THE PORT A ABLE B LE STUDIO

I pushed a lot of carts filled with switchers and camera cables down the halls of my high school. Like the dark clothes and fashionably unwise choices in eyewear, it was part of being in the AV Club. It was a tangly hassle, and nothing like the new Slingstudio. This R13 000 multi-camera production platform lets you record from, switch between, and edit, four high-definition-video inputs in real time from as many as ten connected smartphones and cameras. The best part: you don’t have to string any cables or hook up all those switchers. If you have two linked cameras 100 metres from each other, you won’t also have to run 100 metres of crowdtrampled cable between them. Just plug the somewhat chunky wireless sending unit into any Hdmi-enabled camera, and it automatically syncs with the Slingstudio hub. Connect your phone or tablet (assuming it’s an iphone 6 or later, or from a limited list of Android devices) to the hub with the app, and you can stream the outputs of any connected camera to Facebook Live or Youtube, or record it all to an onboard SD card or USB drive to edit later.

The Slingstudio hub provides its own Wi-fi access point, so you don’t need to worry about your location having connectivity. Or power: the battery-operated hub lasts up to three hours on a charge. My only complaint is with set-up and configuration. It’s not fun. You need patience and, ideally, experience with streaming video to set up all of the different Wi-fi links and devices. It’s far from plug-andplay, but the wireless set-up will change the way you record studio-quality video and the number of people you trip while you do it. – Dan Dubno