 Hello and welcome to the live streamer backstage podcast. I'm Alec Johnson and this is a weekly show where I interview fellow live streamers to understand how they are using live streaming as a tool in their business and to discover the tech the gear and the software that they use to produce great live shows. My guest today is Robert Hathcock aka the Las Vegas legend that is DJ ROB Rob is a highly acclaimed DJ and through his company right on beat productions Rob has been involved in the Las Vegas nightclub and music industry for over 30 years Rob owns a recording studio and production company and has produced original music and remixes for various artists on major record labels earning him gold and platinum recording awards. There's a whole conversation we can have around transferring his audio and DJing and showmanship skills over to live streaming but actually I've asked you on the show today to also talk about his interior design skills because Rob has designed some phenomenal live streaming sets in his recording and virtual studio and video studio consultancy clients services If you are in the e-cam community on Facebook you may well have seen videos he's posted of some of these studio builds and they look more like TV studios than your average live streamer setup Speaking as an engineer, designer and an architect I really appreciate the attention to detail that Rob has shown both aesthetically but also technically in the implementation of these designs They're quite simply on another level. As always I'm really looking forward to this conversation so without further ado let's welcome DJ right on beat Hey Rob, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Thanks, thanks for the great intro and thanks for having me. I'm glad to be on your show. Everybody in the community knows what you're doing is top level So shout out to you. I'm jealous and envious of your organization and how you do everything and how you plan everything. I call you the man with the plan That should be your little subphrase, Alec Johnson the man with the plan because you're great at planning things and organizing things and I see all the things that you're doing in the background and that's the thing I'm lacking so I'm probably going to be getting some consulting from you. Hopefully some people need consulting from me but from you that organization that level of planning that you do is something that I lack and hopefully we'll get together on that and you'll help me with that Thanks so much. Well we can exchange ideas because like I say I've just been blown away frankly by the designs that you've produced and speaking as a designer you've done an awesome job with some of these things so I definitely want to get into that a little bit later on as well Perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background and sort of how you got into live streaming as well Yeah well it was music first, grade school, high school, being a drummer, being a musician and got into keyboards and of course getting into bands and stuff like that and then naturally progression into a DJ DJs that were prior musicians have that one step above because they already understand musicality and phrasing and what works and what people like so that progression when I was a teenager being a DJ here in Las Vegas and funny enough I was a teenager 17, 18, 19 years old and I was working in adult clubs where you weren't supposed to be you know you had to be of age but I had a dynamic skill set of DJing that nobody else had in town and I got kind of famous for that and so DJing in all the hottest night clubs been doing that for 40 years believe it or not and celebrating the other 40 year anniversary of actually DJing professionally here in Las Vegas which led to the natural progression of being a music producer as a DJ you know what songs work what gets people to the dance floor so then you start analyzing the songs say oh what is that keyboard you're using what is that drum thing and then you start investing in that and so I got into the producing thing and working with major labels and artists and doing remixes and additional production and then all these things are natural progressions the natural progression from being an audio editor programmer production guy here in Vegas got me into video and it makes sense from a music producer standpoint you have to have a beginning and middle end you have to have a verse chorus you know I'll show all that and it came naturally when I did start tingling with video that oh the transitions gotta be they gotta make sense you know if I'm going from this shot to this shot it needs to you know smoothly move in and that's how audio work that's how music producing work so it was a natural progression but that's the short and quick story of that progression and how I got into video and when was the sort of foray into actual live streaming as opposed to just video when did you sort of make that take that sort of jump into that side of things it kinda happened because the clients and the companies that I work for in Vegas so when I do the music production I'm doing it for agencies shows come to town because it's a big conference town shows come to town and I do a lot of music production for choreographers and production shows where Google will come on stage or Remax Realty whoever big companies come on stage and they need all this audio production to go with this big show that they're doing for all the people that are coming in town to watch the show and visit the conference do the breakout rooms and all of a sudden you know COVID hit and these clients still wanted to do these shows virtually and the clients are my agencies that I work with say hey Rob do you know anybody can do video and I said I need to start getting into the video so I started getting the cameras and stuff and I the first thing I did for this agency was a school wanted to do a live stream of the graduation this was right when COVID hit and they wanted to do a live stream live stream of the graduation because they didn't want to do an in person graduation so they said can you do this and this was just iPhones I set up three iPhones and didn't have e-cam yet using OBS which was a nightmare in itself but doing the three camera angles with the iPhones and feeding in music and the the other thing they wanted was they wanted the people to come into the big parking lot because it was a big school they wanted people to come into the parking lot and watch and hear the graduation so I set up an FM transmitter and had a sign when they come into the parking lot turn into 88.3 and hear the commencement speeches and everything else on your radio so everybody was in their cars listening to it we had the screen on thing and it was live streaming to Facebook it was challenging but it was great that I jumped in like that and did that then it became fundraisers for restaurants and then the conferences and I had to just I just get deeper in the video and I had to build a test kitchen because I didn't want to go on location and have three cameras is it going to work with this doc is going to work with laptop on my stream am I going to get ethernet at this at this venue and the learning process but it got in demand partly because of COVID I was tinkering the video before that but deeper when that happened and a lot of people that happened with a lot of people they got into video because of that it's funny you mentioned OBS I think we've most people go through that right of passage before they get to Ecamp and then realize there's a like a better way to do it on the other on the other side after OBS but I went through all the the usual OBS headaches myself as well and when did you sort of switch then over to Ecamp when did you find out about Ecamp and how did you find out about Ecamp probably Facebook or something because I was getting frustrated with OBS I'm a Mac guy since 8586 I had the first computer I had was a SE 30 and 85 or 86 I know Mac I know code and programming I know that OBS was built basically on a PC platform and it was fake for PC and somebody just ports that code over for Mac but it's secondary it's like it doesn't work as good it's it's clunky they it's too deep for what you need and you got to be a rocket scientist kind of and I was browsing on Facebook and some just man you can do the overlays and you can do the multiple cameras and you can tap the titles in and do the stuff and that was what year and after years ago I jumped into that it's been a blessing I just want to take a moment to talk about Ecamp live this is the live production Mac software that we're using to live stream and record this podcast in my opinion it is the best live streaming and recording software on the market today so what exactly does it do well essentially it allows you to control the content that you're including in your video be it a live stream or a recorded video and you do this by building out different scenes that contain the content that you want to show this content maybe a feed from your camera or indeed multiple cameras or you may be sharing a screen which is what I do a lot of in my tutorial style videos that I make for my take one tech YouTube channel you can share the screen from a second computer or maybe even a gaming console if you are a live streaming gamer and just as we are doing in this podcast you can also bring in guests using Ecamp lives built in interview mode where guests can join from a browser and you can then incorporate their video and audio into your production finally you can add all kinds of additional graphical and animated overlay elements and even movies to really add a level of branded professionalism that would be hard to achieve in any other way the real magic happens though when you hit that record or go live button because then you are able to seamlessly switch back and forth between all of the scenes that you've created and indeed this is how all of the videos have been created for my take one tech YouTube channel and the reason it's called take one tech by the way is because all of the videos are made in one take with no edits I just hit record make the video and as soon as I hit the end recording button the file is there and ready to be uploaded straight to YouTube what I love about Ecamp is not just the ease of use that it has when compared to other live streaming software but also the greater flexibility it gives in terms of layouts and designs that you can create for your shows when compared to some of the hardware streaming solutions and one thing that makes Ecamp great specifically for podcasts is the fact that it has the ability to record isolated audio tracks so once we finish recording this podcast I'll have a separate audio file for me, my guests and any other audio tracks that have been a part of the recording that makes the editing and repurposing of the content for the podcast so much more streamlined it does have another little trick up its sleeve though and that is its virtual camera feature this allows you to take the video output from Ecamp live straight into communication apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Discord and so on this means that rather than just appearing in Zoom meetings with a regular camera feed you can now show up with all of the amazing production values that Ecamp live gives you and deliver that straight into your Zoom meeting and trust me when you rock up to a Zoom meeting with Ecamp the other participants will be truly amazed so whether for live streaming, recorded video content or to level up your Zoom game I highly recommend you give Ecamp live ago you can get a free trial by going to takeonetech.io.com that's E-C-A-M takeonetech.io.com and of course you can find a link to that in the show notes as well you will certainly not regret giving it a go now let's get back to the show and so the studios that you've been building for other people how did you get into that side of things where you know I know that you do sort of recording studios and video studios as well is that something you were doing before you got into live streaming you know building out recording studios for people as well is that a service that you've been offering for a while or was it the other way around sort of coming from the live streaming side? those definitely during recording studios I had built two recording studios for myself in commercial places here in Las Vegas one was like a warehouse area where there was like a big you know car repair place and that's when I had to learn about sound isolation and sound absorption and because this area was noisy but I built a commercial studio there for myself then I moved that to a more prestigious office building type of setup where it was nice and quiet and nicer for the clients to come into and that led to me building studios for other people I was kind of known in this town for the recording stuff and other people needed that expertise and so I started building some recording studios for other people whether it was a bedroom studio or a commercial building I was doing that same thing happened with the doing the video stuff people said you know can you do the simple little setup in this restaurant for our Friday night thing I did a thing in Arizona for a restaurant and like I said with the three camera thing I made them a permanent thing and some bedroom stuff in Vegas and then that last project that I posted about was you know a multimillionaire with a mansion style home had a huge what I would say canvas it was like a 20 foot wide by 30 foot long master bedroom beautiful space to work with also it was very hard because it was marble flooring it was softened high ceilings glass patio doors on two of the walls solid tall walls on the other two walls so my first focus was getting some sound dampening happening getting the acoustic panel acoustic clouds which sit on the ceiling because man and I sent you a clap test which I do on some of my studio builds the first thing I want to do is I want to clap hear all that reverb splash and then at the end of the project do that same clap test and it's it's night and day and coming from an audio background I think that's a priority and I did that first and of course the aesthetics the look the design and it came out great and then from that I'm doing other stuff and that actual client has an adjacent room now that they want me to build a recording studio so at the beginning of the year we're going to build a recording studio that will feed into that studio vice versa back and forth and they want to do some like recording stuff or they want to start like a record label but it just leads to bigger and better things for those that are listening on the audio I've just pulled up a picture of this studio that Rob's just talking about on the screen so this may be one you want to come and check out the video if you're just listening on audio but this was the one the first one of your designs that I saw that just blew me away and there's a few things that I'd like to just sort of highlight in this first of all is just the general look of it I mean it looks so luxurious and amazing but the other thing about it is it looks it's like the whole room you haven't just got you know the particular area that's going to be in shot the whole room just looks like it's a space that would be just really nice to be in any case whether you're in front of the camera behind the camera and so on the other thing though is the way that you've mounted everything and you've got all the lights all of the cameras everything is hung down from the ceiling and you know I think most live streamers with studios they've got cables running all over the place and various different things I try to keep it tidy as possible but there's still you know a few trailing things here and there I've got the lights that are lighting the wall behind me that if I move out of the way they're just on a like a little stand so it was the fact that you'd put that much care and attention into making this actually a really usable space because people want to be able to presumably just come in and sit down and do their show without having to worry about certainly tripping over stuff but without stuff being in the way and that was the thing that really struck me about this was that level of care and attention and you know the little boxes to route audio work you know headphones underneath the table and it's just immaculate in like inside and out so perhaps you can talk a little bit more about the you know the way that you've done that how how have you sort of suspended all the things and some of your thought process that you put into that Thanks for recognizing that and if you guys didn't know Alec for the previous architect so coming from him that's a huge compliment and yeah I really dug deep on this one I did some studying and I seen some you know everything from what a bedroom studio has to what these big TV studios have and the first thing I wanted to do because this family has kids and they have these giant black German shepherds and I didn't want to have any tripods I knew it was gonna be a multi-camera four camera set up and I didn't want tripods and sea sands so the one of the first things I wanted to tackle was doing the ceiling mounted system so we researched that and quite a bit of money but it's great as you know spending other people's money and they had no qualms about that and I explained why I wanted to go that way and so I got the Manfrotto Skyrail system and had a friend of mine who's a great construction installer and I even weighed all the gear that I knew it was gonna be on that system it was gonna be like 150 pounds worth of stuff between the lights, the cameras the light, the lights, the key light, the hair lights and a couple little lights, up lights going on the wall so I had him find the studs in that ceiling and we did this rail system and then I got the panographs, the panographs are those things that look like accordions so I can get program displays in front of them mount cameras on little telescoping poles and just it was a bunch of research and trial and error on a couple things, oh these poles don't go down far enough this panograph doesn't handle the weight of this display you gotta get the more heavy duty one but just hanging the stuff up there, positioning it where I want it and it gives it a real clean look all the wires are going through the ceiling like you said all the HDMI cables, all the audio from the studio background, recording studio background I know that you can use Ethernet to get four channels of XLR I did the Ethernet boxes so I could send four mic channels to the engineer desk and four headphones back from the engineer desk to them and everybody can have their own volume control and the engineer is sitting there doing the camera switching running the road caster controlling everybody and not a cable to be seen because of the in-wall stuff and the fact that I didn't have to run eight XLRs to the engineer desk I only had to run four because of the Ethernet carrying that signal so that's some of the recording stuff that comes into play with doing a video studio that's cool, that thing about the Ethernet I wasn't aware of that, so how does that work? Is that a specific box then that you plug the Ethernet into and is there any additional engineering I'm getting out of suppose or is that a product you can buy that you just plug in the Ethernet and you've got the sockets right there for it? Yeah, that's quite simple, it's been around for a long time a lot of theaters and places that have concerts will do that because they want to send all the stage mixing to the console which is in front of house and they will use a couple Ethernet cables to do that so the technology of running the audio on the Ethernet is pretty old but because of these home-built studios it's getting more affordable and companies coming out with more stuff just for this purpose so this company built a box and basically you know your cat6 Ethernet has like six twisted pairs in it meaning you have the left and right channel on twisted pairs four times so what it's doing is there's a little chipboard in there and there's the real actual 4XLRs and then all that data travels to the Ethernet and on the other end is that same box which receives all that signals and then you have our hard XLRs to go to your road but it's pretty old technology but it's super handy in rooms like this where you want to keep it clean and not have so much bulky cables traveling through the walls or floors and then I got those panels at each desk so clean, you know? Yeah, I guess that just shows the value of coming to someone who's got decades of experience in music and stage production and stuff like that that would have all of this knowledge to bring to the table but there's lots of us in the... I would say hobby live streamers or people who've just got into this kind of stuff for the sort of things that I'm doing that there's still lots to learn so I appreciate learning more about that from you and what is this... And there's shortcuts... I was gonna say there's shortcuts to that expensive sky rail system that's a lot of work but people could do that in their bedroom because they have the little mounts that you mount to your ceiling with the little spigot and then you put a telescope and you can get your cameras and your lights hung on these, you don't have the rail system the rail system's there so that you can move left and right turn things around and make the room however you want but if you wanted to do this in their bedroom there's easy ways to do that get rid of the tripods on the floor and just because your room is your permanent setup you're not gonna do a lot of moving around once you get your setup the way you want it so you can simplify that and I did that for somebody where I just said we'll just do a couple of mounts and your two camera angles will be here your key light will be on there, nothing will be on the floor so you can simplify all these things Just while we're still on these pictures of this particular studio as well the other thing that is just jaw-dropping about it is the lighting and it's again coming back to this thing that it's not just the lighting in the background in shot it's when you see the video that you've posted in the Ecamm Group and on your website then you can actually see that you've got this lighting effect going throughout the room so it's just a really nice space but perhaps you could talk a little bit about the way that you set up the lighting and your thought process behind that and the sort of decorative aspect of that as well Right, from the DJ world not the recording world, but the DJ world I got into lighting because you have to if you're doing wedding, you need some up lights if you're doing a concert, you need some moving lights I've always been interested in lighting and how lighting works with video and of course you have to have flicker-free type of LEDs so you've got to study that and get the right lights for that but one thing that made this interesting was the people that I found from Portland, Oregon I believe Psyacoustics I believe that's why acoustics, but you can look them up but they designed these acoustic panels and I wanted to integrate these into this studio build I never used them before I actually built my own panel for all the other studios I've done or bought cheaper versions but this company did a couple of things unique they would print on the fabric whatever you wanted it could be the company logo I wanted to go for this hexagon polygon type look I got a high resolution graphic sent to him and he prints it on this big canvas and those are three and a half by six foot acoustic panels on that wall the other thing that he offered was front lighting and back lighting on the panel so he almost had like a LED tube bar like you do for fancy pictures in a museum and you can mount those on the top and bottom vertical of the panel and then he had LEDs going around the back kind of like what you did in your studio and I thought that was unique and when I said well when I find out their color scheme if their logo was orange and green and purple I could do that two color combo on there and then I could accent the 3D art panels which you see on the center those are just PVC 3D art panels that I wanted to do a little like focus wall or feature wall and then up like that with those same colors and then the clouds I don't think you have a picture of the clouds in there but the clouds I have hanging on the four soffits in the ceiling they fit and they're perfect they're hung off chains and those back lit and front lit so the whole room just off the iPhone all runs off of a LED app and you go on there and you turn that on and you get that look and if they wanted their actual colors are actually green and orange for that client but as I'm building it you know my favorite colors are the blue and purple's reds so while I'm in there working I'm putting it on the color I like on the Ecamm you can see I posted a little bit of something they did and they had a red and green look or a red and orange look which is great if you wanted to do a Christmas theme and you wanted red and green or if it's Halloween you wanted to do all orange what's great is you can control your colors for your brand or for a specific event or theme yeah yeah that's the great things about these lights like you say you can change the whole look just by a tweak of an iPhone dial how long did it take to actually build all of that because I mean there's just so much has gone into it what was the sort of build time of the studio the funny thing is when they gave me the yes I gave them the big equipment less than the budget and you know we were right in that time frame where there was those shortages of stuff I literally got every piece of gear in less than a week it was like a miracle they weren't even ready for that I thought it was going to take a longer so I told them but I got 90% of the stuff from B&H some of the stuff from Amazon but when I made the order everything came in less than a week and I was like whoa we didn't even get my electricity installed because I wanted electricity in the ceiling I wanted that mounting of the rail system that whole build I thought was going to take because I got the equipment so fast I thought oh I can get this done in five or six weeks I actually took about two to and a half months to do and that was just because we're waiting on other labor things like the electricians and the people who run HMI and the draperies because they wanted some custom draping like you said not even though every room every wall in that room is treated and every angle looks great even the hallway that leads to that room is decked out with an on-air sign and their logo and draperies and a little red carpet with the red poles and everything so I actually had to do that after the fact they wanted the hallway to be just as presentable as the room when you walked in and there's drapes so it's like when you walk in and we did a reveal for the client because that two and a half months that I was working in there the client didn't come once at least they said they didn't but I believe it because we did a reveal for them and we did the whole thing when they walked in and they saw it and they were like almost crying actually the young girl did cry it's a mother and daughter who were doing like a podcast show and so that was great to see their reaction that's 90% of the fun of it is helping people and getting something more than what they expected anyone would have been blown away by that it's just like say on another level I also really loved the other one that you posted relatively recently which was the kind of more cozy set with two chairs like an interview style thing but I love the way that it also incorporated incorporated the stream deck pedal so that people could literally do this in person interview style thing but switching it all from the pedal I thought that was genius perhaps you could tell us a bit about what that was what that was for you know what the client's going to do with that and some of your thought process behind that I don't have a picture of that one but it was another I thought I was going to give you a picture of that one I haven't just got it up on my thing but no worries it was part of the thing now that I want to do I'm thinking that there's three levels there's multiple levels but I want to categorize my consults and my bills into three levels a level one being like what I have here the talking head maybe one camera maybe one camera I got five or six cameras hooked up that's where I test things in here but somebody with a simple bedroom setup or somebody like you you got the one camera I want to do a level like that where some nice little aesthetics some decent lighting one camera, two camera shot that would be level one level two what you're talking about is something I did for a popular judge in town and she's into this community stuff and she actually the first show we did was she interviewed the mayor here in Las Vegas so I wanted something like that Ellen DeGeneres talk show vibe with the big nice chairs the cozy looking at each other two or three camera angle with a nice backdrop and that would be level two and I think a lot of people want that for their podcast show for an interview type talk show thing and of course the level three which you showed a minute ago which is the extravagant four or five cameras five or six lights big desk engineer desk lighting crazy audio where you can move things around and flip things around like in that one extravagant bill I can flip all those cameras in the lighting and there's a fireplace and there's these cozy little chairs where we can do a little fireside chat and then go back to the news room style on the other side of the room so I wanted to do the three levels and so I'm starting to demo those so people have a choice to make or something to look at and it's fun for me to experiment oh now I'm going to do lavalier mics because I don't want to have a mic you know sitting where they're on their chair so start testing out the DJI mics and oh I wanted to do camera switching just in case I'm the host and put the stream deck pedal right under my foot nobody can see it and do the scene switching as I'm interviewing in the two chair interview type of scenario so I'm glad you like that and that's that was the reason to get another product to showcase the three different levels of bills I want to offer yeah yeah and so when you're doing these things for people have they got any previous experience of live streaming and they're getting you to come in and do the just the build side for them or are you sort of actually also teaching them you know how to use all the software and those kind of things as well and setting everything up for them as well that's that's the hard part say for example on that last big build all that stuff oh I got to turn the lights on here you got to turn the cameras on here there's no way they are going to know all that so but then I have to find people who are capable of doing that videographers people who are familiar with Ecamm I actually trained people on Ecamm so I found a guy for that particular project who goes in there on a weekly basis and records all that footage in Ecamm so the thing about Ecamm is it's like live to tape we're also recording in camera with the cards in case he wants a little bit more robust thing to edit later but hiring somebody to do that and run all that stuff for that client is something there yeah there's the picture of the interview thing so yeah and for some people they kind of tinkered in video and they just need a little help with the design of the room or the right equipment and they know how to run it and I trained them on that but like even the guy who was a great editor a videographer I had to train him on Ecamm he came over here then when that studio was done I trained him over there and that's what I'm going to have to do in most cases is the simplified thing maybe they can learn and if I see they're comfortable and they can do it I'll let them alone and they're on their own or the bigger extravagant stuff I'll find somebody that they can rely on to come in and record and reduce and camera switch and audio record and everything that goes on with doing a live stream or pre-recorded content I've just put the picture up of that little cozy set I thought that looked really nice once again just really great interior design design aesthetic to it and the lighting's all on point as well and the idea of just being able to sit there and switch with the pedal it's got my head thinking as well about trying to switch up I do plan to escape from this single single shot that I use on my live streams at some point and having different angles in the same room so you sort of optimising it but I'm definitely watching what you're doing with interest to get some ideas myself I was watching you I was watching you when you first started and you fooled me that old scene you had with the couch and the purple and red and the background all that time I thought that was real and then one day you came on and said oh that's just the green screen and that was great Yeah I mean that's down to Ecomes green screen abilities as well I mean that's it's so much better than we're used to in applications like zoom and teams where people you know I've got these abilities to put fake backgrounds in but it never really looks good you know the the keying is not not so hot on those but yeah Ecomes does a great job at that if you've got a nicely lit green screen what else have you got in the pipeline in terms of other builds are you working on anything else at the moment or you know what have you got going on in your in your test studio as well are you trying any new things out there That's fun I wish I could come in here more often and test things but when things arise and somebody says oh I need this I love to like grab some new gear and test it out and I love sharing it with the like the Ecamp community it's probably one of the best I mean a lot of communities for text stuff whether it's just cameras or just recording stuff or just DJ equipment and stuff like that but some of the other communities you can oh I just got Model X and then soon somebody's in the comments going oh you should have got the Model X but the Ecamp community they're friendly they want to learn they want to help and every time I post something I always make sure I go back and answer the questions because that's the whole point of helping people and having a community not just showing off stuff or saying look what I got but hey guess what if you're going to get this do this because that won't work or there's a trick to get this to work or you're going to have to bypass this daisy chain this and do this and I love answering the questions and helping people out but to your question one of the next projects will probably be doing the recording studio branch off of that video studio and then there's another person who's going to be doing the opposite they have a recording studio and they're in Arizona and they want to do video podcasts while they're rehearsing their studio are actually playing live and streaming it so they want to have their mixer which is already set up to do all the audio they want to get the cameras in there and go live in their recording studio while they're playing so stuff like that is good because then I can test the audio stuff but I love coming in my test kitchen and testing the gear and like on that picture there you have you have my recording studio which is right behind this wall and I have that tied in with the audio too so those things are great practice for other clients that might want oh I want a recording studio that I can also live stream from Did you do any live streaming of live DJing on live streams at all is that something you've done that was another reason why I got into the video stuff in the live stream because when the pandemic every DJ went on live stream but me being a music producer knowing about copyright rules it was a dead end most of them get away with it on Twitch Twitch would never flag anybody during the live stream but you get so much more people indefinitely when you have a recorded something you know an event or stream that you did good live days on there so people can watch it forever and you get thousands and millions of views or whatever and so I never really wanted to go for because my community is if a heavily Facebook people have um LinkedIn stuff I wasn't really big on Twitch I did get the account on Twitch cause I was gonna do that but number one I was competing with thousands of other DJs cause they were all doing it and thirdly I wanted something I didn't want to get flagged for copyright cause you know we're playing commercial hit music most people wanted me too but I didn't yeah that makes a lot of sense as soon as you've said that of course copyrights there is that issue um so at the moment those the pictures have got up on screen are your test studio and then also your recording studio so what what is the link that's going on between those and uh you know feeding one thing from the other do you have anything going on like that or I can have the engineer in there running Ecamm while I'm in here doing an interview so you can do the two guest interviews and run Ecamm there or like when I demoed when I went on the Ecamm thing and did the Ecamm fam jam I had that logic running on that other computers demoing how that song was produced so that is tied in with video and audio and it's it's set up mostly for practice for other people but I do have it set up for myself as well I haven't used it a lot in that purpose yet you mentioned the Ecamm fam jam because people who may not have actually seen your videos in the Ecamm group I'm sure have heard that on doc streams and on the Ecamm streams as well so what what made you sort of decide to create that well that's a shout out to Anna and Folgen's last year when they were doing the challenges the design challenges and it was great let's get Ecamm let's go and find out oh how we can make these text blocks into graphics and this and that one of the weeks design challenges was to do the the colored opening screen with the the pink or red or blue opacity setting so you're kind of behind that film of color and they said oh not a countdown scene and you got to have some music and everybody of course was getting the royalty free music to put on their wanted to get flagged for copyright so they're downloading the royalty free music and I said well I got something different I can do let me one up everybody and produce this song for Ecamm so when I do do the design challenge with it was you know different scenes had to come up cool transitions cool text straight out of Ecamm logo that Folgen's came up with kind of thing and I said okay I'm going to knock this song and nobody knows this you'll be the first to know this that I didn't want to do that vocal that's my voice this is a jam for the Ecamm fan that was me but it was a little trickery on the audio but I wanted Doc to do that I wanted to send the file to him and tell him those couple phrases because he's got that great heavy D chub rock style voice but you know there was no way I was going to get him that auto file I loved to have him on there because his voice is better than mine but I did some trickery and I did that and when I posted on and Folgen's went crazy a lot of other people started messaging me and then they wanted the song and then of course Katie and Glenn hey can we use this song? yeah of course it's perfectly it's for you and you know to this day Doc uses it for the the Ecamm design channel that he has and people it is the theme song now to to Ecamm and when he does the Friday demos and stuff like that it's kind of you know there's people who have got this idea about you know intros where they have intros on live streams and you know the countdowns and stuff like that but it does set a sort of it's bit like having I suppose your favourite program coming on TV or something there's that that signature to it when it's just starting and so we're going to do we're going to do a take one tech one next you ready? I'm ready anytime I'm here for it no it was yeah super super cool but yeah I know what you mean about Doc's voice as well whenever he does the promos for you know any upcoming events and stuff like that he's definitely got the the voice for it as well so in terms of your studio there then what have you got in terms of the sort of setup what have you got in there at the moment and is there anything that you know you're trying out gosh I am just tinkering with things all the time lighting and the stream deck pedal was probably the last thing I wanted to try something more it's a hidden switch the scenes as an interviewer on a two-chair talk shows type thing hopefully that helped people inspire people to try that I got the three right now I got three ZVE 10s left right and centre a key light a little fill light a hair light but the room funny enough this room when I had a band we'd rehearse in here this was five or six years ago I had a little funk band and it was something I had up my butt that I wanted to do even though I stopped being a musician after high school but we did this little band thing there and so the room was already kind of acoustically treated so I said I'm going to put my little video room in here so I could test out stuff and I started doing live streams I started interviewing Las Vegas entertainment a lot of notable people that were here in Las Vegas I was doing this Facebook live stream every Friday people I did was Tony Basil who had the number one hit song hey Mickey you're so fine you're so fine you're blowing my hemi she was actually from Las Vegas and we were friends from back in the days I had her I was doing the live stream show so this had multiple purposes it was treated perfectly for acoustics I started doing some live streams with live guests and virtual guests I started testing out equipment Rocaster Pro 2 ZVE 10s lights stream decks stream pedals now getting into the lenses and better cameras from my own hobby enthusiast stuff but that's where I'm at I could show you the different angles and how it's all connected if you want yeah cool if you've got another camera angle of the ones I've put up it'd be great to have a little look at those if I just switch over to full screen everybody has your main you can pop in and do the zoom you can do well here's the zoom here's the noise so if you're a little size something to go ladies and gentlemen my first guest is Alec Johnson and then the left camera I love the background that you've got going on there as well the lighting and the texture at the back looks cool it makes it more immersive and fun to have that stuff like the trinket shelf you know I've got a top down camera there's the studio camera now that's live in the studio right now and then I have the top down like when I was like the other day I was showing some DJI mic stuff so I can do the top down I got little scenes where if I had my guest I got picture and picture stuff like that but that's it nice really nice really nice setup and I always ask people what's the favorite bit of tech and usually expecting something like a little gadget or stream deck or something but I was quite surprised that yours was the laptop and it makes perfect sense perhaps you could tell us a bit about that and what you've got and why that is your your current favorite bit of tech that you've got well you're only as good as your tool and you can have great cameras and you can have the can links and you can have the great lighting and the rocaster pro but where's that all going it's all going into a processor a computer that has to handle all that stuff and so to me without this even Mac mini we're starting to see we're putting these things to the limit so I got this last October exactly a year ago the MacBook Pro M1 16 inch Macs and it's handling everything I throw out not only do I do live streams and the recordings and I can do final cut on here I can do audio editing and logic on here even though I got the studio there sometimes when I do a quick video in here I don't even run it I'll drop do final cut here spit it out and post it right away but like I said you're only as good as as processor that's handling all these inputs and stuff you know the can links want a lot of energy the docs and hubs the audio interfaces the 4k all this processing is going on and now you got ecam talking about doing ISO video wow you're going to need some serious power to do that so anybody who's got like a 2019 and less you know that was last of the Intel it's time to upgrade if you're going to endeavor go into the endeavor of ISO video and all the multiple inputs so it's got to be my favorite tool it's the most important tool in the room yeah you're so right there I mean I've got the the base model m1 mic mini the first one that came out and I'm definitely noticing pushing it almost to the limits now it's like 78% processor usage right now upgrading I think this to make sure that you've you've got that capacity but yeah like you say with ISO video there it's whatever it's whatever processor it's taking to render this video right now then every ISO video is going to be a multiple thereof so I think there's a lot of people who ask for these things without really appreciating actually what they're asking their systems to do they asked for the multi stream you know everybody was going to restream and all these other processors as well so if you're going to do LinkedIn and Twitch and Facebook and YouTube that's four times that processing is shooting out to those different you know platforms so it's time to upgrade be careful what you wish for right and what about your the recording studio then so what's your setup in there have you got any other other equipment in there what's the Mac that you've got in there and other gear in my studio video studio I have the beast of a laptop that's the beast of the desktop that is the M1 Ultra which is two Macs chips so it's two times or four times faster than this laptop but I got final cut in there and I do all my real recording stuff in there and man I love that thing those are my two favorite tools laptop in here and that M1 studio in there now we're in October we're getting ready for the new year I'm going to tell you you know the new stuff is coming out there's going to be the M2 Extreme Pro or something like that they're going to get these 14 and 16 inch laptops to have the M2 processor so if people are thinking about buying right now if you can wait a couple months you're going to see the new processors coming out they're actually going to start leaking well not leaks already out but October 22nd I think Apple's going to start not doing a big keynote but they're going to start doing all these things about new MacBooks and new processors and new M1 M1 Mini being an M2 Mini and stuff like that which is going to be great yeah it's definitely definitely that time of year if you can like say if you can hold off to wait for those sort of things and what about in the other studio do you have anything set up there for live streaming as well do you ever do any streaming from the studio or is it just just purely for real I did I did it first before I got this studio up and running I was doing some interview stuff and some people were interviewing me and I had the camera set up in there and that's I still was doing the iPhone thing and then you do after that you do the ZV-1 and after that you do the ZV-E10 so I did have the ZV-1 in there with like a ring light sitting at that desk that was the basic setup yeah and now right there for just that live shot I just got the light on and I got the the microphone and audio interface in there in the Mac studio and it's it's totally its own entity but it's also tied into this room but no super video gear in there except for that one ZV-1 I got a ZV-1 in that room that's what you're looking at right now but like I say starting with the iPhones then the ZV-1 then the ZV-E10 and now I just ordered that FX30 I pre-ordered that I'm starting to get more into the camera stuff because I'm starting to do which we could talk about I did some location stuff so not only do people want me to do the studio bills or do the small rooms for them I'm starting to go on location and do one and do camera things for conferences and live location stuff which is a whole another challenge you know Well tell us a little bit about that then so how does that work and what sort of setups have you done there and what are the challenges that you've faced with doing those kind of things Yeah just like last week last week there was a big cannabis convention in town so Vegas is capital of conferences and conventions and someone reached out and they had a 10 by 10 booth with a bunch of other vendors all in this big room conference center and they wanted to interview people at their booth so they would go farm out all the people that they want to interview this guy's got an innovative product oh this guy's service is great we want to interview him so we did a camera setup and we did two nice LED panel lighting with diffusers on them we lit up a little podium really nice and we did DJI mics but if you watch my last post on the Econ community where I got that Rode dummy mic it's just a fake mic with a windscreen on it but it's got a cold shoe mount and you can obviously they made it for the Rode mic because it's a Rode product but you can put any of those DJI mics the DV mics the Hollyland all these companies are coming out with those wireless mics and they just have that little cold shoe clip the clip is the same size as a cold shoe so we put the DJI mics in there so they could have branding I had the little triangle flag their logo that I printed on the system beforehand do you want us to do loud leaders on everybody you know that's harder when you're running and gunning if you're going to other booths or sitting people down and stuffing it under their dress or the shirt or do you want to do the interview style and no we want to do an interview where we're talking and we give it to them it's like the conference it's live we don't want it to be too predetermined or too set up I said great so I ordered that Rode dummy mic and I ordered the flag that goes on the mic and I printed out their logo on there when I brought it that morning they just love that whole concept they thought that was great it was additional branding plus it was practical because the DJI mic was in there the receiver was hooked up to the camera and we did 30 interviews and two did 15 each day then we edited it all when I say we I have a partner who helps me with the editing and we're going to be getting into more of that that seems to be people want more of that because a lot of people can't show up at a conference now you got hybrid do it live people show up they can't make it they can watch it live they can watch it live from the comfort of their home or at work wherever so I think that's cool yeah that is really cool how about the streaming so was that just all edited afterwards after the fact or was that a live streamed event as well and that particular one yeah we gave them the option we did live stream they go no we want to send we don't want to get all these interviews chopped up by themselves we don't want like two hours of interviews we want each one chopped up with the little intro and the lower third but I explained to them you know we could do all this live I could drop that lower as soon as you tell me what the guest name and what company they're from I build that lower it could fly in so now that they understand I even showed them a demo of that they want to do that on their future ones so it'll be sometimes live streamed sometimes pre-recorded that last one was all just pre-recorded edited and given back to the client for whatever platform they're going to put it on uh huh and is that would the those sort of things be where you've got like a booth and you're still running this through Ecamm and the other way you know without Ecamm I know there's other things like YOLO box that you can use to just live stream direct from the device where you're just plugging all your cameras into that what's the your sort of approach with the my approach and yeah I already practice it in another area where I I brought the roadcaster and I did the cameras and I did Ecamm and I made sure the venue gave me Ethernet because you're in a conference a Wi-Fi everybody's on that so tested that signal out I would definitely use Ecamm just for the fact that I can do you know they're they're going to vendors last minute and say hey you want to do this where are you from and you want to talk about your product and I'd like to you know say hey let's build this lower third and put their name and their business in there okay action or live stream everything and everything be streaming with all those last minute details put in you know so I think that's the best tool for it is Ecamm that you can do stuff on the fly with all the text box I mean one of the things that when I was looking to start my channel was I looked at like the ATEMs and things like that but I'm glad I didn't go down that route because when you look at just how simple it is to drag and drop things in Ecamm there's nothing quite like it I think you gotta do it it's the Cam's way to go and so what what else have you got on the sort of horizon and things that you're you're sort of working on in general and yeah tell us a little bit more about what you've what other plans of 12 months, where do you want to take things? Well, I kind of explained to you earlier that the enthusiast part of me, the hobbyist part of me, the tech knowledge and doing the build and also still doing the DJ and the music production stuff and I'm going this way and that way and I'm that gray area of, you know, I walked Elysio, the same thing happened to him, but it was all a word of mouth. I have not promoted this service to the public yet and I have a huge Facebook community and I haven't posted anything here that I did want to get those levels of products that I could offer done and which I did, but I think in the new year I'm actually going to promote this because everything's been word of mouth clients that I've previously had from recording studio stuff or clients that I do the agencies that book me and now they're branching into, oh, can we get some video content or can you show up and do the stream or this pre-recorded segment? It's all been naturally happening just with word of mouth and in the previous clients I work for. So now if I'm going to go full fledged into this, I built a new YouTube channel just like last month. I haven't made public yet to like post a bunch of stuff, but I want to promote this now. I have the product, I have the services, I know how to market it, but actually sitting there and focusing and go full steam on getting the YouTube channel and getting all the products displaying all the services. So that's kind of where I'm at. There's still some builds that I'm doing and some projects coming up. And of course there's a lot of music production stuff that I'm still doing. So I think when I do focus it and start actually marketing it and getting that demand I need probably some people to help me with it, but it'll be fun. I love doing the build. I love answering the questions. I love giving them more than they expect and stuff like that. So the future is marketing this service and doing more builds, more variety of builds. And I think the technology is helping us a lot with that because the stuff we're doing now, five to 10 years ago, we couldn't do the titles and the overlays and the graphics and the multiple cameras all in one little software platform. So we're blessed that the technology is helping us with these other career paths, making it easy for us to make other people look good. You know, that's where I'm at. Yeah. Well, I've left links to all of Rob's stuff in the show notes and in the description of the video as well. So you can definitely go and check that out. If you are listening on audio, this is definitely one where you're going to want to go and come back and watch the video to see some of these studio designs because they're just absolutely amazing. And obviously look no further if you need studio design expertise. But from that point of view, have you got any sort of advice for people who are looking to design their own studio and like what's the sort of, I suppose the sort of creative process, you know, when you walk into a blank room or somebody comes to you, what are some of the things that you think about and, you know, advice that you could give to other people who are just sort of getting out, started and designing their own studio? Well, the one thing is they see us and they see what we're using and they want to emulate that right away. But you and I both know we all started from the cheapest of lights, the cheapest of phone cameras, the cheapest of audio interfaces, but go that route. Budget wise, if you want to get into this, you don't need all the extravagant stuff, the stuff we're talking about, the stuff we've been showing, the Skyrail system and the 4K cameras, and you know, if you want to sit at home and talk about your service as a lawyer, or if you want to get in the kitchen and show your cooking channel that you're coming up with, get a decent $400 camera, a couple lights and start from there. What you're going to end up doing is you're going to be growing as you grow, your knowledge grows, your technical skills grow, you start learning about lenses instead of just a fixed camera, you know, like a ZV-1 where you can't put a lens on there and get depth of field or go on location and get a nicer shot, but we all started there. So start small, learn it and grow with it, you know, technology is great, but you know, you can also liquidate your things, you know, if you build something and you have the ZV-1 and a cheap ring light, put it off or up, use some of that money that you get for the used item to buy your new thing, don't just throw it in the closet, that's how I did everything I did, started small, oh, I'm outgrowing this, oh, this lighting worked for me, oh, I need a lens, oh, I need this, but I would tell people, start with what your budget works with for you and get the camera and get the simple light, start doing it, start going record, start going live and you're going to start getting more enthused, you're going to get more knowledge and it might take six months, it might take six years, but you're going to get to a place where, you know, you're going to look great and you're going to sound great and people like us can help you whether it's just on a forum like the Ecamm community or physically coming in person and helping you with that stuff, but you're not alone when you go to these communities, they all help you out and learn it, love it, that's all I can say. That's so true, that thing about the Ecamm community, I mean, you mentioned it earlier on about the difference, but I just constantly have to mention this because it is such a welcoming and helpful place where everyone's just genuinely helpful and genuinely happy for everyone else when they see them sort of thriving as well. So it's just been a bit of a revelation for me, really, the Ecamm community has just been such a help to me all the way through that process as well. So really, really sound advice there. And where's the best place for people to get hold of you? I mean, I've got your website that I can pull up here, is this the best place for people to go or where else would you rather direct people to get in touch? And if they're interested in, obviously, your services as a set designer, which they should be, then what's the best way to get in touch there? That's one of the best ways because I talk about myself and the stuff I've done, and then there's a consulting tab on there where you can see about studio bills and you can email me and inquire about that. And then my Facebook page, where we post a lot of stuff, the Ecamm community, where we post a lot of stuff. I have two YouTube channels, but like I said, I designed a new YouTube channel just for this video consulting thing because I didn't want to get you confused with the DJ and music productions that I already have. So on YouTube, just go to write on the productions. It'd be great to see this channel grow because I just started it. And I know you got a lot of people, and I know the Ecamm community is great. If you guys, you're going to see no content, maybe one or two things, but I'm building stuff to put on there. So subscribe to that channel. And I'd like to see that camera. I mean, that the channel grow with our family, our community that we always see every day here in Ecamm and all your contacts, all my contacts. I want to see that camera. I mean, that channel grow. So yeah, that's right on Peep Productions on YouTube. And DJ Rob, well, Robert, DJ Rob Halfcock on Facebook. I know you have all the links, but it's easy to find people. I get tons of just the messenger messages. Sometimes people don't want to post a big deep question when I post a video. They'll hit me in messenger. Maybe they're embarrassed that it's a question that's too easy or it's just too in-depth. And I get all these questions and I'll answer it on there. You can contact me on there. So you can find me if you need me. Cool stuff, cool stuff. Well, like you say, all the links are in the show notes. If you listen to an audio or in the description on YouTube as well. And I'll definitely link to that new YouTube channel and all the places. I can't wait to see the future builds. I always enjoy when I see a little notification that you've posted something in the Ecamm group. I'm just always like, oh, what's it going to be this time? And go and check out the video. They're just always so amazing. Thank you for having me. And I really do want to say that I do need your assistance because you're the man of the plan. And what I lack is this organization and this structure and the planning that you do. And I know that's what you talk about a lot. And so that's where I need help. And I think you're the man to give it to me. Well, we can certainly chat. Let's have a chat afterwards and we'll see what we can do. Thanks once again for being here. It's been a real pleasure and just, as I say, love always seeing all of your stuff. And we'll have a little chat backstage after. Cool stuff. Well, thank you very much for sticking around with us and watching. If you are listening on audio, you may definitely want to check out the video of this one in particular, just to see all of the behind the scenes shots and all of the studio builds from DJ Rob here. Finally, if you'd like to connect with me, you can obviously check out the show notes and go to my website, take1tech.io to find out about all of the things as well. I'll have another great guest for you next time and it's sure to be another great conversation then too. So thanks for watching, thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.