Wistia’s Post

Transcript

On another episode of... I'm trying to take my video and podcast games to the next level. I don't even know where to start. Wistia, please help me fix my setup. We're gonna give Walter the video podcast setup of his dreams. Walter's home office is nice and bright thanks to the big south facing window right behind him. Problem is, his tiny desk is facing the wall. So on camera, Walter's face is mostly in the dark. Walter uses his MacBook Pro webcam, so the quality is a little soft and his eyes are looking down at the screen. We're gonna use the prompter from Elgato, so Walter can look truly engaged with his audience. Then using this really strong bendable arm, we can mount the prompter right to his desk. So he can just move over a zoom window to the prompter and it'll look like his eyes are looking right into the camera because he is. Speaking of camera, you can pair external webcams with prompter. But spicy take, all external webcams kinda suck. So we're gonna use this Canon R50 with an eighteen millimeter kit lens. This cute little guy rings in at about six hundred bones, but it offers us with two important features. One, the camera can be used as a webcam simply by plugging the USB-C port into a computer. No software, no dongles, it just works. And two, this nice big camera sensor. Traditional webcams have these tiny smartphone sized camera sensors. But unlike smartphones, webcams also have bad image processing. This dicey combo gives gives you an image that is fuzzy, grainy, ugly colors, weird motion blur. Yuck. Simply put, the R50 is a real camera which means really good image quality. With all that light coming into Walter's office, all we gotta do is light up Walter's moneymaker. For lighting, we're gonna keep things compact but high quality with the G60 from Zhiyun. This 60 watt light has got a huge and powerful LED, which is more than we need, but comes with a mini soft box and grid, which is perfect for getting quality light onto Walter's face. We'll throw it on a desk mount, set it to 20%, pushing it just to the left of the camera so the direction of the light matches the direction of the natural light coming from the window. And to keep things simple, we'll route the camera and LED light into this Belkin power strip with a wireless remote. So with the click of a button, Walter is ready for podcast mode. If you want a podcast, you gotta get great sound. And the quintessential podcast mic is the Shure SM7B, but it requires a bunch of pricey gear just to get into the computer. Lucky for us, Shure makes a USB version called the MV7+, which is plug and play and sounds nearly as good. Then we'll pair it with the Elgato mic arm to keep things nice and compact. Alright. This is a big one. I'm ready to podcast now. Let's do this. Talk about a clean setup.