How I setup my video podcast studio

It took me hours upon hours of research to figure out how to setup an indoor video studio for recording my video podcast and other videos for social media.

I have combined all of that research into this article to share all the things I’ve learned, including the software and equipment I’m using.

I’ll start my talking about the overall look and design. Then, I’ll move into the technical components for audio and video.

Choosing the location

The hardest part about setting up a podcast or video studio, other than the cost of everything, is finding an ideal recording space in your home.

Hopefully, you can find a room that’s free from a lot of distracting background noises.

Ideally, you want a long wall that is adjacent to a window. The wall will give you the blank canvas to work with and the window will provide natural light.

The length of wall needed depends on your height and if you’re shooting horizontally or vertically.

If you’re shooting horizontally, you’ll need to set your camera up and look at how far you need to be zoomed out to put your whole head and shoulders in frame.

For perspective, my wall is 9 feet long. This is what the space looked like before. I didn’t like the cabinets I had on the left wall because they were open and looked cluttered.

The width of the room is also important, because you need enough space for your lights, camera and tripods. Having at least 10-12 feet of depth is ideal.

The video studio backdrop

To get started, I browsed the internet for furniture and bookmarked the styles that I liked. Then, I copied the pictures and pasted them into a document so I could see the design before I built it.

Because my speciality is food related, it was important for me to have a lot of counter space both in front of me and behind me.

I also decided I wanted cabinets instead of just a simple backdrop. This both works to frame me as a subject and allows me to use this space in my home for more than one purpose.

You can find furniture for your backdrop at so many different price points. I started by shopping at furniture stores, but I really didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars.

I found all of the pieces I wanted online and used a graphics program to copy and paste pictures so I could visualize the final look.

I ordered more affordable, build-it-yourself furniture from Amazon and painted it. The side cabinets are freestanding kitchen pantry cabinets in white. They were $260 each.

The center back counter cabinet was white and was also form Amazon, but it’s already been discontinued, so I don’t have a link for you, sorry. It was $387.

For the front counter cabinet, I purchased a different counter sideboard buffet cabinet in black. With tax and shipping, it was $260.

I didn’t like the look of my plain wall, so I jazzed it up by getting a piece of wood paneling from Lowes. It comes in a few different styles. I went with the weathered pine MDF wainscot wall panel. It was $30.

COSTS SO FAR: So far, the total costs for this studio are around $1,200. Again, you can spend more on furniture, or a lot less, depending on what style you want. 

Branding the backdrop

The cabinets I purchased were white and black, but I wanted something with my brand colors of orange and blue, so I decided to paint the back cabinets.

Because the cabinets are fairly cheap and are just made of laminated MDF, you can’t just apply paint because it won’t stick.

First, you need to apply bonding primer. A quart will cost around $15. It’s amazing stuff. It makes the surface dull instead of slippery, so colored paint will stick.

Then, choose your paint color. I color matched the dark teal blue color I use on my website to a color swatch at the store. It’s called Deep Water.

Make sure you choose an interior paint and one that isn’t too shiny. I went with Valspar Eggshell. Because I chose such a dark color, it needed about 3-4 coats of paint, so I bought a gallon, which was $35. You may be able to get by with a quart.

Lastly, I purchased some spray paint.

The handles on the cabinets were yellow gold and black. Instead of buying new handles, which can cost $5 a piece, I just painted the existing handles with Krylon Fusion All-in-One Satin Metallic Rose Gold Spray Paint, which was $10.

I also have cans of Dupli-Color Chevy Orange Engine Spray Paint to touch up my Hunsaker Drum Smokers. I used that to spray my microphone stand. It’s $12 a can.

COSTS SO FAR: My paint costs totaled around $100. So our total so far is $1,300.

Adding accents

I have some future plans to make this studio pop even more. Right now, my counters are just plain painted MDF wood. Eventually, I plan to add custom-fitted Dekton countertops. I’m just waiting for Home Depot to have a 20% off sale.

I’m going to use Laurent for the front counter, it’s black with gold veins. I’ll be using Entzo for the back countertop. It’s white with gold veins.

I also plan to add rusted corrugated metal around the front counter, so the backside (or frontside on camera) is more finished. I grabbed them from Amazon for $27. They’re not as orange as I was hoping, but they’ll do.

I considered adding floating shelves and may do so in the future, but for now, I just have a couple of props on the counter for accent pieces. One is a metal cow, pig, chicken statue and the other is my logo plate from my Oklahoma Joes Bronco Pro.

Lighting equipment for a video studio

This is one of the most important factors to having a good video studio. You can make a really cheap backdrop look good with great lighting or really expensive furniture look bad with poor lighting.

Through my research, I learned that it’s good to use a 3-point lighting setup.

Key Light

You want a key light to be in front of you at about a 45-degree angle and above you pointing down.

I’m using the Westcott Solix Bi-Color 1-Light Kit with Apollo Orb and Stand. It’s $300 at B and H.

I had to watch this YouTube video to learn how to attach the Apollo Orb to the Solix light.

Key Light Settings:  I set the Solix light color to 56 and the intensity to 50.

When I’m facing the camera, I have a window to my left, so I have this key light to my right.

Fill Light

Because the key light is at an angle, it will cast some shadows on your face. A few shadows are good because you want depth, but you don’t want really harsh shadows. A fill light will help soften those.

If you have a window, you may not need a fill light.

I do have a window, but I found that I liked an additional fill light, too.

For this, I’m using a NEEWER BH30S Light Wand. It costs around $95 and runs on battery. It has so many amazing colors and settings, and you can control them all from an app on your phone, which is cool.

I have one light mounted vertically to a light stand that costs around $34.

It’s in front of me at a 45-degree angle on the opposite side as the key light. The height is pretty even to my eye level.

Fill Light Settings: I use the NEEWER app and choose the light sources tab and modeling lights. 

Back Lights

We talked about depth on our face, but we also want depth between us and the background. This is where background lights come in, and this is where you can have some fun with color.

You can use another NEEWER BH30S light and set it to virtually any color. In fact, in the app, you can point your phone to anything and grab the color.

Just go to the picker tab, point your camera to something, and tap to select. The brightness, hue and saturation levels will automatically adjust to match that color.

Once you have a color you like, tap the star. That marks it as a favorite.

In the future, you can just tap the bookmark icon to find your color. Once you tap your saved color, the light will adjust to match.

For my backdrop, the BH30S lights were a little too large, so I opted for the NEEWER TL96RGB handheld light wands. They cost around $60.

They’re also battery powered. You simply turn the light on and adjust the colors and intensity. Unfortunately, it doesn’t connect to the app, so you do have to do that manually.

I set these to orange (branding!!) and tuck them behind the props on my counter.

COSTS SO FAR: These lights cost $500, which puts my studio total at $1,800.

Audio setup for a podcast studio

While the lights are super important for video, having great quality audio can make or break a podcast.

I don’t recommend using the microphone built into your camera. Instead, go with a better quality microphone and external recording device.

The Shure SM7B Dynamic Vocal Microphone seems to be a top pick among podcasters. Now that I’ve been using it, I can see why.

At $400, it’s a big investment, but I’m really pleased with the high quality audio.

My microphone is mounted on a $25 desktop mic stand and connected to a CloudLifter CL-1 Mic Activator with XLR cables. It costs $155 and includes the cables.

The CloudLifter is optional, but it helps improve the signal-to-noise ratio, sending cleaner audio quality to the recording device.

The CloudLifter is then connected to a Zoom H6 with another XLR cable. The Zoom is $230.

It’s battery powered and records the digital audio onto a SD card. It has four inputs and tracks, so it will work great if you have multiple guests on your podcast.

For now, I’m recording a solo podcast, so I just plug the XLR into one track. I press that track button to make sure the red light is on. Then, I just push the record button.

Audio Setting: On my Zoom H6, I set my track volume to 6 and turn all other tracks to zero. I have the PAD set to 0. In the menu, I turned Phantom on, since I'm using the CloudLifter. The record format is set to 44.1kHz/16bit

Because my counter has drawers, I set my microphone on the counter and run the cable into the drawer where I have the Zoom and CloudLifter.

I recommend listening to your audio with a set of headphones, too. That way, you can make sure the sound quality is to your liking.

The Zoom has a 3.5 mm port for virtually any type of headphones.

I’m testing the Shure SE425 PRO Wired Earbuds. The sound quality is top notch, but the fit is a little odd for my ears, even with the different fittings. They cost $270. For a podcast and social videos, you can go with a much less expensive option.

COSTS SO FAR: The audio equipment, not including the headphones, was around $800. The total costs right now are at $2,600.

Camera options for a video podcast

As you can see the costs can add up quickly, and I haven’t even gotten to the camera, editing software or server storage yet.

If you want to get into this, you really need to be committed because it will take some time to get a good return on your investment.

Smartphone

When it comes to a camera, the least expensive option is to use your smartphone. Nowadays, they provide really good quality video, and you don’t have to worry about audio because you’re capturing that separately.

A con with a smartphone is that the rear camera is better than the front camera, so it’s best to face the rear camera toward you. But then, you can’t see the screen, so you can’t really see what you’re recording.

Fortunately, you can purchase an external camera monitor or buy software so you can use your iPad (if you have one) as an external monitor.

I didn’t go this route, so I can’t really recommend which equipment or software to buy.

DSLR Camera

For better quality, I recommend shooting your video with a DSLR camera. Nikon, Canon and Sony all sell great cameras. I’ve been a Nikon girl since I began shooting on film, so that’s what I use.

For food photography, I use a Nikon Z6II, but for my video studio, I use my Nikon Z30 Mirrorless Digital Camera with a 16-50mm lens. You can pick one up for around $700.

You will also need either an EN-EL25 battery charger and extra battery or a long UC-E24 cable to keep it plugged into the wall, so you don’t lose power. The batteries run about $57 each and the charger is $55.

I bought a five-pack of USB Type C to Type A cables, so I can keep my NEEWER light and camera plugged in. They cost $17.

And don’t forget the SD cards. You need one for the Zoom audio recorder and one for the camera. I use 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro cards. They’re about $25 each.

Monitor

Although the Nikon Z30 has a flip around screen, so you can see what you’re recording, it’s super tiny.

When I setup my monitor for the first time, I did a dance. I was so happy that I could see if I was in focus.

I went with the FEELWORLD FW279 7-inch 2200 Ultra Bright DSLR Monitor. It costs $260. You also need the FEELWORLD power supply, which is $20.

I have my camera on a tripod and the monitor mounts to the hot shoe on the camera. You can use any tripod. Mine costs $200 because I use it for other things, but this is an area where you can save some money.

One of the absolute coolest things about the monitor is that I can turn the grid on, which shows me a bunch of lines on the screen, including the zone I need to stay in for vertical video.

That means I can shoot horizontal video and crop later to vertical video without cropping out important areas.

COSTS SO FAR: The camera equipment I'm using, not counting the tripod costs are about $1,050. Therefore, the total costs to just build a video podcast studio like the one I designed is around $3,650. 

Editing software for video podcasts

Once you’re setup and start recording your videos, you’ll need a few tools to edit them and publish them to the web.

There are several video editing options out there. I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of each one. This is a BBQ website, not a software website. I’m just going to share what I use.

I have a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud and use Premiere Pro for editing video. It is a rather advanced software program, but it’s getting easier every day.

Now, you can import your audio and video files and synchronize them with a push of a button.

The software will also transcribe the audio into text, and you can then edit using the text instead of the video clips.

Plus, you can push all of that transcription into captions and style those captions to match your brand. There are a ton of tutorials within the app, which costs $59.99-$89.99 per month.

A bonus is that this software comes several other programs, including PhotoShop and Lightroom, which is what I use for photo editing, and Audition, which is great for just audio editing.

Publishing your podcast

In order for your podcast to go to Apple, Spotify and all the places, you have to host it somewhere.

After you edit it and export a video format and audio format, you need to publish it.

Again, there are a lot of options out there. I chose to go with Libsyn.

As of writing this post, my podcast is brand new, so I can’t really outline the pros and cons. The service came highly recommended from some podcast friends, and I’m pleased with how easy their drag and drop interface is to use. They also have a lot of easy-to-follow tutorials.

It looks like it’s only going to be $20 a month for audio. I simply upload my artwork, descriptions and audio files to their site and they take care of pushing it to all the big podcast companies.

It will take a few weeks for the big podcast platforms like Apple, Spotify and iHeart Radio to accept it, so plan ahead for that.

I also publish a video version of my podcast, which is why I built the entire video studio. For this, I’m starting with the YouTube podcast platform, which is free.

Libsyn also offers a video podcast publishing service, but I’m not ready to jump on that yet.

Total costs for building a video studio

I know I just dumped a ton of information on you. If you’re still with me at this point, you must be committed to starting something exciting.

Setting up a legit video recording studio is going to cost you close to $4,000.

• $1,300 for the custom-painted backdrop
• $500 for lighting
• $800 for audio equipment
• $1,050 for camera equipment
• $110 for editing and publishing software

There are areas where you can save money and build up to the higher-end stuff, but it’s definitely an investment.

If you found this information helpful and used it to start your YouTube Channel or setup a home podcast studio, I’d love to see your setup. Please comment below with your link, so I can check it out.