Why YoloBox Extreme Is Built for Real-World Field Production

The YoloBox Extreme proved to be a powerful all-in-one solution for field production, combining switching, streaming, recording, and monitoring in a single portable device. It handled a multi-hour, multi-camera live stream with multiple guests and simultaneous outputs without added complexity. With support for multiple producers, monitors, and destinations, it simplified workflows that would normally require several pieces of gear. For on-location productions, YoloBox Extreme delivered speed, flexibility, and reliability in one unit. Check out the video for an overview:

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I've written about the Yolo Box before. It's the Androidbased tablet with live production software and hardwarebased connectivity. It marries the capabilities of software, the input output of hardware and the portability of a tablet. This market has other entries from Magewell, the director and the director 1 and Sinetri. But Yolo is not only the pioneer in the segment, they also offer the most diverse solutions from the single input mini to the 8 input extreme. It's a production studio in a tablet. physical inputs, NDI, SRT, RTMP, web inputs, stills, video playback, PDFs. They can all be mixed individually or in self-created multiv- views. You've got built-in titles, graphics, scoreboards, audio mixing, viewer comments, remote guests, background music, instant replay, and all of that is handled inside the box. The Extreme can also record internally, both program and ISO feeds up to a frame rate data rate limit. You can encode for streaming. You can multiccast one stream to three different destinations. You can leverage optional integrated bonding capability and have the box auto switch, including switch the video to follow the audio. The internal audio mixer handles each input separately. You can turn channels off. You can solo. You can even do mix minus. So, if you're self-hosting, you don't hear yourself with a delay in your headphones. The Extreme is based around a large 11 in or 28 cm OLED screen offering a,000 nits of brightness. It has eight HDMI inputs. Five are autosensing 4K inputs and the other three are manually set HD inputs. There are also two HDMI outputs that can be assigned as program to mirror the YOLO box's own screen, a customizable multiv- view, or you can select one of the individual input sources. Connectivity includes the gigabit Ethernet, internal cellular, and Wi-Fi. Plus, the Yolo Box will also leverage USB connected sources like a USB modem or a USB to Ethernet dongle for bonding. The Xreme has userreplaceable antennas on either side. You can use the included antennas or use something bigger or something directional. You can record to internal SD card or USB. And USB can also be used with video converters. So adding SDI via USB converter is also possible. So given the [snorts] flexibility of the USB ports, I wish there were more than the two USBA ports and the one USBC. The second USBC is for 45 watts of power input only. Stereo microphone and a line input as well as a stereo headphone port round out the input and output. New to the Xreme, in addition to the many HDMI ports and the external antennas, is more functional feedback from the Yolo box itself. From onscreen CPU load in the menu bar to a pull down status screen that also shows temperature and memory load, as well as encoding and streaming details. For me, this is a welcome addition because it's it's still an Android tablet. you're not going to add RAM, upgrade the GPU or the CPU, or anything beyond what it came with. So, knowing how hard you're pushing it and what its limits are is the key. Yolo Live has also taken big steps in this regard with posted limitations as you go to adjust various settings like the dual HDMI out warns you about plugging and unplugging cables while in use, using both outputs at 4K, that the audio only comes out one of the outputs, and more. There are pop-up warnings about exceeding the frame rate processing of the chips inside as they can only process so many frames. And your ISO records, your replay, and your streaming all count against that tally. There are warnings about exceeding the total data rate since the Extreme can handle multiple 4K sources and ISOs. Again, you're not going to open it up and drop in a 4,000 megabyte NVME stick. There's also warnings about exceeding the total CPU load where it will most certainly start dropping frames, and that makes for sad video producers like me. I hate frame doubling. You come away with an understanding that this is not a $10,000 gaming PC that has an i9 with 24 cores and 32 threads. This is not outfitted with multiple NVME drives at 4,000 megabytes per second. And this does not have an Nvidia 5090 or an A4000 in it. It also doesn't suck 2,000 watts. This is just an Android tablet. So, the end user needs to adjust their expectations accordingly. At the same time, you're not going to slip that $10,000 gaming PC into a tiny laptop sleeve, and it's not going to run off a battery for hours. and it doesn't include eight video inputs either, nor the well-designed Yolo Box software. The Yolo Box A sell excels at portability and ease of use. The Yolo Box interface itself continues to be revised and updated. There's still a few user interface irregularities like changing the setting for video source switch or streaming mode gives you a popup while other settings take you to a separate dedicated page depending upon the amount of content or the conditions you need to be aware of. I also feel that several of the top level access panes control things that really ought to be buried in settings like bonding, streaming destinations, recording settings, transition settings. Those are all set once for a project and then just get them out of my way. During a show, I need access to my inputs, my overlays, comments, and the audio mixer. If you're doing sports, you need replaying the scoreboard. Most everything else does not need to be in a tople ready access pane. But otherwise, the YOLO team continues to deliver a very intuitive user interface that despite its simplicity, delivers considerable power and capability to even the firsttime user. Do you want to do a green screen? It's just seven taps, including picking the replacement background, and you're done. Want to build a side byside multiv- view with borders and backgrounds? That's just seven taps. Do you want to invite remote guests? You need their email address and six taps later, you're done. You'd be hardressed to find anything simpler. And each of those features works well. New for the extreme interface is a director mode that gives you a preview and program monitor. While I'm personally still lobbying for separate cut and auto transition buttons, as of this writing, it enables the YOLO box to be used in more professional settings where a director will want to see the next shot before it goes live as opposed to singletapping everything in the input list. Akin to that, the Extreme also carries forward the multiv- view of the Yolo Box Ultra so that a director can see preview, program, and inputs in five different layouts where the user can pick what goes into each of the boxes, as well as borders, source names, and audio meters. I chose the Xreme to produce a 2-hour multi- camera live stream at the Texas Production Expo in May for several key reasons. The first was that the Xreme offers the ability to connect five NDI HX cameras. I was only bringing three Tail Air cameras with me, which have internal batteries for backup, but I also wanted the option to leverage a cell phone or two with NDI if I wanted additional camera views. The second thing I wanted was the Extreme's 11in screen made it easier to have larger input icons and more viewer comments on the screen at the same time. I didn't want to try to do this on a smaller unit and have to scroll around a lot to find things. Third was the functionality of the wired Yolo deck. It's a USB control surface. It's like Elgato's stream deck but directly connected to the YOLO box. This means I do not need a separate computer or device in between the switcher and the deck, which lightened up my setup. I gave the deck to Kirk Riley, a fellow Yolo Box user, to co-w switch the show with me, and he did a great job. It also made it easy for me to host the show and speak directly to the camera, while Kirk brought up my title, went to the twoot, and then to the guests. And at the same time, I could cut to the close-up camera if I wanted by tapping on the YOLO box that was in front of me. Fourth was the dual video outputs. I set up a multiv- view monitor for Kirk to see the camera inputs and know when it was good to switch to the different cameras. And then I also set up a program monitor so each of the guests could see what the audience sees. Especially important when they were showing off gear. No splitters or additional gear bits were needed. I had a lot of videos to play, show sponsors, local organizations, etc., and that gave us time to go between live guests in the show. Having an icon showing the runtime for each video made it easy to pick a long or short bumper between the guests. The Extreme has external Wi-Fi antennas, but I chose not to use the Extreme as my Wi-Fi hotspot for the NDI I was slinging around because I felt safer using an ASUS gaming router designed to handle 2.5 GB of data through it, and it handled several 30 megabit NDI streams just fine. The show went quite well, but doing a live show on location in a challenging, noisy environment once again reminded me how important audio is. And unfortunately, audio is not the Yolo Box's strength. For instance, it can't even mix a mono microphone into both the left and right channels. It doesn't have EQ. It doesn't have a limiter. So, I needed an external audio mixer. I used my Zoom Live Track L8 because of the meters on each input, but what I found out that I needed during the show was I really needed limiters on each channel and the Zoom doesn't have that. We checked our audio levels before the expo and then when we went live hours later in a loud crowded expo hall, we were all shouting over the crowd and we were clipping the audio levels. Lesson learned. The YOLO box doesn't have a limiter either, so I asked YOLO if that could be added to the box in the next version via software update. Another issue with audio and the playback of the videos is that there's no way to automatically mute the mics when we play back a video. This is another feature I requested of the YOLO team. Now, I know that having a dedicated audio op would have saved us on both the audio clipping and the audio mixing, but audio is the forgotten child and hindsight is 2020. If the videos could be set to automute everything else, that alone would have made it work much better. There's a background music playlist feature, and after the show, I thought that a video playlist feature would be handy to help automate the playback of the videos. So we could ensure that everyone got at least one play by going through the list and also having it automatically continue to the next video until we were ready to come back to show. Having used the extreme for this in other shows, I can say it delivers on the Yolo box goal by going probably as far as you can go in the tablet form factor. While earlier models were limited by CPU and GPU chip capabilities, designing the extreme to such an extreme means that using it for HD production is so under the threshold you'll likely not easily hit its limits. With the design constraints that YOLO has put in place, I had to work pretty hard and use a few tricks like 13 overlays to push the extreme to over 90% CPU. Earlier models could easily be pushed past their capabilities without even knowing and the frame rate would drop drastically. So, I appreciate both the overengineering and also the restrictions to make it hard to do the same with the Xreme. The Xreme is not the camera top or pocketable solution from YOLO. It's heavy and big, but it's a fine tabletop solution that I feel delivers on the goal of an all-in-one tablet production solution. What I hope comes next is software updates for the earlier models to help users know when their box is at its limits. As for hardware, I hope YOLO takes the lessons learned from the extreme and delivers updated Mini and Pro models. Similarly overengineered for optimum operation. Not everyone needs eight inputs. So, the three input pro and the one input mini, two if you use the USB, still have their markets and deserve better products that deliver true 60 and true 50 frames per second reliably every time. Also, YOLO's quiet little remote guest feature is impressive, but it requires the mix minus capability that's only available on the latest Ultra and Extreme to really be usable to any self-hosted production. New units with a CPU upgrade could make remote guest shows with the smaller boxes a reality at last. Now, I don't know where YOLO's naming convention goes from here, but I don't think there's a need for a tablet with greater than eight inputs. The Extreme will be at the top of its class for a while. Now, YOLO can focus on upgrading the other units and standardizing the software and capabilities across their [music] product line. Thanks for watching. >> [music] [music]