How to Start a Video Podcast from A to Z

all right let's talk about how to shoot a video podcast from beginning to end I want to cover everything from what microphones to buy what lights to buy audio interfaces switchers how many cameras you need what camera angles to use what lenses all the post-production of editing together podcasts how to upload it we're gonna cover it all I recently started somewhat of a podcast and I've been helping other people start podcasts and it's honestly a big learning curve and so I wanted to help you guys out give you a blueprint and this video you're watching on YouTube is a condensed version of a larger mini course called podcast Pro that you can check out at fulltime filmmaker.com so link will be in the description if you enjoy this video learn some good tips and want to learn more make sure to check that out so let's start first by talking about what microphone to buy now the microphone is going to be your most important thing within a podcast because podcasts can be just Audio Only now the most popular microphone out there is the sure sm7b which is what you're listening to right now the sm7b is going to come in around 400 microphone only it is probably the most popular microphone because it's good looking it's easy to have here in frame and it has a good sound but a popular alternative to this that's a little bit cheaper is the mv7 which ensures USB version of this an even cheaper alternative to that would be the rode pod mic which you can get for just a hundred dollars that too will have to have an XLR cable going into an audio interface and then on the cheapest end is going to be the FTF gear mic that you can get for just seventy dollars and that's a USB mic so it doesn't require any audio interfaces and that's going to come with a boom arm a desk stand a pop filter everything you need to get up and running for just seventy dollars and the last thing to mention on the sm7b is it's also a very low sensitivity microphone so you actually are going to need what's called a cloud lifter which is going to raise the gain going into your audio interface which is going to cost see another 150 dollars now a few pros and cons to be aware of each of these microphones the FTF gear mic does allow you to control the gain which is the volume however if you talk too loud into that one it's still going to distort even if your gain is turned down really low but as long as you're talking in a normal volume like this it is a great bang for buck microphone the rode pod mic in my opinion sounds a little bit thin the low end seems to be missing just a tad on that guy so you are going to have to do some EQ with that to get it to sound in my opinion the way that I would want it to sound and I feel like it picks up quite a bit of desk noise handling noise if you have it on one of the desk stands so be careful with that one also if you're not going to be using the pop filters that come with them because they do look really cool without it it does give to plosives quite a bit more so you're going to hear those sounds quite a bit more and the sm7b like I said it's a little bit flat so you can do some EQ with this guy but overall all these are great microphones but the microphone is just the beginning once you get a microphone you're also going to need unless it's a USB mic that goes directly to your computer you're also going to need an audio interface so we'll talk about that next so which audio interface should you buy again if you've bought a USB microphone you're not going to need one you can go straight into your computer so that's one of the great benefits of those however your nicer microphones are going to be going into XLR so you're going to need to not only pick up an XLR cable to be able to plug into the microphone but it's going to have to go into an audio interface which is then going to allow you to plug that into your computer on the low end I have used what's called The Scarlet solo you can pick up for 130 right now for one input or 190 for two inputs and I've used these for many years and they were great I have noticed a little bit more of a hiss a little bit of a background hum so that's what you're going to get with some of the cheaper audio interfaces a little bit more background noise now the one I use for a lot of mine is called an Apollo twin X which is going to run you about a thousand dollars it is a bit overkill for what you're going to need but I love it it's super high quality but in the middle of these options is what I would recommend for a lot of podcasters and that is called the road Caster Pro 2. and here's a few reasons why I'd recommend this specifically for those doing podcasts number one is that if you're using an sm7b like I mentioned it has a higher noise floor you're going to need to use a cloud lifter but with this guy with the road Caster Pro 2 you actually don't need a cloud lifter the second thing is that it comes with presets for a lot of the popular microphones the sm7b being one of them and they have a few different options of neutral podcasts or Studio options that are going to give you flatter or more punchier sounds to it but for those who don't want to mess with EQ and learn how to use all these different tools to mix your audio and make it sound better these presets are pretty awesome I still like to do a few things after even with the presets but the other main thing that I like about it and the reason why I use it for podcasting is that you can have redundant recording if there's any goof up on your computer this rarely happens but every once in a while if I'm recording into logic X it can happen to where it stops recording in the computer and unless I'm looking at it and monitoring it I'm not going to know it stopped and then I'm out of luck I don't have that audio with the road Caster you can be recording into logic X but you can also plug in a Micro SD and be recording to that internally in the road Caster Pro 2 as well that is on the more expensive end but eventually that would be my recommendation for podcasting and as far as XLR cables I recommend mogami they are the best highest quality XLR cables I've used now the last thing to mention with audio gear is acoustic treatment now this whole room that I'm in right now will cut to a shot is completely acoustically treated and so that you're not hearing Reverb like the echo bouncing off of walls and that's a huge mistake I see in a lot of podcasts but I'll post a link in the description where you guys can get these acoustic blankets they're about a hundred dollars a piece you get two or three of those put them up in your recording space all around you and that's going to make a world of a difference in the quality of the audio and make it sound a lot more professional so that's pretty much it for audio gear next let's talk about tips for actual mic placement and use now main mistakes you're going to see with audio with podcasters is they're either going to be too far away this is like a foot away from the microphone it can be doable but it's not ideal for these types of microphones and these microphones can be used as close but one of the challenges with it being too close is you're going to hear plosives a lot more I like to have it just an inch or so from my mouth and have it to the side so that my air is pushing out in front of the mic instead of directly into the mic to avoid those plosives they could also put an extra pop filter on here or the bigger pop filter it comes with however it's going to give you a different sound it's not going to sound quite as clear and it doesn't look quite as good now the other thing to pay attention to is the gain level either on your microphone if it has one on the microphone if it's a USB mic or on your audio interface you want to make sure that you've set your gain levels and you've tested the audio to make sure it's sitting between negative six at the highest to about negative 18 at the lowest decibels but once you have your audio dialed in next for a video podcast specifically the next most important thing is going to be your lighting so we'll talk about that next I get asked all the time how do you light for two different people and this is the most common way that I see is having one light over the top of each person that's shining on the opposite person because if you just have lights pointing this way it's all going to be frontal lit and there's not going to be very much character very much Dimension very much depth obviously depends on the look you're going for but specifically for two person setups we have an aputure 300X here and an amaron 200x over here and about the smallest Dome I'd recommend getting is about a three foot Dome you can find smaller lights like a ring light for example is probably the cheapest light I'd recommend getting but a ring light's not going to be very soft and the softer the light the more forgiving it's going to be on imperfections on the skin but ideally you put a sheet between it or something to diffuse it to make it even softer or you buy something nicer The Next Step Up from a ring light would be something like an amaran 600x and then pick up a 50 Dome on Amazon and suddenly have a much softer much higher quality light that's going to be bright enough for most scenarios you'll notice I also have a FTF gear lamp tube light over here and that's just lighting up this plant over here this is before and after so you see it just lights up that tree a little bit makes it a little bit less dramatic on the background now we also have a hair light that is right above me up here that is an amaran 600x up there and that's just allowing me to have a little bit of Separation here from the back wall and then coming back over to this spot I've had this turned off till now but I have an aperture 600x which is overkill it doesn't need to be that nice of a light but it's what I have so we used it and that has a gobo on it which when turned on looks like window light coming in from the side there which lights up that tree next to me this is a lamp back here floor lamp and inside that lamp I have two b7cs from aperture as well so again just making the background a little bit less dramatic and then here is my key light on and off so you can see what that's doing so two three people set up this is a very common way to do it but we're now going to move over to a different lighting setup to give you some other ideas this is going to be also a two-person setup so instead of two key lights each overhead on each person instead we have a lantern soft box that you just put over top of both people it is a little bit raccoon eye-ish and so what I have to help out with that is an amaron t4c tube light that I will turn off and on here so you can see what that's doing so that's off and on now you can make that fill light even more dramatic if you want to really make this fill in so you can see that on and off and in the background that's a gobo light you see on the back there that is what is shining on the back wall and I will turn that off and on now so you see that just gives a little bit of Dimension to the back wall so it's not just blank and I believe that's a 300X that that light is on and then over here we have tube lights these are actually Nan light tube lights so now you can see what it looks like without those back there this could totally work as well and then up here you'll see we have a hair light this is the f-22c from amaran let me turn that on and off so you can see what that's doing you see how it's just highlighting my hair and the chairs right here giving them a little bit more Dimension so you can see them popping out also on the microphones so could you get by with just this key light no fill light or hair light yeah and then if you throw out the Gobo this is just the key lights with those splashes of color on the background here's how the key light which is an amaran 100x by the way so we definitely want that on now let's throw back on our hair light separating us from the background a little better now here's our tube light to give us a little more fill light and then that Gobo back there to make things a little more interesting so let's now go over to our third scenario and we'll show you how to light that with just one light all right so our last setup here is going to be in our den so we got 700 camera setup kit lens amaran 600x with a 50 Dome on there and then a 70 condenser mic then you just need obviously a computer to plug that into so here is what the audio sounds like and what the video looks like with this setup and as I mentioned earlier one of the biggest differences you'll notice in this room is it's not acoustically treated and this is honestly what a lot of people's podcasts are except at least I have a microphone a lot of people aren't even using a microphone like this they're just using a lav mic or a webcam or the computer microphone so you look over here we've got a sound blanket on a stand and so what I would do is just bring this nice and tight into myself like this and it doesn't have to be in a nice stand like this but this is basically a c-stand on Wheels so this is what it looks and sounds like in a very normal room that doesn't have any acoustic treatment besides this blanket that I've brought in really cheap camera on a really cheap tripod that's an FTF gear tripod as well seventy dollars all in were around a thousand dollars and you suddenly have an awesome video podcast ready to go this is going straight into the computer recording on a free app in GarageBand we'll then export that out stick it into our editing program and we're good to go so let's talk about what camera to buy camera and lens set up to get when filming a podcast notice we're talking about this after we've talked about audio gear after we've talked about lighting gear and that is for a reason if you have good audio and you have good lighting then your phone can work and that's the first thing I'd recommend if you're on a budget just use your phone people mostly care about the audio so if that's taken care of and if they can see your face and you're well lit then the phone quality is going to be good enough now on the cheapest end we showed you in our den setup there that we had a Canon R50 with a kit lens that's going to be your cheapest option as cheap as I would go just use your phone if you're not going to invest in a real camera now a lot of the older cameras are going to limit you to 30 minutes of recording do not get 30 minute recording limited cameras for podcasting because most podcasts episodes are going to be at least an hour cameras I can film for an hour can work like that R50 that I have kind of pushing it though I'd get one that can go two hours the next camera for canons I can go two hours is going to be the r10 which is going to come in at a thousand dollars so that's on the Canon side on the Sony side I'd get the Sony zv E10 and that's going to allow you to record for up to 13 hours now what I'm using here is the Sony a7s III obviously that's ideal over in this room we have two c70s obviously that's going to get very expensive and so more importantly than the camera bodies is going to be lenses but you want to focus on lenses that can stop down to low apertures and the reason for that is because low aperture lenses are going to allow you to have that shallow depth of field that background blur so I look for a lens that can go down to a 1.4 aperture if possible again in the den setup we had a kit lens which is an 18 millimeter on there and that's on a 1.6 crop sensor camera which brings the focal lengths to about a 29 millimeter so that's what you saw over there this is a 35 millimeter that you're seeing right now on the Sony a7s III and then over here with the C70 cameras we have 50 millimeter lenses over there I think for medium shots which is what this is 35 to 50 millimeter is the most common I just keep it medium so that they can move freely and not move out of frame if you have a tight shot on them and they move too far you're going to lose them from the shot and so just be aware of that be careful you need a camera you need a lens you also need a tripod forgot to mention that again the FTF gear tripod is the cheapest I'd recommend that's going to come in at just 70 dollars most the ones I use are going to be manfrotto's which are going to come around 200 but one thing I would recommend getting for all podcasting is a dummy battery that can plug into an outlet into your wall you don't want to have to be constantly switching out the batteries and risk the battery going out in the middle of a podcast so that's pretty much it for camera gear focus on the lighting focus on the audio and then pick up a camera that's going to allow you to film your face and you'll be good to go with gear all right let's now talk about how to actually film a podcast let's go through the whole process together alright so first question is how many cameras need to be filming I would say if you're going to be interviewing a second person I would say having two cameras is ideal now you could just do one as we'll show over in the text setup we want these to be at least 30 degrees apart these two camera angles and these are actually 90 degrees apart as you can see here and I actually have a third camera set up over here in the R7 and that's going to be showing both of these guys at the exact same time so with our audio we have that going into the road Caster Pro 2 over here as I mentioned earlier and then the road Caster is going into our MacBook and then you see here that we are recording on Logic Pro X and then right here we have what's called an ADA mini pro ISO but the Ada mini pro allows you to hook hdmis from each of those three cameras into the Ada mini pro and then I'm able to switch between each of these camera angles it will save me a file of those cuts I've made so that I can have the podcast video already cut up so if you have an extra person somebody who's going to be watching the cameras and monitoring audio anyway you might as well get one of these Ada mini pros and have them be cutting in real time Carter and I are going to have a little podcast conversation and show you how this all works in real time so welcome to the show today this is the so and so show my name is Parker walbeck and today we have with us Carter Hogan good buddy of mine and the manager at full-time filmmaker Carter good to have you here good to be here Carter where are you from tell us about your family give us a quick background oh yeah so you know Carter Hogan originally from Salt Lake City moved down that's really interesting tell me about your family so we have a couple people in it and we that's a lot of people yeah it's fantastic it's amazing yeah I love your hat by the way really good hat I brought it first I want that on the record I was gonna wear that hat but he wore that and so I didn't wear a hat so thanks for making me change my outfit into the the style and brand of hats I'll give you it is a good one okay so that is how you film a podcast just to give you an idea now I want to show you in post-production how I would edit that together first I'm going to import my footage then I'll just drag in my video files to start a new sequence then I'm going to drag them on top of each other then bring in each of my separate audio files and then the easiest way to sync these up is just highlight all right click synchronize audio make sure it's on audio and hit OK so next I'm going to unlink the camera audio and delete those we don't need those anymore and now we're just going to start cutting back and forth between camera angles depending on Who's Talking Now the easiest way to do this is just to find when we switch off you zoom in here and you can see this is when I stop talking when Carter starts talking so you're just going to come in here and I have the keyboard shortcut V allowing me to enable and disable this or right click enable and then B for my blade tool by the way you can download all my keyboard shortcuts to do all these that I'm doing and then push V and now we start watching and cutting welcome to the show today this is the so and so show my name is Parker walbeck and today we have with us Carter Hogan so right before Carter says good to be here we're going to cut to him I have you here good to be here and I'm going to leave a smile on there for just a minute and then cut back to me originally from Salt Lake City moved down and then right here I cut him off so let's cut to me cutting him off until I stop cutting them off and again I'm just looking at the waves here and just making those cuts next to those and then I'm just making projected Cuts something like that little people in it and we that's a lot of people yeah so we're gonna cut this short and just come to the very end here if you have any further questions please let me know and pretend like that was the end so cut off the rest that could be the end you could export that out upload it as is I would however recommend that you put some intro and outro music now the intro and outro music that I've been using for years on my full-time filmmaker YouTube channel is by by the way may and everyone knows who hears that song that that has a full-time filmmaker tutorial intro song and that song specifically can be found on musicbed and they have been my go-to website for licensing music for several years now and they are the sponsor of today's video now personally I believe that musicbed has the highest quality music out there of any other licensing platform they have over a thousand incredibly talented artists and over 40 000 songs to choose from some of my favorites to use are Tony Anderson chapters Ryan tobert by the way may just to name a few but the difference that musicbed is the quality cinematic nature of the music it just feels like music you'd actually hear in a film score or in a high-end commercial rather than these cheap corporate jingles and finding the right song You Need Is Easy with their Advanced parameters like genre mood and even beats per minute and key and specific to podcasting they now have a podcast subscription as well so if you're ready to take your projects and films to the next level go hear the difference yourself and sign up for a free account at musicbed and use code full-time filmmaker at checkout to receive one free month with your purchase of an annual subscription so let's pull in now our music bed song from by the way may and we're not going to talk about this in this video but we have a separate video inside the course talking about how to create logos and Logo animations but I'm also going to pull in my FTF intro logo animation welcome to the show today this is the so and so show my name is Parker walbeck and today we have so whatever music you find Just Adjust that volume so it's not overpowering the Audio I personally only have it last about 15 to 30 seconds depending on what the intro sounds like so about right there I'm just going to cut it off and then add a little applied default transition and fade it out over time but now we're going to find the point where the last beat hits on the outro if you have any further questions please let me know and then we'll just fade that in towards the end here now the last thing I would do is add any audio effects we're not going to cover this in depth here you can watch full videos talking about each of these inside the course but the main audio effects I use is going to be an EQ a compressor a limiter some normalization some mouth d-click sometimes I'll use denoising and the audio that I've already dragged into our timeline has already been processed before I brought it in and I do all of my processing in logic pro and the plugins I use are called Fab filter plugins and then I use two plugins from isotope RX elements one being voicity noise and one being mouth D click and a lot of the paid plugins I mentioned you can find free versions within most editing softwares for EQ I use parametric equalizer then I'll hit edit and I always add a high pass filter that's just going to get rid of any low end rumble or plosives so that is a must I always do that first and depending on the microphone and the speaker will depend on what I'll do here in EQ but usually will boost the high end a little bit and I'll usually boost the low end just a little bit as well you guys put a pop filter on that get like one of these big pop filters because you don't care how it looks okay so just very subtle just adding a little bit more punch to the audio with EQ next I put on a compressor for that I use Dynamics so drag that on come to edits and I use a preset called Soft compression and I usually adjust this ratio to three turn on the limiter so it doesn't go above negative one decibels and then depending on how loud I record will depend on how much makeup gain I'll add here avoid those pluses at all cost if you're not doing video so you see over here we're in the negative 12 the negative six range I want to bring that up just a tad more so I might bring this up to maybe six or seven put a pop filter on that get like one of these big pop filters because you don't care how it looks and again we're not going to get into this in depth but I'd also recommend downloading what's called Julian loudness meter this is a free plug-in and while you're listening back to your audio you want to be looking at the integrated lufs Spotify and a lot of these platforms recommend between negative 14 and negative 18 DBS so one of the biggest things you're going to hear in podcasts that might drive you nuts so I'm about a negative 21 which means I want to bring this up a tad more and you can do that by pushing G on your keyboard hitting normalize Max Peak audio put it to negative one and then watch my waveforms down here they all jumped up and normalized to a higher volume those plosives those air pockets are going to be going straight into the microphone so now we're at about a negative 17 lufs which is in that zone and the last effects I mentioned that are going to be paid is going to be an rxd noise this is going to get rid of any of the background fuss so if we come to just a part with no audio so if you put this on come to edit you can adjust how much you want it to be working I'm usually around a four five six Zone but if it's really noisy you might want to boost that up so here's before and after as you can see it just takes away some of that background fuzz and I think that's only a 30 plug-in so it's not too expensive but the last thing I would do I think you have to buy their 200 package on this one but this one's called mouth D click and this is just going to take away all the mouth noises when you speak come to edits I usually have sensitivity at five click widening at 2.5 let's listen to this with and without making us separating us from the background a little better now with making us separating us from the background a little better I highly recommend that now that I use that I recognize so many mouth noises in people's audio at this point we'll just come up to file export media name it whatever you will where you want and for most podcasts you're probably good just to export it out at 1080p I just use the YouTube preset within the h.264 format and then hit export and you're ready to now upload your podcast which we'll talk about next how do you upload a podcast now it's not exactly straightforward I want to show you in this video how to do it with a free option called anchor FM so type that into Google it's called Spotify for podcasters anchor dot fm go to login hit sign up put in your information hit sign up let's make your first episode let's do it so I have a file ready to go I'm going to upload a video file by hitting browse come to a file that I want to upload and it's going to ask if you want an audio episode or video episode I'm going to say video and you're going to title it whatever you want put a description customize if there's a certain season number episode number you want this to be upload some episode art if you have any all right so once that has finished uploading now we're going to hit next and now we get to set up our podcast and call this true Millennial give it a description put in a category podcast language English hit continue upload some cover Arts continue update now this is ready to publish this will make your podcast available on Spotify so we'll hit publish and it will let us know when it is ready on Spotify now if you want to put this on other platforms you have what's called an RSS distribution feed so you'll use this link right here to then upload this to other platforms and then as soon as they notify you when it's ready on Spotify you'll be able to hit listen on Spotify and you'll be able to start listening to and sharing your podcast so that is how you create a podcast from A to Z again this was a compressed version just trying to give you all the steps so if you want more in-depth detailed instructions on each of these steps and additional steps like using stream yard to do virtual interviews or how to monetize your podcast to actually make them sustainable for tips and tricks on how to get more views and actually make your podcast engaging then make sure to check out links below to join our course podcast Pro or that many courses also included inside full-time filmmaker our main course with over 600 tutorials linked also in the description below but that's all I got for you hopefully you got some good insights on how to get your podcast off the ground don't forget to subscribe for more content just like this and if you have any further questions please let me know

Channel: Full Time Filmmaker

Views: 371,555

Keywords: parker walbeck, full time filmmaker, podcast, podcast pro, podcasting, how to podcast, upload podcast, anchor fm, spotify, best camera for podcasting, video podcast setup, video podcasting, how to start a podcast, podcasting tips, video podcast

Id: 9y9UEAkB2VA

Length: 28min 27sec (1707 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023