This setup is based on the ideas from Dri at this thread on tiltforums.

Idea

The basic idea here is instead of capturing 3 HDMI cameras, we will instead feed 3 cameras into a multiviewer, capture the output of the multiviewer in OBS and carve it. This has a couple big advantages

• When running a wireless mobile rig, you only need 1 TX/RX pair
• You only need 1 HDMI capture device

 

Hardware Setup

• Monoprice Blackbird HDMI 4x1 Multiviewer
  • Powered PD battery and a USB Type C 3.1 PD to 5.5mm Barrel Jack Cable
• 3 HDMI cameras powered by power bank battery
  • My setup is using
    • Sony ZV-1 for the playfield
    • Sony cx405 for score cam
    • c922 plugging into a Raspberry Pi 4 outputting to HDMI
• 1 Wireless HDMI transmitter. I am using Accsoon Cineview HE
  • powered by 5V usb-c
• 1 usb capture device - EVGA XR1 Lite

OBS Setup

The multiviewer has several display modes.

2 of these modes seem reasonable: Mode2 and Mode5. Mode 2 will scale all inputs to 960x540 (540p). Since the normal playfield dimension I use is 1080x608, this will case it to be downscaled and upscaled again. It will be ok, but lose a bit of sharpness. Mode 5 will scale the playfield to 1280x1080. We will still be scaling twice, but we will downscale, then downscale a second time, and we will not lose as much clarity. We will be compromising the quality of the other sources, which will be 640 x 360. In my setup my score cam is usually around 773x435.

Here is how we plan to carve up the multiviwer

OBS Setup

The plan is to create scenes for each of these cameras, that can then be put together into the main view. We start by creating the following scenes and each will contain one Video Capture device which is a reference to the XR1.

We will crop and scale the video in each of the views to the correct size for the camera.

Multiviewer1x3 - Playfield

Player Cam

 

Score Cam

Aux Cam

Putting it all together

I can now add the scenes to my main scene and position just as I would other cameras. 

Testing the quality

I ran 2 quick tests of this setup to compare to directly capturing the playfield camera. In each of these tests, the playfield on the left is being directly captured and the center playfield is the multiviewer. I ran in both the 2x2 configuration and the 1x3 configuration. You can see the improved clarity on the 1x3

Multiviewer 3x1

Multiviewer 2x2