So here's something that's going to blow your mind. This microphone is not actually being used right now. The microphone you're hearing is the webcam microphone, which normally sounds like this. But let's turn it back on so you can hear it.
This is a part of the brand new NVIDIA Broadcast 2.0 that they just launched a couple of weeks ago. And that also includes a new feature called Virtual Key Light that I'm going to tell you about. We'll talk about how good it is. We'll talk about how to use it. And we'll talk about a short list of issues that I found in both of these features.
And at the end, I'd actually love to know your opinion if it's worth the trade-off to some of those things. So let me know. But first, a couple of quick updates. First, we're back on a regular streaming schedule.
So I'm streaming every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, both on this YouTube channel and on twitch.tv slash Harris Eller. So if at the end of this, you have any questions, you wanna hang out, whatever you wanna do, either subscribe here or follow over there. Right now we're doing a lot of testing with like enhanced broadcasting, 1440p streaming on Twitch, 4K on YouTube. So come on by, I'd love to see your face over there. And then also Dustin, the master cameraman and editor of this channel, just launched his own camera course called Lumix Pro.
It's a one-time payment to sign up, no subscription, it already has over 175 signups. So if you shoot on Lumix like we do and want to hone your craft a little bit, I'll put a link in the description down below to that. Go check it out.
But let's talk about NVIDIA's brand new AI features. You might remember NVIDIA broadcast from this viral clip that happened after NVIDIA launched their noise removal feature, along with their virtual background that went live with the original launch of the software. Not only have those gotten a lot better over the years, especially their virtual green screen, virtual background effect, that's gotten very good, but also they've launched two brand new tools.
We've got StudioMic, which utilizes the AI processing inside NVIDIA's GPUs to turn any microphone into a studio microphone, but also their virtual key light, which simulates having a light on you. Even when you don't. It's pretty wild. Since the whole purpose of NVIDIA Broadcast is to improve affordable gear, I'm actually shooting this entire video on an affordable but high-quality webcam, one of my favorites lately, the Insta360 Link 2C.
More specifically, the brand new white one that they're launching today. But let me give you some sound tests of NVIDIA Broadcast, the audio portion with different settings turned on and off. while I tell you about today's sponsor, the Insta360 Link 2C.
First of all, the reason the Insta360 Link 2 and 2C look so good is because they're premium sensor built into it. It's why you have a great dynamic range, why you have super natural colors, why HDR looks so good in both 4K 30 and 1080 60. Plus the brand new autofocus, which is the same autofocus technology used in our big boy cameras. It's called phase detect autofocus is phenomenal.
Like I'm always in focus. You never see any focus pulsing like you see on other webcams. I mean, the quality of the Link 2C is so good. It even looks good in low light. Like you can tell it automatically readjusts the brightness for this new lighting on my face.
But sometimes the Link 2C in low lighting actually looks better than some other webcams in good lighting. And because this webcam is such a crisp image and it's 4K, it can use something called auto-framing where it can punch in and still follow you around the room and center you in the middle of the frame. And you can even turn features like that on and off using hand gestures.
So if you stand up to walk away and remember that you want it to punch in on you, you just... Give it a little wave, basically. So this camera is designed not only for streamers, but also professionals in Zoom meetings for teachers.
Basically, anybody who needs a high quality webcam at a very affordable price range. So if you're interested in picking up one of these brand new white Insta360 Link 2Cs, there is a special deal for you right now. There's an Amazon link in the description down below.
And the first 20 people to use that will get an additional 10% off the camera. That's $15 off. So now's your chance to make your live stream look super crispy.
Make your parents proud. Back to NVIDIA Broadcast. So I'm sure you noticed in that section that I was not only adding studio voice, I was also adding EQ to it.
I was doing that because even though studio voice is making my voice sound thicker and more present, it felt like it was cranked up a little bit too much and it was adding some harshness in the high mids area. So by pulling down just a little bit in a couple of those frequencies around 1400 to 2400, it ended up kind of smoothing out that line and making it feel more natural. I thought it may have just been the microphone built into the webcam, but I tested it on my nice shotgun microphone and it kind of did the same thing.
So clearly with this first beta, they're kind of cranking that presence up to 11 and it's a little bit too far. It'll be interesting to see how good this sounds when they tweak this and get it a little bit more dialed in in the future. Studio mic is also really cool for if you stand up and want to walk around the room, but still sound super present. Because normally when you stand up and move further away from a microphone, you start to get more of a roomy sound. You lose that presence that you get from being right up close to a microphone.
But I'm going to fix this here. It's impressive. Let's turn on studio mic here.
Studio voice. As I stand further and further away, they managed to keep that presence intact. You can hear it starts to sound a little bit more digital as the GDU has to work a little bit harder.
So you start to hear a little bit more processing in there as you step further away. But it's still. Very impressive.
So while the tech is impressive, I think it can start to get a little bit distracting when it goes a little bit too hard. It's just a little bit unnatural to be that far away from the mic and have it working so hard to make it sound like you still have a broadcast mic right in front of your face. Like right now, it just seems like the effect is cranked up to 11. I'd like to see what it sounds like if they dial it back to like a seven or an eight. It's awesome when you're at a desk though and you're at a normal webcam distance away from your microphone. In fact, I'd say in this circumstance, it'd be really cool to just be able to have it on all the time.
But there are some drawbacks you need to know about. And they're the same drawbacks that you get when using virtual key light. So let's talk about that real quick. Let me switch my video feed to the webcam going through NVIDIA Broadcast.
You can see at the bottom of NVIDIA Broadcast, we've got this brand new virtual key light here. And when I turn it on. It really brightens me up.
Like, it's very impressive. Let me even close this window a little bit more. I assumed that what it was gonna do was recognize what's you, what's the background, and then just brighten you up.
But it doesn't just do that. It adds proper skin tones. it doesn't wash out areas that might be too bright.
Like I've still got this light on the side of my head and you can see when I have it off, that section of my head is really bright. If we were just cranking the brightness, that would wash out, but it doesn't. That maintains the same brightness, but the dark side of my face is brighter and the skin tones feel warmer.
My face feels more natural. And you can change the actual warmth of the light itself. Although I've found...
Really only the middle to look even decent. But one thing you might notice is that my face is no longer as sharp as it was before. Let me turn it back off.
I retain a lot more detail in my face when it's turned off. But where this would really come in handy is if we were to shrink this down into the corner so that now you don't really notice a lack of sharpness because it's gotten so small. And then we turn on virtual background. Let's remove the background.
This looks amazing. This would be an absolutely incredible gaming stream. Keep in mind, not only am I not green screened right now, but I have no lights in front of my face, and this looks pretty incredible.
This would allow me to game without having lights shining in my eyes the whole time, if it weren't for one major issue. Let's turn these lights back on. Between these two features, I think Studio Voice is a little bit more of a game changer. Not only are there more applicable situations where it makes sense, like... having a friend sitting next to you when you don't have a second mic or walking around in the room, but also the end result is just, I think, a little bit better on studio voice than virtual key light.
The main problem with these, however, is something that they are not hiding. It says right on here, requires high-end GPU not recommended to use with games or GPU intensive apps. And this is shown underneath both of these new features. In fact, Nvidia themselves told me they would recommend you have at least a 4080. or higher. So 4080, 4090, 5080, or 5090, if you want to use these and you shouldn't use them during games, you should only use them during just chatting.
So these are very much beta softwares that are more designed to showcase what these GPUs are capable of rather than actually make something usable for everyone right now. But we did test these to see if that was actually true, or if they were just being extra cautious. I did notice in Marvel Rivals, when I had this turned on, I was losing about 100 frames.
I went from 240 frames down to 140 frames. Still very playable. But in other games like PUBG, even though my frames stayed at around 160 frames, I was getting crazy stuttering and it was basically unplayable. You can see when I turn these features on how much harder the components of my PC actually have to work just to process all of this. We also tested it on Nix 3080 just for fun and it worked, but his PC made some weird noises.
Don't blow up. Studio Voice also adds quite a bit of delay. Like we fixed it in the editing software, but like unsync it, Dustin.
Go back to how it was before. This is what happens when you turn on Studio Voice. So if you wanna use it while you're live streaming, you're also gonna have to delay your camera 250 to 500 milliseconds just to get those synced back up.
And you may have even noticed that when I switched the webcam to being sent through the NVIDIA Broadcast app, Even when virtual key light wasn't turned on, we were dropping frames. So right now with the way the software is, the drawbacks feel a lot stronger than the actual benefits. And it feels like it's more of a way to mitigate catastrophic problems. You're in a room where you can't have a light, this helps.
If you're in a place where you have to use a webcam microphone and there's no other option, sure, turn this on and fix the sync. But out of convenience, it doesn't actually seem more convenient. but let's give it a couple of years and see what happens.
What do you think? What are your thoughts on the improvement versus the drawback? Let me know in the comments down below. If you don't have any opinions, just leave your favorite emoji for engagement because it helps out a lot.
While you're down there, hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't already for future videos. I hope you found this interesting. I did, and I hope you found it helpful. And as always, happy streaming.
I'll see you in the next stream here or on Twitch, whatever. Doesn't matter to me. I'll see you over there.