Everything on this page is free and stays free. We publish it because most people reading it cannot afford to hire us yet, and the ones who can would rather see the working than take our word for it.
Take the plots, the wiring and the settings below and build your own room. Then use the kit list, which starts at a two-microphone setup for about $3,400 — buy the audio first and add a camera when the show earns it.
We spec your actual room: a lighting plot drawn to your dimensions and ceiling height, the signal flow, a gear list inside your budget, and the order to buy it in. You or your contractor install it. Useful when you have hands but not the specification.
We spec it, source it, rig it, wire it, commission it and hand you a room that works — then train your crew to run it. This is what we do inside client offices and studios across California.
Once a room exists, someone has to run it. We teach crews the parts that are actually hard: balancing cameras off the switcher before the guests arrive, riding four headphone feeds live, keying against a screen that is never quite flat, and getting the ISO recording into an edit the same day. On your set or remote.
Top-down lighting plots for every seat count from a solo host to two hosts and three guests, with the heights, angles and ratios written on them — plus the signal flow for four microphones through a RØDECaster Pro II, and the kit list that builds it. This is our own crew reference. Take it, build from it, no email required.
01 — The numbers
These are the constants. Get them right and the plots below are just seat arithmetic. Every figure is measured to the centre of the source, and every angle is from the subject's eyeline, not the fixture's.
| Parameter | Setting | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Key height | 7'6" – 8'0" | Puts the nose shadow just below the nostril and keeps catchlights in the upper third of the iris. Higher goes raccoon-eyed; lower flattens the face and spills on the backdrop. |
| Key angle, horizontal | 35° – 45° | Off the subject–lens axis. Under 30° is flat; past 50° the far cheek falls off and multi-camera cuts stop matching. |
| Key angle, vertical | 30° – 40° down | Standard portrait fall. Seated talent at a desk needs the lower end of the range. |
| Key distance | 5' – 7' | For a 3×4 softbox. Close enough that the source stays large relative to the head, which is what makes the shadow edge soft. |
| Key to fill ratio | 2:1 – 3:1 | 2:1 (one stop) for panels and anything cutting between many cameras. 3:1 (1½ stops) for a single host where you want shape. |
| Fill position | 20° – 30°, lens height | Opposite the key, near the lens. At lens height it fills the eye sockets without adding a second nose shadow. |
| Back / hair light | 8' – 9' high, 30°–45° rear | Three-quarter rear on the opposite side from the key. Set ½ stop over key on dark hair, 1 stop under on blonde or bald. |
| Background level | 1 – 2 stops under key | Enough separation to read depth, not enough to pull the eye off the face. |
| Overhead base (space lights) | 10' – 12' grid, 2 stops under key | One fixture per 6×6 ft of table. Lifts the table top and laps, kills the "floating heads" look, and gives the keys something to sit on. |
| Colour temperature | 5600K, ±100K | One temperature across every fixture. Mixed colour is the single most common reason multi-camera podcast footage refuses to grade. |
| Colour quality | CRI / TLCI 95+ | Below this, skin goes sallow on one camera and pink on another. |
| Exposure target | T2.8 – T4 · ISO 400 · 1/50 | T4 on anything with three or more people — you need the depth of field to hold the whole table sharp. |
| Flicker | No PWM below 5 kHz | Run every LED on high-frequency or DC mode. A 24 fps camera will find the flicker you cannot see. |
Cross-key. On any table of two or more, the source outboard on one side keys the person on the opposite side and simultaneously acts as the near person's edge light. One fixture doing two jobs is why a five-person table needs six fixtures and not fifteen.
The second rule follows from it: as the seat count rises, lighting stops being per-person and becomes zonal — a soft overhead base across the whole table, two big cross-keys at the ends, and one backlight per head. Standardised, not customised. It will feel less flattering to any one person on set, and it will cut together cleanly, which is the thing that actually matters.
02 — Lighting plots
Each plot is drawn to scale on a 1-foot grid. The backdrop or cyc is at the top; cameras are at the bottom looking upstage. Fixture labels carry the height above the floor.
03 — Signal flow
The audio path and the video path, and the two places they meet. Solid lines are audio, dashed are video, and the dotted line is timecode.
Each microphone lands on its own Neutrik combo input, 1 through 4. Gain is set per channel on the desk, never at the camera.
Outputs run in parallel: the balanced ¼-inch main pair feeds the switcher, USB-C 1 feeds the computer for stream and multitrack capture, and the microSD card records the same multitrack as an independent backup that survives a computer crash.
First at the switcher — the RØDECaster's main output becomes the program audio bed on the ATEM, so the live-switched master comes out finished.
Second in post — the multitrack from the SD card is what the editor actually cuts with, because an isolated track per microphone is the only way to fix one person's cough without touching anyone else.
Jam every camera and the recorder from one timecode source at the top of the day and again after lunch. Without it, syncing four 4K files to a multitrack is an afternoon of work instead of ten seconds.
All four headphone outputs have independent level. Set them before the first word — a guest who cannot hear themselves will lean into the microphone and wreck the take.
04 — Green screen & virtual production
Keying the cyc, rendering into an LED wall, or fixing it after the fact with AI. They are not competing options — they solve different problems, and a stage that can do all three quotes on jobs a single-method stage cannot.
Cheapest per shot, most forgiving of set changes, and the only one that scales to five people without a wall the size of a building.
Costs you: green spill on skin and hair, a lighting plot that has to serve the subject and the screen, and talent who cannot see what they are standing in.
In-camera final pixel. Real interactive light on faces, real reflections in glasses, and a client who can see the shot on the day instead of imagining it.
Costs you: moiré risk, a genlock chain that has to be perfect, a colour pipeline to manage, and a background whose parallax only works for one camera unless you are tracking.
No green screen at all. Beeble's SwitchLight pulls a matte and re-lights the subject to match whatever background you drop behind them.
Costs you: it is a post process, not a live one — so it does not serve a livestream, and it adds a render pass to the delivery schedule.
| Item | Qty | Why it matters | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rosco Chroma Key Green paint | 5 gal | Matte, not eggshell. Two coats over a grey primer, rolled in one direction. A repaint before a big job is cheaper than an hour of roto. | $310 / 5 gal |
| Screen lighting — separate from the plot | 4 | Light the cyc with its own fixtures, evenly, to within ⅓ stop corner to corner, at one stop under the key on the face. Metering this is the single biggest determinant of key quality. | see Nanlite |
| Distance from talent to screen | — | 8 ft minimum, 12 ft preferred. Spill falls off with the square of distance, so this one free decision beats every piece of software below it. | free |
| Backlight with a ⅛ magenta gel | per head | Counteracts green spill in hair at the source instead of in the keyer. Costs nothing and saves the shot on blonde and curly hair. | in gel pack |
| Digital Green fabric, 20×30 ft | 1 | For the flypack. Wrinkle-resistant, grommeted, and a frame to hang it flat — a rippled cloth is a bad key before anyone turns a light on. | $1,100 |
| Item | Qty | What it gives you | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blackmagic Ultimatte 12 4K | 1–2 | The reference. 12G-SDI, real-time, and it holds detail a switcher keyer throws away — hair, smoke, motion blur, glass, and the shadow the talent casts on the screen. One per camera you intend to key live. | $9,995 |
| Blackmagic Ultimatte 12 HD | 1–2 | Same engine, HD only. The right call if the deliverable is 1080p livestream and the 4K master is being keyed in post anyway. | $4,995 |
| Blackmagic Ultimatte 12 HD Mini | 2 | HDMI in and out, rack-ear pair, and a fraction of the price. Genuinely good on a clean cyc, and small enough to live in the flypack. | $995 |
| Ultimatte Smart Remote 4 | 1 | Physical control surface for the Ultimattes. Keying by menu on a live show is how you miss the moment the light drifts. | $1,195 |
| Item | Qty | What it gives you | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO | 1 | Advanced chroma keyer on every M/E plus upstream and downstream keyers, and it ISO-records all eight inputs. Good enough for a clean, evenly lit cyc and a two-shot. | $2,995 |
| ATEM 4 M/E Constellation 4K | 1 | Four M/Es, four upstream keyers each, DVE and SuperSource. The step up when you want a keyed presenter composited over a graphics build live, not in post. | $9,595 |
| ATEM Mini Extreme ISO | 1 | The flypack switcher. Eight HDMI in, chroma key, ISO record, and it fits in a backpack. Pair it with the HD Minis for a keyed show on location. | $1,295 |
The honest comparison: the ATEM keyer is fine on a well-lit cyc with a subject in matte clothing. The moment you have curly hair, a glass of water, a fast gesture or a client in a sheer blouse, the Ultimatte is not a luxury — it is the difference between delivering and apologising.
| Platform | Tier | Where it fits | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unreal Engine + nDisplay | Base | The layer everything else sits on. Free, and the format every environment vendor ships in. nDisplay drives multi-node LED walls with frustum rendering. | free |
| Aximmetry DE / Broadcast | Mid | The best value in the category for a podcast stage. Built-in keyer, camera tracking support, virtual sets and AR, and it runs on one good workstation. DE is free for non-commercial; Broadcast is the licence you would actually buy. | $60–900 / mo |
| Pixotope | High | Broadcast AR, virtual sets and on-set VP in one stack. Subscription, strong graphics tooling, used heavily in sports and live events. | quote |
| Zero Density Reality Hub / Lino | High | Their Keyer is genuinely the best soft-edge keyer in software — it is the reason broadcasters buy the stack. Overkill for podcasts, correct for a network-grade set. | quote |
| disguise xR (rx / vx range) | High | The LED volume orchestration layer — set extension, colour pipeline, multi-camera frustums. This is what you rent, not what you buy, until the volume is booked most weeks. | quote / rental |
| Assimilate Live FX Studio | Mid | Plate-based virtual production — play 2D and 360 plates to the wall with live comp and colour. Far simpler than Unreal when the background is footage rather than a 3D world. | ~$1,000 / yr |
| Tool | Use | What it does | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beeble SwitchLight 3 | Post | AI relighting. Decomposes the shot into PBR passes — albedo, normals, roughness, specular — then re-lights the subject with an HDRI so they actually sit in the new background instead of floating on it. The thing that has always given composites away is lighting mismatch; this attacks that directly. | see plans |
| Beeble SwitchX | Post | Rotoscoping and masking. Clean alpha mattes with no green screen at all — guided by you, frame by frame, rather than a one-click black box. | see plans |
| VFX Pass Generator | Post | Exports PBR, depth and alpha passes for any DCC, and SDR-to-HDR as an EXR ACES sequence. This is what makes it usable in a real finishing pipeline rather than a toy. | included |
| Beeble Studio — on-prem | Post | Local 4K relighting on your own hardware, so client footage never leaves the building. For brand and corporate work under NDA, this is the version that matters. | enterprise |
| Plans | — | Creator $16/mo, Professional $60/mo, Team $84/seat/mo, all billed yearly on a credit model; Enterprise is quoted. | $16–84 / mo |
How to sell it: this is the service that lets a client shoot in their own office against a plain wall and still get a branded environment. It is a post line item, not a stage booking — which makes it the highest-margin thing on this page.
| Item | Spec | What to specify and why | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Panel pitch | 1.5–2.6 mm | For a seated podcast the camera is close, so go finer than a concert wall. 1.9 mm is the sweet spot on cost against moiré at a 6–10 ft shooting distance. | — |
| ROE Black Pearl BP2 V2 / Ruby | panels | The two most-specified volume panels. Ruby is the finer pitch for close work; Black Pearl is the workhorse. Both have the refresh headroom camera work needs. | quote |
| Brompton Tessera SX40 + XD | 1 + n | The processing is not where you save money. Brompton's Dynamic Calibration and frame-remapping are what stop banding and colour shift on camera. Specify it by name. | quote |
| Megapixel HELIOS | alt | The other credible processor, with strong HDR handling. Pick one ecosystem and stay in it — mixing processors across a wall is a colour-matching nightmare. | quote |
| Genlock to everything | critical | Wall, processor, cameras and switcher all locked to one reference. Without it you get scan lines rolling through frame and no amount of shutter angle fixes it. | — |
| Camera tracking — Mo-Sys StarTracker | 1 | Ceiling-sticker optical tracking. The broadcast standard, and the most forgiving to install in a room you do not own. | quote |
| Camera tracking — Vive Mars CamTrack | 1 | The affordable entry. Genuinely good for a fixed podcast set with limited camera movement, at a fraction of the StarTracker price. | ~$5,000 |
| Shutter and frame rate | — | 172.8° at 24 fps, or 180° at 23.98 with the wall at a multiple of frame rate. Test on the day — every wall has its own sweet spot and the wrong one bands on camera. | — |
For Stage A, the honest framing to a client: a podcast LED volume earns its cost through interactive light and reflection — faces lit by the environment, glasses and glossware carrying the scene — not through parallax, which a seated show barely uses. Sell the light, not the tracking.
05 — Gear
The kit that produces the plots above. Lighting is Aputure for keys and fills, Nanlite for backlights, tubes and colour, and the FloLight soft sources already in the inventory — one ecosystem per job, so nothing fights on colour. Prices are approximate US street as of September 2026; check the vendor before quoting a client.
| Item | Qty | Why this one | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| RØDECaster Pro II | 1 | Four combo preamps, four independent headphone outs, dual USB-C, and multitrack to microSD. The whole audio chain in one box. | $699 |
| Shure SM7dB | 4 | The SM7B with a built-in active preamp, so it no longer needs an inline booster. Rejects room reflections, which is what makes it survive an untreated space. | $499 ea |
| RØDE PodMic — budget swap | 4 | Dynamic, broadcast-voiced, and a quarter of the price. The right call for a flypack kit that gets handled hard. | $99 ea |
| RØDE PSA1+ boom arm | 4 | Internal springs, so it does not creak on camera. Desk-clamp or bolt-through. | $149 ea |
| Sony MDR-7506 | 4 | Closed back, low bleed, and every guest has already seen a pair, which removes a conversation. | $99 ea |
| Canare / Mogami XLR, 10 ft | 6 | Four in use, two spare. Star-quad if the room has dimmer packs. | $25 ea |
| Deity / Tentacle Sync E mk II | 5 | One per camera plus one at the desk. Jam once, sync forever. | $239 ea |
| Item | Qty | Role on the plots | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aputure LS 600c Pro II | 2 | K1 and K2, the cross-keys. Full RGBWW, silent mode for a live room, and enough output to hold T4 through a large dome at 7 feet on the five-person plot. | $1,890 ea |
| Aputure Light Dome III | 2 | Fitted to the 600c pair. 34-inch parabolic — this is the source size that makes the shadow edge soft at podcast distances. Ships with the 1.5-stop and 2.5-stop diffusion. | $249 ea |
| Aputure Nova P600c | 1 | F, the on-axis fill. A flat RGBWW panel is the right shape for fill; a softbox is not. Set it 2 stops under key and never touch it again. | $2,690 |
| Aputure Amaran 300c | 2 | F2 and F3, the three-quarter fills. Colour-matched to the 600c pair, which matters far more than the output you would gain from a different brand. | $549 ea |
| Aputure Spotlight Mount SE 19° | 2 | Turns a backlight into a controllable hard edge and keeps the spill off the backdrop. The 26° and 36° lenses are worth owning too. | $479 ea |
| Aputure Lantern 90 | 1 | Overhead ambient when the space has no grid. On the flypack this replaces the space-light row in plots 03 through 07. | $299 |
| Aputure Infinibar PB6 | 4 | Edge, practical and set accent. Pixel-mappable, battery or mains, and slim enough to hide in the set rather than on a stand. | $429 ea |
| Item | Qty | Role on the plots | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nanlite Forza 500B II | 2 | B1 and B5, the outer backlights. Bicolour, so you can warm the hair separation half a notch against a 5600K key without gelling anything. | $1,299 ea |
| Nanlite Forza 300B II | 3 | B2, B3 and B4, the inner backlights. One per head on the four- and five-person plots. | $849 ea |
| Nanlite FL-20G Fresnel | 3 | On the Forza 300Bs. Spot to flood 12°–45°, with barndoors, which is how you keep a backlight off the person next to its target. | $249 ea |
| Nanlite PavoTube II 30X | 4 | The BG accents. 4-foot RGBWW tubes, battery powered, so they place anywhere on the backdrop without a cable run across the floor. | $329 ea |
| Nanlite PavoTube II 6C | 6 | 10-inch tubes for in-set practicals — shelves, desk edge, behind a monitor. The detail that makes a set read as designed rather than lit. | $109 ea |
| Nanlite PavoSlim 60C | 2 | Edge-lit RGBWW panel, 1.6 inches deep. Goes where a Forza will not fit — low front fill under a desk lip, or a wall wash in a tight office. | $449 ea |
| Nanlite Compac 200B | 2 | Flat soft panel for the flypack. Folds into a case, runs off mains, and is the fastest fill to rig in a client's conference room. | $379 ea |
| Item | Qty | Role on the plots | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| FloLight MicroBeam 512 LED | 4 | Soft daylight panels with a gel frame. On the stages they run as base and wrap under the space lights; on location they are the two-minute rig while the Aputure units come out of cases. | in kit |
| FloLight MicroBeam softbox + eggcrate | 4 | Turns the 512 into a controllable soft source. The eggcrate is the part that matters — bare, these panels light the whole room. | in kit |
| FloLight fluorescent bank, 4-tube | 2 | The lowest-heat soft source in the inventory, and the only fixture here a guest can sit under for three hours without noticing it. | in kit |
| FloLight replacement tubes, 5600K | 8 | Buy the daylight tubes in pairs and keep them matched. A single aged tube in a four-bank shifts the whole source green. | $39 ea |
FloLight is largely secondary-market now, so treat these as inventory to maintain rather than a line to re-buy. When a panel dies, the Nanlite Compac 200B is the closest replacement in size, softness and rig time.
| Item | Qty | What it does | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matthews C-stand, 40" arm, turtle base | 10 | Turtle base folds flat for tight rooms and stacks in the van. Ten is the right number for the five-person plot with spares. | $189 ea |
| Matthews combo stand, 12 ft | 4 | For the 600c pair and the backlights. A C-stand will hold a 600c; a combo stand will hold it safely with an arm extended. | $329 ea |
| Sandbags, 25 lb | 12 | One per stand minimum, two on anything with an arm extended. Not optional, not negotiable, and the cheapest insurance on the list. | $39 ea |
| 4×4 floppy flags | 4 | The negative fill. On a flat overhead base this is what gives a face shape. The single highest quality-per-dollar item in the whole document. | $115 ea |
| 2×3 flags — solid, single, double | 6 | Cutting spill off the backdrop, off the table top, and out of the lens. Six covers the five-person plot. | $65 ea |
| 4×4 frame + diffusion set | 2 | Frames with 216 Full White, 250 Half, 251 Quarter and Magic Cloth. Enlarges any source without changing its colour. | $240 set |
| Grid / eggcrate, 40° and 60° | 4 | For the Light Domes and the Compacs. A grid is how a soft source stays soft on the face and dark on the wall behind it. | $95 ea |
| Gel pack — CTO, CTB, ND, minus green | 1 | Even on full RGBWW fixtures, a quarter CTO on glass reads differently from the same shift done electronically. Keep a pack. | $180 |
| Grip arms, knuckles, Cardellini, Mafer, super clamps | 1 set | The kit that rigs a tube to a set wall in thirty seconds instead of building a stand you then have to hide. | $420 set |
| Apple boxes, full set | 2 sets | Seat height, stand height, laptop height. Two full sets, every time. | $220 set |
| V-mount batteries, 290 Wh + dual charger | 6 | Runs the tubes and the Amarans on location with no cable to the wall. 290 Wh is the largest that still flies domestic. | $349 ea |
| Duvetyne, 12×12 ft | 2 | Kills a reflective wall, a window, or a glass conference-room partition. On location this gets used every single time. | $180 ea |
The single most common reason a rig takes an extra hour is having only long cable, or only short. Colour-code by length with heat-shrink at both ends and the coil goes back right every time.
| Type | Qty | Lengths and where each one goes | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| XLR — mic, Mogami / Canare | 22 | 3 ft ×6 boom arm to desk edge · 10 ft ×8 desk to RØDECaster, the everyday length · 25 ft ×6 a second table or a reset · 50 ft ×2 talent in another room. Star-quad on anything running near a dimmer. | $18–58 ea |
| SDI — Belden 12G rated | 20 | 3 ft ×4 camera to on-board recorder · 15 ft ×6 camera to the floor box · 25 ft ×6 floor to the ATEM, the workhorse · 50 ft ×2 the far camera · 100 ft ×2 a second room or the lobby. 12G-rated only — 3G cable is where a four-camera day goes wrong. | $28–165 ea |
| Aputure head-to-ballast extension | 4 | 16.4 ft (5 m) ×2 · 32.8 ft (10 m) ×2. Lets the 600c ballast live on the floor with the head up on a combo stand, which is the whole reason to own a two-piece fixture. | $119–189 ea |
| Stingers — 12/3 SJOOW | 18 | 25 ft ×8 stand to quad box · 50 ft ×6 quad box to distro · 100 ft ×4 reaching the only working circuit in a client's office. 12-gauge, not 14 — a 600c at full draw will brown out on thin cable. | $45–140 ea |
| Edison to powerCON TRUE1 | 6 | 6 ft ×6. The adapter everyone forgets and everyone needs, because half the fixture inventory has moved to TRUE1. | $42 ea |
| DMX — 5-pin | 12 | 10 ft ×6 fixture to fixture in a row · 25 ft ×4 row to row · 50 ft ×2 back to the console. Only needed when you run a board instead of the app, which you should on anything over eight fixtures. | $22–65 ea |
| ¼" TRS — balanced line | 6 | 10 ft ×4 RØDECaster main out to the ATEM · 25 ft ×2 when the switcher lives off the table. | $25–45 ea |
| Headphone extension, ¼" | 6 | 10 ft ×4 · 20 ft ×2. Four talent all need slack, and a guest tethered to the desk cannot sit back in the chair. | $18–30 ea |
| USB-C, 10 Gbps rated | 6 | 3 ft ×2 · 6 ft ×2 desk to computer · 10 ft ×2 computer off the table. Data-rated, not charge-only — a charge cable will pass power and no audio. | $16–38 ea |
| Timecode — 3.5 mm to BNC / LEMO | 6 | 1 ft ×6. One per camera plus a spare. Short on purpose — it lives on the camera body. | $29 ea |
| Quad boxes + snake bites | 6 | Four quad boxes and two snake bites. Turns one 50 ft stinger into four fixture feeds and stops the floor becoming a cable nest. | $65–95 ea |
| Cable ramps + gaff tape + ties | 1 set | Two 3-foot ramps for any run a guest walks over, a case of 2-inch matte black gaff, and 50 hook-and-loop ties. This is the difference between a set and a liability. | $260 set |
| Item | Qty | Where it fits | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blackmagic Studio Camera 6K Pro | 4 | The right answer for a podcast stage. EF mount, 12G-SDI, built-in talkback and tally, a 7-inch monitor with a hood, and it takes power over the same cable run. Purpose-built for exactly this job and a quarter the price of a cine body. | $2,595 ea |
| Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2 | 4 | The B4 option. Servo zooms, shoulder-mount ergonomics and true broadcast controls — correct if an operator is riding the shot rather than locking it off. | $3,995 ea |
| Blackmagic PYXIS 6K | 2 | Full-frame box camera, swappable EF / PL / L mount. The one to put on the jib and on a gimbal — small, light, and it cuts with the Studio Cameras. | $2,995 ea |
| Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF | 1 | Only if the client is buying a cinematic hero angle. 12K large format, 16 stops, internal media. Overkill for a talking-head show and glorious on a brand film. | $14,995 |
| Micro Studio Camera 4K G2 | 2 | The hidden angles — overhead, table-level, inside the set. MFT mount, 12G-SDI, and small enough that nobody in frame knows it is there. | $795 ea |
| Item | Qty | Where it fits | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sony FX6 | 2–4 | The on-location workhorse. Full frame, dual-base ISO 800/12800, superb autofocus, SDI out and timecode in. When the flypack goes to a hotel suite with no lighting time, the FX6 sees in the dark the way the Blackmagics do not. | $5,998 ea |
| Sony FX3 | 2 | Same sensor and colour as the FX6 in a body with no handle. Gimbal, jib, hidden angle, or a second unit — and it intercuts with the FX6 invisibly. | $3,899 ea |
| Sony PXW-FX9 | 2 | 6K full-frame sensor, dual base ISO, and Sony's Dual Base ISO with built-in variable ND — which is the feature that actually saves time on a run-and-gun corporate day. | $10,998 ea |
| Sony BURANO | 1 | 8.6K full frame, in-body stabilisation and internal ND, in a body one person can carry. The Sony equivalent of the URSA Cine argument — a hero angle for brand work. | $24,999 |
| Sony FX30 | 2 | Super 35 and half the price of an FX3. For a B-roll unit or a client who wants to keep shooting between bookings. | $2,198 ea |
Mixing the two brands on one show is fine if you commit to one colour pipeline — shoot BRAW and S-Log3 / S-Gamut3.Cine, then bring both into DaVinci with matched input transforms. Do not try to match in-camera profiles by eye.
| Item | Qty | Why this one | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fujinon MK18-55 T2.9 + MK50-135 T2.9 | 2 pr | The correct podcast pair. Parfocal, constant aperture, matched colour, and they cover the whole range from a 5-person wide to a tight single without a lens change. On a live switch, parfocal is not a preference — a zoom that shifts focus mid-move ruins the take. | $3,799 ea |
| Canon CN-E 17-120mm T2.95 Cine-Servo | 1 | For the jib and the wide. Servo zoom and focus, 7× range, and it holds focus through the whole move. The single most useful lens on a moving camera. | $28,000 |
| Sigma 18-35 T2 + 50-100 T2 Cine | 1 pr | The value pair for Super 35 Blackmagic bodies. Fast, sharp, matched, and about a fifth of the cine-zoom price. | $3,999 ea |
| Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II | 2 | On the FX6 / FX3. Lighter and sharper than the original, with autofocus fast enough to trust on an unrehearsed guest. | $2,298 ea |
| Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM II | 2 | The tight singles from the back of the room. This is what makes an office look like a studio — compression, not lighting. | $2,798 ea |
| Sony FE 28-135mm f/4 G PZ | 2 | Parfocal power zoom, servo controlled. The unglamorous lens that makes a locked-off studio camera behave like a broadcast one. | $2,498 ea |
| Sigma FF Cine primes — 24 / 35 / 50 / 85 T1.5 | 1 set | When one camera is the hero and the rest are coverage. Matched housings, consistent front diameter, so the matte box and filters never change. | $3,499 ea |
| Fujinon B4 20× ENG zoom | 2 | Only for the URSA Broadcast G2 route. Servo everything, huge range, and deep depth of field — which on a five-person table is a feature, not a compromise. | $12,000 |
| Variable ND + IRND set, 4×5.65 | 1 set | Fixed IRNDs beat a variable for colour consistency on a multi-camera shoot. 0.3 through 1.8, matched brand. | $2,400 set |
| Item | Qty | Why this one | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sachtler aktiv8 flowtech 75 MS | 4 | The studio standard for this weight. Payload to 22 lb, and flowtech legs deploy in one motion from a single brake — which matters when you are resetting four cameras between blocks. | $4,190 ea |
| Sachtler aktiv10 flowtech 100 | 2 | Step up for the FX9, the URSA Broadcast with a B4, or anything with a matte box and follow focus hung off it. | $5,690 ea |
| Miller CX10 Toggle 2-stage | 4 | The value alternative. 75 mm ball, 22 lb payload, genuinely smooth counterbalance at roughly a third of the Sachtler price. | $1,495 ea |
| Manfrotto Nitrotech 612 + 645 Fast twin | 2 | For the FX3 and the small bodies. Nitrogen counterbalance, and the leg deploys as fast as a flowtech at a quarter the cost. | $949 ea |
| Vinten Osprey Light pedestal | 2 | If the show is really a studio show. A pedestal lets one operator reframe height on air, silently, without touching a leg. Nothing else reads as broadcast the way a ped does. | $9,800 ea |
| Hi-hat and low-boy legs | 2 | Table-level and floor angles. The cheapest way to make a four-camera show stop looking like four cameras at the same height. | $310 ea |
| Kessler Kwik Jib 8 ft | 1 | The small jib. Sets up in minutes, breaks to a case that fits the van, and 8 feet is all the reach a seated table needs. Pair with the PYXIS or FX3 to stay under the payload. | $2,395 |
| Proaim Wave-5 / Wave-8 jib | 1 | The budget option at 5 or 8 ft. Heavier and slower to rig, but it holds a real camera and costs a fifth of the Kessler. | $700–1,100 |
| Kessler Second Shooter remote head | 1 | Pan and tilt on the jib from the floor, with repeatable moves. Without a remote head, an 8-foot jib is a crane you cannot aim. | $3,900 |
| Jib stand, dolly and counterweights | 1 set | Weights to 60 lb and a wheeled base. Budget it with the jib — a jib without enough counterweight is a hazard, not a camera position. | $900 set |
| Rhino / Edelkrone slider, 24" | 1 | The move you actually use most. A slow 24-inch push on the wide is worth more to an edit than a jib arc nobody asked for. | $800 |
| Item | Qty | Why this one | Approx. |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO | 1 | Eight SDI inputs, and it records every input as its own file plus a ready-made DaVinci project. The single most useful box on the list. | $2,995 |
| HyperDeck Shuttle HD | 4 | Independent ISO recording per camera — redundancy for the recording the switcher is already making. Two recordings of everything, always. | $495 ea |
| Blackmagic Video Assist 7" 12G HDR | 1 | Program monitor and a third recording of the line cut. | $795 |
| SmartView 4K G3 / multiview monitor | 1 | The operator has to see all four feeds and the program at once, or they are switching blind. | $1,845 |
| Teleprompter, 19" with glass | 1 | Only if the format needs it — and budget an operator with it, because a prompter nobody is running is worse than none. | $1,200 |
B&H Photo and Adorama both carry every item above and both run affiliate programmes that pay 2–4% on qualifying orders. Sweetwater is better on the audio side and has its own programme.
A gear page on podcastprosla.com carrying these lists with your affiliate links is worth building — it earns on traffic that is already arriving for the rate card, and it reads as expertise rather than advertising. Say the word and I will build /gear and deploy it; I just need your affiliate IDs, or I can ship it with plain links and you can add the tags once the applications clear.
06 — Post & AI
You deliver a program master, four isolated 4K files and an isolated WAV per microphone, same day. Everything below is what turns that into episodes, clips and show pages — and the six lines you can sell on top of the stage day. Prices are US list as of September 2026.
Repair the audio before anything touches the picture. Every AI tool downstream — clip finders, caption engines, show-note writers — works off the transcript, and the transcript is only as good as the audio you feed it. A five-minute pass through Enhance or RX pays for itself twice: once in the mix, once in every automated step after it.
| Tool | Fit | What it does for a four-camera podcast | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| DaVinci Resolve Studio | Core | The right spine for this shop. The ATEM ISO writes a ready-made Resolve project with all four camera angles synced on a multicam timeline — you open it and start cutting. Fairlight handles the multitrack, and the grade lives in the same app. One perpetual licence, no subscription. | $295 once |
| Adobe Premiere Pro | Alt | Text-based editing is now genuinely good — cut the timeline by deleting words in the transcript — and Enhance Speech is built in. Correct if a client's own editor lives in Adobe. | $22.99/mo |
| Final Cut Pro | Alt | Fastest multicam on Apple silicon and a one-time price. Weak on collaboration, which rules it out for anything a client team touches. | $299 once |
| Tool | Fit | What it fixes | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Podcast — Enhance Speech | First pass | Browser-based, free, and startlingly effective on room tone, echo and HVAC. Run every isolated WAV through it before the edit. It will occasionally over-process a good take — always keep the original. | Free |
| iZotope RX | Surgical | When Enhance is too blunt: de-click, de-rustle a lav, spectral-repair a chair creak or a phone buzz you cannot re-record. This is the one that saves an unrepeatable take. | $399 Standard |
| Auphonic | Mastering | Loudness normalisation to −16 LUFS stereo for podcast platforms, with true-peak limiting. Set it once and every episode leaves at the same level. | Free 2 h/mo · from $11/mo |
| Cleanvoice | Cleanup | Strips filler words, stutters, mouth clicks and dead air across a multitrack. Cheaper than paying an assistant to do it and better than doing it yourself at 2am. | from $10/mo |
| Tool | Fit | Where it earns its keep | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Descript | Rough cut | Edit the video by editing the transcript. Studio Sound, one-click filler removal, Overdub, and multitrack. The fastest way to take a 90-minute raw record down to a 48-minute episode — then finish the cut in Resolve. | Free · $12 · $24/mo |
| Riverside | Remote guests | When a guest cannot be in the room. Records locally at each end up to 4K, so a dropped call does not cost you the interview, and Magic Clips pulls shorts automatically. This is the tool that lets you sell a remote guest into a studio booking. | Free 70 min · $15 · $24/mo |
| Adobe Premiere — text-based editing | Included | If you already pay for Creative Cloud, this covers most of what Descript does without a second subscription. | in CC |
| Tool | Fit | What it produces | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpusClip | Volume | Finds the moments and cuts vertical clips with captions and a virality score. One credit per minute of source, so a 60-minute episode costs 60 credits however many clips come out. Expect to discard a third — the wins are worth the sort. | Free 60 min · $15 · $29/mo |
| Submagic | Finish | Better caption styling, B-roll and sound effects than OpusClip. The usual workflow is OpusClip to find the moments, Submagic to make them look like yours. | from $16/mo |
| Captions | Mobile | Eye-contact correction and auto-framing for talking-head verticals. Useful on remote-guest footage that was never framed properly. | from $10/mo |
| Vizard | Alt | Similar to OpusClip with a more generous free tier. Worth testing head-to-head on one of your own episodes before committing. | Free tier · from $20/mo |
Your rate card already lists a vertical clip package at $650 an episode. Tool cost for that package is under $30. Sell it on every booking.
| Tool | Fit | What it writes | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Castmagic | Full pack | Titles, show notes, chapter timestamps, social posts, newsletter copy and quote cards from one upload. Turns an episode into a marketing kit in minutes. | from $29/mo |
| Capsho | Alt | Narrower than Castmagic and cheaper. Good if all the client wants is notes and titles. | from $29/mo |
| Claude or ChatGPT | Free-form | Feed the transcript and ask for the notes in the show's own voice. No subscription beyond what you already pay, and better results than a template tool once you have a prompt that works. | $20/mo |
| Whisper / MacWhisper | Transcript | Runs locally, so client audio never leaves the building — which matters on anything under NDA. Free and more accurate than most paid services. | Free · $69 Pro |
Total tool cost to run all six: roughly $90 a month. Against an episode edit at $850 and a clip package at $650, that is the cheapest margin on the rate card.
07 — Reading
Four of these are on every gaffer's shelf. The other four change how you think about why a face looks the way it does.
The industry reference for everything below the fixture: distribution, load calculation, cable, rigging, safety, crew roles and the vocabulary a gaffer expects you to use.
Buy this one first if you buy one.The most diagram-dense practical book in print. Worked setups with plots, including seated interview and multi-subject configurations close to what is on this page.
Closest match to the plots above.Written by the man who invented the Lowel fixture and gaffer's tape. Less about where to put the light and more about what the light is supposed to be doing dramatically.
The "why" behind every choice.The physics of how light behaves when it hits a surface — the family of angles, reflection, and why skin, glass and metal each need a different approach. Stills-oriented, universally applicable.
The one that makes the rest make sense.Bridges theory and set practice: colour science, exposure, lighting for the specific demands of digital sensors, plus a solid section on interview and studio work.
Best all-rounder for a small crew.The multi-camera studio textbook. Lighting plots, floor plans, camera blocking and the grammar of a live-switched show — which is exactly what a video podcast is.
The only one that covers live switching properly.First published 1949 and still the most quotable book on the subject. Alton lit film noir with a fraction of the equipment on this page and got more out of it.
Read it for taste, not technique.Camera angles, continuity, cutting, close-ups and composition. The chapter on continuity is what stops a four-camera podcast edit from feeling like four different shows.
For the camera side of the same problem.08 — Tools & free resources
Downloadable studio lighting plots from broadcast designer Michelle Poley — single anchor, two-anchor desk and three-anchor desk, with fixture counts and positions. The closest thing to a professional template you can get without paying for one.
Build the room, place the talent and fixtures, and it renders what the camera would actually see plus a printable top-down plot. Designed for stills but the physics are the physics.
Worth it the first time a client asks what the set will look like before the build.
Hollywood Camera Work's floor-plan tool. Camera positions, blocking, lighting symbols, and it animates the blocking so you can check sightlines before anyone stands up.
A free PDF from ARRI covering photometrics, colour, control and fixture selection. Dry, technical, and the numbers in it are correct — which is not true of most of what is online.
Aputure's channel dissects real setups fixture by fixture, and Shane Hurlbut's Hurlbut Academy does the same at feature scale. Both show the plot alongside the frame, which is the part most tutorials leave out.
Deakins answers lighting questions himself, at length, with no gear pitch attached. Search it before asking anywhere else.
09 — Watch
Every link below was checked and resolves. Manufacturer channels first, because they are stable and they demo the actual fixtures in the kit list — then specific walkthroughs worth an hour of a new crew member's time.
| Channel | For | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Aputure | Lighting | Fixture-by-fixture breakdowns of real setups, with the plot shown alongside the frame — which is the part most tutorials leave out. Start here for the 600c and the Light Dome. |
| Nanlite | Lighting | Forza and PavoTube demos, fresnel and grid control, and colour work on the bicolour bodies. |
| RØDE | Audio | RØDECaster Pro II from unboxing through multitrack routing, plus microphone technique for guests who have never sat at a desk mic. |
| Blackmagic Design | Switching | ATEM, HyperDeck, Ultimatte and the Studio Cameras, straight from the source. Dry, accurate, no affiliate pitch. |
| DaVinci Resolve | Post | Multicam editing, Fairlight and delivery. The official training is genuinely the best free course on the software. |
| Sony Cinema Line | Camera | FX6, FX3 and BURANO — menus, picture profiles, and the S-Log3 workflow you need to match them to BRAW. |
| Shure | Audio | SM7B and SM7dB placement, gain staging, and why the off-axis rejection matters in an untreated room. |
| Sachtler | Support | Flowtech deployment and fluid-head counterbalance — two minutes that stop a new operator fighting the sticks. |
| Adobe Podcast | Post | Enhance Speech demos on genuinely bad source audio, which is the honest way to judge it. |
| iZotope | Post | RX spectral repair — de-rustle, de-click and the module that saves an unrepeatable take. |
| Descript | Post | Text-based editing, filler removal and Studio Sound. |
| Riverside | Remote | Local recording at both ends and Magic Clips — the workflow behind selling a remote guest into a studio booking. |
| OpusClip | Clips | How the clip finder scores moments, and how to steer it instead of accepting the first pass. |
| Unreal Engine | Virtual | nDisplay, ICVFX and the in-camera VFX toolset that drives an LED volume. |
| Aximmetry | Virtual | Virtual sets, camera tracking and keying in the platform that is the best value in the category for a podcast stage. |
| Video | Length | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|
| Best Podcast Lighting Setup — Budget to Pro, with Exact Placement Tips PSS Creative Media | Tutorial | The closest thing online to the plots in section 02 — actual distances and angles rather than "put a light here". Watch before your first solo rig. |
| A+ Video Podcast Lighting Setup for Beginners — Complete Studio Tour Alitu & The Podcast Host | Tour | A full room walked end to end, including the mistakes. Good orientation for a new crew member who has never worked a podcast set. |
| Nanlite Lighting Kit — Workshop & Tutorial ProAV | Workshop | Hands-on with the Forza and PavoTube bodies in the kit list — fresnel control, grids, and colour on the bicolour heads. |
| Video | Angle | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|
| Walkthrough & Set Up — ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO Wex Photo Video | Setup | Start here. Physical set-up through first switch, at a pace a new TD can follow. |
| ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO — Full Review & Walkthrough Middle Things | Deep | The longest of the four and the one that actually covers ISO recording and the DaVinci project export — the feature you are buying it for. |
| ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO & 4K8 Overview Orms | Compare | HD8 against the 4K8, which is the upgrade decision you will face in a year. |
| BlackMagic ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO — in use Jason Yadlovski | Practical | Owner's perspective after real shows rather than a first-look. Useful for the annoyances nobody mentions in a review. |
| Video | Angle | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|
| Virtual Production on an Indie Budget — tutorial on the Ultimatte Blackmagic Collective | Best start | Sets the Ultimatte in a whole workflow rather than demoing it in isolation. The one to watch first. |
| Master Chroma Keying with Blackmagic Ultimatte 12 SociallyU | Controls | Goes through the parameters one at a time — matte density, black and white gloss, spill suppression — which is the part a TD actually has to learn. |
| Chroma Keying with Ultimatte 12 — Inside the Studio Atlanta North Studios | In a real stage | A working stage rather than a desk demo, with the cyc lighting shown alongside the key. |
| How To Improve Your Green Screen — Ultimatte 12 HD first demo AV Therapy | Before / after | Deliberately imperfect source, which is the honest test. Shows what the Ultimatte recovers that a switcher keyer throws away. |
| Blackmagic Ultimatte 12 keyer explained slashcam | Short | Ten-minute overview if you only have ten minutes. |
| Video | Angle | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|
| The Ultimate Guide to LED Volumes NAB Show | Overview | The whole category explained by people who build them. Watch before quoting a volume to a client. |
| UE Setup for LED Wall Virtual Production — nDisplay & Switchboard Vp Toolkit | Hands-on | Step by step through the actual Unreal configuration. This is the technical spine of a volume day. |
| Virtual Production ICVFX & LED Volume — behind the scenes Fortis Films | On set | What the day actually looks like, including the parts that go wrong. |
| LED & Unreal Engine virtual production demo Resolution Productions Group | Client-facing | Short and polished — the sort of thing to show a client who has not seen a volume before. |
| Testing a massive LED wall Joshua M Kerr | Honest | Moiré, refresh rate and shutter testing on camera. The problems section 04 warns you about, demonstrated. |
| SwitchLight AI and Unreal Engine for relighting footage — walkthrough Robert Dodrill | AI route | Beeble's relighting in an actual pipeline. The clearest demonstration of the no-green-screen, no-wall third method. |
| Guide | From | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| RØDECaster Pro II user guides | RØDE | Channel assignment, output routing, USB configuration and microphone technique. Read the routing page before your first four-mic show. |
| ATEM Television Studio — Getting Started | Blackmagic | Official set-up path plus the manuals for every ATEM feature including the keyers. |
| Using LED walls for virtual production | Aximmetry | Operator-level guide to driving a wall — genlock, frustum, colour. Applies well beyond Aximmetry itself. |
| The Broadcast Playbook — studio lighting plots | Kino Flo | Downloadable anchor-desk plots by a working broadcast designer. The nearest professional template to section 02. |
