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The RØDECaster Video has been updated to firmware version 1.1, which includes graphics overlay transitions, improved SSD handling, scene-specific audio channel muting – which you'll find in individual inputs, scene layouts, and even media playback – automatic scene switching after media playback, higher bit rate Program recording, and more. Let's start with a very quick recap of the hardware and its layout for those who might be new to the RØDECaster Video. For a complete tour though, you should click on this playlist here, which includes my initial complete product tour video from its launch in September, 2024, a detailed Q&A video answering all of your hardest post-launch questions, and a live show covering new features added back in December. But for now, here's the basics. The RØDECaster Video is a relatively new to market video switcher made by RØDE, the company you know for microphones and audio podcast switchers, where they combined video switching with their best features of their audio switcher interfaces, making a remarkably powerful and easy to use addition to the live switching market competing with products like the Blackmagic ATEM, and the YoloLiv YoloBox switchers.
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Before you ask, there is no “this product is the best” answer to that question because while all of these switchers obviously share a lot of common features, they also each have their own unique strengths and weaknesses, meaning the real question isn't “which one is the best”, but “which one is the best for me”, something only that you can answer by watching loads of videos like this one. I will tell you though that what makes the RØDE stand out is its ease of use, especially for building complex multi-camera angle layouts… superb audio support, including native integration for its own RØDE Wireless Pro microphones, and most impressively a desktop app that not only allows you to control the box completely, but also see your live video feed in the app anywhere on the network, removing the need for an HDMI monitor for a lot of productions. Since it's launch RØDE has already added support for bitfocus companion and the El Gato Stream Deck, as well as launched an iOS app called RØDE Capture that allows you to use your iPhone or iPad as a camera input for the video switcher.
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Let's do a very quick product tour. These are the six input buttons, one through six and pushing one of these, we'll switch to that input; 1 through 4 for HDMI and 5 and 6 for USB video input. The A through G buttons are multifunction. Initially they are scene layout buttons allowing you to choose between the prebuilt or custom scenes that you've added in there. If you press this button here, it becomes a media switcher allowing you to play back your preloaded media clips, so you can have up to six of those in there. Then if I press this button, they become graphics presets allowing me to load full page graphics or PNG files with transparency like these. All of this can be controlled on the hardware itself or through the impressive RØDE Central app or through your Stream Deck. So that's the rapid tour.
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Now let's see what this February, 2025 firmware update version of 1.1 has added, starting with the graphics overlay transitions. Previously when you loaded a graphic overlay, which again could be a full screen image like these here or could be a PNG with transparency like that logo and the lower third, they simply cut on and off the scene, but now you have the ability to change that from a cut to a fade. You can individually control the timing for the fade. So I'll leave that one at 0.5 and I'll switch this one over to a fade and change that to one second long. And now each one of these transitions can have its individual cut or fade, and as you click them on or off, they'll fade in and out of the scene or once again, simply cut on and off as well. Previously when playing video from the media player, you could either have it play once or loop, but once the clip was over, you had to manually switch back to your live video.
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Now this can happen automatically. I'll load the media player and bring up the settings for that first one, and you'll see that there's a once or the loop as before, but now there's this new SWITCH TO, so I can have this, for example, switch to any of the camera inputs. I can have it switch to any of the scenes that I've set up, or I can even have it switch over to another media clip, meaning that I can have cascading video clips playing back to back, and then at the end of them loop back to whatever video I want to be live. I'll go ahead and set this one to input two and on video B here, I'm going to go ahead and set that one to load up a different scene. So let's set that to scene A. Now we'll go ahead and play them.
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I'll trigger it from the hardware, so I'll hit A, we'll see that video clip play and then at the end of it it will transition using whatever global transition setting I had set down here. So that could be a fade, dip or wipe using any of these different presets here. Those presets are global, so this are the same ones that are used if you're using the auto transitions to cut from shot to shot. Now if I play back clip B, it'll play that five second clip that I loaded and then at the end it'll transition to the scene.
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The RØDECaster Video has amazing audio configuration options with a very powerful built-in mixer, but previously if you wanted to have different audio channels live throughout the show, you had to toggle them manually. Which of course you can still do, however, now you can toggle audio channels off and on depending on what's on screen. There's loads of reasons you might want to do this, but one very simple one is to mute all the microphones during any media playback. Watch. I'll load up the media player and go to this second shot here and open the new SCENE AUDIO controls. These are all the currently active audio inputs and I can go ahead and toggle off all the ones that I don't want to hear. So that would be everything except for VIDEO CLIPS, which is going to play the audio that's associated with this clip. Now when I play it back, I want you to watch the mixer up here.
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We can see that currently all channels are open. We're getting audio on both HDMI one and two. That's just the audio coming in from these two cameras, and we're getting audio from the Wireless Pro here, and those are all coming in on the first three channels. Then we've got the video clips here, nothing's playing, so we're not seeing anything happen, but again, all of these are currently open. If I mute one manually, it goes red to indicate that it is permanently muted. However, now if I play back that video clip, we'll see that all the audio channels except for the video clips one have been temporarily muted and that's indicated by the orange mute icon. So say you're playing back a 60 second ad during a live show. While the ad is playing, you're off-mic so people on camera don't have to keep silent and you don't need someone muting their microphones manually. And this isn't just for media playback though. I'll open the scene editor and we'll see that each individual scene also has scene audio controls, plus each individual fixed camera input has its own scene audio controls as well, so you can truly control exactly which audio channels are live depending on what's on screen.
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You can now choose Program, Preview, Multiview or any of the HDMI or USB inputs to be passed directly to either HDMI or the USB-1 output. That means not only can you monitor any input you want nice and big on an HDMI display, you can also send a specific input to the UVC output over USB. So for example, if you're integrating a Zoom caller into your live show, you can send a specific video feed out over USB, like the feed of the show host instead of the Program feed, so that's all the caller sees. To make it even cooler, the BitFocus companion module has already been updated with these 1.1 features, so you could create a Stream Deck button to toggle the USB video output between the Program and the host. So a caller could be watching the Program while they're waiting for their time to go on air, and then you can switch them to the host's dedicated feed for their interview.
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Neat. Hey, there's no sponsor for this video, but I do want to remind you not only to like and subscribe, but to also consider joining the channel. As a member, you'll gain access to the PhotoJoseph Discord server, which is a great place to discuss products like this one beyond what you can get from the comment section. I'm pretty active on there, so odds are if you pop in a question, I'll see it pretty quickly. Just look for that join button right by the subscribe button. See you in my Discord. For auto switching, the awesome feature where the RØDECaster Video switches, camera angles depending on who's talking, now has a relaxed, neutral and fast speed switch. I really do need to do a deep dive video into this someday. Anyway, now you can toggle how aggressive the auto switching is. Super! You now have a higher bit rate recording option for the Program.
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You don't have explicit control over the bit rate, but you can now choose between normal and high quality for the Program recording. The high setting matches the ISO recording bit rate, which is around 40 to 45 megabits. The normal setting is only about eight megabits, so now you have a much higher quality file if you want to edit from the Program, which matches the quality of the ISO recordings. The last update also has to do with recording to an SSD and with a comment that I heard often when comparing the RØDE to the ATEM. The ATEM is known for closing the video files constantly while recording, which means you can pull the USB drive off the back of the ATEM while it's actively recording and not have a corrupted file. This wasn't the case with the RØDE until now. Now, if the hard drive is disconnected or loses power during a live show, the existing recordings are not lost.
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Let's see it in action. I'm going to go ahead and start recording here, and then from my phone, I'm going to load up a clock and put this on screen, and then right at the zero mark, I'm going to unplug the USB drive. 8… 9… 0… yank. So I pulled it out just as the zero was rolling off screen, so let's plug this into the computer and see what we got. There's the Program file. I'll scrub over to the end and play that back. There's 57, 58, 59, and then we lost the zero, so it looks like we lost only about one second off of that recording. Now, I've actually run this test several times and I've seen up to about five seconds lost, so I would guess that the RØDE is closing the file every five seconds or so, and of course, it's just going to depend on when you pull the drive.
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You've probably noticed by now, but just in case not, I've been powering the RØDECaster Video and one of the cameras here with this power bank the entire time. This is a whopping 24,000 mAh battery that supports PD on both of its USB-C outputs, and you can see the power output battery percentage and the estimated battery life remaining on this LED display. If you're going to power your gear on the road, this is a pretty cool solution. I'm powering the S5IIX using the DCC-18 DC coupler – I'll link to that video up here and down below as well – and this power bank, which allows me to power it for quite a while, but if you wanted to simply recharge your batteries with this power bank, the standard LUMIX battery is a 2200 milliamp battery, so that means you could recharge it about 10 times with this beast. So that's everything. To get the RØDE firmware update, just launch the RØDE Central app. It'll tell you that there's a new version to download; download that, and then once you connect that to the RØDECaster Video, it'll prompt for firmware update. That's all there is to it. We'll see you in the next video.
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