As many of you have noticed, there is a stark difference between the quality of
the videos that I shoot in the studio with my staff and the quality of the
videos that I shoot at home by myself. Bless their hearts, my Logitech webcam
and second generation Mod Mic try real hard, but we are day seven into the
quarantine beard here and I figure if I'm going to get serious about streaming
at home and making videos at home, it is
time for an upgrade. Here is what we're
starting with. And by the end of this video, this is going to be about the
Ballinist streaming setup within reason.
That is at least if uh Jake's word is
anything to go by. First, we've got one of Elgato's Keylight Airs. So, these are
a nice lightweight, super bright Wi-Fi
app controlled uh light that comes with a stand and it's doesn't really need a
diffuser because it's got its own built-in kind of diffusion layer. We've
got an Elgato Multimount, which I originally thought was a mount for
multiple key light airs. Not. So, in fact, that mount is for this Canon T6i.
Uh we didn't choose this camera for any particular reason and this lens is in
fact a placeholder. But the idea was just to have a better camera than a
webcam. We're replacing the mod mic with a broadcaster mic from Rode that's going
to be powered by a Euphoria UM2 from Behringer. Got a nice little stand from
Rode to go with it. Capturing the video from our camera is going to be the
CamLink 4K from Elgato. That's a USB 4K
capture card. We've also got a power
adapter for the camera so that we don't have to run batteries in it. An HDMI
cable also for the camera, pop filter,
hammer. I promise you this will get interesting. And finally, an Elgato
Stream Deck. So, this is the 12 button variety. They've got little screens on
all the buttons so you can set up all your scenes and all that good stuff.
Now, it's after midnight, which means that I can't really count on Ivon to
shoot this whole thing with me. So, we're going to throw the camera on a tripod and get real creative about the
way that we're filming this late into the night. It really is harder to do
this without a camera crew. Instantly see your current and past network
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Many people's first impulse when they want to improve their video quality is
to upgrade their camera. But as you can see, I'm getting a dramatically better
feed out of the same webcam that I started this video out with just by
changing my lighting. So, that's where we're going to start. But of course,
rather than grabbing a couple of studio
quality lights and bringing them to my house and putting them on seaands, I am
of course going to begin with these key light airs. Wow, that's a heavy base.
They got weights in there. Power supply.
So, we got a little ball doodad we're going to tighten up in there. Key light
air kind of diffusion pad thing here.
Oh, that's kind of finicky. So, you got to undo this and then you got to stick
both things in without the whole thing coming apart. That goes in at the
bottom. And the experience is 100%
toolless except for the user. Hey, got them. I'm going to want these on kind of
the right and left to evenly light up my face. You know, I told myself that part
of this process was going to be cable managing my desk. That's clearly not
happening. Oh, how convenient is that? And they've got little numbers on them
so you can actually make them even nice.
Select the accessory you want to control. Turned off and back on. Wow,
that looks so soft. Can hardly tell I've got an isolation beard at all. So, you
can go ahead. You can adjust the temperature of the color. Well, I'm
definitely lit AF now. Actually, hey, Von, can you turn the room lights off so
that we can see what it looks like with just the stream lights?
Okay, then. Well, fancy lights are still
not going to compensate for the fact that I'm still using a webcam. But this
is progress. Let's see if we can kick things up another notch. This looks even
simpler than the other mount. You got one of these handy dandy tighten it to
attach it arms right here. Then you basically screw this end into the bottom
of the camera. Wa! Look at it go. Wow. Look at that.
To be clear, I'm not hating on the Brio. It is an excellent webcam. It's just
still a webcam, that's all. The next cool item in our bag of tricks is this
DC power adapter. So, it actually comes with a wall wart, but I'm not going to
need that because I have a high-owered USB port on my USB hub. So, I'm just
going to take these cables and plug straight into that. We got video. It's
set to 60 FPS, 720p, but I have no idea
how to get rid of this stuff on the screen or how clean the HDMI feed is
right now. For that, we will need an HDMI capture card.
Just going to plug the Cam Link directly into the back of my Thunderbolt hub
here. We are setting up Cam Link 4K. To hook
it up, all I need is this micro HDMI to HDMI cable. I hope
we had it for a second there. See,
that's this. I don't get any output on the back screen when I've got an HDMI
cable plugged into it. That's sort of inconvenient. There it is. See that? Oh,
it's like interlaced AF. Here, of course, this game wouldn't have been as
fun without the side quests. Now, we're updating the firmware on our camera.
Firmware update complete. Let's plug her back in. Yeah, that still looks
horrible. Well, that might be a slight problem. It appears that I selected a
USB 2 port. Wait, did I?
I don't know about that. The Elgato software seems to think so. Well, let's
try one of these other ones then. Okay, we get signal. Ooh, that also
looks like 60 FPS. Now, after fighting
my way through the menu here, I figured out how to disable the auto power off.
So, that's there. Uh, what I don't know yet is while it does say 60 FPS here,
that seems to suggest that that's internal recording, that doesn't
necessarily indicate that the output will be 60 FPS. So, it says here 1080i
60fps, but then on the input, but then output
is 30 FPS in Elgato's utility. Maybe that's an Elgato setting I can change,
though. What is good is that a 60 FPS interlaced output turning into a 30 FPS
progressive input is perfectly normal. So, we're going to be stuck with 30 FPS
for the live feed, but that should be fine as long as the gameplay is 60 FPS.
I really doubt anyone's going to be bothered by that. So, this is
configured. It's got that face detect thing.
Wow, that is a lot of beard. Hey, there
we go. All right, cool. Now, I am getting some interlacing artifacts. You
can see that. Uh hopefully we can apply
some kind of de-inlacing filter. Hey,
deinlacing. Oh, that is better, isn't
it? That is one heck of an improvement. I think what I'm going to want to do is
actually match my lights here to the
light in this room so that I can have a little bit of light behind me. Does this
even look that much better than the webcam? Webcam. Real cam. Webcam. Real
cam. Yeah, I just don't think the webcam's going to get there. All right.
And something to consider, guys, is remember you're going to see it like this. So, at 720p, that's going to look
pretty sharp. Okay, then this is progress. This is camera upgrade and
lighting upgrade. Now, it's time for
audio upgrade. For this, we will need the microphone ARM. So, I'm going to go
ahead and just attach that right next to where my headphones go. Kind of like
that. And this hold the microphone. Ooh,
shiny. This clearly goes on here. I have a
slight problem right now, though. I feel like there's supposed to be a little
ring in here, and I can't find one. Thankfully, there is a backup plan. I'm
going to steal the nice shock mount from
the RE20. Of course, a microphone like this doesn't plug into just any old 3
and 1/2 mm jack. You need an XLR interface. So, that is where the
Behringer Euphoria UM2 comes in. This thing's pretty cool. It's actually
completely USB bus powered. So, you won't be powering anything like super
super crazy off of it or anything like that, but you just plug this little
puppy in via USB. XLR goes in the front
and bippity boppity, you are off to the races. This mic requires 48vt phantom
power. So, we'll go ahead and turn that on. Now, it's time for the big test.
Let's see if there's an improvement going from the mod mic to the broadcast
mic. This is the mod mic and this is the
broadcast mic. What do you guys think, ladies and gentlemen? So, we got our
broadcast mic and we're back to the mod mic now. So, if I was sitting here, oh,
I'm playing a game. It's real intense. I'm I'm got my gamer face on. Now I'm
switched over to the broadcast microphone. Now I got my gamer face on.
Pretty good. I don't know. I have no way of knowing. I'm monitoring this one, but
I'm not monitoring the other one. So, I got to go back and look at the footage. Small update, I did get my issues with
the Go XLR sorted out, so I'm using that now. It might not have the most amazing
reputation for audio quality either, but I really like a lot of the features and
it's super easy to use. So, full credit to the Mod Mic. It's actually a lot
better sounding by comparison than I expected. I mean, obviously, this one
has a lot more dynamic range, but yeah,
credit to the multi-year-old mod mic.
Now, I remember I promised to use a hammer. That's because one of the
biggest problems with my setup right now actually has nothing to do with the
computer or really streaming at all. It's that my stupid,
stupid, horrible carpet protector is
sliding around all the time. I'm going to nail it into the plywood. Last piece
of the puzzle. Time for the stream deck. You can
program macros, put little pictures so you don't forget what they do. The good
news is that going through this software, I've got this like epic
streaming setup that I can use. All right, OBS. So, title, screen, scene,
line of screen share. I'm all set up. So, now all that's left is to jump into
a game and see if I have got what it takes to be the next Twitch sensation.
Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. Let's see what we can do about our uh
eyeglasses supply chain. We've got to get some more some more eyeglasses.
There's no way to win, right? You get to the point where you use propaganda and
people get mad because you use propaganda. And if you don't use
propaganda, they're mad because you didn't use propaganda to increase their
happiness. Like, why are the engineers so mad? I feel like I'm watching my
future as a Twitch streamer. Come on, let's go. Just attack the harbor. Do we
have anything? You know what else is over? This video. And it's brought to
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going to have that linked below. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out
some more of my isolation content. I uh replaced the cells inside a battery
bank. That was a fun little adventure. Uh the sparks definitely flew, so uh
maybe check that out. The beard wasn't quite as glorious at that point yet,
though.