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Comment by brutus1213 | Hacker News Reader

I was an organizer for a major ACM conference last year, and I really struggled with my home video streaming setup. A lot of equipment was sold out last year. I followed the recommendation of some YouTubers and realized that this is not as simple as it seems. Despite realizing the importance of a live stream setup and investing in it, I'm pretty unhappy with the results. Thankfully we are out of the worst of the pandemic .. but I agree that a good home streaming setup will be important going forward.

Edit: one thing I never figured out how to solve was removing glare on my glasses (either monitor glare or from key lights). Best investment was an external microphone and a few items mounted on the wall behind me (which used to be bare).

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For the glasses glare I found a few things that help:

    - Turn down display brightness
    - Dark mode everywhere possible
    - Block direct sunlight (blinds/curtains or rotate desk)
    - Illuminate the rest of your face to reduce the contrast from glasses

If you use a terminal for most things, including notes, one thing that helps a lot is to use a semi-transparent black background and position the terminal window over the meeting display.

>Block direct sunlight

Yeah, I don't bother day to day but, if I'm recording video, I have a couple different pieces of fabric that I can use to control the light coming in the windows--which also have shades--depending upon how sunny it is outside.

For glasses glare a couple of things: First, a circular polarizing filter can help. Second "key lights" don't have to just be your monitor. You can dark mode the monitor you have in line with camera and leave it at low brightness, then bring in the primary lighting from the side (another monitor, or a cheap/home-made soft box would work - a diffuse desk lamp may serve well, or a strong harsher light bounced off a white wall ). You can't stop light reflecting off your glasses, but you can make sure most of it doesn't bounce into your camera.

Not if you go very directional on the light you may need something to fill from the other side so you don't get strong shadows. One source should be ok if you only give enough angle to loose the reflection.

I wonder if using a polarizing filter over your webcam would reduce the glare from your glasses. Polarizing sunglasses very effectively reduce glare on water, as well as car windshields.

Yes this works. I use a polarising filter on a DSLR for a web cam and it makes my lenses invisible to the viewer... No reflection whatsoever.

For glasses glare you can use soft lights (large, non directional lights, like lamps with large shades or harder lights bounced off of a white wall) on each side of your face, much more to the left and right than normal - almost perpendicular to your nose, just slightly in front of your face. It's a nontraditional setup.

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