 I'm working hard over here cable management. Wow, that's where can I ask pray tell Where are you right now? Do you like this office? It's kind of a new fancier space that we're in You know, I don't remember that office. I thought we paid for a different office Oh wait Where are you crap The grain screen The gig is up, baby The gig is up, you know and people who have been following these episodes religiously, which should be our entire fanbase Exactly They probably watched last week's episode and saw us talking to Andy rush and like usual he is an inspiring man and so I've been Busy at work here in the office trying to Recreate some semblance of some of the pieces that we learned from him. So I can actually I will we'll give the full tour here in a minute. But yeah, this is This is a larger Room next to our office that we really didn't have a whole lot of use for we really we felt like It would it was high time to have a space to do some video production work and so I started with painting the green screen and I recently blogged about that and Got some lighting in here a camera equipment and that kind of stuff So this is kind of the first trial run of actually, you know, giving it a go So playing around with the whole switchered stuff the green screen is so tight though Like even when you go back to the green Like there's the painted wall, but for some of the way in which it just It engulfs everything you begin to understand how that whole chroma key works and everything. It's just amazing. It looks great Love it. Yeah Yeah, it came out really good That was probably one of the hardest things just because we did the paint which I think is really useful You know Andy's point there was that fabric tends to wrinkle Um, you know, or you use the paper and that gets ripped or torn and you have to constantly replace it And it's just the pain in the ass. And so uh, he said, you know, we painted a wall They actually painted two walls and you know, and They were done, you know, it never wrinkles You know, you can light it properly and it works really well. And so that's what we did now This was a gray wall before So I ended up Taping everything off sanding it down Covering up a patching a few holes and priming it first So, I mean there there's between I think it was two or three coats of primer and then like two coats of green screen paint to get it all on So it was several days worth of work. It was basically my labor day weekend I had nothing else going on so I kept popping in here to do another coat of paint and that kind of thing So, um, but yeah, it came out really well. I actually have another shot here Um, turn the keyer off so you can see So it goes edge to edge on this wall here But you can kind of get a sense when we've got some lights on there, too That was one of Andy's recommendations was that you light the wall so that you kind of remove any sense of shadows and problems there So we've got two led lights Pointed at the wall and then these softbox lights pointed at me to light myself and then overhead microphone camera in front of me Beautiful. Yeah, you have the camera in front of you at also and I add right That's right. Yeah, so that device there. It's called glide gear. I guess is a teleprompter So you can do the script reading and stuff But I think the better idea of what what we were talking about was being able to mirror your display onto the iPad So you can look right into the lens, you know, so if I switch back to here You know, you really get a sense that I'm looking right into the camera but I can talk to you because I can see you right there in front of the The iPad is reflected onto the teleprompter And so that's worked really well for some of just the video conferencing that we've had not even recording or doing any fancy production But you know, I think our idea which I think was the right one Is that it makes a difference to be looking right into the camera at someone to really be able to Stare into their soul so The Yeah, who is that arrow morris? Arrow morris. Yeah. Yeah, and it really works. It works super well and like it's the thing is the difference is You know the background like you don't think about it like how much these small details matter Like the changing of the background to something so clean The looking into the eyes of the person you're dealing with now, you know, depending on your needs and your use case It's not always necessary, but like Seeing it dialed in It gives the whole experience a different a different sense of presence And I think that's what's interesting what we're doing I think a little bit with the studio is experimenting with What that presence is and it reminds me it returns us to when we were exploring with detail team today And we had like different shots and we did have like you're controlling those shots right now, right? Like I might be worth talking a little bit about how you're changing the chroma key and all that stuff Because there's a bit of a magic going on that you and Andy talked about last week Well, I've got I mean There's so many different things going on because that's stream yard where I'm switching the various shots for this recording And we've talked a little bit about stream yard We think it's awesome for broadcasting out recording and sort of doing these podcast episodes super easy But I've also got the a10 mini which is that hdmi switcher and so that's switching between These various shots I have to turn the chroma key off for that second shot there and I don't have any others I had one other one that I was going to try and do but I didn't have the right converter So but it's got four inputs for hdmi and you can switch between them So you can do the front on the side view or whatever or you could for example if I was sharing my laptop screen I might Do hdmi out from the laptop and into that so that yeah switch seamlessly between that because then you can do the picture in picture That kind of thing as well So Yeah, that's the hdmi switcher But for the most part if you're if you just have a single shot like this and you're doing green screen once you've set that You don't really have to touch it. So unless you're really producing a multi camera thing That seems to just work fine on its own and that comes usb into the laptop and it's seen as a webcam So stream yard and anything else, you know, if it's a zoom call It would just be a zoom call, but then stream yard I'm switching between these so we can do you know the the full screen view or you know picture in picture side-by-side type situation But that's a whole lot Grabbing multiple things and doing that kind of stuff there at the same time. The other thing I did take Andy was using one we use this at the domains conference and it's that What is it the hd pbr rocket? So that's this device that bring it back here. So it's in focus We use these at the domains conference and it's hdmi in and then hdmi out It's basically a pass through But then you can put a flash drive on it and press the red button to record And so it's basically an hdmi recorder, but it doesn't really do anything else to the feed So i'm coming out of the switcher and into this thing first So if I wanted to press this button You can see it turns red. It's recording now now It's not recording you because it's coming out of the switcher. So it would just be my video So sure it's good for standalone like single videos that we might want to do like so again If I had the teleprompter and I was doing a script or whatever the case may be I just want to record a nice video on the fly But it's picking up all the the chroma key settings and all that kind of stuff So it would be a great looking video at the end of it And then you hit the button to stop it it flashes for a few minutes while it saves to the flash drive And now and now it's ready I could take the flash drive out and I've got an mp4 file that I could upload to youtube or do whatever I want With so it is kind of that one button studio in that sense if you have everything dialed in You'd have to know how to use the switcher a little bit more in that case to make sure you got your green screen, right? and I found There's a whole software suite atem software control That kind of connects to the switcher to do some more things. So, you know, for example to get this image to show up You have to have the software But the actual turning turning on and off of the chroma key is all right within the hardware So it's almost like it takes the images from the software and writes them to the device so Yeah It's a lot. It's kind of cool. Yeah, it's kind of cool. So and then if I switch back to this shot Let's It's kind of crazy you'll see the camera the camera is actually a A black magic cinema 4k camera. So it's basically a DSLR in some sense, but it is a video camera. So Um, that's hooked up to the tripod sitting on the teleprompter there Great camera. And in fact, I can actually control some of the settings from that same atem software So if I if it's something is out of focus, so for example, let me go back here Because I do have the software open. I'll go back to the front screen So before I was showing you this but it was out of focus because it's holding focus in there Normally you'd have to be controlling the camera to adjust that but if I hit the autofocus button Nice. Yeah Exactly. Yeah, so you can adjust that you can do sort of exposure controls in here if it was too bright or too dark So you do have some control of the camera itself directly from the software And that's because it's a black magic camera As opposed to you know, anything else, which would just be an hdmi feed It can actually do a two-way You know talk with the data there, which I think is pretty cool. So and then the What else the microphone Is a road video mic and he had recommended the road wireless Which is it a lapel mic and we'll probably get some kind of lapel mic system But I really liked the idea of the shotgun mics. It's out of the way I'm not clipping anything to my shirt or dealing with anything like that I think on the fly we could probably get away with two people talking with a single mic up here, but we'll have to see Um, so I think that's the question mark But you know it picks up really good audio and you know when you're looking face on you don't see it at all And so I don't have anything clipped in my shirt I don't have to deal with any wires or anything like that, which I love I actually your audio is feeding into these AirPods. So those are wireless as well So I don't have anything attached to me. I like yeah, so So that's pretty cool I think that's it the lighting the cameras all that it's not too crazy Um, we do have I don't know if you can If you can see this on here, no you can because it's not high enough Let me let me move the camera so you can get the whole view here But we actually have a lighting trust that goes along the edges of the room And that's so that we can hang lights from the ceiling and so that will be for You know, he talked about wall washer lights And so I think there's a little bit more work that we could do to light the background some as well as it just looks really cool So let me turn the camera here. Yeah, I want to see this I actually I'll lean over here real quick and Switch to a solo view See that Yeah, so if I move the oops, sorry It's all right So there's the lighting trust over there. Yeah All the way along the room and it comes down. So it's just on these really large tripods I'm probably super quiet since I'm far away from the microphone, but no we can hear you fine yeah, so I'm do this a little more and you can kind of See the cameras view there. There's the there's the lights pointing at the green screen And they have everyone's pointed at me itself But yeah, this if I could get it a little wider, I would I kind of I regret this is a 10 foot trust And I think we could have gone 15 And gone a little bit further up against the walls just because I think you want a little bit more wider space But we'll see But yeah, that's for hanging lights And then you can kind of see the camera It's got a really big it's got a really big LCD on the back of it if I go out of the menu here You can see you get a really nice preview On that as well You too, but yeah, that's just You know right here on the teleprompter and then point it in there and then if I come over I'll give you a close-up view Of the iPad and their stream yard running on the iPad. Yeah, there it is So so my view of the head is reversed, but I can actually see Directly onto it Nice and it's a pretty it's a pretty clean desk. You have there record button and the 810 mini Yeah, and You know in the recorder you wouldn't always have to have it there, but it's kind of nice to have it Yeah, exactly so That's nice So where where are you? In the in the kind of like process is that like do you feel like do you need more? Or do you feel like no this is kind of where we're at? Like where and he was we're kind of pretty close Yeah, no for for sure I think the next thing so I think for single recording Like one person needing to record in front of a screen. I think this works really well Um, I think once it comes to multiple people We'll have to think through microphones and audio a little bit more So that's one piece of it is you know when you get back I know we're going to want to be able to do a recording of both of us kind of you know sitting in here talking and You know or you know Meredith and I talking through something so like what does that look like? Does the does the shotgun mic work well for two people? Do we need to have sort of I was looking at there are some You know like wireless mic systems where you have like four different packs or something So, you know that might be overkill We'll have to see so I think playing around with the audio with multiple people would be one thing And once you get into that you think about like audio monitoring because you know I can hear you because I've got my headphones in But if Meredith and I were both talking to you How is she gonna hear you? You know the reason I'm in the headphones Is so that there's no echo in the space I can hear you directly through the headphones But if she needs it as well, you know, you remember at DTLT We used to have a box that's split out and we actually read grand wires up there You could there's some wireless in ear type stuff now That's fairly reasonable So we could do something like that where everybody has their own headphones They plug them in they can turn the volume up and down and and they can hear everything that's coming through the The broadcast so I think something like that would be important too if you had multiple people The other thing and I know you'll love this that I want to play around with is capturing stuff So You know, I know you've been playing a little bit with capturing like Atari and bhs tapes And you're doing it mostly from an archival sense, too But I think just for fun like playing stuff on stream So I played a little bit with twitch, but I want to roll a pinball game in here and stream it out I want to I want to bring miss pac-man in and connect it to the switcher And have people be able to see me playing it and You know be able to do that and the space is big enough that we can do that And we've got the structure in place to be able to light things really well Which I think opens up a lot of all of opportunities We've got a gopro that we could clip on somewhere and do like zoomed in shots So when I think about like repairing video games and things like that, um, I'm really interested in that I've actually been talking to My daughter's teacher, you know She's actually she's at a private school and they're meeting in person But of course they can't have any visitors, you know that the kids basically stay in the classroom and You know, no parents are allowed to to visit or whatever and they actually said, you know But if you're doing anything cool, you know, you want to show something from your work or whatever We would love you to zoom into our classroom and actually do a demonstration And and he knows about what we're doing here And he said, I don't know if maybe you had like an 80s video game that you wanted to show the insides of or something And I was like, oh So Totally We have to inspire the next generation, you know, absolutely the robots are coming kill them now That's right So yeah, that's my idea is that, you know We could actually get them excited about like how electricity and circuitry works by opening up a pac-man or something And actually allowing them to see the insides of it I could do it all from the studio and just quickly roll the game in and set up the lights and the cameras and everything To really have different shots So there's a lot of opportunity there and it's this room is really accessible Big doors accessing the space lots of open space to move things around So that's definitely something I'm interested in well and we were talking a little bit about Furniture and what furniture for the space might look at I don't know if you have any ideas about what furniture makes sense I'm just using a desk that we had next door right now But I think we would probably want something maybe a little bit more flexible You know, just in terms of the the actual furniture of the space I think I mean, I think we already talked about something akin to what we had At um w with those flexible butterfly tables Those were super nice the rolling chairs But also some sort of maybe couch Should there be because there's plenty of room in that space now if you're bringing in other things maybe maybe not but like Even in the other space next door, which was the kitchen space Like there's there's a lot of flow over So I also like the idea of if you're gonna have a group of people there Although you don't really do that right now in this era but I do think even just roll chairs in the butterfly tables is more than enough Yeah, some kind of like Like you're saying like studio lounge type furniture to record from just something a bit more casual than tables and chairs Right that people are sitting at so yeah, it may not it may not be a cuddle couch in the coronavirus era But you could have some like, you know some smoking chairs or something Yeah, exactly just a cloud of air Yeah, maybe a lazy boy, you know and you have two of them You can move them hopefully easily out. Should you have to bring the pinball whatever but like I love that idea Yeah, take another tip down to Richmond Yeah, exactly and and again, there's so much space. It's so far back here That you could just keep furniture up against the walls and then bring it into the camera view for whatever set up You know you stay just set up the way that you want it to be The other thing that I didn't even point out Is I did mount a tv on the other side of the wall and I can see What's coming out of a switcher through there? So after it comes out of the PVR rocket Recorder it goes into the television and so that way I know that I'm on camera. I'm not off to the side Whatever, it's not showing you it's just showing exactly what's coming out of the switcher But I can see the chroma key setting so it's been good to dial some of that in so It's kind of sort of a nice failsafe for me to know that Everything is looking good and everything is still working properly But again, you know, if I didn't have the teleprompter. This is how I'd be looking at the stream I'd be watching you Up there and I'd probably have the computer up and you'd be you know looking up my nostrils the entire time But instead I come down here I'd be like, why isn't him looking at me? What's wrong with me? What did I do to him? Yeah, one interesting thing though that I found was that like things looked so good up on the tv And they were not looking good on my computer. I was kind of like Like the colors looked really good And then I would look on the computer and I was like almost orange colored And I I was like this doesn't make sense and I kept thinking it was a problem with the computer But it wasn't I think anyway, and I'm no expert We'd have to pull Andy back in here to know for certain But what I think is that the tv has different codecs on it And it's compensating for things to balance out the colors and make everything look really good And I think the computer was just getting a raw feed from hdmi And it wasn't doing anything to it. So, you know in your tv You've got like movie settings and gaming and all it like it's got processing inside of it to make images look really good Whereas on my computer. I had to dial in all the colors So in fact, I'm I'm not perfectly happy with it But I I could do a couple more adjustments in there, but I think it looks okay It definitely looks a lot better than it did before but in turn on the tv I'm much more washed out now like I I look like maybe I look much I look much brighter up there Then I do on the computer, but I know the computer is what's recording. It's what's going out to stream yard So that's sort of that's the the the true answer and the reason I figured that it's the tv And it's not anything about the device or my computer or anything Is I took that same hdmi out signal and I used a capture card to bring it into the laptop instead of using usb Same image I was still getting I was still looked orange there So the same thing going to the tv when it comes into the computer It's not the same. So I think that the tv is actually adjusting colors on the fly which makes a lot of sense I mean, you know, that's that's what tv's do they've got code And they're processing and they're cleaning things up to make thing an image look really good And I think typically what looking good means on a tv means making things really bright and crisp and all that kind of thing So I had to make a lot of adjustments in the software You know to make the camera look really good for the stream too. So I thought that was it Yeah, it was really throwing me off because I thought okay There's a problem with usb or there's a problem with the device or what Something about the capture is not right because I was like it should just look really good right out the gate and It ended up I just had to adjust a lot of settings on the camera to dial those in Now yesterday you were having issues with the sound syncing but today that's not an issue at all Did you do anything? I did so One thing is that I updated the firmware on the a10 mini They a couple months ago issued an update where they added audio delay settings into the software So you can actually take the mic feed and you can say I need a three second delay on or a three frame delay So I did that I had tried doing what andi had recommended which was plugging the mic directly into the camera I still think that's probably the cleanest But at the same time the microphone was really quiet when I did that and it may be that I just don't understand the black magic black magic Cinema camera settings yet, but I had it dialed all the way up and I was making a lot of adjustments I It hasn't been completely reliable So instead I did go into the mic input on the atem switcher But I have the three second delay in there as well. And so that's what it's doing And it also then allows me to you know the software itself. I can monitor The audio levels in there to make sure that things aren't too loud or too soft and that kind of thing It's also got processing and this is kind of trippy Because my voice will actually change. I won't be able to hear it, but you will so They've got you know how there's equalizer settings and iTunes and other places. Sure Where you can do stuff like that So the software has that kind of dynamic equalizer type stuff too And so I can actually make adjustments to like add more like Bass to my sound so if I move some of these things around I assume my my voice might be changing here Yes, you're like deep through it right now And then I can turn it back off and I'm normal But if you had monitoring headphones into where you were listening to what you were saying in there You could adjust all of those dials to get like the bass and the treble all really good in there And that's all processing within the software before it goes out to the feed. So that's awesome Do they have like a donald duck voice so you can do this go duck Yeah, well a bad like with the deep throat with the deep throat that you could really like like like Modulize your voice and then you could use the green screen to get like a shadow look So it's like one of those interviews where you can't see that you That would be awesome Yeah, notes from the reclaim hosting underground Yeah undercover undercover black hat researcher That would be awesome Kim Droom Kim Droom back on the case That's right That came together pretty quick. You said it by the end of the week. I'll have it together and true to your word We have a studio The painting took the longest because you got to wait for it to dry You know and you've got to tape everything off There's still a layer of green dust everywhere that I I've got to run a vacuum on it on it all Oh and the other piece of it too, and it's not really affecting things right now But I think ultimately we do want it is some blackout curtains Um, this is a our office is a storefront area And so the front wall is all glass windows and and metal and stuff and so Uh, you know, I'm looking right out to a door and it's you know, full glass Florida ceiling So, you know when it's sunny that could be a huge issue They've there are some old blinds that are falling apart here from the previous tenants And I think we just want blackout curtains to cover the entire space not just from a security standpoint But also just from a lighting standpoint that way that's not even a factor So that would be another thing, but I've got to figure out. I mean, it's a good it's probably 16 feet You know edged wall to wall So you're gonna have to mount things along the way to hold it structurally It won't be enough to just have two brackets on either end or I think it'll sag quite a bit And you know, there's nothing to mount to on the front because again, it's all glass. So what do you do like? Yeah So up into the ceiling tiles almost right, which is yeah, which is its own challenge because they're just yeah It's just a drop ceiling So you almost have to go through that and see what what structural stuff you have above it that you could use Or I was thinking I mean at least on both corners In a closet situation You almost have brackets that are held to the sides and you know a pole that sits inside those brackets And I thought maybe you could use something like that I think a lot of it will depend on like the weight of the curtains and that kind of stuff So that'll be another piece of it too for sure, but You know all very minor stuff I think the the bones of it is already there and we can start playing around and that's the For me the funnest part is just playing with this stuff and trying out different combinations and seeing what works and what doesn't So what's the tally? What's the cost tally on the on the studio? So by far the most expensive thing was the camera And so I had this camera. Sorry I turned that off for a second. So this camera over here is a Panasonic vixie or something it's a decent enough camera But I wanted to get a better one For the video recording stuff. So so I got the black magic cinema 4k and that was $1,300 just for the camera You know and it actually it's like a DSLR and so you have to buy a lens for it So I had to get the lens and all that other stuff too. So so the camera was the most expensive everything else. It's like You know $50 here $100 there. So I imagine In total were probably about Somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000 Yeah I remember when we were doing the kit and the kit was You know the camera the one camera one Lavalier mic not the software or anything like that. I don't know if we had a switcher And the kit was like five or six thousand Right, right and we had to go and ask for money remember that like and ultimately I think like university relations bought us the kit Right like Kathy derricky found a way. I don't know how we got the money for that but that's And there's a few things that i'm repurposing here. So like i'm using my own laptop You know probably a dedicated computer in the studio probably makes a lot of sense to You know if you've got one that can do all the streaming and all that kind of stuff I borrowed the ipad from the robot. So there's that I've got to go to A laptop or sorry an ipad to have in the teleprompter permanently So but we had that one on hand and so I was like, all right. Well, I'll go ahead and use that so So i'm repurposing those things and then like the pbr rocket Like I said, we had already used it at the conferences. So we actually had a couple of them here in the space and so Yeah, uh, you know, I I grabbed that I bought the a10 mini a couple months ago and so but even still I mean, we're talking, you know, again like hundred dollars here a hundred dollars there like the stuff has gotten very cheap It's also gotten Very accessible, you know, just like really user friendly and accessible Um to be able to play around with this stuff, which is awesome I agree. No, that's cool. I appreciate the overview of of your update on the on the studio It's uh, it's amazing how quickly that came together and I can't wait to start doing some of that streaming you said In the space that's gonna be yeah, I know and it I think, you know, like the idea of converting stuff and showing it off It's just so cool to me. I just think like, you know, we've got so many cool old devices We've got the selective vision. We've got beta max players. We've got vhs We've got arcade games and pinball machines and the idea of like grabbing those feeds and bringing them on to a stream In some way. I think it's just super cool. So that's in part why I've been like so enamored with twitch recently Is that you know, just the ability to show off stuff and in almost like a real time way Which I think it's it's what we're doing now with DS one of six tv But the thing about twitch that is interesting that we don't have to with DS one of six tv It's that real time chat. It's that live feed. So you're actually interacting with your audience and they're like, what about this? Well, yeah, let me show you that and it's like, sure you could use twitter That's not really a great channel for that kind of thing and so YouTube's got options like that too But at the same time youtube you run into copyright twitch you run into copyright issues too on that kind of stuff But you know for whatever it's worth It's that kind of real time feedback loop that I think is for me like the real key with twitch I think it's super cool to be able to like show something off and then interact with your audience and actually do stuff on the fly Which again makes the teleprompter crucial because on a lot of those streams you look at it And the person's looking off to the side to read the comments And then they're looking back at the camera to talk and then they're looking back at the comments Whereas like you could just again like look right at the at the camera and read the comments They're coming in and talk right to the people So it's funny the yestercades arcade in red bank, new jersey was Has gotten on to twitch and has had like, you know street fighter two battles And like really doing a good job of highlighting games in their collection And creating a little bit of a community and a buzz around some of that using the streaming stuff It's like it's a layup and the fact of getting in there like you said and like integrating it with a With a classroom to show them the guts of an 80s arcade machine is just magic Yeah, and then of course the teleprompter and all that like that'll be really useful for doing some better video type production for reclaim hosting So there this does tie back to hosting too not just arcade and and silly fun stuff But you know when we're doing tutorials when we're you know wanting to do other types of broadcasts and things It just makes it a whole lot easier to do that when we talk about virtual workshops and the ability You know for someone to Stand in here put their slides up on the tv stand in front of the camera and talk to it I mean I think in this day and age, you know with the with the virus That stuff's only become more and more important And so the ability to do it in a really professional way is exciting and to you know Not have to to spend a ton of money to be able to do that. It's super cool too Yeah, and like we kind of reclaimed a little bit of Of some of the the more exciting parts about the new building And um w that we couldn't do Given the fact that we were on our way out or it just you know time and and everything but like We told ourselves that we would slowly get an office space like that and do stuff like that We have Yeah, cool. It's fun It's super cool. All right. Well, I think that covers it. Um, we'll have to get andy back Here in the next couple of weeks to kind of get a sense from him on what are we missing? You know, what could we what else could we add? You know, I know he he had planned some changes as well And they were looking into things right now This whole setup is 1080p or 1080 I can't remember the peas in the eyes and all that stuff, but it's 1080 resolution He had talked about like that's what they're doing, but that they're thinking about 4k and what that looks like The a10 mini does not do 4k But the camera does so, you know, you could record a video in 4k You would have to add the chroma key after the fact and so there's other kind of variables to that kind of thing too So I don't know if anybody wants to see me in in that many pixels So but the fact that you're not 4k right now is remarkable because you're so damn sharp Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a it's a great camera. So it's sampling it down really well and you know Yeah, it's strikingly good. It's a it's a good shot Oh, well super cool. Well, I'm looking forward. Yeah. Well, you'll you'll be here to see it in a couple weeks And so we'll have to do another stream from the space, you know, we're happy. Yeah, it'll be cool So well very good. Well, we'll cut this episode off then keep it nice short and sweet But uh, appreciate everybody, uh, watching and checking it out and stay tuned for more like and subscribe Yeah, shut button smash it See y'all later. Bye