A New Era - Season 14 Premiere!

It's a new era not only for the podcast, but for a lot more too... 

🎙This week's mic:
Warm Audio WA-87jr
https://geni.us/ZGaN (Amazon)

Chapter Markers:
0:00 - Intro
4:01 - Season 13 Mic Poll Results!
6:44 - Mic of the Week: Warm Audio WA-87jr
13:21 - A New Era
47:13 - Channel Check In
58:18 - Listener Messages

———————————————————————
Affiliate links earn a commission from qualifying purchases which helps support my channel at no additional cost to you. 

——————————— CONNECT ———————————
Electronic Mail: tom@enthusiasmproject.com
Main Site: https://himynameistom.com
Social Medias: @sodarntom

——————————— PODCAST GEAR ———————————
•Rodecaster Video: https://bhpho.to/3Ub88j2 (B&H)
•Rodecaster Duo: https://geni.us/ULKDFkp (Amazon)
•Elgato Prompter: https://geni.us/elgatoprompter (Amazon)
•Mic Arm: https://geni.us/zc7hAbW (Amazon)
•Elgato Stream Deck Plus: https://geni.us/EzyY6o5 (Amazon)
•Headphones: https://bhpho.to/3JNacqg (B&H)
•XLR Cables: https://geni.us/bluexlr (Amazon)

S14E01 | Series Episode 185
 
Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Hello and welcome. My name is Tom. This is the Enthusiasm Project season fourteen, episode one. What? It's been a minute or several thousand minutes. Uh, it is very cool to be back for an episode and for a new era in many ways, not just the topic of today's show, but also for the podcast in general. So let's just jump into it, right? So uh first, first off, elephant in the room. It's been many months since I've recorded an episode, and that is totally fine. And I am becoming okay with that. So uh I talked about this in the last episode, the end of season 13. And basically, if you want to grow a podcast, the way that I'm doing this show now is the worst possible way to do so. Consistency really is key. Uh, there's definitely a reason that that has been you know touted as best practice for many years for all kinds of, you know, any anytime you create something, and there's also a reason that on YouTube I upload at least one video a week at the same day, on the on the same day at the same time, every week, for years on end, you know, that that is very valuable and very important. And same thing is true if you want to grow a podcast. For me, though, after doing this show for six years and you know, 13 seasons, which is sort of arbitrary, but you know, for doing a lot of it, I was very much getting worried that it was going that continuing to do it as a weekly obligation was very quickly going, it was getting to the point where it's gonna be not fun. It's literally called the Enthusiasm Project. If I don't have enthusiasm, it doesn't work. So uh that's why I kind of made the decision to just record episodes whenever. So this is season 14. I'm doing giant air quotes if you're listening to the audio version, not watching the video version. Uh arbitrary, I don't know. I just figured for the sake of like completion, you know, doing 10 episode seasons still works, uh, even though I don't know when those will be. I do have a few ideas, so hopefully it'll be you know a couple more frequent episodes, but ultimately it comes down to rather than feeling like I need to make an episode every week, I will make an episode whenever I want to. Like this one, which is like getting very excited to share stuff and being, you know, I woke up, I went to bed last night looking forward to waking up today so I could record an episode, and that's how it should be. And I want to make sure it stays that way. So I'm sorry that that's not uh as consistent, and you know, I know that there's something to be said for every week. There's a new episode, and you know, lots of the podcasts I listen to have very regular schedules. So I'm sorry that that's not the case, but hopefully you'll bear with me, and I do appreciate that. And, you know, this is this is a fun thing, and it should stay fun, and I want to keep it that way. I want to protect the enthusiasm in the enthusiasm project. So we have some fun stuff to talk about today. Uh really, really cool stuff that I'm excited about in really in the world of cameras, but we also have some other things to touch on and some updates and all that kind of stuff, starting with what is actually the beginning of our where we left off last week. So microphones. That was a thing I said last week, last season, many months ago. Um, microphones are a thing. Last season, for all 10 episodes, I used a different microphone on every episode. And then at the end of the season, I put out a poll and people could vote on which one sounded best. You know, obviously super scientific. So I appreciate everyone who did take the time to vote on that. I shared some of the results early after that happened, but since this is the next episode, and if you're listening in order, that several month gap in between episodes is irrelevant. So now you can just get the answer to the question of which microphone won. And I do want to share that. I just have to make sure I'm clicking on the right thing over here so I can actually do that. So uh the results of the microphone uh survey poll thingy that we did last season. The winning microphone, so it won by one vote. Percentages can be off. So with 20, there were 18 responses. Uh, how many options did we have? One, two, well, uh, 10, because there were 10 episodes. So uh 27% of the votes, which is five votes, went to the Earthworks Ethos. So the Ethos was the number one uh rated microphone, followed closely by actually the Blue Sona, which is also called the Yeti Studio. And that to me was pretty fun. That's a little bit of a surprise there. The Ethos being number one, I actually wasn't that surprised because it is just such a good microphone, especially for long form stuff. Um, and it's it's genuinely helpful for me to know which microphones people like and prefer to listen to. Third place microphone, we actually had the SE Dynacaster, which is pretty cool. And then everything else was kind of uh, you know, getting sort of the same amount of votes. The Rode NT1, the Lewitt LCT 440, the Shore Super 55, the SM7B. Kind of surprising the SM7B. I almost wonder, I almost wonder if it was a if it were a blind sound test, what people would have voted for, or if there's baggage like, I don't want the SM7B to win again. Um, or if I don't know, I'm just curious. Obviously, this is you know probably more qualitative than quantitative in terms of research. But if you're wondering which microphone won, it was the Earthworks ethos, which is pretty cool, especially because for a long time I have said that I think that the ethos is the least one of the least fatiguing microphones I've heard. So, especially for things that are longer, like a podcast, that just works really well because people can listen to it for a long time and not get tired of it, which is pretty cool. So that was the winner of the the microphones of the season last season. I appreciate that idea to do that, and I I appreciate everyone who voted and you know listened and hung out and did all that kind of stuff because that is that is pretty darn cool. But you might notice, or if you're watching the the video version, you would notice this. If you're listening, you might be trying to figure out oh, is that the ethos right now? And the answer is no, it is not. So, Mike of the Week segment. We gotta start here, which is also actually going to overlap with the gear of the week segment. And let me put my notes over here. Uh, so mic of the week, gear of the week, this week they are the same thing. Uh, I'm using a microphone that is new to me, uh actually I think it's new in general, uh, which is the Warm Audio WA87 Junior. So if you can remember all that. Uh basically Warm Audio is cool. I I have uh some mics from them from a few years ago, and they do some really neat things. They kind of do, I guess you could kind of call it like budget-friendly versions of like classic microphones, particularly Neumann microphones. So this one is an 87-style microphone, which is obviously like um when they reference an 87-style microphone, the the Neumann U87. Uh, but that the Neumann is a I don't know, six thousand dollar microphone. It's a very expensive microphone. You know, it's a it's it's I've never I don't think I'll ever be able to use one, much less own one. Uh and then Warm Audio kind of took the I want to say the essence of that, the idea of that, and made it much more affordable. This has an MSRP of $300. Now, Warm Audio also does make a W87 that's not the junior, the senior. I don't know. And that one's more expensive. I think it's five or six hundred dollars. And the difference there is that it has a transformer inside of it, which I don't 100% understand how that transforms the sound, but it's electronically and component-wise more in line with the the actual Neumenu 87. This one is a transformerless microphone, which makes it less expensive, but also makes it just kind of easier and simpler to run with whatever interface you got. It's a condenser microphone, just pop it in. I'm running it through the Rodcaster Duo right now, just on the generic condenser setting. It does have, ooh, let me just pop that over there. It does have um some different pickup pattern options. So there's a cardioid pattern, which I'm using right now. Uh, there's also an omnidirectional, so it can pick up sound from all around, and then there is a bi-directional, so it'll do front and back. So um, whether you're doing music or or spoken word or instruments or whatever, there's a lot of applications for this. And then it also does, sorry, I'm looking, you know what? I should turn on the omnidirectional and now I can go over here. Uh, it also does have a minus 10 decibel pad and then a high pass filter as well, uh, which is pretty cool. So this is the I don't say the Neumann. No, this is the Warm Audio uh WA87 Jr. And they sent this microphone out. Uh and I okay, the negative, this shock mount is not my favorite. It is, it looks just like a regular condenser shock mount, but the bands in it like they fall out really easily. And so once the microphone's in, once all the tension's set, you're good. But like, as I was taking out of the packet and stuff, it was like it was the most frustrating shock mount I've set up in a while. Uh, the microphone itself, though, uh is is pretty cool. Like, especially as someone I'm probably the perfect person for this microphone because I'm not going to buy a Neumann microphone, no matter how nice they are. Probably no matter how much money I had, even if I actually had the budget for it, I don't think I could ever. It's like, you know, I would never be someone that buys a $30,000 bag, even if I had unlimited money. I just don't think I could ever do that. So uh money aside, I just don't think I could ever buy the actual Neumann microphone, but getting a taste of it, you know, and I I would be very curious, maybe someone will do a YouTube video where there's a side-by-side between this and the the much more expensive actual version. And obviously, I'm pretty sure that for many reasons the Neumann wins, right? Not just sound quality, but probably build quality, components, all kinds of stuff. But for $300, this kind of gets you a really awesome condenser microphone. And for me, it was very similar to kind of like the SM7B, right? Like when I got my SM7B, I was I was anti-SM7B. And I bought I got my SM7B because I needed it for videos. And I had been borrowing one prior to that through work, but I knew I was leaving my job at the time, you know, like a little over four years ago. And I was like, crap, I still need access to an SM7B. Ugh, I don't want an SM7B. But if you do microphone reviews, that's like the number one question. How does the microphone compare to the SM7B? So I was like, I gotta have one. And I remember, I know I've told this story before, but I remember getting the microphone, taking it out of the box, plugging it in. And you know, I had borrowed one before, but for some reason, I don't know, maybe my headspace was different or something. When I spoke into the SM7B running through the Rodecaster for the first time, I literally did laugh out loud because I was like, crap, it sounds amazing. Like, ah, and then it as I've used it, it just kind of continues to be like, yeah, this is why this microphone's awesome. This is one of the other times that I've had kind of a similar thing. I I'm not like anti-Neumann, but I'm just it's so far beyond what I what I can have that I just don't think about it, right? And so I just kind of out of mind. And then I plug this microphone, spoke into it, and at least for me, I was like, holy crap, I love the way that this microphone sounds. Uh, you know, it is more prone to handling noise because it's not, doesn't have the built-in shock stuff like the SM7B does. Peter Piper Pitch Day podcasts, it is more prone to plosives, uh, which again, that's where the SM7B comes in. Like, there's no handling noise, there's no plosive issues, but just sound quality on even a generic setting. There is something very, very nice about this microphone. And so, even though the ethos is the one that won the survey, and I was like, Oh, I'll use whatever microphone wins, I'll use that on the next episode. This microphone wasn't released at the time, and I didn't own it at the time, and now I do. So, it is the one that I'm using on this episode for for that specific reason. So, uh, if you're wondering what I'm using, if you're watching this and you're wondering what microphone that is, and if you're listening and you're like, hey, what microphone am I listening to? It's the Warm Audio WA87 Jr. running through the Rodcaster Duo. Um, definitely curious if you have any thoughts on that. I'm using the nickel version, but there's also a black version. The nickel one kind of does look like the classic Neumann, and that's pretty cool. So uh now, it's a new era of microphones, new era of the podcast. Let's talk about another new era. In this case, this is gonna be a new era of cameras because last season I did an episode called Is Camera YouTube Dead? And I think in the time since, I would almost say um it has been dead, cremated, and the ashes have been spread, and then involved in like a forest fire to turn into even more ashes and then picked up by the wind and spread even further. Uh, camera YouTube is a weird space, and it has been in a weird space for a while. Um, for a lot of reasons, kind of that I talked about in that episode last season, and without getting kind of like too critical or too negative about it, there are there are a lot of reasons for it. One is that um gear has matured, the creators have matured, at least maybe not emotionally in some cases, but uh in in terms of capabilities, like it it really has been a space that if you if you've been someone who follows camera YouTube from you know uh the early DSLR era to now, you've found people using Canon Rebels with nifty-50 lenses who now are kidding out $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 full-on cinema rigs and running production companies. And so, you know things evolve and change in a lot of ways. For me, once it kind of moves into that genre, even though that stuff's kind of fun and neat, like it becomes unrelatable to me just because I don't want a $50,000 camera. I don't want uh, I don't want a rig that takes two people to run it. I don't want to work with a a huge company and a huge team. Like, that's not what I do. I like I like being a solo creator, you know, I like making videos with Heather sometimes, or like a friend if they come to visit. Like, very, very small. Small scale is what I like. And uh there's room for both. It's not like one is better than the other, but um, camera YouTube has just kind of leaned with that as the gear has gotten better, as people have gained more experience, as the skills have improved and the industry has changed. I I just sort of feel like it's sort of gone in that direction. Um, but it's it is kind of cool to go back and think about, you know. If we're talking about like the SM7B was a microphone that made me literally, you know, have an audible reaction when I listened to it. Something that is kind of revolutionary and exciting. If you go back and you think about DSLR cameras back in, well, I guess it was what 2008-ish, when the like 5D Mark II could do video, and that was what kind of blew the roof off things. And you have the Canon T2i in 2010, and then from there you just have different models that can do video better and better and better. And then you move in, you know, like over 10 years ago now, you move into kind of mirrorless, then you move into 4K and all that stuff. But the DSLR revolution when a DSLR could shoot video, it is very hard to overstate how important that was and how big that change really was for a lot of people in a lot of ways. Because when that happened, it meant that anybody could could make stuff for the first time ever that looked genuinely professional and really was because like even the 5D Mark II was used in TV shows and movies, not necessarily as a main camera, but a lot of times if they if there was a scene that required a camera to be put somewhere really you know in a tight compact space, or if uh a production needed like a crash camera where they can't put their you know 100,000 plus setup uh into something because it might get damaged, putting the $3,000 DSLR made a lot more sense. And so you you actually started seeing it, seeing its footage mixed in with stuff. I was teaching students, teaching digital media students at the time, and I saw I saw projects that students made with the 5D Mark II, with the 60D, you know, that kind of era of cameras shown in movie theaters because we would do film festivals and they would have them shown in theaters, and it's like this footage looks awesome, like manual focus, relatively budget lenses, uh, you know, whatever it is, not 422, 10-bit, all stuff, what you know, it's it's 1080 footage that a lot of people wouldn't want to even deal with now, but it's like I've seen it on theater screens and it looks awesome. And you know, and the fact that that kind of capability became accessible to pretty much everyone was unreal. Like that had never happened before. And obviously, then people wanted to learn how to do that, and it just kind of kept growing and kept becoming bigger and bigger as the technology continued to improve. It really did, you know, change everything for a lot of people. The camera tech continued to mature, right? It's like it's the same thing. Like, think of phones, uh, for example, or or iPods or whatever. Like, if you think of the first iPhone, the fact that it existed was enough. There was no app store, uh, there was super slow internet, the camera was really bad, but it was this cool little, like it was a pretty impressive device. And then the next phone really kind of jumped ahead. The next one jumped ahead. Like every year was these huge leaps when smartphones came out because the technology was new and emerging. For the past however many years, it's like every year it's a different rectangle, you know, slightly different colored rectangle with a slightly different shape bump for a camera. You put a case on it after you buy it, it feels no different than the one you had before. Because the technology has matured, it's kind of reached a plateau. Same thing with cameras, right? Like uh my Sony FX3, which is still my main camera. That you know, that camera's now five years old. Same with the A7S III, A7 IVs getting up there. It is, I don't ever know of a time, even the camera using right now, the the EOS R to record this, which is just 1080, uh, that came out in 2018. That camera obviously had to upgrade from because I did want 4K. If I didn't want 4K, this camera would be fine. But the Sony cameras with full frame 4K, great autofocus, good stabilization, amazing color, picture quality, all that stuff. Like, you know, there are things here and there that might be nice to update. And you know, like Sony came out with the FX2 that has the cool viewfinder and stuff, like that's neat. I don't know of another time that you could go five years, especially like using these full time, and not really have a not only an urge to upgrade, but a need to upgrade, and especially something like the FX3 has kind of become a standard. So many, if you do want to go beyond the solo creator route and you want to go into the world of working with the team and doing productions, especially if you have to like be familiar with or provide your own gear using an FX3 or similar camera, is has become kind of the standard. It's a five-year-old camera now at this point, and it's like there are new cameras out there and there's new technology, but it's not growing at the same rate it was. You know, if you think of the five years prior, so that the FX3, A7S3, those came out in 2020. If you think of the cameras from 2015 to 2020, the the the it's a grand canyon, like there's a huge chasm between those. Whereas if you think of 2020-25, they're just using the same cameras, like there's no, there's no actual real difference. So um there was that huge DSLR revolution, it switched to mirrorless, there's 4K, but everything's kind of matured and sort of reached that plateau, which then, you know, if you're in the world of camera YouTube, not only you know, as people do do things change and skills evolve and grow, and there is that issue of relatability, but also, you know, the the excitement of it, right, is not necessarily there. Getting a DSLR with a 50 millimeter lens used to be the most exciting thing in the world for someone who is into video and into cameras. You know, now it's like, well, why are you only using the Nifty 50? You should be using some, you know, G Master Mark II $3,000 lens on your $3,000, $4,000 camera. You know, everything's kind of just leveled up, and everything just everybody just sort of expects that level. So kind of that excitement, you know, there's always going to be new people who are getting into cameras, getting into photography, getting into videography, and they find that, but it's, you know, it there's there's not a lot new to cover, and especially a lot not a lot that like I feel makes people inspired. And that's okay. Like stuff just changes and and things move on. So then, you know, if you're into cameras, you kind of look around. For me, it's like I have my three main mirrorless cameras, which suit pretty much all of my needs. So I'm interested in other cameras. Like I'd love to try out, you know, new camera Canon cameras or Nikon or Lumix or whatever, just to see, just from the enthusiast point of view. But in terms of like what I actually need to get my job, like I don't, I'm very good with my cameras, and I don't have any idea when I would need to upgrade cameras still. Uh so you kind of look around other cameras. I have these beautiful full-frame mirrorless cameras. Something I've always thought is that webcams, why would anyone use a webcam? I have one in my MacBook. It sucks. Like, you know, it lets you see uh that there's a person, it lets you see what I look like, kind of lets you hear what I sound like, and that's pretty much it. And that's kind of always been the case. Webcams are are always boring, is sort of at least what I have thought for many years. And I think what has been true for many years, but here is something I've noticed. Webcams historically have always tried to compete with what we can call real cameras. So you would see a webcam, whether it's a 1080 webcam or a 4K webcam, and you would see it make comparisons to like a real camera. Uh, and when I say real camera, I mean like an interchangeable lens camera. And if you go to manufacturer websites and you click on a webcam and you scroll through and you see like the product page, there's a lot of images that are clearly not produced with those webcams. They look like movies, and you're like, this is a $120 Logitech camera. How is it producing that image? And the answer is it's not, it's just not even possible. When you have a webcam that is the size, like here, I'm holding up the ObSBot Meet 2, which is a newer webcam. This is literally smaller than the full frame sensor in the camera that I'm recording this right now. Luckily, Obsbot is not telling you that this looks as good as the camera I'm recording on right now. It's not supposed to. But in the past, you'd have small cameras like this that are literally smaller than the sensor in another camera, and they're trying to say this whole camera is just as good. No, it's not. And if it were, if you could spend $120 and get that same quality, everybody would do that, right? Like, why would why would anybody spend thousands of dollars on on a big expensive camera? Who would be dumb enough to do that? And so to me, that's always been like an annoying thing about webcams is trying to say that they're the same as real cameras. And it's also been you know, it's been detrimental because it's not true. And so it just leads to people being disappointed. How many people have bought a webcam? You hook it up, and you you expect suddenly you're gonna get the best quality in the world, and it just looks like it kind of looks like a webcam. Lately, and I don't know really when this started. Uh I would say it's relatively recent. It seems like a lot of webcam companies have stopped trying to compete with real cameras and stopped trying to draw out those comparisons. And I put up a bullet point on screen that is not related to this because it's from a different episode. So we're just gonna go to the next thing. Ums. So the thing about that though is it seems like companies have stopped stopped doing that and started leaning into webcams being their own thing. And I feel like they have evolved into something new. So here's an example right now, right? Uh, a couple years ago, I made a video about the InstaLink uh yeah, the Insta360 Link webcam, which is a small PTZ camera. And those kind of new when PTZ cameras like that were coming out. I've it's still a strong camera. I think they have a second version of it, and that was cool. It's a little 4K webcam. It does not look like a full-frame mirrorless camera by any means, but it's a clear, crisp image. It's a very small, compact camera. And what's very cool about that is it it has PTZ functionality. So it can track you, it can follow you, you can frame it, you can you can you can set up different shots so you know you can have it focus on you, and then you can set up another like preset where it's maybe pointed down at your desk or something, and then just through a click of a button, you can now change your shot. You know, how e how nice is that for someone who does not even just like streaming or content creation, but you know, work from home stuff, online teaching, video calls, like being able to just have that functionality instead of reaching and you know, tweaking and manipulating a physical camera or whatever, it's really nice. And so recently, a thing that kind of kicked this off this year for me at least that got me sort of into this was not really paying attention to cameras for a while. Obsbot, a company I had kind of ignored just because I was like, yeah, they're like the webcam company and they sound like they're related to OBS, but they're not related to OBS. Uh, earlier this year, they released a big camera that people were really excited about, and that was actually the OBSBot Tail 2, uh, which I do have a tale to tell you about the tail 2. And I was people were like really into that. And I actually even do know a few people who, especially for like solo creator stuff, they were switching from their mirrorless camera to the tail 2, even though they were losing a little bit of image quality, they were gaining this other functionality that was more beneficial to them. Before I had used that camera, Abbasbot sent out the Tiny 2, which is very similar to the InstaLink. It's a small PTZ camera, but I was like, wow, you know, the image quality is better. Again, not looking like a mirrorless camera, but it's really crisp, really clear, looks awesome. The tracking works even better, the software that comes with it is better. It was just like a really impressive, like, this is a really good webcam. Like it for sure. If you're someone who wants a webcam, you don't want to dive into the world of mirrorless stuff, for sure that's the way to go. And I really liked it, did a whole video about it, used it a bunch. Then the Tale 2 came out, and people were kind of going nuts about it. Obsbot, uh, they wanted to do, they actually reached out to me and offered to do a they wanted to do a sponsored video, and we were coming up with ideas for like they were kind of like, what should that be? And I had a few things, which is one, I I know that people use Obsbot cameras with YOLO boxes a lot for like mobile production and stuff. And so I thought I asked them if they had pain points with that. And they said a lot of people are confused with how to set those up. And I was like, cool. Um, it makes sense. A video I would make anyway would be a video about how to use OBSBot cameras with the YOLO box. So I like doing sponsored tutorials because they don't feel like ads. It's just like here's how to use this stuff in a different way. And it just it just feels a little better than like a you know, just a straight up showcase or whatever that feels like an ad. So I kind of pitched them on that idea. They were on board with it. But I was like, here's the thing though, I haven't used the tail two. So uh before we can do anything sponsored, I would need to use the camera for an extended period of time and then you know, see how I feel about it. Actually, I'm gonna grab just because I do have a visual element of this, even though uh I'm not using this camera to record right now. And if you listen to the audio version, it doesn't matter. So they sent out the tail two for me to test, and there was no obligation. I could have got it, said, no, it's not for me. Send it back. We don't do anything sponsor, whatever. This was kind of like the SM7B. I got this and I was like, oh my god, I understand why people are so into this camera. Uh, it's a giant, not a giant, it's bigger than most PTZ cameras, but it's really it's not meant to be like your personal webcam. It really is more of a like an event production, you know, it's a higher end, it's an exp, it's a $1,200 camera. It is an expensive camera, but you have a very nice lens, you have awesome software, you have optical zoom, you have the ability for it to rotate. So even if the camera is not perfectly level, the shot will still be level. The lens physically rotates inside, which is super cool. Most PTZs don't do that. And then you have all kinds of crazy uh connectivity on the back. You have Ethernet, full-size HDMI, SDI, like microphone inputs. You have some really cool functionality here, and the image quality is great. Not mirrorless great, but really good. Not that far off from mirrorless because we're getting into bigger sensors here. And especially when you use that optical zoom to zoom in, it also has like a hybrid digital zoom thing, but when you use the optical zoom to zoom in, you you do get some very decent-looking compressed background. The tracking works really well. So I started using this camera a lot. Um, you know, before even doing anything sponsored. For me, it really became incredibly helpful for in a typical video setup. I have like my main camera. I usually have a secondary camera just for variety. And then oftentimes, especially if I'm doing a product-related thing, I will have a third camera that is showing you know whatever I'm holding. And a lot of times I'll use like a really nice prime lens or even like my 70 to 200 on that to get you know super shallow depth of field and compressed background and all that, which is great. And I think it looks amazing. It is so hard to keep that stuff in focus, and it is also so hard to keep it in frame because as I'm talking and moving throughout stuff, even if I'm staying seated in the video, I kind of shift from time to time. And so then I I constantly have to monitor like where the thing I'm holding is in relation to the it's a lot to keep track of while I'm also trying to present and share information. With this camera, I do take a bit of a hit in image quality, but it still kind of looks awesome. It keeps everything super in focus, and the tracking, like legitimately, you know, it's taking me some experimentation to kind of play with it, but legitimately at this point, if I told you, oh yeah, Heather's helping me, you know, she's operating like my third camera to kind of keep stuff in frame, you'd probably believe it. Like it it kind of looks like there's someone operating a camera over there, and there's not. And I then don't have to worry about that. I just I just select the thing I want to track, and you know, I kind of glance at the monitor, but it's gonna keep it in frame, it's gonna follow it in a nice way that looks natural. And I I it offloads so much from my brain while making videos, and it improves the quality of the videos and like it it really leveled things up, and then you can do all kinds of other stuff with it. So this has been I ended up doing we did the sponsor thing about the YOLO box, which I also thought was really cool because like they want to do a sponsor video where half of it was about another company's product. So I was like, oh, it seems pretty legit. Like you you don't seem you seem like you actually want to help your users and not just market a product, and I thought that was very cool. Um, and then the other thing with this camera, which I said in the review I did on it because I just liked it so much, was really since the time of being a kid and or a lot younger and getting cameras where it's just like I have my camera, what can I do with it? Like, where where can I put this? How can I use it? What can I connect it to? What can I make with it? I haven't sort of had that like that novel feeling with cameras in many, many years. And this camera did it. Like, this camera really made me think like, how could I, how could I use that? What could I do with that? And it it really reminded me of what it used to feel like when I would try to, you know, try to do stuff like that with cameras when I was a kid. And so that really kind of kicked things off for me in a big way of like, okay, these like nice webcams, these sort of high-end production cameras, the fact that you can use them with things like a YOLO box to do total mobile setups. This is like really cool new technology. Like, I remember, you know, the first YOLO box five or so years ago, where it was like, this is really cool and it can do what it's supposed to do, but it's also rough around the edges. There's a lot of reliability issues. You know, it's like the the original Sony A7 mirrorless camera, where it's like, it's a mirrorless camera, awesome low light performance. Uh it overheats like crazy, the battery doesn't last forever, but then they, you know, they keep improving it and eventually get to the point where it's like you have a camera that doesn't go bad or doesn't like get outdated because it's so good. YOLOBOX is very similar. Like the initial thing, super cool idea, super cool concept. At this point, between like the ultra and the extreme, like you have these incredibly capable and reliable small production devices, and then you you throw in, you know, uh because also the obspot cameras, the the like the tail two, it has a built-in battery, so you can and NDI, so you can just set up the camera anywhere. No power needed, no wires needed, send the signal straight to a YOLO box, control the PTZ functionality with that or with a you know a separate remote control if you want to. And you can you can produce something that looks like a full-on crew, even though it's it's not. And so it's like whatever, and these are just the ones I'm familiar with. So it's like whatever, whatever you're thinking of, you know, when you think of webcams prior, it's not that anymore. And then even so I've been kind of diving in. I bought the Obsbot Meat 2, which is uh, I think it's a $120 camera. I got mine for about $100. It was on sale. It's a little tiny 4K webcam, uh, which is pretty nifty, and I like it quite a bit. And I just wanted to see, like, okay, if the tail two is a $1,200 you know production camera, what does the you know the webcam that the average person who's just like, I need a webcam, I'm gonna go buy something, how does that perform? And it's great. Like, it does not look as good as the tail two, uh, but it it looks way better than any built-in camera you're gonna get. It's small, it's compact, the software is great. It's like, okay, I have a video, I have a review on this coming out because it's just a it's a really fun camera. And that's the thing, too. Is like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did I buy a webcam that's fun? Is that a thing that's actually possible? And then there's this whole other type of webcam. There's uh like the YOLO cam S7, which is a big um, I was even gonna, yeah, I've used it a lot. It's a it's a micro four-thirds webcam. Kind of looks like a Sony FX3, but with no buttons and no screen because there are no physical controls on it. Um, but it has a micro four-thirds sensor and interchangeable lenses. So it is a straight up mirrorless webcam. And uh what is the retail price on that? Around 800 bucks, which sounds expensive for a camera that you can't control or do anything else with. You can't, it needs to be plugged in and run in a studio. But for the person, I think of somebody like Heather, for the person who doesn't want their camera to ever leave their tripod, they're not going to take it out into the world. They just want, they want the mirrorless camera quality, the depth of field, all that stuff, but they don't want to deal with the camera side of things. Now there's actually an option out there, which is which is pretty darn cool. Then there's other stuff like the Holly Land Venus series. Uh, I just got the Venus Air last week, which I played with a little bit. Um, and that's sort of the opposite. It's it's uh it's a camera that can be used as a webcam. It's not interchangeable lens, but it's higher-end lens. But the camera itself can be used as the streaming device. So it you can do everything vertically or horizontally just directly from the camera. So it's sort of the opposite of the YOLO cam in that way. And that's that's pretty cool. That's pretty fun, pretty interesting. And then YOLO also came out with the YOLOCam S3, which I can reach over here. Sorry, I had to grab that. Uh, this one, so this is a little $199 webcam that they just announced recently. Uh, it's a little bit bigger than the Obsbot. So, you know, the ObSbot is $100, $120, the Meat 2 is, and Meat 2, not Me Too. That would be a different thing. Um, so it's bigger than that, but it's still pretty small and compact, and it's all made out of metal, and it has magnets built into it, so you can, you know, it comes with a magnetic mount, but you can stick it to anything that's metal, which is really cool. And I was like, okay, you know, it's it's like your guys' decent little webcam. I don't understand how this camera looks as good as it does, whether you have low light or not. It's kind of ridiculous. And at the time recording this, I don't even think I'm using the final firmware on it. Still using like the early firmware, so I think the focus, like the focus hunts a little bit, but you can do manual focus if you want. But it does have autofocus built into it, which a lot of webcams don't. They just have fixed focus kind of like a GoPro. They keep everything, everything in frame and focus. But this doesn't, and that actually does give you some background separation. The clear, like again, no one's gonna mistake this for a mirrorless camera, but if you want to, this is a very good, like simple streaming camera, a top-down camera, a second angle mixed with a mirrorless camera. It I it doesn't make sense to me how this looks as good as it does. Like, I'm genuinely surprised by it. And for $200, so you have the something like the Meet 2, which for you know about a hundred bucks, you get a decent webcam. If you just want something that's you know not your built-in camera or your you have a computer, it doesn't have a built-in camera, and you just need something decent. This is good, and the low light performance kicks butt on it, and it's just small, compact, and adorable. Then, you know, for $200, for a bit more 80-ish, $100 more, you get something that's like, oh crap, that looks uh really, really good. And you probably don't need anything more than this until you want to take the leap into the world of you know, a mirrorless camera or an interchangeable lens camera or something like that. And to me, the fact that you have all these options that this world exists now is insane. To me, this is this is what I mean when I when I talk about there being a new era of cameras. To me, this is kind of it, especially in the world of solo creators. This is that new era. I think it is in many ways just as revolutionary as the DSLR revolution was, because now you have everything's way more affordable. So, you know, whether you're spending 200 bucks is not bad to get a very, very, very decent webcam or even jumping up to like 1200 bucks on the tail two. The capabilities that you're getting, considering the lens I use on my FX3 is $1,400, the fact you're getting the whole tail two for you know $1,200. You have a lot of options, and the things you can do with this, and the things that they enable a single person can do. I feel like it's the same level of like democratization that we saw in the DSLR revolution, but now it's more geared towards like empowering the individual, or maybe even a super small team, which like basically stuff you could have only done with a big team, like a multi-cam, multi-moving cam production. Now you can do as one person, maybe two people if if you have help. And I think that's really cool. And that's not that's not to like I know the other side of that coin is then well, what happens to the professionals? What happens to the people who lose their jobs to you know all this automation and stuff? And that's obviously like there are two sides of every I lost my job as a television studio floor director to robotic cameras in 2003. So this isn't something that's been around for a while. Um, and that was a bummer. There used to be, when I worked at the local news station, there used to be at least one floor director, if not a couple of camera operators, operating four to five cameras during the news, moving them around, moving the you know, the dollies around, changing the angle, focusing the camera, zooming in. Now it's just all, and to this day, it's all just robotic. There are no camera operators, no floor directors. You just have the technical director push the button, and it's basically the same, it's basically the same thing as a tail two. It just goes in. So that I feel in that in cases like that, I did a better job than the robot camera does. And we got more dynamic shots and more we had more creativity than the robot cameras do. But in cases like mine, I'm not going to hire someone to do a second camera. I'm not going to even ask Heather to operate a camera unless I really needed her to. I'm just doing everything by myself. So it's it's not taking the place of someone else. It's enabling me to do something I couldn't have done before, and that wasn't even an option to do before. And I think the same thing goes for a lot of small teams and stuff. Think of like event teams, right? Who maybe it's a couple of people, maybe, maybe it's one to two, possibly three people who do events, corporate events, graduations, churches, whatever. So you have someone who's probably doing the switching and the setup. You have another person who's probably setting up cameras. Since they can't, you probably do, you say you have three or four cameras. You can't have someone at every camera. So they usually set up a couple of static cameras, and then maybe there's one camera that they can actually move around and make a little more dynamic. Now that same small team, or even the same the single person who used to just have to set up multiple static cameras and hope that the action happened within the frame. Now they can have multiple moving tracking cameras that they can you know control remotely, keep everything in the frame, make everything super dynamic. Like it's going to look like a whole crew was putting this together when it wasn't, and it never was going to be. And so I think that's I think that's kind of a I think that's a really I don't know, I think that's an important part. These cameras are still limited, like, right? So they can't do everything. Big productions, crews, talented operators, those are things that are still crucial and have places. But in the same way that like I kind of lost touch with camera YouTube because it seemed like everyone wants to do $50,000 rigs and have production teams, and I'm just kind of the solo creator who's like, I just want to do cool stuff with like things that an individual person can do. I think this this suit this serves an entire population of people that have not had these capabilities before. And I think that is incredibly I don't know. I I just think it it's really, really cool. So even though the image quality of these cameras doesn't match mirrorless, I think a lot. Lot of people because it is still good, and the other capabilities you get, you're kind of willing to take that hit on image quality. It doesn't have the the same cinematic vibes, but the other things that you gain in return, and then the creative options, the fact that it really does it has that feeling of like if I have an idea, I think I can make it happen versus like I'm just super limited because I I have a crappy webcam that tricked me into spending $400 on it because it said it was going to look like a mirrorless camera and it still looks like a crappy webcam, and now I'm just frustrated, you know, or I don't have the option. I I do events and I have me and maybe one assistant sometimes, and we just can't be in more than one place at a time. So we have static cameras, and that's what our clients get. And now we can do more dynamic events and we can do it more easily, and our clients get a better project. And maybe that also means then we can even like generate, we can increase our rates because we're producing something higher quality than we were able to do before. I don't know. I think that's I think it's really fun. And again, the thing that really kicked it off for me was going into the world of the tale two and having that feeling that I haven't had since I was a kid of like, what can I what can I do with this camera? Like, how can this camera let me do things that I was not capable of doing before? Not everything does need to be at that pro Hollywood level. Like, I I did the episode last season about what it means to be a pro, and I don't want to like I think that there's so much value there, and I am appreciative and respectful, and I don't know, I admire the people who can do that stuff so much, but we sometimes fall on the trap of like, well, that's what everything has to be. That has to be the end goal. And it's like we you sort of forget that there are people all over the world in every town, every city who have some level of production need, whether that's one person in a bedroom or an entire team trying to do, you know, community client stuff. They've not been able, they've not had access to these things before, and now they do. And so, and it's fun because since it is in that new and experimental phase, it goes back to the early DSLR days when people were like, wait, you could go to Home Depot and get some PVC pipes and make a stabilizer, and you could use this lens to do this. And if you put the camera this way and do this kind of technique, like everyone's sort of discovering stuff. I feel that same energy, which to me is just so invigorating when you compare it to kind of the jadedness of like, here's another amazing mirrorless camera that came out, but it kind of has maybe some rolling shutter issues. So let's only talk about that for the next three weeks because obviously that's you know, that's the biggest thing. This I don't know this new excitement, this new era of production, event, whatever you want to call these cameras. I feel like calling them a webcam isn't enough, but whatever that is, the fact that it's bringing new accessibility, new options, new creativity, and new excitement to people like myself who maybe either haven't felt that in a while or people who are new to the world and haven't felt this ever, I think is really exciting. And I feel like it genuinely is a new era of cameras and a new era of creativity. And I am genuinely excited about that. So, with that being said, let's move in now and do a channel check-in. Uh, we talked about, you know, usually I will talk about what I'm working on right now. There's a lot of videos happening, a lot of stuff I'm working on. There's one project, speaking of new eras, that I really do want to share with you because I haven't gotten to talk about this yet. I'm super excited about it. It is uncharted territory for me. For a lot of people, they're like, Yeah, I call this, you know, a Tuesday. It's it's a normal thing here. So uh I'm recording this podcast into Ecamm Live. Ecamm is Mac only software. I'm using my M1 Mac Mini. I have my M1 Macs MacBook Pro that I edit videos with. I have used Macs exclusively for the last 20 years. So I have not used the PC. The the exception to that being I did have my job at Trader Joe's from 2006 to 2010. We did use Photoshop a bit in that, and we had a Windows XP PC for that, but it was just Photoshop. And so I almost don't count that because it was what we literally use it, oh, and Space Cadet 3D pinball on lunch break. Sometimes not on lunch break. Um, but yeah, so when you open up Photoshop, it's this, you know, it's the same as then opening up on my Mac. So it was no real difference. Command instead of control, I guess, but otherwise, or control instead of command. Um, otherwise, I have not used a PC. I did all of my call, my seven years of college. I wrote my master's thesis in pages, and people told me, like, I couldn't do that. You can't do formatting. It was literally never an issue. Did all of my presentations in keynote, like I'm using right now. So I've been a Mac user for 20 plus years. Heather has, and you know, I need to have Heather on an episode to talk about this because Heather has not only she's had her gaming channel, but that has evolved into a legit 501c3 nonprofit organization, HeatherJustplay.org, uh, that it that seeks to help adults have transformative, positive personal growth experiences through gaming. It's fun. All that to say, we've also been diving into gaming a lot more this year. Um and in the world of gaming, Macs are not good. They are not good. And I I didn't want to believe that because I know people say that, and sometimes there's you know, there's stuff that's that's ported over, like you can do portal, for example. You can get Steam on a Mac, you can play some games, you play Portal, it's a great experience. Holy cow! Most of the stuff that that our friends and the people in Heather's community and stuff that they're diving into, it's all geared towards Windows, and so we have been doing these things to try to make the Mac think that it's on Windows. It's just a nightmare, and it's a crappy experience. And also Mac OS Sequoia, I think it's it's slightly it's gotten like only slightly less bad than the previous version was. I don't know. I've had the worst experience with it. I hate it so bad. Uh, so it has made me like not want to switch from Mac because also I feel like I have um I've lived in this world for the past 20 years, and there are things I don't even realize are nice, right? Like, you know, if if I got rid of my iPhone and got like even a super cool folding, awesome smartphone, I would suddenly be like, wait, where's Airdrop? Where's my iMessages? Why can't I? You know, there's so many things I use every day that I don't even realize are part of my workflow and part of my life that that I would miss. Um, and I I know the same is true if I were like, I'm getting rid of my Macs and going PCs. Plus Final Cut Pro, the thing that I make all of my videos with, I love it. I try to learn DaVinci Resolve, and I think Resolve is awesome, but it does not click with my brain the same way that Final Cut Pro does, you know, and so anyway, I don't want to leave Mac for PC, but I'm definitely at the point where I want to build a PC just because it's fun, right? Like it I want to be able to like have a better gaming experience just recreationally. That's kind of where this started. And then it was like, well, you can also like build stuff, which is fun because there's a whole tinkering component that it's like adult Legos to me, and that sounds really, really fun. And then there's also the side of it where it's like I was realizing there are practical aspects too. There are certain things, you know. Sometimes I have pieces of gear that like you can only update the firmware on using a Windows computer, and so a lot of times I just can't do it. Or I make videos about stuff that uh that has applications or whatever that's only Windows compatible, and I'm just not able to use that stuff or or test it or even have an opinion on it because I don't have access to it. So even though the start is a fun thing of like, oh, it'd be fun to build a PC for um you know, for gaming, it's like, well, there's actually like even more practical things to it. So all that to say, Heather and I, you know, we got to the point where we each want to have a PC, primarily for gaming, but also for other things. And I thought it'd be fun to build a PC. Um, and I actually did a community post a few weeks ago asking for people's advice because I know nothing, absolutely nothing. And so people were telling me all kinds of cool stuff, and I was sort of putting together this wish list. In my dream scenario, the thing I was going to do was basically do a video where Heather and I talk about what we want out of a computer, out of a PC, and then we kind of like spec out our different computers because we do have different needs. Like a simple one is I I'm I'm on board with like a full-size case that can fit all kinds of stuff in it. And Heather, I'm sure, wants something more compact that doesn't take up a bunch of spot, a bunch of space. So, you know, that kind of changes what components you're gonna use, what you know, all that sort of stuff. So we're spec out our computers. Um, then the plan would be to like I build my computer, quote unquote, and then I can make a whole bunch of mistakes and mess up stuff along the way, and then take those mistakes and then build hers, uh, hopefully having fewer mistakes, and then we both just have this. And I thought that would be a fun video series. I think it would be a fun video series. The downside is uh it's expensive to build one computer, it's very expensive to build two computers. So um I I've been pitching, actually did sort of pitch like a potential sponsored thing to like BH about maybe, hey, you know, this could be a cool collaborative thing, but even they are on board, the wheels move slowly, and I am an impatient boy. I don't want to wait till 2026 to do this. Um, and it's also like the the downside to that kind of stuff is you never know if it's happening until it is happening, and so it's like it's hard to plan around that. Um, but budgets are also a very real thing. Uh so I actually had somebody reach out to me after I made that post, and they said that they built a computer a couple years ago, built a PC, a decently spec'd one, and they just never really ended up using it, and they'd be happy to send it my way. And I was like, absolutely not, I would feel too guilty. Um, but they were like, no, no, no, like seriously, it it's okay. And so I talked to them a little bit more. I even told them that I was kind of waiting to hear back about potential, like maybe this could be a sponsored project. I don't want to take a computer if if I then have the option to do that. Um, but since I don't know what's going on with that, and for all intents and purposes, it seems to have fallen through. I talked to them a little bit more and they were like, Look, I want you to have fun with this. It's okay to make it your own. I'm not gonna get offended if you swap out stuff or change things or whatever. I told them about Heather's nonprofit organization, and he's like, Yeah, even if you know down the line you send it to somebody else or you send the parts to somebody else or whatever. Like, I just want it to get used, however, that is. So, anyway, um, and he also was like, as someone who has been into computers and building PCs, there's no shortage of the like person building maxed out computer content. There is a shortage of the much more realistic, I have a hand-me-down computer, what can I upgrade? How can I make it my own kind of thing? Um, which is a situation I would be in. So, anyway, I'm incredibly excited because I do believe sometime in the next couple weeks I could end up with my first PC in many, many, many years, decades, even. Um, and then for the most part, it's up and running. I just need to put in a new SSD and then get a copy of Windows, and things should be good. And then I think there's some stuff I do want to add just right off the bat, like a Camlink Pro or something where I could do four, 4K input, just you know, for fun. Um, but I don't know. I I again this is a whole new world to me. I'm super grateful and excited. I think that would be a really fun video, just the like I not I know there's lots of switching things. I'm not switching from a Mac, like I have no intention of leaving that behind, but I want to add a PC to my toolkit and you know, different capabilities and sort of just different ways of doing things. And I think that that might be a fun thing to do from uh just a user perspective. Like, hey, I haven't used these things since Windows XP, like, what are they like now? Um so hopefully that's interesting, and then also kind of document that initial thing of like, okay, here's one that was handed down to me. Here's what I need to do to get it up and running. Here are maybe a couple upgrades that I want to make, and then here's how that works. And then I do still want to do the like now. We spec out Heather's PC and build that from scratch, which hopefully, you know, that's that's now only building one PC, not two PCs. So budget-wise, maybe a little more accessible, and she probably isn't gonna go as crazy as I just like. Even when I want to keep stuff, you know, like I don't need the best of the best. It I can see the I I put the the shopping cart wish list together. I saw the price go up higher than I wanted it to go. So I think it'll be cool. Like, I think it'll be a fun, realistic thing. I think it'll be a fun thing to share on the channel because it is still relevant. I need genuinely need help from people who have more experience with PCs than I do, and there's a lot of people who watch the channel that do that. I like that it's not going to be a Mac or PC thing. So maybe it appeals to a broader audience, which is just obviously good for the channel in general. It's not an I'm switching video, but just a like I'm adding video. I'm, you know, like yeah, it's not like learning a new language and then never speaking your old language, it's just trying to be bilingual, basically, is kind of where it goes. So that's you know, there's other stuff happening on the channel, but that's like the the biggest project that I'm trying to figure out now. And you know, uh it I think it'll be really fun, and it'll enable me to do things I can't do currently because I I don't have access to them because they're PC only things. So that's kind of like the big thing happening on the channel at the moment. If you have thoughts or anything about PCs uh or just suggestions or advice, definitely let me know because I'm super, super curious. And speaking of uh, you know, listener thoughts and advice and things like that, we do have a few listener messages that have shown up since the last episode, which is pretty cool. So I didn't go through the YouTube comments from last. I mean I did go through them, but I didn't bring them on here. But I do have a couple um, a couple speakpipe audio messages, which is very cool. So even though we don't know when exactly the next episode schedule is going to be, if you want to go to high my name is Tom.com, you can still leave a speakpipe message and I will include it in the next episode, unless you specifically ask me not to. If you just want to send a message and you're like, this isn't for the show, this is for you, that's fine too. Um, so our first speakpipe message comes from Marty, uh, who shares a bit about his creator journey, and then also is seeking uh seeking an alternative for for some software. So take it away, Marty. As Speakpipe loads. See, I always have this problem. You know what? I played fast and loose with this because I didn't download the file before like I normally should.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

Hey Tom, Marty Ford here. I just want to say thank you for what you do. I really appreciate your channel. Uh about three years ago you encouraged me through uh watching a lot of your review videos and uh how to podcast and how to record YouTube videos uh to start my own channel. And it's been a wild ride. Um it's not a big channel, but it's about my hobby and something I'm passionate about, and I just really enjoy uh sharing and building a community of my own online. And so thank you for that. I really appreciate your energy and your effort, and uh I really appreciate your ethics statement. That was an important part uh for me starting out, so well done. Thank you. But my question, and it's not necessarily for the Enthusiasm Project podcast, but um I'm a bank marketer. I work for a small community bank, I do all their marketing, and I've been I've been an Envado subscriber for a number of years, and I'm looking for maybe a new service to provide stock videos, stock photos, audio, things like that for my content that I create for my my job. And so what's good out there? What are you using or what do you see that's nice, new, fresh content? Uh, because I'm looking at changing, and I just want to know what what what are the better services out there. So I feel like I'm not in the know, and I feel like you're a guy that's in the know. That's me. So, Tom, thanks. I appreciate it. Thanks for what you do, and thanks for taking my question.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:41

Thanks, Marty. I appreciate all the kind words. Uh, congrats on your channel. I did want to mention that you sound awesome. So, whatever you're using to record sounds fantastic. Uh, and then to kind of get to the question of we're essentially looking at royalty-free, you know, stock footage and that kind of stuff. I actually am not super in the know on this. So, this is something that maybe we can source some options from people who are listening. You know, you can leave it as a YouTube comment or if you want to reply to Marty directly, that's cool too. Even though I you sent this a couple months ago, Marty, so you might have already found out your answer. Um, but uh, I can share my thoughts and experience and how those play in, along with a weird story. So, my experience is the only royalty-free like asset service I'm familiar with is Artlist, also like Motion Array. It's kind of kind of similar. Um, and I don't use it a ton. So I've you know, I use sound effects and royalty-free music and stuff. I use that all the time. Uh, but as far as visuals go, I don't use a lot. Really, the only like stock footage that I have and use regularly are textures. So I look, I get like colorful textures and things, and sometimes I have those playing on like my computer monitor in the background. And so when I'm doing B-roll, I can put, I actually have a video about this. I can put a product or something in front of it, film the product, and then the background, they're just sort of like cool textures and things, which adds more variety than just sort of the same physical backdrops that I have here. So I don't have any like actual footage like New York City skyline, person typing on computer or whatever. I've never used any of that. So I don't know what the best resources for that are. Um, but the reason that I wanted to touch on this is because obviously, and especially if you if you look at what Artlist is off, they're going heavy on AI, as are many of these services. And that is a slippery slope. Um, I my general thought is whatever service you're using, I can't help but feel like I would encourage you to make sure you're getting real footage and not AI footage. Even though the AI footage feels like you can tailor it, if you know whatever the client needs, you can get that exact thing because you just type it in and it makes it for you. I really do think there's value in if you're using stock footage, something that a person filmed in the world that we all live in. I I think that that's I think that that's important, if possible. But that's that's just me. That's just my opinion. Those are just my feelings. I did almost have somebody kind of give me a new perspective on this the other day. Um, I was at an event and I was actually listening in on a conversation with somebody else who does live event stuff, and this person was well, then they they were talking to me. I wasn't just totally eavesdropping, but then they I was they were kind of like talking to me as well. Um, they were all about AI like stock footage. And initially, it was funny because they were saying this, and the the several other people in the group were we were all clearly not into AI stock footage, but this person was not picking up on our like reactions, and so he he just barreled forward with this story where all of us kind of threw up threw up in our mouths a little bit. It started off in a way that kind of made sense, where he was saying he was he's a like an event, kind of like the person who might use a PTZ camera and do live events and stuff. And he was like, Man, I have been using a lot of AI stuff for my clients, and it's made a world of difference. And I was initially like, I don't know. His reasoning for it actually was kind of interesting, and this is why I wanted to bring it up because maybe this is something to keep in mind since you're not using it for personal stuff, but you're doing it for work and client things, is depending on your licensing, you get stock footage, and the client may not have like access or license to use that for an extended period. Sometimes it might be like a year or it might only be in that one specific project or whatever. Whereas with the AI generated content, they basically owned it, and so they could just keep using it over and over again in future projects. And so he was sort of pitching it as like it's a way to give the client more for their money. They get a more tailored, specific thing that they're looking for, and then they they have the ability to use it basically forever. So, as much as I kind of hate AI video like a lot, um, and I would never do that, I was like, Oh, you know what? I can see a world where that makes sense. Because also, you know, last year, about a year and a half ago now, I did a couple sponsored videos for Artlist AI voiceover thing, which I did because I saw the value in. Now I kind of even have different feelings just because, like, I the tools are used for so many bad things. Uh, but I have been in situations in previous jobs and in and in in different organizations that I've worked for where we actually need voiceovers and nobody can do it. Uh, or I literally get a simple one, which I think I've told before is um I was working with a school district, they were doing a promotion that they were gonna run in local movie theaters for months for an entire summer to like let people know where students could enroll in different programs. They had a voiceover person ready to go. That person canceled at the last minute. And so it was literally like the second day of summer break. I got a call from one of the district admins going, like Can you get students into the classroom to like open up a studio and do a voiceover? And I was like, classroom's packed up, students are out of contact, like school year's over. Um, it ended. This is pre-Youtube, this was like 2014, 2015. It ended up with me having to take the only audio recorder I had at the time, which was my Zoom H4N, go into our guest room and just do my best. And then it ended up being my voice on the promo in the theater, which is kind of fun. And then it, but then it ran for like two years and not just several months, and so it was a whole thing. Um, but it wasn't ideal, like it would have been better if they had obviously the initial plan to use the person. That person wasn't there. It would have been better for them if they could have just found like use an AI voiceover. Because the the the better person wasn't like a voiceover actor they were hiring, it was just someone within the school district who was like, Yeah, I'll help out, and then they couldn't. Kind of like I ended up doing. Um, but they were just a little better at it than I am. Um and so there's cases like that where it's like you're not taking something away from an actor. There was never going to be anybody hired to do this, it's just making somebody's life easier. And so that was what I was thinking of when I was doing the AI voiceover integrations, was those kinds of people. It was like, there's a very real need for this here. AI video is getting weirder, and I know it's it's kind of the thing of like, well, look, I need aerial footage of New York City. I don't live in New York City, I don't have the ability to fly a drone in New York City and get that footage, so I need stock footage. You know, you could get the exact weather, mood, lighting, all that stuff by using an AI version. I would just rather use the I don't know. I it's I don't want to go too far down the AI rabbit hole. Anyway, this person was very excited about that. I did think that was an interesting point. And if you're somebody who's trying to get, you know, third-party assets for clients, I did think that the the usability licensing, whatever you want to call it, of AI versus non-AI footage is something to consider, even though I would still say don't use the AI stuff. Because then this story went off the rails because the person was like, Yeah, it's crazy what you can do. Um, one of my clients wanted to do, they were doing an event and there was going to be a keynote presentation kind of playing on the background or a slideshow reel thing, and they wanted footage of their CEO speaking at a conference. This CEO had never spoken at this particular conference. So anyway, they just gave me his photo. I put it in the thing, and now I have footage of the CEO speaking at a conference. And I'm like, that is straight up you want to talk about unethical. Like, that's not like I used AI to get New York City instead of the drone footage of New York City. That is now you are making people think that the person who leads your company did things that they never did. That'd be like me saying, Oh, yeah, I spoke at NAB, I spoke at VidCon. I show you footage of me speaking at VidCon and I never went to VidCon. That's weird, right? And so all of us kind of threw up in our mouths a little bit at that. Anyway, I just thought there was a funny story that happened a week or two ago. Don't do that. But if anybody has any uh any good recommendations for uh, you know, royalty-free assets and stuff, I'd be happy to hear them. Even though Artlist and Motion Array are leaning very heavy into AI stuff, they also do still have their catalogs of non-AI stuff. That's where I got all my textures and stuff that I use uh pretty regularly. So those are the only ones I use. I'm actually not familiar with much more, much more than that. Um, we do have one more voice message, and this one comes from Abigail, and Abigail is asking about a microphone, and I thought she brought up a really, really great. Well, she her question brings up a really great point.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:51

Hi, my name is Abigail, and I've been watching your YouTube video on the equipment you need for uh uh podcasts, and it's been really helpful. I bought um I think a good quality mic uh here in around Asia. This is a good brand in Asia, but I'm not sure if it's kind of the right kind that I can use for uh what you've been referring to uh American brands or brands that are available on Amazon. So I'm not quite sure if this is the right one and if it's good enough. That's why I'm testing it out. I hope it is because I spent a good amount of money on it and I really hope that I don't have to buy another one.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:52

All right, thank you so much, Abigail, for that message. And this was a few weeks ago that you sent this in, so I don't know if this is relevant or not, or if you'll hear this, but I hope you do. Because it brings up a really good point. You are using a microphone, which I think sounds just great to ask me if your microphone is good enough because of things that you see on my channel, on the internet, on everywhere, and especially living somewhere where you have different brands accessible to you than what I'm talking about. It's easy to be like, oh my god, I bought something. Did I buy the right thing? I think all of us can relate to that, and all of us have probably felt that at a time or another. And the thing that I want to say is if it works, it works. And in this case, you sounded very nice on your microphone, and you sent me a message and I heard it very well. So I think that microphone works great. You didn't say the brand or what it was, so I don't know much more specifics than that. But I think the microphone that you have totally works, and I think there are probably some things you can do to improve the sound, but that is the case with any microphone that you will buy. So um I did notice it sounded like there was some processing happening on that microphone. I don't know if it's a USB microphone or an XLR microphone, but it sounded like there was kind of some noise reduction and stuff, which might just be necessary for the environment that you're in. But I would maybe play with the noise reduction settings a little bit uh in whatever software you're using, just to sort of see if we can make it sound a little bit more natural. Um, and then just double check mic positioning because that's always a thing. Um, you know, I'm using this microphone, which is very nice. But if I if I place it too far away from me, now you're getting this reverb-room tone sound, and you really want this sound here, this much more you know, broadcasty, clear, high quality sound. So things like mic positioning, if you are using software, you know, like understanding these settings and and usually using a light touch on those is gonna help things sound great. But honestly, like the the message you sent me sounded awesome. So there's, you know, a little isolation, a little reverb reduction, whatever. Things you can always, you can always, you know, I don't think any any of us have ever produced anything that's perfect. I know I definitely haven't. So there's always room for improvement, but that doesn't mean that what you have isn't good enough. And the most important thing that I wanted to emphasize with this is that the thing you have that you invested in that you took your time on that you're using right now is definitely good enough. And you don't need to feel like you have to spend money on something else. That is for sure. So um I hope you enjoy your microphone and keep making stuff with us and keep keep us updated too. Let me know what it was. I'm curious what microphone it was, especially if it's not something that's available to me. Up next, we have a few fan mail messages, and I just want to emphasize that this is what the Buzz Sprout feature is called. This is not what I'm calling it. Um so if you're listening to the audio version on any on any platform, right at the top of the show notes for the episode, there's a thing that says send a message to the show. You click a link and you basically send a text message right to the show. It's a very cool feature that BuzzSprout has, and they call it fan mail. So I have several of those. Um, the thing about fan mail though is there's no way for me to reply directly. So you send the message, I can't like reply back to you. And I also have no way of knowing who sent the message unless you tell me. So I don't get it, it kind of gives me like the state or the country that it came from, but it doesn't give me any other info than that. So if you, which is fine, and I think that's how it should be. I don't think it should automatically share that info. Uh, but if you want, if you want to send a fan mail and you want to include your name or you want me to, you know, be able to reply to you directly or something, you want to include an email address or something, feel free to do that. I will not share your email on the show, obviously. But I have a few fan mail messages here, which are these are always fun. Uh the first one says, uh, I enjoy the technical part of your podcast. That's why you use the equipment and why you enjoy it. I started listening to listening when researching a new microphone, and I stayed because I felt like I was hearing somebody real. Hang on to that. Thank you for your effort. I really, really appreciate that, especially in the world of AI stuff where things feel increasingly less and less real. Um, you know, I it's it's hard like to do the thing where you're into this stuff. I know that sharing my opinion means that it's going to influence how people spend their money and what they get for their setups. And I don't want people to think that every time I'm talking about this microphone today and it's awesome. If I'm using a different microphone in another episode, it's not like, oh, that microphone sucks now, it's onto this one. No, I love all of them. That's why I used 10 different ones last season, right? It I hope the enthusiasm is the most evident thing. And then all the different stuff that I happen to be enthusiastic about can be helpful and interesting along the way. But please don't feel like I just want anyone to ever feel like what they have isn't good enough or they need to get something else or whatever it might be. Um, but I really appreciate that. And I've actually really thought about doing some um it's funny, the realness of it. Uh I feel like that is for anybody who makes content, not just me, I feel like that's becoming a bigger and bigger asset. And just yesterday, actually, I I other than Heather, the person I talk to most in the world is Bronson from Audio Hotline. He has a YouTube channel. He's great. Um, we send Marco Polo's back to you. There's an app called Marco Polo where you can, it's basically like voice messages or video messages, I should say, but you can do them, you know, reply at any time. They're not stored on your phone, so they don't take up space on your phone. It's it's like really helpful. It's a really cool way to keep in touch with people that you don't get to see physically often, um, or if you're in different time zones, different schedules and stuff. So that's really cool. Uh, we were talking about all these webcams actually just yesterday, and I was like, oh, I'll send you, I'll send you a clip of one of them. And so I went to eCam and I recorded with the the YOLOCam S3 that I was talking about, and I was like, oh, well, I did that. So I then quickly added in like the the Holly Land Venus that I mentioned. I was like, well, actually, that's compared. I ended up accidentally making a YouTube video, kind of. Uh, but obviously it's very raw because it's just me like sending a message to a friend. And I sent it to him, and I was like, you know, it's like five, six minutes long. I was like, I watched this back, I was like, I don't know if this is something I would put like publicly on the channel as it is, because it is a conversation for a friend. But honestly, I feel like this could be a members-only video. And so I uploaded it, he said it was fine. So I upload it as a members-only video, and it's I was like, having the thought though, of it wouldn't take that much for this type of thing to just be a video, which is very much like a 2007-style YouTube video, right? Like where it's just somebody sharing their stuff, and it's like it's weird because wanting things to be as good as possible and as polished as possible in this weird way in our AI world, losing that almost does make stuff feel better now because then it's so clearly human-made. So I've been kind of thinking about, and especially you know, with the upcoming PC project and stuff, different ways to make videos that maybe does kind of strip back more of the polish and is more of the like it's just a person making a video. I don't know how people will feel about that, but I something about it kind of sits well with me, and that's something I've been wanting to explore more lately. Uh, next message this says, Hi Tom, very much relate to this episode. I'm almost 50, and some of my more exhausting friends still have a tendency to dump on things. Last weekend I hosted a movie night for Hot Rod, which was intended to be nothing but fun and escape. I put a lot of work into the costume and gift bags and presentation. Needless to say, I was geeked. Well, as we watch the movie, people sitting on either side of me at my own house started with the negativity. I'm not telling them how to live, but I'm right on the edge of quiet quitting this group. Keep being positive. Thanks for the podcast and gear advice, hoping to put some of my own works, put out some of my own works soon. So here's the thing. We were there's the episode last season about uh no fun anymore and like just having fun and things are so serious. I have to say, a hot rod movie night with costumes and themed gifts sounds like one of the most fun experiences you could have. So I am sorry that people did not appreciate this. I would have appreciated that like crazy. Um, there are two movies that I have very clear memories of almost throwing up from laughing so hard in the theater. Uh, one of them is super bad, and the other one is hot rod. They're like I I just I remember being kind of in physical pain from just laughing so hard. And you know, it's like it's and when you think about especially when those movies came out, it was like you just kind of hadn't seen that sort of stuff before, and I just definitely didn't expect it. Like, oh man, I'm really sorry that movie night did not go the way that you wanted it to. I hope that you continue to do cool stuff like that, and you're able to do that with people who enjoy it. Something so speaking of Heather's community, HeatherJustplay.org. Um, something that people have been hosting in there a lot is we've been doing weekly anime watch parties in Discord. And essentially, we started with episode one of series, so people just suggested um series that that would be fun to watch, and then we spin a wheel. Um, a couple people in the community host it, so they organize it all. They spin a wheel, episode pops up, and we all just you can do like a watch together thing on Discord, and so we just all watch the episode together, and we did do like you know, four episodes a a time or four or five episodes a time, a couple hours, you know, like once a week in an evening. Uh, and now we're moving on to episode two. So we like which ones do we actually want to see beyond episode one? It's been really fun. The reason I bring that up is because it's kind of a cool way. There are people from literally all over the world, every time zone, every kind of background there, and we're all just watching these shows together. It's really fun and we're all on board. It's not the same experience as having like costumes and gift bags and one-to-one in-person interaction, but you know, if there's no one nearby that appreciates the thing you're doing, maybe there's a way to reach out to people online and have kind of cool experiences there too, with people who will really get it and really appreciate it. Um, I know it's been the internet's crazy even that way, in a in a good way, like crazy fun. And our last fan mail, uh, this is actually only the first half of a message, but I it was one that I really wanted to to share because it was one of the most like touching messages I've ever gotten. It says, Tom, thank you for what you do. In April of this year, I lost my teaching job, 27 years as a high school band director, and a job I ate and slept and bled for, gone. I understand feeling that way about a job. The love of my life, gone. I found your YouTube video where you talk about stepping away from teaching and it inspired me. I think I've watched all your videos and just started the podcast. Love the content, etc. More than that, thank you for being there at a very dark time. Um and then that it goes on to kind of share some more personal stuff that I didn't want to put here, but it was incredibly touching. Again, this is fan mail, so I have no way of replying to this person. So I wanted to put it here. And just let if this was you, please know that I got your message and it meant the world to me. And it was also a very, very good reminder of when you make stuff, no matter what it is, no matter how often you make it, um, no matter how many people watch it or don't watch it. All it really takes is one person to find the thing that you made and have a pretty important positive experience, and then you have done something huge. And, you know, sometimes, especially now, good lord, is the world a weird, scary place, and weird things are happening, and scary things are happening all the time. And I would be absolutely lying if I said that it didn't sometimes feel trite and weird, and if not downright insensitive, to like see what's happening in the news and then be like, look at this microphone, like, look at this webcam. Um, and I felt similarly during the start of the pandemic, where it was like, Do I even make videos? I know I'm home a lot now, so I have time to make videos, but like, is that okay? Like, people's lives are falling apart. Do I make videos? And I remember kind of having this discussion online, and a lot of people were like, the videos are the escape, like they're the thing that like they serve a purpose. And I I still I it make this was a good reminder of that to me here. There's there's so much happening in the world that is so terrible and bad and scary and all that stuff, and very little of it can I actually do anything about, right? Like, I can do the best I can to affect what I can affect in my life, but I like most of what I encounter throughout the day I can't affect or impact at all, personally. And that is depressing sometimes. But I can make videos about stuff that I'm excited about and stuff that's interesting, and maybe those videos are interesting and fun for other people or helpful for other people, and then those people are able to do things that they're excited about or they're able to rediscover a passion for something, and then in a world that's scary and terrifying and all that stuff, those people are now able to have a little more fun and focus on a little more positive than the negative. And that is hugely valuable. And I think you know, anybody who makes anything and shares it has the power to do that to some degree or other. And I think that's a really important thing to remember and to keep in mind. And that's probably actually a great note to wrap up the episode on. So thank you for all the messages. Thank you for listening. Thank you for uh accepting my weird podcast schedule. It has been a bit since I recorded an episode, but boy, it's fun. And I really love the idea of like, you know for a fact, every time I'm recording an episode, that is like the number one thing I want to be doing at that moment. And I don't know, I think there's something special about that. So hopefully, you know, if it's not every it's not a regularly uploaded schedule or regular upload schedule, hopefully that kind of, you know, hopefully that's obvious and that makes the episodes fun to listen to. And I appreciate you sharing your time with me. I hope you have a safe, happy, healthy, fun rest of your day, and I'll see you next time, whenever that might be.