In a previous video, I mentioned that having a large
computer monitor to see yourself when self filming is such
a good investment, and it'll make your life a lot easier,
and I stand by that advice.
But there are some caveats you should be aware off,
and some tricks that you should know to implement it better.
Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and I'm the stuff that dreams are made of.
So, here's the problem,
you can't just use any old monitor
and expect it to accept a 24fps
or even a 30p signal from your camera.
Most inexpensive monitors are expecting to get a 60Hz refresh
rate from your computer, and thus will only work
if you set your camera to 60fps.
Here, I'll demo this with the Sony a7 III.
So, let's turn the camera on, this monitor is on,
I have an HDMI cable connected from the camera to the monitor.
Now, right now, you can't see anything on the screen.
If I go into the HDMI settings,
and I change it from 2160p to 1080p...
still can't see anything on the screen.
This is a 1080p monitor, by the way.
But then if I go down to the 24p/60p Output,
and change it to 60p and choose that...
Now you can see what the camera sees on the monitor,
so this monitor,
which is the BenQ GW2470H,
I think I only paid like a 100, 150 bucks for it.
Will only accept 1080p 60fps signals.
Now, there's two ways you can solve this.
One, you can get a monitor that does accept 24p,
which many high-end editing monitors do,
but that'll likely cost you more than you want to spend
for a monitor dedicated to this purpose.
Unless your studio is set up in a way
where it can serve a dual purpose, shooting and editing,
in that case, both of the monitors
that I use for post-production,
the ViewSonic VP3481
and the BenQ SW271 both accept 24p
but there are some cheaper models you can get, too.
I reached out to a few different brands to see who
was offering quality panels that accepted 24p at a good price.
And one of the best options I came up with was BenQ's EW line
including the EW2780Q,
the 2780U, and 3280U.
The cheapest of which is only $299 for 27" 1440p IPS panel
that's 99% sRGB with a Rec. 709 profile.
This video is not sponsored by BenQ,
I just like their panels, and thought this one
was a good value for this purpose.
Now, I opted for the 2780U
which is the 4k version of the panel.
It's pretty much as the same Q version,
but the price does go up quite a bit
for that 4K to around $550,
now there is still one advantage to going for
the thousand dollar or more editing displays,
which is that they allow for hardware calibration,
meaning you can colour calibrate your screen with your computer,
but the profile is stored on the monitor instead of the computer.
So, that way it'll work with your cameras as well,
where the more affordable options I'm recommending
only allow for software calibration.
So, they won't be perfectly colour-accurate
when connecting to a camera, but to be honest,
that's not that big of a deal to me because
I don't do my colour work until post anyway,
and I'm using this monitor more for focus,
and framing, and monitoring my presentation.
I'm not really looking at the colour
as long as it's decent out of the box
which these are. I think that's sufficient.
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with using a screen that doesn't accept 24p,
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So, as I was saying, this monitor here only accepts
1080p60 from my cameras,
but if I want my camera to record at 4K24,
some scaling will need to happen over the HDMI.
Now, some cameras, like most Sony mirrorless cameras,
will allow you to scale both the resolution,
and the frame rate right in the camera menu
which I showed you a minute ago.
Allowing me to output 1080p60 from the HDMI,
even though the camera is recording 4K24.
But doing this causes problems
on all but the newest Sony models,
where you lose functions like Face Detect Autofocus
while performing the scaling,
and most other camera brands only allow you
to scale the resolution and not the frame rate.
This also applies when using something like
an Atomos recorder as an in-between step,
you can have the Atomos scale the output resolution
down to 1080p, but it won't touch the frame rate.
So, this is where you'd need to buy a separate scaler box,
but rather than spend the money on a dedicated device,
I found the ATEM Mini from Blackmagic,
actually proves to be a better choice here.
Now the ATEM Mini is gonna cost you
as much as the 24p monitor I recommended,
around $300, but it will allow you to monitor
and convert the frame rate of up to four different cameras.
The only caveat to this set up
is that this only accepts 1080p signals, so,
if you plan to record in 4k you will need to activate
that resolution scaling option on your camera down to 1080
but the ATEM will handle the frame rate conversion.
But that still means you're gonna lose face detection
on older Sony cameras,
but that's just a camera limitation,
and can only be circumvented by running it through
an external recorder first, and recording on it,
instead of internally on the Sony.
But anyway, the other benefit of scaling with ATEM Mini,
is that it doubles as a capture card,
so you can then easily live stream those same cameras
whenever you want by just connecting a USB cable
from the ATEM to your computer, making it a much better value
than buying a bunch of scaler boxes,
just to make an old monitor work for this purpose.
In fact, even though I'm using the 4K BenQ monitor
that supports 24p signals,
I still have the ATEM Mini connected to it,
for that exact reason.
Here, let me show you my regular set up.
We'll set this camera up so you can see
what I usually see when filming.
OK, so this is what I normally see when I'm sitting
where you guys are now, and now looking this way,
and I hope it sounds OK,
I just kind of lazily pointed my microphone this way.
I hope it sounds alright.
Anyway so this is the 4k BenQ monitor
that I recommended, the $550 one,
and beneath it here is the ATEM Mini all connected,
and I've also got the overhead rig connected
the one that's up there, shooting down,
and that's on port two. You can also see it over here,
We will talk about that in one second,
and on one here we got the Blackmagic,
which is running via HDMI into the ATEM Mini,
and I don't have to worry about any scaling
on the Blackmagic because the HDMI port is always 1080,
so it goes in fine to port one, and I have the info display on,
so I can see the stats of what I'm doing and what I'm shooting,
and as you can see right now, we're shooting 23.98fps
So that frame rate isn't being converted
by the ATEM because this monitor can accept it.
But we could be using
the cheaper monitor here as long as we have the ATEM,
because it can convert it from 23.98 up to 60p
for the cheaper display. But in this case,
this is great because I have the versatility,
if I want to shoot 30p or 24 or 60,
all of them can be accepted,
and I don't have to worry about converting it,
I could plug right into the monitor if I wanted,
but the convenience of having the switcher is handy here,
where if I wanted to switch over to the overhead rig,
and get a closer look at me
moving some stuff around on the table
and then switch back here
and make sure I'm framed up and in focus.
Now because the overhead camera is a Sony camera,
I'll give you a quick, little tip about that
using an Atomos in-between step,
if for some reason I wanted to do
face detection on the overhead rig,
or maybe if I had a different camera connected over here,
that was a Sony camera, those face detection problems,
I can use the 4K24-only output which means
it doesn't record internally and it only records externally,
and have it recorded here, which is what I do.
I record on the Shogun,
and not on the camera so I don't have to fiddle
with the overhead rig every time I wanna record,
and I also get to take advantage of DNx instead of
the small codecs built into the Sony.
But anyway, it goes in here via HDMI,
and this would allow me to keep face detection,
and then out from here I have it scaling down to 1080
which then goes into the ATEM, under port number two,
and I have two more different
camera configurations that I could set up,
and switch between and monitor them if I wanted too,
and best of all, when I'm ready to live stream,
I can just take my USB-C cable here, connect it to the ATEM,
and then run this long one out to my computer,
and then I can live stream as easily that.
And I can just put ATEM up on the table if I want,
and switch through it that way,
and the fact that I'm able to do 24p, for my filming,
30p, which is how I like to live stream,
with a monitor like this,
and 60p if I wanted to do, you know, high-speed stuff.
I don't really do a lot in here, but I have the versatility,
as well as everything in between, these monitors,
they don't just accept 24p,
they accept all the in between--
25, 50, if you're using PAL, 48,
they accept 'em all between 23.976 and 59.94,
and including 60 flat, 24 flat, 30 flat,
they're all accepted as well by these displays.
So, it just gives me a bit of versatility there,
but I don't need it if I use the ATEM,
I can use the cheaper display,
but I would be limited to having the ATEM only send out 60p,
which is fine for streaming, but it does create some kind of
juddery effect if you're doing a 24p delivery,
so not great, but a good workaround
if you're only using it to monitor yourself.
And the reason why I like to have a setup like this,
is because one of the things that I always say
is sort of, like, the biggest burden for me at least
to doing something when I'm feeling inspired,
is that there's too much set up time
or too much reconfiguring the cables.
All of the cables for this
are permanently managed and sort of locked down,
and it's so easy for me to switch
between streaming, recording, overhead,
because everything's in the same place,
and if you have that option
it really makes it a lot easier to just jump in
and do a live stream or start a recording
as soon as you feel inspired
without having to set everything up,
and this kind of configuration
makes that a bit easier.
Now, I realize my configuration is a bit more complicated
than it needs to be to simply see yourself
on a bigger screen while shooting,
and if that's all you're trying to do, again,
just find a monitor that will accept 24p,
like the one I recommended,
but I hope that this video was useful
as a bit of and inspiration album,
for the different ways you can
make your life easier around the studio
or while self filming. But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video entertaining or at least
helpful, and if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs
up, and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.