Board Game Recording Setup

Sorry for the horrible AI generated art. I’ll probably replace it eventually.

I want to walk through a couple of different ways that I have set up to record board game playthroughs for my YouTube channel, Cardboard in the Rough.

Note: The links on this page are not affiliate links. These are just links to the products I ended up using. The links are subject to change to affiliate links in the future, but if they do I will update this note.

Setup 1: Early days with Sony a7III and Cell Phone

At one point, I bought a Sony a7III body with a Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS Lens to try out photography as a hobby. I realized that I could also use it to record gameplay videos, so we gave it a shot. We just recorded top-down gameplay videos to start. We did this by putting the camera on a cheap tripod that I had sitting around from probably 10 years prior, that tripod on the table, and then angling the camera down to film the table. We did that for just a couple of videos, but it worked as a proof of concept. Our next step was to add my cell phone as a second camera, which I’ll get to in a minute. We could have, and probably should have, started with this setup, but I didn’t know any better. So, don’t feel discouraged if you don’t have a lot of gear, you can still make videos! You don’t even need a “real” camera - just get started with your phone and some ways to mount it.

For this first setup, we just recorded to an SD card and transferred it to my computer to edit with DaVinci Resolve. We were both completely new to video editing, but there are plenty of good free tutorials for DaVinci Resolve, including the official ones.

Then we uploaded to YouTube and were off to a start!

I’m still not very good at editing, but if you want to hear more about my workflow for recording or editing, just drop me a line.

Setup 2: Adding a second camera

The first videos were okay, but I wanted something better (this is a recurring theme in my life, not just with this project). I wanted a second camera to capture our faces while one was filming the table. We did another couple of videos by using a cell phone mounted to a cell phone tripod that I also had sitting around, but you could pick one up for pretty cheap.

Similar to the first setup, we just recorded internally, then transferred to my computer for editing and uploading.

Setup 3: Sony a7IV, OBS, and Capture Cards

While we were recording the first videos, I kept checking on local markets for used lenses and other gear, and eventually I found a great deal for a Sony a7IV with a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG DN art lens and a RODE VideoMic Pro. We also picked up a couple of cheap capture cards to try recording straight to the computer. This is because the cameras didn’t like recording to the SD cards for long periods of time, which is something we would need to do for a playthrough of a long game. Before getting the capture cards, our recordings were interrupted by stopping periodically to stop and restart the recording, which was interrupting the flow of recording. The cheap capture card technically worked, but the quality was very poor. Even though they were advertised as 4k, they really just accepted 4k input and the output was blurry, even at the supposed 1080p output (written in the fine print on the page and not mentioned by other reviewers for that particular caputre card that I saw on YouTube). After fighting with them for a while and trying out different settings to no avail, I ended up getting an Elgato Cam Link 4k. I only got one because I was worried it was the camera, the computer, or something else that would prevent it from working properly. But it worked immediately and produced a much better picture, so I got a second one.

Also, since this was a camera and not a cell phone, I needed a second tripod, so I got a Manfrotto MK290XTA3-3WUS 290. This extended a lot further than my first tripod, so we were able to get a better angle on the table at the expense of a larger footprint. And, in order to record for long periods of time, we needed dummy batteries for the cameras. We used the a7IV as a face cam and the a7III as the top down camera for a little while.

The new capture cards led to new problems. I had been, with the cheap capture cards, running two OBS instances on my gaming PC (nothing special - i5-6600k, GTX 1070, 16GB RAM, running Windows). I was sending the input from each camera to a different OBS instance, and that worked until we got the Elgato capture cards. I was sometimes getting dropped frames and sometimes losing connection to one of the cameras. After a lot of troubleshooting, I learned they were sending a lot more data and saturating my USB channels. So I did manage to find two USB ports that weren’t on the same channel, but even that didn’t always work. And in the setup and teardown before and after recording we would sometimes forget which was which, and end up having to mess with it for a while to get it working. So I pulled in my laptop (a Razer from 2015 running Debian) and used it for the second OBS instance. Then I would transfer the files from the laptop over to my other computer, and then edit and upload. We stuck with this setup for a little while.

Setup 4: C-Stand

Even with the new tripod, the angle for the overhead shot was annoyingly angled and it was frustrating to have to limit the board to within the legs of the tripod. So, I eventually also bought a C-Stand. In order to hang and angle a camera from it properly, I used a baby pin that attaches to the C-Stand, then a threaded adapter screws into the baby pin. Then a ball head can attach to the threaded adapter, and the camera connects to the ball head, and the ball head allows you to angle it however you need. The C-Stand is pretty tall, and the dummy batteries reached, but the HDMI cables weren’t reaching, so I got some USB extenders instead of longer HDMI cables.

Unrelated (as far as I know) to all of this, the motherboard in my computer went out, so we had to switch to using my wife’s computer for a while. It had very similar specs to mine as it was built around the same time. This setup was very nice for recording and editing, but took a long time to set up and break down. We did this because the entry to our house goes through this recording room and it also doubles as the game room when visitors come over. This friction led to us not wanting to record as often.

Then we had a hiatus for a while. We had a baby on the way, so we had to take time to remodel one of our rooms into a nursery. I also redid our office with the intention of it becoming our new recording studio, but the room ended up being too small with our desks in it to also set up a table and all the recording equipment. Which has led to our current setup.

Setup 5 (current): Blackmagic Video Assist

This is our most recent setup, and as of the time of writing, we have started testing and recording, but don’t have a video up from this setup yet. I had a rack mount PC that I was using as a server that I built up a bit after my other computer went out. So, we couldn’t use the office (easily enough) and we couldn’t move my computer back and forth to our other recording room (easily enough) since it’s in a server rack. So I started exploring other options. I picked up a couple of Blackmagic Video Assists and Samsung External Drives. This isn’t the optimal solution, but it’s a good enough solution for now. We’re going to set up in the front room and leave everything set up until guests are expected.

With this one, instead of streaming to the computers at all, we will use these recording monitors to record to the external drives, then transfer back to my computer and edit from there. One problem this solves that we weren’t specifcally aiming to solve is the noise from computer fans that was always in the background. I could reduce it, but never was able to eliminate it, through editing.

I hope this helped you in some way. If you have any questions or just want to chat about it, drop me a line! If you’re interested in supporting this blog, you can buy me a coffee, and if you want to support the channel, please consider subscribing!