Setting Up a Home Studio for YouTube Videos: A Budget-Friendly Approach

When it comes to creating high-quality YouTube videos, many people assume that you need expensive equipment to get started. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. With a little creativity and resourcefulness, you can create a studio setup at home that produces great lighting and audio without breaking the bank.

First, let's talk about cameras. One of the biggest misconceptions is that you need a high-end camera with a large sensor to get good video quality. However, this is not necessarily true. Cellphones have become incredibly capable of capturing high-quality video, and many smartphones can produce results that are comparable to those from expensive cameras. In fact, I've personally sold my full-frame cameras because I'm so sick of dragging around heavy gear everywhere. With a cell phone or a camera with a tiny sensor, you can still capture great footage.

To demonstrate this point, let's take a look at some video quality on different devices. We'll start by recording a quick test video using the front-facing camera on my iPhone XR. As we can see from the screen, the image quality is not bad at all. Now, let's flip the camera around and record a quick test video using the rear camera in 4K. Again, the results are impressive, especially considering that this camera costs only $35.

Another important aspect of creating high-quality YouTube videos is lighting. Natural light is free and looks the best, so whenever possible, we'll be using natural light to illuminate our setup. To demonstrate this point, let's set up a quick test in my living room with plenty of natural light pouring in through the big window. As we can see from the image on screen, the lighting is even and flattering, making it perfect for capturing great video.

Now, let's talk about audio quality. One common issue that people face when recording videos is poor audio quality, especially when using built-in microphones or low-quality external mics. However, with a little creativity, we can easily improve our audio setup without breaking the bank. For example, I've been using a simple USB microphone like this one to record my voiceovers and podcasts, and it produces great results.

To demonstrate this point, let's take a look at some video quality on different devices. We'll start by recording a quick test video using the front-facing camera on my iPhone XR. As we can see from the screen, the image quality is not bad at all. Now, let's flip the camera around and record a quick test video using the rear camera in 4K. Again, the results are impressive, especially considering that this camera costs only $35.

But how do we get the best out of our setup? One trick I want to show you is how to use a simple stabilizer to smooth out shaky footage. For example, I've been using this tiny handheld stabilizer to record my videos, and it makes a huge difference in terms of image quality. By keeping the camera steady and level, we can ensure that our footage looks smooth and professional.

Now that we have a better understanding of how to set up a home studio for YouTube videos on a budget, let's talk about some tips and tricks for creating engaging content. One common mistake that new YouTubers make is not having compelling content to share with their audience. This can be anything from sharing your daily life, showcasing your skills or expertise, or even just talking about random topics like tech or gadgets.

As I always say, "the most important thing to make a camera look good is good lighting." And when it comes to creating high-quality video content on a budget, this couldn't be more true. By using natural light and simple setup tricks, we can create professional-looking footage that engages our audience without breaking the bank.

In the next article in this series, we'll dive deeper into some specific tips and tricks for making better videos on a budget, including how to use smartphone features like 4K video recording and advanced camera modes. We'll also explore some creative ways to add visual interest to your footage and make it more engaging for your audience. So be sure to stay tuned!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: encan you set up a fully functioning youtube studio for $35 let's find out what's up everyone I'm the everyday dead if I can figure it out you can figure it out and welcome to budget video production this used to be called reviewing the cheapest and we're still reviewing the cheapest stuff but we're not necessarily be the cheapest but what we're trying to do is to find out how you can make better video and today we're gonna set up a fully functioning YouTube studio for 35 bucks now preface this video that yes this assumes that you are like what a 99% of the population and you already have a cell phone with a camera so that is not included in the price because you probably already have one if you don't have one then yes asterisks ding you'll need to have a cell phone to make this video work but yeah what's up you really need four things to make decent online video number one you need some kind of a camera you don't need anything fancy you just need a camera that can take at least 1080p the cell phone will cover that for us today on the other hand you need some way to stabilize that footage because nobody likes nobody likes shaky footage it makes everybody nauseous and will never do anything so you need a way to stabilize it what are these two things number three and the one that I always focus on is audio like I spend more money on the audio system that I use than anything else so you'll need a decent audio solution which is what we've got here and then number four a good camera will look terrible and bad lighting but a bad camera can look good in good lighting and we're gonna do some tricks to get good lighting for basically free I like free that's the easiest way to make a video about cheap stuff you get it for free so today I've got three things that we're gonna combine into a YouTube studio we've got an Amazon basics lightweight aluminum tripod we've got a I don't know whatever the cheapest cell phone holder I could find and we've got the cheapest lavell ear microphone I could find we're gonna unbox and we're gonna combine them all with the Google pixel 3 alpha thanks to the folks over at Google for sending me the Google pixel 3 alpha if you've seen my photos on Twitter you've seen that I actually like the camera in this a lot and it's actually a budget camera in and of itself I'm gonna treat this like my new point-and-shoot camera cuz it's pretty good but anyway let's combine this on and see what we got so again I've been talking about this amazonbasics tripod basically I started the channel like this is if you were looking for a tripod this is one of the cheapest ways that you can go come on man it's one of the cheaper where's my knife cutter thanks to Jim from help at home for this knife cutter that I've been using a lot because I try opening everything myself but it doesn't work out oh but I love this amazonbasics tripod this is actually the tripod that's holding up my g85 right now it's cheap its sturdy it just works I've had one of these this is not my original one it eventually broke but I've had one of these for like two years running out this is one of the best tripods you can get if you just need something to hold a reasonably light camera it works great so there is the tripod next up let's talk about the cell phone holder there's a thousand cell phone holders out there the one that I got like I said was just too cheap it all it needs to do is have some kind of way to mount onto the tripod which this one in fact does we will come on come on don't bite your fingernails so much Teddy you'd be able to do this easier on camera let's not cut ourselves the video though I'm sure self-harm would make it look make a better click babe title but yeah so it just needs to be something that can hold the cell phone in place for us so we don't get like you don't want shaky footage like shaky footage just makes your footage look bad just because the human eye is not used to seeing shaky footage I mean your eyeball and your brain and you're like your body's designed to be gimbal like so your brains not used to seeing it and I'll just make you stuff look amateur so you want a way to hold it this cheapest thing is just gonna hold that for us we're gonna pop it onto the top of this tripod makes it really easy how easy this is there no we've got it stabilized super easy and then something that I really like about the Google pixel 3 alpha is it has a headphone jacks we don't need a dongle we don't need anything else we're just gonna take this lav mic and we're gonna plug it straight into the camera but what comes in this bag so we've got the lav mic itself and I'll leave links to all of this stuff in the description below but we've got to laughs Mike and what I like about this one is I don't remember the exact brand but again I'll leave a link in the description below but I like that it comes with a TRS connector because it looks like this is designed to just plug into a cell phones cameras and cell phones have different audio connectors cellphones have what's called trrs or tip ring ring sleeve whereas like regular cameras and other audio equipment that used 3.5 millimeter audio jacks have what's called TRS or tip ring sleeve so we've already got the trrs so we don't need an a' so we don't need an adapter which is great but it has an adapter it has extra little fuzzy it has extra little fuzzy covers on it in case you lose one chances are I will probably lose some of this stuff so what we're gonna do we're gonna set this up in the studio really quickly so we're gonna set this up in the studio really quickly so you can see how it looks with really good studio lighting because I've got a really nice light here the godox SL 60 W which is a not a professional light but it's pretty darn close I break stuff all the time welcome to the everyday dad if you haven't if you haven't swung by before okay and look we've got a nice long cable there which which helps out so let's plug this in let's clip on the mic because it's gonna come with some case we're clipped in let's do both the front and the rear camera because I can see what the front cameras doing okay okay and here you go this is the indoor video quality of the cheapest studio you can set up so you got good lighting we got decent audio hopefully and it should just be working and you don't need like the biggest fallacy that you can see on online video is you don't need a very expensive setup to make this work you just need to have compelling content that really gets people invested if you're talking about cameras are you talking about tech or you talk about something like that you can set up your storyline to make it very easy if you have just a story you're trying to tell about your daily life who cares whether it's in 4k or 1080p this is 1080p perfectly fine teeny tiny sensor who cares who cares I'm selling all my full-frame cameras because I'm sick of dragging around full-frame cameras cellphones will do perfectly perfectly fine so yeah this is the video quality of the front camera so let's turn it around and see how the video quality in 4k of the rear camera looks so pause or stop I guess stop flip the camera flip the camera we're not gonna be able to let's record first at least make sure recording okay and this is the main rear camera so this again you just don't just get like you don't need to spend that much money this is 35 bucks 35 bucks to get away to stabilize the camera will show you how this should officially be used in a second which is the way we're gonna use it is natural light because natural light is free and looks the best this is just a quick way to show you what it looks like if you do want to invest in some lighting inside of a studio this is the kind of quality you can get don't spend money don't spend money unless you know that this is something you want to do people ask me all the time what their first cameras should be your cell phone should be your very first camera because you may not even like doing this because sometimes making YouTube videos sucks okay so now what we're gonna do we're gonna tear all this stuff down we're gonna take this downstairs and I'm gonna show you how I would actually use this next to a window with natural lighting that you can get for absolutely free freeze the best okay see you down there okay and as you can see we are currently set up in my living room which gives a lot of natural light I've got a big window now something you may have noticed we've switched from the Google pixel 3 alpha to my iPhone XR for some reason apparently I don't know why but the pixel 3 alpha is not picking up the microphone but the microphone works perfectly fine on my iPhone so we'll figure that out some other day I guess but yeah this is the image quality on the front-facing camera on the iPhone X are you just the most important thing to make a camera look good is good lighting now this microphone is going to the a 6400 that's recording us over here this microphone is the one plugged into the camera so again you just get started like is there probably more noise like right here in the shadows is there probably more noise here in my face because this is 1080p yeah probably but honestly who cares i watch most of my videos in 720p on my iphone XR and I never even seen my own video recording this is a 4k right now I'm not even gonna see that difference okay so this is the front camera let's flip it around to the back camera and again show you what you can get okay and this okay and this is the rear camera that we're talking at we're doing 4k 30 frames per second on the back here which again I think it looks perfectly fine cellphones are so fantastic and that's why you I know I've mentioned this before I know I mentioned this a lot but I really want to so it's a trap that I personally have fallen into of I gotta by the news gear gotta buy the best gear best gear more money more money more money you don't actually need to spend all that I mean believe me I need to hear that advice more often than you could probably imagine because I'm always buying new cameras and was buying new junk but don't fall into my trap you just use your cell phone get started out find out if you like it's been 35 bucks get a stabilized camera that you already have in your pocket and it'll do fine what else did you guys like to see like I said in the beginning this video series is now gonna turn more into how can you make better videos on a budget as opposed to just reviewing random cheap crap so let me know what else you guys would like to see I've got some ideas for the next month or so but I'd love to hear what you guys would like to say and any good ideas that are picked will be featured in that next video thanks for watchingcan you set up a fully functioning youtube studio for $35 let's find out what's up everyone I'm the everyday dead if I can figure it out you can figure it out and welcome to budget video production this used to be called reviewing the cheapest and we're still reviewing the cheapest stuff but we're not necessarily be the cheapest but what we're trying to do is to find out how you can make better video and today we're gonna set up a fully functioning YouTube studio for 35 bucks now preface this video that yes this assumes that you are like what a 99% of the population and you already have a cell phone with a camera so that is not included in the price because you probably already have one if you don't have one then yes asterisks ding you'll need to have a cell phone to make this video work but yeah what's up you really need four things to make decent online video number one you need some kind of a camera you don't need anything fancy you just need a camera that can take at least 1080p the cell phone will cover that for us today on the other hand you need some way to stabilize that footage because nobody likes nobody likes shaky footage it makes everybody nauseous and will never do anything so you need a way to stabilize it what are these two things number three and the one that I always focus on is audio like I spend more money on the audio system that I use than anything else so you'll need a decent audio solution which is what we've got here and then number four a good camera will look terrible and bad lighting but a bad camera can look good in good lighting and we're gonna do some tricks to get good lighting for basically free I like free that's the easiest way to make a video about cheap stuff you get it for free so today I've got three things that we're gonna combine into a YouTube studio we've got an Amazon basics lightweight aluminum tripod we've got a I don't know whatever the cheapest cell phone holder I could find and we've got the cheapest lavell ear microphone I could find we're gonna unbox and we're gonna combine them all with the Google pixel 3 alpha thanks to the folks over at Google for sending me the Google pixel 3 alpha if you've seen my photos on Twitter you've seen that I actually like the camera in this a lot and it's actually a budget camera in and of itself I'm gonna treat this like my new point-and-shoot camera cuz it's pretty good but anyway let's combine this on and see what we got so again I've been talking about this amazonbasics tripod basically I started the channel like this is if you were looking for a tripod this is one of the cheapest ways that you can go come on man it's one of the cheaper where's my knife cutter thanks to Jim from help at home for this knife cutter that I've been using a lot because I try opening everything myself but it doesn't work out oh but I love this amazonbasics tripod this is actually the tripod that's holding up my g85 right now it's cheap its sturdy it just works I've had one of these this is not my original one it eventually broke but I've had one of these for like two years running out this is one of the best tripods you can get if you just need something to hold a reasonably light camera it works great so there is the tripod next up let's talk about the cell phone holder there's a thousand cell phone holders out there the one that I got like I said was just too cheap it all it needs to do is have some kind of way to mount onto the tripod which this one in fact does we will come on come on don't bite your fingernails so much Teddy you'd be able to do this easier on camera let's not cut ourselves the video though I'm sure self-harm would make it look make a better click babe title but yeah so it just needs to be something that can hold the cell phone in place for us so we don't get like you don't want shaky footage like shaky footage just makes your footage look bad just because the human eye is not used to seeing shaky footage I mean your eyeball and your brain and you're like your body's designed to be gimbal like so your brains not used to seeing it and I'll just make you stuff look amateur so you want a way to hold it this cheapest thing is just gonna hold that for us we're gonna pop it onto the top of this tripod makes it really easy how easy this is there no we've got it stabilized super easy and then something that I really like about the Google pixel 3 alpha is it has a headphone jacks we don't need a dongle we don't need anything else we're just gonna take this lav mic and we're gonna plug it straight into the camera but what comes in this bag so we've got the lav mic itself and I'll leave links to all of this stuff in the description below but we've got to laughs Mike and what I like about this one is I don't remember the exact brand but again I'll leave a link in the description below but I like that it comes with a TRS connector because it looks like this is designed to just plug into a cell phones cameras and cell phones have different audio connectors cellphones have what's called trrs or tip ring ring sleeve whereas like regular cameras and other audio equipment that used 3.5 millimeter audio jacks have what's called TRS or tip ring sleeve so we've already got the trrs so we don't need an a' so we don't need an adapter which is great but it has an adapter it has extra little fuzzy it has extra little fuzzy covers on it in case you lose one chances are I will probably lose some of this stuff so what we're gonna do we're gonna set this up in the studio really quickly so we're gonna set this up in the studio really quickly so you can see how it looks with really good studio lighting because I've got a really nice light here the godox SL 60 W which is a not a professional light but it's pretty darn close I break stuff all the time welcome to the everyday dad if you haven't if you haven't swung by before okay and look we've got a nice long cable there which which helps out so let's plug this in let's clip on the mic because it's gonna come with some case we're clipped in let's do both the front and the rear camera because I can see what the front cameras doing okay okay and here you go this is the indoor video quality of the cheapest studio you can set up so you got good lighting we got decent audio hopefully and it should just be working and you don't need like the biggest fallacy that you can see on online video is you don't need a very expensive setup to make this work you just need to have compelling content that really gets people invested if you're talking about cameras are you talking about tech or you talk about something like that you can set up your storyline to make it very easy if you have just a story you're trying to tell about your daily life who cares whether it's in 4k or 1080p this is 1080p perfectly fine teeny tiny sensor who cares who cares I'm selling all my full-frame cameras because I'm sick of dragging around full-frame cameras cellphones will do perfectly perfectly fine so yeah this is the video quality of the front camera so let's turn it around and see how the video quality in 4k of the rear camera looks so pause or stop I guess stop flip the camera flip the camera we're not gonna be able to let's record first at least make sure recording okay and this is the main rear camera so this again you just don't just get like you don't need to spend that much money this is 35 bucks 35 bucks to get away to stabilize the camera will show you how this should officially be used in a second which is the way we're gonna use it is natural light because natural light is free and looks the best this is just a quick way to show you what it looks like if you do want to invest in some lighting inside of a studio this is the kind of quality you can get don't spend money don't spend money unless you know that this is something you want to do people ask me all the time what their first cameras should be your cell phone should be your very first camera because you may not even like doing this because sometimes making YouTube videos sucks okay so now what we're gonna do we're gonna tear all this stuff down we're gonna take this downstairs and I'm gonna show you how I would actually use this next to a window with natural lighting that you can get for absolutely free freeze the best okay see you down there okay and as you can see we are currently set up in my living room which gives a lot of natural light I've got a big window now something you may have noticed we've switched from the Google pixel 3 alpha to my iPhone XR for some reason apparently I don't know why but the pixel 3 alpha is not picking up the microphone but the microphone works perfectly fine on my iPhone so we'll figure that out some other day I guess but yeah this is the image quality on the front-facing camera on the iPhone X are you just the most important thing to make a camera look good is good lighting now this microphone is going to the a 6400 that's recording us over here this microphone is the one plugged into the camera so again you just get started like is there probably more noise like right here in the shadows is there probably more noise here in my face because this is 1080p yeah probably but honestly who cares i watch most of my videos in 720p on my iphone XR and I never even seen my own video recording this is a 4k right now I'm not even gonna see that difference okay so this is the front camera let's flip it around to the back camera and again show you what you can get okay and this okay and this is the rear camera that we're talking at we're doing 4k 30 frames per second on the back here which again I think it looks perfectly fine cellphones are so fantastic and that's why you I know I've mentioned this before I know I mentioned this a lot but I really want to so it's a trap that I personally have fallen into of I gotta by the news gear gotta buy the best gear best gear more money more money more money you don't actually need to spend all that I mean believe me I need to hear that advice more often than you could probably imagine because I'm always buying new cameras and was buying new junk but don't fall into my trap you just use your cell phone get started out find out if you like it's been 35 bucks get a stabilized camera that you already have in your pocket and it'll do fine what else did you guys like to see like I said in the beginning this video series is now gonna turn more into how can you make better videos on a budget as opposed to just reviewing random cheap crap so let me know what else you guys would like to see I've got some ideas for the next month or so but I'd love to hear what you guys would like to say and any good ideas that are picked will be featured in that next video thanks for watching\n"