Equipping a Studio for Web Video Production: Three Models to Match Your Budget

The $25,000 Webcast Studio

The $25,000 budget might sound like a lot, but if all you did was buy two of the $8,300 Sony FS700RH video cameras that I like to use, you would have already spent 65% of your total budget. So even with this larger budget you have to seek out gear that offers great value, and you’re still going to have to make trade-offs and tough decisions in terms of what workflows you are going to support today, and which ones you will have to put together an additional budget proposal for to support in future years.

For this setup I decided that I would place more emphasis on adding 3D virtual sets. My total package came in at $24,094.89 before set decoration, which needs to include either a greenscreen or that can of green paint my editor suggested.

This also leaves room for some proper HD-SDI cables—never scrimp and use cheap BNC cables designed for SD video or—worse—security camera footage. Note that Canare and Belden make some great HD-SDI cables.

Three-Camera Upgrade

I’ve upgraded my camera kit to three Canon XA25s, with matching Manfrotto 502HD tripods. For lighting, I’m complementing my pair of Adorama Flashpoint softbox lights with a three-point Flolight fluorescent light kit ($1,299) (Figure 11, below). I’ll need the extra light to evenly light the backdrop if I want to make the green screen required for the virtual sets look good.

Figure 11. Flolight dimmable 3-point fluorescent light kit

The wireless mic, batteries, and webcast service remain unchanged, but I will need more SD cards.

Streaming Appliance

The central component of this webcast studio is the NewTek TriCaster 410. At $9,995 it gobbles up a large part of my budget, but it will save me money on other components: I’ll no longer need a separate webcast encoder or archive recorder as the TriCaster 410 (Figure 12, below) can switch, stream, and record.

Figure 12. NewTek TriCaster 410

Soundboard, Monitor, Laptops

I’m keeping the Behringer soundboard, beautiful Dell monitor as my primary display, and the Lenovo laptop to push the computer presentations and for additional editing after the event, although I will need to add a $295 Blackmagic HDMI to HD-SDI battery converter to convert the laptop’s HDMI signal to HD-SDI for the TriCaster—the TC410 is HD-SDI only.

I am also going to skip using iVGA to feed computer presentations because my IT department won’t approve the opening of the required ports and allow me to connect to the office network at the same time and I need to keep them happy so they will support my Internet bandwidth demands.

I’m going to also leave in the $300 budget for an entry-level laptop so I can actually monitor my own webcast—something I should have included in my previous two studio builds.

Ready to Stream

So there you have it. Three webcast-studio equipment budgets completely exhausted, and three brand new studios ready to start streaming to their respective audiences and recouping their investments.