How to stream Unreal Engine over Zoom without lag

The beauty of Unreal Engine is its power to bring immersive worlds full of fantastic creatures and stunning landscapes to life. What you create in Unreal Engine can transport people from their couch or gaming chair into another world they can practically touch. 

However, for animators and designers building these worlds from their remote workstations, their world is anything but immersive. It can be incredibly isolating, and collaborating with your co-creators feels less like it used to when you all used to edit together in one editing suite. 

Naturally, many editors are desperately looking for a way to recreate the live collaboration experience of a pre-pandemic era, and the most obvious solution is to use our good old friend Zoom.   

We’re going to explore some common workflows that people are attempting to use to stream their editing and creation sessions live over Zoom and examine whether any of them truly meet the needs of creative teams. 

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Try an Alternative

While there are a variety of complicated workarounds to try with Zoom, you'll never quite get what you're looking for if you need ultra low latency streaming.

Evercast Studio is specifically built as a platform for seamless creative collaboration. It can broadcast your Unreal Engine editing workspace while you live video chat with your creative team and make edits in real-time. 

Benefits of using Evercast Studio to stream Unreal Engine:

• Low latency streaming (on average, less than 100ms)
• Built-in video chatting
• On-screen annotations and timestamped comments make collaborating on edits super easy and straightforward
• Dedicated apps for macOS, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro
• Supports up to 10-bit 4:4:4 color
• 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound support
• 4K/60fps streaming of any editing workflow via Unreal Engine, any other game engine or creative software, media files, and more
• 24/7 white-glove support from Evercast’s support team
  

If you’re looking for a better way to bring your remote creative team closer together and collaborate more efficiently from a distance, check out Evercast Studio.

And if you don't need a full-scale collaboration solution like Evercast Studio, you can also try Evercast Presenter, a plugin for Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. With just a simple plugin, you can securely share 4K video and high-quality media within the video conferencing tools you already use - no stuttering, no lag, and no compression artifacts. It's great for presentations, quick creative reviews, and more. Learn more at presenter.evercast.com.

If you're not ready for a solution like Evercast,  here are some workarounds to stream Premire Pro over Zoom.

Workaround #1: Use an NDI and two separate systems 

One of the most common workarounds is going to require that you have two separate systems for it to work. One for you to run Unreal Engine on, and a second to run Zoom on. You’ll also need some additional software which we’ll cover in the breakdown. 

Step 1: Download NewTek’s Connect or Connect Pro NDI to both systems. This will create an input-output system for broadcasting Unreal Engine to Zoom. 

Step 2: Set up the NDI on your Unreal Engine system to screen monitor while you edit. 

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Download the NewTek NDI Tools package to your PC
2. Open the NDI Screen Capture application.
3. Once NDI Screen Capture is running, it will automatically begin broadcasting your screen to the network. 
4. Open Filmora and launch the project you want to broadcast.
   

Step 3: Open Zoom on your second system. 

Step 4: Open “Preferences” in Zoom, and locate the Video preferences menu. 

Step 5: Set the video inputs to the NewTek NDI Video stream. A broadcast of your desktop running Unreal Engine should now appear in the preview window. If it doesn’t, ensure that NDI Screen Capture is running on your other system. 

If you’ve done this successfully, you should be able to stream your editing screen live over Zoom while talking with your co-collaborators.

Workaround #2: OBS VirtualCam

This workaround uses OBS and an NDI on a single system with two monitors. It is similar to the previous workflow but with some minor differences. 

Step 1: Download and install OBS VirtualCam to your Mac. 

Step 2: Download NewTek’s NDI Tools package for Mac. 

Step 3: Start NDI Screen Capture and select the screen that will be running Unreal Engine as your source. Open Unreal Engine and whatever project you want to stream on that screen. 

Step 4: Open OBS and Zoom on your second monitor. 

Step 5: In OBS, select your first video input source and set it to NewTek NDI Screen Capture.

Step 6: (Optional): Select a second video input source and set it to your webcam feed. This will allow you to stream your face as well as your screen. You can position this second feed anywhere on top of the screen sharing feed. 

Step 7: Start “Virtual Camera” in OBS by going to “Tools” then selecting “Start Virtual Camera.”

Step 8: Open  Zoom, go to “Preferences,” then select OBS as the source for both your audio and video. This will allow you to stream whatever is in OBS directly to Zoom.

A note on the audio: You can connect an external microphone through OBS as well to be able to speak with your co-collaborators, or you can set your audio input in Zoom as your built-in microphone. 

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