Topic: starting a new website/project

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

So back ground time. Most of you know my story, failed musician trying to shift into TV. So I got a job at a local news station after going back to school to earn a degree in mass media. Major has changed a few times but my love of music, video production, and trying new things continues. A couple of guys at work, far more likable and professional than I, want to do a podcast. I have some technical experience and well we all have I think interesting ideas. So here is the deal depending on how things work out we will be creating a new website to promote our media projects. I will help edit and contribute to the podcast as well as work on some video projects on the side that I have been putting off for far too long.

The first topic is going to be the Interview. It should be good we have one guy who hated it, one guy who loved it and one guy who is indifferent so hopefully it will be interesting.

I have also given up the rap thing, and invested in better electronic equipment for making more quality dance music. I will be contributing music to the project but there is a guy at work who plays in a rock band, they have a couple cd's out and are making a name forthemselves, there is a chance they might contribute music to the project as well.

In addition to the podcast we are going to try to put together an internet radio station type deal. Not going to get too into details until/unless something actually happens but I would be interested in getting advice, criticisms from others here especially those in the media, entertainment, and podcasting arena.

[Ceric]

Get good source audio but, you probably already now that.
Plan the shows before hand.
If you can grab Music and Sound Effects early do but, most of the time it will hit you why doing the Podcast.
Have at least 2 ways to connect.  For NFR we use Dolby Axon because it tends to be more reliable and fall back to Skype when we have to.
If you can backup audio.  It may be recording the call as well as the individual audio.  In NFR case that means recording with a recording device and the computer.  You never know when you might forget to hit record or there is some sound artifact that gets into one recording and not the other.
Check you Mic sensitivity.  Try the best you can to prevent it from picking up the other people talking.
Clap at the beginning of segments and wait a 5 count before talking.  This gives a good way to align the audio and the 5 count silence afterwards gives to grab background noise for silencing
Record at a higher quality than your are going to produce if your able to.
Centralized Storage for notes, clips, raw, etc.  For NFR we use Skydrive/Onedrive.  I think RFN uses Drop box or like.  The advantage with OneDrive is its pretty easy to give people access and by default you get the ability to make and edit office documents right there.
For editing having each individual audio instead of just the groups can be a god send.

[Nile Boogie Returns]

Can I make the theme song! I'm dope!

[Wah]

Breaking Benjamin
hands down
not there?
not listening

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

we're all local we work at the TV station together the studio is going to be in my basement so we should be able to record live, so to speak.


Nile, if you are serious well I can't make that call but I can put your name in the hat. Ceric, lots of information to process thanks for the tips I will be sure to pass them along.


I am mostly curious about what software to actually create the stream, I am not that familiar with podcasts the one I did before, which was years ago, we just uploaded the MP3 to the web, I want to do something more "professional" than that, if that makes sense.

[Ceric]

Personally find Audacity easy to use.

MP3 is sort of the defacto standard.  BBC and I think NPR as well put up the specs for what level of audio quality you have to have to submit something for them to use.  Here is what I found on the BBC Standard.  I also found this document on what NPR is looking for.  That would be professional but, for most people exporting to an equivalent setting in MP3 using a more Voice centric export would work better.

That being said at NFR we record in a raw format, wav or whatever Audacity uses in the background, and export all are audio to the Lossless Flac codec so they can be imported by whoever edits the episode into separate tracks in Audacity.

In general for NPR it looks to mean:
Suggested MP2 file formats: Bitrate: 192kbits for mono, 384kbits for stereo. Sampling Frequency: 48KHz
Suggested WAV and AIFF formats: Sampling Frequency 48KHz or 44.1KHz.

For BBC:
Linear PCM, 44.1 KHz, 16 Bit in the Riff/Wav format.

For Podcasts its common to mix the audio down to Mono since its mostly voice, you lower the size, and people can listen with just 1 ear.  That being said if you include music originally meant to be in Stereo it gets a little weird.  We are actually thinking about moving to Stereo for that reason.

Hopes that helps some.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

I have used Audacity before for minor stuff but I do most of my editing in Acid I am not sure what would be better for the recording process, using Audacity to record the stream and edit in Acid, or just record from within Acid.

Thanks for the info it should be very helpful. I will probably capture everything in a raw format anyways and mix it to stereo because I will be using music and the way I want to do the mix is have the audio on left channel low volume and voice on both channels normal volume, something like that. I see why mono would be appealing though I might fiddle with that too.

I will listen to some more of your guys podcasts to get some ideas, this project is by no means inspired by RFN, I haven't listened to more than a handful of episodes though. What I would like to do is have sort of an internet radio station like a pirate radio thing something like that. I am working out the details right now its just something I have wanted to do for a long time and I ran out of excuses for putting it off.

[Ceric]

NintendoWorldReport actually has a radio station of Videogame music or did.  Can't remember where it is at.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

I listened to the latest one today, or I tried to those are far too long for me is that standard length for a podcast? We are thinking keeping ours about an hour or less.

[Ceric]

I listened to the latest one today, or I tried to those are far too long for me is that standard length for a podcast? We are thinking keeping ours about an hour or less.

About an hour.  NFR is much longer than an average podcast.  It just happened that way.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

I haven't had a chance to meet with the other guys yet but I did record a podcast for my blog. I been meaning to do that for a while too and decided to give it a try as a practice as well as putting something new to my blog. I am shooting for under 45 minutes for my personal blog but the collaborative one we might go a full hour or thereabouts.

[Ceric]

We shot for 2 hours for the longest time on NFR.  You just find a time that it ends up averaging and go with it.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

Well since I had to shut down the website due to lack of funds and Go Daddy raising their rates this is no longer happening.  I did finish editing my first episode. I just don't have anywhere to host it now.