 Time here from Warrant Systems, it is January of 2024 and this is the latest studio build. The first studio I built was all the way in 2017. So it's kind of fun to look back and go, wow, that's the way it used to look or the way I used to do things. And here's the way I'm doing them right now. Now I did move the studio from my office. It's now in my house. I just found that way more convenient because mostly I work as a solo creator. I create the content, which is really just about what I do for a living, you know, talking about firewalls is really what my job is. Also setting up firewalls and doing the work. So I've got one foot as a creator sharing content and the other foot as a business owner and involved in project design and have the company that now after my split merge, as you can find more info on my channel about that or on my website is now all IT businesses through CNWR and Lawrence Systems handles all the media production for those of you that didn't know. Now onto the studio here. The trick to being a solo creator is the workflows that you develop. And that's kind of what I walk through is the studio isn't just about what parts I use, which by the way, you're going to find all those linked down below for those you just kind of know what lights I have or what cameras I'm using. But it's also about creating workflow that's easy for me to do the editing. So from the top to bottom, when I start an idea, put a script together or however I want to present that information, all the filming and everything, some may be on site, some may be inside of the studio. And then all the editing happens on the workstation behind me. I do that all right here. The trick though is automation when it comes to it first, starting on the studios. And let's show you how that works because that is just done with Home Assistant. That'll actually turn on some bench lights that I have on a bench that's behind me over here. That's where I have a lot of the work going and another double click will turn on the rest of the studio lights. And this whole process being very automated is important because I don't want to spend time fiddling with any of this. Once I take the time to tune all of it, I put little stickers on them to know what each setting was in case I ever change it or make a modification to my studio. I always focus on how do I get the content out there? How do I spend less time doing video production? As much as video production is fun, it's not really where my passion lies. I just needed to learn enough about studios and video production by going through and watching lots of YouTube videos. And that's also why I'm sharing this one back out to maybe help some of you to see how I do things and give you some ideas if you're thinking about getting a content creation. But my goal is really getting the content out there, teaching people about firewalls or storage or any of the other topics that I cover. Now, this might be a more familiar angle, which isn't exactly the same angle I film at because this is being done on my Sony FX30. This is the camera I take when I go places or film anything on-site. I only recently got this one. Everything else is filmed, at least when I sit in this position in the studio with a Sony A6600 and that is attached to a glide cam teleprompter. Sitting on the teleprompter is just one of those portable screens. And it's just a mirror of what the output of my studio computer is, which is also mirrored on the big TV. So essentially the way the content comes in is all of my work is being done on my work computer with the multiple monitors set up you see behind me. And then from there, I have a series of capture cards, Blackmagic and other cards. And like I said, they're all listed down in the links down below that pull in all the media. They pull in a copy of what's on my screen. So one of those HDMI's get split to go to there. Then each one of the camera feeds is pulled into the Blackmagic card and into OBS, then it creates a single stream. This is how the editing workflow gets really simplified for me because I can just use the stream deck to switch between the different views. That way, when I'm editing, there's just one continuous file that I got to cut the spaces out of. Now, it's going to be a little different editing on this particular video because I'm shooting on this separate camera and I'm doing this in multiple cuts. So I got to stitch them together. But when you don't have to stitch together, you save time. When only thing you have to do is trim out silence. You save time. And when you use tools like DaVinci Resolve and you use the auto trim out silence, you save even more time. These are all the shortcuts I use to spend less time on the editing. And it's all about the upfront process that I have to get this really, you know, dialed in so I can focus on just creating the content, not figuring out everything else around creating the content. Now, the microphone is a Sennheiser MKE 600. This microphone works wonderful. I have that attached to my audience, and that allows me to ingest the audio as a single source, even as I switch between different cameras. Now, the different camera feeds I have and why some people have noticed that the camera looks really good, what people were assuming is a webcam, of course, isn't. It's a Canon C100. I've actually had that for a number of years, Sigma F 1.8 Art lens on there. But the fast focus on that and the fact that you could just a nice, soft, blurry background, it looks wonderful. It works every time. And I think it does kind of give you a nice edge when you're on there. Once again, that's why there's two keyboards as well, because this simplifies things. So I can sit at one keyboard or swing over to a standard monitor. Now, the trick is with the triple monitor set up, I have, especially the really big wide screen monitor, it's hard to film on that one because it would be hard to present or capture a portion of the screen. So it's easier to have this other screen off to the side with the camera mounted just above it. And then that allows me to easily stare right at the camera and type on that keyboard to, you know, present whatever I'm presenting on the screen. And once again, I'm just switching back and forth to the stream deck to make that work. Now, the other thing that helps the clean look that's in here is these rails that I have across the ceiling. I started this at my old studio and brought it to this one. It really is a clean look when you hang everything from the ceiling. Well, clean when you look at it from this perspective and clean when you're walking around, there's no wire suchare over and it makes it easy for me to clean dust and things like that. But it's also a nice stable mount for if I touch the desk or bump anything. The microphone and cameras won't shake at all. You know, if I lean on this or even bump it kind of hard, because this is what allows me to move the mic and point it somewhere and keep the absolute silence necessary as I type to not reverberate through anything because it's all ceiling mounted. It also kind of makes it nice because I keep service loops of wire if I want to shuffle things around. So all the wires weren't cut to exactly the length they needed. They were left like I do when I do a wiring job with the little service loop so I can move things around and kind of rearrange the studio once in a while without having to reinvent it. And I just use a bunch of Velcro ties to hold it all on there. Now, one more thing I mentioned about having these extra mounts. This camera, sometimes I'm mounting right here. This is another HDMI cable that runs once again across the ceiling via those different pipes I have hung up there. And this allows me to plug that camera in and also feed the bench camera into OBS. This gives me another view. So if I'm doing a top down product, I just mount that here. And I can even mount the microphone over here as well. I got a quick release that allows me to swap it, plug it in over here because I have an XLR cable that extends over to here. And then I can do top down product and it's really easy. Once again, making my workflow really simple because it's all pulling right into OBS. I can talk about the product. I can have a really nice view ceiling mounted. So as I move around on this bench, it doesn't cause me any problems. Now, speaking of benches, this particular bench and all the desks in here are just like Kia countertops. So I can sit on these. You can see it's solid. It doesn't wobble around. I like using these because I didn't see anything on the open market that says, hey, this desk would fit nice here. Building it all custom just makes it a little bit nicer. You also may have noticed some of the blue ambient lights you see around there. That's because I don't mount these desks flush to the wall. I keep each of them a little bit of a gap. It just gives it a nicer look. It also makes it so any little doodads fall and get stuck in that little edge there. They can fall off and go all the way to the floor, making them easy as opposed to when you bolt it to the wall and that little bit of stuff always gets kind of stuck there. But yeah, it does give it a nice look. These are all just part of the home assistant control that controls everything on here. So I can quickly turn the bench lights on and off or any of the studio lights on and off and do that with a little Zigbee button I have right here. I can do it from home assistant on my phone or from my desktop. Now, one of the other things that helps keep the audio really clean inside the studio and the look really clean is all the computer stuff is here. The rack, the servers, the true NAS boxes that ingest all the different media and my computer itself. This wall right here on the other side of this wall is where my monitors are mounted. And then we just feed all the wires through this wall and then they go to the computers in here. So I don't have to have any computers in my office. Now, I have two computers. Not well, these are the servers, but my main desktop computer is over here. When I get around to rebuilding and I'm probably gonna rack mount it so it's in here. I just been kind of busy doing other things and I haven't needed to replace that one yet. And the same thing goes for my studio computer which is hidden back there. The auto mute blanket that you see here was an addition I added later because this is my furnace. And when furnaces come on, the plenum may make a little bit of noise. This just deadens that little pop that may come out and it doesn't let anything bleed into the studio. As far as the way the studio is constructed this gives you a little bit behind the scene as well. You kind of might notice that the walls are black. This is fully loaded vinyl. And when we were constructing all of this we hung all this fully loaded vinyl. Then I put a whole extra sheet on there because I had some left over. So there's actually double layers right here on this particular spot by the furnace because this really helps with the sound deadening to keep any ambient noise, even the fan noise from these which is not much, but it's still there. I don't want any of that bleeding into the studio. There's even insulation on any of the joists. So nothing even bleeds in like above the ceiling or any other noise that may wander in. Now one thing is it gets a little messy when I'm working on some of these projects. I do have some network ports on my bench over there but yeah, I should have put a full height rack in so that will be an upgrade I do coming pretty soon where I take this out and I have plenty of headroom. So I'm gonna probably put a full height rack in and I might even keep this rack and have two of them in here so I can put shelves in here and just spread the projects out more. I don't like when they kind of get jumbled on each other. Here's like the Unify I was testing. This is where I plug in some of those mini computers. I got the little kilowatt here. There's just different things that are sitting here and I like everything in a more organized fashion. I'm maybe a little obsessive about it but organization is what once again helps with my workflow. I mentioned Home Assistant a few times. This is a quick look at my Home Assistant dashboard. I have an entire parts list down below for all the different devices I have attached to my Home Assistant and integrated with it. If you're not familiar with Home Assistant, it's a self-hosted open source application. That's pretty amazing for doing home automation and not having to worry about some third-party cloud. It supports a wide array of devices and lots of different connectivity options including the option to do things that are kind of custom like to a wake on land to turn on the computers on the other side of the wall so I can be lazy and just boot everything up from here with a click of a button. And that's all I have for the studio tour. Leave your thoughts and comments down below. Like and subscribe if you want to see more content from this channel. And if you have questions, comments or want a more in-depth discussion and you want to talk about like this whole setup and you're a fellow content creator, feel free to reach out to me on the socials. All the socials I'm attached to are at lorenzsystems.com or just join my forums, forums.lorenzsystems.com to talk about this or other topics you've seen on the channel. All right, and thanks.