a lamp in the background
since the studio space is now nearing
completion I figured that I would do a
little bit of a behind the scenes studio
tour talking about how I produce these
videos I am mpj and you are watching fun
fun function so this video is not going
to be about programming it’s going to be
how I produce programming videos so if
you’re not interested in that you can
just pretend this video didn’t exist and
come back next week if you are you’re in
for a treat because I’m going to tell
you all the magic behind how fun
function is produced I actually did one
of these videos called behind the scenes
two years ago but some things have
changed since then
a quite a bit of my gear has been
updated and I just figured it’s it’s
time for an update a disclaimer here is
that if you’re thinking about making
programming videos do not view this
video as a prerequisite or things to buy
before starting out when I started out I
literally only had a good microphone and
a laptop I didn’t have any special
cameras any fancy setups or any fancy
lights or anything like that I just
started producing and that is what you
should do as fast as possible if you’re
interested in making videos should get a
microphone because that’s the the only
thing you can’t really gear you can’t
live without you scattered like a blue
Yeti or something and start producing
that said I know a lot of you are
interested in what I actually use so I’m
gonna give it to you first things first
let’s talk about my microphone because
sound is the absolutely most important
thing that you can have like if people
cannot hear your voice properly if
there’s like problems in the quality of
of your sound like everything else
really doesn’t matter
sound is absolutely
paramount okay so I’m going to show you
my microphone using this bugger the
canon g7x we’re going to be talking
about about this bit later okay so this
is the October MK 12 it’s it’s almost
exactly above my head and it is a
corridor microphone which means that it
is directional it doesn’t pick up much
to the left or to the right or behind it
or anything like that so that it doesn’t
pick up the noise from my laptop over
there man this is messy
and yeah that is that is basically it
I’ve switched from to this from the blue
Yeti microphone that I used to have and
the reason why I did that was because I
was having some noise problems with the
Yeti not everyone does but I did and I
also I didn’t move around I don’t like
having in order to get the Yeti to work
really well it needs to be pretty close
to your face so when I kept it at the
position where I have the October at the
point a moment it really didn’t shine
that’s not how the Yeti is supposed to
be used the October this is exactly how
the October is meant to be used and this
is this is a very common setup when
recording voiceovers I’ve learned this
and pick up like in order to know what
to buy I watched a lot of videos by
Curtis Judd of link to his YouTube
channel in the in the video description
he’s amazing I still recommend the blue
Yeti for beginners mostly because the
the the sound problems that I had with
it seem to be very very rare most people
they work fine another reason why you
might want to get the blue Yeti is that
it is are a lot less expense
than this microphone this microphone is
kind of twice as expensive as the blue
Yeti
it sets you back about 200 200 euros and
it’s also it’s also not a USB microphone
the blue Yeti is basically you just plug
it into your laptop USB powered and bang
you can just start recording using these
are not quite as simple these
microphones need phantom power and that
is provided through this thing this is a
Scarlett eye-to-eye sound card and it’s
it’s basically connected to my computer
via USB and it is what is providing the
October microphone with power and you
also see that it’s recording my voice
here besides the fact that we need to
have an external sound card like this to
provide phantom power to XLR microphones
like this is that the an external sound
card is it’s quite a big thing and it’s
built only to be a sound card the sound
card in your computer is most likely
pretty cheap and it’s going to be
sensitive to interference from the
computer because there’s a lot of
electronics inside of the computer that
it’s hard to shield the internal sound
card from so whenever you connect a
microphone directly to the computer
there just tends to be a bit of
interference an external sound card will
just give you a better audio quality the
focusrite scarlett i think i said eye to
eye but it’s focusrite scarlett 2i2 will
set you back about 130 euros so this
this microphone and the Scarlet the
scarlett sound card will set you back
like 350 euros I also have this
microphone stand for it
it’s your
that cheap microphone stand nothing
special about it I think has paid like
fifty bucks or something like that a lot
of people compliment me on my high image
quality and then they proceeded to ask
what camera do you use
thank you for the observation of my nice
video quality but your assumption that
the camera is mainly responsible for it
is not correct so let me show you my
lights this up here looks very cozy and
homely but in my face I have two of
these buggers they are too big daylight
softboxes these are huge lights it takes
it takes a while to get used to having
these in your face for the hour or so
that it takes to this you can get these
soft boxes or soft lights you can get
these anywhere a Radio Shack or whatever
like these are I just bought these let
me actually show you what it looks like
without you hello so they provide a lot
of light hello darkness my old friend
there’s quite honestly not a lot of
cleverness to the positioning of these I
have not spent a ton of time thinking
about lighting like plan to do more of
that during this year but like just
having two soft boxes and just putting
them in your face we’ll just do wonders
for your
video quality the background is very
important you see a couple of lights in
it but the most important background
light is not in your view so I’m going
to show it to you it’s up here this is
just a cheap IKEA spotlight
rig say whatever what it does is that it
will shine a few lights on the
background so that it doesn’t appear
completely dark or flat it gives it some
kind of a it helps separate my head from
the background I actually plan to have
which gives the room a little bit more
depth I think it looks just lights are
nice I like amps they are cozy
I also hope to get a some kind of plant
in here in the back and perhaps actually
a plant on that table we’ll see perhaps
it’s gonna be too distracting so
lighting most important thing do not buy
a fancy camera before you have good
basic lighting that said let’s look at
the camera I’m going to record the
camera with the other camera all right
so this is the canon a DD this is a
significantly fancier camera then i had
in my last behind-the-scenes video the
camera that I used back then was
basically a DSLR that I had lying around
and I didn’t want to spend a lot of
money on
fancy camera at the time based wanted to
get started on a budget because you know
gear is really the ultimate
procrastination but I I ended up
upgrading to this one because I really
wanted a flip out screen i it’s really
beneficial to have the ability to see
yourself and see that oh you you’re
actually on the screen and since I was
buying a new camera anyway I figured
that I could allow myself to splurge a
little bit and I did that only led one
of the strengths of the ad is that it
has a really good autofocus it I
basically don’t have to do any manual
focusing at all with this I can just let
the camera do the work which is not
absolutely it it’s a bit of a luxury but
it’s it just speeds up the production
process a little bit that I don’t have
to care about this thing it just always
finds my face the lens that I use is
actually the old piece of lens that
comes with the came with my old camera
and there that is not it’s not per
design it’s because I I have this very
old corporation that I postponed for I
every year I just postpone dismantling
it it’s just like a thing I’ve
procrastinated on for years and I just
put it off myself – I’m not allowed to
buy a new lens until I’ve got that done
so it’s kind of like the people when
they they have to when they want to
finish a project they they just vow to
not shave their beard until they’re done
it’s that kind of thing so I don’t
recommend that lens it’s just a basic
lens I also don’t necessarily
recommend this camera this is not the
camera that I would buy today I actually
plan to upgrade this to possibly the
Panasonic gh4 a
the reason for that is that I want to
use the same camera for twitch streaming
as I use use for YouTube because the
camera is just so much higher quality
the for the twitch streaming now I use a
logitech webcam it’s the best webcam
that money can buy but it’s still a
webcam so it’s like super inferior
compared to this camera or like a proper
DSLR so panasonic gh4 would be and i
can’t use the eos for streaming because
it doesn’t provide a clean hdmi output
it has like you can’t turn off all the
over I’ll show you like these things
like there are a bunch of indicators on
the screen you can’t you can’t turn
those off on this camera and I just
figured that yeah you can do that on the
Panasonic g85 and it is an amazing
camera it doesn’t have the upper limit
of 30 minutes that the eos camera has it
like so you can only record for 30
minutes at a time so I actually have to
keep tabs on the how long it’s recording
for and then I see it approaching 30
minutes and I asked to have to stop and
then start recording and do that now
and there we go so there’s a lot of you
know tiny things around production that
you eventually learn one final note on
the camera that thing you see under
there
don’t pay that any mind that’s a task an
audio recorder that I no longer use I
have switched to the this scarlet the
tascam is a fine audio recorder but it
you can’t use it to record directly into
the computer which means that I have to
use I had to get the scarlet force
twitch streaming and now I’m just might
as well use the scarlet for both
recording both audio for YouTube and for
twitch in order to record the screen I
use QuickTime and it’s just it’s very
very robust it’s included in the
Macintosh and it just works really
really well it has never crashed on me
ever it’s just awesome QuickTime is also
what I used to get sound from this
microphone so you can just choose this
scarlet as the sound source when
recording the when recording the screen
and they will be synced up together very
nice when I started out I used a
software called ScreenFlow do not use
the ScreenFlow I used ScreenFlow for
many episodes and I eventually just
threw it out and discussed for two
reasons one is or at least was at the
time this was two years ago so sorry
ScreenFlow if you have fixed something
it was useless if you wanted to use a
external camera source because I
recorded these record with the DSLR
records video to an SD card it doesn’t
work as a as a webcam and ScreenFlow it
is designed to work with a webcam as
soon as you move outside of the web
ham world it just breaks down the whole
flow it’s just not built for that and
everything is yes sir I also found it to
be very very buggy and unreliable uh at
least compared to Final Cut Pro X that I
use now by the way Final Cut Pro X and I
was hesitant to use final cut for the
videos because I figured that ScreenFlow
was a software dedicated to producing
these kinds of these kinds of videos but
it turns out that Final Cut Pro is
really really nice in general for video
ScreenFlow will record and fuse your
webcam and your screen recording but it
turns out that is extremely easy to do
in in Final Cut
I literally just pick and select my the
files for my camera and the that’s the
screens screen recordings from QuickTime
and I guess press sync and they are just
from the audio they finally
automatically figures out where things
should be and it’s synced it’s just hmm
so nice this is the shiznit it’s
slightly more expensive than ScreenFlow
but it will be well worth your money it
is just a fantastic piece of software
it’s not perfect but as editing software
goes I’ve used a lot and Final Cut Pro X
is very reliable and easy to work with
all right there’s some more tricks let
me show you like a lot of people ask me
what I used to do this like this where a
highlight part of the screen this
software is called Mouse Posay it’s
great I really really love it it’s a
simple little thing that yes
Mack’s video go for quite a while it
struggled with positioning windows and
the solution that I ended up with is
this thing I tried I tried a lot of
window positioning software like a lot
but this this solution is so simple and
it’s extremely reliable and it works so
well hang on where it’s my image this is
the one so I just have this thing here
Cooper layer will it will just position
this semi-transparent box on your screen
and it allows you to well it’s just it’s
just an image that I made this red box
that happens to be exactly exactly 1920
by 1080 P wide which is just HD
resolution and this is where I just
position Windows in to help me assist me
with the exact window sizing and a lot
of people just don’t buy this this
solution they suggest all kinds of
window managers I have tried them all
trust me and they are just window
positioning software it’s not built for
this use case because I need this to be
pixel perfect but window positioning
software really doesn’t care about that
they and they have a hard time
calculating the exact offsets of the
menu bars so it’s just they just don’t
get it right it just doesn’t get right
with this thing I see exactly what is
captured and it’s just very simple for
me to deal with this thing it’s have
this dampening pad to prevent like to
just reduce the noise from the keyboard
so this is a pretty silent keyboard and
this helps it
be even more silent it’s called an
extract Ripper very thirteen-year-old
cool name
I added on a MacBook Pro maximum specs
that I bought last year if I bought a
new computer today for editing I would
probably get a iMac pro video editing is
just one of those areas where you just
it just doesn’t seem like you can
possibly get enough computing power like
it’s just you can always get a more
powerful computer to shave off those few
extra milliseconds in response time when
editing and that really makes the
editing process a lot faster on the
matter of sound I there’s still some
improvements to be made because you
might notice if I say something like
echo maybe I like you perhaps you hear
that the sound is still bouncing around
a little bit and that is because I have
three large windows here and I don’t
have anything on the walls here yet the
chair does some to help the bouncing
sound but there’s gotta be some more
sound treatment here I’m gonna play some
soft mats on the floor and probably
gonna buy some sound dampening equipment
like to keep here just out of you and
perhaps hear sound out of you and some
stuff on the on the walls as well like
I’m I’m gonna link a sound treatment
video in the episode description because
that can be like really really I can do
a lot of bad things for your sound if
you have like a room with a lot of glass
or just empty walls because I will
create this echo like effect and make
it’s hard to hear what you’re saying oh
by the way when editing I use these
these are pretty good but cheap studio
headphones
because studio headforemost headphones
are problematic when doing sound editing
because they try to improve the sound
for you like they for Beats headphones
or examples like they they young they
add a little bit of bass to make it
sound better but you don’t want that
when you are editing editing sound you
actually want to hear the problems so
that you can fix them and these are is
the AKG K 240 studio headphones so what
you want is studio headphones that are
head of that or knobs messing up your
sound reference headphones perhaps
they’re called I’m linked them I promise
you to talk a little bit about this one
the canon g7x it’s just a handheld
camera I bought it to do the walk and
talks that I used to do a a few year
last year I haven’t done them in a while
it’s not for any particular reason and I
think it’s just that I haven’t been
inspired it’s a bit tricky
I want to go back to doing them but
right now it’s I’m not doing oh and one
final thing one very important gear
actually there you women you already
know this but men if you have too big as
daylight lights in your face they’re
going to expose every single problem
with your complexion like if you have
redness and stuff like that it’s going
to just shine through a lot and it’s
going to distract the audience so get
some basic makeup powder you can just
walk into any makeup store and just ask
for mineral powder and they will help
you out for your skin complexion it’s
just you just get it on and it looks a
lot better and a lot less distracting if
you have any further questions or
thoughts just post them in the comments
down below or in the Fun Fun forum in
the dedicated thread for this specific
video there and that is it
you have just watched an episode of fun
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I am npj until next Monday morning stay curious