New show: NewsReal with Joe & Niall

[Scottie]

Tech notes:

I've been doing some search on cam stuff lately. As it turns out camcorders are very expensive (for my budget anyway), so after checking into alternatives I discovered that some of the newer smart phones have very good video quality and can do 1080p and even 4K. There's a site, DXOMark, that tests and ranks them (with a point score), explaining pros and cons with imagery. As an example, something like a Samsung S8+ is ranked really good and they're available in various places for $500 or less, used. And of course audio can be wired into a mixer or recorder etc. Just an FYI, as a way to have extra cams without big expense.

Yeah, that's an option. I use my Nexus 5 for my overhead cam for YT vids. Trouble is, we'd need 3 of them.

The cams we got are the Canon Legria HF-R806, which is the Canon Vixia in the USA - the base model or near to it, I think. 250 bucks. FullHD at 60fps, although we're not using them at "full power" just yet. They have mini-HDMI outputs that work without recording and when on AC power (some cams don't). So then all that was needed was a Magewell quad HDMI capture card. That was pricey... But not as pricey as the fancier SDI version.

Real pro FullHD cams start at about $1500, and rapidly rise to 5k and higher. And then you need an SDI capture card, or multi-cam production hardware, etc. Joe Rogan's setup cost something like 30k, and that's just cams, mics, and studio equipment... no puters or panel lighting or fancy desk chairs, and so on.

And Mark, you'll be happy to know that the puter doing the recording is linux with the free OBS Studio. OBS on Windows is kind of problematic.

As for mic, I have a Shure SM7B that is very good (and widely used for audio voice recording), so I can recommend that one.

Added: If you want to consider using wired lavalier mics the Rode Smartlav+ is pretty good based on my own tests. (it has a TRRS connector, so an adapter may be necessary depending on what it's connected to).

The Shure is the one I want for Joe + Niall. Too bad they're 481€ each here! We're using Sennheiser e840's now, which are pretty good for the price, but they're really really basic vocal mics.

The Rode SmartLav+ is excellent. That's the one I use for my YT vids, but the Rode app is only available for iPhones. So, I use our Zoom Cass session recorder for audio. The guys like the Big Radio Mics better though. They're easier to use with our radio show mixer, and they look cool. But not as cool as the Shure SM7B...

 

[Scottie]

a fixed chair instead of the spinning one used by Joe

Well, I dunno... Joe rotates and Niall leans to the left. It's part of their signature!

I actually find it kind of boring when hosts sit perfectly still. It's just not natural - especially when you're channeling cosmic energies.

 

[mkrnhr]

Well, I dunno... Joe rotates and Niall leans to the left. It's part of their signature!

I actually find it kind of boring when hosts sit perfectly still. It's just not natural - especially when you're channeling cosmic energies.

LOL agree. The point is that on the screen, Joe make the spinning signature but the big chair can be visually distracting. Not important anyway.

 

[aimarok]

The cams we got are the Canon Legria HF-R806, which is the Canon Vixia in the USA - the base model or near to it, I think. 250 bucks. FullHD at 60fps, although we're not using them at "full power" just yet.

People aren't happy with this model. Very poor quality at low light conditions. I hope you're recording 1080p and downscale later because there's only 720p option on YT.

I wonder if you tried to use action cameras in your setup. There are some good and cheap ones like Yi 4K (~$160), but they don't have zoom and their optics are ultra-wide.

So then all that was needed was a Magewell quad HDMI capture card.

This one looks serious, but I noticed some artifacts specific for hardware encoders. When Joe moves his hand fast it becomes very blurry. If you have enough drive space software encoding will give you much better quality.

 

[beetlemaniac]

That was a fun show, and well put together too! This is a great next step for the SOTT team. Now, I finally get to see what Niall and Joe actually look like on camera, which adds to the empathy factor by leaps and bounds. I think people would derive more enjoyment from NewsReal once the broadcasts come out in 1080p. That would blow everyone's socks off for sure!

edit: don't forget to 'Like' on YT too

 

[Voyageur]

Just excellent, way to go guys (not to mention the behind the scene help)!!!!

'Liked' on YT!

I sometimes look at this US site for new/used (Used Photography Cameras & Equipment - Buy and Sell Online) camera/lenses/video when we were not in 25% austerity mode, so perhaps something might pop up. There is this not too expensive (relativly) Cinema Camera (1080p movie camera capable of 422 ProRes) that is interesting Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera Body (M43) (1920 X 1080) and it can be souped up. You can catch a review of it here.

 

[caballero reyes]

The communication in SOTT in ascending spiral. Congratulations to the team.

 

[luc]

Had a chance to listen in - excellent! I think you two are getting punchier now that you're on video

One technical note: the audio levels were quite uneven between Joe and Niall and the overall volume was way too low. I think for "talking heads" YouTube videos, the audio is extremely important, maybe more so than the video quality.

One simple solution would be to run the audio through an audio program (such as Audacity or similar, that's what I use) in post production, normalize it and slap a software compressor/limiter on the audio track to even out the volume differences and maximize loudness. Keep in mind that many folks will watch the video on a laptop, smartphone or smart TV and these devices often have not enough power to crank up the volume, and it's also very inconvenient to constantly change volume settings.

 

[hesperides]

Is there any possibility that your discussions may be subtitled in English? I ignore wheather this is easily feasible or not, but I would be sooo happy to follow you, guys! It´s not that I can´t follow you generally speaking, but I´ve found myself listening to some parts of your discussions over and over again without figuring out what has been said. Very frustrating.

Other than that, I love your new format. It transmits very well your scientific research under a journalistic facade

 

[Scottie]

Is there any possibility that your discussions may be subtitled in English?

Yes! Anyone can add subtitles to YT vids. I'm not sure if it's enabled for new channels, but viewers can create the subtitles on YT itself (I think) and then the channel owners review/approve them.

So, if somebody wants to add English subs to each vid, that would be pretty nifty.

Also, audio levels will be better in the next vid.

 

[beetlemaniac]

Yes! Anyone can add subtitles to YT vids. I'm not sure if it's enabled for new channels, but viewers can create the subtitles on YT itself (I think) and then the channel owners review/approve them.

So, if somebody wants to add English subs to each vid, that would be pretty nifty.

Also, audio levels will be better in the next vid.

Hi Scottie,

I checked out the video for an option to add subtitles, but unfortunately it wasn't there.

I figured out that you need to enable "Community Contributions" for others to be able to contribute to your videos. Full instructions here. Here's the gist of it:

 

[aimarok]

This one looks serious, but I noticed some artifacts specific for hardware encoders. When Joe moves his hand fast it becomes very blurry. If you have enough drive space software encoding will give you much better quality.

Looking at the video more I'm not sure anymore. It looks like that the original video might be interlaced and deinterlace filter was applied later. It would give the video that "unfocused" flavor.

 

[Luis Miguel]

This new project rocks, guys

We can emulate the ECS work flow for the captions, the only extra to consider is that we would need to actually transcribe the audio if the automatic option in YT is not available yet. But to save us time we can use a little trick ;) We would need to change to "stereo mix" as the default microphone of our computer in the sound settings, or if you don't have "stereo mix" available in your OS, we can download a software that allows us to record the audio from our computer - as sunflower for Mac, or voicemeeter for PC -. And then we select either of this newly installed audio inputs as the microphone in the sounds settings.

Then, we open a google doc, go to the "Tools" menu and chose "Voice typing". Check that "stereo mix" is working (usually you'll see some green bars at the right of the device in the sound settings window whenever there's any sound generated in your computer), play the video, and you'll see that everything that's being spoken in the video will be automatically transcribed to the google doc. That option even allows us to pause the video and make corrections to the text if needed.

The Voice typing in the google docs is a very decent "AI speech to text", and even if we will need to make some corrections, it will be much faster than doing everything manually.

To make things easier, one or more of us can create the transcription with the "Voice typing" option in google docs, and others create the captions with the finished transcription in a software as Subtitle Edit, Jubler, HandBreak, or other of your liking. Once we have the subtitles file we could even translate it to other languages with the help of DeepL and the subtitles template that we already use for the ECS.

If anyone is interested to help with this and have any doubt about the process, just let me know.

 

[Gawan]

I really like the new format and also the word and name play at the beginning. Onwards and upwards !

 

[fabric]

So, if somebody wants to add English subs to each vid, that would be pretty nifty.

I checked out the video for an option to add subtitles, but unfortunately it wasn't there.

YouTube will auto generate subtitles in the default language automatically. Depending on the speaker and sound, the quality might not be perfect but it usually does an ok if not mediocre job, which might be better than nothing. The channel owner has to enable the feature upon upload however. Here's how:

From the creator studio go to your video. Then select "Subtitles/CC"



The following screen should pop up:



Set your language. You can pick English UK or US etc. I think it matters to the algorithm so if most speaking have a US accent for example, might be better to choose that. Not 100% sure though as I haven't compared different ones. The page should reload and you'll see following:



Clicking the blue "Add new subtitles or CC" button takes you to another page where clean transcripts or translations can be added. "Community contributions" can also be turned on here (as well as some other places) which allows others to edit the CC.



And that's pretty much it. After the auto generated file can be extracted and worked on if needed. Once that feature is on, YT will also auto-translate the text. If you click on the "settings" next to the subtitle toggle button, you should be able to pick it. For example:



Again, it's not going to be perfect, but it's quick and easy and at least gets half the work done To grab the file (e.g. srt), something like www.lilsubs.com can be used. It will also find the auto generated translations YT spits out.