 April of 2017 I decided to get kind of serious about creating content putting a lot of it on YouTube But that required a place to do so so when we got this new building same time in 2017 we built out this area to be the studio and we put a lot of sound deadening and stuff like that up Um, those are some of the basics, but then it's now time to upgrade it a lot further So I did that and I was gonna time lapse that the problem is it kept happening over months not even you know One idea or one rebuild with a plan. It's kind of like been tweaking over time So I figured I'd do this August of 2019 status update of where it's at and of course as I come up with new ideas I'm always going to be evolving in updating the studio But before we get deeper into all the gadgetry that drives the studio one of the things is very important I just want to remind people all the time. It's not about the gadgets. It's about content. It's about story It's about having What you want to tell put together that is the first step before you figuring out what gadgets you need So this is not necessarily a place to start when it comes to gadgetry It's more about do you have the story once you've got that down then okay? Now you got to make some decisions about how you want to do things And speaking of decisions if you can decide to hit the like button that would be wonderful We live in an algorithm driven life and clicking the like button helps let other people know that they may enjoy this video as well All right back to the content so I've widened it out a little bit I got like a little bit what I feel is clutter around me But I want to talk about each little piece of the studio So we'll start with the camera that I use and as my main or studio cam now Everything my choices I made everything about them were really driven by the fact that post-production is where you can spend a Lot of time in content creation you all the post-production work Well, it's a pain it can be tedious and sometimes can take longer than even the recording of the video You may have a 20-minute video that requires a Few hours of post-production time so to cut that down you want to do everything that you can Pre-production to streamline that so we're gonna talk about like the camera why I chose it and some of these little gadgets like a Streamdeck here connected to a computer that is I'm pointing there because I can actually see myself on a TV That had behind here, and I'll do a other side of the studio in a second here But it's all being fed right now through OBS studio So it's actually not recording on the camera and the reason for that is we can press the button to see what happens Now we're switched to my laptop So it's now grabbing the screen on my laptop main camera in front and that was not a Post-production scene switch that was OBS studio being able to change scenes now We can also change scenes again, and we'll go for the overhead And you can see me with the overhead right now, and then we press this button here, and we're gonna go back to main camera So that takes away a lot of post-production time So this stream deck which was I think you can pick up the stream deck mini for less than a hundred dollars It was on sale for like 50 bucks when I bought it They go on sale from time to time But I'm gonna leave links and description to every little component that I talk about here with the exact models that I have so back to the camera this is the Canon C100 Mark II camera and It is an older model camera in terms of yeah, it's not 4k. It doesn't have these really super high frame rates But if you're producing studio content like sitting in my studio here, the camera has an extremely good low light Performance it has really good audio performance and the audio performance is really impressive because it has two XLR inputs and currently this particular mic isn't XLR But these ones are in front of me and there's a mixer board over here So this comes back to what type of content you're producing and I produce multiple types me individually right now I'm using this Aston microphone It's an Aston SM 30 that has both a stereo mode or a shotgun mode, which it's in now, which is a mono only Grabbing my voice right now, but when I have multiple people spread out across the table while the microphone even in stereo mode It's not going to pick up the person furthest away as well as it'll pick up the person closest So that's when you look at like a microphone setup and once again either way The flexibility of the Canon C100 Mark II means I can plug in you know these to a mixer board So I can balance you know three mics three different people I actually have a fourth mic if I have a fourth person on set Widen it out and then adjust each person to how loud they are Our ears are good at auto adjusting to different sound levels that people operate at But some people when you're doing post-production You're like wow that person's really loud and that person's not so there's actually a little bit of tuning You have to do to get that right the audio is going to be noticeably better when you're listening to it on this Canon with this Same microphone that when I switch to This camera right here, which is still one I use it's an older Canon 70d I think this camera is like six or seven years old Once again, it's adequate for what I do if you're doing things like you know You need that really high speed because you want to capture something Substantially better. Well, then there are other camera choices out there But this is the reason I went with the Canon one good audio processing I had Canon lenses matter of fact the lens on there is a pretty sweet lens too. It's the Canon EOS mount Sigma 18 to 35 and I also have this really wide telemillimeter lens on here Which is good for those wide angles and when I use this kind of as a selfie stick To talk to the camera when I'm talking about a project when I go on site but one of the things you want is separation between you and the background and the way normally I have the camera a little bit closer, but what you're going to see is We hold something in front of the camera now this box is in focus, but I'm not so you can kind of see how it'll bring that and that's the low f rating f 1.8 of this gives you that softer bokeh or Glory background that you want now the likes of the advantage this is it creates a separation between you and the background But leaves people something to look at in the background not necessary But it's a look that I like and it adds a little bit of professionalism To it you can get different lenses for this obviously this being a little bit more expensive lens It's closer to the $800 range when you buy it new so Back to the other camera you've seen for the overhead which is actually this one here I didn't go expensive on the overhead camera, but it is important and this is a feature of both the Canon and This oddly less than $200 camcorder for the above cam will switch you overhead real quick here so the Vixia HF R 800 Canon camera is Not bad for the overhead shots because generally I have the extra lights on in here So I have a couple lights which will show the lighting in a second But with the entire studio itself this conference room studio room has a lot of lightings We installed a aftermarket LED kit we got rid of the CCFLs and I'll leave a link to Those part of the building build out we did these throughout the building, but it's extra bright in here So you can use the less expensive camera if you have really good lighting on there And it's just a basic camcorder mounted on our articulating arm with a straight top-down look But once again if you're doing a product and I'm holding the product and I've done you know a lot of different things I've covered it's nice to be able to reach over I hit the button and it switches right to the overhead And I can carry on talking about the product and as long as there's plenty of light in here Like I said, you notice that a little bit of graininess with the low light with it But it's better than a more affordable. I should say than buying a second C 100 My thoughts are with buying a second C 100. I really looked at it, but yeah, that's that's a few thousand dollar camera So hanging it from above me a few thousand dollar camera means extra rigging to hold it And I don't do overhead shots that much. You're just some basic unboxing not the Mainstay for my YouTube content. Therefore, I've kind of made the choice of not spending as much money on that now Whether or not you need these microphones, like I said is going to depend on whether or not you have a bigger audience There's a couple different methodologies do it. I went really basic. Whoops and drop these These are just some audio technica inexpensive XLR microphones, but they also have usb But I'm using with an XLR mixer a older barringer. I think it's a six-channel mixer. I'll leave a link to it It's an older model. You can pick them up on eBay for well under a hundred dollars But they work pretty good even though it's all analog because the sound processing in the camera is good It's good enough Sound processing on there the downside is you just have to make sure when you have guests on that if you're Using anything setting on the table this will make a lot of noise So me just touching this table a little bit the microphones separate amounted to a ceiling mount that we'll get to in a second So if I thunk this you will get a very loud deep bass noise If you have guests and you're using table-based microphones Unless you have good solid isolation between them them typing on the keyboard or anything that vibrates the table at all And depending on the density of the table, they'll be able to vibrate it more like if it's a cheaper Less heavy table than the one we're using you will get a lot of Vibration noise and you'll destroy your audience who will go I can't listen to that And you'll completely be unaware of it while you're recording and you have to watch for a guest who like tap things Because that late tapping which you can probably hear on the microphone will be super loud when it's something like this There's a couple considerations when you're doing it and we've talked about maybe using the same overhead rig You know, that's why you either see a table mounted ones with isolation or Coming down from the top being held But that's depending on your content if you're doing content I have a few friends that have asked me about this because they want to do some studio content like I did talking about technology It's gonna be very voice-driven at that point It's gonna be very audio-driven because you want to hear where the people are saying So you got to really think about good quality audio and you know being aware of your surroundings about that So the next thing I want to do is talk about the physical layout of the studio and for that I'm gonna switch to the other camera now You're gonna notice a distinctive difference in the audio quality. I'm gonna use exactly the same microphone But it's gonna be the sound processor that is in this 70d and a lot of the SLR cameras Although they're really popular and are great for portability and keeping high quality when it comes to the video the audio Suffers a little bit. It's not bad, but when you've listened to how good it sounds here versus here there is a noticeable difference in the audio processor and Before I jump to that I will I did say these are being captured on Different captures with the clean HDMI out the capture cards I'm using is the live gamer portable 2 I wanted USB ones that way I didn't have to worry about putting cards in the computer. So I've got two of these these evermedia Like said gamer these things are like a hundred hundred nine dollars each. I'll leave a link to the exact models I have here they do work in Linux by the way, but I am running Windows for this right here This is a Windows 10 machine. That's capturing two with two of these and one of these This is the cam link 4k and I just wanted what I was setting all this up in OBS studio I wanted to try at least one device that was 4k So if I had an input or I wanted to put something really high res what I was doing testing I had something that could support that higher resolution But these are 1080 captures and they work great the also nice thing about these they have passed through and why is that matter Well past you can matter a lot when you Wanted to come out of the camera into here to be captured and be passed through To there's a whether we call a field monitor, which will show That is a way to watch what's on the screen with a really high res small high res screen to tell me whether or not Things are in focus whether or not things are color balanced properly and even though I have a TV behind me That is showing OBS and whatever is on its screen I bought a inexpensive TV and you got to go real expensive if you want a TV that's really well color matched There's not much of a point in that because it's only for you to look at it's not like I edit on It's just for me to kind of know what's going on. Uh, so I have the Over here when we get to that part, you'll see why we did that. That's why the pasture is important Uh, but that's pretty much it for that setup and the little stream deck. That's that's this base studio that you see here Now let's talk about the lights and a couple of the other details about it and show you how that works See volunteer to be the cameraman and so now you can see The other side of what it looks like and what I actually stare at so the camera's there the tv's there So sometimes when I'm not looking at the camera. I'm looking a little above it. That's me looking past there But that helps a lot because when we're doing the switching the scene switching whoops and dropping things I'll just pan down to that. Yeah, let's pan down to the thing I dropped This is how I know what I'm actually looking at the scene and how I can like hey switch this switch to the overhead Or any other scene and not understand exactly what I'm seeing I can see it up here Oh, yeah, this thing is so cool And they're all labeled uh the stream deck I don't know if I'll do a separate video on the stream deck But there's a bunch of gaming people that clearly have done videos on it. I mean it looked really cool Now the other cool part. This is how all this rigging is done up here and this is just black pipe Uh black iron pipe that we got from Lowe's you can cut it directly to the exact size We cut it to the width now the pipe is actually shorter than the width so you buy one 10 foot stick And then you have them cut the difference is it to tenor eight foot steve? Either way, it's not hard to measure ten and had them cut. Yeah, we think ten is the biggest they cut came in Yeah, and this studio is a little wider than a quarter Yeah, one and a quarter uh piping But they do sell equipment that you can buy that's like made for studio And we priced it out and it's like thousands of dollars And this is like less than a couple hundred dollars to put three bars across the top of the studio And on the end instead of painting or running a two by four and painting it to blend in We actually used a decking that plastic decking that you get for The uh like composite decking composite decking steve knows the words and it's pretty solid. What do you think steve? Oh, I may not be strong. I'm not going to pull ups, but it didn't fall So I can't do that in the middle. Obviously, but you kind of get idea It's pretty solid. You shoot a couple of these in a two by fours This was not like the hard part of the project at all but What it does able us to do is get all these lighting back here So we'll start with the back lights. These are the most generically named gvm for great video maker lights But they're really slick. They come in different colors. Well, they can adjust to be different colors They will do like normal back lighting Normal like this or you can switch them to be whatever color you want. I like them to add the back splash colors I'll leave a link where you can get these below what they're pretty cool. Now each one of these is held on These go by a couple weird different genericy names These brackets do but I'll leave a link to them because you can buy the brand name man photo ones And we have one of these is a branding one, but I can't remember which one because they're all identical Oh, and these gvm lights came with a safety in case this goofs up and falls The safety supposed to be able to grab it But cool that it has it, but this is Really solid it wiggles a little bit, but it's got a little safety keyway. So you're not going to accidentally drop them Now next light Is going to be this This is one of the aperture lights and they refer to these as a hair light because this basically lights me sitting Right back behind it. So when I sit here, this light comes down and kind of Is way above the line of sight of the camera But you know it kind of separates you from the background by having a backlight on you It doesn't need to be a very bright light That's why it's kind of a smaller one and on the other end here on an articulating arm We have another one as gvm lights now The same articulating arms are what holds this camera on Now to see how these articulating arms work is pretty cool. They can easily be adjusted to do different angles They got like teeth on them and once again, these are a generic version of the expensive branding ones they make If you buy I want to say it's again Manfrotto sells one But these generic ones are 35 and the Manfrotto ones I think are 89 or 99 dollars I think Manfrotto is the one that they're knocking off I'll leave links where you can get these generic ones and once again I did a comparison of them and I was like well these work good now This is normally where the microphone is but the microphone is currently on top of that just a flex arm And allows easy adaptation of different angles So the flex arm is pretty easy way to get the mic in the place you want You want the mic kind of pointing at you and close and it's just pretty standard adapters, but This flex arm really I was worried it would wander. You can put all kinds of things on it. It doesn't wander We did extend it down a little bit with just another bar. That's why it feels like it has a little play in it But not a big deal Then way over here I'll turn it towards the camera. Yeah This is the feel world. These are kind of like a generic key. They go by a couple different names Yeah, this one is the feel world one and What you can see how it's glowing and putting marks in my arm to let me know it's blown out Now like I said the monitor we have the tv we have does not represent color accurately This will tell you if things are like overexposed underexposed So this is always basically that pass through feed through one of the through this Has a pass through feed that feeds one to capture second one goes here So I can always know and just look at a glance To see what I'm in frame to see whether or not I'm overexposed or underexposed and when you're working by yourself It's great to have something close because it's hard to adjust the exposure on there Then go sit at there and then have to get back up and do it because you're not sure and the screen on the camera It's just a little bit small for that. This is, you know, nice little feature. Definitely handy This is the Behringer mixer board Nothing exciting about it. I'm no expert at these mixer boards, but this is one we actually had this is the 1202 fx It gets the job done. It's got four inputs here and a couple other options For analog inputs, but you know, this is the basic recording that we do for some of the how they got hacked videos And any video where I have more than one person sitting at the table with me with the microphones This I know goes on ebay for well under a hundred dollars right now But there's probably other choices and there's plenty of other people who've reviewed them in more depth But I have no plans on upgrading. It's one of those ain't broke. Don't fix it. It still gets the job done Now for the front lights, I have these Aputure ale 5 2 8 s. I've actually had these for years. These are really The kind of workhorse lights they've been around for a long time I think they were the first products that aperture had a lot of success with No, they're not as high end as some of the other lights out there, but they're reasonably priced You can battery power them with the sony mp style batteries And they also when I first bought them didn't have this and I bought this later Which is the aperture easy box, which really is a nice soft box now I'm not worried about the color splashing from the front So because that's not as relevant to me that I have like extra color coming from the front I just want Fill light coming from the front and these soft boxes at this angle I mean you can see any of the videos we've done with several people They work pretty good But it also is because that Canon camera can do that really low light performance So I don't need a ton of super bright like high-end studio lights I can actually dial in the camera To say hey turn the light down a little bit and no problem Matter of fact the Canon has neutral density built in I've had to use that because even these can be a little bit too bright For the camera So all those features when you're using like an f 1.8 lens still make the Canon to me a really good choice Having a teleprompter is cool and fancy a lot of people like those But sometimes a whiteboard as long as you can reach your handwriting We have the whiteboard just sitting on the tv on a stand that can leave the lake We got the stand off ebay. I think it was like 170 amazon amazon for like a few hundred dollars It's at wheels. I can roll this around And these up here are a lifesaver These are little clips that clip on the standard acoustic drop ceilings Like the standard track size and there was what holds all my lighting and things like that on these So all these wires Keep them all up in the air. So if you wanted to move the tv somewhere else or a different angle Power and hdmi are both coming over this and then we put this on an extension cord So yes, we can spin it all the way around and face the tv the other way and we have quick disconnects We just put an hdmi joiner up here in an extension cord and plugs down here in case we got to Plug something else in it's actually such a simple setup. It's not expensive at all Relatively not expensive than trying to come up with a custom solution. It's kind of like the av cart back in school But that's pretty much it for most of the studio tour the last thing is this little mess in here Which I didn't take the time to clean up before the video. So you don't need to get too close, steve But what it says is a place to put everything and a place that locks And I bring that up because these lenses such things are so expensive and all the charging and all the batteries In case any battery were to have a problem while charging overnight. I had a little concern about that So this is from loze. It's just a metal storage box basically like a toolbox What are these called? Oh, they're loze cobalt series boxes But whatever you want to put these in having a nice strong metal box that locks one keeps people from wandering off of things Uh keeps people from going. Hey, check this lens out and dropping a 700 lens And also if for some reason there was some meltdown with one of these batteries All my battery charging everything is in here. There's a cord hole in the back So it makes it easy to bring it in through the back and then charge all the batteries up. It's like I said, it's a Convenient way to have everything in there and then you can hide your mess Of connectors and everything and then lock it when you're done. So I do recommend having somewhere to put all that because you realize really quickly everyone thinks this stuff's cool I've realized a lot of people can't resist putting their hands on it right away, which always makes me worry Last couple things though, I guess pro master This is the pro master tripod pretty generic What I recommend a higher end one after buying this one. It's not bad, but it's not amazing But we don't move it much. This is like all the moving we do is here to here They you can go crazy expensive and buy a $2,000 tripod I don't think it's necessary for what I do. They'll be kind of cool because I do have one It's got a fancy one button up and down but you know that really necessary and then These are just some hooks on the wall I still have occasionally we have light stands that I need because all these lights are on quick releases So if I have to drop any of them out, I can grab one of these stands real quick Unfold it bring it up and move my video to another part of the studio So it is still handy to have some of these Even though I'm hanging most things from the ceiling in a studio setting But you know teach your own and a couple pro master booms I'll leave links to all these two some of the ones that we've bought that I've had good luck with And that's it. Thanks and Leave your comments below tell me what else you want to know about the studio or something I may have left out missed or Whatever, but if there's or something I should go more in depth on let me know. All right. Thanks Thanks for watching If you like this video give it a thumbs up if you want to subscribe to this channel to see more content Hit that subscribe button and the bell icon and maybe youtube will send you a notice when we post If you want to hire us for a project that you've seen or discussed in this video head over to laurance systems.com Where we offer both business it services and consulting services and are excited to help you with whatever project you Want to throw at us? Also, if you want to carry on the discussion further head over to forums at laurance systems.com where we can keep the conversation going And if you want to help the channel out in other ways we offer affiliate links below Which offer discounts for you and a small cut for us that does help fund this channel And once again, thanks again for watching this video and see you next time