Scoreboard over NDI

Why NDI is the easy option

If the picture of the scoreboard already travels your network as NDI, there is nothing to plug in. No long HDMI run across the hall, no spare capture card, no fighting over who gets the USB device. UniversoOCR joins the network, finds the sender and starts reading.

It finds the senders by itself

Press Refresh in the Source panel and every NDI sender on the network shows up under its own NDI heading — you pick one from the list rather than typing an address. Any sender works:

Full quality, not the preview stream

This matters more than it sounds. NDI can also send a small, heavily compressed proxy stream, and on that stream a distant shot clock turns to mush — the digits lose exactly the thin segments the reader needs. UniversoOCR always asks for the full-bandwidth feed, so what it sees is what the camera sent.

Set-up

1. Install the NDI runtime (NDI Tools, free from the NDI website). Without it Windows has no way to receive NDI at all.
2. Start your sender — camera, converter, or OBS/vMix with its NDI output on.
3. In UniversoOCR: open the Source panel, press Refresh and pick the sender under NDI. Press Start.
4. Define Corners on the scoreboard, Add Field over each number, and switch on the output you want — OBS, vMix, file or browser overlay.

When it does not work

The NDI heading is empty

The runtime is missing — the app says so in the Source panel. Install NDI Tools and press Refresh.

Sources are listed but there is no picture

Almost always the same cause seen from the other side: a partial NDI install can discover senders without being able to receive from them. Install the full NDI Runtime / NDI Tools package and restart the app.

Nothing is found on a big network

NDI discovery relies on multicast, which many managed switches and most guest Wi-Fi networks block. Put the sender and this computer on the same subnet, on cable rather than Wi-Fi where you can.

The trick worth knowing

NDI also solves the capture-card traffic jam. If OBS has already claimed your capture card, no other program can open it — but OBS can send its feed back out as NDI (with the NDI output plugin), and UniversoOCR reads that. One card, both programs, no splitter. See capture cards for the other ways around it.