Yup, that’s right. Of course, I have a few technical problems, mainly that my headset is missing and my desktop cannot access the internet at present! The second one will be rectified eventually, but as for the first… that could take a bit longer. Anyway, the next weekend, Ollie and I are planning a special where we’re in the same room at the same time, meaning we’ll be trying out local recording! Yes, I’m totally aware the result might be a bit crap, but hey it’s just a test! Of course, it’s not one of the 10 official test pilots (or maybe it will be), so it’s another experiment. Grtanted, the ultimate intention of this to make a fully fledge podcast out of this, but I’m using this testing period to both iron out kinks and set out guidelines for future podcasts so they are a little more solid, as after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. If you want to skip my ramblings, I made a summary of the more important stuff at the bottom of this post.
I expect to make screwups in the course of the remaining 8 episodes, which is why I need feedback in the first place; even comments on seemingly minor things in this podcast may be an important consideration in future ones. Admittedly though, this podcast isn’t meant to be taken too seriously, given it’s classed as a comedy podcast, although it could be rather serious in places, depending on the subject being discussed. The Weekly Farkage section may have some more serious articles and we will act accordingly and will read them before commenting further, as I personally have learnt that things aren’t always what they seem with articles. I’d rather not make a mistake like that again.
Anyway, with that aside, I hope to have the 2nd episode edited and uploaded by Saturday or Sunday. This special will most likely seem a little less professional in places due to the setup in place; it’s literally going to be an omnidirectional mic hooked up to Audacity for recording so we expect every sound to be picked up and will most likely have to edit the special too to make sure that some sounds aren’t picked up especially as the room next to the one we’re recording in will have 24 hours of traffic!
The setup that is used for the normal podcasts isn’t actually much more professional, although admittedly, the results tended to be superior; all it was really was the use of Skype and a call recorder (hence why my missing headset is such a bother… it has a noise cancelling mic on it), which I plan to replace with a better one when I have the finances. As for why I’m saying this, I’m showing how easy it can be to actually make a podcast (although admittedly some background music would be nice), even if it’s just a basic one. Transcription is by far the easiest thing to think about; it’s the recording that’s the main issue. However, during this trial period, I won’t be making any transcripts of the episodes due to the time it takes to get one going, plus there’s no official setup for them yet. This is a consideration for out of the test period of this podcast and also when I get some more proper podcasts up and running too. I do plan on getting much more professional equipment down the line although I would want to learn to make do with what I have so far. The eventual idea though is for me to be able to work on more professional podcasts and have better control as let’s face it, a basic setup, while perfectly fine to use has very little in the way of customisation.
One of the major reasons for me buying new Skype recording software though is to have some more options for recording, such as lowering the sound frequency although this will have the efect of having a lower sample rate to manage, though I’m not too bothered, seeing as I’m going to lower the quality down by around 100kbps (to 64kbps) anyway; the high quality (160kbps) MP3 is a compromise seeing as WAV files are too large to work with; I don’t see any need for keeping WAV files on here as they’re not that useful to me. Perhaps if I was in a more professional environment where I actually have to care about other factors, but seeing as it’s just people, I can afford to be more lax. When it gets to actually including music, or playing it I’ll be pushing for the best quality I can use, depending on the situation. I’ll no doubt explain more when it gets to that stage, but for now I’ll just summarise some key points:
- We’re still around
- A new episode will be edited and uploaded next weekend (around the 8th)
- A special episode will be recorded the same day
- The stuff we learnt from before will be taken into consideration
- Further experiments will happen
- We expect it to be crap
- There won’t be any transcriptions done by us officially for any episodes within the trial period, at least for now.
And lastly, feel free to comment on any of the podcasts that are uploaded, as there may be some considerations not taken into account that we can think about for the next episode. That’s it for now… sorry if I rambled >.>
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