Thread by @QuinnyPig

Yesterday in my public speaking AMA, someone asked for a walkthrough of my video / audio setup gear. Well okay.

Before I do, please understand that I have two podcasts that do five episodes a week, and I charge companies to do webinars. These are business tools.

We start with my 2015 MacBook Pro. My primary computer, its keyboard is trash because of Apple's withering contempt for its users.

My iMac has been ordered.

To compensate, I've taken mechanical keyboards from "interest" to "problem" all the way through to the other side: "collection."

This is currently a Bluetooth / cabled variant; the @KeychronMK K4. I like it! It's also depressingly inexpensive.

This is my LG 5K monitor. It is utter trash. It ghosts horribly, and support was unkind.

I will not buy another LG monitor. Stay away.

Here we have my @alexa99 Echo Show. Its primary purpose is to mishear me when I'm recording and interrupt me.

Amazon boasted 10K employees working on this. That's more a confession to my ears.

It also controls the lighting, but we'll get there.

This is my wireless charger for my phone. It holds the phone upright while I ignore your texts and DMs.

This is my teleprompter rig--a metal and glass enclosure. I use it for Zoom meetings. There's a Luna display dongle that mirrors the screen from my media computer to this thing.

That's a dedicated cheap iPad in the holder, and the whole assembly lives on a tripod.

It mirrors the display from my dedicated Mac Mini media machine. It's tucked around here in its cable nest of shame pending the new iMac / reorganization.

The @elgatogaming Stream Deck isn't really great for my use case. I mostly use it to open different apps.

I wish it had better Audition integration; maybe it does and I just don't know how it works. I'd not buy it again at the moment.

Inside of the teleprompter is a Sony A6600 4K camera with a zoom lens that I can control remotely (not shown). Shown is a wide angle lens for a different aesthetic.

It used to feed into an @elgatogaming CamLink 4K. (I have two of those). It was great, but I upgraded to the @Blackmagic_News ATEM Mini Pro. Four HDMI inputs, on-device keying, addressable over the network. I'd make a few tweaks but this thing rocks.

Magic Trackpad 2 for scale.

Let's talk sound. I use a RE20 dynamic mic because @christopholies told me to. It's shock mounted, has a pop filter, and is affixed to disappointing Heil PL2T monitor arm. I'm actively looking for a replacement that's sturdier.

That's for podcasting; for video calls I either use AirPods, or a Synco shotgun mic aimed at my face. It's on a floor stand. Half of my office is basically inaccessible.

The mics are fed into a @rodemics RodeCaster Pro. It has a lot of bells and whistles, is portable, and lets me do all kind of audio nonsense. It outputs via USB-C to the media computer.

For my audio output, I either use the Audio-Technica ATH-M50X for pure podcast work, or the Shure 215 in-ear monitors for video work where they should be almost invisible.

I have a second a6600 camera, tripod, light, and shotgun mic in a Pelican case that I ship to the other side of video webinars.

Full service is important; "I have great video, client is filming with a potato" makes it look amateurish, and we are not that.

I have an overhead light dingus that I got off of Amazon. It's decent enough. Larger than it looks, too.

I also have two USB light panels on light stands. (A third older, crappy model is rarely used and clinging to the tripod).

Under the tripod you can see my bluetooth foot pedal. That controls a number of teleprompter apps on the iPad for video work.

In the upper corners of this echoey room I have sound baffles to help with that. It's not perfect, but I don't really have a spare room to turn into an acoustic studio.

This is the distressed leather couch upon which I rest my fat ass--but what's that underneath?

It requires I move the lights and tripod a bit, but it's a full green-screen that expands and lets me do things like "talking head superimposed over my own slides."

If I were bolder I could use it for live keying with the ATEM Mini Pro.

And that's where things stand today.

I'd love to get a monitor arm / 2 mic stand / tablet holder arm setup that beats this janky nonsense. @Yellowtec's Mika system is pretty, but expensive and ships from Germany.

Questions?

Oh, almost forgot! I use @castapp for my interview recordings. It's got a couple of challenges (Chrome only, no Calendly integration) but the audio quality is awesome. I used to use @zencastr, which was also decent.

I want to be very clear here though--I started off with a $60 microphone plugged into my laptop via USB. Most of this is unnecessary!

I improved with time, iterated through a bunch of this stuff. There were some bad purchases. There's a bunch of equipment stored away.

One of the most common podcast failure modes is "dropping a few grand on equipment before you have anything to say."

People will forgive production value for good content; the inverse is very much not true.

As for video, a couple of paid speaking engagements switched over to online events due to These Unprecedented Times and my options were to either learn to do video really fast or refund some sponsors.

I really can't stress this enough--have a plan!

I launched each of my properties (newsletter and two podcasts) with a budget of $2500 each. I had clear metrics for both success and failure.

These things employ 3 people and turn a profit. Horse before cart.

Things in storage, mostly due to lack of travel:

Scarlett Gen 2 USB XLR interface. The RodeCaster used to be worse at this but the latest firmware fixed it.

A Zoom H6. Travel isn't a thing right now. Also a pile of Sure SM58s to replace the older ATR2100-USBs I started with.