Studio

Studio Setup Checklist

1. Turn on the power strip (the red light-up switch on the on the strip behind the desk).
2. Adjust the brightness on the primary ring-light. There is a dimmer that is right under the base on the light lightly to the right (while looking from the front) of where it connects to the tripod. Turning the lights all the way up typically have the best effects (and nice catchlights in your eyes) but be quite bright and hard to stare at.
3. Turn on both the secondary lights on both sides of the desk by clicking the switches on the switches on the cords going to the light panels. You can optionally choose to adjust the gels in the lights (there are gels in the draw in the desk or under the secondary monitor to the left). We've found that it looks nice with a red gel in one side and no gel in the other.
4. Activate the camera by very lightly pressing the shuttle button on the camera (just a half-press down). Once you do this, you should see a life stream on the monitor for the mixer the right-side monitor.
5. Place your laptop on the laptop stand and adjust the height. Things will look most natural if your gaze is as close to directly pointed at the camera as possible. As a result, you want the monitor stand to be as raised as possible without the laptop being visible in the camera frame (again, check the monitor).
6. [IMPORTANT] Unmute the RØDE shotgun microphone by pressing "ON" for Mic #1 on the ATEM mixer. This microphone is controlled by the buttons in the top right corner of the mixer and the button will light-up red.
7. Plug the mixer into your computer by plugging in the USB cable marked "Webcam." Input from the mixer will show up just as a normal webcam so it should be selectable from Zoom, Teams, Jitsi, Skype, etc, etc. The cable that is plugged in is an old-style USB-C cable. If you need USB-C, there is a white cable that should work in the drawer.
8. [OPTIONAL] If you want to also share your screen (or a secondary screen) plug HDMI cable labeled "Input #2." This will be mapped to the button marked #2 on the ATEM video mixer. There is an HDMI→USB-C adapter in the drawer.
9. Ensure that whatever software you are choosing is using the right audio and video. Both should show up as something like BlackMagic ATEM Mini.

Extra things:

The drawers contain a number of goodies including:

• An external USB keyboard.
• An external cordless USB mouse.
• A cordless clicker for giving presentations.
• Gels of various colors of the lights.

Using a secondary screen:

The large monitor on the right side of the screen is setup just to be a second screen and is plugged into a USB-C/Thunderbolt dock which is right the of the laptop stand. Mako typically uses it for things like the brady-bunch view from video conferences, webpages, or other material that he does not want to share with others. You can use this by either using plugging in the USB-C cable labeled "Dock" by plugging in any of the items from the dock (like the HDMI cable from the monitor) into your computer.

The images included here show two of Mako's different setups for (a) recording presentations (i.e., non-shared notes are shown in the middle/laptop screen and the slides being recorded are shown to the right); and (b) video chat with real-time screensharing (i.e., the laptop screen is piped into the mixer to be shared and the right monitor is unshared as a secondary screen).

Using the mixer

The best way to get familiar with the Mixer is to play with it! Here are a few tips.

Video Transitions

The default mode ("CUT") just switches directly between video. If you click "Auto" you can then choose different transitions and the length of transitions using using the buttons on the mid/bottom left of the mixer. Once you have selected the transition you want, just hit #1, #2, etc.

Picture-in-Picture

If you switch from #1 and to #2 and then press the "ON" button and then one of the area buttons in the the PIP area in the top-middle of mixer, you should see a little version of the video show up over your screen. If you want to move the PIP box to a different corner, just press the corresponding button on the mixer. To turn it off, just press "OFF" or switch back to #1.

Fate-To-Black

Just press the "FTB" button.

Autumn 2020 Basement Studio Schedule

The studio schedule is stored in a Google Calendar. Ask User:Willscott for read/write access.