- A year ago, we showed you how to put together
a decent setup for video conferencing and streaming
for anywhere from zero to $50.
And, okay, I lied a little to get your attention.
You sound pretty darn good and, well, you're breathtaking.
(audience cheering) (Keanu laughs)
- You're breathtaking!
- But, that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement.
Somewhere between our previous $0 and $3,000 setups
has got to be a middle ground
that levels up your streaming game
without breaking the bank.
And to show you how much each upgrade
changes the experience, OWN3D Pro sponsored this video
where we've recreated our original $0 streaming rig,
and we will be upgrading it piece-by-piece.
That way you can judge for yourself
if our choices were worthwhile.
So I hope you picked good stuff
because this still looks and sounds
pretty darn good, don't it?
(upbeat music)
(upbeat jaunty music) (videotape squeaking)
There we are back to the original lighting
and still not bad considering the budget.
Of course, we've got some more money to spend.
So where do we start?
Sound.
If you've got some money left over,
it is hard to go wrong with an audio upgrade.
Or sort of.
Many of you will already know that gaming microphones
tend to compromise performance
for aesthetics, flashy lights,
and sponsorships for e-sports teams.
But while the conventional wisdom used to be,
"Well, the people in the know are gonna go get a USB mic."
These days, once you're past about the $50 point,
there really isn't any reason to do that.
Even with the Blue Snowball being as decent as it is.
The thing is, they just don't have
the same internal space and isolation
that a good dedicated audio interface
and a standalone analog microphone will.
For $65 you can get a Behringer UMC22,
which has dual inputs, a TRS jack,
and a combo XLR-TRS connector.
It's got MIDAS preamps,
which are a little bit better than you'd find
on Behringer's basic units.
And it's got three more TRS jacks for headphones,
and stereo studio monitors
for when it's time to upgrade your listening setup.
Of course, since we're not going for an all-in-one solution,
now we need to choose a microphone
with condenser and dynamic microphones
being the gotos for most streamers and podcasters.
Dynamic microphones are known
for their exceptional noise isolation,
and the SM48, which you're listening to right now,
is no exception.
It's a hammer-style mic
like you might see at an event or concert,
but that doesn't mean it's only meant for stage use.
Dynamic microphones do have some downsides.
They tend to have a very tight cardioid pickup pattern,
which means that if you lean or turn away from your mic
you'll almost immediately sound muffled.
But if you live or work in a room that has a lot of reverb
or noisy air conditioning or something,
this bug quickly turns into more of a feature.
Also, because dynamic microphones don't use phantom power,
they can require a huge amount of gain to hear clearly.
That means that some mic and interface combos
may require a gain-boosting add-on like a Cloudlifter.
Though ours is fine without.
They also naturally cut off the high-end fairly early,
which can result in them sounding somewhat flat
without any additional EQing.
But we'll talk more about that later.
Condenser mics, on the other hand,
tend to have a more open pickup pattern,
meaning more background noise.
But their large diaphragms also mean
that they tend to capture those noises with more clarity
and a wider frequency response,
particularly on the high-end.
If you have a room that's already quiet as is,
and you'll be close to your microphone,
but you might move around a bit,
well, there's a reason that the $100
Audio-Technica AT2020 is so popular.
It can sound fantastic.
However, if you're planning on using a condenser
you will need 48-volt phantom power on your interface.
Now our Behringer UMC22 did end up doing a pretty nice job
with the Aston Spirit mic that I'm using at the moment.
But at $450, I think the biggest takeaway here
is how much bang for the buck we had
with our $40 dynamic mic.
After a cable and an inexpensive stand, then,
that puts us at $130 for sound.
Meaning we can now turn our attention to video.
And as crazy as this might sound, if you're a tinkerer
I would strongly recommend buying an old flagship phone
and a cheap tripod on eBay,
rather than going with the traditional webcam.
Apps like IP Webcam make it easy to import the video feed
into a program like OBS or Zoom.
And as an extra bonus,
you can always use it for phone things if you're in a pinch.
The main drawback of this strategy is that some phones
can overheat during prolonged use,
and you will want to get one that allows you
to set a charge limit to prevent the battery from swelling.
Or you can take your game to a whole other level
with a dedicated camera.
If you already have a DSLR
or a mirrorless camera kicking around with an HDMI port,
there's a good chance that it can output a clean video feed.
Even if it's an older model,
it will look significantly better than a smartphone
thanks to its much larger sensor.
And if you don't have one already,
we really like the Sony A5100.
It's a mirrorless camera that can be had
for around 300 bucks on eBay,
with a 16 to 50-millimeter kit lens included.
And, if you add a cheap tripod from Amazon for 20 bucks,
hook it into a capture card, more than that in a minute.
How do I look?
Pretty plug and play, right?
Actually, I should point out
that we are using the step-down A5000.
It is $100 cheaper but it doesn't support clean HDMI output
without a third-party modification.
So if you're a tinkerer, good for you,
but if you're not, I'd recommend going for the A5100
and this should give you a pretty good idea
of what to expect in terms of image quality.
In terms of camera settings, most streamers
aren't gonna have to mess around with too much.
30 FPS is lots for a corner cam,
which means you're gonna want a shutter speed of 1/60.
Then you might just need to tune your ISO,
which is the sensitivity of your sensor,
to make sure you don't have too much in your image.
Your white balance to make sure
it doesn't look too yellow or too blue.
You might have to tune your tint a little bit.
We had to push this a little bit away from green
and towards yellow to get it to look just right.
And then you're gonna wanna set your aperture
as wide as possible to get that nice pleasing depth-of-field
bokeh effect in the background.
If you wanna avoid focus jittering
with an older camera like this one, set your focus to manual
and you should pretty much be good to go.
Now, I wanna note that there are other options
other than the A5100, just make sure you do your research.
That $150 Canon Rebel might be tempting,
but its HDMI output might be full of menu garbage
which there's no hack to get around.
And that's gonna be pretty hard to explain
on your parent-teacher conference or whatever.
Now, in terms of lighting,
we previously recommended a basic halogen light.
Either in a lamp, you found at Value Village
or in a clamp-style work light.
That'll run you anywhere from a few dollars
up to around 35 bucks.
They are power-hungry,
and they do tend to run a little hot,
but with a reflector and a sheet of wax or diffusion paper,
I mean, that's what you're looking at right now, man.
And there's definitely an ambiance to it,
but I look not bad, right?
Switching over to an Elgato Key Light for comparison
certainly looks a lot better,
but compared to just adding another halogen light,
I think it's hard to justify the $200 price.
At least, from strictly an image quality standpoint.
Where Elgato stands out though is in software control.
Brightness and color temperature
can be adjusted with a little slider in the taskbar,
making it easy to compensate for a cloud suddenly
covering the sun outside your window or what have you.
And it also looks a lot more professional on your desk,
if that matters to you.
Back to capture card for a moment.
It is crazy how cheap these things have gotten,
with generic USB stick-sized devices available on Amazon
for as low as $15.
And these aren't even the cheap crummy ones either.
They have low latency,
they record at reasonably high bit rates for 1080P,
and they don't need any additional drivers or software.
This makes them perfect for a quick capture of your camera.
With that being said,
you do get what you pay for to an extent.
And a lot of cheap capture cards
may suffer from signal degradation
or crashing issues earlier than higher-end options.
Also, warranty, right?
Another benefit of premium capture cards
is low-latency pass-through
so that you can stream your Xbox gaming, for example,
from your PC.
But a good workaround to this is a cheap HDMI splitter.
And for your viewers, it'll look exactly the same,
even if, for you, it means a little bit more cable clutter.
Of course, if you wanna capture in 4K,
you will need to spend more money on a capture card.
AVerMedia and Elgato both have solid 4K offerings
around the $200 mark.
Although, for like your face camera,
I really can't say that I'd recommend them.
Unless you are recording your footage locally on your PC
so that you can edit it later
and you want higher quality source files.
Now let's get everything set up.
After taking a break to take a sip from my water bottle.
Lttstore.com.
Yeah, love Elgatos at home
but the bang for the buck here just cannot be beat.
We're gonna need a couple of key pieces of software,
OBS and Voicemeeter, both of which, happily, are free.
With both programs open,
use A1 to select your preferred listening device.
Ideally using a hardware ASIO engine, if it's available.
Set your first input to be your microphone
and then select your desired output channel on that input.
To EQ your mic and make it sound all fancy,
all you gotta do is right-click on the EQ above your output,
and well, for me,
we might wanna raise the bass and treble a bit,
giving it a warmer more podcasty sound.
Let's give that a shot.
With audio dialed in,
it's time to start getting our overlay setup.
The overlay we're using today
was generously made for us by OWN3D Pro,
the sponsor of today's video.
They have an OBS Studio plugin
that offers 600-plus overlays, alerts, and tools
in nine-plus languages
that can all be installed with just one click.
Using code Linus,
you can get 50% off the yearly subscription at OWN3D.Pro.
With OWN3D it's as simple as that.
Is that it?
One-click, eh?
That was actually really easy.
Their overlays include everything from stinger transitions
which produced this cool effect,
to intro screens
and even banners and buttons for your Twitch page.
Items are in groups in the sources panel.
And you just need to add your webcam setup
by clicking on add source and then video capture device,
and your game or full display capture,
if game isn't working,
by using game or display capture.
Resizing elements is simple.
Just select the one you want to edit and you can resize it,
holding shift and control keys to change how it's resized.
Or you can right-click to gain access
to a whole bunch of extra options and tools,
such as color keying for things like a green screen
if you have one.
Adding alerts is also really easy OWN3D Pro.
On their dashboard,
you can easily add custom alert variations and messages
and everything sticks to your alert theme
without any extra hassle.
Ah, ga, ga, ga, ga! I shot my teammate!
Oh, God!
Oh, where is he?
Got you. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba!
Ah!
We're running. We're running, boys.
This is the original setup.
Not bad by any stretch of the imagination.
But I think the difference after our upgrade
(gentle electronic music) (logo whooshing)
is pretty striking.
♪ Leveling up the stream ♪
♪ Got that better audio quality ♪
Now I'm coming for you. Oh, shoot.
Ahh! Get 'em. (gun blasting)
Argh!
I hate that gun so much.
I don't know. I don't know what it's called.
Do I look like I know guns to you?
I'm a pacifist Canadian.
(gun blasting)
Oh God, my aim is so bad.
Well, there you have it.
Whether the upgrades are worth it, that's up to you.
But at least now you've got a solid idea
of what's out there
and how to set up for different kinds of configs.
Thanks for watching.
And remember to check out OWN3D Pro
at the link in the description
to get 50% off their yearly plan.
If you guys are looking for something else to watch,
maybe you check out my home streaming setup upgrade.
That was more of like the deluxe version of this.