preface

The past year, 2016, can be said to be a year of rapid development of the webcast industry. With more and more people joining the ranks of webcasters, the form of live broadcast has also begun to change. More and more webcasters are no longer just sitting in front of the computer screen, but choose to go out of their homes for outdoor live broadcast to find more fun in natural life. However, due to the hardware performance of smart phones, mobile phones gradually cannot meet the growing demand for live broadcast quality, so a new smart phone live broadcast solution - Hemiao live broadcast coding stick came into being.

Unpacking

Hemiao live broadcast coding stick was launched by Shanghai Heniao Technology, a company that develops professional audio and video transmission products. First, look at the packaging of the coding stick. The simple white paper box makes it difficult to connect it with the live broadcast equipment.

When I opened the carton, the coding stick was smaller than I expected. The matte metal material and the tough shape made me believe that this is a professional live broadcast equipment.

The attached cables in the box are complete, including USB Type-C and Micro USB OTG data cables, and HDMI HDMI and HDMI mini HDMI video cables. It can be said that they are compatible with the streaming of various Android devices and the input of most high-definition video sources. However, Apple devices cannot connect to the Hemiao coding stick, This is also not supported by the IOS system in the supporting APP.

The fuselage design is very simple, and the upper panel is designed with heat dissipation holes, so the heat dissipation performance of the coding bar is very good.

The two sides of the bar are distributed with its main interfaces. Since my bar is a professional bar, there are two HDMI and 3.5mm audio interfaces at the input end, while the ordinary bar has no external audio interface. There are also two indicator lights on this side of the coding bar, which are on respectively during coding and power supply.

On the other side, the USB interface is used to connect the Android mobile phone for streaming, the AUDIO/HDMI switch is used to select the audio input source (professional only), and the Micro USB interface is used for external power supply. However, the coding stick itself is not equipped with a battery, so it needs to be powered by a mobile phone or an external power supply when it is working. The endurance problem that everyone cares about will be given after the test.

Practice

After introducing the main body of the coding stick, we have a basic understanding of it. Then we will start to use it to "do things".

Before the official use, let's first introduce its supporting APP - Hemiao Live.

This app developed by Croix Technology can be said to be a powerful tool for Android mobile streaming. We will introduce it from the following features:  

1. Multiple playback sources

In addition to Hemiao coding stick and encoder input source, this APP can also use mobile camera, USB webcam, local MP4 video and even webcast source as playback source to push streaming, and can also use picture in picture mode to push multiple video sources at the same time, which is enough to meet the needs of most direct broadcast scenarios.

2. Powerful mobile guide station

On the live broadcast screen, we can add logo, text, news title board, competition score board and other elements in the way of overlaying layers, so that we can easily meet the live broadcast requirements of various occasions.

3. Free live broadcast control

During live broadcast, we can freely choose the mode of streaming and screen recording, adjust the streaming code rate according to the network environment, and add atmosphere and sound effects to live broadcast to activate the atmosphere of live broadcast.

At the same time, this APP can be streamed to Hemiao's own live broadcast platform, or to third party live broadcast platforms such as Douyu, Panda and Bilibili through live broadcast code, which is very convenient. When using Hemiao's live broadcast platform, we can create activities up to 24 hours long and share them conveniently and quickly through WeChat, which is sufficient for the light live broadcast demand of daily life.

Let's take the live broadcast of bilibili as an example to explain the specific use method and experience.

First, obtain the streaming address of the live broadcast room on the live broadcast platform, and input it into the APP. Here is a tip. Hemiao Live supports the input method of scanning the code, which means that we can first generate a two-dimensional code from the live broadcast code, and then scan it directly into the APP. Such a small design really greatly improves the convenience of the software.

After setting the streaming address, enter the streaming interface, select the Hemiao coding stick, and connect the equipment as required.

Here we take the camera live broadcast as an example. Connect the camera's HDMI output to the video input end of the encoding stick, connect the mixer output to the audio input port (optional), and then connect the encoding stick to the mobile phone. After the connection is successful, we can click the streaming button to start our live broadcast. The whole process is very simple and easy. If you are skilled, you can complete the configuration of the live broadcast environment in a few minutes, which is very suitable for outdoor light live broadcast.

If you don't want to push streaming to the live broadcast platform, but want to share the live broadcast to friends, you can create events in the APP to push the live broadcast to the Hemiao platform and share it through WeChat. The time of each event is limited to 24 hours, and you need to create new events after the expiration.

Summary

As a collection device positioned in the field of outdoor mobile phone live broadcast, Hemiao coding stick, compared with the two traditional live broadcast solutions of mobile camera live broadcast and camera+capture card+laptop streaming live broadcast, takes into account the quality of live broadcast and mobile portability, and can add many new live broadcast methods with the official APP, For example, connect the UAV image transmission system for UAV aerial photography live broadcast or use the APP's own scoreboard to broadcast small events.

The encoder bar can support the encoding of 1080p pictures at most, and the picture quality can meet the requirements. Because of the design of the cooling hole, the fuselage has good heat dissipation and will not overheat due to continuous work.

However, as the first product of mobile phone coding stick, Hemiao coding stick also has some shortcomings, the most important of which is the endurance problem. Since it does not have a battery, the coding stick can only rely on the mobile phone for power supply. However, due to the limited interface of smart phones, once the mobile phone is connected to the coding stick, it can no longer be connected to an external charging device. According to the official statement, at present, there are only three models on the market that can support charging while broadcasting. Therefore, if you want to use this product to broadcast live for a long time without interruption, you can only use a specific model. It is hoped that future products can solve the power supply problem through other methods and adapt to more mobile phones.

As for the live broadcast delay problem mentioned by many people, in the actual test of Bilibili live broadcast, the live broadcast delay is about 8 seconds, slightly longer than that of the camera live broadcast, but within an acceptable range, it will not have a great impact on the live broadcast effect.

To sum up, if you want to carry out outdoor mobile live broadcast, but are not satisfied with the quality of mobile camera live broadcast, or have some novel ideas, and want to upgrade some more professional equipment, you can say that the Hemiao coding stick is your best choice; If you don't have such a high pursuit of live broadcast quality, and you don't have sufficient funds to upgrade equipment for the time being, you can wait for a more complete product launched by Hemiao later.

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