My Pandemic Zoom Setup

Now that everyone is spending many of their waking hours in Zoom, a lot of people are laughing at, and then asking me about, my Zoom setup. It’s actually not all that elaborate. I know many people with much more elaborate setups. Still, for a simple upgrade to the mic and camera that come with your laptop, here are the two pieces of gear I use.

For a microphone, I use a Blue Yeti USB mic. I bought mine years and years ago now, during one of Amazon's Black Friday deals, or maybe it was a Prime Day sale, some window where they were discounted heavily (they retail now for $130). I had grand visions of using at the time, but then I put it on a shelf and didn't even remember I owned one until I did Ben Thompson's Stratechery Daily Podcast last week.

From a setup perspective, the mic is nearly plug-and-play as it comes with a USB-A cable (you'll need an adapter if your laptop only has USB-C ports, like my Macbook Pro). After you've plugged it in, on a Mac you need to go into System Preferences and then Sound and select it in the dropdown box in the Input tab. If you want to plug headphones into your mic, as I do, to listen to your Zoom call, go into the Output menu also to select the mic.

Audio quality is one of those subtle things that makes a world of difference to the quality of a video chat. If you'll be doing a lot of Zooms moving forward, this is a sound investment (pun intended, obvi). There is such a thing as audio fatigue, at least for me; the better the audio, the more pleasant a Zoom is, and the longer I can tolerate it.

The Blue Yeti looks vintage and professional and feels hefty; you'll fancy yourself a radio DJ. Every time I'm planted in front of it, I'm tempted to read a dedication: "This is The Glory of Love by Peter Cetera, and it goes out to Shannon in Ridgewood. Shannon, Tyler wants you to know that even in this pandemic when you two are apart, he scrolls through your photos on his phone to remind himself of the glory of your love."

It has a hardware mute button which I use quite often. For large group Zooms I recommend everyone mute themselves and press the spacebar when they want to talk. This keeps background chatter to a minimum. However, if you don't want to fuss with the spacebar, a mute button on the mic comes in handy.

The next upgrade I recommend, though I'd still rank it behind a microphone upgrade, is to spring for a separate webcam. Most laptop cameras, especially those on Mac laptops, aren't that high quality. The one I use is the Logitech C920S HD Pro Webcam. On Amazon you have to press the Privacy Model option button to get the C920S; the original model is the C920. Either works; the privacy model comes with a clip-on plastic cover, but if can only find the C920 right now you can easily rig up a makeshift shutter cover.

I don't find the upgrade as stark as the improvement in sound quality from the microphone upgrade, but it's definitely noticeable, especially in more varied lighting conditions. Since it can stand on its own or clip to another surface like your laptop cover, you can position it for the most flattering camera angle on your face (a camera that looks down on your face is generally more flattering than a camera that looks up on your face and accentuates your chin(s)).

As I'm writing this, the C920S is out of stock on Amazon. I assume a lot of people snagged one as they realized how many Zoom calls they'd be on during shelter in place. Other stores likely have faster shipping times now anyway given that Amazon is prioritizing essential shipments during this pandemic surge in their order volume.

Out of curiosity, I checked Wirecutter, and the Blue Yeti USB Mic and Logitech 920S happen to be their recommendations for USB microphone and webcam also.

Call me Nostradamus

When Meerkat and then Periscope had the tech world buzzing about live video streaming through mobile phones, I wrote a piece on how the live video streaming space would play out. One bullet in that timeline:

27. Facebook adds a live video streaming button to its app, then shortly after that spins it out into a separate app altogether. They name it Live, and some other company that launched an app called Live that did the same thing a year earlier complains that Facebook stole their name, but no one really pays any attention.
 

From TechCrunch:

Before Periscope and Meerkat jumpstarted the mobile live-streaming craze, Facebook was already quietly working on its own way to let public figures broadcast live videos to their fans. Today, Facebook is launching “Live” as a feature in its Mentions app that’s only available to celebrities with a verified Page.
 
VIPs can start a Live broadcast that’s posted to the News Feed, watch comments overlaid in real-time on their stream, and then make the recording permanently available for viewing. Stars like The Rock and Serena Williams will stream today.
 

Okay, so maybe no one is giving Facebook guff about the name, but I'm still going to give myself a partial high five.

In a post about Venmo and payments as a social network in April, I wrote:

Speaking of the pile of poop emoji, it seems only a matter of time until someone releases an app that allows you to broadcast when you are taking a poop. It should be a mobile app just called Poop. I leave it to the design geniuses at Apple to figure out what type of haptic feedback a poop notification should emit on the Apple Watch.
 

From Mashable this past Friday:

A new chat app called Pooductive aims to create a miniature social network specifically for anyone who gets bored while they are doing a number two, and want to talk to people in the same position.
 
Created by two student developers, the free iPhone app, which began life as a failed Kickstarter, facilitates one-on-one or group chats based on your location. You can choose to message people nearby or be connected with users in other cities or countries.
 
"The fact that there is only little to do whilst tending to ‘number two’ is common knowledge, and truly a first world problem," the developers write on Pooductive's website.
 

Poop is clearly a superior name to Pooductive, so the only reason I didn't nail the name yet again was poor branding instincts on the part of the developers. The sample screenshots of the app in the iTunes App Store are something for the archives, someone actually dreamt up this imaginary chat between two people sitting on the toilet.

I honestly don't know which prediction I'm prouder of.

Vertical video

The shift also shows off the way that opinions of tech elites can be rendered moot by mainstream preferences. So, whether you are shooting a home video or something for work, you can safely ignore the puppets. To shoot vertically isn’t to be exposed as a tech ignoramus or a lazy philistine who cares little for the creative process. Rather it is to be on the vanguard of a novel and potentially far-reaching artistic trend.
 
The arguments against vertical video all seek to find something inviolable about images that play out horizontally before our eyes. “We live in a horizontal world, and most action happens from left to right,” said Mr. Bova, one of the men behind the puppet P.S.A. He added that “vertical videos feel claustrophobic,” because often they feature one or two people occupying the full frame, and not much of the landscape to show what lies beyond. Finally, Mr. Bova said, “our eyes are horizontal,” by which he meant the human field of vision is wider than it is tall, so it is only natural that our videos match that shape.
 
There is a simple rejoinder to his argument: Our eyes may be horizontal, but our hands are best suited to holding objects vertically, which is why phones, tablets and, in the predigital age, our books and other documents were usually oriented in portrait mode. Watching horizontal video on a phone’s vertical screen is a minor annoyance. With a horizontal video, you have to awkwardly flip your phone sideways so the entire image fills the screen, or you can keep your phone vertical and tolerate the huge black bars displayed above and below the picture.
 

So writes Farhad Manjoo in the NYTimes. Let's throw this in the category of contrarian pieces that are actually just wrong.

Just like professional photographers will turn their camera vertically from time to time, the lens orientation should match the subject. I would not want to watch a mumblecore movie in a Panavision 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio, but for Lawrence of Arabia, the Super Panavision 2.20 to 1 widescreen aspect ratio was crucial to the feeling of the feeling of people against the open expanse of the desert (and it amplifies Lawrence as a great man to see him wield his force of personality against such a broad canvas).

Sure, sometimes shooting vertically on your phone allows you to get closer to your subject, like the baby's first steps mentioned in the piece. However, for most subjects, horizontal is better. Human field of vision is horizontal, and it feels claustrophobic to watch vertical video for long period of time, it's like looking through the vertical slats in a fence.

For a Snap or a Vine, sure, I don't really care that much, neither do most people. Most of those are shot spontaneously, without much regard for the background, and it actually feels more unnatural or artificial if the video is horizontal since you know people usually hold their phones vertically. The vertical orientation suits the casual, disposable nature of those videos and subjects. The rise in vertical video reflects the rise of those networks and the rise of the mobile phone, but it doesn't signal some fundamental change in the difference between the suitability of horizontal versus vertical video.

Yesterday I watched this remarkable eyewitness video of the explosion in Tianjin China. It's stunning, but I couldn't help thinking two things watching it. One: stop filming and get to safety! Two: I wish it was shot horizontally.

Elmo's arrival points to HBO's future

Sesame Street announced a new five season deal with HBO. The seasons will be available exclusively on HBO for nine months before dropping at PBS.

This is HBO pursuing the Netflix, Amazon Video, and Hulu strategy instead of the reverse, the latter three all offer or plan to offer original children's programming. HBO has never had kids programming, and this move is a clear acknowledgment that they view themselves as a mini-bundle in and of themselves, more so than a channel carried by the traditional cable bundle.

HBO was once content to be a brand that stood for movie titles from the Warner Bros. catalog and boxing. Then it offered some comedy, and then original series, most of it targeted towards an adult demographic. HBO has had some great original series over the years, but it's fair to characterize their house style as having a fair bit of sex and nudity along with a fair dose of profanity and violence. They told us “It's not TV. It's HBO.” but if you watched any of their series you weren't likely to confuse the two.

What they didn't offer was family or children's programming. The money was coming in by the truckload, especially during the heyday of DVD, so it wasn't as if HBO felt a great sense of urgency to diversify its subscriber base.

Then came Netflix, which doesn't have a house style. Rather, they have more of a technology companies approach to content and growth: why put artificial limits on your own growth? The limit on entertainment subscription service growth is a function of the diversity and quality of their content portfolio. To acquire a subscriber, you need enough content to entice that person to become a subscriber. Then you need enough interesting content each month to keep them from canceling (that's the main reason subscription services like HBO don't release all their series at the same time of the year).

Once you have enough content to acquire and keep one type of subscriber, the marginal return on your next dollar of content is higher if you produce content that appeals to another type of subscriber. That's the Netflix strategy. If you look at all their original series, they are all over the map in genre, style, tone. They want to offer something for everyone so their subscriber base can include anyone.

[Amazon Prime is an even more bizarre subscription because it includes not just video but free expedited shipping, Amazon music, unlimited photo storage, e-book lending libraries, Amazon-branded everyday essentials, cheaper shipping on groceries, and a personal drone for dropping your kids off at school. I made one of those up, but it might be part of Prime next year.]

And now HBO is following suit. The next step for HBO is to let its original series spill out from Sunday night. If you read the Hollywood Reporter or another industry rag, you'll no doubt have heard of HBO passing on quite a few original series recently. Some of that could be creative differences, but if any of it is HBO limiting themselves to what they can fit in their Sunday night time slots, they're imposing yet another artificial limit on themselves that makes no sense in this streaming, time-shifted age. If HBO Now is the future, at some point it shouldn't even matter if some content on HBO Now never airs on their cable channel, especially if it's something like Sesame Street which would seem out of place on a cable channel chock full of mature content. The MSO's wouldn't love that, and perhaps HBO would just tack on another channel like HBO Family, but they should be willing to consider any concessions to their linear channel to be a strategy tax.

...

Since Twitter has largely replaced late-night talk-show monologues as the joke factory on the day's news, I enjoyed this roundup of humorous tweets riffing off of the HBO and Sesame Street deal.

Information previews in modern UI's

[I don't know if Facebook invented this (and if they didn't, I'm sure one of my readers will alert me to who did), but it's certainly the service which has used it to greatest effect which I suppose is the case for anything they put to use given their scale.]

One problem with embedded videos as opposed to text online has always been the high cost of sampling the video. Especially for interviews, I'd almost always rather just have the transcript than be forced to wade through an entire video. Scanning text is more efficient than scanning online video.

Facebook has, for some time now, autoplayed videos in the News Feed with the audio on mute. Not only does it catch your eye, it automatically gives you a motion preview of the video itself (without annoying you with the audio), thus lowering the sampling cost. To play the video, you click on it and it activates the audio. I'm sure the rollout of this UI change increased video clicks in the News Feed quite a bit. Very clever. I've already seen this in many mobile apps and expect it to become a standard for video online.

[It's trickier when videos include pre-roll ads; it's not a great user experience to be enticed to watch a video by an autoplayed clip, then to be dropped into an ad as soon as you act on your interest.]

Someday, the autoplayed samples could be even smarter; perhaps the video uploader could define in and out points for a specific sample, or perhaps the algorithm which selects the sample could be smarter about the best moment to select.

It's not just video where sampling costs should be minimized. Twitter shows a title, image, and excerpts for some links in its Timelines, helping you to preview what you might get for clicking on the link. They show these for some but not all links. I suspect they'd increase clickthroughs on those links quite a bit if they were more consistent in displaying those preview Twitter cards.

Business Insider and Buzzfeed linkbait-style headlines are a text analogue, albeit one with a poor reputation among some. Given the high and increasing competition for user attention at every waking moment, it's not clear that services can leave any such tactical stones unturned.