Tag Archive for: youtube

Audio is one of the most important things in video

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When the audio is bad I often stop the video

Honestly, I can watch a video with imperfect image quality, but if the audio is bad, I’m out. Audio is one of the most important things in video.
For years I’ve been using a Sennheiser wireless lavelier microphone. I always bring this to shows and use it during almost all videos and live streams. And it just sounds awesome and never fails me. But it’s expensive. And for most starting creators it will be overkill, plus in all honesty, you always have to put the wireless transmitter somewhere. It’s not a super small device. Over time I’ve had several (expensive) cables replaced.

Over the years I’ve tested several alternatives from all kinds of brands. And although some are really nice they never really pulled me away from the Sennheiser.
On most cheaper mics my voice sounds like it’s coming from a can without any bass and harsh highs. But they do have something really nice and that’s size and connectivity.

Audio is one of the most important things

My Sennheiser set never lets me down

We use different audio devices

The time that you shot video on a handycam, photos on your photo camera, etc is over.
Nowadays we use a combination of capture devices, sometimes we shoot behind the scenes or B-roll with iPhones, Osmo Pocket or a Sony A7RIII. So when you buy an audio system you have to make sure it will work on all your devices, and as easy as possible.

I think we found the solution, and I love it.

The Saramonic Blink 500+ Wireless Audio System with 2 mics

Audio is one of the most important things

The Saramonic Blink 500+ contains one receiver unit and two wireless microphones.
And that immediately makes it a very interesting set for creators. It now becomes super easy to quickly interview someone on location (or in the studio of course). The connection is made super fast, as soon as you take the microphone out of the case (which charges everything) it is almost immediately connected to the receiver. So no more taking the lavalier off and using it as a microphone to interview someone. Just quickly give them their own mic, which also makes editing audio after the fact much faster and easier.

As mentioned before we need something that can be easily connected to all the devices we use, and the Saramonic doesn’t disappoint there.

Audio is one of the most important things

“One Size Fits All”

In the box, you will find different cables and connectors, and in all honesty, I think they cover an impressive array of connections.
It works just as easily on your iPhone as on a console and all without changing settings, just choose the right connector.

Always charged (well almost)

Nothing is more frustrating than empty batteries.
The Saramonic microphones and receiver are stored in a nice case that is both sturdy and not too big. So it will fit easily in most camera bags or even your jacket pockets. The case keeps your devices charged until you take them out. So as long as you make sure the case is charged you know you will always have a full battery when you go live. Now the first time you think about a built-in battery it might be a bit scary. With the Sennheiser, I can easily switch batteries when they run out, but with a built-in battery…. well when it’s empty that’s it. Luckily the battery time with up to 20 hours for the microphones and 16 hours for the receiver it will cover most, if not all activities.

Going the distance

A few of the sets I tested where okay when I stayed close to the receiver. But several mics became a lot more noisy or flat sounding when I walked further away from the receiver. And most even lost connection when I went to the makeup area, which is in a different part of the studio. The Saramonic promises 150 meters, but to be honest I always take those numbers with a grain of salt, and mostly it means in the open field. I didn’t test that but I did walk to the makeup room and didn’t hear any difference in audio quality, and also no extra noise, which actually surprised me a bit, but in a positive way 😀

Where to put it your mic?

We need to place the microphone somewhere of course. With the Sennheiser I’m using a small lavalier microphone, which is great because you hardly notice it. But the disadvantage is that you also have to put the sender somewhere, and that is in most cases my pocket. With the Saramonic the microphone is larger than my lavalier but it has a huge benefit. You can clip it on your clothing, but often it happens I’m wearing a sweater where it’s not really handy to clip a microphone on. And in that case the Saramonic has you covered too, if you don’t want to clip it you can also use the magnet.

Some key specs

Of course, it’s always important to get the specs right, so here we go.
– Up to 150 meters of wireless transmission.
– Separate noise cancellation control – 48 kHz HD audio format retained.
– Wide-range 20 Hz – 20 kHz frequency response – delivers exceptional high-quality sound.
– Low-cut filter (75 Hz / 150 Hz) – cut off low-frequency noise from common.
– Up to 20 hours of operating time for a transmitter and 16 hours for a receiver.
– Comes with a windproof capsule – minimize unwanted wind noise.
– Attach the transmitter to your clothes with the included magnet.
– Receiver’s 3.5 mm headphone output – monitor your audio in real time.
– High-resolution OLED display – see vital information at a glance.
– Mono / Stereo Safety Track output setting.
– 3.5 mm TRS analog output, USB-C, and IOS Lightning digital output – universal compatibility with cameras, smartphones, and computers.
– Charging case included – make the kit easy to carry on.

In practice

I’ve been using the system for a few weeks now and can honestly say that I love it.
I find that I use a lot more than the Sennheiser. With the Sennheiser I regularly got tangled up in a cable or had fights with the transmitter during shoots. Plus when filming on location it was very uncomfortable to be always “mic-ed” up and taking the lavalier off when interviewing someone. The Saramonic solves all these irritations. We have it with us in the photo case. As soon as we want to film something it’s connected to the camera and I clip on the mic. Give the other mic to the other person and we’re ready to go. Add to this some noise reduction (although I like to edit audio after the fact personally) it’s very nice to have.
I’ve been using the system in the last episode of Digital Classroom in a live setup and it performed without any problems for the full broadcast. We didn’t lose connection once.
The problem with the live broadcasts is that it always compresses the audio so for the second part of the review I’ll create a video in which I show you the Saramonic in action with the proper quality.

Conclusion

When you want a proper 2 microphone setup that is super easy to use and works without any problems on most capture devices, gives you a good audio quality and some extra features for a very reasonable price. I would highly recommend you check out the Blink series from Saramonic, it might be the perfect solution for you.
I’m not paid for this review. We met the guys from Saramonic at a tradeshow. They gave me one of their demo units to test out.
The review was not seen by them before release and is 100% my personal opinion.

YouTube…. watch out….

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I’m a huge YouTube fan.
I love to watch but most of all I love to create new exciting and interesting stuff for you guys, the community.
The main platform at the moment is of course YouTube.
However a lot is going on.

Because it’s the largest platform everyone loves to earn some money, often over the back of others.
YouTube has an option to earn money on videos, don’t think to much about it by the way, I’m happy if we earn 100-200 euros a month, seeing the ammount of work we put into our channel that is of course peanuts, that’s actually what makes it even more frustating what I’m typing now.

The first thing that happenend started a few years ago. I always used Quicktracks for creating music under the videos, this is of course a package I bought and the music I used was 100% legal. Still on almost every video we got a claim from company X-Y or whatever that the music was theirs, so YT stopped paying you and the money went to that company. Of course we always fought this claim and the weird thing is that within often 2 hours we would get a message that the company didn’t respond within 24 hours so the video was released again….. weird…. maybe YT lives in another dimension where time goes much faster. At one point we just had a copy paste text ready and every day we had app 2-3 videos that were claimed on bad weeks, sometimes none for weeks and than it started again.

Now for us it’s not a lot of money we lose of course, maybe cents, but add this all together and you can earn a nice income if creators don’t object. For us it was a matter of principle. Now we actually use music that is supplied by YT themselves or their partners and now we are free of these claims, but I can’t use my bought solution anymore 🙁

Now this is a third party that annoys the creators, and that’s “ok” (well it’s not but at least YT can’t really be blamed for people trying) however the last few months it’s happening over and over that my videos are (without any reason) demonitized, meaning you can’t earn money from them, and this is not a 3rd party… it’s YT itself that does this. The problem is….. you can ONLY complain when your video hit the 1000 views mark in 7 days which for some of my videos is not happening. We have videos that hit 1000 in 1 day but we also have videos like the vlog that are watched that ammount after a month, and that’s understandble being it’s a vlog. So in other words we can’t complain untill we hit that mark… the weird thing again is that SOMETIMES YT does seem to look and change the status again to approved. Now if I knew WHY and how to prevent this I would be happy, but most of my videos use the same keywords so it’s not that, in other words you’re in the hands of YT.

 

Now of course people tell me…”leave YT, go somewhere else”
And that’s why I post this blogpost.
In all honesty there are NO alternatives.
Of course you have Vimeo but let’s look at it.

 

YT is the standard, this means the largest audience, it works on every device from Playstation to smartTV to streamer etc. in fact when you ask someone about video platforms most don’t even know about vimeo. As a creator the most important thing is range, and in that case we are STUCK with YouTube, there is NO alternative. Of course I change to Vimeo but that would mean doing a boat load of work for a much smaller audience. Taking into account that sponsors, viewers etc. are only interested in content (the viewers) and numbers (the sponsors) it’s only logical to choose the platform with the biggest audience, how frustating that is. The money we lose due to YT’s strange behaviours doesn’t even come close to the viewers we would lose if we changed platforms.

It’s a very very frustating situation, but for now it’s the only way.
YT delivers the best platform (although the trending videos are a bit weird), it delivers the best options for us creators with apps able to stream on the road and do live streams like digital classroom, but is also frustates the HECK out of the creators like me. We are a relativly young/growing channel with “only” 22.000 subs (growing every day) so I don’t have the impact that someone like Casey Neistat has (YT seems to listen to him very quickly). But we do poor a lot of love into our channel and the videos we create for you guys, so it’s incredibly frustating that the platform that earns money over the backs of the creators is actually frustating it’s creators.

 

If I leave YT nothing will happen, in fact it will only impact my own succes, I’m just afraid that if people with much larger channels leave YT, YT could very well be in REAL trouble.
What do you think?

Oh and do us a favor, subscribe to http://www.youtube.com/frankdoorhof we REALLY appriciate it.

Support us on Patreon

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NEWS : Learning with Frank Doorhof on Patreon.

We know you guys love the videos we release and our activity on social media. Now we love to give you everything for free (except of course our full length instructional videos) but producing everything is a lot of work and we see that we are producing more and more and in all honesty we want to do even more. But at the moment we are at a point where we have 2 people almost 100% dedicated to social media and video. And somehow we have to make that work to continue our free material and grow in the direction where we want to go, and trust me it’s going to be interesting and fun, but most of all educational.

This is why we had to look for a great way for you guys to support us, we got some great suggestions but they were all pretty limited or cumbersome, and in all honestly just placing a paypal button on the website…. not really our thing.

So we launched our own Patreon page on https://www.patreon.com/frankdoorhof now Patreon is awesome and very easy to use for you guys.

You can still watch all our content for free of course, we won’t put anything behind the “decoder” (as we say in the Netherlands) however by “pledging” for a certain amount per month (starting at $5.00) you can now support us in the work we do. We didn’t choose for the pledge per video option because we release a lot of material and we wanted to make it as easy as possible.

The $5.00 pledge is the most basic, there are more options however and because we believe in giving back all other options have certain benefits for you guys, like a 1:1 Skype call with me once a month, portfolio reviews, discounts etc. So in essence you are supporting us but also yourself with cool little goodies and gems.

At the moment we are creating a fully new videoblog and if we hit a certain goal each month we can start recording it, with the name “behind the closed doors” you probably already have an idea what its about :D, so head on over to https://www.patreon.com/frankdoorhof and support our work and make sure we can create even more for you guys.

And don’t worry, if you don’t…. we still love you and you can still see everything 😀