Setup guide for in-person multi-cam recording on Riverside

00:00 We're going to show you several tips and guidelines for how you can bring multiple cameras into the Riverside Mac app, as well as proper techniques for a multiple microphone setup for the in-person feature. Now, the goal of this video is to help you understand what gear is and sometimes isn't necessary to capture your cameras and audio in Riverside and how to know what to look for in almost any given setup. So let's dive in and look at these examples. After we launched in-person recording, we got a lot of comments from you all, which we'd love to see, whether it was the excitement, the technical questions, or even the constructive feedback.

00:32 But one of the biggest themes we got from all of you was about the audio. How did the mics hook up? How do I stop mics from picking up other voices? And do I need a mixer? Now, I want to mention that there were many of you asking about the RODECaster specifically, but that one that's going to be its own video. So if it's posted, you can check out the card up here if you're working specifically with a RODECaster device. Although a lot of the techniques while using one will still apply here too.

01:00 The most important factor is this one right here, the type of mic you choose. Now there are several types of mics, but the most common ones used for content creation outside of the clip on lav mics are dynamic and condenser microphones. The simplest distinction between them is a dynamic mic mostly hears what's right in front of it and attempts to cancel out the rest. A condenser like this one is usually directional so I can turn it to the side and my voice will be less clear, but it doesn't have the same background cancellation.

01:29 Their advantage is that they're more sensitive to voices which is why they're preferred for sound treated rooms. Again, like mine is right here. But with two or three people around the table, that sensitivity works against you. So for in-person sessions, dynamic mics are almost always gonna give you the best result. Some examples of good options, especially on a budget, are the Samsung Q2U, the Fifine K688, Ropod mic and the Shure SM58.

01:56 The Shure MV7 and SM7B are also very popular options if you're feeling fancy. For the recording my wife and I did, she was using the Fifine K688 plugged directly into USB and I was using a Behringer XM8500 with a basic ZenX USB mixer. It's also important to note that in general, dynamic mics don't use phantom power unless they have preamps built in that require it.

02:22 Technique is also very important. Dynamic mics usually sound their best when you're roughly six inches away from it. Your fist is a good rule of thumb, although with my fist, I might subtract a pinky. It's not a hard set rule that you need to stay perfectly at that distance, but it's good to know what your mic sounds like if you're too close or if you're too far away. Angle wise, you wanna make sure you're talking directly into the mic and ensure you angle the mics away from each other as much as possible so that each mic can cancel out the other speakers easier.

02:51 Once your positions are set, then adjust each mic's gain so that the other people are heard as little as possible while still keeping that speaker's voice very clear. Because in post, it's easier to raise a mic's volume than it is to reduce it. The next key is how the mics connect. There are two primary options here. One, the simpler option, just use USB mics that plug directly into the computer with no extra gear like the Shure MV6 or the Beacon mic.

03:21 And Riverside will see each of these mics as their own input, and typically these work well with USB hubs too, so you don't have to take up more than one port on your Mac. The second option is using XLR mics, of which there are tons to choose from, like the Shure SM7B, SM58, Rode Pod mic, Behringer XM8500, the list is long, you get it. But these need to be paired with audio interfaces. Now, this can be a single mixer that can handle multiple mics or multiple small mixers as long as whatever mixer solution you go with has USB output.

03:53 And there are a wide range of mixers from brands like Focusrite, Tascam, Behringer, Elgato, and of course, the Rode Casters. Now, there are also options of mics with both types of connections, like the Samsung Q2U, Fifine K688, and Shure MV7, which means you can start on direct USB and then switch to XLR later with a mixer when you're ready to upgrade without changing your mic.

04:19 XLR usually provides a lot more flexibility and quality options, so it can be a good upgrade later on. Now, there are several things to keep in mind here. First, as soon as you add an in-person guest, Riverside will automatically disable echo cancellation because it doesn't really have a way to know if an extra voice that it's hearing is an echo or not. And that's kind of expected for in-person setups.

04:46 The second thing is with mixers with multiple mics. Typically, these won't come in as separate inputs, rather these mixers will include them as one input that has multiple channels. So in that case, you can select your interface and we will get an additional option here to select which channel to use, and then you can separate your mics from there. Third, because Riverside has to disable echo cancellation, if you invite a remote guest, it's highly recommended that you use headphones so that you can avoid any computer audio coming through your mics.

05:18 Now, the last thing, and even though this is somewhat camera related, it's pretty crucial for some setups because there were a number of comments about this too. So as of recording this, if you're using a wide camera, keep in mind that you will need to manually switch to it in post because it's still treated as a separate track. And the transcript and smart layouts won't really know how to differentiate between which audio belongs to which speaker track.

05:45 So keeping audio off of the wide shot is currently the ideal option. With all this said, it's always best to do test recordings to make sure that your setup works the way that it should. There are three main methods that we're going to cover in this video that should cover most cases, although if you do have additional questions, please drop them in the comments below. And those three ways are connecting the camera through USB, using a capture card, or using a network camera.

06:15 So the first one we're going to start out with is the most basic solution, which is just connecting your camera directly through USB. The most ideal scenario for this is if your camera has what's called UVC protocol, which is just a fancy way of saying you can use this as a USB webcam. So as an example, I have a Canon R5C right here that does support this feature. And this means whenever I enable it in the camera menu settings, as you can see right here, and then I plug it in through USB, it's automatically recognized as a webcam.

06:44 Now where to set this somewhat varies from camera to camera and definitely brand to brand, but it's usually found in one of the setup type menus. Now this feature first started appearing on cameras first and around 2019-ish, but most brands didn't really adopt it until later. So check your specific camera model to make sure it includes UVC. However, if you have an older camera or it's just not a supported feature on yours, you can still likely use the USB output from that camera using the brand's webcam app.

07:09 And here's a list of brands that currently have one of those. But keep in mind that this software method specifically is much more limited with the quality because the cameras that these webcam utilities were originally made for were actually never really intended to be used as webcam. So there are a lot of physical limitations with that, but it's still a lot better than using a built-in webcam. The second option is the use of capture cards.

07:35 Now, if you aren't familiar with capture cards, they're basically used to take an HDMI signal and convert it to a USB webcam. And common brands for capture cards are brands like Blackmagic, Elgato, and AVerMedia. And there are many more brands than even no name branded capture cards out there as well. Now this route is typically the ideal option if you want the highest quality from your camera as possible, or your camera just doesn't have UVC.

08:00 To answer the big question, though, and if you need to have a capture card per camera, the answer is yes and no. To simplify this, the only capture cards that allow you to capture multiple cameras and use each one of them individually are PCIe cards that look like this. This one is the Blackmagic DeckLink Quad HDMI, which is actually the one I use on my PC behind me back here. However, to use these types of cards on a Mac, you need to purchase an additional PCIe enclosure to be able to connect it to your Mac.

08:32 And unfortunately, Magewell is really the only brand that can show up as a webcam feed directly with their capture cards, which can get to be a pretty expensive setup. So if this isn't an option for you, then individual capture cards is the way to go. And as far as options to choose, you primarily want something that shows that it can output the resolution that you want, not just capture. And something that is ideally USB-C as well so that it's easy to plug and play with most newer Macs or MacBooks.

09:01 There are also camera switchers like the ATEM miniseries, but those really only have the ability to send one camera signal, unless you use an additional capture card with the HDMI output. So they're not really ideal for the in-person feature, and there's not really a way for Riverside to be able to control the cameras with the software as well. And the third option is using network cameras. Now, this one's a little bit more nuanced, but stick with me because this can sometimes solve some issues that the first two can't.

09:32 Now, this refers to any camera that's connected to a network you have set up, whether that's through your internet modem, or router, or even through basic switches. And this just means that your cameras are connected through either ethernet or sometimes wirelessly, although wireless is typically not ideal. The most common examples of this would be using PTZ cameras or broadcast cameras that are all hooked up together in the same system, but it's not exclusive to those options.

09:57 As an example, in the initial video I did, what I was actually doing was sending my Fujifilm cameras into my PC through that Blackmagic capture card, and then I was sending both of them to my Mac using NDI. NDI is just meaning that it was sending video and audio through my network, like using an ethernet cable as an HDMI cable. Now, how can you actually use this regardless of what type of network solution you're using?

10:23 Well, you can use OBS with the NDI plugin and use the virtual camera option, or you can use NDI virtual input from NDI tools. Now, I do wanna quickly address mobile devices. Now, this can be its own full tutorial so we won't get into it too much today, but there are solutions to using phones or iPads either directly with an app like Camo, using something browser-based like Video Ninja, various GitHub solutions, or sending it out to a capture card like normal cameras using the Blackmagic camera app.

10:57 Now, if you'd like to hear more about these options, please leave a comment down below for that as well. All in all, there are many ways to get multiple cameras into Riverside for the in-person feature. And I hope this video gave you some better understanding of how you can use your cameras, or at the very least, what gear is necessary to complete your setup. So if you have any more questions about anything that we talked about in this video, please leave your questions in the comments because they literally wrote this video in the first place.

11:23 So thank you so much for watching and we can't wait to see what you create.