This episode is all about the tools and tips for organizing hybrid events. Have fun listening.
Further links
Introduction
Nice to have you back for another episode of Digital4Productivity and I was very pleased that the relaunched version of the podcast not only made it into the top 26 in the first week, not just the top 100, but, as I said, 26th place.
Today’s topic
Yes, thank you very much for always listening so diligently. And as promised, you’ll always get practical experience and tips from the things I’ve experienced. And this episode is about exactly that, because I’m attending an event on Saturday with the German Speakers Association. That’s the speakers’ association in which I’m also active as a speaker. And we had a speaker here, Silvie di Gusto from the USA, who gave a workshop on international speaking. And now we had the situation here that we had 15 people in the room and 15 people wanted to be connected again via Zoom. So, as I always say, face-to-face events have a certain level of audience that you can reach, and you can often reach even more participants if you add online/hybrid events. Now you can do the whole thing in a highly elaborate way using live streaming systems or you can also do it very simply with Zoom. And as you know, one of my mottos is to simply use technology and that’s why I would like to tell you live, behind the scenes, how I realized this with the simplest means. Yes, first of all, if you are the person who is supposed to do something like this, you should ideally always make sure that you do it with your system in the first step. So please don’t rely on what hardware or software the speaker brings along, but have the slides given to you in advance. And then you can test everything on your system. Because then someone comes along with an ancient MacBook Air, which only has one port, which perhaps still has some old software somewhere and then none of it works because it is so underpowered or there are some driver problems, or fonts are not on it. Yes, then, if you have slides given to you, or even if you pass on slides, I always recommend that you work with PowerPoint if possible, regardless of whether you work with a Mac or a PC. I received a Keynote presentation from my colleague. I have a Mac now, so I can work with Keynote a bit. But if you have someone who doesn’t have a Mac, then it will be difficult with Keynote. Powerpoint works on both Mac and Apple. So now on Mac and on PC. Now we had the additional challenge that my colleague had three fonts in her presentation that I don’t have on my computer. When you open the presentation in Keynote, you get a message that the corresponding fonts are missing and you are offered to replace them with other fonts. This usually not only looks silly, but also often means that the current font no longer fits, i.e. the breaks no longer fit. But the good thing is that Keynote also shows you which fonts are missing and then you simply have to google for the fonts, download them, and if you double-click on them, the Mac will ask you whether you want to install these fonts. And once you’ve installed them, it works. Fonts are also generally often the reason why slides don’t look right. Yes, another reason for me to work with PowerPoint, by the way, because in PowerPoint, both on the Mac and on the PC, you have the option of embedding the fonts when you save a PowerPoint presentation. And that has a huge advantage. As a speaker, I often simply hand over slides on a USB stick, for example. I always save them in such a way that I have generally set the PowerPoint options to embed the fonts. And this has the huge advantage that the person no longer has to install the font. And not everyone can just install fonts.
If they are also paid fonts – I have a few, including paid fonts – then perhaps not everyone wants to buy them again. In addition, too many fonts on a computer also put a strain on performance. So you don’t want to have too many fonts on your computer that you don’t need. So that’s another reason why I always say it’s better to work with PowerPoint. Yes, but it also works with Keynote in the end. You may have heard me in the previous episodes in November and December, where I put Keynote and PowerPoint up against each other a bit. Yes, if you have a projector or, in this case, a monitor, then you should always set the screen so that it is not mirrored, but expanded. Then you should have two things with you. Firstly, you should have your own HDMI cable, because the cable we had on site was a bit short. The second thing that is always good to have with you is gaffa tape, black textured adhesive tape. You can use it to tape cables that you have laid on the floor so that you don’t trip over them. Yes, then we started the presentation accordingly. You have to be careful. With Keynote, the first thing I did was start Keynote and tell it to present, and then I was really struggling because I tried to switch back to Zoom using the command tab here and that didn’t work. So I realized that I work more often with PowerPoint. There you can say wonderfully, with Alt+Tabulator I switch back to the zoom call, then give exactly this screen where I have the presentation on it or the window accordingly. This works in Keynote. But then you have to activate in the settings that you don’t go to full screen, and then there is a second small presenter window that you can display in the settings, where you can always see the last slide, the current slide, the current and the next slide, and if this window is activated, you can also click on it. Yes, now you want to see the corresponding presentation on the second monitor, which was the projector or the monitor. Now, if you continue clicking, you can do that with a laser pointer. The only problem is that if you have a laser pointer and you have a monitor, you can’t see it in the room. Not to mention that you can see it online when you show something. There is a trick and that is, what I recommend is the Logitech Spotlight Presenter and this presenter, as well as the other accessories that I’m discussing with you here, you can also find them in the show notes. Just click to say please on the link to the show notes and then an e-mail will be automatically generated to me and then you will receive exactly all the links from me by e-mail.
So you don’t have to download anything complicated, I’ll simply email it to you, or you can write an email to t.jekel@jekelteam.de. Many of you know me anyway and have saved an e-mail address, just send me an e-mail if you want to get input from me. And this Logitech Spotlight Presenter has the charm that I can say I can do forward, I can do backward, the other clickers can do that too. But then I have the option of either having a virtual flashlight on the screen, where I then have a flashlight symbol. You can also see this on monitors, or I can set it so that when I tap the top button twice, it switches to a red dot. And this red dot is controlled by software, you have to install software for this. That’s why I say again, use your own computer, because you can install the software beforehand. I also had an update of this Logitech Spotlight software the day before. You can do all that beforehand. You should also check everything beforehand! Yes, and then there’s the next trick. If you then release it in Zoom, you have to do two things. The first thing you should always do is to check the box at the bottom so that the sound is also transmitted. And if you have videos in there, then you should also say optimize for video. Then the whole thing runs a little more smoothly, is a little less sharp, but smooth and the tick for the sound is important. Now, when you do this sharing in Zoom, the next important thing is that you don’t share the presentation window, but the entire screen. If you only share the window of the PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, you won’t see this software-generated flashlight effect or this red dot as a clicker or laser pointer. And when you say I’m sharing the screen, you can see that too. So that’s how you present it. And if you want to have my website in between, then you can also do the browser on the same screen and then simply have it in the background so that you can switch back and forth accordingly. And if you don’t have Keynote in full screen, then you can do that just fine. So it works well this way.
The picture
The next question is, how do you get the image in? Of course, one option is to simply put a notebook there, use the webcam or put a webcam on top. Yes, the only problem is that, as a rule, when you look into this camera, you are not looking into the audience, which is not so good. Now there is a simple solution and a more complicated solution. I’ll give you the simplest solution, which I’ve also used a few times before. You use Logitech C920 as a webcam. You need it without having to install any software, you can simply connect it via USB. It’s recognized everywhere. And it doesn’t have such a long USB cable, but you can simply order a USB cable extension from Amazon or your trusted retailer. I’ll also include the link here, and then you can simply extend the cable by 2 – 3 meters and put this webcam on a tripod. Because it has a thread at the bottom, so you can put it on there. And then you can put it in the room a bit and then you can look into the audience and look into the camera from time to time. And on Saturday, for example, we had a U-shaped seating arrangement and then I placed the camera roughly in the middle of this U, a little to one side, and then you automatically looked into the camera from time to time when you were looking around. Now there’s the next stage, which I used, and what I used was a so-called PTZ camera. And PTZ stands for pan, tilt and zoom. So with pan, tilt and zoom, there’s another simple option, if you’re working with the Logitech, there’s a Telesin tracking tripod. It’s a small round knob, about the diameter of a Coca-Cola can, half the height, with a thread at the bottom and a thread at the top, which you can attach to this tripod. You can then put the Logitech C920 on it and the nice thing is that you don’t need an app for it, but the thing has a camera look at the front and you have a small remote control and you can either turn this camera manually with the remote control or alternatively you can tap a button and then this thing follows you automatically. In other words, the camera follows you automatically or you can turn it accordingly using the remote control. This also works with the Logitech C920. Yes, what I did. I used a so-called PTZ camera, a PTZ is a pan, tilt and zoom and I used a USB PTZ camera and the one I used is the Celexon FullHD video conferencing camera VK1080. And it has several advantages for me. I’ve been looking for it for a long time and, firstly, it’s very, very compact. In other words, not quite as compact as an Insta360 or a Tiny Obsbod. But still relatively compact. So the diameter is roughly like a CD at the bottom of the round base, and the whole thing sits on top of that. And that’s why I opted for it.
Firstly, it is compact. Secondly, you can easily connect it via USB. So you don’t need an ATEM Mini or any other kind of video mixer, you just connect the whole thing via USB, connect it to power and then you have a remote control. You should always remember to pack fresh batteries. It’s happened to me that the batteries were full and I didn’t have any new batteries with me. Fortunately, I thought of that this time, put fresh batteries in and then you have a remote control where you can pinch, tilt and zoom this camera. In other words, you can zoom in and out. And this camera has an optical zoom, which is always very important, because many cameras now have digital zoom. This means that if you zoom in on the whole thing, you have a really big optical zoom. You have a tenfold optical zoom, which gives you very good quality, because the resolution of the cameras is FullHD, not 4K, but the fact that you have a tenfold zoom means that in practice it’s enough to allow you to do things without loss. And a zoom only eats 27 anyway, so no FullHD at all, other systems too, so from the side, you now have a professional account, a company account with at least ten accounts, then you can even have the zoom account set to Full HD. But 4K doesn’t work anyway. So that’s all you need. The whole thing is simply connected via USB and is immediately recognized as a webcam. And then you have a remote control. You can then use this remote control to rotate, zoom and tilt the camera. You can pan and you can zoom, pan, tilt and zoom. But you also have the option of setting positions beforehand. And that’s what I did, or I actually always do, so that I have a position. You often have a high table with a laptop on it. You have a projector or monitor in the middle and then a flipchart on the other side. And I always have the first position where you can see the flipchart, the monitor in the middle and the high table, which is usually where the speaker is. The second position is just the speaker. The third position is just the flipchart. The fourth, fifth and sixth positions are three excerpts from the audience. And the nice thing is that even if there are questions from the audience, you can also pan to the audience, for example, or say in between times when there is a discussion or a video is being shared, that you can also pan to the audience so that you can see the participants, just like in a real training session. That’s why the camera pan, tilt and zoom. The camera is also relatively affordable, costing €327. Unfortunately, it does not have automatic tracking. On the other hand, if you’re running back and forth very quickly, constant tracking like this can sometimes be unsettling. Then it is sometimes better to have a larger section and to run within this section accordingly. Of course, you can also add the whole thing to the telesin. That’s a bit borderline because the camera is then almost too heavy for it, but if you align it very straight, you can even use this audio tracking function of the Telesin again (…). Since I walk back and forth a lot when I give presentations and most people do the same, I find this constant camera tracking almost a bit too hectic. So I’m not at all unhappy that this auto-follow function is there. I don’t miss it that much. So that brings you to the subject of the image. The important thing is, that’s the difference with an optical zoom, that you don’t get pixelated, and a tenx optical zoom is also good enough for most situations. I usually saw the camera at an angle to the left of me as the speaker. Not right at the edge, but still, if you have U-shaped seating, it’s great to have it inside the U, because when you look at the participants, you automatically look at the camera from time to time, or when you look at the camera, you automatically feel like you’re looking at the participants. If you have it all to the side, you always have to decide whether to look into the camera, i.e. at the external participants, or at those present. That’s why I’m always a big fan of U-shaped seating and I’m a big fan of putting a bit of the center into the “U”. And, of course, masking, and if you don’t have electricity on site, it’s always important to take an extension cable with you. You can also take extension cables for the electricity. I always do. Multiple sockets, small ones, like three, which are available in every DIY store. And you can also work with the camera with a power bank, which then has a bit more oomph and I’ll also provide you with links.
The sound
Yes, now we’ve talked about how the picture comes in. The next topic is how the sound comes in. And as you know, you can watch a bad picture for hours, but you can’t listen to bad sound for that long. Now you have a second challenge. And that is, if you have an audience, questions from the audience, then you can hear that in the room, but the external people can’t hear it if it’s not supported by a microphone. That’s why I always recommend working with two microphones and with two microphones, there’s the Rode Wireless Go 2, where you have one receiver and two transmitters. I work with a different microphone system. But ultimately it has the same basic idea, the same basic idea that you say I have two microphones to clip on and I have one receiver. And I work with the Comica wireless microphone, with the VDLive10. And you can connect it via USB-C to the Mac or PC and then you have two microphones that you can then connect wirelessly, you can just click one to the lavalier, clip it to the speaker. And by the way, there’s another trick here, if you clip it outside, you sometimes have the disadvantage that it’s not so nice, because you can also clip it to the lavalier inside, then you don’t see it like that, you just have to be careful if it’s very tight, firstly that you don’t somehow produce a dent again and secondly you have to be careful that it doesn’t rustle. If you have a tie or rustling clothes, it’s sometimes better to have them on the outside. And you usually forget this lapel microphone very quickly, or if you know it beforehand, then you wear black or dark blue, then you don’t necessarily see this dark microphone. Alternatively, you can also attach an extra microphone to it, as there is also a plug. If you also use the Rode Wireless Go, you can attach a DPA headset to it or there is an alternative headset, which is also available from Rode. You have a bit more room on it, but it’s a whole lot cheaper. So that means I’m just having another look at what they say about microphones and headsets, let’s have a look, I don’t have them to hand at the moment, but I’ll be happy to give them to you later. I’m having another look here, but now I’ve found it here. The Rode HS2headset is a headset that is significantly cheaper than the DPA, because if I look now, a DPA like the one I have costs around €1,000 with all the accessories. And that makes sense if, like me, you regularly perform on big stages and want to have your own headset with you that sounds very, very good. But for €265 including VAT, you can even get a Rohde HS2P. It’s a headset in beige colors, which you can also attach to the Rode Wireless Go, for example, and I’ll also include the two links. I like this Comica a little better. It costs 135 €. It has two big advantages for me. Firstly, it has a box so that you can load it straight away, where everything is together. Secondly, it has an optional return channel. This means that if you want to use it for recording somewhere and you are not directly at the computer or you want to communicate wirelessly with someone via Zoom, then you also have a socket and then you can plug in headphones and then you can say, okay, with the headphones you can also listen to what is being said on the computer, so that’s why Comica. And then there’s the question of how to use the lavalier… And now it’s a bit silly to hold such a small clamp thing in your hand. There’s a flash bar and that’s a standard part that I’m happy to link to you. And you can simply push it onto this flash bar and click it on, and then you have a small metal rod, 15 centimeters long, which gives you a microphone. It’s important that when it’s not in use, it’s lying around somewhere, that you somehow switch it to the middle, that it’s off and when spoken to it’s up. Sometimes it’s a bit of a sport, so ideally there should be someone who takes care of the microphone. And you also have to moderate at the beginning by saying, people, please remember that we can all hear each other here in the room, but the participants will only hear the questions if you do this with the microphone. If someone chats in anyway, it is important that the speaker repeats the question again, because this microphone is open. Yes then, if there are videos in the presentation, always test them. Secondly, what I always recommend is, for example, we had video interviews here and we had two small sticking points. One was that the speaker had two video interviews on one slide and then sometimes she only wanted to have the second one on the slide. But now the animation was like this, the moment the first video wasn’t through and she clicked on it, the first one ran through and the second one also started and then the sound practically went twice. And so it’s important that ideally, if you have several videos, you only have one video per page, because then I know, okay, when I go to the next slide, the first video is definitely not running anymore. So that’s why it’s always recommended not to have several videos on it. The next thing is with video interviews, you can record them using Zoom. I tend to recommend Riverside. Riverside has the great advantage that it is a solution that achieves significantly better quality. And how does it do that? The idea is that Riverside records sound and image on both sides. Also in FullHD. And then uploads it in the background, even during the interview. And then you can download different layouts or even the individual images afterwards with the original sound in a very high quality and then edit them afterwards. There is also echo suppression.
There is also a setting that normalizes it if there are different volume levels. For example, we had a situation in some interviews where the interviewer was much louder than the interviewee and this can be eliminated accordingly. And if you have interviews with different volumes, different videos, then there is another tool that I also highly recommend. I run everything that is video and sound through it anyway, it’s called Auphonic. And Auphonic is a web-based service. You can upload an audio or video file and then it reduces all the noise, crackers and whatnot. And a very important function is that it normalizes the audio levels. Because I had a situation where I was always turning the volume up and down on the speaker so that it was more or less normal in the room. I hadn’t leveled up the different videos in advance because it was a bit, I’ll say, close in time. There wasn’t enough time. If you do it yourself, use Auphonic, have it chased through beforehand, ideally record it with Riverside. I recommend this, then you’ve already done it that way and with Aufphonic it also compensates for differences in volume. And even if they are too loud or too quiet, it will bring them down to a normal level. By the way, if you record such things, which you can do, then there is always the option of recording them locally, which I always recommend, as this gives you a higher quality and then you can also run the zoom recording through Auphnic again afterwards. If you are in a position to do this in the office, where you have more technology at your disposal – I was on the road at the time, so I just did it with Zoom – then you can also work with eCam, for example, or with another streaming solution. And with eCam, you can send a processed image into Zoom as a virtual camera. And when I do something like this when I’m in the office, I always do it in such a way that I make a local recording in eCam straight away. You can also do it this way if you set up the sound with Loop Back, for example, so that you say that the sound from Zoom is also played back into the program and you record the audio in isolation. Solutions like eCam, for example, can do this, so you also have the soundtrack from the zoom and don’t have the images from the zoom. And that has a big advantage. Above all, I often have this in-house, where there is a requirement that the participants must not be visible. But the rest please yes, and of course I want to have the sound for questions. I would be happy to do another episode on this. It’s more relevant if you’re doing online formats and don’t want a lot of post-production afterwards.
But you can also, if you say you have a hybrid scenario, which you often have in your office, in your company, then you can build something a bit more efficient, you can do something like that. Now I was on the road, it was important to me to make it as lean as possible. I just put the camera in, took the zoom recording and then ran it through Auphonic afterwards, because the videos were much louder than the speaker who was talking, so you just have to be a bit more careful afterwards. Auphonic is a great way to get that to the same level. And then perhaps another tip for making the videos smaller is a solution called Handbrake. It’s free for Mac and for video, so you can make videos smaller without any real loss of quality visible to the human eye and you can make them significantly smaller. Yes, we had videos that we wanted to listen to in the room. I have a Bose Soundlink Mini 2 speaker for this. You can connect it via Bluetooth and via cable, as my cameraman and editor Michael Nirwald always says so nicely – wireless makes wireless. With this in mind, I always recommend connecting it via a jack cable. That’s what I did in this case. And the only important thing is that when you’re showing videos, I have the speaker’s microphone on the Comica receiver, there’s a mute button, and I’ve pressed it and muted it accordingly. Otherwise there is always the risk that the sound will come in again via the microphone. Zoom is relatively good, but depending on how good the line is, and in the worst case scenario, both microphones may be open, which are very far apart. Then, in the worst case, the sound might even come in three times, slightly delayed via the two microphones and then again via the release. So I don’t recommend that. Yes, if you have a speaker who should ideally always be visible, I always recommend spotlighting them in Zoom. Spotlight means that they are in the spotlight for everyone. So you can of course highlight someone for yourself, but spotlighting means that they are always visible to everyone. If there is always a recording at the top right, always visible by default, then it is not the case that this image always jumps back and forth in the recording. So maybe that’s another little tip on this topic. Yes, what else did I have? I had a little glitch at the beginning, where the camera kept switching off from time to time, and then I realized, oh, I had too much connected to a USB hub. So if you have a computer with several USB ports, then ideally you should have the camera on its own port and I just have a short adapter cable like this, for example, where I have USB-A to USB-C.
So there is no longer a hub, but just a practical cable extension that converts from the large USB to the small USB-C, if you still have a computer with the large USB ports, then of course you don’t need this conversion. So don’t use too much of an adapter is another tip. That’s what I’ve seen from my own experience. Yes, I think I’ve covered the most important topics that we have to do with the possibility of taking others with us. In training situations, if you want to take several things with you, then I often use a video mixer where I have several things on it. So I have another video mixer where I can connect my iPad, my iPhone and another document camera via HDMI. So that’s something you can use again accordingly. I use and I’m looking again at video mixers including accessories to make sure I’m using the right one here, namely theFeelworld L2. And the Feelworld L2 is relatively inexpensive. What does it cost? 530 euros. That’s a very reasonable price compared to other video mixers. And it has an integrated monitor. This means that you can even see what you have connected to the four sources via the integrated monitor. And in some cases I have an iPhone, an iPad with a short HDMI cable with the adapters on it and an IPEVO document camera for those who like to draw something or who perhaps say, I want people to see what I’m doing with my fingers on the iPad or on the iPhone. And here, of course, you could also bring in another computer with a PowerPoint presentation or an iPad with a PowerPoint presentation, because then you don’t always have to switch between the different shares, you just tap on it and can switch between the different shares. That’s what I do when I do iPad training, iPhone training. Then I have my iPad, iPhone and document camera on there and can do these things, so I always use the three of the four accordingly. You could even add a camera if you wanted to. But I usually do it in such a way that I say I have the camera in the USB as a webcam and then I have the release again via this separate image mixer. But these are options again. I didn’t use it at the weekend either. So at the weekend I just have the camera, then this two microphone set and if you switch back and forth a lot, then it’s also a good recommendation to use a stream deck.
Because in Zoom I have the possibility to record key combinations for muting, for example as a throat clearing button, on a stream deck and then you can do something like that, I also have that in my office, where I say I have Zoom and then I can say here in Zoom, I can look at the list of participants, the chat, I can mute everyone, I can switch on the audio, I can switch my microphone on and off, switch my camera on and off and I’ve even included a few sound effects here, so that’s another option that you have. But you don’t necessarily need it.
Conclusion
Yes, I hope I was able to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how you can make hybrids not so complicated. Now you say, wait a minute, so with video mixers and whatnot, I hope you can say this abstractly, ah, I’ve understood, there’s a simple option and there are a few more options. You can also read the whole thing again at your leisure, of course. As always, there is also a blog post about it here. Either on my site Digital4Productivity.de or simply on Blog you can see that, or in the show notes, tap on it in the episode show notes, then an e-mail goes to me and then you simply get an e-mail with the information. Yes, by the way, I also have a Q&A session once a month where you can always ask me questions. And if you’re on the mailing list, you’ll always be informed when the time comes. So if you haven’t signed up yet, just tap on it and say, “Gee, I’d like to be added to the mailing list too.” Then you’ll always get the latest dates when there’s another free Q&A session. By the way, if you also have questions as a podcast listener, just click on the link and you’ll receive an e-mail where you can ask me your questions and I’m always happy to receive questions, suggestions and additions. And I look forward to seeing you again next week when it’s time to be more productive with technology. Because simply using technology is the other thing. And you’ll hear the first sentence in the closing credits. See you next time. Yours, Thorsten Jekel
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