I am thinking a couple of things and I’m wondering if I am crazy?
I do video streaming and I use NDI from 4 mevo’s and occasionally a couple other sources. I’ve been thinking about putting together a dedicated system or mostly dedicated when in use that would just do the streaming and switching with OBS. Currently I am using a MacBook Pro 2019 and I have a few issues with it namely the stupid full screen app support. do you want to do a full screen multiview … sure ….all other monitors are now blank black, so you have to do a window multiview then option click maximize (because the maximize button doesn’t work the way it should either anymore). Between that and the better support for touchscreen monitors on windows and a couple windows only programs I like.
And considering my last go with video streaming on Saturday OBS almost crashed my entire system froze up with streaming but the video came out frozen with guttering audio. Yeah I’m slightly annoyed.
I’m thinking the programmable button keypad would be very handy for the situation.
but I’m also wondering is this overkill or under kill?
Do I need the GPU upgrade?
And should I or should I not get the clear keyboard, as a touch typist who really can’t spell that well. I am mainly concerned with knowing what is what (although it would certainly keep other people off my computer?) as I noticed currently there are no labels even though the description says it “use a water-based paint process to minimize environmental impact.” But all the pictures I see don’t have any lettering. But I love the old iBook transparent/ opaque keyboards.
There are no labels at all on the clear keyboard. Some parts of the keyboard descriptions only apply to certain keyboards.
In my opinion, the clear keyboard is mostly for people who want the cool factor. And also those that want a completely custom layout where they plan to get key decals. You could do that, say if you wanted different decals for the F-keys, to have them labeled for macros. But you could just use the macropad for that too. There are some keyboard decal options here List of company or individually driven projects
Other than going “do I really need another computer, I have a van payment”… Definitely thinking the macro pad will be really handy for OBS and I’m thinking scenes and then some sort of active status with colors.
Yeah not being a typist makes me a little concerned about the blank keys. Took a bit of digging to find out that’s generic text on the site. On the upside I did find some better photos on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/framework/comments/xz3hu8/clear_keyboard_with_key_cap_stickers/ and I definitely like what they’ve done with it. I’d probably have to do key labels. The original Apple iBook G3’s had a semi transparent keyboard. and I always loved that design unfortunately it wasn’t backlit back then and certainly not RGB although there were a few mod’ers who tried there hand at EL backlighting. It might be frivolous but I’m liking the clear keyboard idea.
Yeah I’m probably sold just wondering if it’s enough processing power at this point and how bad it’s gonna hurt my budget, what’s a budget?
One downside would be lack of internal touchscreen but it’s a framework.
I am somebody who doesn’t like touchscreens on laptops because I touch my screen and suddenly things are moved all around, although there’s a few occasions with certain software it’s certainly handy.
Be aware that QMK does not have an easy built-in function for changing per-key colors. It can certainly be done, but you’d have to either add the function yourself or hopefully find someone who already wrote something. I’d ask in the QMK discord. https://docs.qmk.fm/#/support
That’s good to know. Currently I’m just mapping an external number pad.
Haven’t done that much with custom key layouts except for enabling a num pad overlay on my older Macbook. I guess that would be something to learn, with color being an eventually thing.
Well thanks everybody for better or worse I did it. I’m actually surprised at how well I’m doing typing my complicated password and various other bits with no indication on the keyboard and I am a touch Taiper and dyslexic. I guess I’ve been giving myself a good bit of practice. Still planning to use a brother label printer to print transparent legends for some of the function keys. If anybody else goes this route with the clear keyboard go load up the keyboard shopping page and pull down a high-quality image of the legends.
Was slightly concerned that it might not have enough power or the right configuration of graphics for streaming but I think I probably don’t have to worry about.
In case anybody’s interested I streamed the unboxing and set up.
I have a couple of number pads (a wired one that only works on windows and a Bluetooth one for Mac) and I have programmed hot keys in OBS for cameras 1-4, guest laptop, split screen, with and without lower thirds. Out of the box the rainbow keypad operates just like the numerical pad so I’ll probably just carryover the same shortcuts for now. At some point I might map a third layer to a hot key and use unassigned characters that way I can still have a number pad + arrow keys without OBS taking control of the number pad. But that might take me a while I’m gonna have to learn coding it sounds like.
I mostly run OBS on Mac, but lately I’ve been having troubles with it either not being stable or streaming but not recording or vice versa. it’s been picky getting the codec right. Plus Macs stupid full screen function for the multiview blanks out all other monitors so you can “focus your productivity” finally got me so annoyed that I’m moving my entire set up to windows with may be a stop in Linux first to see if I can get it to work there.