Live Streaming Studio Lighting

This week we review the lighting setup that has evolved over the years to incorporate 3-point lighting for each one of our guests plus we have added some very nice “atmospheric lighting”. Our lighting system includes six cameras from DRACAST that are all LED which keeps our studio cool and well lit. But what do not currently have is actual DMX control over our studio lights. Therefore each show we have to manually turn on each light and angle the lights for the set we in.

We are now adding Chauvet DJs lights to our system and felt it was time to start using DMX controls with our studio lights. So this week we reviewing our LED studio lighting before we jump into our new setup for Season 2. When it comes to lighting it’s all about color temperature and setting up your lights to complement your cameras. Each camera angle will capture light in a different way so testing your camera angles with your lighting setup is always a good idea.

DMX Controlled Studio Lights

DMX Control is very much like VISCA controls for PTZ cameras. DMX controls are used for lighting and each DMX “Universe” has 512 channels. One light might have up to 16 channels and each channel could be a fader control over a variable such as Red, Green or Blue. In this way, lighting managers can control their lights and setup scenes for various songs or layouts in their production. Regular LED studio lights that made for video production also include DMX controls and they are often setup in a daisy-chain fashion as shown in our video. When it comes to DMX control you can use either a hardware controller or a DMX to USB adapter which is used with a USB connection to your computer. DMX to USB converters like the DMXKing are used to interface with software applications which ofter help perform automation or more advanced lighting scene setups.

The future of our live streaming studio lights

Stick around and don’t forget to subscribe because in the coming weeks we will be testing all kinds of DMX controllable devices with our new DMX lighting control console and software. We will be setting up scenes for the intro of our live streams and controlling all of our LED studio lights along with Chauvet DJ lights which are used more for music festivals and events. I will list out our current LED lights that we are using and include the new Chauvet DJ lights we are planning to install in the blog post below:

Fresnel Lights (Spotlights)

1. Dracast: FL-Series 1500 D (Large Spotlight X1)
2. Dracast: BoltRay 1000B 100W LED Bi‑Color Light ‑ DRBRF1000B (Medium Spotlight X1)

Panel Lights (Flat LEDs)

1. Dracast: Pro series LED 1000 (Large Square LED Light X1)
2. Dracast: Pro series LED 500 ( Medium Rectangle LED Light X1)
3. Dracast: S series DRSP 500 B (Small Square LED Lights X3)

We also have a ring light that Tess uses to enhance close up shots. Ring lights are built to put a camera inside of a ring which provides ideal lighting from a single camera. Our ring LED light has warm and bright options which we use depending on the need.

Finally, we use in ceiling LED light fixtures from a company called Brightline. These fixtures are installed directly into the ceiling grid for a professional installation without taking up any precious floor space. These lights are built for video conferencing but provide an easy professional backlight for us without getting in the way.

Chauvet DJ Lights

These lights are more for churches, events and stages where they are usied with a fog machine. Yes, we bought a fog machine!

1. Chauvet DJ Hurricane 1500 Fog Machine
2. Chauvet DJ Intimidator Spot lights 255
3. Chauvet DJ  OBEY 70 DMX Controller Console
4. Chauvet DJ Geyser P5
5. Chauvet DJ Gigaflex
6. Chauvet DJ XPress-100
7. Plus a bunch of DMX Cables!!

More Tips for Setting up a live streaming studio

 

• Tips for setting up your next live streaming studio – here

 

• See how we setup our live streaming studio lighting – here