[00:00.640 --> 00:06.100]  All right. Thanks, everybody. Sorry, ran into a couple glitches here, but we're going to get
[00:06.100 --> 00:19.600]  started now. I'm Spam. I am from DC212, which is New York City area. And this presentation
[00:19.600 --> 00:26.060]  is called Remote Presentations, Simple Ways to Dramatically Increase the Quality of Your Talks.
[00:26.060 --> 00:33.220]  It's almost a little ironic, given this in a VR environment, because a lot of what I am
[00:33.220 --> 00:40.300]  going to talk about is how to increase the quality of your video and also some simple
[00:40.300 --> 00:47.100]  things you can do for audio. The reason why I think this is really important now is as we are
[00:47.100 --> 00:54.560]  all holding meetups and in general just having any sort of meeting where we're not physically
[00:54.560 --> 01:01.520]  close to each other, having a decent audio and video to do your presentation has become much
[01:01.520 --> 01:07.140]  more important. And a lot of folks are going out and buying all sorts of expensive things to try to
[01:07.140 --> 01:16.540]  make their presentations look better. And I've found that over time, you can get this down to
[01:16.540 --> 01:22.800]  some fairly low cost, fairly simple things that give you a very professional look. You don't have
[01:22.800 --> 01:31.600]  to go out and buy all sorts of super duper expensive high-end webcams and expensive audio
[01:31.600 --> 01:38.240]  mixing solutions. There's lots you can do with very simple things. It requires a little more
[01:38.240 --> 01:48.060]  effort sometimes, but you can have dramatic results from it. So first thing is, when we are
[01:48.060 --> 01:52.480]  looking at this, we're looking for simple solutions, but a lot of times simple doesn't
[01:52.480 --> 02:00.740]  always mean cheap. We're going to try to keep things both simple and cheap. Sometimes, like I
[02:00.740 --> 02:08.040]  said, it may require a little more effort on the initial setup or initial configuration side,
[02:08.040 --> 02:14.920]  but I'm going to try to keep it both simple and cheap because not everybody has a ton of money
[02:14.920 --> 02:23.040]  to invest in this. So the most important thing that you can focus on, I think, when you are
[02:23.040 --> 02:28.060]  trying to improve the quality of your video is not getting a more expensive webcam. It's not
[02:28.060 --> 02:36.980]  going ahead and doing complicated, you know, green screen effects or anything else behind you.
[02:36.980 --> 02:44.260]  It's focusing on basic lighting. I've seen so many people who get expensive cameras and hook
[02:44.260 --> 02:50.260]  them up in an attempt to go ahead and have a really high quality setup be let down because
[02:50.260 --> 02:56.820]  their lighting is not something that's great. So when we're doing lighting, what we're trying
[02:56.820 --> 03:02.620]  to do a lot of times is emulate almost the lighting that you get from the actual sun.
[03:02.900 --> 03:10.600]  If you watch any of the late night talk shows in America over the past few months, as they've been
[03:10.600 --> 03:17.020]  taken out of their professional environments and people have had to do stuff at home,
[03:17.020 --> 03:21.380]  at first you saw people doing things inside and it was very dark and difficult to make out what
[03:21.380 --> 03:26.000]  was going on. And then you started seeing a lot of these folks going into their backyards because
[03:26.000 --> 03:29.960]  if you're outside, you can probably notice even if you're taking photos with your own
[03:29.960 --> 03:35.760]  personal smartphone, if you go outside, the even lighting that you're going to get from the actual
[03:35.760 --> 03:41.200]  sun is going to give you much better results a lot of the time. So what we're going to try
[03:41.200 --> 03:47.020]  to do with lighting is to present very even lighting so that everything that you're looking
[03:47.020 --> 04:08.070]  at is illuminated well and in some sense is sort of simulating the sun but not necessarily inviting
[04:08.070 --> 04:13.270]  and move to something where there's a good separation between you and the background.
[04:13.270 --> 04:19.150]  It's well lit, it looks inviting, and it's going to help you communicate better when you're giving
[04:19.310 --> 04:28.450]  a presentation. And even a cheap webcam can have it. So this is not me. I'm definitely not this
[04:28.450 --> 04:34.710]  photogenic. This slide here, this person, this is a guy who has a YouTube channel called Indy Mogul
[04:35.170 --> 04:43.530]  and this is actually from a video he did on lighting and production with a cinematographer
[04:43.530 --> 04:49.490]  named Larry Fong who's worked on tons of big budget movies. And they go through how to go from
[04:49.490 --> 04:56.190]  zero dollar effort to five thousand dollars investments and improve the quality. But a lot
[04:56.190 --> 05:02.270]  of the stuff is very, very simple. You see everything he has in these two videos,
[05:02.270 --> 05:07.830]  two screenshots here. This is, I believe, with the exact same camera. So they're not even improving
[05:07.830 --> 05:13.110]  the quality of the camera but making some simple changes to what's behind him and how he's lit.
[05:13.110 --> 05:21.610]  We're able to go from that dark shot to the much more pleasant look at shot. So looking at here
[05:21.610 --> 05:29.570]  what we have on the left versus the right, on the left you see he is seated with a window behind him
[05:29.570 --> 05:36.330]  which is letting in light, but he himself is very dark. And that's the thing, the first thing I see
[05:36.470 --> 05:43.390]  a lot of folks don't necessarily think about when they're setting up a shot. We, when you're working
[05:43.390 --> 05:48.370]  and you have your desk that you're working at, you want to get light so that if you're looking at a
[05:48.370 --> 05:51.850]  piece of paper or anything on your desk it's going to be illuminated. So you have the light behind
[05:51.850 --> 06:00.390]  your head. But when you reverse it, the camera, if it's pointed at the light, the way that a camera
[06:00.390 --> 06:06.770]  works is that bright light that's behind you, it's going to view that as the brightest thing
[06:06.770 --> 06:12.650]  and then that should be white and it's going to bring everything else darker to compensate for
[06:12.650 --> 06:21.270]  that. So if we look at the side on the right, what has happened there is we've put over some drapes
[06:21.270 --> 06:27.490]  on the window and that is going to soften the light a little more and it's going to darken the
[06:27.490 --> 06:33.330]  room, but they've added in additional lighting to compensate for that and provide a much more
[06:33.990 --> 06:41.630]  even lighting to everything. And so everything is much more vivid, much more realistic. So I'm going
[06:41.630 --> 06:47.990]  to go to the first thing in terms of lighting. We want to go ahead and get some lighting that we're
[06:47.990 --> 06:53.330]  inside of the home. Because while it's great we can cover the window and we're going to lose some
[06:53.330 --> 06:58.590]  light from that, you can compensate a little bit with lamps you may have around. But I think if you
[06:58.590 --> 07:03.830]  want to step up your game, we can spend a little bit of money, we can get a lot of bang for the
[07:03.830 --> 07:10.290]  buck. So the thing that I recommend is getting what's called a softbox if you really want to
[07:10.290 --> 07:16.230]  step up your game. There's tons of professional lighting equipment that you can get that will
[07:16.230 --> 07:21.990]  go ahead and do this in a very professional way. But you can find... here's a model I found on
[07:21.990 --> 07:32.130]  Amazon for under $50. The brand is called Mount Dog and it is an LED light with a softbox that's
[07:32.130 --> 07:39.910]  going to give you a much more softer light. It's going to spread out like a gel in front of it,
[07:40.050 --> 07:47.170]  a soft fabric that's going to allow it to to be a nice and not harsh, not glary light on you.
[07:47.410 --> 07:52.370]  And it comes on a stand. So it's everything you need to go and it's under $50, comes with
[07:52.370 --> 07:58.710]  remote control, and allows you to go ahead and control the color temperature of the light.
[07:59.410 --> 08:04.850]  So if you're outside, we have one, you know, we're using the sun. The sun is just one color.
[08:04.850 --> 08:11.490]  But inside, if you purchase bulbs for your own home, you may have what in America is referred
[08:11.490 --> 08:17.850]  to as soft white or bright white or daylight. These are all different color temperatures.
[08:17.950 --> 08:23.310]  Depending on what you're setting up, if you're using different color temperatures, you're going
[08:23.310 --> 08:28.150]  to... like part of your face may look blue and the other part of your face may look more red.
[08:28.150 --> 08:34.410]  If you just make sure that all of the bulbs that you're using are warm white,
[08:34.850 --> 08:40.750]  then you'll, again, be able to have a much more cohesive look to you. And using a product like
[08:40.750 --> 08:46.670]  this, because it's designed for lighting, allow you to select whichever color temperature you want.
[08:46.670 --> 08:50.970]  So highly recommend this. You know, if you already have whatever webcam,
[08:51.370 --> 08:57.430]  getting just this will allow you to decide like, okay, I have my background that looks fine,
[08:57.430 --> 09:03.670]  but my background is appearing a lot lighter than I am. You put this up, focus it on you,
[09:03.670 --> 09:09.890]  and then already you're going to get a huge improvement to the quality of your video.
[09:11.530 --> 09:17.290]  But I want to lay out a couple other changes, because I've tried to bring this down. I've
[09:17.290 --> 09:22.610]  shared this with a number of folks. This is a $360 kit. I'm going to go through each of the
[09:22.610 --> 09:29.070]  individual elements. If you want to go all the way and get cinema level results, basically,
[09:29.070 --> 09:34.690]  when you're presenting online, I think this is the cheapest way I've found to get that done.
[09:34.690 --> 09:39.650]  And this assumes that you have nothing today. Lighting goes a long way, but if you want to go
[09:39.650 --> 09:43.230]  to the next level where, you know, somebody's watching the video and they're going to be able
[09:43.230 --> 09:50.710]  to see, you know, the pores on your face, this will get you there. So I'm going to not touch
[09:50.710 --> 09:54.950]  on any of these individually. I'm going to just go through as we go through slides and go through
[09:54.950 --> 10:00.970]  each one, why I chose it, what the advantages of it are, and then hopefully I think you'll see
[10:00.970 --> 10:09.090]  that if you go with all this, you'll love the results. So first thing is audio. A lot of folks
[10:09.090 --> 10:13.910]  will focus on video and not necessarily think about audio that much. They'll use a built-in
[10:13.910 --> 10:22.290]  mic or a cheap USB microphone. Clear video is great, and it makes an impact, and people can,
[10:22.290 --> 10:29.530]  you know, be able to connect. But clear audio helps you communicate. So I would say one of the
[10:29.530 --> 10:35.410]  first things I would do is make sure you invest in a microphone. The microphone I recommended on
[10:35.410 --> 10:43.410]  the previous slide is the Blue Yeti. The Blue Yeti looks like what you see on this slide.
[10:43.410 --> 10:53.310]  It is the most common microphone that you will see podcasters using, YouTube celebrities using.
[10:53.450 --> 11:00.230]  Once you know what it looks like, you'll see it everywhere. And there's a good reason for it.
[11:00.230 --> 11:08.030]  The microphone itself has a lot of options on it without purchasing anything else. If you go with
[11:08.030 --> 11:12.990]  some higher-end microphones, you oftentimes have to purchase additional audio gear to take advantage
[11:12.990 --> 11:19.150]  of it. So while the Blue Yeti may not be the highest-end microphone that you can purchase,
[11:19.870 --> 11:25.470]  the fact that it is a USB microphone, that you don't need anything else really to take advantage
[11:25.470 --> 11:34.110]  of it, makes it really great for presenters. On it, you have, you see those two dials on the back?
[11:34.110 --> 11:40.930]  One of them is for adjustable gain. So if you go ahead and you want to make the audio louder
[11:40.930 --> 11:46.670]  because you're placing the microphone further away from you, you'll be able to do that by
[11:46.670 --> 11:52.830]  adjusting the gain. You don't need to adjust anything else to do that. If you're too loud,
[11:52.830 --> 11:59.690]  you can adjust the gain down and bring your audio to an acceptable level. It has adjustable
[11:59.690 --> 12:04.410]  pickup patterns. I won't go into those. If you're interested, you can do that on the website.
[12:05.090 --> 12:09.730]  It has a physical mute button, which I think is really useful for folks.
[12:10.010 --> 12:17.610]  And the last thing that it has that I absolutely love is it has an audio output.
[12:21.660 --> 12:29.860]  Somebody said that my voice was breaking up a bit. Also, my connection was stuttering a bit.
[12:29.860 --> 12:34.920]  Is it, let me give you some feedback if I'm coming through okay now.
[12:38.970 --> 12:43.470]  Yeah, you're good. Awesome. Yeah, it was breaking a lot earlier.
[12:44.670 --> 12:52.950]  Sorry about that. Maybe my connection. So one thing I really, really love about this microphone
[12:52.950 --> 13:00.110]  is it has an audio output on it. So you can get a live mix of your system audio
[13:00.110 --> 13:07.830]  and the audio that the microphone itself is picking up, which is more of a radio host type
[13:07.830 --> 13:13.090]  of a thing to be able to hear whether you're close, you know, how your audio is going to sound
[13:13.090 --> 13:19.070]  to others. Obviously, in certain environments, remote presentations can't necessarily account
[13:19.070 --> 13:25.350]  for things like the internet connection and, you know, intermediary servers. But other than that,
[13:25.350 --> 13:32.830]  you can know that the audio as it's going out is as you expect. So it's about $100 for the Yeti.
[13:32.870 --> 13:36.590]  Highly, highly recommend it. And since it's a simple USB microphone,
[13:36.590 --> 13:40.850]  it's really easy to hook up, really easy to use, and you just get that headphone output.
[13:43.590 --> 13:51.870]  Next thing is webcams. So a lot of folks have the Logitech webcams and like the C920 and C922
[13:52.550 --> 13:59.450]  are very popular, although difficult to get these days. But unfortunately, those webcams
[13:59.450 --> 14:05.150]  and the technologies in them are, you know, like eight, 10 years old sometimes. There
[14:05.150 --> 14:11.250]  haven't been dramatic improvements to the quality of webcams in a number of years.
[14:11.830 --> 14:19.670]  So I, you know, when I was setting up my own setup at home, I first tried with an old webcam
[14:19.670 --> 14:24.650]  that was similar to what I was using, and eventually saw that the real way to up my game
[14:24.650 --> 14:34.690]  was going to be to use a DSLR or digital SLR camera. Now, how to use DSLR is a different
[14:34.690 --> 14:40.230]  thing. You know, sometimes you can go with some very basic settings. There's lots of different
[14:40.230 --> 14:46.790]  ways that you can, you know, up how the quality of your video in the camera itself has a lot of
[14:46.790 --> 14:52.370]  additional settings that you can configure that you will not be able to do on a webcam.
[14:53.090 --> 15:06.770]  So I started off with a very expensive SLR, the Canon 6D Mark II, which is fantastic,
[15:06.770 --> 15:15.090]  but very expensive. What I am using right now is a Canon Rebel T4i, which you can pick up
[15:15.090 --> 15:21.970]  on the used market for between $100 and $150 very frequently these days.
[15:22.130 --> 15:27.110]  So it's, the reason you could pick it up for that price is because it's a few years old.
[15:27.110 --> 15:32.110]  It's like, I think, six, maybe even seven years old at this point.
[15:32.110 --> 15:39.750]  But it still has the ability to do 1080p video with a large sensor.
[15:39.750 --> 15:44.090]  Sorry, Spam, but your voice for the last 30 seconds was totally gone.
[15:44.090 --> 15:49.430]  So can you please repeat from the point where you said about T4i?
[15:49.810 --> 15:56.790]  Okay. Apparently, I hope everybody heard your, your audio to me as well, but lost some of the
[15:56.790 --> 16:05.690]  info on the T4i. So with the T4i, I chose it because it is a few years old,
[16:05.690 --> 16:15.210]  but it still has a lot of great features. The, the image sensor on the T4i is still high quality.
[16:15.210 --> 16:25.710]  You can get a 1080p image capture at 30 frames a second, and it is available for between $100
[16:25.710 --> 16:34.950]  and $150 on the used market. It is a, it's, it's a little bit cheaper because it's a little older,
[16:34.950 --> 16:40.770]  but the quality that you can get from it is still really, really good. So it's an often overlooked
[16:40.770 --> 16:50.390]  camera. So once we have the camera, we want to go ahead and make sure that we can get that image
[16:50.390 --> 16:57.610]  into our computer because this is designed for taking photos. With the, the way we're going to
[16:57.610 --> 17:02.470]  get it into the computer is going to use the capture card. So if you look up capture cards
[17:02.470 --> 17:09.050]  on the internet, you're going to see everybody talking about the Elgato Cam Link 4K. That's the
[17:09.050 --> 17:15.490]  capture card that everybody wants to get. And the Elgato Cam Link 4K is fantastic,
[17:15.930 --> 17:22.470]  but it's under $50. I think it is sold out everywhere right now. And it may be great,
[17:22.470 --> 17:28.050]  but that's going to be out of reach for a lot of folks. There are a number of really cheap
[17:28.050 --> 17:34.450]  video capture cards that have flooded the market recently that have totally decent quality and come
[17:34.450 --> 17:41.830]  in at a ridiculously low cost. If you go on Amazon or on eBay or on a number of other selling
[17:41.830 --> 17:47.050]  platforms and you search for a video capture card and you see one that looks like this with
[17:47.620 --> 17:55.810]  no brand name, and it has these rounded corners and just the HDMI logo, USB on one side and HDMI
[17:55.810 --> 18:02.610]  on the other, this thing you can purchase for as low as $15. And I frequently see it for between
[18:02.610 --> 18:10.410]  $15 and $25. And it is a totally, totally decent video capture card that will appear as a normal
[18:10.410 --> 18:16.770]  webcam input on your computer. So I highly recommend this. Even if you don't like the
[18:16.770 --> 18:24.270]  Canon Rebel P4i, whatever camera you find, whatever video camera you find that has an HDMI output,
[18:24.270 --> 18:31.590]  you can hook up to this. And for $15, you can use it. So really, really highly recommend it.
[18:31.590 --> 18:37.710]  When this first came on the market, you saw some folks doing reviews and they were kind of stunned
[18:37.710 --> 18:46.830]  because this thing is just like it's a cheap $15 card. But the quality is decent and the input
[18:46.830 --> 18:51.830]  lag on it is also really, really low and competitive with the Cam Link 4K. So it's
[18:52.350 --> 18:55.690]  a really fantastic setup that you can get with that.
[18:56.130 --> 19:03.790]  If you want to take your image quality up even further and do some of the fancier things you
[19:03.790 --> 19:10.470]  may see on YouTube frequently, I recommend switching out the normal lens on your SLR,
[19:10.470 --> 19:17.830]  if you're going that route, with a different lens. In this case, the one I have selected
[19:17.830 --> 19:30.530]  is for the Canon. P4i has an EF-S mount. And you can find, there's a company called Yongnu,
[19:30.530 --> 19:37.130]  which is selling a 50mm lens available on Amazon and a bunch of other places.
[19:37.670 --> 19:45.310]  And it will fit the Canon lens mount. You can literally go on Amazon, search for lenses that
[19:45.310 --> 19:53.710]  will fit the P4i, because they have a lens search tool, and sort it by price. And this
[19:53.710 --> 20:01.930]  will show up as the lowest price. And this is a $50 lens that is a 50mm and an f-stop of 1.8.
[20:01.930 --> 20:09.170]  So this is not necessarily words that will make sense to everybody. But if you watch a YouTube
[20:09.170 --> 20:16.930]  video, and you see you have the person clear, and their background is something we're defining as
[20:16.930 --> 20:22.910]  blurry, they're using what's known as depth of field. So they are in focus, but what is behind
[20:22.910 --> 20:30.930]  them is either slightly or totally out of focus. This lens will enable you to do that much better
[20:30.930 --> 20:37.010]  than what came in the box. So we've gone ahead, and we've added by adding all of these elements
[20:37.010 --> 20:40.970]  together, we end up with a full solution.
[20:52.690 --> 20:57.390]  Sounds like my voice is breaking up again. I apologize for that.
[20:59.090 --> 21:05.830]  So if you see here, I've broken it down again by price. You can mix and match as you go.
[21:06.690 --> 21:12.390]  But I think what you what we have here is something that can give you a full professional
[21:12.390 --> 21:20.410]  setup. And at a price point that is going to be just a little bit above some of the
[21:20.410 --> 21:26.150]  webcams that are sold, you know, to be a little bit higher end webcams, those can cost,
[21:26.150 --> 21:33.750]  you know, 200 to $250 on their own. This gives you a very flexible, very professional setup
[21:34.790 --> 21:43.310]  for just a tiny bit more than that. So I highly recommend it. If you want to go ahead
[21:43.310 --> 21:49.130]  and have better presentations, I think it is a very worthwhile investment. And if you get
[21:49.130 --> 21:55.550]  none of the audio or video stuff, I totally recommend that you go ahead and at least get
[21:55.550 --> 22:00.890]  the softbox. I know I spoke with a number of teachers who as they are getting prepared for
[22:00.890 --> 22:04.930]  this coming year, and they know that they're going to be presenting remotely, they've gone
[22:04.930 --> 22:12.070]  ahead and bought the softbox that I have here. And it's already, you know, leaps and bounds beyond
[22:12.070 --> 22:17.770]  what they were doing previously. Even if they just went with the built in webcam on their laptop,
[22:17.770 --> 22:24.770]  it's improved things. So one last thing, because I know this has come up in some presentations
[22:24.770 --> 22:33.090]  that I've done and seen others do, when you are going ahead and doing a presentation,
[22:33.090 --> 22:39.250]  you may want to go ahead and show off a, you know, a physical piece of hardware or something else.
[22:39.250 --> 22:46.010]  Maybe you're doing lock picking. There is, you can invest, you can use OBS,
[22:46.010 --> 22:50.910]  and there's plenty of tutorials on how to use OBS to composite, you know, a second camera in.
[22:50.910 --> 22:55.290]  But if you just want to go ahead and use the software that you're already using to do it,
[22:55.290 --> 23:02.210]  if you're using Zoom, as a lot of folks are, if you just go in and select inside of Zoom,
[23:02.210 --> 23:07.370]  share camera, and go to advanced, they have a little share content for a second screen.
[23:07.370 --> 23:12.350]  So you can highlight your video of, let's say, a second webcam that you have pointed
[23:12.350 --> 23:19.970]  at a piece of hardware or at a lock or anything else, and still have your video of your face
[23:19.970 --> 23:30.270]  be able to be seen by folks. So that's it. Thank you so much for coming. I apologize that
[23:30.270 --> 23:37.650]  it looks like my connection may have been not the best and may have affected it somewhat,
[23:37.650 --> 23:48.270]  but thank you so much, everybody, for coming. And I will, if I have the ability,
[23:48.270 --> 23:52.790]  I will open this up for questions.