23 ms·

A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

201 points by darimo 5y ago

davidgerard 5y ago
See also Ed Zitron's how-to set this up for yourself or your clients (he's a PR guy): https://thefuturebuzz.com/2020/08/06/how-to-make-your-zoom-calls-look-like-youre-on-tv/ https://thefuturebuzz.com/2020/08/06/how-to-make-your-zoom-c...
- enlightens 5y ago
  Matt Mullenweg has a few takes on this as well. Early in 2020: https://ma.tt/2020/05/ceo-video-streaming/ https://ma.tt/2020/05/ceo-video-streaming/ Second iteration at a lower cost: https://ma.tt/2021/05/2021-streaming-kit/ https://ma.tt/2021/05/2021-streaming-kit/
loloquwowndueo 5y ago
I took a picture of myself using my videoconferencing camera, then set it up as my meeting background. The effect is hilarious when people see you, then see you again moving into the frame :)
jumpkick 5y ago
What point is the author trying to make in comparing the two iPhones? There was a setup but no payoff.
- rozab 5y ago
  As they say, it's the skuomorphism. The original iPhone aimed to replace various existing things - instead of TV, we've got YouTube! Instead of a notepad, we have the notes app! No need to carry around paper maps with charming little pins stuck in anymore! This is equivalent to dressing up nicely as one would for an in-person meeting and plonking oneself down in front of a laptop webcam, according to the author. In the newer iPhone, and in Bill Gates' setup, it is understood that the framing is the important part, it is not enough to pretend to be in a normal meeting. Of course the whole thing is a bit silly
  - gumby 5y ago
    > of course the whole thing is a bit silly As goes with fashion as well. I’m not a practitioner myself (but married one, and am the parent of one) and I have observed that even the ones who take it seriously also treat it wil a sense of humor.
    - akarma 5y ago
      As someone quite into fashion (and worked in the space before), this is a very astute comment! Fashion trends in the past few years have often progressed increasingly into a level of irony. It's become about what level of craziness/funkiness you can pull off while making it look intentional and attractive. This includes hairstyles like dying your hair platinum blonde or purple and buzz-cutting it, or wearing loud, maximalist patterns, or even ironically wearing defunct fashion brands or cultural symbols opposite of your everyday life, like the popularity of Bass Pro Shops hats. The comeback of 'dad sneakers' and 'mom jeans,' while even retaining those monikers but in a positive way, are other good examples.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    It also demonstrated the almost limitless possibilities of the UI. Smooth scrolling textured windows! Tap a button and they curl over to reveal a new pane! And it comes with a UI that was designed, not thrown together by a coder!
- pc86 5y ago
  It this wasn't on substack I would have guessed someone paid to have this article written on Fiverr.
- resonious 5y ago
  I also felt like the article hit pretty weak in a lot of places. In the part where they compare Bill Gates to the Bloomberg anchor, it just says "Her self-presentation is overawed by Gates’ setup." with no clear explanation as to why. And it's not actually clear to me when I look at the pic. Maybe I just don't have the "technical expertise to understand how colour temperature, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO conspire together to form a beautiful picture".
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I suspect they could have found a better example, but Gates was clearly using a camera with a very wide aperture, giving a shallow depth of (focused) field, meaning his background wasn’t distracting. His lighting also had slightly less hot-spotting (you can see she’s using two main lights, but can’t readily ID Gates’ light placement). Given the disastrous video setups I’ve seen, I think the Bloomberg anchor’s setup was at least a 7 on the 10 scale (and maybe an 8), so hardly terrible. Side note: audio is a fraction of the effort and expense and IMO is more important.
    - Applejinx 5y ago
      If you mean to really REALLY push the quality, audio gets expensive. My video is in service of audio plugins so I have a motivation to do that: the reason my audio is strikingly good on my voice is, it is NOT done with plugins. It's done with a Roswell Colares (or a Sennheiser lav) a $1500 boutique mic inspired by $10,000 mics, into an API 3124 studio pre, directly into a MOTU 16A interface with no further processing. Room treatment also plays a part: the room has two large openings into other spaces and six large T-Fusor diffusors, painted to match the walls. A setup like that projects its sound character into the recording so strongly that there's nothing to fix: when the mics and things are high enough quality it's like the intention of the vocal performance comes through more powerfully in the first place, and this responds very well to digitization and compression.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        Sure, getting to the 99.99th percentile of audio is incredibly expensive [just like anything else]. My comments were more directed at getting people into the 80th percentile level (decent mic on a boom, correctly placed and away from a built-in camera/laptop mic), but your point is correct for the absolute best 1-in-10000 level.
periheli0n 5y ago
I expected to read about studio setups for live-streaming, e.g. on twitch. There are some musicians on twitch that have really awesome setups where one can discover so much visual detail while listening. I would have loved to read about some of those, perhaps even with a bit of advice how to build my own. Instead I got a luke-warm analogy of business attire and videoconferencing backgrounds. Mildly disappointing.
- raels 5y ago
  Given that the analysis seems far removed from mainstream livestreaming, I'd say very disappointing.
- rjknight 5y ago
  The point of the article is not "how to do it", but rather to observe that this kind of thing, previously a (relatively) niche concern, has become important to a general audience. The article even suggests that there's a business opportunity for fashion businesses to create tailored videoconferencing spaces, which is predicated on the notion that most people lack the time or inclination to set up their own bespoke setup (including lighting, cameras, audio, and so on). The takeaway is meant to be that videoconferencing has reached a point of cultural importance where it has become hard to take a public figure seriously if they have a poor setup, in much the same way that it would be hard to take a poorly-dressed person seriously. Much as people experiment with clothing as a means of signalling status and personality, one's videoconferencing setup becomes a new way of signalling these things. It's all fairly obvious, but it's still not something that I have spent much time thinking about, and a how-to guide would probably not prompt me to think about the social and cultural aspects nearly so much.
  - mssundaram 5y ago
    Eloquent summary and analysis, thank you!
  - brutus1213 5y ago
    I was an organizer for a major ACM conference last year, and I really struggled with my home video streaming setup. A lot of equipment was sold out last year. I followed the recommendation of some YouTubers and realized that this is not as simple as it seems. Despite realizing the importance of a live stream setup and investing in it, I'm pretty unhappy with the results. Thankfully we are out of the worst of the pandemic .. but I agree that a good home streaming setup will be important going forward. Edit: one thing I never figured out how to solve was removing glare on my glasses (either monitor glare or from key lights). Best investment was an external microphone and a few items mounted on the wall behind me (which used to be bare).
xwdv 5y ago
I write off anyone who video conferences with a bookshelf behind them as a fool trying to pass off as more intelligent than they actually are. It’s so cringey because of how blatantly manipulative it is.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  That's ridiculous. Lots of people don't live in huge houses where they have lots of options. They're videoconferencing from their home office desk, which guess what -- it's extremely common to have bookshelves behind your desk. Has been for many decades, it's not a Zoom thing. If anything is cringey, it's your tremendously unsympathetic comment, unfortunately.
- sva_ 5y ago
  So living in a small space is being manipulative now?
  - maeln 5y ago
    Yeah, I live in a one bedroom, one kitchen-office-living room. I don't have a choice but to have most of my flat "on display". This made me realize, that I have some book by some prominent anarchist author on my book shelves in clear view of my webcam. I guess my employer know where I stand now haha.
- TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
  Some people have only one workspace, and also actually happen to have some books they don't want to stack on the floor.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    When I was getting my office video properly set up I thought about more deliberately putting some other objects there and so forth. But the thing is that it's my office bookcase and I'd have ended up having to pile a bunch of books in the floor in another room. So I decided it wasn't worth it.
- 5y ago
draw_down 5y ago
> I want to see Gucci deliver a home studio build for their elite clients, that fully and completely ‘guccifies’ their space. Maybe it’s just me but this is a crazy thing to want, and to say you want. Why, why?!
spython 5y ago
I am using the built-in webcam for video as well as a boring white wall as backdrop, as to not over-design the self-presentation. But I invested quite a bit of time in setting up a good microphone and pre-amp, as listening to bad audio is the most tiring part of videoconferencing for me.
Kiro 5y ago
I was expecting a review of some of the really amazing setups some Twitch streamers use. Check out CodeMiko if you haven't already.
- approxim8ion 5y ago
  CodeMiko is incredible. I don't care for her content particularly, but the tech is just incredibly interesting.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Since the pandemic, I’m seeing more and more over-engineered home video conferencing setups that add more trouble than they’re worth. Adjusting your home setup for decent front lighting and workable audio quality is important. Getting a mirrorless camera with expensive lenses and a podcasting microphone setup is not. I’m getting tired of losing minutes at the beginning of each call while the people with exotic camera, microphone, and lighting setups play games to get everything working with Zoom.
- slantyyz 5y ago
  Doesn't the issue have more to do with people not being ready on time than it does their gear? It's no less annoying than a person who shows up to a meeting without having read any required background material in advance. I always make a point in connecting to a conference a couple of minutes in advance to make sure all the inputs are correctly assigned and working, simply because I don't like making people wait.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  I would rather give them a few minutes than spend the entire meeting straining to understand people over their echos, terrible mic quality, etc.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    That’s the false dichotomy that lures people into these over-complicated setups. You don’t need a professional podcasting microphone to be understood. Plenty of us do just fine without. I have pro audio gear at my disposal, but I’ll still reach for the MacBook Pro built-in Mic when it’s convenient. It just works and I don’t have to worry about placement, reflections, setting gain and clipping, keeping noise sources away and so on. There’s a lot going on with the directional microphone setups in modern laptops that happens behind the scenes. An improperly setup podcast style cardioid mic will actually catch more echos and stray noise than the finely tuned directional setup built in to a MacBook Pro. Pro gear doesn’t automatically solve problems, but it does introduce a lot more opportunities for incorrect setup.
gumby 5y ago
I don’t know about fancy mikes but just using a phone as the webcam made a profound difference for me. And my AirPods seem to work well as microphones for me.
- EForEndeavour 5y ago
  https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1405575186691330054 https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1405575186691330054 "I don't know who needs to hear this, but your colleagues want to hear from you, and your AirPods sound like shit"
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Might not be professional audio but Airpod's are better than using the built in Mic's and just using headphones improves your audio quality.
  - gumby 5y ago
    I have wondered about this but we record a lot of our meetings and I have heard myself and I sound pretty clear. Admittedly this is me judging myself, but I do listen critically to see. Also I was interviewed for a podcast recently and I asked a few friends if I was clear and they all said yes, even when I said why I asked. FWIW.
jihadjihad 5y ago
> What’s pernicious about this new organization: whereas the status of a double-breasted banker suit is transparently obvious, the technical arrangement that conspires to give an amazing streaming setup is altogether inscrutable to lay people. What is truly inscrutable is the decision to adopt this particular style of writing.
- zachlatta 5y ago
  This comment does not contribute to the conversation and is unnecessarily mean.
  - ryan0n 5y ago
    Hi, I'm new here. Is 'downvoting' not a thing here?
    - Mrnimbus112 5y ago
      No this community is full of cunts where there is a "right" way to communicate
    - bidirectional 5y ago
      You need 500 points before downvoting is enabled.
crazygringo 5y ago
As someone who records nearly daily, I'm going to critique: > What’s required for an impeccable streaming setup? > 1) Good lighting that can be precisely calibrated, both in brightness and in colour temperature For most uses, fixed brightness is fine as long as you can adjust the light's distance. Lighting doesn't need to be color-temperature adjustable because that's what the white balance on your camera is for -- just make sure all your lights are the same color temperature. Mostly, just get a single large ring light, about $90. [1] > 2) A good camera with a big sensor and a wide aperture lens If you've got good lighting, then no -- honestly an $80 Logitech C920 [2] will be perfectly adequate for sharp 1080p, and over videoconferencing it's going into deeply compressed 720p anyways so it's more than enough. A wide aperture lens is only if you want a blurry background, which is almost never desirable in professional interviews or videoconferencing. (Gates has a blurry background, this is very unusual.) A large sensor/aperture is required for low-light conditions, but you should be using good lighting, so that shouldn't be an issue. > 3) A good microphone It doesn't need to be that good, just better than your built-in laptop mic, or built-in Bluetooth earphones mic. A $40 Blue Snowball iCE [3] will be more than enough. A $35 lapel mic [4] will be pretty decent too. But just like lighting is far more important than your camera, distance to the mic is far more important than the mic itself. Generally, it should be roughly 9" away, which means keeping it just out of frame, supported by some kind of stand. > 4) The right rigging to hold everything together Yup, basically just a stand for your mic and maybe for your webcam. Also possibly a stand for your laptop to support it at eye level. > 5) Ambient fill lighting Any normal room has this, though you may need to change which direction you're facing to optimize. > 6) The technical expertise to understand how colour temperature, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO conspire together to form a beautiful picture. You absolutely need to manually set the white balance and lock it. Webcams don't really have ISO (they have gain), but you absolutely do need to set the gain to zero (because you have good lighting) and lock the shutter speed for the desired exposure. Not a whole ton of technical expertise here though -- it's pretty simple. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Ring-Light-Kit-Self-Portrait/dp/B01LXDNNBW?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Ring-Light-Kit-Self-Portrait/d... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Widescreen-Calling-Recording-Desktop/dp/B006JH8T3S https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Widescreen-Calling-Recording... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Snowball-Condenser-Microphone-Cardioid/dp/B014PYGTUQ https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Snowball-Condenser-Microphone-Ca... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Microphone-Omnidirectional-Recording-Conference/dp/B01AG56HYQ?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Microphone-Omnidirection...
mwarkentin 5y ago
Lots of people have spare phones sitting around with really nice camera setups. https://reincubate.com/camo/ https://reincubate.com/camo/ is a pretty cool way to use those for a quick upgrade to your camera setup.
- milesskorpen 5y ago
  I've found it to be super laggy and unusable, unfortunately. iPhone 12 + 2018 MBP.
  - afit 5y ago
    Yowch. Sorry to read that. I built Camo. Can you drop us a note? Should be lower latency than a regular webcam as we can rely on device hardware to encode.
    - jazzido 5y ago
      I love Camo. Any ETA for the Android version?
      - afit 5y ago
        Thank you. We're going to be bringing more people onto the beta this week. We had a bit of a pause whilst we revisited a few bits. Hopefully you're on the list — I don't think we're too far away now!
    - greggh 5y ago
      I love Camo too. I use it for my Twitch stream. Great software, thanks for the awesome stuff. The big feature I'm waiting for is the built in chromakey / greenscreen tools.
  - greggh 5y ago
    I use Camo about 14 hours a week for recordings. I've never had this problem. I'd love to know what is causing it if you ever figure it out.
Scene_Cast2 5y ago
I have a good mic setup, but trying to improve my lighting. The biggest issue I have is with the mounting. How do people generally mounting their lights so that they don't take up much desk space?
- dekhn 5y ago
  I don't have a good answer for you but right now I'm facing a large diffused light that lightens my face and a backing green screen. Mine is floor standing and enormous, but you can get an equivalent diffuser attached to monitor and an LED behind that.
  - illwrks 5y ago
    Building on this, I sit at a south facing window that gets good lighting for most of the day. I use a large circular photography light diffuser that can stay firm in the window frame using the tension of the diffuser. That plus slightly grainy background images to blend with the webcam footage and I blend well with any background :D
- justincormack 5y ago
  Mounted with a desk clamp at the back of the desk, takes up no space really (but its a bit further away you might need a bright lamp).
francisofascii 5y ago
Good overall advice, but what is missing is the how. How do you setup "good lighting" that can be calibrated? How do you buy/select a "good" camera or a "good" microphone? Specific products or features to look for when purchasing would be helpful.
platz 5y ago
> A good camera with a big sensor and a wide aperture lens And how does one use this in a way that has no latency for a live webcam.
- blhack 5y ago
  Use an HDMI capture device.
shagie 5y ago
On the lighting bit... I stumbled across this at Two Minute Papers- a neat bit on relighting a video stream. https://youtu.be/SEsYo9L5lOo https://youtu.be/SEsYo9L5lOo The paper is Total Relighting: Learning to Relight Portraits for Background Replacement from Google Research. It can be found at https://augmentedperception.github.io/total_relighting/ https://augmentedperception.github.io/total_relighting/ The video from the presenters - https://youtu.be/KeebkkaZhhI https://youtu.be/KeebkkaZhhI
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Spandex talking about well-tailored suits? Isn't that stretching it a little bit?
alkonaut 5y ago
Is there any way to integrate an app with zoom/teams to know when a video call is happening? I’d like to have lighting when I answer a video call but not the 99% of the time when I don’t have the camera on.
SergeAx 5y ago
Part of the problem is widespread of MacBooks. When this coronavirus thing was just starting, I thought about maybe working from home and bought a cheap 720p Logitech webcam for my home desktop PC. Year and a half later my picture still looks a magnitude better than most of coworkers' using their MacBook camera.

201 points by darimo 5y ago

See also Ed Zitron's how-to set this up for yourself or your clients (he's a PR guy): https://thefuturebuzz.com/2020/08/06/how-to-make-your-zoom-calls-look-like-youre-on-tv/ https://thefuturebuzz.com/2020/08/06/how-to-make-your-zoom-c...

enlightens 5y ago
Matt Mullenweg has a few takes on this as well. Early in 2020: https://ma.tt/2020/05/ceo-video-streaming/ https://ma.tt/2020/05/ceo-video-streaming/ Second iteration at a lower cost: https://ma.tt/2021/05/2021-streaming-kit/ https://ma.tt/2021/05/2021-streaming-kit/

loloquwowndueo 5y ago

I took a picture of myself using my videoconferencing camera, then set it up as my meeting background. The effect is hilarious when people see you, then see you again moving into the frame :)

jumpkick 5y ago

What point is the author trying to make in comparing the two iPhones? There was a setup but no payoff.

rozab 5y ago
As they say, it's the skuomorphism. The original iPhone aimed to replace various existing things - instead of TV, we've got YouTube! Instead of a notepad, we have the notes app! No need to carry around paper maps with charming little pins stuck in anymore! This is equivalent to dressing up nicely as one would for an in-person meeting and plonking oneself down in front of a laptop webcam, according to the author. In the newer iPhone, and in Bill Gates' setup, it is understood that the framing is the important part, it is not enough to pretend to be in a normal meeting. Of course the whole thing is a bit silly
- gumby 5y ago
  > of course the whole thing is a bit silly As goes with fashion as well. I’m not a practitioner myself (but married one, and am the parent of one) and I have observed that even the ones who take it seriously also treat it wil a sense of humor.
  - akarma 5y ago
    As someone quite into fashion (and worked in the space before), this is a very astute comment! Fashion trends in the past few years have often progressed increasingly into a level of irony. It's become about what level of craziness/funkiness you can pull off while making it look intentional and attractive. This includes hairstyles like dying your hair platinum blonde or purple and buzz-cutting it, or wearing loud, maximalist patterns, or even ironically wearing defunct fashion brands or cultural symbols opposite of your everyday life, like the popularity of Bass Pro Shops hats. The comeback of 'dad sneakers' and 'mom jeans,' while even retaining those monikers but in a positive way, are other good examples.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  It also demonstrated the almost limitless possibilities of the UI. Smooth scrolling textured windows! Tap a button and they curl over to reveal a new pane! And it comes with a UI that was designed, not thrown together by a coder!
pc86 5y ago
It this wasn't on substack I would have guessed someone paid to have this article written on Fiverr.
resonious 5y ago
I also felt like the article hit pretty weak in a lot of places. In the part where they compare Bill Gates to the Bloomberg anchor, it just says "Her self-presentation is overawed by Gates’ setup." with no clear explanation as to why. And it's not actually clear to me when I look at the pic. Maybe I just don't have the "technical expertise to understand how colour temperature, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO conspire together to form a beautiful picture".
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I suspect they could have found a better example, but Gates was clearly using a camera with a very wide aperture, giving a shallow depth of (focused) field, meaning his background wasn’t distracting. His lighting also had slightly less hot-spotting (you can see she’s using two main lights, but can’t readily ID Gates’ light placement). Given the disastrous video setups I’ve seen, I think the Bloomberg anchor’s setup was at least a 7 on the 10 scale (and maybe an 8), so hardly terrible. Side note: audio is a fraction of the effort and expense and IMO is more important.
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    If you mean to really REALLY push the quality, audio gets expensive. My video is in service of audio plugins so I have a motivation to do that: the reason my audio is strikingly good on my voice is, it is NOT done with plugins. It's done with a Roswell Colares (or a Sennheiser lav) a $1500 boutique mic inspired by $10,000 mics, into an API 3124 studio pre, directly into a MOTU 16A interface with no further processing. Room treatment also plays a part: the room has two large openings into other spaces and six large T-Fusor diffusors, painted to match the walls. A setup like that projects its sound character into the recording so strongly that there's nothing to fix: when the mics and things are high enough quality it's like the intention of the vocal performance comes through more powerfully in the first place, and this responds very well to digitization and compression.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Sure, getting to the 99.99th percentile of audio is incredibly expensive [just like anything else]. My comments were more directed at getting people into the 80th percentile level (decent mic on a boom, correctly placed and away from a built-in camera/laptop mic), but your point is correct for the absolute best 1-in-10000 level.

periheli0n 5y ago

I expected to read about studio setups for live-streaming, e.g. on twitch. There are some musicians on twitch that have really awesome setups where one can discover so much visual detail while listening. I would have loved to read about some of those, perhaps even with a bit of advice how to build my own. Instead I got a luke-warm analogy of business attire and videoconferencing backgrounds. Mildly disappointing.

raels 5y ago
Given that the analysis seems far removed from mainstream livestreaming, I'd say very disappointing.
rjknight 5y ago
The point of the article is not "how to do it", but rather to observe that this kind of thing, previously a (relatively) niche concern, has become important to a general audience. The article even suggests that there's a business opportunity for fashion businesses to create tailored videoconferencing spaces, which is predicated on the notion that most people lack the time or inclination to set up their own bespoke setup (including lighting, cameras, audio, and so on). The takeaway is meant to be that videoconferencing has reached a point of cultural importance where it has become hard to take a public figure seriously if they have a poor setup, in much the same way that it would be hard to take a poorly-dressed person seriously. Much as people experiment with clothing as a means of signalling status and personality, one's videoconferencing setup becomes a new way of signalling these things. It's all fairly obvious, but it's still not something that I have spent much time thinking about, and a how-to guide would probably not prompt me to think about the social and cultural aspects nearly so much.
- mssundaram 5y ago
  Eloquent summary and analysis, thank you!
- brutus1213 5y ago
  I was an organizer for a major ACM conference last year, and I really struggled with my home video streaming setup. A lot of equipment was sold out last year. I followed the recommendation of some YouTubers and realized that this is not as simple as it seems. Despite realizing the importance of a live stream setup and investing in it, I'm pretty unhappy with the results. Thankfully we are out of the worst of the pandemic .. but I agree that a good home streaming setup will be important going forward. Edit: one thing I never figured out how to solve was removing glare on my glasses (either monitor glare or from key lights). Best investment was an external microphone and a few items mounted on the wall behind me (which used to be bare).

xwdv 5y ago

I write off anyone who video conferences with a bookshelf behind them as a fool trying to pass off as more intelligent than they actually are. It’s so cringey because of how blatantly manipulative it is.

crazygringo 5y ago
That's ridiculous. Lots of people don't live in huge houses where they have lots of options. They're videoconferencing from their home office desk, which guess what -- it's extremely common to have bookshelves behind your desk. Has been for many decades, it's not a Zoom thing. If anything is cringey, it's your tremendously unsympathetic comment, unfortunately.
sva_ 5y ago
So living in a small space is being manipulative now?
- maeln 5y ago
  Yeah, I live in a one bedroom, one kitchen-office-living room. I don't have a choice but to have most of my flat "on display". This made me realize, that I have some book by some prominent anarchist author on my book shelves in clear view of my webcam. I guess my employer know where I stand now haha.
TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
Some people have only one workspace, and also actually happen to have some books they don't want to stack on the floor.
- ghaff 5y ago
  When I was getting my office video properly set up I thought about more deliberately putting some other objects there and so forth. But the thing is that it's my office bookcase and I'd have ended up having to pile a bunch of books in the floor in another room. So I decided it wasn't worth it.
5y ago

draw_down 5y ago

> I want to see Gucci deliver a home studio build for their elite clients, that fully and completely ‘guccifies’ their space. Maybe it’s just me but this is a crazy thing to want, and to say you want. Why, why?!

spython 5y ago

I am using the built-in webcam for video as well as a boring white wall as backdrop, as to not over-design the self-presentation. But I invested quite a bit of time in setting up a good microphone and pre-amp, as listening to bad audio is the most tiring part of videoconferencing for me.

Kiro 5y ago

I was expecting a review of some of the really amazing setups some Twitch streamers use. Check out CodeMiko if you haven't already.

approxim8ion 5y ago
CodeMiko is incredible. I don't care for her content particularly, but the tech is just incredibly interesting.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Since the pandemic, I’m seeing more and more over-engineered home video conferencing setups that add more trouble than they’re worth. Adjusting your home setup for decent front lighting and workable audio quality is important. Getting a mirrorless camera with expensive lenses and a podcasting microphone setup is not. I’m getting tired of losing minutes at the beginning of each call while the people with exotic camera, microphone, and lighting setups play games to get everything working with Zoom.

slantyyz 5y ago
Doesn't the issue have more to do with people not being ready on time than it does their gear? It's no less annoying than a person who shows up to a meeting without having read any required background material in advance. I always make a point in connecting to a conference a couple of minutes in advance to make sure all the inputs are correctly assigned and working, simply because I don't like making people wait.
silicon2401 5y ago
I would rather give them a few minutes than spend the entire meeting straining to understand people over their echos, terrible mic quality, etc.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  That’s the false dichotomy that lures people into these over-complicated setups. You don’t need a professional podcasting microphone to be understood. Plenty of us do just fine without. I have pro audio gear at my disposal, but I’ll still reach for the MacBook Pro built-in Mic when it’s convenient. It just works and I don’t have to worry about placement, reflections, setting gain and clipping, keeping noise sources away and so on. There’s a lot going on with the directional microphone setups in modern laptops that happens behind the scenes. An improperly setup podcast style cardioid mic will actually catch more echos and stray noise than the finely tuned directional setup built in to a MacBook Pro. Pro gear doesn’t automatically solve problems, but it does introduce a lot more opportunities for incorrect setup.

gumby 5y ago

I don’t know about fancy mikes but just using a phone as the webcam made a profound difference for me. And my AirPods seem to work well as microphones for me.

EForEndeavour 5y ago
https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1405575186691330054 https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1405575186691330054 "I don't know who needs to hear this, but your colleagues want to hear from you, and your AirPods sound like shit"
- rkk3 5y ago
  Might not be professional audio but Airpod's are better than using the built in Mic's and just using headphones improves your audio quality.
- gumby 5y ago
  I have wondered about this but we record a lot of our meetings and I have heard myself and I sound pretty clear. Admittedly this is me judging myself, but I do listen critically to see. Also I was interviewed for a podcast recently and I asked a few friends if I was clear and they all said yes, even when I said why I asked. FWIW.

jihadjihad 5y ago

> What’s pernicious about this new organization: whereas the status of a double-breasted banker suit is transparently obvious, the technical arrangement that conspires to give an amazing streaming setup is altogether inscrutable to lay people. What is truly inscrutable is the decision to adopt this particular style of writing.

zachlatta 5y ago
This comment does not contribute to the conversation and is unnecessarily mean.
- ryan0n 5y ago
  Hi, I'm new here. Is 'downvoting' not a thing here?
  - Mrnimbus112 5y ago
    No this community is full of cunts where there is a "right" way to communicate
  - bidirectional 5y ago
    You need 500 points before downvoting is enabled.

crazygringo 5y ago

As someone who records nearly daily, I'm going to critique: > What’s required for an impeccable streaming setup? > 1) Good lighting that can be precisely calibrated, both in brightness and in colour temperature For most uses, fixed brightness is fine as long as you can adjust the light's distance. Lighting doesn't need to be color-temperature adjustable because that's what the white balance on your camera is for -- just make sure all your lights are the same color temperature. Mostly, just get a single large ring light, about $90. [1] > 2) A good camera with a big sensor and a wide aperture lens If you've got good lighting, then no -- honestly an $80 Logitech C920 [2] will be perfectly adequate for sharp 1080p, and over videoconferencing it's going into deeply compressed 720p anyways so it's more than enough. A wide aperture lens is only if you want a blurry background, which is almost never desirable in professional interviews or videoconferencing. (Gates has a blurry background, this is very unusual.) A large sensor/aperture is required for low-light conditions, but you should be using good lighting, so that shouldn't be an issue. > 3) A good microphone It doesn't need to be that good, just better than your built-in laptop mic, or built-in Bluetooth earphones mic. A $40 Blue Snowball iCE [3] will be more than enough. A $35 lapel mic [4] will be pretty decent too. But just like lighting is far more important than your camera, distance to the mic is far more important than the mic itself. Generally, it should be roughly 9" away, which means keeping it just out of frame, supported by some kind of stand. > 4) The right rigging to hold everything together Yup, basically just a stand for your mic and maybe for your webcam. Also possibly a stand for your laptop to support it at eye level. > 5) Ambient fill lighting Any normal room has this, though you may need to change which direction you're facing to optimize. > 6) The technical expertise to understand how colour temperature, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO conspire together to form a beautiful picture. You absolutely need to manually set the white balance and lock it. Webcams don't really have ISO (they have gain), but you absolutely do need to set the gain to zero (because you have good lighting) and lock the shutter speed for the desired exposure. Not a whole ton of technical expertise here though -- it's pretty simple. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Ring-Light-Kit-Self-Portrait/dp/B01LXDNNBW?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Ring-Light-Kit-Self-Portrait/d... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Widescreen-Calling-Recording-Desktop/dp/B006JH8T3S https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Widescreen-Calling-Recording... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Snowball-Condenser-Microphone-Cardioid/dp/B014PYGTUQ https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Snowball-Condenser-Microphone-Ca... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Microphone-Omnidirectional-Recording-Conference/dp/B01AG56HYQ?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Microphone-Omnidirection...

mwarkentin 5y ago

Lots of people have spare phones sitting around with really nice camera setups. https://reincubate.com/camo/ https://reincubate.com/camo/ is a pretty cool way to use those for a quick upgrade to your camera setup.

milesskorpen 5y ago
I've found it to be super laggy and unusable, unfortunately. iPhone 12 + 2018 MBP.
- afit 5y ago
  Yowch. Sorry to read that. I built Camo. Can you drop us a note? Should be lower latency than a regular webcam as we can rely on device hardware to encode.
  - jazzido 5y ago
    I love Camo. Any ETA for the Android version?
    - afit 5y ago
      Thank you. We're going to be bringing more people onto the beta this week. We had a bit of a pause whilst we revisited a few bits. Hopefully you're on the list — I don't think we're too far away now!
  - greggh 5y ago
    I love Camo too. I use it for my Twitch stream. Great software, thanks for the awesome stuff. The big feature I'm waiting for is the built in chromakey / greenscreen tools.
- greggh 5y ago
  I use Camo about 14 hours a week for recordings. I've never had this problem. I'd love to know what is causing it if you ever figure it out.

Scene_Cast2 5y ago

I have a good mic setup, but trying to improve my lighting. The biggest issue I have is with the mounting. How do people generally mounting their lights so that they don't take up much desk space?

dekhn 5y ago
I don't have a good answer for you but right now I'm facing a large diffused light that lightens my face and a backing green screen. Mine is floor standing and enormous, but you can get an equivalent diffuser attached to monitor and an LED behind that.
- illwrks 5y ago
  Building on this, I sit at a south facing window that gets good lighting for most of the day. I use a large circular photography light diffuser that can stay firm in the window frame using the tension of the diffuser. That plus slightly grainy background images to blend with the webcam footage and I blend well with any background :D
justincormack 5y ago
Mounted with a desk clamp at the back of the desk, takes up no space really (but its a bit further away you might need a bright lamp).

francisofascii 5y ago

Good overall advice, but what is missing is the how. How do you setup "good lighting" that can be calibrated? How do you buy/select a "good" camera or a "good" microphone? Specific products or features to look for when purchasing would be helpful.

platz 5y ago

> A good camera with a big sensor and a wide aperture lens And how does one use this in a way that has no latency for a live webcam.

blhack 5y ago
Use an HDMI capture device.

shagie 5y ago

On the lighting bit... I stumbled across this at Two Minute Papers- a neat bit on relighting a video stream. https://youtu.be/SEsYo9L5lOo https://youtu.be/SEsYo9L5lOo The paper is Total Relighting: Learning to Relight Portraits for Background Replacement from Google Research. It can be found at https://augmentedperception.github.io/total_relighting/ https://augmentedperception.github.io/total_relighting/ The video from the presenters - https://youtu.be/KeebkkaZhhI https://youtu.be/KeebkkaZhhI

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Spandex talking about well-tailored suits? Isn't that stretching it a little bit?

alkonaut 5y ago

Is there any way to integrate an app with zoom/teams to know when a video call is happening? I’d like to have lighting when I answer a video call but not the 99% of the time when I don’t have the camera on.

SergeAx 5y ago

Part of the problem is widespread of MacBooks. When this coronavirus thing was just starting, I thought about maybe working from home and bought a cheap 720p Logitech webcam for my home desktop PC. Year and a half later my picture still looks a magnitude better than most of coworkers' using their MacBook camera.