Getting Started — MCR Box

GETTING STARTED

Four steps from download to on-air. A new account starts a 30-day trial of the full engine and 10 hosted cloud hours (no card, once per email). Hosted instances receive their license automatically.

GET THE BUILD

Download the signed macOS DMG or the Ubuntu 24.04 CUDA bundle, pull the Docker server image (including on Windows via WSL2), or skip the install and launch a hosted cloud instance.

MACOS →UBUNTU GPU →WINDOWS (WSL2) →DOCKER →AWS AMI →

INSTALL & LAUNCHMACOS

Open the DMG, drag MCR Box to Applications, and launch it. First launch may require approval in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

UBUNTU 24.04 (GPU)

$ shell

mkdir -p ~/mcrbox && cd ~/mcrboxunzip mcrbox-2.0.6-beta-ubuntu-24.04-cuda.zipsudo ./scripts/install_service.sh

The zip unpacks at the current directory — there is no nested folder. You need an NVIDIA driver 525+ and a few Ubuntu 24.04 runtime libraries, listed on the downloads page. GPU acceleration is auto-detected after that. Hosted Cloud skips this step.

WINDOWS (WSL2 + DOCKER)

There is no native Windows build. Install the NVIDIA driver on Windows, Ubuntu 24.04 in WSL2, Docker Desktop with the WSL2 backend, and the NVIDIA Container Toolkit in that Linux environment. Then run the server image with --gpus all and NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=compute,video,graphics,utility so NVENC and the compositor both see the GPU.

Full commands — including Compose and docker exec mcrbox nvidia-smi — are on the Downloads Windows tab. Without a GPU the engine falls back to software x264.

OPEN THE WEB UI

MCR Box serves its embedded Web UI locally:

https://localhost:8443RECOMMENDED · HTTPS

http://localhost:8080FALLBACK · HTTP

You will see a self-signed-certificate warning on HTTPS — click "Advanced" and proceed. This is normal for localhost.

CONFIGURE & GO LIVE▸Add at least two sources — SRT (caller or listener), unicast UDP/RTP, or MPEG-TS over UDP — to enable automatic failover.▸Pick an output — SRT, UDP, or RTMP — and set encoding: H.264/H.265, bitrate, resolution.▸Press Start. MCR Box watches every source for freeze, black, and latency, then switches frame-accurately. Live metrics sit in the multiview; TR 101 290 and SRT rates sit on Health.▸Cue a recording or file onto preview, then take it to program. Pause, seek, and skip from the console. Apply updates from Config.▸Send a guest a browser invite, add a commentary mix-minus, or bring in a remote captioner.

GET THE BUILD TALK TO AN ENGINEER

COMMON ISSUESKNOWN ISSUES →

CERTIFICATE WARNING

https://localhost:8443 uses a self-signed certificate, so your browser shows a security warning.

Click "Advanced" (Chrome/Edge) or "Accept the Risk" (Firefox) and proceed — this is safe for localhost.

PORT ALREADY IN USE

Another application is holding port 8080 or 8443, so MCR Box cannot bind.

Stop the conflicting application or change the MCR Box ports in the configuration file.

PREVIEW NOT SHOWING

Video previews may not appear in the UI after configuring sources (known issue #10).

The streams are still processed correctly even if previews do not display.