Podcasts - engaging with the Internet audio / video way

[guitarplayer]

Please could you post here suggestions a minimal setup (ERE style) that will pass as mainstream for online audio / video presence?

@AH please if you could maybe post as you are pretty active, others welcome as well.

I would be willing to throw some (not much) money on it, predict mostly on a microphone.

[white belt]

I have a Youtube channel where I post gameplay videos/commentary.

For podcast and video, audio quality is going to be important. One of the most recommended "good" cheap USB microphones is a Blue Yeti. I'm not sure how available they are in your country, but here in the USA you can pick up a used one on ebay for ~$30. The stand it comes with is perfectly adequate if you can position it relatively closely to your mouth (the quality improves significantly if it is within 6 inches or so of your mouth in my experience). Fancier stands with boom arms and shock mounts can be acquired down the line but aren't necessary when starting out. There are fancier microphones like the Shure SM7B that professionals use, but I don't think it's worth the additional cost when you're just starting out. The other part of audio quality is learning how to do basic audio post-production in the program of your choice. There are plenty of tutorials available on Youtube and elsewhere.

I am currently using my old iphone as a webcam with VDO.Ninja. In theory you can use any smartphone and the camera quality will be better than what can be had on cheap webcams. Someone from work gave me an old Logitech C920, however I found my iPhone camera solution to be of superior quality. I bought a cheap phone stand that has a clamp on one side for my desk and a long goose neck so I can adjust the camera, although this could likely also be bodged/improvised if you have a smartphone mount laying around. Your camera needs might be different but I'm only doing static shots so I don't move around much. The next level is figuring out how to do decent lighting and again Youtube tutorials are your friend. I took an existing desk lamp and taped a paper napkin over the bulb to act as a diffuser, which actually works pretty well as a key light.

[jacob]

See extended discussions in viewtopic.php?t=11810 and viewtopic.php?t=11846

I use a Blue Yeti on a homemade boom (I show it sometime during https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee2VtoYYQis ) with a homemade pop filter. I still run out of my room but I've yet to paint it 18% gray. I do arrange for lighting (top, side, front) but I leave my background as it is. My workbench instead of the usual "blanket" or "bookcollection". I'm not sure that background the best idea for all audiences since it does send a certain message (I'm going for the Eric Hoffer vibe ).

My next upgrade if any will likely be a better webcam because I currently use the built-in one in my laptop stacked up a pile of books. I put this as much front of my main screen where I keep my notes without blocking the notes. It's not very convenient.

[AxelHeyst]

I don't have anything valuable to add regarding hardware relative to what others said. The most ERE thing I can say about it, is:

.The most important thing for good audio is understanding the acoustics of the space, knowing what your mic will pick up (if you wear a puffy while recording, every time you lightly move your arm, will the mic pick it up like an ocean wave crashing?), not eating peanut butter right before recording (shudder) or having a dry mouth, pop filter, etc. Then, google a couple tricks and settings for audacity (noise removal, eq tweaks, etc).
.The most important thing for good video is lighting. I've totally punted on video. It's a lot of work to make quality video imo and it's not my bag, at least not right now, so the investment of time I'd need to put in to make good stuff is not proportional to my desire to make video content. Might do, later, particularly once my studio is more set up.

tldr: skill and knowledge. Enough skill and knowledge means you can do everything to really nice quality with your phone and twenty bucks. Not enough skill means your stuff will be wretched even if you have $5k of gear. Assuming you trust yourself to judge the quality of what you make, it's a process of testing, listening/watching, fixing the reasons it sucks, testing again, etc until it meets your standards. (This is agonizing if you eff something up when recording a conversation with someone else... if it's just me, I'll just delete the take and redo it. Can't do that when e.g. recording a non-reproducible conversation with other people.)

I use https://obsproject.com/ for managing live stuff.

[guitarplayer]

Lots of info to digest, thanks.