Lights, Camera, Podcast: Mastering Video Recording for Your Show

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Boomer Podcasters, the podcast that is here to help baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Y and anyone else start a podcast.

We will help with everything you need from equipment like microphones, programs to record your audio and video.

If you are going to do a video podcast from Start to publishing with a host, this podcast is for you.

Podcasting is a great medium as well as a lot of fun.

So sit back and get ready to learn about the podcasting world.

Now, here is your host and podcaster himself, Gray Hair Dave.

Oh, welcome back, folks.

Welcome back.

Glad you're here.

Gray Hair Dave here.

Just as she said.

I hope you're having a great day.

I'm having a really good day.

Well, not really.

Doesn't matter.

I'm having a good day.

If you get up with a positive attitude in the morning, hopefully it keeps you positive through the rest of the day.

And I try to do that, and it's working pretty well for the most part.

So let's get started with Boomer Podcasters today.

I know that we talked last week a lot about hosts and things like that, and this week I told you we would be talking about video.

If you're gonna, if you're gonna do video for your podcast, there's a couple of ways to do it.

If it's just you alone, then depending upon the platform you're working, you're either going to, you know, whether that's a Mac or, or a Windows device is going to determine how you're able to do things.

So if you're on a Mac, you can use, you can use a few things.

You can use the FaceTime camera, which is one option.

You can use another option, which is one of the programs I'm going to talk about, which is descript.

Descript gives you the opportunity to not only record audio, it gives you the opportunity to record video.

And then you can, you could.

Descript is kind of an all in one program that I'd like to show you on video.

But if you go to descript.com they've got a great, great tutorial on the front page of it on what, you know, what you can do with it.

They've also got.

So they can do video editing, captions, podcasting, clips, all that kind of fun stuff, but you can record into it.

And I've tried it.

It's not bad.

It really isn't bad.

I mean, it uses a camera off your computer, if you're using a laptop or you can designate whatever you want.

Now there's A couple of ways to go with that when it comes to recording video.

Let's talk about that at the end.

Okay, we'll go to the end and talk about, about cameras and things such as that.

Okay?

Now if it's you and somebody else, all these programs I'm going to talk to you about are good for either single or multiple guests.

Okay?

Now remember I said if you're on a Mac, you can go to the script.

You can also go to ECAMM Live and I'll put a link to that also in the show notes.

Ecamm is a Mac only program that you can record into and you can also do a lot of.

You.

You can't really do a lot of editing in it, but you can do a little bit.

You can pull the audio out if you want, but there will be a link in the show notes for this for ECAMM Live.

Now when I do it, I use ECAMM Live when I do recordings.

But there's, there's another one out there that I want to talk to you about, which is called OBS Studios.

OBS Studios is an.

It's.

It's called open source, it's free, it works on Windows or Macs or Linux to where you can record your video and your audio at the same time.

It's.

It's okay for bringing in others, but it's easier to not.

It's easier to use something else for that program.

And it has, I've used it and there's a little bit of a learning curve there.

So if you're just a beginner doing this and you want to start out with something simple and easy for that, I would go with descript.

Okay.

If you're just yourself.

Now these other programs I'm going to start talking about for video also do more than one.

But you can do singular too, or singular or just, you know, a mono or a solo show with that.

And they do a wonderful job for that.

They all have their pluses.

They all have a couple of minuses.

And the minuses aren't that big.

They really are not.

And it's not that expensive if this is something you're going to do.

And if you think about it, most of these, you take them out of here.

A lot of them will do the editing for you through AI now, but the price looks like the first one I'm going to talk to you about is one called squadcast.

Squadcast has annual as well as monthly billing.

If you're doing monthly, it's about $12 for and it gives you a free trial for 14 days.

You can have chat and email.

And it looks like, I don't know that it goes live, but it might, I think it does.

Okay.

And it's, it's very, very good.

It'll record you and it'll record others at the same time.

It's, it gives you, let's see here.

You can schedule escalations, you can, you can do live call routing and.

Which basically means live call routing means you can do more than one person at a time.

Okay.

That squadcast, the show note, it'll be in the show notes with the link to it.

Next one is that I want to talk to you about is Riverside FM.

I did 100 shows with my brother on a poem on a podcast called.

It started out as Living in God's Rhyme and then we rebranded it to Poetry of Christian Faith.

That was a show that after about 10 or so we started doing video.

Now what this program does and all of these basically do is you sign up and then you, you put, you make a room basically and it's going to be like your studio.

So for me it was, it was Poetry of Christian Faith Studio.

I was the host and Tim was always the guest.

So from there we went on and recorded.

And you can get side by side or the AI in it.

Well, always put the person talking full screen while they put the other person either not there or you know, in a corner.

It'll highlight them however you want to do it.

There's all kinds of things that these programs can do.

I used Riverside.

I heard a lot of complaints about Riverside, about them having issues.

And every time I had an issue, I emailed them or I went through their support.

Boom, they had it fixed within minutes for me.

Unless of course it was on like a Sunday night.

And of course it always was because Tim and I recorded on Sunday afternoons.

So.

But it's easy to, it's easy to work with.

I, I recommend Riverside.

I really, really do.

At this point in time, I do not have an affiliate link with them.

I may in the future, but for now try them out.

And their pricing really, really isn't bad.

Monthly it's around $19.

And if you think about it, it's not bad.

It gives you 5 hours of multi track video and audio up to 4K quality, no watermarks.

When you're paying for it, it gives you two hours free.

Wait a second, one second.

You can, you can try it for free for a couple hours.

Live studio for live streaming is $15 a month.

If that's something you're interested in.

I'm thinking about that.

And if I do it, I may come back to Riverside.

I don't know.

I may.

After Riverside, I want to talk to you about a company called Restream.

If Restream is hit.

Restream is great for live.

Live videos or live broadcasts.

When I am going to go live, I'm going to use ecamm Live and I'm going to send it over here to Restream so that I can send it out to YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever I want simultaneously.

Restream is a bigger program than some of us might need in the very, very beginning.

And you know, that's nothing wrong with that, right?

Nothing wrong at all.

But that's.

That's Restream.

After that, we're going to go to one called Open Real.

Now, Open Real is.

Has.

They have remote capture, which means that you can.

You can record somebody else.

You can record, create, host, manage and go live.

Almost all of these are going to let you go live.

They really are.

They want you to go live.

You know, what's wrong with that?

Nothing.

So the pricing on those isn't bad.

They want you to contact them, though, for pricing.

And I don't know why that is.

Some people are that way, but they do give you a free trial.

I have never used them.

Next one up is streamyard.

Now, Streamyard is very, very good.

I've used it too.

It has a lot of.

A lot of AI ability in it now to where it helps you get the things you want to do done.

It'll record them both.

You know, if you've got one or two or three or four, it records them together plus individually, the same as Riverside does.

So you can control all those things.

And the one nice thing about both these, all these programs is if you've got a guest, you can tell what mic they're using.

Are they using headsets, what their volumes are, how their Internet setting is.

You know, is it strong, is it weak?

You can tell all those things.

And that is a very big plus because let's say you're going to be on my show and we go through streamyard and I'm looking at my stats and you know, and you come in, I send you a link and that's how all this works.

I sign in, I get into the end of the show and if you got a guest, you clear, you click Create link in it, then you can send it to ever you want to.

That is going to open it up on their computer.

And whichever program they prefer, which most of these.

I want to tell you, almost all of these work better with Chrome.

Google Chrome, just so you know, there's something about the other ones and it's, and it's not that they're not good, it's just most of these were designed for use on Google Chrome and they just, it just seems to work better.

Will they work on other platforms?

Yeah, they probably will.

Do you want.

Why take the chance?

Google Chrome is free if you don't have it and it works on Macs as well as any Windows program or any Windows machine.

Okay, so there's that.

I forgot where I was at now.

But when I got.

But you know, it's it.

They've all got free.

Try it.

You know, free, free demos for a little bit.

But go into them and research them and see what you think about them because they're really pretty amazing what they can do.

Now this is one that I'm going to say, but I want to say here we are, it's.

It's 2024 going on 2025 and we all know about Zoom.

When the COVID crisis hit the world, Zoom really, really stepped up and up their game and pretty much wiped out Skype.

Now Skype is still there and I think it's still there.

I just, I don't look into it anymore.

So I don't know.

But Zoom has, has a great plan.

I don't.

It just doesn't give you the robustness of the other programs I was telling you about.

Riverside, squadcast, Squad Cast.

Riverside.

Oh my God.

What was the other one I was talking?

Squadcast, squadcast and streamyard.

Yeah, streamyard.

Yeah.

So they're not as robust.

And let's be honest, that person.

That doesn't.

That means now that they can record with their phone, please tell them to not use their phone's microphone.

Have them if you have to go out and get one of those lavalier microphones and hook it up to their, to their phone because it's going to give you a better quality or at least use the wired headsets that they, that the phone came with the headphones.

It's better than just talking to the speakerphone.

Oh my God.

Some things.

I'm an editor and some things are just God awful for us to edit when it comes to those kinds of things.

But that's one of the downfalls of Zoom is people tend to not use a microphone when they need to.

And I'm going to say this now and I'm going to say it from now on, you really need to be using some sort of headsets with this, whether that and all of this, whether that's video or just audio or both, you really, really do.

Most people you'll notice in the videos are wearing headphones.

I'm wearing the in ears.

I've talked about them before.

They're the in ears like they use on concert stages.

They're comfortable for me, they work better for me.

And I hate having that big thing over my.

Over my ears because I wear glasses and it doesn't.

It gives it an escape for the noise to get in.

Okay, so that.

No, enough being said about that.

That's what it is.

Okay?

The zoom is okay.

It's not great.

It really isn't great, but it works.

It does.

It works.

So if they've got no other option, use zoom.

It's free for a while.

I mean, you can record up to 40 minutes each time, up to 100 participants.

All these kinds of things.

It gives you whiteboard, basic, it gives you document basics, all kinds of these types of things that you can get with it.

And if you want more, the first here is 1332.

That's 1599.

Build monthly.

I tried this for a while and I stopped because I stopped using the program.

There's always add ons.

There's always something you can add on to all these programs, but do your research.

Okay, these are the video programs that I suggest.

Are these all of them?

I don't believe so.

No, I do not.

I believe Zencastr has a way.

Zencastr is just as good.

Zencastr is equivalent to Squadcast and Streamyard in my mind.

They really, really are.

They're very.

It's very, very good.

I just didn't do anything with it.

Freaker has a way.

Iris, R, N G, Ringer, Clean feed.

They're there.

Do you want to use them?

Do your research.

It's.

It's really, really easy to do it with the bigger programs.

They've been around a while.

If it were me, I would go to Riverside first, check them out.

Then I would go to Squadcast second.

Those are just my opinions.

Okay?

Do your own research.

I was very happy with, like I said, with Riverside, the quality was good.

It keeps getting better.

They keep adding new things.

You can get transcripts now in most of these programs, but do your own research.

See which one feels better for you as you're doing it.

And remember, you are in control.

If it's your podcast, if you're going to bring on two or three or Four people, remember?

And you really need a.

A program like Riverside, SquadCast, Streamyard that can handle those, that many people in a room and give you the ability to control them, but also know what kind of equipment they're using.

Everybody needs to be using some sort of a microphone.

If they're on their telephone or on a tablet, they need to be using the wired headsets that come with it.

Otherwise, and these aren't great.

You can get.

Now, if you've got an Apple tablet, you can use a regular USB C microphone.

Same with your phone.

I mean, why not do that?

You want good quality before you start.

It's easier to edit if you have.

If you've done it properly to begin with.

I can't stress that enough.

I really, really can't.

Now, most of these programs are going to give you the option to not wear headsets.

And it'll say echo cancellation if you don't want to wear headsets.

Because my brother didn't want to wear a headset, I didn't really care.

But so we went with, with no headsets and with echo cancellation, because what it does is it you can't hear it.

The microphone doesn't pick up what's coming back out of your speaker from when someone else talks and puts it back in, which gives you the echo.

And you don't want that.

Right?

Because that, that is really.

I mean, they have programs out there that I can use right now because I own them and I paid a lot of money for these things.

But you don't need to do that.

If you just record right from the beginning, it just makes it easier.

So those are the programs that I suggest.

How do you use them?

Watch the tutorials.

I can tell you how to use them, but it's easier to show you how to use them.

I could do a video on each one, but.

But then we'd be deep in the woods on this.

I'll get to that if you want me to, but I don't see a need right now to get to that.

This is not what this is for.

Right now we're here to tell you about the basics and get you going.

Okay, so those are what I suggest.

And I wanted to talk to you about your recording process.

So let's go into cameras.

Now, the camera on your computer is usually pretty good, but let's be really honest, the camera on your phone is better than that.

If you're going to start out, don't go spending hundreds of dollars on Sony cameras, video cameras, all this other kind of stuff.

Spend it on lighting.

Okay, Your room needs to be well lit in front of you.

There's lots of videos.

You'll see them on all these sites about how to light yourself.

I'm using an Elgato light right now, but I used to use a 15, one of those circular lights, and it gave me all kinds of options for warm and smooth or bright and harsh and all those kinds of stuff.

But you want it in front of you so that the light hits your face, but you don't want it in front of you so that you get a glare off of your glasses or you can see the light ring or the light in your glasses.

If you wear glasses like I do, that's always the challenge.

So usually two, one on each side coming at you.

Now you can go ahead and spend all kinds of, of money on lighting and, you know, and, and diffusers and, and all that fun stuff and setting up your, your, you know, your, your studio.

Or you can just start easily, record where you're recording.

Use the background you're in.

I'll be honest with you.

My main office is in a bedroom.

There's a bed behind me.

There's carpet on the floor, so there's bedding.

There's stuff on the walls so that I don't get all that echo off of a blank room.

Now in the beginning, that's where all my recordings came from.

I've got a green screen now so I can use whatever backdrop I want to use.

But in the beginning, I didn't.

And why would I?

I'm not spending a boatload of money.

I spent like $130 on this green screen that I have.

I've got a big one that I use when I go out to places that I can set it up to where, because it goes 7 foot wide by, or 8 foot wide by.

It's.

I think it's 10 foot tall.

And it comes with frames, big, huge frames.

If that's something I'm going to go do out in public, I got it.

It's available to me.

I've got.

Got another one that attaches to the back of my chair.

And I think it cost me 50 bucks.

Green screens are easy.

Just if you want to do that, I'll show you how to do that.

But it doesn't need to be done yet.

So if you want to do video, do video.

I have nothing against it.

Put it on YouTube, put on YouTube, put it on LinkedIn, put it on Facebook, put it on Twitter, Instagram.

You could do Instagram ram reels.

Most of these programs I've given you will do shorts for you.

They'll cut them into shorts.

Don't use those for that.

You can.

Don't get me wrong, you can, but you make the decisions on the editing yourself.

Now, a lot of them you can edit in the program and then, you know, export it out.

What I do is I export it, the whole thing or both to a program called.

Oh, it's called DaVinci Resolve.

DaVinci Resolve is a.

Is the same program that most.

I'm saying most of the big film corporations and companies use.

They use the paid version.

You get more out of this program for free than you'll ever, ever need.

And it gives you the option for plugins.

But my goodness.

And it'll.

It'll also help you with your audio.

It's free.

It's called.

It is.

It's called DaVinci Resolve.

I suggest you pick it up.

Go now.

Put a link.

I will put a link in the show notes.

Let me type that in there real quick.

Now let's go and talk about video editors.

This is a video editing program, DaVinci Resolve.

It's simple, it's easy, but there's a little bit of a learning curve.

If you're on a Mac, you can use Imovie.

Imovie Simple.

It's easy if you download it into imac.

If you're on a.

You're on a Windows machine.

Sorry about that.

I actually stopped the recording and go look it up because I had forgotten what kind of options are available for Windows machines.

I apologize for that.

But I did.

So DaVinci Resolve will work on that.

There's one called Lightworks.

It's a freemium kind of free now.

I went for the free ones to start out with and VSDC is out there.

It's a very good one.

Power Director isn't bad.

It really isn't.

But if you're going to go to Power Director now Power Director is used by a lot of video Editors on.

On YouTube and on Facebook and Vimeo and as well as LinkedIn.

But the big programs, they are a lot like it.

They really are.

So look into Power Director.

See which one is easier for you.

I personally, it's.

For me, I don't know.

There used to be a program called Windows Movie Maker and I don't know if it's still out there or not.

Okay.

Windows Movie Maker stopped being.

I don't know if you can still get it.

If you got it on yours.

Well, good luck, keep using it.

They don't have anything right now.

The best they can come up with is Moviezilla.

You're gonna have to pay for most of these.

I don't.

I don't know.

I really don't.

Again, DaVinci Resolve or power Director?

Again, There's a learning curve on these, so take your time, get ready.

I want a Mac.

So I started out on Imovie and it went rather.

What?

Rather quickly.

Now, Mac does have their program which is upgraded from Imovie.

It's called Final Cut Pro, which a lot of the big studios use to.

I looked at that and I had already downloaded DaVinci Resolve.

Final cut Pro is paid for just like Logic Pro is paid for on a Mac.

I wasn't going to spend another 200 bucks on a video editing program.

I didn't know how much I was going to use.

I knew how much I was going to use the audio editing.

Wasn't sure about video editing, so I went with the free stuff.

That's just me.

Okay, don't.

I'm trying to keep this as inexpensive as I can.

If you're all in and got thousands of dollars to spend on this, go for it.

Give me a yell and I'll walk you through the expensive stuff.

Maybe down the line we can do an expensive upgrade program.

But there's programs out there you can get that are just simple as pie.

But most have a little bit of a learning curve and you have to expect that this is something new to you.

Unless you've been doing this before.

And if.

Or if you know somebody who is an editor like myself and is willing to do it at a reasonable fair price and you can afford that, by all means, send it over to the editor, both video or audio.

Let us take care of it for you.

You will be happier and you'll be a lot less stressed.

You've got to figure with audio in the beginning especially.

So if you have a.

Let's just break it into one hour bits here.

If you have a one hour podcast that you've recorded and you're going to edit it, it's just audio.

Figure the first couple months you're going to be spending an hour and a half to two hours editing it because you're going to want to get out the ums.

Now you can go to programs like Descript or who will help you edit it and they'll take out the filler words for you.

But you want to be a smooth at it and go whichever way you want to go.

Now it's up to you.

I'm not your boss here.

You are the boss.

I like to edit my own.

Okay?

So I've got it down to however long it takes.

I usually add 10 or 15 minutes to that.

So if I had a half an hour, 35 minute show here, it's going to take me 45 minutes and a little bit to, to get this all said and done.

And then the rest of it happens.

Then you go back to, you have to export it, you have to upload it into your host, the host that you've decided to go with.

And you gotta come up with a show name.

You got to come up with show notes, you've got to come up with links.

If you've promised them computer links, you know, for go to this program, you know, go here, go there, like I've done today.

All these links are going to be there because I was talking about them.

So follow through is important.

So you gotta figure an hour show, two hours to edit.

You got, let's just say another half an hour to upload it or to export it out.

Upload it into your host, come up with a name and with show notes or whatever that is and all the links and post or publish.

It's called publishing, it's not called posting.

So what are you in there?

You're in two, three, four hours, let's say four hours for a one hour show.

And that's if you didn't make a lot of mistakes.

So consider that or consider farming out some of that work to an editor.

As an editor, I will upload to your host if you want me to, but you have to grant me access to your, to your host.

And I don't like to do that.

I like you to re hear it.

So let's just say you're sending it to me.

You got an hour out there and you're going to get it down to 45 minutes because of the ums, the odds, all the other stuff.

You send it to me, I send it back to you.

You've got to spend another 45 minutes, listen, then if you find other things, you call me back and say, hey, this is what's going on.

All right, Sorry, before we were so rudely interrupted by the ever present lawn guys.

All the links are going to be in, in the show notes.

If I missed something, I'll fix it.

But I want you to consider a video.

There's going to be podcasters out there.

Oh, video is not a podcast.

Who cares if you're doing the audio and the video?

Who cares if you're just Doing video.

It's your decision, not theirs.

Don't let them bother you, okay?

Oh, you.

You can't be a podcast if you're just doing a video.

Hey, can you extract the audio and put it out there?

Ain't hard.

Here I go.

Using bad words ain't.

So that's the show for today, folks.

I hope you're.

You're okay with that.

I know we talked about editing programs before, but I want to talk about them again next week, and we're going to go into a little bit more depth on each one.

We're going to probably Talk Pro Tools vs Audacity vs Logic Pro vs GarageBand.

There's other ones out there.

They're all basically the same in a sense, but that's my plan for right now for next week.

So until then, if you live in the United States, this week is Thanksgiving week.

I hope you are happy and you have a family to go see and enjoy time with.

I really hope that you are.

You are as thankful as I am for being around.

Okay, I think.

I think I said that all wrong, but I'm very thankful for being here.

I'm thankful for you folks.

For you sitting there listening to me driving down the road, or for you sitting there at your computer going, how in the world am I gonna do that?

I'm here for you.

I am.

So here's what I want to tell you.

If you need editing done, because you want.

You don't want to learn that part of it yet, get a hold of me.

Leave me a note here on the.

The.

On the website.

Boomer podcasters.com.

just go to the website, go to the Contact Me page and leave me a note.

Or go to that little red or the green microphone.

Leave me a message there.

Remember, I do not sell your email addresses, so be careful about that now because you know how things are.

Also, folks, if you know somebody who is not knowledgeable or doesn't know what a podcast is, do us a favor.

Show them how to find one.

Show them where they are, what they are, how to do it, how to follow and subscribe, how to, like, how to leave a review.

You ever thought about leaving a review about this podcast or any of the other podcasts that are out there?

We would enjoy that.

That makes a big deal to us.

It.

We really feel.

Feel something special when people leave us a review, good or bad.

Leave us a review.

Also, folks, don't forget I have another podcast called Five Minutes with Gray Hair Day.

Five Minutes Grayhair.

Dave.com.

that's the number five minutes of gray hair dave.com and leave me a note there.

Just listen, see what you think.

So on behalf of Gray Hair Dave here in Gray Hair Productions on the day before Thanksgiving in the U.S.

i hope you all have a wonderful day, a wonderful weekend.

Stay safe and I will talk.

Oh yeah, wait.

Don't forget, smile at somebody today.

Don't forget to smile at somebody you don't know.

They are going to be ecstatic to see somebody smile at them and it's going to make your day.

So you all go out and make somebody today.

Talk to you soon.

Bye.