a year ago we showed you how to put together a decent setup for video
conferencing and streaming for anywhere from zero to fifty dollars and
okay i lied a little to get your attention you sound pretty darn good and
well you're breathtaking you're breathtaking
but that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement somewhere between our
previous zero dollar and three thousand
dollar setups has got to be a middle ground that levels up your streaming
game without breaking the bank and to show you how much each upgrade changes
the experience owned pro sponsored this video where we've recreated our original
zero dollar streaming rig and we will be upgrading it piece by piece that way you
can judge for yourself if our choices were worthwhile so um
i hope you picked good stuff because this still looks and sounds pretty darn
good don't it
there we are back to the original lighting and still not bad considering the budget of
course we've got some more money to spend so where do we start
sound if you've got some money left over it is hard to go wrong with an audio
upgrade or sort of many of you will already know that gaming microphones
tend to compromise performance for aesthetics flashy lights and
sponsorships for esports teams but while the conventional wisdom used
to be well the people in the know are gonna go get
a usb mic these days once you're past about the 50 point there really isn't
any reason to do that even with the blue snowball being as decent as it is
the thing is they just don't have the same internal space and isolation that a
good dedicated audio interface and a standalone analog microphone will for 65
dollars you can get a behringer umc 22 which has dual inputs a trs jack and a
combo xlr trs connector it's got midas preamps which are a little bit better
than you'd find on behringer's basic units and it's got three more trs jacks
for headphones and stereo studio monitors for when it's time to upgrade
your listening setup of course since we're not going for an all-in-one
solution now we need to choose a microphone with condenser and dynamic
microphones being the go-to's for most streamers and podcasters dynamic
microphones are known for their exceptional noise isolation and the sm48
which you're listening to right now is no exception it's a hammer style mic
like you might see at an event or concert but that doesn't mean it's only
meant for stage use dynamic microphones do have some downsides they tend to have
a very tight cardioid pickup pattern which means that if you lean or turn
away from your mic you'll almost immediately sound muffled but if you
live or work in a room that has a lot of reverb or noisy air conditioning or
something this bug quickly turns into more of a feature also because dynamic
microphones don't use phantom power they can require a huge amount of gain to
hear clearly that means that some mic and interface combos may require a gain
boosting add-on like a cloud lifter though ours is fine without they also
naturally cut off the high end fairly early which can result in them sounding
somewhat flat without any additional eq'ing but we'll talk more about that
later condenser mics on the other hand tend to have a more open pickup pattern
meaning more background noise but their large diaphragms also mean that they
tend to capture those noises with more clarity and a wider frequency response
particularly on the high end if you have a room that's already quiet
as is and you'll be close to your microphone but you might move around a
bit well there's a reason that the hundred dollar
audio technica at2020 is so popular it
can sound fantastic however if you're planning on using a
condenser you will need 48 volt phantom power on your interface now our
behringer umc 22 did end up doing a pretty nice job with the aston spirit
mic that i'm using at the moment but at 450 dollars i think the biggest takeaway
here is how much bang for the buck we had with our 40 dynamic mic after a
cable and an inexpensive stand then that puts us at 130 dollars for sound meaning
we can now turn our attention to video and as crazy as this might sound if
you're a tinkerer i would strongly recommend buying an old flagship phone
and a cheap tripod on ebay rather than going with a traditional webcam apps
like ipwebcam make it easy to import the video feed into a program like obs or
zoom and as an extra bonus you can always use it for phone things if you're
in a pinch the main drawback of this strategy is that some phones can
overheat during prolonged use and you will want to get one that allows you to
set a charge limit to prevent the battery from swelling or you can take
your game to a whole other level with a dedicated camera if you already have a
dslr mirrorless camera kicking around with an HDMI port there's a good chance
that it can output a clean video feed even if it's an older model it will look
significantly better than a smartphone thanks to its much larger sensor and if
you don't have one already we really like the sony a5100 it's a mirrorless
camera that can be had for around 300 bucks on ebay with a 16 to 50 millimeter
kit lens included and if you add a cheap tripod from amazon for 20 bucks hook it
into a capture card more on that in a minute how do i look
pretty plug and play right actually i should point out that we are using the
step down a5000 it is a hundred dollars cheaper but it
doesn't support clean HDMI output without a third-party modification so if
you're a tinkerer good for you but if you're not i'd
recommend going for the a5100 and this should give you a pretty good idea of
what to expect in terms of image quality in terms of camera settings most
streamers aren't gonna have to mess around with too much 30fps is lots for a
corner cam which means you're going to want a shutter speed of 1 60th then you
might just need to tune your iso which is the sensitivity of your sensor to
make sure you don't have too much noise in your image your white balance to make
sure it doesn't look too yellow or too blue you might have to tune your tint a
little bit we had to push this a little bit away from green and towards yellow
to get it to look just right and then you're going to want to set your
aperture as wide as possible to get that nice pleasing depth of field bokeh
effect in the background if you want to avoid focus jittering with an older
camera like this one set your focus to manual and you should pretty much be
good to go now i want to note that there are other options other than the a5100
just make sure you do your research that 150 canon rebel might be tempting but
its HDMI output might be full of menu garbage which there's no hack to get
around and that's going to be pretty hard to explain on your parent teacher
conference or whatever now in terms of lighting we previously recommended a
basic halogen light either in a lamp you found at value village or in a clamp
style work light that'll run you anywhere from a few dollars up to around
35 bucks they are power hungry and they do tend to run a little hot but with a
reflector and a sheet of wax or diffusion paper i mean that's what you're looking at
right now man and there's definitely an ambiance to it but i look not bad right
switching over to an elgato key light for comparison
certainly looks a lot better but compared to just
adding another halogen light i think it's hard to justify the 200 price
at least from strictly an image quality standpoint where elgato stands out
though is in software control brightness and color temperature can be adjusted
with a little slider in the taskbar making it easy to compensate for a cloud
suddenly covering the sun outside your window or what have you and it also
looks a lot more professional on your desk if that matters to you back to
capture card for a moment it is crazy how cheap these things have gotten with
generic usb stick size devices available on amazon for as low as 15 and these
aren't even the cheap crummy ones either they have low latency they record at
reasonably high bit rates for 1080p and they don't need any additional drivers
or software this makes them perfect for a quick capture of your camera with that
being said you do get what you pay for to an extent
and a lot of cheap capture cards may suffer from signal degradation or
crashing issues earlier than higher end options also warranty right another benefit of
premium capture cards is low latency passthrough so that you can stream your
xbox gaming for example from your pc but
a good workaround to this is a cheap HDMI splitter and for your viewers it'll
look exactly the same even if for you it means a little bit more cable clutter of
course if you want to capture in 4k you will need to spend more money on a
capture card avermedia and elgato both have solid 4k offerings around the 200
mark although for like your face camera i really can't say
that i'd recommend them unless you are recording your footage locally on your
pc so that you can edit it later and you want higher quality source files now
let's get everything set up after taking a break to take a sip from
my water bottle lttstore.com
yeah love the elgatos at home but the bang for the back here just cannot be
beat we're gonna need a couple key pieces of software obs and voice meter
both of which happily are free with both programs open use a1 to select your
preferred listening device ideally using a hardware seo engine if it's available
set your first input to be your microphone and then select your desired
output channel on that input to eq your mic and make it sound all fancy all
you've got to do is right click on the eq above your output and well for me we
might want to raise the bass and treble a bit giving it a warmer more podcasty
sound let's give that a shot with audio dialed in it's time to start getting our
overlay set up the overlay we're using today was generously made for us by
owned pro the sponsor of today's video they have an obs studio plugin that
offers 600 plus overlays alerts and tools in nine plus languages that can
all be installed with just one click using code Linus you can get 50 off the
yearly subscription at owned dot pro with owned it's as simple as that
is that it one click hey that that was actually really easy their
overlays include everything from stinger transitions which produce this cool
effect to intro screens and even banners
and buttons for your twitch page items are in groups in the sources panel and
you just need to add your webcam setup by clicking on add source and then video
capture device and your game or full display capture if game isn't working by
using game or display capture resizing elements is simple just select the one
you want to edit and you can resize it holding shift and control keys to change
how it's resized or you can right click to gain access to a whole bunch of extra
options and tools such as color keying for things like a green screen if you
have one adding alerts is also really easy with owned pro on their dashboard
you can easily add custom alert variations and messages and everything
sticks to your alert theme without any extra hassle god
i shot my teammate oh god how where is it get out of here
we're running we're running boys this is the original setup not bad by
any stretch of the imagination but i think the difference after our upgrade
is pretty striking leveling up the stream
got that better audio quality now i'm comfy oh shoot ah
get him
i hate that gun so much i don't know i don't know what it's called do i look
like i know guns to you i'm a pacifist canadian
oh god my aim is so bad well there you have it whether the upgrades
are worth it that's up to you but at least now you've got a solid idea of
what's out there and how to set up for different kinds of configs thanks for
watching and remember to check out own pro at the link in the description to
get 50 off their yearly plan if you guys are looking for something
else to watch um maybe check out my home streaming setup
upgrade that was more of like the deluxe version of this