Easy, impromptu live performance videos

This might not be that novel, but I figured out a way to record nice-looking videos with my iPhone while getting the audio fidelity from my laptop & audio interface.

Using Blackhole (free with optional donation), you can route audio thru your interface into a DAW (like Logic Pro), then into the Photo Booth app on macOS. You can then tether your iPhone camera to a MacBook to use it as a camera in Photo Booth. The result is a video I’m comfortable throwing on YouTube with almost no editing time.

⚠ You need a Mac laptop with Apple silicon, a DAW and an audio interface.

Here’s how I did it:

Part 1: Audio setup

1. Download & install Blackhole
   
2. Open System Settings -> Sound
   
3. Set your laptop’s audio settings as follows:
   • Input: Blackhole 2ch
     
   • Output: your audio interface (I use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2)
     
4. Open up your DAW of choice (I use Logic Pro)
   
5. Open up Logic Settings -> Audio
   
6. Set Logic’s audio settings as follows:
   • Input: your audio interface
     
   • Output: Blackhole 2ch
     
7. Add however many audio or midi channels needed to perform. I used:
   • 1 audio in (ch1) for guitar
     
   • 1 audio in (ch2) for a vocal mic (MXL 990)
     
   • 1 midi for piano
     
8. Enable input monitoring on all channels, so you can hear yourself

Part 2: Camera setup

1. Make sure your iPhone is on the latest version of iOS
   
2. Make sure your Mac is on at least macOS Venture
   
3. (Optional but recommended) Connect your iPhone to Mac with a USB-C cable
   
4. Mount your iPhone as a camera in some way, pointed at you
   
5. Open up Photo Booth
   
6. Find the “Camera” menu and select your iPhone
   
7. Note that the video feed should now be coming from your phone’s camera
   
8. Click record
   
9. Start playing

The result:

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