I host a lot of videos, and if you watch ShortCircuit and compare it to TechLinked or GameLinked,
you might be able to tell, I do better when I'm reading. I'm like a Ron Burgundy type of situation,
so I was really excited when Elgato announced the Promptor. It's an all-in-one teleprompter
setup with a single cable that you can plug into your computer or phone, and immediately
seem like you know what you're talking about. Now, if you don't know what a teleprompter is,
it's just basically a screen that reflects a script up onto a piece of glass that sits in
front of a camera so you can read the script as you're hosting. It's my whole life, basically.
Let's move this to the other side and see what's in this box. Promptor. USB cable.
USB-C? Ooh, a right angle. Okay, USB-A to USB-C right angle cable. I don't know how long it is.
Seems pretty long, though. Braided. Durable. Universal Shroud and a DSLR mirrorless backplate.
So this is going to let you use this Promptor with a bunch of different cameras, either a webcam,
the Elgato webcams, or a dedicated camera that you bring yourself from home. I don't know how
this works yet because I'll figure that out later. Step up rings to step up your hosting
video to a streaming game. So these are rings that would basically serve as adapters to allow
you to fit them into the Promptor properly, depending on what your camera and lens situation is.
I like how the packaging is all cardboard, not a lot of plastic in here. Okay, let's get the Promptor
out itself. At least it's key. Two pieces. Okay, this looks like the platform that the camera goes
on. And sure enough, it's nothing. They can't slip it past me. Wow, okay. I gotta say, like,
compared to the Promptors that we work with here and the Promptors that I've seen elsewhere,
this looks slick. Like, this is a slick-looking Promptor. Maybe I'm being silly here,
but I appreciate that there's sort of this, like, matte, nice finish on it. Like, it doesn't look
like cheap plastic or anything. And they have this cool, like, design on the bottom, signifying brains
because if you use one of these things, you're smart. Gotta say, that's a very, very small window.
I don't see how you're going to put in a DSLR lens in there, but it's because this is a plate
you can take off. It says for Facecam Pro. There we go. That looks like the Promptors I'm used to
working with. However, we also have a mirrorless camera with a lens that we're going to try and
fit on there and see how that works. It looks like you can take the tablet off. And sure enough,
there are screws on the back there. So I'm guessing you can remove the tablet if you want, but...
Now, the tablet itself is a 9-inch screen. It's a 1024x600 resolution. And you might be saying,
that's too low for gaming? Well, yeah, no, you're not gaming. All you're going to do is, like,
put text on here. So it doesn't need to be super, super high resolution. However, this
mirrored display, hello. The glass portion of display is obviously, you know, it's a bit
bigger than the 9-inch display. It's a bit taller and it's got optical grade 7030 beam
splitter glass is what they call it, which just means, you know, it's mirrored. So you can see
what's on the display, on the mirrored glass. Now, as for ports on the tablet itself, as advertised,
there's just this single USB-C port, which you can connect to your Windows PC, or your Mac,
or your Android. First of all, let's connect the webcam. Elgato says that they have, you know,
very wide compatibility for a lot of different camera setups. Hopefully the setup process
isn't that confusing. Okay, so this is the camera platform, and then you can slide it up and down,
depending on how big your camera is going to be. Oh, it's supposed to actually fit into that little
window. Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay, see that, that's nice. Let me just say so far, this is real smooth.
I mean, having a teleprompter made by a company that makes webcams is immediately nice because
they have this like perfect cutout for their webcam that they sell. Okay, and now on the bottom,
we have these tripod mounts. So you can, I guess you could either use this one or that one, or both.
Accessories. We also have these two cold shoe mounts on the top. So you have like a mini shotgun
mic that you use for your setup, then you can just stick it right in there. All right, we are here
with the Elgato prompter setup. It's asking me if I'm ready to roll the camera, and believe me, I am.
Very exciting. So once you connect the tablet via the USB-C cable to your laptop, you can install
the Elgato Camera Hub software if you don't have it installed already, because it's the same software
that you use with your webcam. You go into the prompter section, and here you go. You got your
script. You got some options on the side here for brightness. Yes, I can make it darker, brighter.
You have the content window where you can change it to be either text showing your script that you
wrote or whatever, or you can have it as a secondary monitor, or an even better option if it works.
It's in beta right now is this chat integration, where you can give it your Twitch channel and
an optional title, and then it will like display the chat in their own style. We're going to test
this out by linking to just a random Twitch streamer that we thought of, Kit Boga. Okay, there it is.
That's pretty cool. And now we're recording on the Elgato Facecam Pro, and indeed, I mean, you
tell me, can you see the chat flipping by? No. Now, pretend this is a live stream, and I'm reading
this comment from you in real time. So much sauce today. How did that feel? Felt pretty good
to have eye contact while that happened, didn't it? Now, depending on how fast the chat is going,
I'm not sure how engaging this is going to be for the people making chat messages, especially when
it's going this fast, as like someone's looking at the camera, like, is it better to have somebody
looking at the camera and trying to like read, or is it like, is it better to have them looking down
here and trying to read? Because in both scenarios, if they're actually reading your comment talking
to you through the camera, great, there's connection, there's parasocial dynamics going on here, and that's
exciting. But if you're just looking up at the chat and just being like, oh, it's going so fast,
there's got to be a way to like slow it down. Are there settings for the chat? Oh, font size. Okay.
Yeah, you can make, you can change the font size down to 10 point, which is far too little to see,
unless I mean, if this was right up here, I could, that's, that's readable, because that's
one of the big selling points of this thing, because it's so small, yet so clear, and so easy to use,
and so built for wide angle cameras, you can bring this thing right up over your monitor,
as opposed to like big giant teleprompter setups, which are like way more clunky, and you have to
have like heavy monitor arms and stuff, and whatever, you could just like put this thing on a box,
don't put it on a box, you're better than that. Oh, you can bring it more into the center or over
to the side, you can have the text to be, oh, you can have completely custom colors for the text
and background, red on white, if you want, let's see if the background color affects the actual
video, but yes, and it does, so that's somewhat unsurprising, if you make the background color
white, you can, but it will affect, you'll be able to see that your recording is a little bit more
washed out, so just be aware, you can also change the font, ooh, if you want impact, but no, no
comic sans, there's no opacity slider as well, if you want to have something behind the actual text,
I can't think of an example off the top of my head that that would be useful for, but there
definitely is something, and the last section here is called scrolling, you have an auto scroll
chapter button, which basically means, is it gonna stop after it finishes the chapter, or is it gonna
keep scrolling through each of these chapter sections you have in your script? Okay, let's see
how this goes, Scripts.com, Bee Movie by Jerry Seinfeld, narrator, black screen with text, the
sound of buzzing bees can be heard, according to unknown modes of aviation, what's the deal with
bees? My main complaint so far seems to be that when you can scroll in the software here very
easily and kind of see, oh okay, I see at a glance the whole script, but I can't see an easy way to
scroll on the tablet, unless I'm just like, you can split it into chapters, and then you can hit
the skip back and skip forward button to like jump to certain chapters, but with our prompter
software that we use, you can scroll up and down, like it's a, this is not a touchscreen, right? No,
it's not, so you can just scroll up and down either with the touchscreen because we use iPads for that,
or we have remotes that you can scroll up and down on the script, as a video host, I really
appreciate that, and I can't see an easy way to do that unless I'm tripping. Now you don't have to
use the Elgato Camera Hub software, if you just plug it in and don't launch the app, or if you
select display in the app, it just shows up as another monitor, so you can throw anything on there,
you can even play a game on there, which I, now that I've said it, I want to do. This is not a good
idea, so yeah, you can play a game on it, you can do anything you would do with an external display.
Playing with a laptop trackpad and a teleprompter as a display. I can see a whole new genre of
video game streaming, where you still see the game is still the majority of the screen for the viewer,
but then the Incept webcam is you looking, wow, do you feel like you're there? Yeah, when I'm
watching the streamer, I really feel like I am his computer. Okay, the last thing that I wanted to
see was how easy it is to connect a mirrorless camera with a big old lens on it, as opposed to
just like plugging in Elgato's own webcam. They include a bunch of these adapter rings, so let's
check it out. Okay, let's take this, the adapter plate for the webcam off, and put on the adapter
plate for mirrorless lenses. Okay, and now this, what is this camera here, Glenn? It's a Sony A9
with a 24 to 105 millimeter lens, but the mount on the front fits 77 millimeter adapters, and the
Elgato prompter comes with nine sizes from 49 millimeters to 82 millimeters, and we have a 77
millimeter adapter right here. It's just got a little bit, it's like, it barely looks like anything,
but there's a little bit of a lip there that's going to allow you to slide it in to this adapter
so that it stays in place. So there it is, that's not going anywhere. A specific issue that we're
running into here is that this is kind of a long lens, the 24 to 105, and most lenses that you're
going to use with a teleprompter are going to be on the wider side, which means that they're going
to be on the shorter side. Now, because this lens is long, the included mount doesn't let us,
you know, it doesn't let you connect from the mount to this part of the prompter, you can connect
it to the camera just fine, or you can connect it to the prompter just fine, but not both.
So in this situation, if you really needed to use this lens, then you would have the camera mounted
on a tripod and then have another tripod or a C-stand or something connected to the bottom
thingies there. So then you'd have two things, you know, two supports for your setup. A better
solution would be just to, you know, use a shorter lens that actually can work with this mount.
It doesn't give you a ton of room, depending on your camera. Like, you need to have a pretty
short lens for that to line up properly. You know what, scratch that, I have this the wrong way,
so it's supposed to go this way, and that leaves you more, you know, a little bit more room, but
it's still, this lens still doesn't cut it for this setup. But just be aware, if you want to use
a mirrorless camera or another camera with like a big lens on it, this may be an issue you could
run into. But the mount not fitting isn't the end of the world as Elgato does show that you can hang
the prompter off the end of the lens. If you're comfortable with that, I'd still prefer to set
up an additional support for the prompter just to be extra safe, but it's not 100% necessary.
Now, all that said, for an all-in-one solution with a tablet included and software that makes
things pretty easy to use, this thing is $280, ships in March. You know, that's not bad for an
all-in-one, easy-to-use setup. I think there's a lot of teleprompter setups that you have to
like supply your own tablet or whatever. Overall, pretty happy, nice job Elgato. I don't want to
switch to this for our videos because it's a little small and we have our cameras far away,
but I think for independent video creators who are kind of making videos on their own and you're
in your, you know, personal studio in your bedroom or whatever, I think that having something like
this where you can have a wide angle setup with a easy-to-use teleprompter or for Twitch streamers
or whatever, doesn't seem like too bad of an idea. Hey, that was a ShortCircuit. Thanks for watching.
Subscribe to the channel. And if you're looking for something else to watch, I got a hot tip for
you here. This PIKTO wireless gaming thing that I took a look at, that was pretty crazy. Wow.