Lights, Camera, Action: Fool Proof Tips to Produce the Most Polished Webcasts on the Planet

Hello and welcome to our continuing series of live

webinars documenting creative use of media sites

all around the world.

I'm Sean Brown and today's weapon is titled, Lights,

Camera, Action: Fool Proof Tips to Produce the Most

Polished Webcasts on the Planet.

We've assembled one of the largest audiences that we've

had for this type of presentation, and so I'm just

going to do a little housekeeping and get right to

introducing our guest.

Before we get started, I'd like to point out the

interactive features of the player using right now.

If at any time you have a question for my guest, you

will see a speech bubble below me.

That's the ask button.

If you like to pose a question, just click on this

and submit.

If you'll be kind enough to include your email address,

then if we get a large number of questions, which I

anticipate, my guest has agreed to help us answer them

offline after the presentation is over, as well.

So be sure to include your email when you

are asking a question.

In the lower left is an info button where you can get

additional information about the speaker, and also links

button where you can get supplementary information

including the actual PowerPoint presentation that

my guest created, which he's been kind enough

to share with you.

So let me introduce you to Jan Ozer.

He's produced and encoded video since the CD-ROM bays

way back in 1992.

He's taught courses in video streaming and production since

1994, which I think is pretty much the beginning.

Most recently, streaming media seminars in New York, San

Jose, London, and Los Angeles.

Jan was named a Streaming Media All-Star in 2010 and is

a contributing editor of Streaming Media Magazine and

EventDV. He also blogs for AVTechnology.

He has written, or co-authored over 14 books on digital

video-related topics.

And Jan personally gets his hands dirty in webcasting

doing meetings, church services, concerts, stage

performances, remote webinars.

He's a very frequent speaker on the subject, and he has

told me that he is always the cameraman, he is always

dealing with mic's, he's not just a leader at the top,

sending other crews out to do it.

He actually does what you all out there do every day, as

well as writing the books and being a subject matter

expert about it.

So it's my sincere pleasure to welcome, all the way from

Virginia, Jan.

Welcome to headquarters here at Madison, Wisconsin.

Thanks, Sean.

OK, first thing I want to do is, I looked at the subject

that we talked about, and it looked great in the marketing

materials, and I said, holy cow, I can't cover all that in

30 minutes.

So I wanted to really focus, and I wanted people to

understand the focus, and if they wanted to bail, they

could bail.

Rather than stay for 30 minutes and leave unhappy, I

figured check out now if it doesn't suit your focus.

So my interest in this is primarily single-person

webcasts, small meetings, and presentations.

So I'm not going to teach you how to automate

a classroom, Larry--

Larry covered that.

Larry covered that, and did a great job with it.

And I'm not going to touch on stage lighting or stage audio.

Typically, in those scenarios, I work with what is and take a

feed from the sound board.

The problems I'm going to try and focus on are what are the

backgrounds you should use, what clothing should you

wear-- this striped shirt, I don't know.

Oh no!

All right.

[LAUGHTER]

Choosing a camcorder.

If you're doing a personal webcast, do you want to use

the webcam on your camcorder, do you want to use a an

inexpensive camcorder, do you want to use a prosumer

camcorder like we have here?

What's it look like after it's compressed and enconded.

Lighting.

Can you use existing lightings, can you use hybrid

systems, like we have here with the lighting kit, and,

obviously, colorer-balaned fluorescent lighting.

And then microphone options.

If you're doing, again, a personal webcast, should you

use the microphone on your computer, or should you use an

external microphone?

And I did a lot of testing that we're going to cover, and

a lot of this is going to be available on my website.

And I'll cover where the website is and

where to find that.

Now in terms of experience level, if you are setting up

campus-wide classrooms, we're not going to cover the

materials that are relevant to you.

If you're an American Idol producer, we're not going to

cover that either.

I tried to focus on somebody who's done this before but

wants to tune it up, wants to improve a little bit.

And that's the expertise level that I'm focusing on.

And here's the agenda.

Pre-production planning, background planning, what do

you have for lighting, what are you options there, how to

choose a camera, and how to choose a microphone.

Those are the topics we're going to cover.

And my perspective on this is that

streaming is a lossy medium.

And if you compress the video, even to reasonable levels,

there's going to be some quality loss.

And people expect that.

But you can still choose backgrounds wisely and

clothing wisely.

You can still light adequately, which really

improves quality.

You can choose a good camera and configure it correctly,

which gets you the best of what's possible.

And audio can be perfect, and it doesn't cost a lot of money

to get there.

And my perspective is, let's focus on what we can optimize

and not worry about what we can't.

Now my style for this is--

I've got a lot of slides to get through.

There's a lot of information on the

slides, you can download.

I'm not going to read the slides to you.

I'm going to show you a link in a second where there's six

or seven documents I'm going to touch on during the

webinar, and then you can download those for information

on how to set up for three-point lighting, or flat

lighting, or background checklist, things like that.

So I'm not going to really cover a lot of that

thoroughly, because you probably remember it anyway.

And there's better information, both on the PDF

you can download, and the PDFs on my website.

The first PDF--

and this is where you can find them.

So if you go to bit.ly/webcastresources that

should take you to streaminglearningcenter.com.

And these are all the issues I think about when I'm doing

pre-production planning for a webcast. And it's everything

from background and clothing, to marketing, and how do we

get fannies in the seats when it comes

to the people watching.

And you guys did a great job that.

Three coordinated mailings, a lot of news releases, and

that's the kind of stuff you really need to do if it's a

voluntary-type webcast. And those are all things you need

to focus on.

You can download this document with all the details, and

that's going to look something like this.

I know you probably can't see it that well.

Basically, from how you're going to connect to the

encoding station, are you having a mixer.

If you're going on the road, how do you make sure that you

carry all the right cables, all the right connectors, so

everything fits together, and the pre-webinar testing you

need to do to get that all running.

So this is the checklist I use.

I'm not going to go over because all the people out

there can download it, either now or later.

And then for pre-production planning--

I love this quote, he who fails to plan

is planning to fail.

Winston Churchill had much more important things than

webcasts on his mind, but at least from a background

perspective, I think that's very, very true from

webcasting.

If you're doing webcast, choosing the wrong background

or choosing the wrong clothing is an avoidable error.

And I think that's one you can, in just a few minutes,

learn how to avoid.

And as I said, if the background isn't

compressio-friendly or if the clothing is wrong, you're just

not going to get a good result.

So when I'm doing a webcast, the first thing I think of is,

what's the background.

We've got a nice, relatively-plain, low-detail

gray background.

It was easy to pick clothing that

contracted well with that.

I always go with solids because it compresses most

effectively.

Sean can get away with this shirt here because it's very

small in terms of the overall presentation.

I didn't wear my striped shirts, I didn't wear my

madras shirts.

And I think it's critical, if you're producing webcast, A,

what's the background look like, and B, what do you tell

the people who are coming to wear?

So I got a nice letter from Sonic that said, look, this is

our background, here's a picture of it, wear clothing

that contrasts.

And that's what I do for all the webcasts I produce.

Because if you don't do it, you can end up with

something like this.

So this is the president of Proctor & Gamble.

He's wearing a blue suit, he's got a blue background, you

really can't distinguish him from the back.

And then here's a NIST--

National Institute of Science and Technology--

black coat, black background, no backlighting.

That's a bad idea.

And John Dvorak I mean, a simple black background for

his show Cranky Geeks, but he's wearing a nice brown coat

with a nice reddish shirt, and it contrasts quite well.

So basically, a little bit of planning can get a really,

really good result without spending a lot of money.

And then here's the checklist I use, this is what I present.

Go to the website and you'll see a checklist called

Background Checklist, and download that, and that'll

give you all this information.

If you do a site visit on a place you're going to be

webcasting and the background doesn't work--

it's full of high detail, it's moving, its got backlighting,

those type of issues-- then bring your own background.

It doesn't cost that much money, this is probably a $200

or $300 background and it really avoids a lot of

quality-related issues that you don't want to get into.

And here's a clothing checklist. This

is one of my favorites.

This is a Wall Street Journal webcast that I got, probably,

a few years ago, anyway.

And it just really details what can happen and if you

wear the wrong clothing.

And here we've got a very tight, striped shirt, and we

see the moire pattern.

And here we have a madras shirt, and we just see all the

detail muddied up.

So this is the kind of thing where just tell the people,

look, wear a solid blue shirt--

light blue, dark blue, nice grey shirt--

and just avoid all of these problems. So here's the

checklist down here and you can you can download that.

These will be up on our website for a while, so go

ahead and download those now or when you think

you might need them.

Now, let's look at lighting.

From my perspective, lighting is the most important,

controllable quality element when it comes to webcasting.

If you don't have good lighting, it doesn't matter if

you have a great camera or a terrible camera, you're not

going to get a good result from your webcast. So what is

good lighting, what is sufficient lighting?

From my perspective, it's basically lighting that's

efficient to allow you to expose the face--

and this is me in a waveform monitor--

to expose the face at between 70 and 80 IRE.

And if you don't know what that is, you're in trouble

from the start.

Because you really do need to control exposure to get a good

result from a video perspective.

So when I say adequate lighting, it's

camera-dependant.

You got a consumer camcorder, you need more light.

If you have a prosumer camcorder,

you need less light.

But either way, you want no gain, because gain is noise,

noise is degradation in quality.

So have enough light to be able to light the faces at

between 70 and 80 IRE.

If you're shooting with just overhead lighting, what you

see in this particular slide is, you see both shadows on

one side of the face, and the south side

of the face is dark.

And that's because there's no supplemental lights like we

have here that are lighting the sides and

lighting the chin.

So never use only fluorescents, always figure

out a way to supplement those, and that's what we

see here on the right.

In this particular lighting scenario, I've got a soft box

here and a soft box there, and that's providing nice even

lighting on my face, and that gets a good result even with

the webcam.

So don't use overheads, supplement as you can.

Don't mix color temperatures.

I love this particular slide.

We've got incandescent lighting in the front, we've

got sunlight coming through to the back, there's no white

balance setting you can use to get you a good result.

So don't mix lighting.

If you don't have daylight-colored lamps, then

shut all the shades in your office before you shoot.

If your lights don't much the fluorescent lights that exist,

shut off one of them and--

because this is what you'll get, and you

just can't fix this.

Kind of what I just said.

And then know what you're trying to

achieve with your lighting.

So there's two basic lighting styles.

One is flat, and one is shadows.

And about a year ago I did a survey, who's using what in

what applications?

And let me go back to this one because

I think it's important.

This is the dramatic look.

A lot of people, if you're dealing with somebody from TV,

they say, lighting must be dramatic, it must be moody,

you've got create a mood with it.

And I'm like, that works well if you've got one person who's

not moving.

But even in a two-person scenario like this, it's very

challenging to do.

And then the other style is flat.

And if you look at what a lot of the

broadcasters are doing--

CBS, NBC--

when they come to the internet, they're using flat

lighting because it's easy to do, it works well, and they're

not trying to accomplish dark shadows-like

effect with their lighting.

And then internet-only broadcaster--

this is companies who are only on the internet.

This might be the Wall Street Journal, it might be Forbes.

You see more three-point lighting there.

Corporate information, we see a little bit

of three-point lighting.

Case studies you see a lot, because they're trying for

that impact.

But case studies aren't a live webcast.

And my theory is this: there's enough that can go wrong in a

live webcast, don't try to get the lighting really sexy.

I like what Deloitte did up here.

You can see that the lighting on the, I guess, the right

side of his face is a little bit darker.

So you get a little bit of modeling going on.

But you don't go down here where one side is really dark,

one side is really light, because shadows are very hard

to compress and that's not what you're typically trying

to achieve anyway.

These are mostly informational things, and you just want a

look that's attractive, but not particularly moody.

And if you have multiple participants,

you have to go flat.

Because it's almost impossible to get good three-point

lighting or shadowed lighting when you have multiple

people lined up.

And then, either way, whether you're doing flat or shadowed,

use three-point lighting.

And that refers, obviously, to where the lights are placed.

And there is a very, very good three-point lighting worksheet

at the URL on the page.

And flat lighting, I would do the same thing.

Three lights, it's just that the two lights in front are

the same power.

And then there's also a flat-lighting worksheet

available at the URL that's listed on the page.

And then how much do you have to spend?

We're going through a really good time from a lighting

perspective.

A light kit here probably costs $1,000, maybe $1,500

because that's what was available two

or three years ago.

And now we're starting to see some compact fluorescent

lights in the $150 to $200 price range that are really,

really good.

Because light is light.

I mean, daylight-centric light, or daylight-colored

light is light.

And you need to pay more if you want lights like this,

where you can control the focus with barn doors and

things like that.

If you're going to move the lights, you want kits that are

very robust.

But what I use--

these are $200 ePhoto compact fluorescent soft boxes.

And this cost me $200.

And I never take them down, I never put them away.

They're just up in my office whenever I need them.

And this gives me very, very high quality light at a

fraction of what it would cost two or three years ago.

Now if you're going to take the equipment on the road,

don't buy cheap.

But if you're going to keep it in your office, I think you're

in pretty good shape buying inexpensive gear.

Now again, my interest in this is--

I do a lot of personal webcasts, I do a lot of small

meetings-- so the question for me is, if I'm encoding at 700

kilobits per second for 640x480, can I use the webcam

on my Apple notebook or my HP notebook, or do I need to use

another camcorder.

That was question number one.

Because I do a lot with just my webcam, and it's like, OK,

that's easy, but do I get a better result if I put a

camera in the mix rather than a webcam?

And then, what about the audio side?

And we'll cover the audio in a minute.

So this is what this suite of tests were

designed to shake out.

It's like comparing the webcam versus an inexpensive DV

camcorder, and that's four feet away.

And if I had a camera right here, do I get a better result

if I use the webcam on my HP notebook or if I have a $500

camcorder here, or then a $3,500 camcorder here?

And then it was, OK, if this distance, where we're 15 feet

away and maybe we want an HD look, or widescreen look, how

does an $800 Canon consumer camcorder compare to $3,500

prosumer camcorder?

And those are the tests that I'm going to

go into right now.

This is the parameters of the test. And what I did for these

tests was, I plugged the cameras into a computer

running Telestream Wirecast. And then I encoded in real

time to the SD 4:3 test, at 640 by 480 1 megabit per

second, and then the 848 by 480, the widescreen test, at

1.5 megabits per second.

I didn't transmit these, but I encoded them in real time

using a webcasting program, which is Telestream Wirecast.

And then I compared the quality that we're going to

look at right now.

And all of these videos will be up on my website within the

next two or three days.

So I'm just going to put them up there, and then you can

kind of see what I'm talking about.

We'll see some screens in a second.

So this is webcam versus the ZR500.

So again, it's a $500 DV camcorder, it's about three or

four years old.

And I like DV because DV fits quite easily into a notebooks

that have firewire ports.

So the webcam is on the left and the ZR500 is on the right.

And you can see immediately that even at one megabits per

second, you get a noticeable jump in quality when you go to

a cheap camcorder.

So I mean enough said, I'm never going to do a

webcam-based webcast again.

And If you can use a separate camera, do it, and then when

we get to the audio side we'll see even a bigger differential

between the internal machinery on a Mac or a Windows

computer, and what you can get via separate controls.

And this is the $3,500 versus the $500 camcorder.

We've got about a $1,500 camcorder here, and the GL2 is

a unique camcorder.

It really was.

It had XLR input, it had a lot of sophisticated color iris

adjustments, but it was cheap, it was $1,500.

There's not a lot of those out there anymore.

It's either--

It's either $3,500 or $800, and doesn't have the XLR, it

doesn't have the individual controls.

But what we see in this picture is that you get much

better color control when you can use high quality white

balancing, when you can use good exposure controls, and

it's a more impactful image.

Now it's not night and day, it's not as big as what we saw

between the webcam and the $500 camcorder, but it is a

noticeable difference.

So this is the 4:3 test, this is what I got from right here.

And then from that distance, this is what I saw between the

Panasonic HMC150, which is a $3,500 AVCHD camcorder, the

Vixia, which is a $800 consumer camcorder,

and the XH A1 again.

And you see a little bit better color with the

Panasonic and with the Canon, but the

difference is not huge.

I don't think I would spend $2,000 extra to get the

quality jump between the consumer camcorder here and

prosumer camcorders here.

It's noticeable but it's not dramatic.

You may have to work harder to get good color, to get good

exposure, but at these data rates, you're not going to see

a big quality jump.

This encapsulates what I just said.

If you've got XLR and you've got on-the-body controls for

iris, and easy and accessible and effective white balance

controls, you just get an overall better result.

Things just are going to look better.

Would I spend $2,000 extra for it?

I'd probably not.

And then the other thing you get is zebra stripes and

waveform monitors.

And zebra stripes--

again, if you don't know what zebra stripes are, then you're

behind the curve when it comes to getting good quality,

because that that's how you adjust for lighting, that

how's you adjust your exposure.

But we see zebras over here on the left.

Those are the stripes in the white shirt.

That tells me that this white shirt is 100 IRE, which is

pretty much what I want.

And then on the right, we see the video after capture.

And we see the exposure is reasonable.

So you get zebra stripes on a prosumer camcorder.

The GL2 has them.

My Vixia does not have them.

And it's really hard to set exposure correctly if you

don't have them.

And then the HMC150 has a waveform monitor as well.

This is a little bit far away from this particular

application but I can look at the waveform monitor and know

what the brightness level is on the face.

And that's obviously very critical

when it comes to exposure.

Summarizing the camera.

Don't use a webcam for business.

Consumer camcorders are good quality at the bit rates that

we're working at.

But it's harder to achieve good color and exposure.

And you need a microphone for it.

Don't buy a consumer camcorder that doesn't have separate

microphone input.

Because if you're this far away, 10 or 15 feet away, the

quality's going to be off.

Unless you can have a workaround, you're just not

going to get good audio.

And then prosumers will simplify the

entire production cycle.

But if you can find a $1,500 camcorder that's got XLR plus

iris controls on the body and good white balance, I think

that would be a good investment.

And then here's the camera settings that I recommend, and

typically I use.

Pretty self explanatory.

And then looking at the microphone,

microphones are tough.

It's always a balance between

convenience, cost, and quality.

I love my personal webcast with my HP notebook because

it's got an internal microphone and I don't have

nothing set up, it's really quickly.

But the quality is awful.

And then if I use a lavaliere system, good lavalier's cost--

these probably cost in the $800 to $1,000 range.

It's a pain in the neck to use, they can drop, they can

break, batteries.

But you get the absolute best quality.

So this is a trade-off you've got to decide where to make.

My perspective is that sound is judged more

harshly than video.

Because you can get pristine audio, and people have heard

that on the internet.

Everybody knows video quality can suffer, but if the audio

quality is good, they really don't care.

And if you look at different types of scenarios and

different expectations.

If people are paying for a concert or any kind of

subscription, then the quality has to be pristine.

In incidents like this, I think the quality must sound

professional.

You don't want to hear echoing, You don't want to

hear background noise.

And then in a classroom setting, or a training

session, I think the quality standard's a little bit lower.

The quality cant be distractingly bad.

People have to listen to it.

They've got to, it's a class, it's a training session.

You don't need the pristine audio.

And I think since all this costs money, I think that's an

important perspective to have.

And then again, what I tested was the four feet for personal

webcast, the ten feet, and then beyond ten feet.

And I looked at the internal camcorder, shotgun microphone,

lavaliere microphone for those scenarios.

Single person webcasts, interviews, and larger-type

productions.

And then if you look at the HP notebook, this is the waveform

that I captured with this notebook.

And you can see those bushy lines on both sides.

And those bushy lines are noise.

So if you see those lines, you know that that's noise and

your audience is going to hear that.

And this is the XH A1 from four feet away.

Less noise, but noise.

And then shotgun microphone.

Didn't get a good waveform from there, so I'm not going

to show you one.

The Azden gear is in for testing.

Particularly the lavaliere system-- this one--

I love those on-camera lavaliere systems because you

can take it with you.

If you have to plug it in, you can't use the lavaliere system

if you're not near a plug.

And I found the quality just excellent with the 330

wireless system.

And this is the waveform.

So you see very, very good levels, but you see almost no

background noise.

And that's actually attached to the camera.

Yeah, so it's sitting on the camera.

It's sitting on a cold accessory shoe.

And then you can walk around, it's battery powered.

And that translates to audible quality.

People are going to hear the difference.

Less background noise.

And then and, obviously, if you can connect to a

soundboard, that's the best option.

So the concerts that I do, the church productions that I do,

those are all miced.

I don't have to deal with the mics, that's great.

I just get some kind of XLR feed into my

camcorder, boom I'm done.

And that's always the absolutely best quality.

And these are kind of the rules that I live by.

If you're four feet away, you can shoot the internal

microphone of the camcorder.

It's not optimal, but it's doable.

Shotgun is a very good option for ENG.

If there was a person here interviewing us at a trade

show or something, you don't have time to lav mic, hand

held this kind of awkward.

Shotgun is a very good option.

And then if you're within four feet of proximity, whether

it's a boundary microphones or button microphone, it's going

to be good option, as well.

Lavs or ear mounts are going to be excellent throughout.

Sound board is going to be excellent throughout.

And then if you go to ten feet, don't use the internal

microphone on the camcorder.

That's just too far.

Shotgun microphone can get you decent results.

Proximity at ten feet, you're going to start hear a lot more

noise than high quality audio.

And then lavs and sound boards, again,

are going to be fine.

In this scenario here, where the camera's 15 feet away,

internal doesn't work, shotguns is sub-optimal,

proximity is too far.

And you really do need to move a lave or an ear mount.

We're using the lav here.

And sound board, again, if you can hook up to a sound board,

that's the best alternative you can always get.

Another reason you want a prosumer camcorder rather than

a consumer.

Because you've got an XLR, XLR connector, very, very simple.

Very, very easy.

And what I learned through a lot the sound testing than I

did is that if you use the high-quality mic, it doesn't

sound recorded.

If you use a internal microphone from a camcorder or

computer, you hear the echos, you hear the noise.

If you use a high quality microphone, it sounds like the

person's just talking to you.

You lose the perception that it's actually being recorded

and played back.

And it's--

Natural.

Yeah.

It's almost indescribable but when you hear it, you hear it.

And again, I'll get the test. I tested the

Azden against the Audio2000.

It's $120 as opposed to a $700 system.

You can't see it on the waveform, when you hear it,

it's like, oh, I get it.

And again, this will be on my website in a few days.

And then the book.

So here's my book.

He literally wrote the book on this stuff.

This is not a book on webcasting, so I wanted to

briefly cover what's in the book as it relates to

webcasting.

And then chapter eleven is Live Event Production,

choosing your live streaming service provider, and then

choosing your encoding hardware and software.

And we do cover Mediasite in there, we

do cover that market.

But If you're not doing the mixed rich media

presentations, what external capture device do you get?

What service to you use, Livestream, USTREAM?

And also the software side.

Telestream Wirecast, obviously a tool that I like.

And then Adobe Flash Live Media

Encoder, tools like that.

Expression Encoder for Microsoft.

And then chapter five is Resolution and Data Rate.

When you go live, you still have to pick a configure.

Exactly.

So how do you do that.

That's in chapter five.

Chapter seven is adaptive streaming, which I think is

the next big thing, streaming out of multiple data rates.

So people on an iPhone can get a good experience, as well

people on a corporate network with a big screen computer.

And then chapter six is IOPS devices as

well as other mobiles.

OK, so I'm two minutes over.

Shoot me.

You're perfect.

Perfect as usual.

There's a ton of questions coming in, so I'm just going

to hit you with those.

And it's OK that we're in the question time here.

I'm going to start with the oldest question first. A lot

of people, when you flashed up your office, a bunch of

questions came in about what brand are those lights.

What did you choose for inside your office.

OK those, I think, are ePhoto.

EPhoto, available from anywhere.

I got them from Amazon.

Got you.

Available from anywhere.

And you got two with the cases and put them up there.

Because a lot of people are doing webcasting from a small

office or their home, so I think it was great that you

could talk about that.

Gene amplified what you said, and said, I would add that

your stats are real depending on the type of broadcast

production.

News, I hear, is very different than documentary.

Do you have any comments on that?

That when you're looking at news in the studio and you

were putting up your stats as to who uses flat and who uses

three-point, does it vary with the type of news production

that they're doing?

Without question.

I just think that those statistics were primarily for

on demand production.

You can do multiple takes, it's like, oops, that light is

too dark, move his head.

Live event production is just much more challenging because

it's one take.

One shot.

I'm more conservative.

I light for adequacy.

I light for IRE.

And then maybe a little bit for effect or modeling, but

I'm not going to try and create a dramatic effect If I

have to do it in one take.

Got you.

My friend Tom, from a very large corporation, writes in

and says, Jan, do you have to change any of these techniques

depending on whether you are streaming for Silverlight, for

Flash, WMV, H.264, HTML5, or very low bandwidth encoding?

How is that affected in the various compression methods

that are out there?

Good question.

Tom always asks good questions.

There's just so many scenarios.

In a scenario like this-- you and I talking--

pretty low-motion setting, low complexity,

very easy to compress.

And then whether I'm sending it out for Silverlight, or for

Flash, or even Windows Media, I think at reasonable data

rates, you're going to get good quality.

When you look at really ultra-low bandwidth, that's

when you tell your speaker, look, dude, don't move around.

Don't bounce around, comb your hair tight, frame in more

tightly, lower resolution.

But everything else should be fine.

Tom asked a follow up question that I want to get to.

He was wondering, do you believe that multicasting is

coming to any of those formats that we talked about?

H.264--

I don't want to grab the wrong one because it just moved--

but these newer formats, like HTML5, do you anticipate

multicast support like we have right now in WMV and ASF?

Yeah, multicast is available in Flash Media Server 4, as

well as peer to peer.

So yeah, it's going to be there.

And I think HTML5, they're now looking at the first adaptive

streaming spec, and think multicasting

will come after that.

So Flash, yes, I think Silverlight soon, and HTML5

down the road.

Excellent.

Another question that could amalgamate a bunch, but this

guy John asks it best. If I just wanted one general

streaming bit rate to reach the most people, which rate

would you use?

OK, I'm a big sports fan.

And I go to CNN for most of my big news.

And they both stream in the 800 to 900 kilobit per second.

800 to 900 hundred.

For video only.

Well yeah, and then they use between 64 and 96 kilobits per

second for audio.

So that tells me that the bulk of their audience, which is

the great unwashed in America, can download that much.

Seriously.

Right.

And if you look at the statistics, I get ten megabits

per second, and I'm in a 6,000 person town

in Southwest Virgina.

Let me just finish up.

I would use 640 by 360, because I think everyone's

going widescreen.

And I would be between 800 and 1 megabit per second combined

audio an video.

Nice.

Framerate, as long as you're on it.

That's the question.

But what framerate do you prefer to shoot in?

I'm not a big believer in 24.

And what you see, if you look at streaming statistics now,

people who shoot at 29.97 or 30 stream at that framerate.

There's not a lot of people who dropped the framerate.

And I don't like 24, I just it doesn't

look smooth for streaming.

My new best friend, Stephanie, asks a lighting tips.

Because she cares about the on-camera talent.

She said, any tips on how to keep the speaker cool under

the lighting for longer periods of time.

Example: no Nixon sweats, all caps.

Cannot use a fan because of noise.

Any thoughts?

Yeah, compact fluorescent.

Very good point.

These are tungsten.

They're very hot.

We're in a studio and you can't see it.

We have some Lowel collapsible barn doors, reflected light

coming at us.

And they're hot.

Yeah but five years ago, the only thing you could produce

adequate light would be a tungsten.

Whether it was a shop lamp if you were budget, or Lowel

lights if you had the money to spend and get the control.

They're definitely worth it.

But the ePhoto lights that I showed in that

picture cost $200.

And they're sitting four feet away.

And I'm not feeling any heat at all.

Perfect.

Perfect, perfect.

A bunch people asked--

I'm just going to ask you to do it while I ask

you the next question--

the slide that you have with downloads, the link for

downloads, just rest on that for them so

they can get it down.

Can I steal this--

Absolutely.

I meant to do this but didn't.

So I'm going to plug in ethernet.

Oh no, you can't--

Nope, I'm good.

Because we're almost out of time and I have my last

questions I can take.

And then you're going to multitask for us

so we can get out.

Do you have any suggestions about the best way to support

webcasting from multiple sites simultaneously?

Is there a reasonable tool kit to

support satellite locations?

We're cutting to this guy, we're cutting to that guy.

Or is that kind of ahead of the curve right now?

There I think you're looking at software

as a service provider.

I would really hate to try and do that myself.

Got it.

That totally makes sense.

And that's what we would recommend, too.

We can help you do that in our case and others

that you talk about--

So let me interrupt.

So you guys should be seeing a web page.

Streaming Learning Center is my blog.

And the top article on the left under Streaming

Production is Resources for Sonic Foundry Webcast. And

then click that, you'll see all the

resources we talked about.

The planning mind map, that's the planning

checklist for the--

Which is amazing.

That mind map is absolutely amazing workflow.

Great that you're sharing that.

Thank you.

And then background checklist, clothing, flat lighting,

three-point, and then shooting skills, including how to

control exposure in a camcorder.

If you don't know how to control exposure, I think

you'll find that very useful.

That's fantastic.

The last question I'm going to ask you is all about

backgrounds.

A lot of different people, when you, said this was a good

background, when you accidentally insulted my

choice of clothing, a lot of people defend out here, I

won't let you read all that.

But seriously, people asked, is a white background OK?

Other people asked, is a beige background OK?

So there's various people basically asking about their

environment.

So if you have to choose the color to be behind you for

webcasting, what do you think?

Or a fabric or anything.

But that's the most common question.

So let's just go to, OK where is it?

It's here.

So this is Deloitte.

And Deloitte is, we all know, is an accounting firm.

They could spend a fortune if they wanted to on background.

They choose light blue.

A nice blue.

And then what I did in my office was the same thing.

Little know fact, I worked for Deloitte back in the 80s.

Anyway, if I had to choose one, it would be light blue.

Because it's easy to contrast.

People aren't usually wearing light blue anymore.

The prom tux, I was thinking-- anyway, continue.

White and black are very effective, but

they're hard to expose.

The Apple look is a wonderful book, but you can't have a

white background and have a black jacket, for example.

The contrast ratio is just too much

Just too high.

So I like light blue, it's middle of the road.

If I had to pick one color that most corporations are

using, that would be it.

Fantastic.

Well, Jan, thanks for staying overtime.

People have included their email addresses, so we'll

continue to pass any questions you have along to Jan.

But the most important thing is you've got that website and

his blog to go to.

I'd like to thank you so much for coming all this way--

My pleasure.

--to webcast to our folks out there.

I'd like to thank Sonic Foundry Event Services for

producing another great webcast. And I'd like to thank

all of you for joining us here online live today.

We'll see you the next time.