as this was necroed but it's still relevant - I'm updating the topic a bit

Hi guys. You all were very helpful in my previous thread

But by some crazy coincidence a project fell in my lap - building filming studio. It will be used for creating professional study courses for Uni and online learning. And if necessary used for remote filming.

Maybe there are some enthusiast who know the market in and out or have actually worked or work with filming gear. So for the second time - I would appreciate any opinions and suggestions that I could take in consideration in the process of planning this studio.
As a side note - we are already doing consultations with other companies that offer such products and some schools that have done this. I just dont doubt that you guys could give some insights as well :)

Whats needed :

  • camera - camcorder , probably something semi-professional. probably in price range from 1-2k euros. with 4K filming possibilities - We are going with JVC camcorders, a Canon DSLR for cameras
  • sturdy tripod for the camera - tripods didn't seem too much of a problem choosing, but if there is something specific to take into consideration - I'll here it out
  • microphones - most likely wireless ones that you attach to your clothes. I'd say price range anything from 200-500 euros - as mentioned in comment - Sennheiser shotgun and lav mics and Blue yetis.
  • studio lights - big question is how powerful and how many. I do have experience in photography, but filmography is something relatively new to me, so some opinions regarding lighting in studio would be appreciated. As well accessories - light diffusers etc - Fomei LED Mini lights and Godox LED panel
  • Sound insulation over walls - anything would help. Green screen possibilities and alternatives
  • teleprompter system - DataVideo teleprompter - any comments ?
  • big questions come with computer thats why I mentioned my previous thread). Computer has to be able to work with up to 4K videos flawlessly with possibilities of streaming from cameras. This can probably go up in price as much as is needed without being overkill. ATM there was company that offered workstation for 2.6k euros. I7-7700, Quadro P2200, 64 GB ram, 16 TB HDD and 512 GB of SSD. as well as DeckLink Mini Recorder added. Would 64 GB of ram would be an overkill or a safe bet if budget allows ? Quadro P2200 - mainly I see that its meant for CAD softwares and 3D modeling and VR. How good would it be for video editing ? So feel free to give insights about professional workstation for work with video editing - a lot to talk about here, but the last idea is to go with 3060 or 3070 card, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X or 3950X, 64 GB of ram, 6-8 TB of HDD and 1 TB of SSD
  • Gymbal stabilizer for camera when used out of studio - Decided against this
  • Lightboard system - has anyone had any experience working with such systems ? - still an open question as these systems cost a lot and really eats up our budget

There is more stuff thats needed of course, but Im not the only one on project and every little detail will be discussed thoroughly, but feel free to suggest anything else as well.

Budget would be round 20-25k euros. At the moment the main thing is to understand the market and available cameras, PC components etc. So yeah - anyone who has experience or just are enthusiasts and have opinions and knowledge - just give me all youve got.
This will be a long process of planning and estimating, but any little thing will help.

this is a bit bigger and more serious thread then my previous one, so I'll add some GA as well a bit later on

PS. The setting up will be done by a company that specializes in this. I'm just Project coordinator/manager and whats needed is to understand the specifics of what we ask them to do and how powerful/expensive stuff we ask them to buy. So research is important at this stage (which includes my fellow SG users for me)

THANKS, be safe

4 years ago*

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First question. Is 4k really needed. No. Like REALLY needed. "Professional study courses for Uni and online learning". These videos are usually delivered at 720p due to (client side) bandwidth issues. 4k would likely be massively overbuilding and cost significantly more. I'd really push back on if this is necessary.

Lavaliere mic's work well enough, but a boom mic would capture better sound, esp if the person on camera isn't used to using a mic. My guess is you will be doing mostly static "talking head" shots and maybe some whiteboard work? It's also good to use both when possible.

Don't ignore your soundboard and cable needs. You'll spend more euros here than you'd expect. For education YOUR AUDIO IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR VIDEO. Garbage audio can't be fixed in post. If you're doing videos about hands on processes (like taking apart an engine), have a dedicated sound recording room and focus on voice over.

Sound insulation can be bought on the cheap to start. There's lots of manageable DYI type of solutions to use to get started if you're on a budget. Professional insulation doesn't always do better and can have a heavy markup, but will often look much better if the business is worried about client perceptions when touring/recording. Remind me next week and I'll try and find some common solutions.

Someone else with more hands on experience should weigh in, but buy several colors of chroma grade backdrop. You'll want to be able to swap if someone wears the wrong color, and I've heard a few stories about budget cloth producing issues in post. (But also some success stories, so your mileage may vary)

PC will be dependent on if 4k is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to your customers. Getting multiple computers for several people work with and/or have backups would be better if you don't have to do 4k work. You likely won't need a workstation card if you aren't doing heavy or custom visual effects. Though a low end workstation card is pretty common and may be part of your baseline system.

Don't build your PC. Buy them from a vendor with support. If this is for a professional business, you don't want to be stuck with troubleshooting. You should be looking for a support contract with something like a 24-48h on-site replacement.

Budget for software. This will be a non-trivial expense. Also budget for off-site backups. And you may need to know where the video will be hosted and what formats, file sizes, and other limitations they may have.

Get some detailed use cases for what work you may do out of studio and quality expectations. The gimbal requirements for a low impact "campus tour" video is different than what's needed for say high impact sports education.


Bottom line:
-Who are your customers?
-What kind of videos do they /think/ they need?
-What kind of videos do they actually need?
-What features do you have to have to be competitive?
-Who's your producer and what do they think they need?


It's been a long day, forgive my yelling.

4 years ago
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Enormous thanks for the detailed answer :)

Everything basically boils down to intricacies of government institution as we are one. Why and How and What is all dictated by bureaucracy and different rules from EU and from government.
Its hard to answer your questions as all this is one project that is part of another huge project of modernizing Universities and cities. Its not that this is done for the sole purpose of doing something without a need - Its something that is needed for more dynamic study and work process and to bring everything up to 21st century technology wise. The sole problem with answering your questions is the fact that we need to have the technology on hand to get the most stubborn workers to agree to use all of thats offered.
The use of it mainly is the creation of these online courses, but hypothetically it should be able to be used remotely to film different events or laboratories. Even library has its own youtube channel and this would give them more chances of putting out more quality content. We organize seminars and conferences and this would give chances to film them or actually host some kind of podcasts.

At least thats it to summarize some of the things thats planned to be done. The thing is to get the best inventory we can for the budget, because you cant really allocate more budget for stuff like that for upgrades. So if we plan on filming 1080p, its better to go for 4K and same with the workstation - we wont be able to upgrade it for years to come. So it would probably be smart to be ready to go up to supporting 8K even if we dont plan to go higher then 4K at the moment.

Thats to answer whether we need 4K camera. But thanks for suggestion, I'll keep that in mind.
Boom mics kind of dropped out if my mind so a huge thanks for reminding about those. We have two wireless mics at the moment and I'm thinking we will check out how they perform when filming. But I will definitely keep in mind boom mics and they could probably do better job for studio work.
The thing about PC is - it will be bought by the company that will get the contract. But we cant give them specific model to buy. We have to specify what is the technical specifications we need and they will find what they can get for the cheapest prize (thanks to government bureaucracy) so we have to get the specification on point to get the best deal out of it.

Software falls in different category due to it being annually billed. But that will be evaluated accordingly.

Anyhow - thanks for the comment :) feel free to ask anything or suggest more things if time allows

4 years ago
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I'll echo the concerns about 4K. Plenty of commodity cameras can record at 4K resolution, but not a lot of PCs can handle video editing that, and nobody streams it. Even if you have the crunchiest CPUs, endless storage, and the maximum possible RAM, it wont be enough. Besides, it would be better served making lower resolution videos faster.

I would edit and record in a Linux studio like KXStudio or AV Linux. The realtime signal processing and JACK routing is simple, flexible, and amazing for streaming/broadcasts. They're a studio in a box, and come with professional software like Ardour and all the rack plugins.

Audio routing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaumI8dz4Ag

You wont really need any fancy GPU hardware. You could utilize GPU silicon to help encode the video (NVENC is NVidia's version), but it would produce worse quality/compression than using CPU with normal software. Eventually you'll want H.265 codec anyway. There are ridiculous and complicated multi-GPU CUDA computers with 8 cameras attached to them, but that gives no redundancy and sounds more expensive than a few (much more mobile) laptops with decent CPUs.

Streaming equipment:

  • nice $200 webcams with a laptop for each (include presentation software, screen recording)
  • at least one decent microphone, a USB audio interface or mixer
  • key/fill/back lighting
  • good PC for the broadcasting suite (playout/encoder)
  • storage
  • multi-format video transcoder server PC (if you're using your own website)

Post-production equipment:

  • more storage
  • AV editing rig (extra large RAM and SSD, big monitor, lots of cores)
  • a dark place with no glare
3 years ago*
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Thanks for the input :)

As for the situation as of now - we have planned cameras for 4K video, PC 4K capable, but at least for now we will have FullHD quality videos coming out. PC - 3070, 64 GB RAM and Ryzen 9 3950X or better CPU. Two HP Z27n screens. We are limited to these unfortunately, but seeing reviews on BHPohoto they seem good.

Streaming of course will be only FullHD. No higher, but it's planned to do with ATEM Mini Pro ISO switcher and Davinci Resolve Studio software (and whatever else will be required for streaming). Why this ? It's one of the rare pro editing softwares that has one time payment, includes audio editing as well and we are familier with this. Thanks for software suggestions but we decided going for something we are familiar with as we wont be able dedicate that much time in learning a new software.

I do have 25 good FullHD webcams that I might take and use for live if needed. But essentially the main focus has shifted towards making distance learning materials. So it's good quality audio and cameras is a must. As I said - high end lavs and shotgun mics. Blue yetis for other applications. Live is a bonus we want to be able to provide if needed, but it's not the main focus.

3 years ago
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The 3070 sounds like a waste of $500, buy a NAS instead if that's an option.

3 years ago
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microphones
lavalier or shotgun type like Thac0 said (even micro shotgun, new type that you can put on a desk)
I have tried shure 185 for live streaming and it is really good, but doesn't come with a belt pack and requires XLR device

studio lights entry level solution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KabgSLyeVfQ

Sound insulation over walls
I think that is not easily achieved (perhaps not possible in some cases), proper sound insulation is being done during construction, apart from that
if you need really professional level, acoustic study of the space is required and it costs 4 to 5 digit amount of money.
More viable solution, is to try diffusion & absorption by combining ready to use or DIY panels e.t.c

3 years ago
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Thanks for your input.
With the situation with covid and government bureaucracy turning its slow ass gears we are still working at this. So it's still relevant if anyone else wants to give input - be free to do that.

As for updates since I made the initial topic (at which stage we had no idea what to get) - for audio it's planned to go with sennheiser shotgun mics, blue yeti mics for versitality and sennheiser lav mics.
For studio lights we have an offer for Fomei LED mini 30W lights. We are definitely not building them ourselves but thanks for the video. Apart from that we are getting a LED panel as well for one specific thing we have planned.

Yeah - sound treating the room turned out to be quit a difficult topic. Spoke with people in construction and the consensus is that usually it takes trained professionals and costs shitload of money. As far as our solution goes - we will at least try to lower the reverb by getting several sound absorbtion foam panels, by getting thick day light blocking curtains and putting in a rug. It's going to take some experimenting but as the room isn't that bad acoustically I don't think we will be having huge problems.

3 years ago*
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Automotive sound insulation like Dynamat converts vibrations into a bit of heat, might be good to cover any air holes and rattling things with that.

I like Shure cardioid mics attached to a usb mixer/audio interface for voice and guitar. Blue yetis have a bulky plastic shell and will need an attached pop filter (yeti nano sounds bad).

3 years ago
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You 're welcome!
btw another cheap DIY solution for sound panel is to find large windshield cardboard boxes, and fill them with wood/glass fiber sheets

3 years ago
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As for those there are many options. I like DIY Perks channel and this video was pretty cool - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qczNxoG8s6o
I doubt that I'll go this way with the studio at work, but I will definitely build some of these for myself at home.

3 years ago
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indeed! good channel, had already sub'ed in the past

3 years ago
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