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A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

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111–120 of 136 posts

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of serious, famous people live in grand, nice houses in older neighborhoods with hopelessly oversubscribed Comcast. The CEO of my Fortune 500 company presented at a remote all-hands at about 0.25 frames/second. Now at that level, maybe you can spend the $10 million it would take to pull fiber to your house. But we’re not taking about buying some prosumer electronics here, we’re talking years of permitting and d…

I find it shocking that bad uplink in private homes is still a problem in the US. In times where a good proportion of public life happens on the web, most of shopping is done online, and media are dominated by streaming, why do people not run rampant against the lack of a decent wired uplink?

It isn't still a problem. Misguided wifi setups certainly are though.

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#112
post #79

I have a good mic setup, but trying to improve my lighting. The biggest issue I have is with the mounting. How do people generally mounting their lights so that they don't take up much desk space?

I don't have a good answer for you but right now I'm facing a large diffused light that lightens my face and a backing green screen. Mine is floor standing and enormous, but you can get an equivalent diffuser attached to monitor and an LED behind that.

Building on this, I sit at a south facing window that gets good lighting for most of the day. I use a large circular photography light diffuser that can stay firm in the window frame using the tension of the diffuser. That plus slightly grainy background images to blend with the webcam footage and I blend well with any background :D

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an organizer for a major ACM conference last year, and I really struggled with my home video streaming setup. A lot of equipment was sold out last year. I followed the recommendation of some YouTubers and realized that this is not as simple as it seems. Despite realizing the importance of a live stream setup and investing in it, I'm pretty unhappy with the results. Thankfully we are out of the worst of the pand…

For the glasses glare I found a few things that help: - Turn down display brightness - Dark mode everywhere possible - Block direct sunlight (blinds/curtains or rotate desk) - Illuminate the rest of your face to reduce the contrast from glasses If you use a terminal for most things, including notes, one thing that helps a lot is to use a semi-transparent black background and position the terminal window over the meet…

>Block direct sunlight

Yeah, I don't bother day to day but, if I'm recording video, I have a couple different pieces of fabric that I can use to control the light coming in the windows--which also have shades--depending upon how sunny it is outside.

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#114
post #84

As someone who records nearly daily, I'm going to critique: > What’s required for an impeccable streaming setup? > 1) Good lighting that can be precisely calibrated, both in brightness and in colour temperature For most uses, fixed brightness is fine as long as you can adjust the light's distance. Lighting doesn't need to be color-temperature adjustable because that's what the white balance on your camera is for -- j…

There doesn't seem to be a great consensus on the best microphones to use on my usual sources (HN). This is surprising because the difference between laptop mic or bluetooth mic and a good microphone is enormous. I also don't mind spending a bit more $$$ because this is for my day job. But when buying a mic, I've read many types of good microphones (bluetooth streamer/podcaster looking mics vs XLR traditional looking…

>the difference between laptop mic or bluetooth mic and a good microphone is enormous

Yes but for most of us for most purposes, you can probably spend $50-$100 and you're pretty much there. Something like that Shure is almost certainly fine. I have a Blue Snowball and a Behringer XM1800S that I use for different purposes. (Not for different sound quality but the Behringer is plugged into a mixer for podcasting.)

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. So placing higher value on people based on how they dress is a garbage practice used to profile people with poorer backgrounds and limit their social mobility, keep them out of better jobs, keep them out of upwardly mobile roles like management. It's "learn to play the fashion game or get fucked" We would be so much better off without that crap.

Sure, but we the same applies to any other skill or practice. Like learning to program. Or bathing. Or showing up to work on time (a much, much bigger problem than, say, not owning a suit, for the actually-poor—ask them, or their employers, and you'll get an earful). In the case of management, specifically, I'd think if someone's reached the point where they have a realistic shot at a management position, but haven't…

> Meanwhile, anyone who cares can dress plenty well enough to start in a lower-level management position by hitting Goodwill or eBay and dropping low-hundreds of dollars

Would second Ebay if on a budget, lots of very cheap options compared to what things go for retail. Back when I was in school I bought around 10 designer silk ties for 20$ (retail new for 200$+ each) and a few suit jackets. Knowing your measurements can't be overstated, and only costs a tape measure. Alterations are also very affordable and can make a world of difference.

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#116
post #48

I don’t know about fancy mikes but just using a phone as the webcam made a profound difference for me. And my AirPods seem to work well as microphones for me.

https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1405575186691330054 "I don't know who needs to hear this, but your colleagues want to hear from you, and your AirPods sound like shit"

Might not be professional audio but Airpod's are better than using the built in Mic's and just using headphones improves your audio quality.

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#117
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. People with a spare room can spend thousands of dollars decking out a studio just so. But a lot of that money is pretty much wasted if they have glitchy Internet and there's not much they can do about other than renting a private office that has good Internet (which is probably an OK option for mid-tier famous people if they live near a city or other area with good network infrastructure).

This seems like a sort of roundabout reinvention of the television network. There are already buildings in every population center where famous people go to make their broadcast appearances.

Google I/O 2021: A peek into 3D video chat booth Project Starline

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-gives-peek-into-3d-vide...

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#118
post #13

I expected to read about studio setups for live-streaming, e.g. on twitch. There are some musicians on twitch that have really awesome setups where one can discover so much visual detail while listening. I would have loved to read about some of those, perhaps even with a bit of advice how to build my own. Instead I got a luke-warm analogy of business attire and videoconferencing backgrounds. Mildly disappointing.

Any chance you could list some links for the Twitch streams you're referring to? I've been asked to participate in some live streaming sessions for electronic music and I'm not quite sure how not to make it boring, at least from a visual standpoint.

Fantastic Plastics are a husband/wife duo that play Devo-inspired synth pop. It’s not normally my cup of tea, but they’re fun and the production value is great. They’ve got costumes, make extensive use of green-screening, OBS overlays, and interstitial video between songs. It’s silly and fun and they’ve clearly put a ton of work into it.

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#119
post #15

I write off anyone who video conferences with a bookshelf behind them as a fool trying to pass off as more intelligent than they actually are. It’s so cringey because of how blatantly manipulative it is.

That's ridiculous. Lots of people don't live in huge houses where they have lots of options. They're videoconferencing from their home office desk, which guess what -- it's extremely common to have bookshelves behind your desk. Has been for many decades, it's not a Zoom thing.

If anything is cringey, it's your tremendously unsympathetic comment, unfortunately.

Re: A good livestreaming setup is a well-tailored suit

#120

I have a good mic setup, but trying to improve my lighting. The biggest issue I have is with the mounting. How do people generally mounting their lights so that they don't take up much desk space?

Mounted with a desk clamp at the back of the desk, takes up no space really (but its a bit further away you might need a bright lamp).
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