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Teams NDI status?

Brass Contributor

Can we get a status on the release of NDI within Teams? There are a bunch of us trying to find the best solution for event coordination and have been prioritized to avoid Zoom. With how Skype handles NDI outputs being all but unusable, we're all gunning for Teams to step up and be the solution but aside from the initial announcement, there has been zero feedback on how it will handle things like forced watermarks, audio mixing, or return video allowed to be NDI as well.

There are quite a few even in the circles that I partake in that would be VERY interested in more information such as how it handles audio (comparatively to Skype's terrible decision to mix-down), the watermark requirements, HX compatibility, and whether it will allow for NDI as an input source or whether we need to create a virtual camera with it.

21 Replies

Several days now and still no responses or replies? Not even a "Hold tight, we'll be announcing information X"?

best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution

Hi @AskMP 

 

Nothing on the Microsoft 365 roadmap currently

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=Microsoft%20Teams%2CIn%20development&s...

 

The official build announcement states coming soon

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-build-edit...

 

The book of news actually states June, see article 2.1.5

 

https://news.microsoft.com/build-2020-book-of-news/

 

With new Skype TX interoperability for Microsoft Teams rolling out in May and NDI support available worldwide in June, customers can use Teams to create online conferences, interviews, press briefings, entertainment and other productions. They also can reach audiences through internet social channels and streaming platforms, television broadcasts or websites.

Producers can plan and manage events in Teams, which integrates collaboration, work management and real-time communication with chat, calling and meetings. Expanding on the existing live event solution that allows for anyone to easily share webcams and screens to thousands of viewers, now Teams is introducing these more advanced production options for customized, high-scale broadcasts.

NDI for Teams, available in June, transforms the feeds of a Teams Meeting into discrete audio/video sources for a production tool or streaming app to provide professional capabilities for broadcasts that help turn a Teams meeting into a virtual stage

 

 

So, considering the timeframes I would imagine we will be hearing more very soon, and likely roll out sometime in Q3 CY2020 (July - Sep) given it's already the end of June. 

 

Hope that answers your question

 

Best, Chris

 

@Christopher Hoard Thanks for that. With it stating that a June release and with the amount of industry professionals I know, I'm just VERY curious to now why I haven't even heard from anybody who has actually used it. Without going into names, I work closely and alongside a lot of event and live production people, yet none of them have seen even demos of this in play. With it being a "June release" and it also being now June 25th, it is truly bizarre that there has been zero release of expected functionality considering that Microsoft is trying to push Teams to be a tool for professionals to use in replacement of Zoom, Slack, and others.

My interest is simply to get more information for all of us. The Skype TX isn't a solution for a lot of us, and Skype currently, while does have NDI out, is not a viable option in many cases simply due to how the engineering team decided to treat the audio. We're (as in the crews behind the scenes) are biting at the chomp for details and a more refined timeline of expectations as we need to start planning for events even so far as the fall and early winter seasons.

@ThereseSolimeno I wouldn't consider this "solved". The response by @Christopher Hoard was information regarding what has already been stated. There hasn't actually been information released or any updates. A "June release" but then timelines by Christopher's guess being July to Sept is clearly not what I would have come to expect from Microsoft when it comes to business feedback.

That is the best response. That is what we know currently.

It's not the solution you are looking for - and I can understand that. Teams NDI is a really exciting feature - it was the one we all looked at from build and want to get to grips with as soon as possible. We all use OBS, we all use things like X Split, we want to see casting into public video platforms. We have fed that back a lot to Microsoft.

To reiterate, there is nothing on the Microsoft 365 roadmap or from the message centre. When something is nearing release it will hit the roadmap then the message centre, then be released. It is not there. Until that time, the functionality is likely to be in private preview - as stated here by an MVP i know called Ragnar Heil

https://ragnarheil.de/top-use-cases-for-ndi-integration-with-microsoft-teams/

But we hear very little about it because private preview is largely NDA to those actually involved with it. As MVP's, we can't disclose anything under NDA even if we know. Concerning release dates with Teams some items get pushed back from time to time or simply take longer. These times are fluid and aren't set in stone. The teams team is super busy delivering functionality like 7 x 7, tasks, lists, breakouts and a whole myriad of other things. They also have to deal with massive scaling of the platform as it have jumped probably 40 - 50 million users since Covid

As said, I regret that we haven't heard more sooner, but this is the state of things how they stand currently. As soon as I hear anything more I will post it back here

Best, Chris

@AskMP 

 

Looks like it was recently added to the road map with a beginning release date of mid-August and a completion of mid-September

 

Link to roadmap Item

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=66009

 

Hi there, I too am waiting to here. Sibos 2020 is happening in September and we need NDI available by then, I don't think Microsoft have any idea how useful it would be. Everything is geared around streaming and not recording, no doubt it will cost more as well. The fact it has taken this long is mind boggling, oh well, relying on Microsoft for something video related, big mistake. Sort it out!!

@AskMP I just noticed the "Allow NDI streaming" setting in the admin centre but still no communication or documentation.

@SuleimanDC I checked our tenant as well and it is showing up in ours as well. hopefully that means Microsoft is getting closer to releasing. 

@Carter Seely looks like it is also showing up on our tenant.  Has anyone actually enabled it and tried to use it?

@bdinnocenzo I enabled it on Thursday. I tested on Thursday night and Friday morning but it didn't seem to work. I did notice that the new meeting experience went back to the old experience after the change.

@AskMP NDI Seems to be working for me now. I am not able to properly test it at the moment.

@SuleimanDCwhen i try to active ndi on my teams client, i get the following message : Sorry, a problem occured when downloading the file. Try to re-activate NDI

@SuleimanDC I checked this morning and it showed up for me as well after closing and relaunching Teams

I also found some more instructions on the feature itself. 
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-ndi-with-microsoft-teams-e91a0adb-96b9-4dca-a2cd-07...

@PhilippeL1080 I would check that your firewall isn't blocking the download of the teams image that shows up when there is no video. You could also try to close and reopen the Teams app.

For me, this is already a HUGE failure on @Pernille-Eskebo's part:


Individual users: Each individual user will have a stream available over NDI. The incoming audio for a meeting is mixed together and will be the same for all individual user streams. These streams will display the video at the same quality that is being received by the client.

 

This is the same functionality as Skype's implementation and it's one that we were hoping would not be the case. Having a mix-down of all the audio combined causes all but 1 NDI output to be de-synced due to simple latency within the NDI protocol. The fact that this is the case almost negates the purpose of waiting for this functionality. If you have only 1 guest + screen, sure... it will be fine. But more than 1 person and this method of mixing down all the external audio into each NDI video feed is absolutely unacceptable practice.

@SuleimanDC Can you advise where you found this setting in the Microsoft Teams admin center, please?

Hi @Carter Seely, firewall is not in cause, but maybe the fact that i'm still under windows 7. 

@AskMP 

After waiting for months, we finally got the NDI feature in our tenant!!! Been playing around with Teams, NDI and OBS. Here is a quick video i made..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaZKYJ2z3ic

 

Enjoy ;)

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution

Hi @AskMP 

 

Nothing on the Microsoft 365 roadmap currently

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=Microsoft%20Teams%2CIn%20development&s...

 

The official build announcement states coming soon

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-build-edit...

 

The book of news actually states June, see article 2.1.5

 

https://news.microsoft.com/build-2020-book-of-news/

 

With new Skype TX interoperability for Microsoft Teams rolling out in May and NDI support available worldwide in June, customers can use Teams to create online conferences, interviews, press briefings, entertainment and other productions. They also can reach audiences through internet social channels and streaming platforms, television broadcasts or websites.

Producers can plan and manage events in Teams, which integrates collaboration, work management and real-time communication with chat, calling and meetings. Expanding on the existing live event solution that allows for anyone to easily share webcams and screens to thousands of viewers, now Teams is introducing these more advanced production options for customized, high-scale broadcasts.

NDI for Teams, available in June, transforms the feeds of a Teams Meeting into discrete audio/video sources for a production tool or streaming app to provide professional capabilities for broadcasts that help turn a Teams meeting into a virtual stage

 

 

So, considering the timeframes I would imagine we will be hearing more very soon, and likely roll out sometime in Q3 CY2020 (July - Sep) given it's already the end of June. 

 

Hope that answers your question

 

Best, Chris

 

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