As I watched online video taking over the Internet, my video lust grew stronger every year. Finally the lust overcame my fears and now I’m in the game! I’ve produced a couple videos for ORN (sample hosted on Wistia below). I’m hardly a natural, but why should that stop me?
Since I enjoy seeing other’s office arrangements and reading ‘how I work’ stories, I want to share how I set up my studio (and office). One interesting note, during the setup process, I got hung up trying to achieve good video quality. WebCam’s have bad optics – all of them. Even the very best give you a wide-angle view and unnatural colors which is just crappy in my opinion.
I wanted to use a camcorder and I managed to set it all up that way with my old Canon ZR-20 MiniDV. Unfortunately, the software I use with Skype won’t accommodate the camcorder video feed and there seems to be no alternative that will. Somebody please manufacture a high quality WebCam! In the end, a lot of testing turned into a dead-end and I’m stuck with the WebCam distortions for now.
Cost = $951
- backdrop: $50
- podcast microphone: $230
- microphone shock mount: $39
- microphone stand: $12
- two 2 TB hard drives (one for backups): $460
- vodburner: $100
- sony vegas movie studio: $60
It’s affordable, however, the time cost of learning to use editing software and the actual time you spend editing will dwarf the hard costs!
Here are the pictures – I included the Dragon NaturallySpeaking and knee-click mice for those of you who know I struggle with repetitive stress injury (tendinitis in layman’s terms) and who have the privilege of reading my occasionally outrageous transcription typos!
