Feed

What is it?

A feed is any continuous video/audio signal traveling from one point to another: the camera feed into the switcher, the satellite feed from the stadium, the program feed out to the network, the return feed back to a remote guest. It's broadcasting's most universal noun — the word for a stream of signal — and production conversations are largely about which feeds exist, where they go, and what's on them.

Practical example

Map a live event's feeds: six camera feeds arrive at the truck; the switched program feed leaves the truck for the network; a clean feed (program without graphics) goes separately to the international partners who'll add their own captions; return feeds carry the program back to the on-site monitors and the remote commentators; a backup feed travels a second path in case the primary drops. One event, a dozen named signals — and the production's wiring diagram is literally called the feed map. The streaming equivalents are direct: each guest is an incoming feed, the broadcast is the program feed, what the guest hears back is their return feed.

Key things to know (non-technical)

• The mental model: production is plumbing for signals — feeds are the water, and most technical conversation is about routing them.
• The qualifying adjectives carry the meaning: program feed (the show), camera feed (one source), return feed (sent back to participants), backup feed (the redundant path), clean/dirty (without/with graphics — their own entries).
• Feeds are directional and specific: "send me the feed" is an incomplete sentence in a production — which feed defines the request.
• The word scales from cables to satellites to URLs unchanged: an RTMP ingest is a feed; so is an intercontinental fiber circuit.

In Tupic Live

Feed is the vocabulary underneath Tupic Live's architecture: guest feeds in, program feed out, return feeds (mix-minus) back to participants, destination feeds to each platform — and as the product grows toward professional users, speaking this language in its interfaces and APIs ("clean program feed output") is how it plugs into the broadcast world's existing plumbing.