How to Create Killer Zoom Calls - The Gear

[Music] alright guys i'm nigel Paquin I'm from stellar Jay films I'm a videographer filmmaker and I love gear I'm a gear a holic and recently I've gotten into zoom because well my business has taken a big hit recently because nobody wants you to film events because well everyone is not allowed to be together like they used to so I'm moving into zoom and I want to start using this platform I believe it's gonna be something that we can all use and I want to help people because there's a lot of friends out there who don't know what's going on with microphones and cameras and things like that so basically how to create killer zoom calls the gear and number one is your number one is the camera and most of us have laptops I believe so we're gonna look at laptop cameras webcams smartphones DLSR micro four-thirds and capture cards and I'll walk you through sort of you know the overview of what you can use with these okay so the first one is a macbook most of us have mac books or well not all of us have Matt looks good I have two mac books in my house myself and the camera is pretty good it's a 720p camera and overall the camera is not bad I I'm I'm a bit of a stickler I don't really like it so much but if you're in this if you're in a pinch you can definitely use it it can get the job done and the next one is using webcams now I'm gonna show you guys some pretty cool stuff here these webcams have just gone ballistic the prices are crazy expensive it's almost impossible now I do a lot of Amazon and I can show you here the prices for the past month alone on web cameras have gone from $65 all the way up to two hundred and ninety five dollars and the peak it's sitting right now at around 235 so to be honest I would stay away from webcams because the price has just gotten insanely expensive so it's not going to be very viable right now to head into webcams so probably gonna have to scratch that particular one that one's been around for nine years so it is an extremely popular web camera from Logitech the other one is another Logitech again this is considered a really good one but again the price has just gone from $89 to an amazing $2.99 and 309 if you're wondering why the price goes up it's called retail arbitrage the people who own these products or how these products in stock are jacking up the prices and unfortunately there's nothing you can do Amazon is trying to stop this but it is price gouging and it's been around for as long as you can imagine the next one is this is kind of like an off-brand shoot model I'm not familiar with it but it's called each and this one kind of has your microphone has everything all sort of set to one it's number one in webcams probably because the price is so cheap at fifty seven dollars and the price before was 29 and slowly that price is going all the way up to fifty four dollars so if you guys are interested to know how to install this this is called the keep up plugin and what it does is it puts the plugin into your amazon and it allows you to see the price history and it's really useful because you don't want to be paying $300 thinking you're getting a great webcam when before it was only like us you know $80 webcam so be careful of all this price gouging that's going on is this is another offshoot company they're from China they've been around for a long time $79 it's 4k maybe not the best but again if you're in a pinch you can definitely go for the Chinese name-brand types smartphones are probably gonna be your best choice you guys know that you guys are using you know your iPads and iPhones and things like that obviously if you can use your you know smartphones they're pretty darn good they have 4k capability so I think probably a smart phone would be your best option right now because the prices have just gotten crazy expensive this is not going to be viable for most of you but if you're like me and you have expensive cameras you can use them they're DLSR and Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras and the way that you do is you need something called a capture cam and what you do is you plug this into your computer you take the HDMI and it goes into the capture card and then from here you can basically take your camera plug it into your laptop and use it as a webcam and here you can see a bit of a before and after so that's before and that's after the quality is really good I mean it's it's basically if you see those video game guys and you they're playing video games all day long on YouTube and things like that that's what they're using are these capture cards there's just one problem capture cards have again gone from the previous price of a hundred and $29 to oh well the price went up to four hundred and forty-nine dollars so this is not gonna be a viable option to buy the best one on the market but there are some offshoot types these ones are kind of the Chinese imports and these ones are about a hundred and nine dollars you can buy them in Japan for around 12,000 to 15,000 yen I spent about 15,000 yen on mine and it's from Taiwan and it's what I'm using right now actually so that's the capture card I'm using and this one's pretty good has some pretty good reviews alright so that is the overview of webcams do you guys have any questions please shoot away go ahead if you have any questions please yeah but it's big ass camera well if you get yourself a capture card from Amazon Japan for around 15,000 yen 12 to 15,000 yen you could actually use that deal as our camera so it's a it's an option maybe you never thought about GoPros could also work if you want to slap on a GoPro if it has an HDMI in you could actually use a GoPro camera which is maybe you never thought about it maybe you got an old GoPro just sitting around the house number two microphones we're going to look at polar patterns and this is how microphones take the what do you call it the incoming sounds and the turns that come into the microphone we're going to be looking at laptop onboard microphones and headsets smartphone earbuds headset plus a built-in microphone lapel mics mini shotgun plus some extras tripod or desk boom stands USB studio condenser mics and audio interfaces so the first thing you have is what we call the polar patterns and before you buy you know expensive mics you'd like to know how it interprets the sound you have Omni dit on the directional sub cardioid and cardioid microphones the microphone I'm using right now is called a shotgun microphone and this is the one down here that's why that's how you get that really crispy sound and its really good for interviews and it works pretty good for my you know setup that I have here it's a bit overkill for you guys I don't think you'd want to use something like this but again cardioid is what you want to be using if it's shaped like a heart then that's that's good because it gets rid of the sound that's in the front of the mic and it only accepts the mic that's coming from the back so that's a good microphone to use if you're going to be doing like like a people in the front and people in the back you might want to get yourself a sub cardioid microphone so again podcasters generally use the cardioid microphones they're probably the most common and most popular type polar pattern as you can see in the diagram it has a sweet spot exactly in front of the microphone well it neglects the sounds coming from the back of the phone like I said before and I don't think you need a cardioid microphone if you guys want I can put the links of all these information in the description when I upload this onto youtube if you have like a macbook computer like a new one like i have they have really good microphones this particular lady actually sang a song and she was actually proving that the microphone was so good she could use it for actually recording her audio so you might want to be using your laptop audio which is pretty good now if you're gonna use your laptop I'd highly recommend just getting some cheap little headphones because if you don't use headphones you're gonna get a lot of reverb and bouncing off the walls and things like that so if you can just you know get some headphones it could be anything but definitely use the wire types don't use Blu too because Bluetooth there's a lot of latency and sometimes the audio will break up and it just you can have a lot of issues so I'd recommend just the simple wired 3.5 milimeter types those are going to be your best bet plug it into your laptop your iPad whatever you have and that should be really good okay so combine those two and you should be good to go smartphone earbuds now this is something that's probably sitting in your desk you may not be using these but these actually have really good sound and just even as I was telling you guys I was watching Japanese TV today and they're using these on Japanese TV the news presenters are you know having to broadcast from home and low behold you probably have some of these just sitting in your you know bag somewhere and that's the polar pattern that it produces so it's really good it gets rid of the sound around the microphone and just picks up what's in front the headset built-in now I used to use this a long time ago kind of like the game or guys you know they don't want to have their hands touching the microphone and things like that I really don't know much about them but they're really cheap so for 30 bucks you can get into the game these probably work pretty good again I haven't used these so but I'm sure if you look at the reviews do your due diligence and do some research you might be able to you know start using these type of headphones with the microphone built-in okay lots of them to choose from again you might want to be looking at your prices to see if the prices are just going crazy again look at this one 58 dollars and the current price is sitting out 129 high yeah yeah and so yeah you might want to you know just because it's $129 doesn't mean it's great he used to be $58 the price is doubled this is called a lapel microphone I use this a lot in interviews and it's a fantastic mic it's a believ omnidirectional and it picks up all the sound in a circular pattern so you may not want to use it but they are really good they can go on your spot right in here so sometimes I put it on here on the person I've actually put them on my hat I've actually clipped it onto my hat there's lots of cool little places you can stick it but this is something you want to you know get into this particular company is called Road and this is the road this is what I'm using right now is a road and what's really cool about these roads is they can actually go into your iPhone and so for a few dollars more you will need right here if you get this wire it's called a TRS to TRS wire and if you plug that into your iPad this will take the input jack of your iPad and then you'll be able to use the lavalier microphone so for what how much are these things they are $29 expensive wire to have but it's really good to have in the bag and you'll be able to record with lapel microphone directly into your iPad and things like that so something to think about the mini shotgun is pretty much every video ographers bread-and-butter microphone these guys are awesome I've seen a lot of youtubers where they actually take this and make a boom pole and they just put it right up above here like so some youtubers actually put it down to the low section and sort of aim it up you always want to aim these shotguns for your chest you want to hit that chest right here and so the closer you get the more you know the more closer it sounds like that the further you get it starts to sound like that but from from a good distance like so you can get some really good crispy audio not too bad actually the price has been holding steady at around 59 to $60 and it's a great mic I've been using it for three years solid and it hasn't broke it's just an awesome microphone and they work again with smartphones and iPads so especially with you Mickey you might want to be jacking that up on your iPad one day it could be pretty good if you are gonna use like a boom pole type system you're gonna have this microphone but this little short little wire you're gonna need some distance so I I have this particular wire it's three meters I believe so 20 feet so like if your iPad was like over here you could run this 3 meter wire and then have the boom microphone just sitting right up above you like so right here so you need that 3 meters of wire to get that distance between you know the microphone and the I pad $23 it's an investment you got to make but you're gonna have that distance you need between the microphone and your device and the next one is just a simple little stand I use these all the time they're really good these little stands like these ones here and you know you might want to pick one up I recommend getting one where you can actually move the ball head if you can move the ball head it's really really important because you have to adjust that microphone so you might have to move it around so definitely you want to have one that has a ball head very very important boom stance now this is what I'm this is what I have here this is extremely low budget $11.99 12 bucks look at that you can stick your microphone on there you can look like a DJ and you can pretty much stick any type of microphone onto here and it's really good if you have it on your desk what I recommend is if you're not using it I'll kind of I don't know if I can show you but you can swing it around really easily so if you're not in teaching mode if you're not using if you're not using it you can always just swing it away from your desk the USB studio condenser mics now it's gonna cost you some money but the blue Yeti is gonna is got an amazing reputation it's used by all the podcasters and it's got a great reputation it's got 16,000 ratings of four and a half stars so I mean that's pretty crazy price is holding at 129 and if you look at the price over the history for three months it's been a hundred and twenty nine yellow is Amazon so Amazon's had it in stock and so it's just been holding steady at 129 which is good so you're not getting price gouged which is important again look at the reviews make sure everybody's happy with it but this has a great reputation it's a USB so it plugs directly into your computer which is good and then if you want you can get something called a pop filter and this takes away the sounds like thirds and that's and those different this sounds like that and so for you know about 20 bucks 25 bucks you can put a pop filter on but first thing I don't use it but if I do voice narration I love using the pop filter gets rid of all those sounds that I told you about finally the last thing you might want to think is getting an audio interface these things are amazing you can plug in your microphones and you are able to control your gain and all your different sounds and it's that's of what I'm using right now is the you are 12 and the reason why I use it is because of this XLR cable this particular 3 pin type microphone input here my macbook can't do this but if I plug in this type of microphone here then I can start using XLR microphones and I can control the gain and you know the monitor all the audio and things like that so you know this is a bit of overkill for most of you but if you're wanting to up your game you might want to get an audio interface all right Mickey what do you think it is if I were about to start a podcast or yeah I think all of the things that you can it would be really really yeah II um but it's nice that you can you know just look at your your I i phone headphones and try to use that I think I'm gonna try to get my students to try to do that more so yeah this yeah that's a great idea yeah I just get your students get pull out those old iphone wire old iPhone headphones and stuff so yeah again this was just to sort of inform you guys like this is from low budget all the way to overkill using audio interfaces I highly recommend installed the kippah app on your Chrome and it shows you all the price history it's like the stock market of Amazon prices and before you make a purchase don't just accept what Amazon has man you know like oh it's a hundred and thirty dollars it must be amazing no it's going up three times and so you know don't don't let Amazon dictate those prices cuz it's all price gouging right now so lighting window lighting so that's the easiest form you can always use is just your window basic LEDs battery versus plugged outlet types 400 and le 480 LED panels 600 LED panels diffusers light stands in RGB lights so the first thing is window lighting in filmmaking the best lighting is the window the only problem with window is the day changes so if you start at 10:00 the lighting will be different five o'clock so it's good if your classes are every day at 10 o'clock and and you know it's consistent but if you've got that evening class you can't use the windows so also clouds can affect obviously the light that's coming in but if you you know if you're by like a sunny window every single day you can always use your window it's free next one is just basic LEDs they're really inexpensive now because China has flooded the market of course the thing you need to know is if you're gonna buy these LEDs you're gonna see these little battery options here the problem with it is these batteries don't last at all the batteries themselves are really low amperage so you probably get around 30 to 40 minutes tops and then you have to charge it so I wouldn't recommend doing this so just be careful don't fall for this trap oh I can use battery operated LEDs but again the batteries are gonna die on you so I don't really recommend it if you're you know having to run lights off all day long you might want to get yourself one of these instead it's just a basic power adapter and you can plug this into the light so these are pretty inexpensive at ten dollars and then now you don't need batteries so that's great you can just have a remote control turn on your lights and you're ready to go and in fact that's what I'm using right now with my lights I just have a basic adapter so that works really good next one is a 480 LED panel these things are awesome I use these in interviews they're probably overkill but again if you're interested in upping your game for a whole entire 80 dollars you can have a fantastic light that's consistent it's gonna give you lots of good light price has been holding at 80 dollars next one is just a smaller one I think this is around 200 162 LEDs I use these I use these a lot on my youtube channel back in the day really easy they're simple gonna cost you $30 and again these are battery operated but if you look here it even says where is it right here ac/dc power interface so make sure when you make the purchase look for that ac/dc power interface and then you're good to go you can plug it in and turn it on you don't have to worry about batteries anymore 600 led in a back that's what I'm using right now on my face I'm using a 600 LED this is the exact same one that I bought about two years ago it's been a really good light it's a battery operated but I have a adapter running into it and then what I do is I put a softbox on top of it and if you just last an LED on someone's face it looks really bad so with one of these soft boxes it diffuses the light and it makes it more softer on someone's face I'm sure Mickey you would know your husband does a lot of this stuff with the you know studio work and things like that but yeah for $22 man it's really inexpensive and you've got a quality softbox that's just gonna diffuse that light and this is another diffuser this one I really like it's forty four dollars it looks really cool this is a simple light stands you're going to need some stands so some of these LEDs they're quite large so you might want to get a couple of stands one stand will cost you twenty bucks RGB lights and if you look at the background of mine right now I'm using this particular light this is a what this is what's called an RGB light and it stands for red green and blue and you can actually control the colors of your light so you can change it to any color that you that you like so if you are trying to get a stylistic approach of your background you can actually just slap this thing on the back of your bookcase your wall whatever you want you could put on a pink and you can have like different colors going on and they're they're absolutely amazing lights a lot of my friends on YouTube are they have two or three of these things and they're using it for their key light on their main face they've got one on their bookshelf and they've got another one on the side of the wall and I use this in my studio on on my white backdrop and I change the color and stuff like that but this light is absolutely awesome it just came on the market about six months ago and everybody loves it all right this is the bonus tip speed first we're gonna do a speed test we're gonna check our Wi-Fi versus land we're gonna use the land and then we're gonna use dongles first of all this is my internet speed and I did this test this morning or and then over here 77 they're the way I do this is I have a dongle now a lot of people hate the dongle so I hate dongles are horrible but I actually like dongles you plug it in and it does all of this on to your computer and you want to make sure if you purchase the dongle if you're going to the dongle you know craze make sure it's got a LAN cable import or Jack right here and then you're good to go you can plug in LAN and you don't have to use Wi-Fi turn off Wi-Fi on your computer and that's it you're good to go you can start using land instead of Wi-Fi and that's a really good tip you know because speed is going to make a big difference if you're doing multiple you know chat rooms and things like that so there you go that's my bonus tip of the day and that concludes my presentation well we all have Hikari fiber like my internet is Hikari fiber but we have a router that emits Wi-Fi right and that Wi-Fi we use our iPads to hook up to it but sometimes your router is downstairs your routers upstairs in your downstairs and you're always like man why is my internet so slow it's because you're trying to connect on the upstairs Wi-Fi upstairs if you had a LAN cable you could just you know you know when you go to a hotel and yet you see the old school you know plug it into your computer right but recently computers don't have those LAN LAN cables anymore we've kind of gotten away from that everything's turned into Wi-Fi I'm going old school I'm actually like hey plug it in and man the difference as you saw the speed is just insane you [Music]

Channel: StellerJay Films

Views: 51,785

Keywords: zoom, zoom gear, zoom camera, zoom mic, zoom lights, rode, microphone, webcam, audio interface, how to zoom, RGB lights, lav mic, shotgun mic, english classes, online class, meeting

Id: UK4WTRtDggg

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020