For decades, the only way to broadcast news events in a timely manner was to
have a huge budget for like a truck that
had editing stations inside it and a satellite link to your local station
where it could then be broadcast to the masses. But personal technology has
changed this though in a huge way. First was the everybody has a camera
revolution that allowed the World Trade Center bombings to be captured from many
different angles. albeit in very very low quality for the most part. Then the
next big thing that happened was broadband internet and the ability for
anyone for well next to no cost free
right YouTube to be able to broadcast whatever video it was they'd captured to
anyone. Then social took the internet by
storm in the late 2000s once mobile internet connections were pretty much
ubiquitous. So you were guaranteed almost if anything crazy was going down,
someone was there with a connection talking about it. Following that, more
internet infrastructure improvements, HD online, as well as video streaming gave
rise to sites like just.tv and later the
gaming focus twitch.tv, which leads us
finally to the next chapter. Thanks to the unstoppable
onward march of technology, for less than a few
thousand, an individual can equip him or
herself with a live reporting backpack
that allows footage and personal commentary to be broadcast almost
anywhere live.
So this is it. Everything in front of me is what is needed to build your very own
DIY reporter backpack. So for me, it starts with the laptop. This is a UX303
from ASUS. This is actually the same one that I used in my can you edit 4K video
on a laptop video, which you can check out over here. And the reason I selected
it again for this project was A, I already had it, and B, it's got a Core
i7 Skylake processor, which allows me to get a good enough HD video stream for,
you know, to be better than what anyone's going to be broadcasting from a
cell phone, as well as the fact that it's thin and light and has reasonable
battery life. Now, obviously, a laptop doesn't do anything on its own. So, in
terms of software, XSplit, who actually sponsored this episode, the DIY reporter
backpack episode, has provided us with a copy of their XSplit broadcaster
software, which is going to allow us to take our multiple camera inputs, uh,
switch between different inputs and broadcast directly to twitch.tv, which
obviously wouldn't be the normal destination for something that's not
about gaming, but we have a Twitch account and they're cool. So, uh, we're
going to go ahead and we're going to do our our our testing over on there. Now,
as good as the battery life is on this laptop, um it's not going to be enough
for what we're trying to do. So, I picked out the cheapest, highest
capacity 19vt output battery bank. In
our case, it's a Rav Power 23,000 mAh
battery bank off of Amazon, and I threw that in the backpack. Next, next came
the capture device. So, we've got an Elgato HD60 here. This allows us to take
an HDMI input from our camera and turn
that into something that XSplit can understand, which leads us, I guess,
pretty well into the camera. Now, this is a pretty high-end model. This is a
Canon XA20 that we use for our channel, Super Fun Videos. But what I like about
it and what I would recommend that you guys look for is something with an HDMI
output as well as something that accepts a couple of audio inputs because we're
going to be using one of the XLR inputs for a lavalier microphone from road that
I'm going to wear on myself and the other one for a shotgun microphone that
is forward- facing so that I can collect sound from whatever event it is that I
am actually looking at. Remember guys, sound is as important as video for
capturing an event or a moment of some
sort. Now, I do have a big beefy battery on it, but I'm going to pack my charger
with me anyway because right here I have a second battery bank option. This one
has two USB outputs, but more uniquely an AC output. So, as long as I'm
carrying around the power brick adapters for any of my devices, I can use this
charge tech unit here to get supplementary power with that thing
plugged into the camera. It lasted for hours and hours and hours and hours.
Next up is my MiFi 4G hotspot. So, this
was actually provided by Belle and they gave me an unlimited data plan so that I
didn't have to use my phone for this whole wacky experiment. And uh other
than that, I don't know really what else to say about it other than if you're
going to pick up one of these for this purpose, make sure you have enough data
on it. And number two, make sure you have one that allows you to plug into a
computer via USB or some other connection so that you don't have to go
4G to the mobile connection and then Wi-Fi to the laptop. It is an option,
but having a hardwired connection between this and the laptop is a little
bit better. For this one, I'm going to choose an outer wall of the backpack so
that it has as unobstructed an access to the cellular network as possible. Not
that it really makes a huge difference. For our last two pieces, the
aforementioned remote, which I will be taping onto my ARM, allowing me to start
and stop my broadcast and change scenes without actually digging into the
backpack. And finally, my handy dandy reporter's
helmet. This will keep me safe when I am
covering live events. And thanks to Brandon's Bongo Tide selfie stick on the
top of it here will also allow me to have my face be in the shot so I can
give commentary on whatever it is that I'm looking at. So with all that out of
the way, let's go live broadcast
something. Oh, we have nine viewers apparently.
Okay, so is it the world's most elegant solution? I think we all knew the answer
was no. This, my friends, is the future.
There's not a whole lot happening around here, but uh maybe down this mysterious
back alley. If there was anything that was going to happen though, you can be
assured that I would be ready, me and my trusty uh counterpart,
that I wouldn't actually need. That's another thing that's really great about
my whole future of uh future of live
broadcasting concept is that thanks to the selfie helm, you no longer need a
camera person to accompany you to tell you about uh I have definitely patented
the crap out of the selfie helm. It's a selfie stick attached to a
helmet that protects you from the people who hate you. And you can rest assured
you're wearing a selfie helm. There are people who hate you.
many of them. I'm one of them. Even
though I invented the selfie helm, I invented the selfie helm solely so that
I could identify the people that I hate. This bongo tie system could use some
improvement. I think a stiffer mount.
There we go. That would give us a bit more of that like GoPro look. Definitely
a lot less bounce while I'm while I'm standing. There's a guy running away. He
probably stole that camera.
So, we're back in the studio. I consider this project to be a huge success,
actually, which doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't some things we could
do to optimize the experience. So, I talked about it while I was streaming,
but the mount for our selfie camera, the
webcam that we were using here, oh, I never mentioned the webcam in the setup.
It's a C920 from Logitech. So, the mount for this could be more optimal. a little
bit of motion dampening but with a little bit less bounciness uh would
probably be best. And if we could find a lighter selfie stick that might help as
well. Um in terms of the battery configuration, right now the camera
lasts for like hours and hours and hours, but the laptop only lasts for a
few hours. So I think finding a way to balance those two might be a good
approach if I was going to try and build something like this for everyday use.
Uh, that's another thing. I could have done a better job of cable management of
of all the different wires and cables to make sure that I could get it on me a
little bit more easily, as well as being able to extract the laptop to change any
settings and then put it back more easily would be another optimization I
would make. And I don't know. I guess I
guess that's that's pretty much it. The only real change then if you wanted to
do something like this would be to get a more powerful maybe a quad core laptop
if you wanted to broadcast in 1080p at higher bit rates. From my perspective,
720p 2 megabit, which is what we were doing on the ultraast encoding preset is
I would consider good enough for amateur news reporting. But depending on what
you're going for, you might want to up the ante a little bit. Which I guess
leads us into the conclusion. This video is not about this setup really anyway.
It's more about the broader idea of the democratization of
news. I mean 20 years ago, 10 years ago,
even 5 years ago, this would be completely unattainable, a way of a way
of doing this reliably and with sufficient quality. Whereas now, I mean,
yes, this setup is like $5,000. Although 2,000 is the camera. You don't have to
do that. And that laptop is pretty nice as well. it is somewhat attainable for
real people if they were willing to save up the money and it was really important to them to do this and this brings with
it some major advantages as well as some disadvantages. So sort of the
disadvantages is that journalistic training can be beneficial. I mean,
there was that, mind you, there was that recent situation with the shooters down in the States where the journalists were
running around disrupting evidence and all that, but in general, they go
through school for a reason. And just having everyone willy-nilly running a
mock with cameras, recording everything is a privacy issue potentially as well
as a a factual information issue because
these people don't have the necessary training. With that said, I would also
tend to believe that an individual who's
doing this out of passion, not necessarily to get paid, is going to be
more inclined to attack the news stories that they feel are important rather than
the ones that necessarily drive ratings and sponsorships for their news station
in order to maintain the massive staffs that a regular news station would
maintain. So, let me know in the comments below. What do you think? Is
this a step in the right direction or should we leave it to the professionals?
Which I guess leads us pretty well into our sponsor spot, which as I'm sure the
uh college educated among you figured was coming, is XSplit. So XSplit is the
live broadcasting software that we use on the WAN Show, as well as for pretty
much anything else that we do, including this really cool stream I did a little
while ago where I actually built a whole computer with a couple of different
inputs, a couple of different views. You can just switch between scenes with a
hotkey, whether that's on a keyboard next to you or on a controller on your
ARM. Yeah, that's right. Xplit allows all the usual video streaming platforms
to be streamed, too, and has great game capture features that allow you to
capture your games with pretty much the click of a button. But there's more.
Today, you can save 10% off a personal or premium license for XSplit by using
offer code Linus at the link in the video description. And yes, my friends,
there is even more. We are actually doing an XSplit license giveaway over at
the linesttips.com forum. So check that out. Then if you don't happen to win,
you can save 10% and try out the broadcasting software that we use here
at Lionus Media Group. So thanks for watching today, guys. If you disliked
this video, go ahead and hit that dislike button. But come on, I got like
a keyboard strapped to my wrist. Hello. Come in bass command. I read you bass
command. Can you hear me? Anyway, uh if you like the video though, hit that like
button, get subscribed, and maybe even consider supporting us by buying a cool
shirt
like this one by changing your Amazon
bookmark, one with our affiliate code, instructions for which are up there, or by supporting us directly on the forum,
or maybe even buying our Christmas album. Mind you, by the time you're
watching this, it might be after Christmas, so but don't don't worry too
much about that. Anyway, if you're looking for something else to watch now that you've done all of that stuff,
check out Yeah. Check out the promotional video for our Christmas
album. Even if you don't care about the Christmas album, if you don't want to buy it, I think it's pretty funny. Even
if it's after Christmas, it's just ridiculous. It's us singing. It can't be
that bad. It is that bad, but that's why it's funny. Don't forget to subscribe. See
you next time.