A recap — written down so we all stay aligned through Tryon

What we built.
What Tryon will be.
What we agreed to last night.

I ran out of room on a phone screen, and you ran out of patience for hypothetical. So this is the same conversation, written down, with everything I've been building tucked in next to it. Read at your own pace.

Mike Schiff · Real Neat Solutions · April 29, 2026

01 — What we agreed

Sixty minutes. Zoom and FaceTime. The shape of it.

I run Real Neat Solutions — the platform, the tech, the contracts, the customer relationships, the sponsorship marketplace.

RNS Videomedia is the production company I hire for shows — two days of setup, all the show days, the cameras, the field crew. Lou Ann and Mark do what they're best at. I pay for it.

Tryon is the proof show. Every concept I've built is on the truck. Nothing is held back, nothing is "let's wait until next time." If it's ready, it goes on air.

After Tryon — when we know what worked — we sit down with the numbers and put the long-form arrangement on paper. Day rate, platform share, sponsorship split, IP, all of it.

02 — Since Ocala

Sixteen days. Six decisions. The shape of the platform.

APR13–19

Ocala — proof that this works.

First full-stack live event. LiveU + Wirecast + Captivate + the orchestrator I built. Four divisions running simultaneously on Saturday's XC. Graphics, scoring, lower-thirds, lineups — all driven from one keyboard. We didn't drop a stream.
APR23

Direct line to Rick at Event Entries.

The relationship for live timing data now flows through me. Rick has the data the entire sport needs. We unlock automated rider-on-course tracking, real-time leaderboards, and per-rider video boundaries. This is foundational.
APR25

Wirecast → OBS Studio.

Switched the program switcher to a fully programmable platform. Every scene, source, transition, and recording is now scriptable from the orchestrator. This is how we get to "the AI cuts the show, the operator overrides when needed."
APR27

Strategic clarity — the platform thesis.

Wrote it down: better streams, free rider video, zero cost to the show, sponsorship-funded. Not a service. A platform. The whole rest of this document is what that means.
APR28

Captivate → After Effects.

Moved the graphics package to After Effects — the industry standard. Unlimited templates from Envato. AI-driven population from rider data. The stuff we did manually in Ocala will be one click going forward.
APR29

The call. The blessing.

About sixty minutes between Zoom and FaceTime. I derailed the comms-prep, walked through the platform, and we landed on the new shape: I run Real Neat Solutions; RNS Videomedia is the production company I hire. Mark is in. Lou Ann gave the blessing to go. Tryon is the proof show.

03 — The stack we have right now

Three Macs, one operator desk, one server, no theory.

Switcher seat

M4 iMac · 32 GB

OBS Studio — program + preview
LiveU Studio — bonded ingest
Orchestrator UI — keyboard control

Graphics

Mac mini A · 16 GB

After Effects — render farm
Auto-populate from rider JSON
NDI feed into OBS

Pipeline

Mac mini B · 16 GB

AI rider-video pipeline
Standby switcher (failover)
Outbound encoder

Distribution

Cloud server · public web

RTMP fan-out — H&C and anywhere else, simultaneously, free
Per-rider video URLs at realneatsolutions.com/r/<show>/<bib>
Sponsorship marketplace + reporting
This page lives here.

The KVM ties all three Macs to one keyboard and mouse on show day. The iMac is primary. Either Mac mini can take over the program in under sixty seconds. The cloud server makes us location-independent.

04 — Tryon, May 6

Every idea, on the truck. Not a pilot. The whole kit.

I'm bringing every concept I've been building. Some will land on air, some will sit in standby. What matters is that nothing is theoretical when we hit Friday — every piece of this is built, tested, and one keystroke away. We pick what works on the day.

Roughly fifty graphics — broadcast-standard.

Rebuilt in After Effects. Brand-aware: one template, every show preset re-skins everything in one click. Lower-thirds, leaderboards, standings, schedule cards, fault corner-bug, finish slates — the whole package.

Rider-on-course tracking + time-on-air ledger.

The orchestrator knows who's on course, where they are, who's about to start, and how many seconds each rider has spent on program today. If somebody's been under-covered, it surfaces. No rider gets forgotten.

Five-second bumper for every fence on cross country.

Pre-rendered video card per fence — name, number, height, distance, a hero shot. Commentators tap a button, we cut to the bumper, they talk through it, we cut back to live. The XC story has structure for the first time.

Commentator dossier app.

Every rider's bio, every horse's history, every relevant story — built from USEA, Event Entries, and our own scrape — surfaced to the commentator on cue. Annie and the rest get a teleprompter-grade rundown for every ride.

Course-walk camera collaboration with Mark.

Mark walks the XC course holding a phone. I'm at the switcher watching what he sees. We assess camera positions live, in real time, before the operators show up. Twenty years of his eventing eye, my switcher view, one phone call.

Course builders as content creators.

The course builders shoot photo and video as they build — a fence going in, the heavy lifting, the angles. That feeds the per-fence packages and gives commentators behind-the-scenes content nobody else has.

Per-rider video — every rider, free.

Every ride, cut start-box to finish, branded, archived. Posted to YouTube under their bib at realneatsolutions.com/r/<show>/<bib>. They get the link automatically. They share it. That's the wedge that makes the next show easier.

Live archive of all eight feeds.

Every camera, recorded continuously, indexed by rider and fence. The orchestrator can pull any moment back into the live show as a replay or build a highlight reel from it. Ocala had no archive. Tryon has a complete one.

Stream destinations H&C primary · plus any destination we want, simultaneously · zero added cost per destination

Operator Me, solo at the switcher · keyboard-first · two failover machines

Comms Two-layer hybrid — production core wireless intercom + PoC radios for XC ops · final pick by Wed

05 — The vision

The best stream in the world.
Free for the show. Free for the rider. Free everywhere it lands.

Better than the incumbents — by a lot.

Clip My Horse is expensive and clunky. Horse & Country is good but still niche. We're not building a streaming service. We're building the production the streaming services pay to carry.

Every rider gets their video.

Automatically. Branded. On YouTube under their bib. A vanity URL they can share to friends, family, sponsors, prospective owners. We don't charge them. Ever. That's the moat.

The show pays nothing.

Organizers don't pay. Riders don't pay. Viewers don't pay. The money comes from sponsors — and the sponsors come from the size of the audience we build by being free everywhere.

Distribution everywhere it makes sense.

Free streams can be cross-posted to YouTube, X, FaceBook, Twitch, Roku channels, smart-TV apps, anywhere. Same broadcast. Many destinations. The cloud does the fan-out for cents per show.

07 — Why this can't be matched

Speed is the moat. Nobody else in this sport is building this way.

The traditional way

Broadcast tech vendor3–6 months per feature
Custom graphics2 weeks per template, designer + dev
Per-rider videodoesn't exist at this scale
Sponsorship salesfull-time team, percentage cut
Stack changesquarterly planning cycle

My way

Broadcast featuresa weekend, sometimes a day
Custom graphicsAI populates from data, render farm does the rest
Per-rider videoautomated end-to-end, every ride
Sponsorship salesself-serve marketplace, AI fulfillment
Stack changescommitted before the next show

I work with Claude Code and a chain of AI tools that write, test, and ship code with me — not for me, with me. It's the difference between an engineering team of one and an engineering team of one with a hundred specialists on call.

That's why a $15K software package took a week. That's why this presentation is on a real domain ninety minutes after we started writing it. That's why every show we run, the platform improves visibly.

The window is twelve to eighteen months. After that, somebody else figures this out. Before that, we own it — if we move.

08 — The arrangement we landed on

Same crew, new shape — built around what each of us is actually best at.

Lou Ann gave the blessing. Mark is in. The shape is simple, and it works for everyone in the conversation.

Real Neat Solutions

The platform — me.

The technology, the orchestrator, the graphics package, the AI pipelines
The H&C contract and every future streamer / distributor relationship
The sponsorship marketplace and every dollar that flows through it
The customer-facing brand, the website, the calendar of new shows
I pay RNS Videomedia for the production, every show, on a clean rate

RNS Videomedia

The production company — you.

Two days of setup plus all show days, on a per-show contract
Cameras, racks, LiveU rental, field crew — your domain
Mark as DP / shot designer (see below)
Lou Ann's organizer relationships keep feeding the calendar — every show in your network is one I can pitch
No tech overhead, no API plumbing, no stack to learn

Mark — DP & Shot Designer

Twenty years of eventing eye, finally pointed at a director who's listening.

Course-walk camera partner. Mark walks XC with a phone, I see what he sees, we lock the camera positions together before any operator arrives.
Field DP on show day. He's the one talking to the operators, calling the audibles, catching the story moments my switcher view can't see.
Course-builder liaison. Mark gets the timing data, the build-process content, the photo/video for the per-fence packages.
Mentor for camera ops. Hired-gun ops show up day-of — Mark's the one who briefs them in five minutes flat.

Lou Ann — Production lead & relationship anchor

The two things RNS Videomedia is uniquely good at — kept, and amplified.

Production manager on every show. Field crew, gear, comms — yours to run.
Camera op on dressage / SJ. The work you actually like, on the disciplines that suit a single-camera approach.
Organizer relationships. Twenty years of trust with show organizers — the calendar I'm pitching against starts with your phone book.
Co-pilot on show ops. When the field side needs a decision, you make it. I stay at the switcher.

After Tryon — when we know what worked and what didn't — we sit down with the numbers and put the long form on paper. Day rate, platform share, sponsorship split, IP. Until then, this is the shape.

09 — The endgame

The room we earn our way into.

Amazon Prime Video. ESPN. YouTube TV. FloSports. DAZN. Apple Sports. Every major streaming service has a sports vertical strategy and a hole where "the right partner in equestrian" should sit.

We don't ask for that meeting. We earn that meeting by being undeniable — by running the best stream in the sport, free, everywhere, with rider video nobody else delivers. By the time they're shopping, we're the only choice.

That meeting is the unlock. Distribution at planetary scale. Sponsorship inventory priced like a real sport. A seat at the table for the next decade of how this gets watched.

But we have to be that good, that fast. Every Tryon, every Rebecca Farms, every show after that — all of them are the rehearsal for the meeting.