DIY Live Reporting Backpack
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,422 words · ~12 min read
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For decades, the only way to broadcast news events in a timely manner was to
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have a huge budget for like a truck that
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had editing stations inside it and a satellite link to your local station
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where it could then be broadcast to the masses. But personal technology has
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changed this though in a huge way. First was the everybody has a camera
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revolution that allowed the World Trade Center bombings to be captured from many
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different angles. albeit in very very low quality for the most part. Then the
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next big thing that happened was broadband internet and the ability for
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anyone for well next to no cost free
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right YouTube to be able to broadcast whatever video it was they'd captured to
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anyone. Then social took the internet by
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storm in the late 2000s once mobile internet connections were pretty much
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ubiquitous. So you were guaranteed almost if anything crazy was going down,
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someone was there with a connection talking about it. Following that, more
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internet infrastructure improvements, HD online, as well as video streaming gave
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rise to sites like just.tv and later the
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gaming focus twitch.tv, which leads us
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finally to the next chapter. Thanks to the unstoppable
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onward march of technology, for less than a few
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thousand, an individual can equip him or
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herself with a live reporting backpack
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that allows footage and personal commentary to be broadcast almost
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anywhere live.
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So this is it. Everything in front of me is what is needed to build your very own
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DIY reporter backpack. So for me, it starts with the laptop. This is a UX303
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from ASUS. This is actually the same one that I used in my can you edit 4K video
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on a laptop video, which you can check out over here. And the reason I selected
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it again for this project was A, I already had it, and B, it's got a Core
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i7 Skylake processor, which allows me to get a good enough HD video stream for,
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you know, to be better than what anyone's going to be broadcasting from a
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cell phone, as well as the fact that it's thin and light and has reasonable
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battery life. Now, obviously, a laptop doesn't do anything on its own. So, in
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terms of software, XSplit, who actually sponsored this episode, the DIY reporter
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backpack episode, has provided us with a copy of their XSplit broadcaster
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software, which is going to allow us to take our multiple camera inputs, uh,
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switch between different inputs and broadcast directly to twitch.tv, which
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obviously wouldn't be the normal destination for something that's not
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about gaming, but we have a Twitch account and they're cool. So, uh, we're
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going to go ahead and we're going to do our our our testing over on there. Now,
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as good as the battery life is on this laptop, um it's not going to be enough
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for what we're trying to do. So, I picked out the cheapest, highest
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capacity 19vt output battery bank. In
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our case, it's a Rav Power 23,000 mAh
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battery bank off of Amazon, and I threw that in the backpack. Next, next came
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the capture device. So, we've got an Elgato HD60 here. This allows us to take
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an HDMI input from our camera and turn
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that into something that XSplit can understand, which leads us, I guess,
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pretty well into the camera. Now, this is a pretty high-end model. This is a
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Canon XA20 that we use for our channel, Super Fun Videos. But what I like about
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it and what I would recommend that you guys look for is something with an HDMI
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output as well as something that accepts a couple of audio inputs because we're
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going to be using one of the XLR inputs for a lavalier microphone from road that
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I'm going to wear on myself and the other one for a shotgun microphone that
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is forward- facing so that I can collect sound from whatever event it is that I
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am actually looking at. Remember guys, sound is as important as video for
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capturing an event or a moment of some
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sort. Now, I do have a big beefy battery on it, but I'm going to pack my charger
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with me anyway because right here I have a second battery bank option. This one
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has two USB outputs, but more uniquely an AC output. So, as long as I'm
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carrying around the power brick adapters for any of my devices, I can use this
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charge tech unit here to get supplementary power with that thing
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plugged into the camera. It lasted for hours and hours and hours and hours.
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Next up is my MiFi 4G hotspot. So, this
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was actually provided by Belle and they gave me an unlimited data plan so that I
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didn't have to use my phone for this whole wacky experiment. And uh other
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than that, I don't know really what else to say about it other than if you're
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going to pick up one of these for this purpose, make sure you have enough data
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on it. And number two, make sure you have one that allows you to plug into a
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computer via USB or some other connection so that you don't have to go
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4G to the mobile connection and then Wi-Fi to the laptop. It is an option,
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but having a hardwired connection between this and the laptop is a little
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bit better. For this one, I'm going to choose an outer wall of the backpack so
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that it has as unobstructed an access to the cellular network as possible. Not
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that it really makes a huge difference. For our last two pieces, the
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aforementioned remote, which I will be taping onto my ARM, allowing me to start
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and stop my broadcast and change scenes without actually digging into the
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backpack. And finally, my handy dandy reporter's
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helmet. This will keep me safe when I am
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covering live events. And thanks to Brandon's Bongo Tide selfie stick on the
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top of it here will also allow me to have my face be in the shot so I can
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give commentary on whatever it is that I'm looking at. So with all that out of
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the way, let's go live broadcast
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something. Oh, we have nine viewers apparently.
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Okay, so is it the world's most elegant solution? I think we all knew the answer
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was no. This, my friends, is the future.
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There's not a whole lot happening around here, but uh maybe down this mysterious
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back alley. If there was anything that was going to happen though, you can be
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assured that I would be ready, me and my trusty uh counterpart,
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that I wouldn't actually need. That's another thing that's really great about
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my whole future of uh future of live
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broadcasting concept is that thanks to the selfie helm, you no longer need a
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camera person to accompany you to tell you about uh I have definitely patented
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the crap out of the selfie helm. It's a selfie stick attached to a
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helmet that protects you from the people who hate you. And you can rest assured
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you're wearing a selfie helm. There are people who hate you.
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many of them. I'm one of them. Even
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though I invented the selfie helm, I invented the selfie helm solely so that
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I could identify the people that I hate. This bongo tie system could use some
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improvement. I think a stiffer mount.
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There we go. That would give us a bit more of that like GoPro look. Definitely
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a lot less bounce while I'm while I'm standing. There's a guy running away. He
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probably stole that camera.
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So, we're back in the studio. I consider this project to be a huge success,
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actually, which doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't some things we could
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do to optimize the experience. So, I talked about it while I was streaming,
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but the mount for our selfie camera, the
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webcam that we were using here, oh, I never mentioned the webcam in the setup.
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It's a C920 from Logitech. So, the mount for this could be more optimal. a little
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bit of motion dampening but with a little bit less bounciness uh would
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probably be best. And if we could find a lighter selfie stick that might help as
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well. Um in terms of the battery configuration, right now the camera
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lasts for like hours and hours and hours, but the laptop only lasts for a
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few hours. So I think finding a way to balance those two might be a good
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approach if I was going to try and build something like this for everyday use.
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Uh, that's another thing. I could have done a better job of cable management of
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of all the different wires and cables to make sure that I could get it on me a
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little bit more easily, as well as being able to extract the laptop to change any
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settings and then put it back more easily would be another optimization I
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would make. And I don't know. I guess I
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guess that's that's pretty much it. The only real change then if you wanted to
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do something like this would be to get a more powerful maybe a quad core laptop
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if you wanted to broadcast in 1080p at higher bit rates. From my perspective,
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720p 2 megabit, which is what we were doing on the ultraast encoding preset is
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I would consider good enough for amateur news reporting. But depending on what
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you're going for, you might want to up the ante a little bit. Which I guess
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leads us into the conclusion. This video is not about this setup really anyway.
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It's more about the broader idea of the democratization of
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news. I mean 20 years ago, 10 years ago,
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even 5 years ago, this would be completely unattainable, a way of a way
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of doing this reliably and with sufficient quality. Whereas now, I mean,
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yes, this setup is like $5,000. Although 2,000 is the camera. You don't have to
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do that. And that laptop is pretty nice as well. it is somewhat attainable for
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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
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it some major advantages as well as some disadvantages. So sort of the
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disadvantages is that journalistic training can be beneficial. I mean,
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there was that, mind you, there was that recent situation with the shooters down in the States where the journalists were
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running around disrupting evidence and all that, but in general, they go
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through school for a reason. And just having everyone willy-nilly running a
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mock with cameras, recording everything is a privacy issue potentially as well
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as a a factual information issue because
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these people don't have the necessary training. With that said, I would also
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tend to believe that an individual who's
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doing this out of passion, not necessarily to get paid, is going to be
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more inclined to attack the news stories that they feel are important rather than
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the ones that necessarily drive ratings and sponsorships for their news station
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in order to maintain the massive staffs that a regular news station would
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maintain. So, let me know in the comments below. What do you think? Is
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this a step in the right direction or should we leave it to the professionals?
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Which I guess leads us pretty well into our sponsor spot, which as I'm sure the
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uh college educated among you figured was coming, is XSplit. So XSplit is the
11:08
live broadcasting software that we use on the WAN Show, as well as for pretty
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much anything else that we do, including this really cool stream I did a little
11:16
while ago where I actually built a whole computer with a couple of different
11:19
inputs, a couple of different views. You can just switch between scenes with a
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hotkey, whether that's on a keyboard next to you or on a controller on your
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ARM. Yeah, that's right. Xplit allows all the usual video streaming platforms
11:30
to be streamed, too, and has great game capture features that allow you to
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capture your games with pretty much the click of a button. But there's more.
11:40
Today, you can save 10% off a personal or premium license for XSplit by using
11:44
offer code Linus at the link in the video description. And yes, my friends,
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there is even more. We are actually doing an XSplit license giveaway over at
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the linesttips.com forum. So check that out. Then if you don't happen to win,
12:00
you can save 10% and try out the broadcasting software that we use here
12:04
at Lionus Media Group. So thanks for watching today, guys. If you disliked
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