DisturbedSwan Posted October 20, 2017 Share Posted October 20, 2017 Only just realised you can't record other folks voices over the net with Audacity so I'm gonna use Zencastr instead to save some us all some hassle. So when the time comes I'll send you all a link and we'll all sync up the mics in the room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 20, 2017 Share Posted October 20, 2017 I've just realised @mr lakitu won't be able to use Zencastr or Audacity because they're PC apps I initially thought it wouldn't be an issue as it would just record your phone audio, but the revelation that audacity doesn't record everyone's audio over the net and Zencastr's lack of support for phone browsers/apps has got me in a bind . Unless you can borrow a laptop/mic for the afternoon of course? You don't have to download anything, it's all browser based, I understand if that's asking too much though. If not I think we should be ok to use Google hangouts and record on that? I can stream directly to YT with the MFG YT channel anyway with that so in theory it should be fine. We can still talk about it on Skype and set it all up afterwards when it comes to it on the saturday anyway. If all else fails we'll use Zencastr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimboxy Posted October 20, 2017 Share Posted October 20, 2017 There is an audacity dmg for Mac https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac/&ved=0ahUKEwjps77N5__WAhUEnBoKHchTDH0QFggnMAA&usg=AOvVaw2UTqlCzrYNUdHidfmR7MnK You just need something to record your audio so that Blakey can then put them all in as tracks in audacity. I'm pretty sure Blakey should be able to record all the audio coming in from Skype though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hendo Posted October 20, 2017 Author Share Posted October 20, 2017 You can record the Skype conversation or you can record everyone separately and mix the files together. The advantage of the former is less editing but the downside is potentially bad audio mix and the host will have good sound, the others will sound less so. The advantage of separate recording is complete control of the mix, can silence people’s mics when they’re not speaking if they have bad background noise. The downside is having everyone know what they’re doing, all uploading their files, for some inexplicable reasons we used to have files going out of sync so lots of painstaking fixes in the editing process. Like Jim says you can use pretty much any audio program to record your mic, as long as it exports as an mp3 you’re golden. What I would do is start off with a Skype recorder this weekend and do an informal test show, see how that comes out. If everyone involved is then up for it and willing to put the effort in, try recording separately if the Skype audio is pretty bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 20, 2017 Share Posted October 20, 2017 Yeah, gonna give it a go and see how it goes, as long as everyone turns up we'll give it a bash, I've used Zencastr before on a poddy a couple years back and it was great so I'll give that a go. I've not really been able to think about it much these past couple of days as I've had a couple of bad migraine's/eye-strain (unsure which). So yeah, hopefully everyone turns up at the time and we'll have to suss it out then, if Mark's phone mic is good enough we'll get a google hangout going, if not we'll go for Zencastr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radiofloyd Posted October 21, 2017 Share Posted October 21, 2017 13 hours ago, Blakey said: Yeah, gonna give it a go and see how it goes, as long as everyone turns up we'll give it a bash, I've used Zencastr before on a poddy a couple years back and it was great so I'll give that a go. I've not really been able to think about it much these past couple of days as I've had a couple of bad migraine's/eye-strain (unsure which). So yeah, hopefully everyone turns up at the time and we'll have to suss it out then, if Mark's phone mic is good enough we'll get a google hangout going, if not we'll go for Zencastr. Hey man, you haven't added me on Skype. I don't know if you added someone else or an old account I've forgotten about. Search for "Thomas Hanley Kumamoto" and if you see a depressed looking guy wearing glasses, that's me. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 21, 2017 Share Posted October 21, 2017 3 hours ago, radiofloyd said: Hey man, you haven't added me on Skype. I don't know if you added someone else or an old account I've forgotten about. Search for "Thomas Hanley Kumamoto" and if you see a depressed looking guy wearing glasses, that's me. Nice, added you now. Must've added another Tommy before haha. Me and Ben are on Skype now, head on when you can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 21, 2017 Share Posted October 21, 2017 (Accidently streamed my webcam ) Thanks again for joining me @DANGERMAN @mr lakitu @radiofloyd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 21, 2017 Share Posted October 21, 2017 1 hour ago, mr lakitu said: Will you be uploading in audio form for people to listen to? Is there an MFGamers podcast feed I’ve forgotten? If so plz add the raw intro music onto it I was ages making that ? Yeah, I'm going to try to download and convert the audio from the YT vid into an mp3 converter program and then eventually get it up onto iTunes, soundcloud or something. So yeah, hopefully I'll have it done by next week sometime Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimboxy Posted October 21, 2017 Share Posted October 21, 2017 10 minutes ago, Blakey said: Yeah, I'm going to try to download and convert the audio from the YT vid into an mp3 converter program and then eventually get it up onto iTunes, soundcloud or something. So yeah, hopefully I'll have it done by next week sometime So, what have you uploaded to YouTube? The unedited screen capture? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DANGERMAN Posted October 21, 2017 Share Posted October 21, 2017 my internet dropped about halfway through so I came back on using my phone and 4g. The wifi eventually came back but I didn't want to piss about going back to the pc. The quality drops so I probably should have done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 25, 2017 Share Posted October 25, 2017 Not sure if there's an appetite to record another Podcast this weekend? I don't mind streaming Fortnite or something with @Hendo and a few of the other PS4 chaps and just having a casual chat, I'd probably repeat a lot of what I'd said on last week's poddy though but different folks would bring new conversations/thoughts on games etc. I did float the idea around when we went off air last week about doing a deep-dive into Super Mario Odyssey at some point? But I guess that'll probably be best served for next week as we'll of all (hopefully) made sufficient enough progress into it by then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hendo Posted October 25, 2017 Author Share Posted October 25, 2017 I’m not gonna be around at all this weekend, i’m afraid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 25, 2017 Share Posted October 25, 2017 Ah ok no worries. I'll knock it on the head for this week then and come back sometime next week for some SMO discussion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sly Reflex Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Oh hello. Yeah it's me. Recently I've been talking with various people from MFGamers about this whole podcast thing. I was pointed towards this thread before it happened and I sort of knew already that the show would be a complete disaster, although parts of it showed promise it was drowned in a shit whirlpool of problems, audio issues, general bodging and people not knowing what they were doing (aside from Ben who carried hard). I actually listened to it twice in full, the second time I sat with an A5 notepad jotting down everything that was bad, unneeded or just plain wank. After filling the page up on both sides I ripped it off and threw it away, since it'd have been easier for me to list what was right with the presentation rather than what was wrong. So I set on a journey to show Blakey that you cannot half arse this stuff. If you want to produce something resembling a vague amount of quality, then you have to prepare and edit shows to make them listenable. Initially I was going to edit the show that was uploaded until I realised it was just going to be Ben talking about expo's and Tommy talking about JRPG's with a little bit of filler from the remaining guests. Basically it would have boiled down to 110 minutes being sliced down to 15 minutes of show. It was junk. You know it, I know it, everyone that struggled through it knows it. For those involved that's hard to swallow, when you take time to organise something and you have an idea of how it'll turn out, only for it degenerate into shite is heart breaking. It's more heart breaking for people to say it's good though, since how are you meant to improve if you don't know where you went wrong. So I talked to Tom and got him to record again under parameters that should have gone the first time. While it wasn't possible to have as much quality in as I would have wanted myself, the recordings were of reasonable enough quality to be edited by me in Audacity. All in all it took me, someone who has next to zero experience in editing audio, about 50 minutes to clean up the um's, ar's and all the other mouth noises and breathing, chairs creaking, clocks chiming, dead air and meandering. This is from having no knowledge of how to manipulate audio. Once I got going it was pretty easy going, especially if you use the keyboard shortcuts that allow you to cut unwanted audio. So Tom. Stop being a lazy shit. See what is possible when you have a modicum of drive. Get the people involved and reward them with a product that they can be proud to listen to and want to appear on. You can't put shite out and expect people to willingly contribute to it. The video below took me approximately 2 hours to make. That includes looking at youtube guides on how to use Audacity and batting Vegas so I could host the show, since I had nowhere else to put it in a raw audio format. So tell me. Would the people that listened to both shows prefer to go along and carry on doing the clusterfuck that happened on the maiden voyage of dredging up the podcast, or would you prefer something at this level of production? Because it's really not hard when you put your mind to it. Sure, not as easy as capturing a stream of your call and throwing it up on Youtube, but it's not exactly hard either. Come live up to the original "Professional" show moniker you bandied about. Be Yorkshire tea, not instant coffee. Spoiler If you try to put that in any other show I will come down south and slap you about so hard metacritic will rate the beating at 90%. Awful idea. Listen to what people are saying. They're not advising to be ignored. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Folks wanted a casual chat, that's what we had, I'm happy enough with how it turned out. It wasn't the best quality audio-wise etc. True, but part of that was down to factors outside my control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sly Reflex Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 We had a casual chat when we recorded last night. The difference is I put a bit of spit and polish on while cutting out the fat. This isn't a case of me trying to assassinate you either. I'm trying to give you a kick up the arse to be better. Nobody else is going to do it, they'll talk between themselves about it but they won't directly address you, because they're being pleasanr. You tried, it was gash. Mistakes were made. Time to dissect the car crash and see where you can improve. Me intervening with what I've done is to show you how to correct it if/before the next episode happens, because if you carry on putting substandard stuff out, everyone will lose interest and it'll be dead and buried before the year is out. I don't want that. The people here don't want that either. What they do want is a show that's theirs that's dolled up a bit. It doesn't have to be super fancy. Functional, yeah, we don't need to hear all the mumbling about and all the other crap that happened in the first show. You can still have a casual chat and adhere to some standards. To look at what you have and decide if it should make the cut. I know you can do better. We all do. The issue is you're listening to the shows that have whole gluts of editors and people who know what they're doing so they can make shows like that. You just don't have the know how yet. And that's the key words. Yet. That's the obstacle you need to jump. You're totally capable of it. The people here are totally capable of recording their own audio. We even battled bad audio recording last night with your headset, what with having to jump across to the webcam camera. We jimmied it and I managed to correct it to a degree where it's alright, those issues were out of my control but I did the best I could to correct it. Some of my favourite podcasts of all time were recorded with Rock Band mics for fucks sake. It's hardly a requirement that you need expensive gear. It's maybe a good idea to invest in a nice mic if you're going to get into it though. I know it's hard for someone to criticize something you put work into, and maybe you think what you did is perfectly serviceable, but one day you're going to look back on it and be ashamed by it. I do that even now, stuff I was proud of at the time I despise now. Wear that shit like a battle scar. Get up, dust yourself down and take the advice I'm giving you. Redeem yourself. Put the time and effort in and publish stuff you can be proud of. I just showed what you can do with next to no knowledge. Be inspired to out produce me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hendo Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 Just finished listening to the Bitesize show. Being completely honest here, I think it was much better. The audio quality was much clearer (though personally I think the intro/outro music was a little bit higher in the mix than the voices, came booming out a little) though the big improvement was it being a much shorter, more focussed affair. I think the way forward, as like a few people I’d like to see the podcasts come back, is to make much shorter shows with a particular point per episode. Make it about one or two games tops, get people on that have been playing whichever game. Like for example, now you’d want Mario and Wolfenstein (or Ass Creed) and get people on who’ve been playing them for a fairly short show. Or about one or two particular subjects, like loot boxes or the Sony Paris show. Ask the forum for any comments or input ahead of time and keep the recording to 30 minutes max. As I’ve said before, I’m interested in being involved but my time is limited due to shift work. I’d be more than happy though to do editing - as long as the files are no more than 30 minutes long it’s not as exhausting to do. I got burnt out when we used to do them as editing long recordings with multiple files, with lots of pauses and chaff, not to mention files going out of sync, was a real pain in the arse. But if the files are short enough, I’ll be happy to lend a hand. I’d love the podcast to come back, but certainly in tighter affair. The original 2 hour YouTube show was hard going, at least until the conversation started flowing a bit easier. Constructive criticism - playing the theme on a phone wasn’t a great look, only one person on camera and only a small window was weird and the ending was very abrupt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisturbedSwan Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 I planned to do things Sly's way (but with Zencastr instead), but had to go to Plan C about 5 minutes before recording and use GeForce Xperience instead, to be completely honest I was scrabbling around just trying to find a solution to record voip about 5 minutes before we went on air. You can think I'm lazy or whatever all you want, but I did the best I could with the tools available to me at the time, and if the same exact circumstances arose again I'd do exactly the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radiofloyd Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 I enjoyed recording it and even listened back a couple of times, but I have to admit I'm almost unlistenable. Take my time...am...to make the point...like...I want to make...like... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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