Rode released the Rodecaster Video device last week. What is it? Should you get it? and more!

Hey everybody, welcome to Podcast Answers. The show where I help people start and grow

their podcast answering all sorts of podcasting questions along the way. And we are doing

it again. We are going to be talking tonight about the Rodecaster video. It is a 100% new

device and so I'm answering all sorts of questions about that. To be fair, to be honest, I do

not have one of these in my hand. I am using Ecamm to do my video now. But I will be talking

about what is the Rodecaster video? Should you get one for your video productions and

podcasting and things like that. So stick with me, we are going to be talking all about

it. We're going to be talking all about how to do it, how to use it, what it is, what

it is not and should you get one.

So Rode released this device just last week. They announced it last week and it's available

for purchase right now at B&H only. But it is... What is it? It's a video switcher, a

hardware video switcher and kind of a Rodecaster combined. And so what do I mean by that? There's

this... So a hardware video switcher, if you're not... I'm going to break it down super simple because

you may or may not even know what a hardware video switcher is. And so I want to touch

on what a hardware video switcher is first and then we will talk a little bit about what

the Rodecaster is.

So hardware video switchers are literally that. There are hardware that you can plug

your cameras into. That may be a HDMI in, that may be a SDI in. It could be a lot of

different things, but it's a separate video hardware that's specifically designed for

video switching.

And what it allows you to do is take all of your inputs and switch cameras. It's what

you would do if you were live TV broadcasting. It's what you would do if you were creating

video podcasts. That's what it is. So there's that. There's such thing as a video hardware

switcher. And then there's a software video switcher. And that's what I'm using tonight

with an Ecamm.

So in Ecamm, I have several different scenes set up. I could bring my guests on if I had

guests, I could have separate scenes and things like that. Now that's all done in software.

And so my computer is not a dedicated video device. And so I have to have dongles and

adapters and things to get my video into the hardware or into the computer.

And so there's different advantages on both. So if you have a dedicated video hardware,

that's what it's for. It's easy because that's all it does. Whereas with a computer, you

could have something going wrong, you could have a different app taking up lots of memory,

you could have lots of different things. And so what what road release was is so that they've

had a for about a year now they've had another device called the streamer X. And essentially

what that is, is it allows you to take a camera in and use it as a webcam and you can you

can mute and you can do all sorts of stuff like that.

It's a very simple, very simple capture card. And so what they've done is this year they've

released the road caster video. And it is essentially a road caster streamer X on steroids

plus kind of a road caster because so what it has, so this is just explaining the hardware

here.

It has six video inputs. And with those six video inputs, what it allows you to do is

it allows you to it brought one up on screen here. So the six video inputs, so this is

the hardware piece right here, but the six video inputs, what it allows you to do is

it allows you to take six different cameras in and so that's four HDMI inputs.

So if you have four different HDMI cameras, you can bring those in. And then it also has

two USB C inputs for UBC video. And so what that allows you to do is bring some like your

webcam or actually really just webcams in really. So you could have two webcams in and

for HDMI inputs. And it allows a video in frame rate of 1920 by 1080. So no 4k. I've

seen lots of people complain about the 4k not having 4k, things like that. Really, I

don't think it's a big deal. It's 1080 P only but so video in frame rate is going to be

10 at ADP 19 says 1920 by 1080. And then the frame frame rate is 23.97 2425 29.7 30 50

9.94 and 60. And then it can do a video out frame rate of 1920 by 1080 at 24 frames per

second 25 frames per second 30 frames per second 50 frames per second and 60 frames

per second. And then it also has two HDMI out. So if you wanted to go to a TV, you could

do that if you wanted to go to something like a video capture card somewhere else, you could

do that. You can have one of your video outputs as the multi can or the multi view. Essentially,

that'd be program preview. And then all of your separate inputs. So you can kind of see

again, this is really meant for like doing video switching live. So more of like an event

than something pre programmed. Now I say that but something in E cam allows you to E cam

has essentially what they call like a it's a camera. It's called a camera switcher. So

if you're if you're looking here at this, you see all of the different camera inputs

here and you could switch between them and essentially do like a multi cam input if you

really wanted to, but it's not necessarily designed to be set up like that for like,

live production. But again, you can lots of people use it for live production. You can

set up E cam pretty much the way you want to but this this video is not about E cam,

right? This video is about the this video, this podcast episode is about the roadcast

or video and what it is. So again, I said it had two HDMI out and then it also has USB

out too. So that can show up as a webcam. So again, if you wanted to bring that into

something else, like E cam or like zoom or whatever, you could bring your production

out of the roadcast or video into something else on your computer to actually send it

out to the world, you know, whether that be straight streaming, YouTube, whatever. But

it does allow you to do so. So it has a couple different things. You can you can record locally

on the device with a thumb drive or something stand alone like that. So this would this

would be something where you you go to your hard drive, you're recording it, you have

a separate hard drive for it. Unlike the roadcaster Pro, the roadcaster to pro or the roadcaster

duo, that output goes out onto an SD card. Now this roadcaster video does have an SD

card slot on it. But that's not for your produced video files because video can get fairly large

and so they don't you don't want to go out necessarily onto an SD card for that. But

you can go to a thumb drive something that you can get a bigger, you know, terabyte,

two terabyte storage and so you can do that. You can also go live directly to like an art

TMP ingest. So YouTube, Facebook, rumble, Twitch, all any of those things that have

an art TMP input on them where you can stream to them. You can stream right off of this

roadcaster video, you can stream right to that so you can stream and record at the same

time the SD card that's on it. I did mention it does have an SD card like the roadcaster

pro and the roadcaster duo. The SD card on it though is for assets only. And by that

I mean, overlays and backgrounds and things like that. So it also has this is where I

was saying it kind of is like a roadcaster duo or roadcaster pro because it has two XLR

is in and out. And those are the I don't want to even say XLR is there the Neutrix combo

jacks. So you could do two XLR cables, you could do two quarter inch inputs, you could

do XLR and a quarter inch input because it is their combo jacks. You can use use either

ones. They have the same revolution preamps that the roadcaster pro does. And that's

really cool because the road the revolution preamps are amazing guys. You can drive a

SM7B off of it without the cloud lifter and things like that. So it's amazing because

you can you can use those those inputs pretty easily and pretty universally. It has two

headphone jacks on it. So again, if you're used to the roadcaster pro or the roadcaster

duo, actually, let's go with the duo because it's more like a duo than a pro. It has two

headphone headphone jacks on it. So again, if you are at a doing a podcast, a video podcast,

you can plug right into that and listen to your headphones, you can have your other co

hosts having headphones on and hear it. Then it also has to monitor out so or a monitor

out so a stereo monitor out. So if you wanted to do something along the lines of monitoring

your video, you had audio playing from it, you could you could have studio monitors there.

Now, the way that you control this thing is there's buttons on it. So if you're used to

the ATEM line of things like ATEM Mini, Xtremix, ISO, whatever those things they look, they

look similar. They're flat, it's a little panel and it has the buttons on it, it has

two rows of buttons. And so what the buttons are handy for is the very bottom row of buttons

is just a switch between your camera inputs. And so if you just want to do a straight shot,

you know, between your cameras, you just want to switch between cameras, you can push those

bottom buttons and it does a full frame full video camera switch. So it's just the whole

the whole thing, it's just going to switch it straight up. And it's going to switch between

those those those sources, it's going to switch between sources. Now the second row, the row

that's on top is for scenes. And you can so you can set up scenes and this is where this

device becomes really cool. Because if you're familiar with the ATEM line, you really can't

do a whole lot with it. Really, it's just, it's just a big video switcher, but you can't

do all the fancy things. It's more along the lines of like the ATEM line. Think of it more

of a I don't want to say professional because I don't want to I don't want to set this apart

between professional and non professional because they're both professional devices.

But the ATEM is more for like where you're just going to do switching between scenes,

you're not going to do any fancy graphics on it and things like that. The roadcaster

video is 100% different, because you can build scenes on it. You can kind of have they have

pre built templates in there. So you can say okay, camera A is big camera B is littler

and then it has this background or you can build your own scenes, you can just add an

input and put it there and place your cameras wherever you want them. You can load graphics

off the back or off the SD card so that you can have your branded background on it like

similar like what I'm doing in a cam if you're watching the video right now. I have a background

and I have a lower third bug that's going on as his podcast answers. It's similar to

that. Whereas you can bring that in in the roadcaster video. So you can't do that necessarily

in the ATEM line of of video switchers, but you can in in this and so it's really easy.

So if you've ever used anything like a roadcaster pro or anything else by road you've more than

likely used road central road central is the app that they use to control all of their

devices. So if you have the wireless pro mics, you can get the you can set a lot of settings,

you can get the recordings off of it, things like that. Your roadcaster pro allows you

to configure it, get your recordings off of it, things like that. This is the same thing.

So you plug it in and you turn the roadcaster central app on and it allows you to really

configure this. And so to configure it, you go in there, you can build your scenes, you

can you can do a lot of things now. You can you can I mentioned multi view earlier and

you can set one of your outputs to be multi view, but you don't necessarily have to because

if you have the road central app open, you can see the multi view right there. And so

it's really cool because it allows you to kind of see your multi view on your computer.

Again, you don't have to have a computer to run this thing. If you're taking this in the

field and you have a monitor, you can just hook the monitor up, see the multi view. It's

it's great for doing traveling shows and things like that. But you can if you don't have a

separate monitor, you can hook it right up to your computer, open up road central and

you see the multi view. You can adjust. Now, again, the downside of this is I say it's

like a roadcaster duo, but it does not have the sliders and the faders on it like that

does. So if you're a person who adjusts the volume a lot during the show, it's going to

be a little bit harder for you to do this on the roadcaster video because it does not

have any physical sliders on it. But it does have it you can do the menus, you can adjust

the volume. But again, you're probably not going to be doing a lot of that during your

broadcast. You're going to do your pre show check and make sure your levels are good.

And then you're probably going to be forget it. But if you have the road central app and

you open the road central app up, you will see road central and the multi view and you

can adjust the sliders right on there. Now, one thing I didn't mention yet is so I mentioned

it has two XLR inputs, but it also allows you to hook to wireless devices up. So this

is the wire, just like the roadcaster pro, the roadcaster duo. If you have those, you

can hook up the wireless me, the wireless go, the wireless pro, all of the newer generations

of the road wireless mikes, the interview pro, those you can all hook up to this device

wirelessly. So really, you could have four audio inputs because you could have two coming

in from the combo jacks, so XLR or from recorder and check, but then you could also have two

wireless mikes in on it too. So that's great, because if you wanted to do something like

a interview show and you had your your host and your guests sitting at a table far away,

they can use the wireless mikes and not have to be hooked directly into the video system.

It's nice. Now, one other thing that is really kind of cool about this that I was a little

bit like, OK, this is weird. I mean, I don't quite get it when they were announcing it,

but I now the more that I think about it, the more I like it. So you can add a roadcaster

pro or roadcaster duo and add extra inputs. So I mentioned that it has the two USB in.

It allows you to do essentially the same thing as a roadcaster. You know how the roadcaster

pro has the USB one and USB to this device essentially has the same thing on it. However,

if you take one of your roadcaster pro roadcaster duo USB outputs, you can hook that into this

video device. So then essentially you have. Four four XLR jacks on your if you have a

roadcaster pro, you have those four inputs and then you have two inputs in the video.

So you could actually do six XLR inputs if you wanted to. You would mix your audio from

the four on the roadcaster pro. Bring that in as one channel into your video. And then

you have two other channels of audio that you can bring in from the roadcaster video.

So really, it's it's kind of an amazing device. Now, I say that, but there are caveats. There

are there definitely are times that you would want to use this device and times that you

would not want to use this device. And here's here's where I'm going with this. Right. Okay.

Who is this for? It's for creators on the go. It makes it really easy if you have your

camera and some some maybe more two cameras, you can plug it in. If you have two USB cameras,

you can plug it in. And it would be really easy to kind of just go. Let's say you were

going to a show floor, you're going to maybe work from your hotel room, something like

that. It works great like this. It takes out the separate computer, having to have a separate

computer, having to have, you know, capture cards, things like that, because if you have

to capture cards, then you end up having to to lug around the capture cards and other

things to get that to work and hope, you know, especially if you have if you're going mobile

with this. So let's say you're using a cam. And again, I love cam and I'm all for cam

and I wouldn't I wouldn't trade it for anything. But if I'm on the go, and I'm going to be

recording, let's say, mobiley, or in a hotel room, I now have to take my MacBook, I have

to take some sort of a capture card. And if I have more than one camera, so let's say

I'm doing two or three cameras that aren't necessarily webcams. I now have to have two

or three capture cards. But the thing to note is your Thunderbolt lanes can only handle

so many of those input capture cards. And so a lot of times creators end up having to

get some sort of a dock that can can handle all of that. So now if you're on the go, you

have to take that dock with you and the capture cards, and you're going to hope it works.

And, and, and whereas if you take the roadcast or video, you now have the ability to just

take your, your cameras and your roadcast or video and you're good to go. It's also

good for people that want to right now aren't using anything else like they're not using

EKM, they're not using OBS, they're not using anything like that to do a better stream.

Maybe they're using the ATEM because they have a couple capture cards. So this would

be good for people using an ATEM and getting the HDMI in they're already using it, this

is going to be better, because it's going to allow you to build scenes, it's going to

allow you to go and have have all of this with you, but be able to, to build these scenes

that look cool because they have graphics in them, they have animated overlays, they

have, you know, super source, things like that.

This is also for people want to get the video production off of their computer. Video production

is really taxing on your computer guys, like I don't know if you know that but it takes

a lot of processing power to do video on your computer. It's okay if you're doing one camera,

but let's say you start to move in one camera and a guest or zoom or two cameras and I guess

there's even more three cameras and and you start adding these things and your computer

starts to blog down your computer, you need a higher power computer because it's going

to take more to process this. So if you want to get this video off of your the video production

off of your computer, you can easily do that with the roadcast or video, it separates that

out. It separates out the the need to have the doing all the video on your computer.

Who is this not for who is the roadcaster video not for people using software switchers,

like E cam, so I'm using my software switcher. The reason I say that is because the roadcaster

video is not going to produce discrete video inputs for all of your cameras, meaning E

cam is only going to see one camera. And that one camera is going to be the output from

your roadcaster video. So you can have your four video inputs coming into your roadcaster

video. And you'll do all of your switching on and roadcaster video. But then E cam is

only going to see that one output. And that's okay if that's how you want to do it. I mean,

if you if you really don't want to have four separate capture cards, but you want to have

the ease of doing graphic overlays and bringing in comments and the stuff that E cam is really

good at, then you can do that. You could use the roadcaster video for it. But it's not

if you're doing all of your switching in there. If you're hoping to build scenes in E cam

that have a guest or two cameras or things like that, you won't be able to do that. You'll

have to build those scenes in the roadcaster video and then just switch to him in the roadcaster

video and not use them and bring them in via E cam. This is also not for people using three

or more webcams. I in some of my productions have used use webcams as my inputs instead

of DSLRs or mirrorless cameras or whatever. And in some cases, I have three cameras, I

have a guest, I have a host and I co-host and I have a host. You can't do that with

a roadcaster video. If you have three webcams, it's not going to work. They have two webcam

inputs. This is also not for people wanting to bring in NDI video sources. So by that,

I mean, if you're bringing in something from, for let's say, Pro presenter or NDI capture

app on your computer. Currently, E cam works great. If I have Pro presenter on my computer

or Pro presenter on another computer on the network, I can easily bring that video in

that overlays in that whatever that's coming out of out of Pro presenter. I can bring that

into my E cam. But with the roadcaster video that doesn't work. You cannot bring your your

extra inputs in, in like that you could just get you can't it doesn't work. So is it for

you? It could be Do you fit in there one of those scenarios, creators on the go, wanting

to bring your higher level video getting your your production off of your computer, upping

your game from the ATEM if you're already using the ATEM, then it's for you. If you're

using software, such as like, like E cam, it's probably not for you. People using three

or more video cams, webcams, it's not for you. People wanting to bring in NDI sources

in, it's not for you. So there you have to decide, is the roadcaster video for you? It

could be. Now one thing note is the roadcaster video currently costs $1,199 US dollars. And

I know people are some people are blocking at the price of that because the ATEM is a

lot cheaper. But the roadcaster video does a whole lot more. And when you start to step

up your game and level up and become more professional, the hardware costs more. And

that's supposed to you know, that's opposed to the now the good thing about that is it's

a one time cost. You pay for it. That's all. E cam, that's $40 a month if you're getting

the pro, that's $400 a year. But and it is reoccurring. But you also get what you pay

for. You can do a lot more with E cam that you can't do with this roadcaster. So there's

that toss up. Is it for you? It might be. Let me know what you think. Let me know is

the roadcaster video something that you're gonna get? Is it something that you're going

to add to your production? Or is it something that you're going to skip and you're going

to say, "Nah, this isn't for me. This isn't for me." Let me know. I would love to know.

So in the comments of this video, in the comments for this episode, go over to podcastanswers.com/contact.

Let me know. Are you going to use this? Are you going to use this video? The roadcaster

video? Are you going to pass on it? I, guys, I hope to see you soon. And let me know again.

Like I said, let me know if you're going to use this. I would love to hear about it.

Bye.

you