Technical setup for YouTube headshots

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1

So, I am publishing scripted educational videos on YouTube, but I am still unhappy with my recording setup for headshots. I currently have 3 options:

  1. I have a consumer Canon DSLR with a Parrot telepromt adapter. The image quality is perfect here. I’m especially fond of the depth of field look I can achieve with this. But setting this up and remote-controlling it alone while also filming myself is rather cumbersome. In addition, the audio input on the camera is very noisy. But recording the audio separately means I constantly have to start and stop recording multiple things at a time, while being the presenter as well. Super messy and time-consuming.
  2. My iPhone’s back camera (old 6s at the moment). The image quality is acceptable, but of course considerably worse than the DSLR. Recording audio + video is easily possible. But since I only see the back of the phone, I can’t use telepromt software on the phone.
  3. My iPhone’s front camera. I can use telepromt software and record audio + video, but the image quality is unacceptable.

I’m looking for ideas to improve my setup. I want to record more in the future, but I would need a hassle-free setup while still maintaining or even improving the audio and video quality. Any tips? What are you guys using?

2

Continue using option 1 for sure

You can clap to sync audio and video in post and then do not stop recording until you’re done with the whole script, even if you have to attempt and reattempt certain lines. It is infinitely easier to have one (albeit giant) file for video and a smaller one for audio and just edit the dead air out later. Especially since it looks like you aren’t on screen for a lot of your videos. No one will even know that you made cuts between takes and you might have already been making those cuts anyway!

Hope this helps!

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