How To DIY: Home Video Recording Studio Setup + Video Editing

By Morgan Timm (http://blog.teachable.com/how-to-diy-home-video-recording-studio-setup)


People are visual creatures. They can spend hours on Netflix and YouTube, but when it comes to reading news sites or blogs, they'll often get bored and click away after a minute or two.
Clever internet marketers have taken notice, and have responded accordingly, shifting their strategy to focus on video content.

Course creators have done the same. Online courses that include video (rather than just text and images), are higher value products and sell for more. Furthermore, they create a greater connection between you and your audience. 

For newbies, video production seems like a complicated and expensive process, but in reality, you can easily create professional quality video on a budget.

Why video?

 

According to The Next Web, our brains process visuals faster and retain and transmit more information when it’s delivered visually.

So basically, video = better results for your students.

 

Creating videos can be easy

 

You can make a home studio with material that you already own, otherwise invest a few dollars here and there to up the production quality. Here are our suggestions:

 

DIY Studio Setup (Free-$60)

1. Shoot with your phone/laptop
 
Most people either have a phone and laptop, or have a friend who has a phone or laptop making this a free option that can still deliver a high quality end result.

2. Shoot with your phone horizontal or laptop upright 
 
This will create a widescreen video so nobody will be the wiser that you shot on your iPhone.
With your laptop, make sure you're filming with the camera at a 90 degree angle. Tilts can look funny and distort your face.

3. Buy a tripod ($20) or elevate your laptop
 
You want the lens at face level to get the most flattering shot. With an iPhone, that means using a small tripod (like this $20 one!).

If you’re using a laptop, however, you can stack it on a pile of books or boxes to reach face height.
4. Use the right editing technologies 
 
If you’re using an iPhone, we suggest the filmic pro app to stabilize your video.

If you’re using a laptop, we suggest Screenflow as an affordable way to film and edit your content. Just check out our Screenflow tutorial to easily create your videos.

On a PC? Camtasia is a great alternative. (And it's what I use!)

5. Never use the zoom feature 
 
Zooming in with your phone can make your video blurry. Instead of zooming, move your phone or computer closer to you.

6. Shoot at 24 frames per second 
 
Something the average viewer might not catch if you skip this, but people with trained eyes will know, and it's a simple flip in your settings.

7. Use one laptop/phone for video and another phone as a microphone 
 
This is more complicated than speaking into the same laptop that’s recording you but makes a big difference in sound quality.

Set one phone/laptop in front of you to record visuals, but use another phone closer to your face for clearer sound. Obviously we don't expect you to have two phones, but you can borrow a friend's or use your camera for video and phone for sound.

Later on in the editing process, you’ll combine the visuals from one device with the sound from the second.

8. Clap your hands to mark the start of a scene 
 
A clapboard with its white stripes and loud noise is a symbol of cinema, but it’s also a waste of money when you have two hands.

Clap loudly at the start of your scene. This will create a spike of noise that shows up as a tall spike during video editing.

Image from SoundonSound.com.

You can use the height of this point to match the visuals from one camera with the sound on another.

9. Use a sheet as your DIY backdrop

A background is pretty easy to fake with any large piece of fabric. Black works better than white, which tends to wash out its subject, especially with bright lights.

10. Use soft household objects to stop echo
 
A common trouble point is getting an echo from your sound. This can come from large rooms, empty apartments or from clearing furniture out of a room to set up your studio in the first place.

The very simple solution is to use pillows, rugs, couches and all things fluffy to absorb sound. It’s as easy as throwing some cushions around your lights.

11. DIY lighting: natural light 
 
Your hand-me-down lamp and boyfriend’s reading light aren’t ideal for casting even and warm light. Bad lighting can make you look sickly or cast weird shadows on your face.

The best option for cheap lighting? Filming by a window or glass door and using that sweet, sweet natural light.

 

High-Value Studio ($300-900)

The upgraded version of the “DIY home video studio” is to create a “high-value” studio. Your video quality will jump from slightly amateur to looking more professional. Compare these two shots side by side:

Not to mention, the High-Value Studio has two huge advantages.

1. Low cost and high return
2. Semi-Permanent

It’s no surprise that most of our tips read like a shopping list. Below, I’ll talk about why we suggest each of the upgrades from the DIY studio, but if you want a quick list of the equipment we suggest, cost and links to where to buy it, click below to download our Studio Set Up Guide.

GET THE SHOPPING LIST 

Below are our tips for the very first things you should buy in order of priority. We believe this list encompasses the equipment with the highest return on investment. Once you start buying professional equipment, you could consider using part of your home/workspace as a permanent home studio…or not. That’s the beauty of these studios, leave them up, or take them down, you have options.

 

TIPS:

1. Buy a mic

Sure, hanging an iPhone from the ceiling with fishing line might make for a quick microphone fix and good story, but it’s easily trumped by an affordable and higher quality microphone that instantly takes your videos to the next level.

For less than $150 you can upgrade to a Blue Yeti. It’s a product we use and love and it easily plugs into your computer.

2. Buy clamp lights 
 
For DIY studio lighting, we suggested using natural lighting, but you run into problems if you live in gloomy areas, or if you don't get good light into your apartment at all.

You can buy three clamp lights for $39. You’ll want two key lights pointing at your subject at 45-degree angles and one light aimed at the backdrop to round out the light and get rid of shadows from a moving subject.

You can also use diffusion papers to soften the light to the right amount of brightness and use clamps to keep them in place.

3. Shut out natural light 
 
It comes as a no-brainer that if you’re buying lights, you don’t need to open the windows. Cover them to keep extraneous light from streaming in.

4. Buy a camera 
 
This is the natural progression from using an iPhone or laptop to film your video. There are tons of options, but we’ve found a high ROI and love the end results from the Canon SL1.

When you buy a better camera, you’ll also want to buy a tripod to match.

Still the same.

 

MORE UPGRADES

At some point, you might decide that you want to invest in higher quality equipment. Before you do, consider if it’s actually necessary.

1. Is a majority of your content video based?
2. Is a higher quality video really going to convert and engage your audience more than what you have?
3. Is it necessary for your subject matter?

If you still think upgrading to more expensive equipment is worthwhile, then start by considering the following:

1. A professional backdrop: Two words: green screen. This opens up a whole new world of opportunity if you want to invest in green screen. However, a nicer grey background works as well, or even a white backdrop with a whiteboard like Rand at Moz.
2. Sound Panels: If sound clarity is important to your content, buying and installing a few sound panels to muffle extraneous noise might be a good option.
3. Nicer Cameras: Because Lord of the Rings wasn’t shot on an iPhone.

Nice equipment is something we’ve toyed with and our suggestions are included in our Studio Set Up Guide. Check it out for some tried and true equipment.

GET THE SHOPPING LIST

 

Before you get started

So you've got your set up, you're gearing up to film your masterpiece BUT.. now you're feeling a little stuck. Sure, your studio is looking great, but when it comes to going from there you're a bit overwhelmed.

Don't worry, we've got your back. Here are some of our best tips for video production:

1. Do your research

See how other people are teaching online. Focus on niches that you're not interested in so you can soley focus in on the technical side of things. What angles are they using? How are they editing clips together? Do they use slides?

Figure out what you do and don't like about other people's teaching methods and design a teaching method of your own.

2. Think about framing

 

It might feel natural to sit smack-dab in the center of your video, but if you're going to be showing products or adding text overlays, it might make more sense to sit off to a side.

You also don't want to sit too close to the camera. We've all seen those videos that make you feel like you're nose to nose with the person on the otherside of the screen, and it's always a bit unnerving.

 

3. Blur your background

This might feel like a small thing, but it makes a big difference in how professional your quality looks. It's not hard, either.

Here are two tricks to making it happen:

1. Increase the distance between you and your background (when the camera focuses on your face, it will focus less on things farther away).
2.  Adjust your lens. Changing the aperture changes how of a scene your camera catches. The lower the number on your aperture the smaller part of the scene that’s in focus.

Here’s a quick reminder:




So, if you want a blurry background, add distance and shoot in a lower aperture.

 

4. Practice!

Not everyone is a natural at this - and you're probably going to feel awkward at first and so you might look awkward, too. Combat this by practicing.
Saying your script to yourself a few times before you film will make it sound more natural and less forced. You don't want to sound like you're reading lines auditioning for your high school play.

 

Tie it all together

Editing is my least favorite part of video production. Why? It will never not be weird to see myself talking on the computer. BUT! I do it anyhow because it's important and I'm waaaay to awkward to not edit out the bloopers.

We have a few tricks up our sleeve here at Teachable to make the video editing process smooth as butta, so here are my best tips for you.

 

1. Record Room Tone

To start, no matter what kind of video content you’re creating you want to record in a quiet and noise controlled environment.

Capture around 30 seconds of “room tone”, or the base sound of the room. Turn on your mic and let it record. This sound will be used in the editing process to fill audio gaps and smooth out transitions from one scene to the next.

It’s quicker than trying to edit out every time gap or inserting filler noise you’ve pulled from elsewhere.

 

2. Give yourself enough lead-time between takes

Knowing that you’re going to edit your videos, make life easy on yourself and create silent lead time between your takes and after you make a mistake.

This is especially important with screencasts. If you make a mistake while recording, it’s find to stop and keep going as long as you take the time to stop. You can cut out your fumbles and filler time and use room tone to smooth the transition.

If you hurry to your next point and don’t pause, you’re going to wind up in editing madness.
Editing out a fumble: 

 

 

3. Easy Transitions with Cross-Fading

Sometimes, there’s a transition in a video that doesn’t need room tone, just a little smooth-over. Use crossfading.

A majority of non-linear video editing programs will let you do this in one of two way:

1. Drag the beginning/end of one clip over the end/beginning of another
2. Line up the two clips next to each other and then apply a cross dissolve/fade.

 

4. Save your content on an external hard drive

Big screens aren’t the only thing big about movies, they’re massive files.
Some programs, including Screenflow, capture your whole project as one file (in this case a .screenflow file). Other programs create a series of source files, project files and even rendering files.

All are massive.

Check out how long rendering is taking. Let’s AVOID this: 

 


What to buy:

When buying a great external hard drive, it might be a good idea to look for quality. Working with movies you need AT LEAST 500GB of space, but we prefer 1TB+.

Also, check out transfer rates (how long it take to stream data to and from your computer). If you’re saving and transporting big files, it’s important to know that a 1.8GB movie transferring at.05MB/sec will take hours but at 25MB/sec only a few minutes.

 

5. Compress your videos after exporting them in HD

The better the resolution, the bigger the file, the better the connection needs to be in order to watch, stream, or download it in a reasonable amount of time.

We can’t control the internet speeds of our viewers, but we can do our best with what we can control.

Export your videos in the highest quality possible, then compress them. This provides the highest quality from your end at the fastest speed.

At Teachable, we’ve compressed a 54GB video to 25MB! This download works lightyears faster, and when compared the quality side-by-side, it was hardly noticeable in our ScreenFlow.

Check out the size of our files.

 


We use Handbrake because it is free and we’ve never had issues with it, but feel free to use another program if you have a preference. For a guide on Handbreak, check out their wiki and keep reading below.

 

With these 5 tips in mind, you can dramatically increase the quality of your work and decrease the time it takes to create it without spending more money or changing it’s look and feel.