Frank (00:09):
James, I got the funniest texts from my dad. He says, unfortunately, his church group cannot assemble and we're going to conduct a meeting over zoom. Do I have any tips or tricks? Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. It seems like everyone is individual conferencing and me as the tech support person in the family is getting a lot of requests. And the truth is, I don't know. Do I have any tips or tricks? Like I guess I've been doing video conferencing. James, the world's upside down. Everyone's doing video conferencing. We've been thrust into the future. You're a pro at video. Let's talk

James (00:48):
video. Oh, the first important thing is I'm very glad that he reached out and said, Hey, we're going to stay at home like you should. And in fact, 17 States that don't have stay in homeowners, get your act together. Um, but this is good because we actually had some people, um, respond to the last podcast and they're like, Hey, like you haven't talked about anything at all about any of the current pandemic or anything. I'm like, yeah, we don't want to talk about the pandemic.

Frank (01:12):
It's depressing. Is it? That's why people,

James (01:18):
well, just talk really quick because I opened up bing.com/coven, which is the best coven website by the way. They do degree tracking everything. And then I cried. So, Oh, that's the state I'm in where I'm afraid opening to a show. I sat down. Right. So, uh, anyways, I digress. But no, this is great because in fact we have friends that are teachers.

Frank (01:40):
I feel so bad for all students just, just putting, putting this out there. If you're a student and or teacher or God forbid both, I'm sorry. Life must be so tough for you. Uh, good luck. Stay strong.

James (01:55):
And our friend is a, I think she teaches like first or second grade. So they're doing all zoom calls as well. And then we have a user group and we're trying to figure out how do we keep people connected. Right. And you and I are connected every single week via this podcast who all of our friends, we hope that we're connected to you, but we only get to have a one sided conversation with you or me and Frank, we at least get to talk every week. So that physical connection is really good. And in fact, before we talk about TAC, because I've used a lot of different tech recently because I think for every different situation it's kind of who, who are you talking with? What are you trying to accomplish? Because every Saturday we have a Google Hangouts with my sister and my brother in law. We just talk for an hour on the phone, get some FaceTime and talk about events. And then on Sunday we talk to our good friends, Craig and Dave and we have breakfast together. We do a brunch together via teams.

Frank (02:48):
Oh, call. Let me interject because that is one thing I miss. I didn't know I'd miss it, but I used to go out on weekend breakfast, breakfast. This is with all the friends. And I always call myself a hermit, but it turns out you start to miss those weekend breakfast. Disses and that's a great one. I love the idea of the video breakfast. Uh, my friends and I, we go out for bar trivia and we've begun doing, we call it friend trivia, we do video conferencing and we all video conference using discord and do trivia that way. So I love all these little hacks. We're all learning.

James (03:27):
Very nice. Yeah. I feel like there's always a way basically to make it happen. And the question is, can all these things scale up and does it work how you want it to work and what are you trying to accomplish? And it seems like in our situations it's worked for the well, so you weren't used discord, which discords fun. You have like your own mini server kind of. It's like your own personal server, which I kinda like.

Frank (03:49):
Is it possible to compare and contrast these things? I don't think we're that organized or we could do it, but I wished someone would make a website that just was like a breakdown of pros and cons of all these services because honestly they all float in my head. So when my dad sent me this text, he says, we're going to do it over zoom and zoom, zoom, zoom. Everyone's talked about zoom. James, I've never used zoom. I've used all the other ones. I've used teams, I've used Skype, I views uh, hang outs, discord, you know, everything. Uh, but like, I dunno, uh, do I have to learn zoom?

James (04:24):
Well, I think that, I mean, you don't have to learn anything. I mean the zoom zoom is very straight forward and, and the reason it became so popular, I think early on, we use it all the time in the Xamarin days back in the day, is that it was really, really quick and really high quality. And it really integrated into like, I'm going to create a teams call. It gives you a unique link for that specific call and then you can just hop onto it, hop off to off of it. Really, and you could just share that via an email or in your email. So it's nice to basically create a meeting. You know, you're creating a virtual meeting that gives you a URL. That's really what it's doing.

Frank (05:01):
I love that. Uh, I used to use when I was doing a lot of consulting, like go to meeting for contacting people and doing all that. And the nice feature there, it was, it was URL based. Cause I think what we've all discovered is if you ask people to create accounts on the service, that's where all these meetings kind of fall apart. Especially if you have a bunch of people that haven't used that software before. Even me, I, I'm terrible. You know, you've dealt with me using a new app before, so all the friends are like, we're going to try this app and this other app. And I'm like, I don't know how to do it. I can't use it. Don't make me create an account. I turn into such a baby. I just have such a low tolerance for software that, um, I, I, yeah. So I'm just happy that you said that. It's easy, simple URL based. That's good.

James (05:47):
Yeah. And you, you don't need accounts. I think that's a really, really important, like you just said, because anything that requires you to, if you're working at a company, it obviously makes sense. Like Microsoft, we're at, we're on teams and we just, you know, can send that out. And also, if you invite an external individual to a team's call, they don't have to create an account. They can join as a guest basically. Um, but it, it works a lot better when you're all internal where the zoom thing, the thing that they're really famous for with zoom is they call it the Brady bunch of fact, which is that everybody on the call has everybody. Everybody's on every one he is on, you know what I mean? In a big grid, which is very, if you have like a hundred people, that's not gonna make any sense at all. But yeah,

Frank (06:29):
but it's simple. Like there's no, I think a trick about Hangouts is how they always try to bring focus to the person who's talking. And that algorithm is sometimes, right. But other times it's just someone tapping on their desk or something like that. So I think that there's just a nice simplicity of a giant grid. There's nothing to question. Yeah.

James (06:48):
And we were having this discussion on the Donna foundation get hub, which was how do we keep the user groups engaged like you know, dot net user groups. How do we not just keep them engaged or keep them going during these times. And that said, well, why don't we figure out how to give a recommendation of what tools to use? And this came into a spiral of every single tool ever. Right. But I, I sort of group them into different categories because it's like what are you trying to accomplish? And in your dad's case it was your dad. Correct? I want to make sure I'm correct. Yes. My dad. Your dad. So in your dad's case, the question that I really have to ask him is, well, what are you, what are you trying to, what is your goal of it? Are you trying to do a presentation? What sort of interaction do you want? I think that's the important part because is the interaction part, do you want that or do you not want that? So I grouped these things into three zones. Ready? Ready, zone zone one, zone zone one. I call it free for all

Frank (07:52):
the Brady bunch. Free for all. Is that the name of this episode?

James (07:55):
Pretty much. That's the free for all. And we'll dive in these. Okay. Group two is the, is the webinar, which is the, I am speaking presenters are speaking to a group of people and we can field questions, but they don't get to turn on their microphone or their camera or anything like that. So that's the webinar I like to call that the second tier. And then the third tier is live stream, right? So the first two, those are private. And then there's a live stream, which is broadcasting to the world, which is what you do on Twitch. Frank, not me. Just, you know, you're more popular than me. So I give up.

Frank (08:34):
Oh, uh, I, I really like how you're breaking these down because at first I was gonna start asking you like don't all the pieces of software out there have these modes. Can't I go into Brady bunch free for all switched to webinar, switched to live stream, but know the truth. I guess you made your point right there at the end with a Twitch and yes, I am twitching around and having a lot of fun with that actually. Um, at first I thought that livestreams were kind of the webinars, but it turns out live streams are a little bit different. Live streams are more of a hangout and chit chat and kind of groups. So in some ways it's almost a Brady bunch free for all, except that there's just one person or there's a focal point of people. So all of these could definitely blend together. I definitely see that. But now I'm seeing the way you break it up yet some different purposes here.

James (09:27):
Yeah. And I think on the, you're right, I think it is like the Twitch streaming. I do it because it's kind of a cool, like me and my friends getting together, but I'm sort of in control. So I get to decide if I want to answer the question, but also the chat room can just do their own thing, you know what I mean? Um, but in that regard, it's completely open, right? You are live streaming to the world, which means who knows who is going to come into into there. Right? And if you wanted a webinar, you sort of do want that. Like you do want it to be open so you could give anybody a link, but you don't want people to bomb your meeting. You know what I mean? So that's like the approach where like you're doing Twitch, but technically you have to moderate that, right?

James (10:06):
You have to have bots, you have to have someone watching, you have to have the bandwidth to do it. You have to make sure people aren't swearing and causing havoc. Now no one can bomb your video feed, which is very, very good, right? Because if you use zoom or use teams or you use any meeting, Google Hangouts or whatever, blue jeans, all those other ones, I think blue jeans is one, I'm going to think it is. But any of those which are in the first category, which is free for all that is you are giving a link out to the world Skype, right? Same thing. You give a link out to the world and anybody comes in, they can turn on their webcam, they can turn on their, their microphone and yes, you can boot them, you can turn them off, but anyone can come in and say anything at any time. Right? And you may want that and that's really good for a meeting. So those free for all is are really, this is a meeting where we want people to participate. Everyone can listen, everyone can talk, everyone can have on video type of situations. And all of those pieces of software work, they all work very, very similar. Some of them you have to sign up for accounts. Some of them you don't, you know, in general. But that's why I think free for all is,

Frank (11:15):
I thought it was funny when you were naming some of the ones in the beginning, you're like, I'm not sure if that's one. I'm like, I literally don't know. James. You could just be saying random words at this point and I would believe you that it's a video conferencing software. Uh, one of the ones that I tried was called Git C. have you tried that one? J I T S I guess open source. It worked. It worked. You just type in a thing, do the link. I have no idea who this is what kind of freaks me out a little bit if I'm honest. I don't know who servers this is going through. It has to be gone through a server. There's no way to do a direct connect the simply, so like what are they doing with the data? Okay, so I'm getting a little paranoid. I don't want to make the show into that, but it is. We are that there are so many of these, but no one's really clear on where that data's going or what it's being used for. Let's say conspiracy that off.

James (12:07):
Let's talk about that at the very, very end because I was listening to some tech meme ride homes recently and they talk about some zoom edge. Um, Oh yeah, sure. The response is now, I don't know. I don't, I'm not a security expert, but listen, let's just get into it. Let's get it over with. Okay, so there is pure end-to-end encryption. How Frank you w doesn't have to be video and to an encryption. What does that mean?

Frank (12:29):
Go and [inaudible] encryption means that both sides have a secret. Well, whatever in this case cause you're doing a video conference, let's imagine two people, both sides have a secret. They encrypt their data so that only with a shared secret can it be un-encrypted. That means no third party could ever, ever in this day and age, decrypt the data because they don't have either of the super private secrets or the shared secret. They don't have either of those. So they can't do it, they can't touch it. It's not how most encryption works because honestly it's a pain to set up and it means that services cannot audit the traffic going through them and they may want to actually see the bits and bytes going through. Uh, so I think it's a mixture of people don't always implement end to end encryption because it can be a little slower. It can be a little harder to set up and get going. Correct. But honestly, in this day and age, there's no reason not to have it. Uh, the alternative is, uh, what most sites do. You have an encryption encrypted connection up to the server, but once the data's on the server, it's totally unencrypted. So anyone who has access to that server or that network, whatever, could potentially read your data, not possible and end to end because they still don't have either of those secrets.

James (13:50):
Perfect. And that's what zoom does. And I think that's probably what a lot of other ones do. I don't know. All I know is, I know zoom does on them because I was listening to that tech meme ride home where that kind of question came up when they said they have end-to-end, but really what they mean is that they have client to server encryption via HTTPS, right? In general. So your data is going to their server, internet encrypted and then from their server going back down to the other client internet, you know it. And you know what I mean? So the idea is that if someone's sniffing on your network, then technically no, they would shouldn't be able to see it cause it's HTTPS. But that doesn't mean that someone in some server somewhere it has that data. And I, like I said, I don't know all of the, and I know like signal, right? That's one of the big end to end ones or you know, whatnot, what they're saying. But um, yeah, that's always something to think about and depends on what you're doing on the online that you may want to or may not want to have that on there. Um, in general. But I guess that's a general every service that we use type of problem.

Frank (14:57):
Yeah. I think the truth has very few services offer true end to end encryption first time private possible. Yeah. I don't know that for that one. Um, and I think uh, in the case of zoom they sometimes advertise it as end to end even though it's not. But then there's this weird thing about it has a mode, like maybe an option that you can set to turn it on to be a proper end to end encryption. But that I honestly should stop talking because I don't need to read to like the first couple paragraphs of the article that I'm thinking of. But I think what we're all learning right now is that we want true end to end encryption where we all have our public and private keys and we use that to completely avoid man in the middle attacks. Absolutely. But then there is another one to all of this, which is what is the services storage policy.

Frank (15:51):
I think the best services out there say we don't store any data a moment goes through our network. We throw it out, you know, and that's ideal honestly. But then other services, they want to, I don't want to say profit from it because obviously companies profit. That's the whole reason to have a company. Um, but they could use the data to say train neuro networks or you know, whatever, whatever they want to do with the data. So I think this is a good time. You know, I was going to say like read the terms of service, but who have a hacker is the terms of service. So I don't know, read Twitter and find out what the good apps are and what the bad app.

James (16:27):
I'm sure there's some Reddit thread that that devil tell you. But yeah, you know, and it depends on your situation cause I think of in the, in the form of a live stream, like on Twitch, you don't care, right? Because you're literally broadcasting it to the world and you're gonna upload it to YouTube later. So it's everywhere. And that's your Bryant. Now a lot of the user groups were asking like, should I do this? And I recommended no, because one, it's very complex. You've got to use a bunch of different third party software. You got to OBS, ed, you got to pipe in audio. If you have guests on things like that, it works well for one person or people in a room or like for the Donnette comp, the Xamarin edition, like it was a whole orchestration of producers behind the scenes and tons of different hardware and things like that and like you can do it right, you can pipe it through.

James (17:15):
It's just going to be more error prone is sort of the issue, which is then maybe you want to go towards one of the other models and I think for your dad's case, I would ask him, well what does he want to get out of it? Right? Does he want that webinar style? Does he want to present and have presenters or does he want that to be more of a community? Everyone's sitting around and a lot of people will say, use the easiest one, the zoom, the Google Hangouts, the normal teams meeting, the Skype meeting. My problem there has always been, I like that everyone can talk and that great, but what happens when you have 50 or a hundred or 200 people out there and these times you may have more interaction from his individuals at church or like our user group or we have more people signed up for this event than any other one ever because I tweeted it out and said Hey like come on out.

James (18:06):
You know cause it's a webinar styles. I know one can come and join and I think that's the sort of question you have to talk about. And that middle tier is the one that I like. So you have to have the ability to say what is my trade off? And the one I've been leading towards towards user groups is either go to meeting, which is, which is basically their [inaudible]. There's a web ax or webinar go to meeting webinars series, um, or teams. Microsoft teams has a new feature called a live event and live event is really cool. I did a whole video on the YouTube about it. Funny enough that I was making a video about another streaming software that I put on YouTube. This is funny, but this is really cool because you have producers and presenters. So I'm a producer and I can have additional presenters like I could add you as a presenter.

James (19:02):
And what's cool is then only you and me are able to have audio and we're able to share our screen. Everybody else is sort of in visitor mode into it. Now they can't chat, but they can do a Q and a. um, so they can ask questions and then the producer or the presenters on can sort of say, yes, approve that question, approve that question, reply to that question back and forth. So that's really more of a one sided communication, right? It's, it's very much like asynchronous. Like I'm presenting, someone asks questions, I approve it, go back and forth. So it depends on the style of presentation that you want. And what I love is that in this thread there's so many options and there really probably is a solution for like what type of environment you're trying to set up. Because those first ones, the free for all and even this team's won or the GoTo meeting or whatever the, the WebEx one, those are probably the easiest one. You install something and your users just open a browser and enter a URL and they're good to go. Right. What experience do you want?

Frank (20:08):
Well my dad is not on the show to answer for himself and to answer your questions but I'm going to give you fake answers. Things I think he would say. Uh, so it's kind of funny. Um, it's pretty old. If it's the meeting that I'm thinking of, I'd have to get some clarification from him, but I'm pretty sure they are a classic Robert's rules of order here. URI, let's bring this meeting to attention. Read the notes from the last meeting. I think it's a fairy, very formal. So it was fun listening to your explanation there because at first I was like, this should definitely just be the Brady bunch free for all a hundred. But now after listening to what you saying about like the webinars where you have just a select group and control and where the chat room is a more formal Q and a, it's sounding like that's the better one.

Frank (21:00):
Um, just because they are already so formal and all that stuff. But I do worry about, um, this is probably the wrong analogy, but the cathedral and the bizarre, I kind of liked the idea of the free for all, like a little bit of chaos and you're like, Hey, you mute your microphone. Your dog is too loud. You know, cause you can turn a free for all into order. You can't turn order into a free for all. True. So I kind of liked the flexibility that the Brady bunch of free for all kids here, but at the same time, maybe for my dad's meeting a Robert's rules of order kind of meetings. Maybe that style is better.

James (21:35):
Yeah, there's, there was one I was using, I think it was a web ax. It was like a Cisco one. And what they do is it's sort of free for all, but then they're able to, I think you can put her in a mode, it's very similar to teams, how they do it, but that you kind of pass the presenter Baton so you can kind of, there's someone that says, okay now you're able to present or whatever. Now the floor is open type of thing because I think on the teams one, what's nice is that I could say, let's say we have five presenters, right? So let's say this meeting is, is five people, but they're presenting to like 30 people in the, in the bin, the church. Right. So your dad could have like five people on it cause they, okay now it is time.

James (22:15):
He's kind of in control. He's a producer now is saying like, and now Frank is talking and now Marie is talking and now you know John is talking and kind of lets them present. But I do, I do struggle with that too, which is what you said in John Galloway and I, we were talking about this for user groups and we were saying, okay well maybe you do want the chaos sometimes. Cause what happens when you want to open the floor to Q and a and you want to have the community feel, well if you're in a webinar or presenting, it's not really a community feel. Same thing that was kind of um, there is a community feel to like Twitch streaming but then also not at the same time because they just can't flip on their camera. Right. But that's cultural. So in the twin streaming I've definitely learned this. It's up to the presenter to keep the chat room involved. And so there is a culture develop developed

Frank (23:03):
around Twitch that like the software is not enforcing at all. In some ways I feel like the software is even in your way of making that happen. And so I've really started to love the um, Twitch streams that put the chat room live on the screen. Cause that's, you know, really giving that community feel. So if you have a comment to make, you know you can type it out and it's going to appear on the screen. The problem is then the Twitter has to become a much better moderator. You have to keep an eye out for people posting bad stuff, things like that. Wow. There are so many social things to get into here. Maybe we should all return to Robert's rules of order. I should do a Twitch stream like that and just like uh, with a prosecution. Yeah,

James (23:46):
please present their argument. Well, you know, I always thought that, you know, I think though the cool part about all of these pieces of software is that that do work anywhere, right? They can work on your phone, they can work on, on, on a browser, they can, you can install software. But it is, I always feel like there is, the reason you see so many is that there's an opportunity, right? There are pieces of software that are great for X, right. For this purpose. And when I was talking to my, my teacher friend, she was using zoom and they spent the first like two or three days teaching the kids. Again, they're five and six years old. How to mute your microphone. It was like mute unmute. It is.

Frank (24:26):
That's a good school lesson. Like the fact that that's not in the curriculum is because the curriculum is old like that should have been in the curriculum. Maybe not for five-year-olds. I probably wouldn't have guessed for five year olds. But yeah, I mean I think I've talked before and nothing makes me happier than seeing babies play on an iPad. So 100% I am hoping, I think I kind of alluded to it in the beginning. I think this whole virus thing is kind of shoving us into the future a little bit.

James (24:53):
Yeah, I can imagine also like digital classrooms. I think there's an opportunity here. So I have a call out to all software creators right now, which is if you have a piece of software that does live streaming, I think you'd be really great to have that sort of meeting leader. So in this case, my teacher friend, what if she had the ability to say, you know what, turn off and keep everybody's a microphone off for the next for right now. No one can turn it on until I, it's like, you know, you know what it is. It is that child lock in your car. You know when you accidentally turn on a child locking. Like why won't this door open? I'm so, I'm so mad right now.

Frank (25:30):
He gets so mad at you, you're a cop. Why are you treating me like a child? You're like, I don't know. I don't know how to use the child.

James (25:35):
That is what they need. They need that in all software. There needs to be an owner, right? Or there needs to be people that have the power, that can trial lock it. Cause I think that'll be really cool. Or, or even, you know, make those buttons big. Like especially if you had a, a kid mode, right? Imagine you're in zoom or you're in Skype or you're in teams and there's a big, there's a child mode, right? And the child mode basically makes those buttons bigger. And more clear of, of what you know they actually need to do because most of those kids are a good, just going to turn on and off their microphone. Those buttons probably need to be bigger, kind of like in a place. I mean, kids are really smart, but what I'm saying is make it make it and so like these kids don't accidentally share their screen, you know, or flip around the camera or do whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah,

Frank (26:22):
yeah. I do love the, um, in this day and age, the software pretty much works everywhere. You said that before for a couple of my, uh, at least one of my, uh, trivia nights. I was sitting out on the deck next to a river with my iPhone pointed at me. You know, we have wifi, thank God for the internet bearing this virus. Okay. Let's talk about some lighter topics. All right. Um, what about backdrops? Okay. So I know some of the softwares out there are sophisticated and others are not. And I found myself on the Amazon prime now app looking for green sheets cause I don't have a green sheet. Uh, should I buy a green sheet? James number one? Uh, number two, um, how do I make my apartment not look as messy as my apartment actually is?

James (27:16):
Okay. This is a great question. Um, so like the, I'm sure there's many, but I obviously work at Microsoft, so I use a lot of Microsoft tech during the day and I know that Skype and teams both have a blur. My background and that is using depth per, you know, depth things built in your camera. So it works with every single camera out there and it does a fairly good job I would say. But like if a small human,

Frank (27:42):
like even with a comp without a co with a complicated background, it would still be able to remove it.

James (27:47):
Oh yeah, correct. Yeah, very complicated ones. It does very well. Yeah. Um, but if like a small human being runs up, it's going to put them in it. Right? Or if there's things moving in the background, it does a fairly decent jobs because there's still a background. There's little things happening, right. If a dog comes up or whatever. Now, the green screen is a great idea if you have a space where you can put a green space, green screen, but you also need to have software that will be running or a camera that supports say like a lot of the Logitech ones supported on the box and there's, there's definitely software on your computer that can do it automagically but is a little bit more of a complex setup type of thing for me. Okay. What I do is I just have a room divider and I just put the room divider behind me and a room divider.

James (28:33):
You can't see anything behind me. Like when I stream right now I'm in a completely different room in the house so you can't really see it. But when I'm in my normal stream set up, um, I have a room divider and behind that room divider is, is actually like a, a love seat. Like there's old Heather had this old loves, he this really likes and has like these huge stuff, monkeys on it. It has my closet with like a bunch of laundry everywhere, has Heather's desks with a bunch of all of her stuff. But you don't see any of that because it's a divider behind behind me and it just sort of blocks off everything. And that's what I like to use. I

Frank (29:07):
had completely forgotten all about dividers and I've even seen yours and I've still forgotten about dividers. Yeah, that is a pro tip. Thank you very much. Yeah, I would love like a very light one, but maybe like just a rice paper or something very simple. That'd be ideal. Oh good. So now I don't have to find a green sheet on prime now cause I think they're sold out. I think there was actually a run green sheets. Uh, but I feel a little bit bad because, um, I've been doing a lot with neuronetworks. I keep talking about on the show and part of that is I can do amazing with, um, doing weird shifts to images. So I drop out the background, turned me into a lava monster, you know, things like that. And I'm so sad that I haven't actually been doing any of that.

Frank (29:54):
So now I'm just complaining about my lack of technical skills. Do you know of any way to like run your own software through the webcam? I think that's the problem with all these softwares. It's like they all probably have a plugin model but they're all probably different. So there's no way to like create one cool lava monster Frank to use on every program. And I find that a little bit sad, so, Oh geez. That's a good question. Wait, I just, I just thought of it. I'm going to write this app tonight. It's going to be a virtual webcam and it's just going to be turned yourself into a lava monster. Right? There we go. Yeah,

James (30:30):
I think there is a few webcams. I'll let you do a fax and do different stuff or pause your camera and have more control. I know what, um, who was it that, um, one thing that David did, so now we're getting into complex zone, but David or now, um, did it a lot, which is he will take his OBS feed. So it was open broadcast software. And what you can do is you can use something called NDI. Um, do you know what I mean?

Frank (30:57):
I'm liking this. Anytime it's initials means it's going to be good and powerful. I'm ready. Gimme NDI.

James (31:03):
So NDI, what the heck does it stand for? NDI tools or what you need is from a company called um, new tech. It's called the network device interface. That is so generic. I love it. Yeah. Now they have something called a virtual something, I dunno. But anyways, you install, you install 'em, you install NDI tools and this thing is really cool because what it allows you to do, there's two main parts of it that I've, I've know of. But if you install NDI, sends it to the network device interface, right? You can have a webcam on another computer and over the network, make it a source on your computer.

Frank (31:45):
That's what I'm talking about. Virtual webcams love it. Yes.

James (31:48):
And in fact they have an iPhone app where you can take your iPhone and then NDI stream it to your computer so it becomes a webcam. It's very cool.

Frank (31:58):
Yeah, I was actually thinking about doing that. Um, just pro tip, if you just plug a cable into your iPhone and open up quick time, you can actually just start recording the screen. I was actually considering using that as an external camera. As an app developer. I have lots of old old phones around that could make like on, I was thinking like I could have a three camera set up in Twitch, James, you know, camera a, camera B, camera C

James (32:22):
you should do and you should do that. Right. And that's pretty cool. Um, and, and you could even do this like is there like over your wifi? Technically you wouldn't even have to plug it into your computer and you could just pipe it in. But yeah. The other thing I like is that what you can do is you can have things to become NDI sources and other things can except NDI sources because NDI in the NDI tools has a virtual camera. So if you follow the NDI SBACK, what you're able to do is pipe that video into the NDI virtual camera and make that the source for anything. So for teams, for Google Hangouts for anything. So what a lot of people will do is they will set up their scene in OBS and then turn the OBS, the whole thing in OBS into a webcam. Okay.

Frank (33:11):
That way, no matter what software they're using, they get to put up their cute little one thirds and all that. Exactly. Yeah. They can look like John Oliver whenever they want. Or a lava monster. My goal.

James (33:24):
Yup. You can have all your different scenes, all this stuff you can change between different web cameras from a single source. And in fact, if you watch the Don Netcom keynote with David and Maddie, what David did is he put both Maddie and David as little as Zam Hogans and then he would change sources, go to his desktop, go to Maddie's desktop and go through all these things because he was using an NDI source, which was very, very cool.

Frank (33:49):
Yeah. I was going to ask him how he got those little Zam Mangans, how he got people on site at Sam Hogan's. So you've revealed the curtain. The wizard has been revealed. I love that.

James (33:59):
Pretty cool. Yeah. So you can, you can do all sorts of things, but here's what you need to know. Just go use one. It doesn't really matter. They're all going to do the same thing. But I think the question you need to ask yourself is like what type of situation you're going to try to get yourself into and how do you want users to interact or like, well how do you want the group interaction to be pretty much is what I like.

Frank (34:21):
Yeah. Um, that, that's something I'm going to definitely have to suggest to my father actually is not sure if everyone there is going to be comfortable in a chat room. That might also be a new experience for them. I'll be honest, I grew up on IRC and Twitch chat rooms are still a bit of a new experience for me. They move a bit faster than you expect. Uh, I accidentally logged into one of the popular Twitch streamers that had 8 billion people in a chat room and I thought my computer was going to explode. I don't know what was going on. I've never seen so many emojis fly past my screen. But I guess that's a good problem. If he has 8 million people show up to his church meeting, that'd be a good thing. That'd be a good thing. Well, if he wants them, any people, don't we all isn't that why? No, that's probably not why he's running well. Oh Lordy.

James (35:15):
Well I think that we'll know more next week I'll put a link into the user groups. Everyone can experience a team's live event next week if you want. It's on next Wednesday. So Wednesday the eighth, um, is when and um, and it'll be John Galloway talking about what's new in visual studio from Ackford on at developers. So I understand that you're a Don at developer uses a Mac.

Frank (35:39):
I basically live in vs for Mac. It's my home.

James (35:44):
So you can join the webinar and you can, you can understand the team's thing, see if it works for you or not.

Frank (35:49):
Actually, I got a little bit of taste of the team's thing cause I attended the secretive and VP summit and I got introduced to teams there. Yeah. So that one, that one I learned. Yeah. Uh, these are all interesting pieces of software. I'm sorry, my mind's just going over and over how to become a lava monster. Now it's just on, totally distracted by that. Um, but uh, uh, I think I'm also just kind of happy that, you know, we're dealing with a virus in the best possible way we can by being social internet people, which is kind of our profession being social internet people. So it's our time to shine and I'm glad that we revealed, reviewed all this stuff so I smell sound a little smarter to everyone I speak to even though I just messed up that sentence.

James (36:38):
Nice. All right. Anything else that you want to talk about today?

Frank (36:42):
Oh, I um, how do you, how do you light a scene? How do you get good sound quality? Isn't it funny how like all the professional night shows are doing YouTube streams and they're way worse quality than like your average Twitch stream. We can just talk about video for the rest of the night.

James (37:00):
Oh man. Yeah. I got this question from a few of my colleagues too. And you know, I'm not an expert on this at all, right? I don't have a DSLR set up. I don't have the nice fancy backdrop. I love watching, um, uh, Seth Meyer. He did his first one from the hallway, which is a terrible idea because it's super hard.

Frank (37:17):
So echo-ey it was so I wasn't sure if it was a joke because why Colbert did it from the bathtub. So obviously that's a joke, but like was the hallway a joke or was it just a bad idea?

James (37:28):
Cause I think it was just a bad idea. You know, a great place to do it is inside of a closet because um, if you're only doing audio, like if you're recording a podcast, a closet with a bunch of clothes is amazing because all that clothes asks, um, they act as a natural noise damper. And you can hear probably on the podcast for the last week or two that I'm a little bit more echo-ey because I am in a different room, which doesn't have anything in it besides me and a microphone. And that's really bad. So I do have hung up a few blankets just on the wall. They're just buying, gets on the wall to dampen the noise and that's helped a little bit. Um, but yeah, it is very fascinating, you know, and if you want that sort of backdrop, you've got to have a nice, you know, sort of that faded background.

James (38:11):
You need a nice DSLR that's going to focus and do stuff. And you know, for your microphone, it's really hard. I was talking to my boss today, Joseph, I have this whole guide on my get hub about our homework set up and what you should have or what you shouldn't have. And he could got the Yeti caster, which is really nice. It's a Yeti microphone, which is a pretty nice hundred, $150 microphone. But it's on a stand because he had a microphone, but it was so low to the ground that it sounded like you couldn't even, I just thought he was using his laptop microphone because he sounded so far away and I said, no, you have to put the microphone really close to your mouth. That's how microphones work. You need to speak into it. And um, you know, for podcasting there's no video so you don't look like an idiot.

James (38:57):
You only look like an ADT if someone walks into your room. But if you watch your Twitch or you watch my Twitch or a lot of different Twitch people, you'll see their microphone right up in their face. I'm only, because they're doing a bunch of different sources and then that's how they're going to look. And not every Twitch streamer has that sort of setup. They probably have way really expensive microphones that are super focused and dialed in on them. But if you're spending a few hundred bucks, you can do that. So we spend a good five minutes of this call, just a rearranging it and I was like, it doesn't need to be directly in front of your face, but realize that there is a, there's a zone in the microphone, a sweet, sweet spot, right, which is like speak into here and it will sound better because right now I'm speaking directly into the microphone. If I speak over here, that's very different. If I speak over here, that's very different. If I speak above it, it's very different. But if I speak right into it, I sound real good.

Frank (39:54):
You're making me realize that, uh, those night show people did have one extra level of difficulty. They were all using like level the air mix, so they couldn't put a microphone right in front of their lips. So I guess that's also why they got poor audio cause they just couldn't do it. It's not normal. I guess like back in the day, Johnny Carson used to have a mic on his desk then he, yeah, I think so. Yeah. Bring back the Johnny Carson, Mike

James (40:19):
and lofts are good, right? We use lavs all the time. You just need some pretty good logs and you sort of have to be in a space that can handle that. To be honest with you, the lavs are pretty good. The only problem is with LOBs is that you know, it's down on you. So if you turn your head a lot, you don't see the love. So you can go in and out. Right. Or some people are wearing shirts that the lavs zone attached to nicely. Your flip flop around where if you get a microphone, you shove it right in front of your face, boom, you're going to sound really good, but you need to balance that in some way of how your recording the video so you don't have this big thing. But I said, you know what, it's fine. Have a big microphone in front of you cause you're going to sound great and no one cares. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's how I look. But for your dad, he's going to be speaking into his laptop and it's going to have terrible audio but it's not going to matter because everybody's going to have terrible audio. You know what I mean?

Frank (41:10):
Yeah. That's why I tried to give them the tip of ask everyone to mute when they're not speaking because everyone uses their in room speakers and they're in room microphone. So immediately you get feedback. Just instant feedback from everyone. It's like please mute everything, always be muted. That's the only audio tip I've really developed over time. Always mute. And you know, I told

James (41:34):
'em, someone said, well, you know, Oh James, you put up this guy. And then it was, you know, very expensive stuff. And I was like, well, you know, it's a, you know, it can go from $100 to $500. It just depends. And you know, you don't need to spend any money if, if, if all you can afford is your laptop microphone, then user laptop microphone. But if you want to level it up, and I said, you know what, just buy a headset, $20 headset, USB headset, it's going to sound a thousand times better than, than what yours does. Right?

Frank (42:00):
Yeah. I was actually gonna say gamer headset cause uh, one critique, uh, that goes around on Twitch definitely is keyboard noise. You know, programmers love their clickety clickety keyboards, but some people really can't stand it when you're, you know, pounding away on the keyboard. And that's coming through the mic. I think a very nice thing from this podcast is we were able to get Mike arms so we can decouple the microphone from your desk. And I think if you're pounding away on a keyboard during a meeting, I personally also can't stand it. Hearing that low frequency thought that the [inaudible] thud. Please. If you're going to do recordings, try to isolate the microphone.

James (42:40):
Yeah. Okay. Last thing you said lighting, lighting. I'm not an expert on either. I, I buy everything all Gato because they make a bunch of great streamer stuff and I own two key lights. I'll put the guy that I put up on on in the show notes, but I own these key lights and they're very expensive. It's like $200 each, but they're wifi enabled. You can, you can change all the colors and sensors,

Frank (43:04):
lights you have like pro lights that can actually put out some power and that can actually change color a little bit. I tried to get these nice

James (43:13):
right as one's like a, they're like 58 or 65,000 lumen or something, I don't know, 6,500 lumen. They're very bright and you can change, um, the different settings. Like, do I want, cool, do I want warm? Like what's the light in the room? How's it going to interact on me? And I started with one, but I went to two because I was getting shadows. So I have ones that are coming down at like a 45 degree angle from my left and right that come down on me. Um, and I like that because I actually in Seattle it's usually darker outside. If the sun doesn't come out, I just turned them on even if I'm not streaming because it's like I'm outside. It feels good. It feels great. Um, yeah, those are good. A lot of people start with key. Um, ring lights. These are smaller, cheaper ones that you can get.

Frank (43:58):
Um, a lot of recommendations will tell you to like put your webcam and your ring light, which is a ring of light. It literally is in the name like right together and put it right on you. And I hate that because it makes your eyes look like you get the ring, you get a ring. Yeah. You see that in YouTube all the time. I always say people's ring lights in their eyes. I mean, now that everything's four K, you can't not see him. Basically, um, uh, one last thing though because funnily enough, and you'll love this is I was on a call with Hanselman and we were talking about

James (44:31):
this in a group setting and people are like, you know, a lot of this stuff is sold out right now because everyone's buying webcams and stuff and he's like, I had this genius idea and I saw someone else do this on the internet, which was they went to home Depot and they bought like those, um, construction lights or like clamp lights and just put a light bulb in it and just put them on there and it's like a $40 set up at home.

Frank (44:57):
Yeah. Uh, I personally use clamp lights everywhere. I think they're the most convenient thing on the planet and just attach them to anything. You can change the lighting in your apartment very easily and literally, that's what I'm using for my lighting setup right now. Works great, but I need more light because I'm in a funny little spot. Funny pro tip for this one. Um, if you're a computer user like me, which I imagine you are, if you're listening to this podcast, there are YouTube channels that just have different light patterns on them and oscillate between different colors and you can use a monitor or something as a very cheap version or maybe that's actually a very expensive version of a, your lighting set up there. So you can literally just go to a YouTube channel to put on solid lights to illuminate your room. It's kind of silly, but if your room is dark enough, we are playing with it. It actually works really good. You can change the tone of your room. Uh, really easily with that.

James (45:53):
I did, I've been experimenting for a long time with like color backdrops, so like these aren't the lights that are shining on you, but you might see like YouTube videos where it's like, Oh, a splash of green in one corner and red in the other corner and things like that. Or you have these accent lights and I've tried a bunch of them. I tried like huge lights. I tried, um, like expensive, like um, um, like camera person, like camera people lights. I could change anywhere from a hundred dollars to $250 and they just weren't bright enough for me because I'm already in a room that I have these two lights coming down. It needs to be strong. And I watched um, a channel called alpha gamer and they do a lot of gaming sort of set up and they do some gear but then also just general Twitch and YouTube stuff.

James (46:41):
And he did it like a whole thing on lights and he said you can get these led floodlights for like 30 or 50 bucks and they have like a little controller where you can just adjust the RGB values. So I picked one up and this thing is awesome because it's super crazy bright and whatever color you want. And it was like $50 free shipping on Amazon and that was it. And it's 50 Watts, just like blast light on it and you get a multipack for like, you know, just a few of them. It was like 70 bucks or whatever. But comparatively to like smart ones where literally I was buying a smart light bulb to change it to blue. I was like, why do I need, it's not going to be bright enough because they had to put all the wifi and all the shenanigans in there. So I bought this thing and this thing is awesome. I'm going to use it on my stream on Friday for the first time and like blow it up. But I want to go into a meeting where like throughout the meeting, like at work, I'm just changing the background colors. Like whenever I talk it's like a different color and now it's a different color and see if I freak people out or not.

Frank (47:41):
You're actually reminded me a lot of um, just stage lighting. You know, if you've ever spent any time on the stage, you know you have a red and a blue light, it's always red and blue shining right in your face. It's making you sweat. You literally can't see the audience because you have these red and blue lights shining down on you. And that's making me think I absolutely need stage lighting in my room. Now this is a necessity, a viral necessity and a, how about stage makeup? James, are you wearing, since you have stage lighting, do you have any stage makeup on?

James (48:13):
No, but I will say that I have done stage makeup before for a lot of like Microsoft, um, events like keynotes and pre records if, if it's fancy makeup on because that means they have budget because there's like a makeup person there. Yeah, there's actually a makeup person cause I don't know how to do it. I have no idea either. But I will tell you that I look a thousand times better with makeup on. Like especially during the recordings, I look so good. Like all the bags, literally the point of makeup. James, it was so good. It looks so good. It's not a lot like they just put a little bit on now. I hate having makeup on like later in the day because it starts to cake and my skin gets all mad or whatever. But I mean honestly I probably should think about it. Maybe I'll off to have Heather teach me how to put on makeup. But I will say like you do look a thousand times better just by like the bags under your eyes or something like that. Because I'm coding, I'm livestreaming after coding all day. Right. So like I'm already stressed out and all the Covance stuff and maybe I should put some on, that's a good idea.

Frank (49:12):
It's so funny because I'm not the throw my father on the bus more than I already have on this episode. But he used to coach the local hockey team. And so after some important games he'd have to be on TV. Right? Cause it's important local hockey stuff. And every time my mom would see him on TV, she be like, Oh my God, look at those raccoon eyes. Cause he just said dark bags under all his eyes. So after a few of those, she would make him put on tons of makeup before he was allowed on TV. It's not thinking, Oh, I wonder if she's going to do that again now.

James (49:44):
That'd be awesome. That would be, that'd be pretty fantastic. If so. All right. Well, I think we've spent enough time on this, but it's funny that you sort of turn this podcast into how to make Frank's Twitch scream a little bit better. And I like that.

Frank (49:58):
If you haven't noticed, I've done that for like the last three episodes, but you know, eventually I'll learn and I'll stop doing that to us. But no, that's what this was for my dad. This is for you dad. I needed some answers.

James (50:09):
Okay. So here's the last tip I'll have for people. I was watching emo stream today and he's doing some really cool stuff and I like his setup. It's very minimalistic. It's just a webcam with a little rounded corners. And then basically a full screen, very simple. And I like it. I'll do like simple setups. I've gotten way complex and bingos and bang goes and whatnot. But I do like use that. I like to have the chat on the screen, you know, you gotta make space for stuff. Um, and I could tell it, I think the microphone he was using was very close to his laptop, if not the laptop microphone. And when laptops fans come, when they come on, you can picks it up. So the pro tip is an OBS on any audio source, on anything you can right click on it and say filters and on audio sources like the microphones, even my super high end microphone, I add a, um, two things.

James (51:02):
One is I'm like noise suppression, which means it would suppress lower end noises that are really low. And in fact the podcast when we post produce, it does that on it. So if something happens and something is clacking in the kitchen, you don't hear that I left the heater on. I do that all the time. Sorry. Every one. If I did that, it'll sort of try to remove that 100%. And then also a limiter and limiters really important because, um, if you don't have a pop filter when you pop or whatever or say something, it'll, it'll spike the audio so you can have a limiter that make sure, even if you're yelling, it limits it to a certain decimal. And those two settings are really all you need. Just the defaults. You're totally fine.

Frank (51:43):
You're good. Okay. Okay. But as someone who used to do something, uh, a little bit of reverb on your voice never hurt. It sounds good. Sounds good. That's just a tiny, just turn the knob just the tiny little bit tiny. That's good stuff. I got to use those filters too. I, I never, I never touched those audio filters. Actually. I saw someone hooked up some really crazy audio filters to their stream so they were doing high pitch, low pitch auto tune. I need the auto tune

James (52:16):
filter, Frank Auto-Tune. That's what I need in my life. Uh, make that happen Frank. All right, I'm going to get outta here is we've talked for 52 minutes about, I don't even know, but we did it. So

Frank (52:28):
video, something nasty topic. Brady country for all videos. Something

James (52:33):
free for all videos. Something. All right, well let us know what you're using and if you're working from home, I'd be interested in to, maybe you have a situation like Frank's dad. Maybe give him a recommendation right into the podcast. Go to emerge conflict.fm or just tweet at us. You know what to do. Uh, but thanks so much for listening to as a rant on for when you're really ran. We just discuss things for way too long, but you know how I like to end up podcast. Thank you so much. This has been another merge conflict. Until next time, I'm James Monto Magnum

Speaker 3 (53:00):
and guy prank. Thanks for listening.