The Viliv X70 EX Premium Air has a long battery life, reasonable processing power and built in 3G so it didn’t take me long to start messing about with it as a mobile broadcasting solution and that’s the focus of Version 6 of my mobile reporting kit. Live video.

I spent some time testing different webcams, microphones and configurations and have come up with a 2KG setup that will allow you to do live, mobile broadcasting over Ustream with reasonable quality. The total cost of the solution is under $1000 and the setup can not only be used for live streaming but can be used as a complete Ultra Mobile live blogging solution.

Hardware

What I’ve done is taken the X70 EX and the car kit. I’ve mounted part of the car kit onto the leg of the tripod so that the ultra mobile PC can be clamped in. It provides a sturdy screen at a good height when sitting on a chair in, say, a conference room. The X70 EX has Wifi and 3G included. The 3G is HSUPA capable which puts it in the 1Mbps max upload class (assuming you have the right coverage)

I’ve added a 4-way USB hub to the X70 and then plugged in a Philips SPC900 webcam (manual focus) and Samson USB mic. The Philips cam has been chosen because the drivers seems to be very efficient and can produce 20fps VGA framerate while still doing automatic white-balance. Many other solutions I’ve tried including the built-in cam, drop to below 10fps and lower when using the automatic white balance features. Auto-focus would be nice, as would optical zoom and a quality sensor and optics but for the price, the Philips cam does well.

Software

One of the ‘tricks’ I use on the live video sessions is to avoid the use of the browser-embedded video capture software in the ‘flash’ control panel. The CPU requirement is high, the quality is poor and there’s very little control. Instead I use the standalone Flash Media Encoder (FME). It’s an application that takes audio and video inputs and allows you to stream to a media ‘relay.’ More details on this can be found here. On a desktop machine it can be used to broadcast very high quality VP6 or H.264 encoded video but on a ultra mobile PC is can be used to fine tune the broadcast for a good balance between quality and CPU load.

Unfortunately you can’t control the end-user stream with the FME so you still have to run the Ustream Broadcast Console. The wonderful advantage of this is that you don’t have to run the broadcast console on the same PC so you have three options.

1) Run the broadcast console on the same PC Not recommended as it takes a lot of valuable CPU and doesn’t do much except start and stop the broadcast (unless you want to add text and links overlays.)

2) Run the broadcast console on another PC. This could be on another laptop that you have with you or on a remote desktop machine that you access via a remote desktop solution.

3) Get someone else to handle the broadcast console on a remote machine, anywhere on the internet.

The Ustream broadcast console automatically detects that you’re streaming via the FME and allows you to switch directly to that stream. If the stream drops out it gives you the option to drop back to a local video source. It takes some playing with to understand the architecture but its very flexible once set-up.

Settings

After doing some testing with various settings I settled for a total 550kbps average broadcast bandwidth by using the VP6 encoder at 500kbps with a 20fps VGA (640×480) frame rate and size. For audio I used a 48kbps MP3 audio track. If you’re broadcasting music, you’ll want to pump this up to 96kbps or more.

550kbps is a good rate for 3G broadcast on HSUPA. 50% utilisation is a reasonable expectation although you must expect to get some frame loss as the quality of 3G services varies wildly based on usage and position.

Example broadcast.

This broadcast was recorded by Ustream at their servers (not at the source) while broadcasting over Wifi. It gives you a good idea of what the end user will see.

It’s re-sized to 80% of full frame size.

Once again, this is not recorded at source, it’s what the end user is likely to see. I hope it streams OK for you for the Ustream server and apologies for my appearance!

640 x 480 is arguably too big for web-embedded broadcasting but if possible it’s worth doing as when you ask Ustream to record the stream (a single button press on the broadcast console) they’ll be capturing better quality that you can use and post-process later. If you find the upload bandwidth isn’t available though, switching to QVGA and dropping the bitrate to under 300kbps, 15fps, is going to work in most situations.

Using the solution for one-man live photo / text blogging.

To do live video and live photo and text blogging on the X70 EX might be asking a little too much but if you’re not into doing live video, here’s another possible arrangement. Using a Canon Digital Camera (possibly others too) you can replace the video camera and then use the Canon Remote Capture software from the PC. Doing this forces an immediate transfer of the image to the PC where you can drag it into LiveWriter or your favourite blogging software (I prefer LiveWriter as it does some nice image re-sizing) and update a live blog. With a USB keyboard plugged in you can type your text as you go along too.

Other thoughts

The X70 EX will run for about 4 hours over 3G in this setup. That’s one 30wh battery powering the cam, mic, 3G and PC. It’s amazingly efficient. If you need more power though, get the X70 EX car kit which has a car adaptor in it. You can then run the solution from a 12V car battery or general purpose Li-Ion battery. You can even use a 24w solar panel to keep the whole system topped up for a whole day’s broadcasting. If you’re using 3G, make sure its a true flat-rate connection!

The solution is very mobile when in use. By grabbing the neck of the tripod, the unit stays well balanced when walking. You’d need to find a good USB mic solution that could be mounted to the tripod but this shouldn’t be very difficult. I can see myself having some fun with this a IFA in Sept as I walk around the booths!

I’d like to find a higher-quality USB web camera with, if possible, built-in white balance, auto focus, brightness etc. Maybe even zoom and an LCD preview screen. I’m wondering if there are any digital cameras or digital video cameras that can be used in this way. If anyone has any information on this, please let me know.

I need a new keyboard. My Samsung Ultra Mobile USB keyboard appears to be broken so I’m looking at the Aisonic 800M right now. The integrated mouse control is a must-have but can I find one anywhere? Nope. I’ve written to the manufacturer to see if I can buy some samples.

The Ultimate Live Reporting Setup?

While I was thinking about keyboards, I thought about just using my netbook with Synergy keyboard and mouse sharing over a Bluetooth PAN. The advantage of this setup is that you have one keyboard, two PC’s, two screens and the ability to live stream, run the broadcast console AND live blog using a USB-connected camera. It would add 1-2KG to the setup (netbook + cam) but wow, you’d be the ultimate one-man band live blogger!

Alternative solutions.

As an alternative to using the X70 EX on it’s own, you could use a netbook or, for more processing power and the ability to connect a web-cam, a digital cam and to do live video and simultaneous live blogging, a full power laptop. You won’t be able to mount the netbook on the tripod so you’ll lose a lot of mobility but as a laptop solution it should work fine. Choose a 3G-capable laptop with a good keyboard. Something like the Samsung NC10 3G or Eee PC 1000 GO range which offer good battery life too. Overall though, with the car mount, the 12V charger, the built-in 3G and light weight, I think the X70 offers one of the best solutions for mobile use.

As for streaming platforms, Ustream works well but I’m looking to try out Livestream.com soon. They have been working in the Ultra Mobile space recently  (and demonstrated a mobile internet streaming solution at Computex) so maybe they have some good ideas. Their basic ad-supported streaming service is, like Ustream, free.

Previous versions of the ultra mobile reporting kit.

V5 (March 2009) is here.

V4 (Sept 2009) is here.

V3 (Feb 2008) is here.

V2 (Sept 2007) is here

V1 (March 2007) is here.

Have you done any live mobile streaming? Maybe you’ve used the QIK solution? Livestream? Let me know

Life has been so busy over the last month that I’ve hardly had a chance to think about CeBIT and yet it starts in just 5 days. On Monday, I’ll be meeting JKK and Sacha in Hannover and we’re going to hit CeBIT as hard as we can.

Fortunately the accommodation, tickets (I have a press pass again this year) and transport have all been arranged so all that remains to do is fix up the schedule, write up a hit-list and organise the kit.

I’ll write about the ‘hit list’ in the next few days as we’ll probably use it for the basis of a warm-up podcast tentatively planned for Friday but let me quickly talk about the kit I’m going to use at CeBIT.

Due to three ‘smoked’ UMPCs, a couple of no-show UMPCs and a general need to keep spending down this year, I’m having to really cobble together the best I can from the devices I have left here. I’m not exactly struggling to find a PC to take but I had planned a different set of devices and was planning to have a bit more of a ‘showcase’ setup.

I will go with the three-device strategy (phone, mid, notebook) because of flexibility, fall-back and battery life. I’ll take my Nokia N82 for the important tasks of voice, SMS and email and it will also come in handy for some direct-to-flickr photo shooting due to it’s superb camera optics and flash. I might use it for a bit of Google Latitude fun and the occasional 3G Bluetooth modem but the idea is really to preserve it for essential comms. At the top end of the range i’ll be taking my laptop. Actually it’s a Medion Akoya Mini netbook but I don’t have anything else so it’s going to serve as my main keyboard and screen during the event. It’s far from the perfect mobile netbook though and I’ll have to deal with a lack of built-in 3G, no Bluetooth and a poor 2hr battery life. On the positive side, I’ve used it a lot and it’s got a stable build with all my applications running well.

As the third device, I want to take a MID. The original plan was to use an Aigo P8888 but the standard 2hr battery life and lack of standard XP build has put me off buying one. I’m not a JKK and so hacking XPe and piggyback batteries was never on the cards. The Viliv S5 didn’t hit the market on time. The Wibrain i1 prototype doesn’t standby or hibernate due to an incomplete BIOS setup and I’ve killed the Raon Everun Note I was preparing. As I look across my devices for a MID, the only one I can see is the Nokia N810, a device that I had ignored for the best part of a year but started using again recently when I upgraded the OS and installed a bunch of community applications on it. As an RSS, mobile website, IM and twitter tool, it’s working out quite well. Web browsing is frustratingly slow but certainly better than my S60 device and with 4 hours wifi-on battery life, it can sit and pick up feeds and tweets for a long time before the battery needs changing so today I bought a second battery and a USB charger cable for it, fished out an old Nokia 3G phone with a broken backlight and will tether the two up on a 2.50-Euro per day pay-as-you-go UMTS contract, drop the phone in my bag or on my belt and put the N810 in my pocket as and use it as as always-on ‘informer’ and twitter tool. I’ll also be able to put comments on photo’s at Flickr and post to the blog using the Flickr blog posting tools as Jenn did at CES. The N810 needs a lot more power to turn it into a real MID but the size, battery life, screen and keyboard should help to keep me updated on the go and certainly won’t need much space.

One thing I’m really happy about is that I’ll only need one power brick for all the kit and the reason for that is a nice little U2o power pack I’ve got from Ultimate-Netbook.co.uk. I did some field testing for them last year and we’ve been happy with the results so they now sell it. Fortunately they let me keep it after the testing so I’m now armed with a 55wh power pack that takes a 19v input (the power brick from the Medion Akoya plugs straight in) and provides 5V (via USB), 9v, 16v and 19v outputs. There’s a selection of adaptors with the device so both my phone, the N810 and the Medion Akoya will run or charge from it. If I treat the Akoya well, I’ll get about 6hrs working time out of it which should be fine for a day’s work on the floor.

For photo and video work I’ll be taking my trust Canon S2IS and tripod. The long lens, VGA video capability and great stereo mics are perfect for recording conferences or device overviews and although a DSLR with 720P video recording would be my preference, it won’t be hard to get some good results out of the S2. Besides, JKK has a new Canon HD cam so we’ll be using that for most of our videos.

Finally, I’ll take the Samson USB mic which is great for mobile podcasting and interviews. Audacity is installed on the netbook and it’s an easy process to upload an MP3 to UMPCPortal.

I’m a little sad there’s no ultra mobile PC in there but it’s a proven set of kit that I’m very familiar with and that should help to keep the stress levels down. The whole kit comes in at 4kg which is very good considering I’ve got the tripod, cam and a 400gm microphone included in that. Total cost of the complete kit is around 1400 Euros (new)

Of course, if I have any issues, I won’t need to look too far for help. Sascha the ‘netbook king’ is joining us in the accommodation and on the floor and he’ll be bringing a stack of netbooks so I’ll probably get some good hands-on opportunities with some of the netbooks I haven’t had a chance to use yet. JKK is with us too and he has a good set of kit too so between us, well have no excuses.

As JKK, Sascha and I prepare over the next few days you’ll probably here a few more warm-up stories. We’ve tentatively planned a podcast for Friday evening so expect a CeBIT warm-up post over the weekend.

I think I’ve said this before and maybe I shouldn’t say it again; I’m a sucker for a kit-list. I always enjoy reading what about other people are taking on their tech travels and I can never resist showing off my own kit either. It’s definitely the boy scout in me. Here’s a selection of kit lists from people getting their bags ready for CES 2009 this week.

Read the full story

I’m back at my desk after a swift tour in the UK last week, a place that appears to be home to one of the most advanced mobile Internet industries I’ve seen recently. My home country of Germany is certainly no laggard when it comes to offering high-speed Internet over 3.5G networks but the UK is a big step ahead. Everywhere you go on the high-street there are promotions and advertising for ‘mobile broadband’ which is the carriers way of trying to pull in DSL and cable customers with the promise of the mobility factor. 10 pounds a month gets you a 2 year contract with a free ‘dongle’ on a 3G network 15 per month nets you 3.6mbps access. Even the pay-as-you-go offerings are good. Its very consumer focused now and seems to have moved on from business-level marketing.

Read the full story

The idea behind the ultra mobile reporting kit is to provide capability for every possible reporting event at CeBIT. From twitter to lengthy editorial. From flickr to fully edited video. From sound byte to audio interview. Standing. Sitting. Table-top. Floor. A live one-man band of mobile reporting equipment that is as as light as possible and that uses standard off-the-shelf components and services.

Last year at CeBIT I used V1.0 of the reporting kit, a system weighing 4.5kg and it served me well. 21 reports which included 2 live events a handful of videos and hundreds of images. This year I’m aiming for better quality, faster reporting, better connectivity and, something i didn’t have last year, fall-back options. Welcome to V3.0

The core of the V3.0 system is, as with V1.0, an AMD Geode powered device. Rather than the all-in-one Kohjinsha SA1 I’ve opted to used a Raon Digital Everun S6S. Its smaller, lighter, more powerful, has longer battery life, has HSDPA built-in and is completely flash memory based. It also has a car mounting kit, part of which I’ve mounted on my tripod giving me a nice eye-level screen when sitting in conferences. As a keyboard I’m using what I regard to be one of the best portable keyboards there is. The Samsung Q1 portable keyboard. Its almost full-size, is extremely thin and light (half the weight of a Sierra Bluetooth foldaway model) and incorporates a mouse pointer. With a short USB extension cable it works very well on the lap and never gets hot like a laptop! Its USB-only but I’m happy with that as dead batteries on a Bluetooth keyboard would be catastrophic. For additional connectivity I’ve got an excellent Nokia N82 which I can tether via Bluetooth if needed. In fact both the Everun and N82 and have wifi, hsdpa and Bluetooth for flexibility and fall-back options.

The N82 also forms part of the optical kit. The Canon S2IS will perform high-quality image, zooming and video duties. It also has a fantastic built-in stereo mic, good long-zoom stabiliser, takes AA batteries and has a powerful flash. The N82 also has a 5mp cam with Xenon flash and VGA video capability but the quality is nowhere near that of the Canon. The advantage of the N82 is that it will record direct to Mpeg-4 which makes it easy, with the built-in HSDPA, to post to online services. It will be interesting to see which I use the most!

For a rough video walk-through of the kit, check out this wobbly video shot with the Nokia N82. (Blip.tv doesn’t seem to have done the best format conversion. Look at the MP4 original if you can.)

[article continues with details and kit-list]

Read the full story

I like blogging, I like the blogging scene and being a pro-blogger is thrilling and rewarding but CeBIT has changed all that for the next few weeks. Due to their rather harsh rules about not giving bloggers press tickets I had to prove my worth and submit a membership request to the German journalists association (DJV.) Fortunately for me, and possibly because the 55 Euro I paid meant that they had more than a few seconds to look into my details, they approved my paperwork and issued me with an official press card for 2008.  Of course it’s nice to know that I can go to CeBIT and other expo’s, get free access and have the occasional free meal and I will certainly get a kick out of showing the card for the first few times but to be honest, I don’t feel 100% comfortable about it. In my heart I’m a tech-head, I get a kick out of researching and reporting on the ultra mobile scene and I love what’s happening in the new media world so rather than embrace the old-school world I’m entering next week, I’m going to be making a big effort to promote the new world of mobile tech media and will try to show how ultra mobile devices and the mobile Internet can help. Watch out for a post in the next 24 hours about the Ultra Mobile Reporting Kit V3.0 and watch-out old-school media companies because I intend to have rich, high-quality press conference editorial published before you’ve even looked up the meaning of Moblogging!

Read the full story

I’m starting to get worried. Its only 3 months until CeBIT and I haven’t got a ultra mobile PC for my ultra mobile reporting kit. I sold the Kohjinsha SH6 as the battery life wasn’t good enough and the Packard Bell Easynote XS20 went to someone in Holland and I’m left with a few slate UMPCs and a Nokia N810. Strangely enough, the device at the top of my list now is the old Kohjinsha SA1 F00KS that I took a version of last year. (AKA Vye S18P) Its got the battery life, the form factor and the good keyboard. There isn’t another device on the market that brings in that sort of battery life, screen quality, keyboard and portability and I really doubt that there will be one before March 2008.

The only problem is that I need built-in HSDPA which it hasn’t got so currently I’m looking to see if I can pick up a Vye S18P, get it modded with a 16 or 32GB SSD and then add the Vye CF-HSDPA adaptor. Isn’t it crazy that two years after the launch of UMPCs’ I’m looking at a device based on a platform that wasn’t part of ‘Origami’ at all. Its all about battery life I guess.

So if anyone can find me a 7" convertible touchscreen notebook PC with a good keyboard, Windows XP, SSD, built-in HSDPA, and 4+ hours battery life, let me know! A modded EeePC you say? Yes, its a possibility but I want to have a word with the guys at VyePC first. I wonder if they can do me a special version of the S18P with SSD and a UMPCPortal logo!!

One bit of related news: The Vye S37 is now being offered with XP and a ‘no-os’ option in the U.S. Thanks to Neal for that tip-off.

Info on the Kohjinsha SA1

Info on the ASUS eee PC

Read the full story

You’ve probably read about the trial that Reuters did with an N95-based kit for mobile journalists. I think CNet news were the first to post about it but the detailed info is in the Reuters MoJo (mobile journalism) page. Its a great idea.

Its not unlike my own mobile journalism kit (an early version is shown to the right) although I decided to use a ultra mobile PC as the processing engine for far, far better flexibility due to the increased processing power and application base. I was using a low-end Kohjinsha SA1 that gave me 4 hours of use. Adding a power-pack expanded that to well over 10 hours of live use.

There’s a few problems I see with this Nokia based kit. Firstly, Where’s the optical zoom? If you’re in any sort of press situation a 10x optical zoom with good optics is a must-have. Secondly, there’s no editing capability here. It’s all about sending raw video and text back to base where it can be edited up. That’s a traditional journalism process but certainly not how I work and how I think independent journalists will work in the future. I prepare rich and final-copy posts direct on the ultra mobile PC which can be sent straight to the publishing medium, not via an editor. Finally, there’s no substitute for having a PC with you, especially when its a laptop. As many of us with Q1 organiser packs have found out, a separate keyboard is a pain to use unless you have a table and when you’re out in the field, there’s rarely that facility available. The laptop PC gives you flexibility, a much more comfortable PPI (pixels per inch,) a better overview of photo image quality and access to many many options for editing text, images and video while running messaging programs, VPN software and even live streaming software. The keyboard on a PC doesn’t rely on 2 AA-type batteries either! The package is nice but my feeling is that a PC-based system is much much better for a richer delivery.

I like the look of the microphone though. I’ve tried twice to buy a decent mic but keep buying the wrong thing. This Sony ECMMS907 looks like a good tip. I think I’ll have to invest in one for next years CeBIT reporting kit. I also need a camera that will record VGA straight to MPEG-4 format on an SD card. Anyone got any tips?

VIA Pocketables

Read the full story