Speaker 1: You've probably noticed a ton of your favorite creators have been using more remote interviews lately. For example, all these guys are doing it with Riverside. All the old bottlenecks are gone and now it's just seamless to jump on a call and record it. Recording video interviews over the internet used to be really hard. Now it's easy. The first half of this video, we're going to go over the basics, the simplest way that you can do it. And the second half will be some pro tips so you can step up your quality with some gear recommendations, recording and editing techniques. So let's get started. You're going to need great remote recording software like Riverside FM, sponsor of this video. Next, you're going to need a decent microphone. Of course, you could just talk into your computer or your headphones, but the quality is not great. It makes a huge difference to get a mic closer to your mouth, especially if it's a good one. There's lots of affordable options out there. You could use a USB mic like this Deity one. I use an XLR microphone with an audio interface or even a wireless kit. But most important is that you get that microphone closer to your face because the further away it is, the worse it's going to sound. Now, almost equally important for audio is a pair of headphones. Doesn't matter what they are. They can be wireless or not. You just need to be able to hear the people on the other end of the call without it playing from your computer speakers because then the software needs to cancel out that echo. Really, it makes the quality much worse. Just put on some headphones. Then, of course, you'll need a webcam. I'm just starting off by using one in my Apple Studio display. Make sure that it's clean before you start. But what I've been using lately is actually my iPhone camera as a webcam. So this is actually built into iOS. You just put your phone down horizontally and it's still. The operating system will detect it and let you select it as a camera. This really does improve the image quality over most built-in webcams. But of course, you'll need to put the camera somewhere. There's this small Belkin mount that works great if you're putting it on a laptop. Just use this MagSafe on the back and clips onto a monitor. Or in my case, I'm going to use a little tripod stand to put it right beside my screen. And now I've got some freedom to just place it wherever I need and again, have better image quality. And then another thing that should be basic, sometimes it's not, is you need to have a light shining on you from the front. This could be a desk lamp as long as it's soft light or a window nearby. Just make sure that all the light isn't coming from behind you. Now that we've got our camera set up, we're going to go to riverside.fm or if you find this video helpful, use the link in the description so they know you came from here and you can get started testing it out. No credit card required. Now you're going to create a studio. Enter your name. Let them know you're using headphones because you are using headphones, right? And over here on the right, you can select between your camera. So like I said, we could either use the studio display or my phone. Make sure you have the correct microphone selected. So I'm using the Vocaster 2 audio interface and that you set your speakers to go out your headphones. So this is what the studio interface looks like in Riverside. You can see yourself on the left. If you need to be bigger, you can get ready and make sure that everything in the background is where it should be. Make sure the plant shows up in my empty room right now. On the right here, you can name your recording, which is helpful for organizing things later. Let's open up the settings just so you know what I have things set at. Generally, I don't turn on noise reduction unless I'm in a really noisy environment. It does degrade the audio somewhat. And then optimize quality is what Riverside recommends, but I like to turn it up higher to 1080p. And there are more features here that you can dig into, including live streaming. Sometimes I like to stream my podcast as I'm recording it. It's very simple with Riverside. And then when you're ready to go, there's a few different ways you can invite the guests. You can either copy the URL and just text it to them or you can type in their email and they'll get a link directly. Hi Anya. Thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 2: Hi Tyler. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1: Okay, so we're using Riverside to record today. Anybody could start this kind of call. It's basically just like a FaceTime call or a Skype call.

Speaker 2: You know what this actually makes me think of that it would be amazing for is talking to relatives. My brother did this with our grandma when she was still alive and he would record her with a video camera and he would be sitting on one end or whatever. So many people now are living far away from their families. People are kind of spread across the world. So wouldn't this be an amazing thing to do that?

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that's actually a really smart common feature. I think there's a lot of reasons and ways people could use video interviews without needing to think of it as a podcast. Not everybody needs to have a podcast that they're trying to send out to the whole world. It can just be a way of, thanks for joining on this demonstration sample podcast Anya.

Speaker 2: My pleasure, Tyler. Anytime.

Speaker 1: Now that we have a recording, I'm going to show you how easy it is to edit it. So these are some previous podcast episodes. Like I said, I've been doing this for a long time. And here's what we just recorded with Anya. Now what's really amazing is that Riverside now uses AI to generate a full transcript of your recording. So you can see here, this is everything that we said, all typed out. And to edit it, I can just read the text and select all the sections that I want to cut out. I know this is just an intro. And if I delete it, you can see it deletes it from the recorded file as well. So I can quickly just skim through, find everything that needs to go. And another powerful feature is being able to search. So I remember saying something about edit this part out. Okay, here it is. Finds all the times I said edit, and I can just delete it. Riverside also has a brand new feature called Magic Clips that uses AI to create little social media snippets. All you got to do is click generate clips. And since it's already created a transcript, it looks for the most interesting topic you talked about and creates a little vertical snippet that's already edited. It has captions built into it. All you have to do is hit export, and you've got instant social media content. Another new feature is being able to add an intro. So if I click this plus, I can just select this little quick podcast intro that I made in Final Cut Pro, and it'll be uploaded and added to your video. So it can either play at the beginning before the show starts, or you can also add it to the end. You can also make some changes to how things are laid out, so you can change the order of you and your guest. You can change the layout. So this one has a bit of a background and some gaps, put somebody in the corner like this. There's a variety of backgrounds. I like some of these blurry, subtle ones. And then when you hit export, I think an important one is to use normalized audio levels. In this case, my microphone was quieter than Anya's. So this will bring both mics to the same volume level. And while that exports, we can create a few more clips for the show as well. So let's say I want to make some vertical content for social media. I might just trim it down to one section that I liked. And I love this. As I move the editing sliders around, you can see the different words being selected and revealed in the timeline. So just like in the full video, I can change the arrangement of the tracks, I can make them look a little different, and then hit export. And in just a few minutes, you'll have clips ready to download and publish directly. Actually, I think you can even publish this straight to Spotify from within Riverside. That's cool. How easy it is to make a video interview. Again, I think this is huge because it means anybody can do it. Like you don't have to learn a bunch of other skills. In a few minutes, Riverside can get you started. So an example that Anya was talking about is you could interview relatives, like call up some loved ones, do a video interview with them. And with minimal effort, you could have conversations to hold on to for a lifetime. You could use it to capture meetings or record professional podcasts. So now let's go into some of those more professional tips that I talked about earlier. If you want to do a full podcast edit, you can download the original high quality files. I've made a lot of other videos about editing in Final Cut Pro. So if you want to learn these more advanced techniques, check out the playlist. A common problem when you're talking to somebody online is that connections break up. You lose quality. Riverside is recording at full quality the whole time on the local computer. And then it uploads it so that in the end, regardless of your connection, the audio sounds perfect and the video looks amazing. Versus if you're having connectivity issues or the internet is slow, the video won't look good and you'll have delays trying to hear the other person. There's something really helpful for that called low data mode. I'm going to turn it on for everybody. And then Anya, you can't see me anymore. But then I hit record. And Anya, are you there? I'm here. Hello. So this is the magic. Even though we don't see each other, it's not sending the video signal. This gets rid of any delay and just has like a stronger connection because it doesn't have to send the video back and forth. But it'll still be recorded on your computer, so we'll get the full quality version at the

Speaker 3: end. Yes. So cool. Thumbs up. Can you see it?

Speaker 1: You can't see me. I can't see it yet, but I'll see it later. Now, if anybody out there wants to step up their game further, let's talk about some gear. My favorite USB microphone is the DDVO7U. All you need to do is plug it directly into your computer. But I like to have a little more control, so I usually use an XLR mic, meaning it has one of these thicker standard plugs going to the back. And that means you also need an audio input device. So I'm using the Vocaster 2. This is what it sounds like when the microphone is about 12 inches from me. And this is what it sounds like when I talk really close to the mic. Typically, I do have it a bit off axis, which doesn't sound as good. If it's in front of me, that's ideal. But I prefer to be able to see my face when I'm speaking into it. I think it's worth the tradeoff. This has been my favorite podcasting mic lately. It's the Blue Sona from Logitech. Beautiful, simple design, easy to get great audio quality out of it. There are a ton of different mounts to put your phone on your desk. I've been using SwitchPod as my kind of tripod here. And then this little Arca Swiss mount is from Peak Design, which clips securely to this Nomad phone case. Now, I like to have even more control over my camera. So if I plug in the phone, I can launch the app Camo Studio. This gives me way more control over the phone. I can select which lens I'm using. I can use similar features to what's built into macOS, so I can turn on a spotlight, I can blur out the background. By the way, in the new version of macOS, you can control this blur, and I recommend turning it down a bit. I don't think you should fully blow out the background. It looks super fake. And maybe the most useful thing here is being able to set the exposure manually, just so it stays in one place. You don't want it shifting around as you're recording. Same thing with the white balance. Just get it somewhere good and then lock it. For lights, I was using the Amaran P60C, which is very compact and easy to mount. Anya was using the Amaran F22X. If you have a bigger camera, like a mirrorless, you can always use an HDMI adapter, like this one from Condor Blue, that can send the signal from your big camera into your computer. I generally don't even bother with that anymore. I find most podcasts are acceptable at webcam quality, because when people are watching on YouTube, they're more listening than watching. So I don't worry as much about the big camera, more about audio quality. If you have any questions left after this video, hit me up in the comments and I'll be sure to answer them. And I'd love to see what you guys are producing with video recorders like Riverside. Again, check out the link in the description, and I'll see you guys in the next video.