The Best Podcast Video Recording Equipment That Won't Cost A Fortune

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard and this week my co host Tracy is off doing something important. So you just get me today. But that's all right because I'm going to talk about some things that are maybe a little more tech and, you know, might bore Tracy, but are very important, especially as most of us podcasters, well, most may be a strong word. I think of our podcasters, about 40% are also recording and distributing video. Now. Why are they doing that? Well, because they get more exposure. And it's not just about YouTube. I don't expect many podcasters are going to have a really large YouTube subscribing audience, although YouTube is still the number two search engine on the Internet. And so I think really most podcasters should be there if you want to be found by all the people that could benefit from listening or listening to you or watching you. But video is more important these days for social media exposure because video is the currency of social media. Whether you have one of those coveted, how do you say, approvals from LinkedIn to be able to do live video on LinkedIn. And live is different obviously than prerecorded, but still, you know, anybody can put prerecorded video of a certain length up on LinkedIn. But also on Facebook Live video gets you the most exposure always. But video at all is going to get you more exposure than not. Because right now, much as I hate to admit it, you can't share a podcast audio clip on social media. You have to actually convert it to a video if you want to do that. Now, we certainly do that at, you know, Brandcasters Politize. We do that. They're called audio grams. But you generally don't do that for a full length episode. And I would say you probably shouldn't do that. You'd want people to go listen to it or watch it either on your website or, you know, on through one of the listening apps. But video is really important because when you put out a video clip from your video, like even this episode I'm recording, you may be listening to it as Audio, but it's also a video. The video is on our website, it's on YouTube. But there are some video clips that are going to be created from it that are used to promote on social media and they get people's attention more than anything else. They cause people to stop, take notice, click, turn on that sound, listen, and then hopefully you hook them. They want more, they click and they go back to. I would always recommend leaving social media and going your website to consume the whole video or the audio. But the point is video is getting attention.

So all of us have the opportunity as podcasters to record video and some may not want to. Today I want to talk about some of the tools that you might use to record video. And to me that comes down to three things. A video camera, lighting, and I'm going to say also green screen. Something you should consider. It's not a must have, but, but I think I'm going to tell you why I think everybody should start considering and playing with green screen and trying it out. I've been doing it for more than a year now, actually. Yeah, maybe a year and a half to two years. And I'm very bullish on green screen. So we're going to talk about that as well. Okay. So not going to continue to debate the merits of video for the rest of this episode. I'm just going to take for granted if you're listening and are watching this, you're interested in learning more about the tech of video. The rest of this series we're going to do over the next few episodes are also going to be video related. But today is the tech day talking about the equipment. So just about everybody I bet listening to this episode or watching it on YouTube has a laptop computer and the vast majority of them have a built in webcam. You certainly can use that if you want to. And if you are on a budget, if you're bootstrapping it and it's all you've got, that's great. Use it. Better to, you know, be putting video out of any kind than not recording it because maybe you think your webcam is not as good. And I'm going to demonstrate something right now. So those of you listening to the podcast, I highly recommend you actually go to the blog post for this episode@potatOise.com because you can watch the video. And I'm about to demonstrate right now. My video camera that I've started with is not my built in webcam and I'm going to show you why I use a USB webcam. But now I'm going to switch now. I'm on a Mac and a MacBook Pro and I'm going to go to the built in, what they call FaceTime HD camera and, and you're going to see the difference. And what I'm going to suggest that you're seeing is a drop in my video quality. And I think the color is not as good with the built in camera. I know the resolution, meaning the number of pixels and how fine and sharp the video quality is, not as good. But if you're on the road, you're recording an episode, maybe let's say from a hotel room or something, hey, keep it simple. Use the webcam better than not. But even. And you know, I've got like top of the Line MacBook Pro laptop. I want you to understand something about these video cameras because if you're like me, see until a year ago I had a MacBook Air I was using that was pretty old, it was from 2013 and I don't know why I hadn't bought one in such a long time, but it was still working for me. I didn't have any problems. And that webcam was pretty darn good. When I got a new laptop about a year and a half ago, I thought, hey, in 2020 they have to have improved that webcam, right? Or certainly it's got to be just as good as it was. Well, the webcam built into that MacBook was worse, worse than my one from 2013. And I was puzzled by that and I wondered why is that? And I checked into it. The, of course the screen of the laptop, which I'm sort of pointing at, of course I'm pointing at the screen, but anyway, because the webcam's in it that is filming me right now, the laptops on the 2013 edition of the MacBook Air was about 4 millimeters thick. That's a little more than an eighth of an inch, maybe not quite 3, 16 of an inch for those of you in the English system. And there was some space in there, but on these new MacBook Pros it's like 2 millimeters thick. The entire screen bezel around the screen and the thickness, the rim in there for the hardware of the webcam is incredibly thin. And I learned that's the reason why these webcams aren't as good. You can't have as big a lens and there's just not as much room for the hardware. Now, you know, everything has been miniaturized, you know, in recent years and webcams are one of them. But you know what, when it comes to a webcam, you're definitely sacrificing quality when you go to that built in webcam. Like I said, you're on a budget, it's all you got. By all means, use it. But I have been using a USB Webcam for about 18 months now. And then I just got a newer MacBook Pro with the M1 chip recently, which by the way is well worth it. It's excellent. So those of you listening to the episode, I just switched back to my USB webcam and the colors are brighter, it's more in focus and it's because the one that I have, and I'm. For those of you again are listening to the podcast, you might want to go watch the video because I'm now holding up in front of the camera. This is the webcam. It's another one. It's not the one actually filming me, but this is another one that it, you know, hooks on to your top of your monitor on your laptop and just sits there. And this one has a built in light that you can, you know, you touch with your finger and it activates the light. Now in general, I don't use those lights. And if you see me, know why? It's because I wear glasses. I prefer glasses to contacts. And if I have that light shining, you know, right there on my laptop at my face, you'll see the ring. In fact, I can demonstrate that this is one of the drawbacks to webcams that have a built in light in them is that when you have glasses, it creates quite a reflection. So that's a tip. You want to be prepared for that. And you know, if you're planning to use a built in light to your webcam, you may want to, if you wear glasses, you, you may, that may not be a feature you want to buy in a webcam and you may want to get a different kind of a light. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't really gotten the lighting yet. I'm still on webcam. So the webcam that I just showed you with that ring light built into it, I just checked on Amazon today before recording this. It's $29 prime. I mean, ridiculously cheap. When I bought mine, I think it was $56. And I've seen it range from as high as 60, usually down to 50, but $29 maybe there's a new model coming out and they're working through them. But for most people, that cost is not going to be a barrier to getting a High quality webcam. Now, what is high quality? I mean HD, right? Everybody talks about HD. It was different levels of HD. There's 720p, there's 1080p, 1080. I. I know this can get very confusing. Basically, you know, HD quality, 1080 is great and most of the webcams have that available. So I would, you know, really, anything within your budget, I would try it out. But when you get into these webcams, I'm going to show you two more that I we have here. And, and we've been testing a lot of these recently. Partially because if you're used to watching my partner Tracy on a video on these podcasts, then you'll notice that she talks with her hands a lot. And you'll see her hands come in front of the screen. And when she's recording in her office, she's not using a green screen. She likes to have a natural background. You guys see a lot of times these bookcases on either side. So she's got a lot of depth of field, meaning there's a long distance. There's a long distance between where the camera is and the entire space. Now using a green screen is a little different and it shortens your depth of field. So because Tracy doesn't use a green screen, when she puts her hands in front of the screen, it changes things because the screen is looking not just the distance between the camera to her face or her hands. It might be a couple inches in front and it's also seeing the distance all the way back to the wall. And sometimes you'll notice Tracy goes in and out of focus sometimes with her webcam. Cause most of these webcams have an auto focus feature and that unfortunately you can't really control that and change the autofocus so that it won't do it. You know, you can't set your focus just to manually by rotating a dial. I actually wish I could do do that on a webcam and just fix the focus and never have it adjust for me, because it thinks it should, but that's the way it works. What I found is with the green screen, that doesn't happen as much because again, effectively the camera is only paying attention to my body and my hands. So it doesn't tend to change focus all that much. By the way, those of you that are interested who are watching the video or you're listening to this, the webcams that I'm holding up, I will have links for all of them in the blog post for this episode@potatoes.com so if you want to find them on Amazon like this $29 one by the time you listen to this episode or watch it, I can't promise it's still going to be $29 for you, but the link will be there and the price is the price, but it's pretty darn inexpensive. So another member of our team who many of you know, Alexandra, has also tested a lot of webcams and found one that she prefers and it's by Logitech. Now this one also happens to have that privacy filter. If you're worried about somebody hacking your camera and it you don't want them to see you, you can flip it down to manually, make it sure nobody can see you through the camera. If you don't want them to think there's a few correspondents on broadcast television the last year that could have used that feature. Anyway, this Logitech camera, I mean this, this pretty much is top of the line for webcams. Okay. Again, I'm making a distinct webcams and other cameras Logitech pretty expensive. 100, 150, maybe even $200. They have different capabilities, they have software that has certain enhancements. They have filters, they can try and make you look younger or they can put a blur effect on it. I mean there's all sorts of things. And even if most of you are recording with zoom, that keeps updating and has a lot of features and filters within it too. I'm not really getting into that level of discussion today about video, mostly just the hardware for you to Logitech. Very good. Logitech here has a. There's a microphone built into this. You can see some little screen here if you will. And that's because if you want to use this as your microphone to podcasters, I don't recommend you do that. These microphones are not very good quality. Might be better than one built into your laptop. But I would always recommend you you take with you your high quality microphone on the road and good ones are not very bulky and can pack in a bag pretty easy. But love check wem cam. Nothing bad to say about them. They have some great ones. I used one in the past and was very happy with it because of the autofocus feature. Tracy has been experimenting with other ones and this one is called Nexigo and if you look at it, it kind of looks like the Logitech. They're kind of copying the form factor of it. But another, you know, sub hundred dollar webcam that Tracy so far is liking it the most because for her it's not doing the autofocus that much.

So what I want to share with you also about webcams is all of us have very high. Well, maybe I'll get myself out of the corner a little bit. Most of us have in our pockets a very high quality webcam and it's in your phone. I have an iPhone 12. This is one of the most advanced. It probably in my house. It's like the highest quality video camera that exists in terms of quality and capability. It's amazing you can use that. You know, there are. Now this next category of hardware is going to bridge between cameras and lighting. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. But there are these devices you can get that are a stand sits on your tabletop, has a holder that is spring loaded for your hold your cell phone and gives you a light, a ring light and actually has some features of adjusting brightness and adjusting color. And for me wearing glasses, that type of thing will work much better for lighting because it can be off to the side, it can be angled more above me so it won't reflect in my glasses so much when I'm looking straight at the camera. But more important is really to show you the cell phone holder. You can mount the cell phone above your laptop and you can actually record audio on your computer with your good high quality microphone, even using a zoom call. But then record video on your phone if you want to. The only downside to that is when you record video on your phone like that, the green screen thing won't work because the standard video recording on a cell phone won't pay attention to the green screen. It'll just look green. And I'll get more to green screen again coming up. But you know, don't underestimate your cell phone, especially if you're on the road. I mean, there are high quality microphones you can plug into your phone and you don't even have to have a laptop to record a podcast episode. You can record the audio right into your phone and you can record the video and have very good quality. You know, there's always pros and cons because like I said, you don't have the green screen. Now we have some customers that we work with and we edit their video that actually record video completely separate from their audio. And they like to record people in person or even if it's just themselves record on a higher quality video camera. And I'm going to show you an example. We have here in our offices about three of These Canon Vixia, these are HD video cameras. These are real video cameras. You can see it's got a can shut the lens down, you pull this out to the side and it starts. You know, it starts up and it actually has a screen. And you can see it's now I'm pointing it at my computer so there's a lot of reflection, but there's a screen showing you what you're going to record. Records very high quality HD video. And sometimes if we're doing like a webinar and recording things here, we'll set three of those cameras up. One on me, one on Tracy, one on both of us. And, you know, you could. We have some podcasters that do that. You'll get the best quality video if you record with that type of video camera. However, it's a lot more work. It's not just setting up three different cameras, making sure they all have enough power and are plugged in, but also that you have to. They're recording to an SD card, like this little SD card. Those of you listening, you check out the video. But you know, this is a memory card and this one's 32 gigabytes. That's what you record on. And so when you're done recording, it's not in your computer already. So you can't just upload it to the cloud for, you know, production. You actually have to take that manually, take that SD card out of each camera, load each one into your computer, copy over the files, name them to keep them organized because that'll get confusing, and then upload them to the cloud or to wherever you're going to upload them to be edited, edited or produced. Very high maintenance. I really don't recommend that for most people. It's an awful lot of work. And of course, as we always say at potatoes, we'd much rather you record and put more content out there than put a lot of obstacles in your way or make it a harder process for you so that you then stop recording because it's like, oh, I'm so tired of doing that. I don't want to have to do that, all that work. I'd rather you just record, even if it's lower quality, and get your content out there. But if you want the best quality video and be able to really edit, because think about it, these zoom videos, if I say I'm in, ah, a bunch of times as I'm talking, we don't want to cut that out in the video because it creates all these little jumps in the video and it looks really bad. So usually with video, you don't edit to have that match your podcast. Some people do. But if you do that, your video ends up looking very choppy. But when you have multiple cameras, you can switch between the three cameras or the even two cameras and then cut out anything you want. Because you're not just making a jump within a single camera like this. You're jumping from one to another and it doesn't feel like a jump. So there are pros and cons to all this with video, but really in terms of cameras, I want to wrap up this little part that I think is what you have to consider for recording video. Your built in webcam to your computer, a external USB webcam, which I'm a big fan of, just from for quality. And then it works with whatever you're recording or broadcasting with Zoom, Streamyard, live on YouTube, whatever. You have your cell phone as an option also, that's there. Or you have a real video camera that like, you know, back in the 80s when these first came around, they were really huge and you had a big video cassette in it. Well, this is essentially the modern day version of that, just with an SD card in it. And by the way, these Canon Vixias, at the time I bought them was only like 200 bucks. And they still have models out today that are the same form factor. Even though I think my model is older and no longer available. They have versions of that today, still starting around 200 and going up a little from there, but it's not killer. Some of you might even have a GoPro. Actually, I want to make sure to bring the GoPro in as an option. That's another kind of a high quality video camera. It's usually used more for sports stuff, but it does. You can mount it on a tripod. You can use that just as you would one of these other cameras. All right, so then let's talk about lighting. And I'm going to finish with green screen. Okay, lighting. Here's my feeling on lighting. Record yourself on your device in your environment and look at it and make a judgment. How does it look? Do you think you look good? Does it look light enough? Review it. You know, it always surprises me how many people don't look at their own stuff after they record it and don't listen to their own podcasts. You can learn some things and I recommend you do that. What you want to have is lighting that's intentional and not random. I have lighting in the ceiling in this office and I've put in the kind of color temperature I like. I also have some natural light behind the camera coming in through some windows. So I have this set sort of the way I like it. But you can always get a device like this either if you're using your cell phone or you're not. I have another good one that I can show you. That's just a light similar type of device. That is a ring light with a, you know, tabletop stand. You can, you know, put that off to the side and you know, experiment with these sorts of things. They range in price from $30 to $100. You can get some more expensive than that. Honestly, on Amazon, there's a lot of choices for lighting. You can change usually the brightness. You can change the color temperature or the cast of the color from bright white light to something that's a little warmer. And this technology, thanks to LED lights, has gotten very inexpensive if you want a very large ring light. There's a company called Neewer N E W E R that I've had really good luck with and can recommend. Although I do want to make it clear I'm not necessarily endorsing any particular brand of products. I'm just sharing with you what we have seen and used and experienced. So everything that I'm telling you today is from personal experience. Now we also have lights we use when we do webinars. We have some lights that come with tripods and you really mount them and they plug in and they're very bright LED lights. I mean for like really movie set type of shooting or if you're going to use three of these video cameras, you probably want really high quality lighting. We have some of those. We use them for some webinars. We record. We use them when we're recording at trade shows, when we did go to trade shows, things like that. And newer again I think is a company that makes some good ones. But I'm sure there are lots out there. This technology is pretty common. All I'm saying is make sure your lighting is intentional. See what you could do to reduce reflection on your glasses. If you're like me and you wear glasses and just set your lighting up to be in the best condition that you can. Now I mentioned the last thing I want to talk about with video related. I'm going to stretching video equipment to be video related equipment here is green screen. Now with green screen lighting is important too. If you're in a very low light situation, it's harder for the software to see and tell the difference between the green screen background and you or other objects. So it's important to have your green screen lit and mine is lit from these lights above. It doesn't take much lighting to do it, but you gotta have some. Now I'm going to give you a peek behind the curtain. So again, if you're listening to this, you're not going to be able to see it. Definitely. Check out the video@poditized.com but I'm going to turn off my background and show you. There's my green screen. Now, this also is a roller shade and I'm going to lift it up. You can see I've got a sort of a room divider screen behind me. This is attached to my ceiling. Four screws to a couple of brackets. And there's your green screen right behind you. Done. I like that solution because I set up and I record here and I have calls here all the time. Now I am also going to talk about solutions where you don't aren't able to do that kind of permanent setup. But I'll tell you, this green screen roller shade, simple for me. It'll attach to a ceiling or a wall behind you. If you have a wall behind you. Four screws. It's about $150 and $20 shipping. This thing is not available Prime. I will also provide the link for that into the blog post for this episode. But I love the consistency in the end, how clean it is. A lot of people use these virtual backgrounds that they don't have a green screen because programs like Zoom have that feature where it can sort of detect your body and try to cut you out. And I would say if that's the best you can do in your situation, do it. That's great because it's probably better than an unintentional background in your video that's random and isn't really representing you well or how you want to present yourself. So I would probably use it. But notice with the green screen, it's cutting perfectly around my hair, my body, even my hands, you know, fingers moving them around. I'm very bullish on green screen and just having intentional backgrounds. And, you know, I've had my staff create a bunch of different versions. There's politized word above my head here. I'm, you know, I have our, oh, politized logo. I don't know why I'd want that behind me, but. Or I have, hey, I can make it look like I'm sitting in a lounge chair over here in an office. Right. And these things work much better if You've got a green screen. I can also make myself look like I'm, you know, on the bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise. And allow me to geek out for a moment. Sorry, guys.

Okay, so green screen. Okay, so what if you don't have a situation where you want to screw a green screen into a wall? Fair point. I can understand. Or into a ceiling. A lot of people may not want to do that. I can respect that. So I have a solution for you, too. And in this case, I'm just going to prep here and I'm going to show you a. I'm going to share my screen just to show you one thing. I'm not going to do a lot of this because I don't really like taking myself off camera a whole lot. But this one, it sort of helps to see it. And for those of you listening, I'm going to try to describe it. For 29 bucks, you can have a fabric green screen that sits on the back of your chair back. It's like got this little pocket that sits over your chair back, and it's all made of the green screen material. Now, there's a border around it. It's pretty big. But when your camera's printed tight to you like mine is, you're in a hotel room, you're on the road or even. It's just you're in your office and you don't have. It's not easy for you to have a big green screen on a roller shade hanging from the ceiling. Like I have. This thing is, like, to describe it, how it works. Any of you that have ever used those sun shades for going over the windshield of your car, where it's made of two circles of wire, and then this sort of material, fabric material over it, and you fold it in half and you twist those circles and it breaks down to be one. A circle that's, you know, one quarter of the diameter of the whole thing. That's how this works. So this thing will fit in the same pocket your laptop will, if you've got a computer bag you're traveling with or in any luggage or suitcase. So this is what I'm recommending people use who either don't want to, or it's not practical to have a bigger green screen, or they travel around a lot. And one thing I want to point out, you'll notice in this picture, the woman sitting there, you can clearly, it's obvious, you can see the green screen material. That's the pocket that's over the back of the chair. What I'M here to tell you is that when Zoom or any other program is using the color to separate you from the background, even though there's shadows and different amounts of shades of green going on there with that pocket, Zoom won't show it. It'll project this background image that I have and I'll stop sharing now. For those of you it'll project this background image right on that so you won't notice it. I mean, depending on your lighting situation, if you're in a hotel room, you don't have great lighting. Maybe there's a little bit of it that might peek through, but it's not bad overall. You, you can have that consistent kind of presentation and for $29 prime in the US anyway for a green screen like that. So, you know, I think I've made it clear I'm a fan of having an intentional background presenting you in the right light. What is your brand presentation? What kind of image do you want to project? And you know, Tracy doesn't love the green screen. She doesn't. She thinks with her hair, maybe it doesn't work quite as well. And that may be true, you know, for women with long hair or, you know, in certain hair styles, the green screen may not cut you out as cleanly for the background. Fair point. It's been a long time since I had long hair, since college actually did. I'm not going to show that to you on this video, you know, but I'm, I'm really bullish on the green screen just because I can control everything. And by the way, I should show you, you know, I mean, we do when for our podcasters that we work with, when we set up a podcast, we actually create a background for you like this. But even if you want a generic one, you know, if I'm doing something that's more personal and not business related, I'll just throw on this blue gradient background and wow, that looks pretty good too. So there you go. So that I think concludes my presentation on video equipment for today. Cameras, lighting, green screen. Don't forget, you can go to the blog post odotize.com for this episode and there will be a summary of links to all these cameras green screens. I guess I didn't have any specific links to lighting, but I can throw a few up there for you too so that you're interested in any of these items. You're welcome to go there and get the exact one as any of you. Hopefully. Amazon shoppers know listings change frequently. So depending on when you go there, some of the listings may have changed or no longer exists, but just search in Amazon for what you're looking for. Green Screen Roller Shade or Green Screen Back of a Chair or, you know, Diva Light. That's what a lot of times these things are called. Anyway. So there you go. That's it. Thanks very much for listening, everybody. I'll be back next time with another in our video series. This month we've got a couple more episodes related to video, so come back and check that out. And I'll be back next time on feed.

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