Transcripts
1. Introduction: podcasting happened. Gaining momentum for a couple of huge now is a great medium to do in depth conversations or talks with people as well as sharing your own story for that. It is incredibly powerful, however, sometimes you don't want to just be alone on your show. But you also con really get the person that you want to talk with or have a conversation with or half on your show in some way, have them come to you or even go to them. This can be a tricky situation, even though it is a incredibly valuable tool to half guests on your show for an interview, for example, to get an expert into your topic, or just to mix it up a little bit. This also comes with a benefit that if you have guests on your show, they are inclined to share your show, which can have a marketing effect to grow your podcast altogether. It can be a tricky thing to get the guests to you or even travel to your guest. It can be a thing of cost, but it also can be a thing off very much distance. And nowadays, with the technological advancement that we have at our disposal with the Internet, we can actually do remote interviews quite nicely. Now, since you're looking at this class, I'm guessing you're either already running a podcast interview show where you have guests on and you wanna up your quality in terms of the recording or you want to start having guests on a show or maybe even create a podcast from scratch. And you want to look into how you can have guests on your show and still have a very high quality recording. Now I will have you cover in this class exactly about this topic of having remote guests on your show and still having a high quality recording, which you may not be able to get with programs like Skype or similar call applications, where you can also have a voice over I p conversation. We will talk about specific solutions to have local recordings to have mawr quality, as well as retaining the information in separate tracks for each person on the show, so that you can do much Maurin editing. You know, coming up on my special profile. You will also find other classes regarding the topic of podcasting I already have a class out there that is about the gear that you need for solo episodes or remote interviews, which will going to be referencing here. And the topics coming up are around recording in person interviews, editing podcasts, publishing them as well as just the overall working off the podcasting industry, how you treat your guests, how to invite guests and those kind of topics. So stay tuned for that and follow my profile if you want to be updated. However, right now, as I'm filming this, we are in the Corona crisis, which kind of makes it hard to go in person with people. So I thought to make this a priority class right now for you to know how you still can keep your podcast running, even though you are not able to travel to someone or have someone come to your house so you still can have podcast interviews coming up. Even though you are not able to meet your guests in person, I'll talk in detail about the different equipment needed for remote interviews as well as the suffer solutions at their disposal. There, I'm going to specifically talk about why you might want to choose which one, as well as the specific steps needed to actually set yourself up and get up and running to also have a guest on your show. Once you complete this class, you'll know from the equipment to the software to the recording and already half your recording finished with your guests on the show. The editing will be in a separate class coming up on my scooter profile, and if you want to be informed about that, you might want to check out my profile. Follow me there. And also, if it's already published, it will be a link in the description down below. So let's get you up and running for remote podcast interviews, and I will see you in the inside.
2. Equipment for Remote Interviews: the first thing that you might want to consider when doing a podcast in any kind of form is which microphone do you want to use? Since podcasts are generally audio only, you really don't need that much to actually do a recording off a podcast. And that is one of the big aspects that makes podcasting so interesting because it is just audio and you don't need much to make them. And you also don't need much to listen to them so you can listen to them on the go and all that. Now for a remote podcast interview show, you really just need a USB microphone, and there are actually two microphones on the market. There are kind of similar to this one right here, which is the 80 are 2100. There's a kind of alternative to this microphone on the market, which is called Simpson Q. To you. These two microphones are actually used be microphones, which means they have a use be poured at the bottom, which essentially means you don't need any specific extra gear, and you can just plug them into your computer and start recording, have a whole 25 minute extra class on sketcher, talking specifically about the gear needed for solo episodes as well as remote interviews, which also talks about these use be microphones as well as other alternatives and also gear that you might want to use like these boom arms, for example, as well as these pop filters. So please check out that class. Learn more about remote interview microphones. That makes sense for you. However, if you are planning on doing in person interviews as well as remote interviews and solo episodes, I have a limit of a different recommendation for you. This recommendation actually is a little more pricey. It is more gear intensive because you need a harbor recorder and two microphones to actually get the job done. However, the solution is also a all rounder for like I said in person solo as well as remote interviews. So that means you just need one set up to you all the different kinds of podcasts, and I'm going to have a class specifically about in person podcasts on my scooter profile coming up as well. One quick overview of that I want to give you here in this class if you plan on Onley doing remote interviews as well. A solo episodes. I would recommend you get the que to you from Samson or the age of 2100. And both of these basically looked like this. And they have a use be sport as well as an XLR port. Additionally, I would always get a little bit of pop filter that helps, and some kind of stand is helpful as well. These microphones are really popular and incredibly cheap. They arrange between anywhere from 50 to $80 between the two microphones from 80 are 2100 or Simpson cute to you. They don't really have much of a difference. I have heard that the Q two you may sound a little better than the eight or 2100 so that may be something to consider if you have the choice between the two. But other than that, you can basically just choose whichever is the cheapest at their disposal. Right now, these microphones make it incredibly easy to do solo episodes and in person interviews because you just pluck them into your computer with the USB cord and then open your audio editing or audio recording program. and your record ready to go. This also is really helpful because you can use thes USB microphones. Also four calls, like in Skype or similar things. If you have conference calls off, some soared to kind of have a better quality there as well. However, if you are planning on doing in person interviews as well, I would actually go for a little bit of a different set up right from the start, which includes the assume H five field recorder, as well as the Shure Beta 57 a, which is the microphone that I'm using right here. But you could also use the Shure Beta 58 a or the Shure Sm 58 s. These microphones are XLR microphones, which means you need XLR cables as well. And then these XLR cables connect the microphone to the assume H five field recorder, and that has the benefit that you don't really need a computer anymore. However, it additionally has the benefit that they assume H five actually can also be connected to your computer with a USB cord, and then you can use your sure baby beta 57 a or other XLR microphone to actually be used as a microphone on your computer for Skype four audio recording for the different programs that I'm going to recommend here for remote interviews. So that is a really cool all round solution. So it's break it down one last time, the 18 or 2100 or the Samson Q two. You are used the microphones that can really easily be used for remote interviews, and they cost between 50 to $80. The Shure Beta 57 58 or sm 58. Those microphones cost you between 1 52 50 and the audio recorder costs around 102 to 300 euros as well. So you're looking at a set up for 3 to 500 euros if you want to do remote and in person interviews. So this is the choice for you. And as I mentioned, there are links to the classes in the description below where I talk about these different setups as well. No, With a gear out of the way, let's talk about the different solutions for doing remote interviews
3. Why Local Recordings and Not Skype : they're different solutions for different setups. As always, there's Skype, zoom, Zen Castor as well as a standard local recording, and all of them have benefits as well. A straw Becks, if you want to have the simplest set up out there, for the most part, is probably going to be something like Zoom, Skype or Google hangouts and then recording that audio with something like, for example, audio hijack. However, those are not necessary of the tools that I would recommend as well as feature here in this process, because these solutions all come with the problem that the audio recording is actually always done after it is transmitted through the Internet, which means it's going to be compressed. And most likely, there's going to be some kind of echo reduction already applied to the audio tracks. And sometimes these tracks also are mixed together already, and that means you don't really have any way off editing the audio between the two different speakers. This is a problem because sometimes one person speaks much louder than the other person, and you want to turn them down. However, if it's all baked into one file, you just don't have any way off really, reasonably changing that. If you have the two speakers in separate audio tracks, however, you can have effects on one track and not the other. Which means if one person has an echoey room, you can do echo reduction on just that one person's track. And if you have the for example, volume off another person talking really loudly, you can turn that down. So having a separate track recording is really, really powerful, and most of these other solutions don't really necessarily give you that. And as I've mentioned, you also often run into the problem that the recordings actually done on the hosts computer . Which in turn means that the audio first needs to travel through the Internet. And that can come with compression as well as quality loss as well as the issue that sometimes Internet breaks off. And then you don't have any audio transmitted at all, personally listening to even big podcast using solutions like these. It is often times so awful that I really have to either force myself to keep listening or just turn it off because I can't deal with it anymore. So having a clear, crisp audio, nice high Fidelity is really something that you should work toward when doing remote interviews, and the solutions covered down below are going to give you exactly that. The challenge can be to get another proper solution up and running. And it also may be something that the person that you are speaking to is not really comfortable with or familiar with. Skype is something that I personally always keep an open door to word. So when I am talking to a guest or potential guest, I do make the suggestion to use all these other solutions that I'm talking about. However, I still kind of have Skype as a running solution in there to just have a backup. Basically, however, as I've mentioned, we're going to focus on the other solutions, which are kind of equally as simple, if not simpler, and they work just as well. However, they're basically coming with much more benefits, especially for this type of recording. Skype has a great place for normal conversations that you don't want to record or share. But for the topic off podcast recording, I think there are much better solutions out there at the end of the day of The solution that you choose to actually record your podcast depends heavily on your guest. If you have a co host, for example, you may be able to choose the highest quality version that needs the most set up as well as the most knowledge on all parts. However, if you have changing guests and every week is a different person, you may want to choose the easier solution that still has most of the benefits. So let's talk about the first solution, which is kind of the highest quality, however, also the most complex one.
4. Manual Local Recording for the Highest Quality: So let's talk about one of the highest quality solutions that you can do when doing some kind of remote recording for this solution. You basically both you ask the host as well as your guests are going to run a recording program for your audio. This makes most sense if both of you actually also have some type off, high quality microphone that you are running into your computer, so please make sure that your microphone is actually connected to your computer. And then we have to open your audio editing program, for example, audacity, GarageBand or audition or some kind of other audio recording and editing program. Personally, I prefer Audition from Adobe. However, I'm going to focus on audacity and GarageBand here because they are free programs that are available for pretty much anyone with GarageBand being only for Mac OS but audacity actually being for Lennix, Mac OS and Windows, and it works just all over the board, and it's free to download for everyone so even your guest can download it for free as well . So to give you a little bit of an overview off the solution, you have some type of program running where you have a conversation with the guest that you're talking to, for example, Skype or Google hangouts. Then both of you are running a audio recording program, for example, audacity or GarageBand. And both of you are clicking the record button, and at some point you'll probably have to do something to synchronize the recording, which most likely is something off a clap. For example, a countdown and a clap, which helps to then later used these to audio files and pull them together in the editing program to synchronize them back together. No, the benefit this set up has is that it is really high quality because the recording that you can do in a program like audacity, for example, or garage ben is actually a possible wave file, which is un compressed audio with a bit depth off 24 or even 32 bits. And the high quality standards that really give you a good audio quality recording with other solutions are easier for the guests as well as host, for example, the sandcastle solution that we're going to talk about next. This is actually less off a quality here because the browser recording that is featured there only gifts you about 16 bits off audio and also way files, but mostly MP three files. So this is giving you the most information, most audio quality that you can get. However, it comes with this issue or this struggle that both of you have to run this program and both of you have to click the record button and then also share the audio file. This is taken care of by the next solution. However, this year again gives you the most quality to set this all up. Let's go onto the screen, and I'm going to share with you how this is done. So first things first. Please install or download audacity if you don't have it on your computer or if you don't care about this, jump forward to the garage band section. I'm going to have a link to audacity in the description. Down below, off this classed. Now, once you have audacity open, make sure that you also have the microphone that you want to use for a USB microphone connected to your computer and check that that is working. Now you can do this by for Mac OS. Go to the settings into system preferences and their go to sound. And they're go to input. And you can see. Right now we have the internal microphones selected, and as we scroll down here, we will find the 80 are USB microphone. Selecting that, you could notice that I'm now talking into it. And as I tapped onto the microphone, you can see that it's basically just picking up this microphone now. You can also see that I can actually make the level right here. And this can be important, because right now, if I really talk into it, you can see that it's going up all the way to the end. And that means it is clipping. And we don't want clipping to occur because that distorts the audio and it cannot record the whole equality or the best quality possible. So now, having the 80 are used the microphone here we could go into audacity and then also check here to select the 80 are USB microphone. So if you started audacity before plugging in your microphone to your computer, you may actually have to restart audacity because it did not recognize the microphone when you just plugged it in so restarted the program, and then you can select your microphone from the drop down here, and then you can click the start monitoring button up there, and then you can actually see that I am right now talking into this microphone, and you can also see that the signal is actually quite loud. So it's getting to the red area up here, which we don't really want because that it's clipping and we don't want that. So we have to turn this down and around. Minus 12 is a good area, especially if you're having a conversation where you may actually end up laughing. So laughing is a really loud noise, and usually so you want to give you that self a little of head room to not go into that area. And with that here already set up, we then go over, for example, to Skype. And if you want to have our conversation through Skype, we go to the audio and video settings here, and then you can see that we might want to actually just to use the 80 are USB microphone there asked. Well, now, having that set up, we would then go and have our call with whoever we want to have. And once we have that call up and running, we click the record button right there and you can see that my voice is actually being recorded here at the same time as we are also using that recording for the other stuff on Skype. Now. The same thing works, of course, with GarageBand. So opening up garage Ben and having a empty project opening that up, having this setting right here, where we choose what we want to do. In this case, we do a voice recording choosing the one input because we have a model signal and my instrument connected is theeighties our USB microphone. If it's not that, then we click here and at input device. We actually can just select whichever we want to be choosing. And it's the 80 are USB microphone right there. From that point, we collectively create button right here, and I personally prefer to close the library, change the time up here to time instead of minutes of beats or something, and we don't want the pre counter and we don't mind the metronomic. So, having this set up, you can see that We have an audio level right there, and we also can change the volume again here. And as you can see, that changes the volume to the disc iron value. Now, if we click the record button right there, we can also see that the audio is being recorded into this project right here. And once we're done, we can then export it and work with that. But that's going to be shown in a minute. So once you have these things set up and test it that your audio is being recorded and that it works, you can actually just half that call with whoever you have on the show, and they need to do the same set up for their end. So they also have to open garage bend. They also have to check their own microphone whether or not it's selected and also the levels. So making sure that the levels are around minus 12 not going into the red. Even if you start talking a little louder, that is a good thing to check before and then once you are actually ready to record, what you do is that you go into the call you have the other person. Check with them and see if everything is set up the way it is supposed to be set up and then click live report button on both ends. And then I usually start with about 5 to 10 seconds off silence after the hidden the record button and then also doing a countdown. So both of you, the other person and you, both of you countdown from, for example, 3 to 1. And at zero, you clap into your hands so you have a spike in the audio that you can use to also synchronize your conversation later in the editing process. After that, you just simply have your conversation like normal, and you are actually pretty state because now your program is recording and the other person has their program recording. So even if the call, for example, hangs up, the audio recording locally still continues working. Now, once you're actually finished with the recording, both of you click the stop recording button in whatever program you were using, and now it's time to actually export the audio file. Exporting the audio file always works a little different in every tool that is out there in GarageBand, for example, we go to share and then to export song to disk. And once that opens up, we can choose between different qualities that are down here. Personally, I would choose the way files because they are pretty much the most compatible. It doesn't really matter which system you're using. They just work. Then down here, I would go for 24 bit because that is the highest quality level that, in this case the garage band gives us. And once that is done, we just name the file something that is making sense and click export. And as you can see, it just goes through the file. And now we have that file on the screen right here with audacity. It is similar, but not the same. So here we go to file export and then export asked wave ones that screen opens, we can choose down here what quality level we want to have in this case. Either go for a wife. Microsoft signed 24 bit or a wave Microsoft 32 bit, which is a little more quality, but at that point and really become something that I would not necessarily care all too much. And then we can go to the safe button down here if we want to. We can set certain metadata settings here, but we don't. So just click the safe, okay? And that's done. And now, once those funds are ready, ask your guests to also upload that file and send it to you in some way. Common files to have people transfer files to you like this can be dropbox school drive as well as we transfer. And now you actually have the high quality high fidelity un compressed audio file for each individual person and can start editing with East. I know this sounds like a lot of work for just a simple audio recording, which it is, and there are actually some easier ways to doing this. However, this definitely gives you the most reliable as well as the highest quality solution that is out there Now. If you have, for example, a co host and you're doing a podcast episode every single week, this actually makes sense for you both to learn that process and just to record these episodes in this program in this way. Now, if you have changing guests all the time, this may not really make sense because you always have to teach them the whole process unless the guest itself has their own podcast and knows how to do these things. So in the next video, we're going to coat over a solution where, actually, many off these aspects are automatic ized so that you don't have to worry about that, and your guests also does not have to worry about those things.
5. Remote Recording Easy to use Services: So you probably noticed that the solution with the manual local recording is not really necessarily something that you want to teach every single guest on your show. Luckily, nowadays they're actually solutions out there that give you all of that basically, in a Web browser, even though it comes with a small step down in quality. The two services that I personally have fused in this our Zen castor as well as squad cast DOT FM. The basic offering off both of these is pretty much the same. However, Zen Castor actually also provides a free plan that you can start using it with. So that is what I'm going to focus on in this class. Once you outgrow the free plan of rooms and Castor, it may make sense to check in again whether or not it makes sense to choose another service . One of the upcoming features of squad cast, for example, is that they are planning to implement video calls, and that is something that I'm really eager to see how it will work, one that is actually implemented. But for now, Zen Castor has the better offer, especially since they have that free plan available But what do these services actually offer us? A remote podcast guest host. So there are actually many aspects Number one their Web based, which means you simply send a link to your guest, and they can just simply join that without having to install anything. For the most part, Zen Castor is focused on chrome, and you can basically have everything working with chrome, However, sometimes there are certain aspects that are not working as well. For example, mobile phones or tablets are not necessarily working as well, and also other browsers other than chrome itself. But the amazing thing is, your guest basically just needs Google Chrome, a computer with an Internet connection, a biker phone ideally, a good one as well as headphones. At least that is recommended to use as well to reduce the echo. Then what the service will actually give you is a local recording off every participant that is on the show and that actually can be multiple people that are on there at the same time. So everybody gets recorded into their own track, and that then later gets uploaded into the cloud by then Castor and that suffer on the client side so that you don't really have to worry about that. And once all of those files are ready for you online, you can actually just download them, put them in your audio editing program. And for the most part, they're also pretty much synchronized. Additionally, you also actually see a lot of information, technically, about the different people on the show, which also gives you information about which microphone they have selected, how their microphone is set up, how the Internet speed is working and more details like that. This can really help by just debugging and finding out what is going wrong, what might not be working, and you can then figure it out to eventually get back to just recording your show. Normally, one more thing that then Caster also offers is that they actually also have a kind of post processing service. However, I'm not going to go over that because I do think that that is better done manually because then you can adjust your settings based on how that sounds and how the recordings are actually working together. Now, how about pricing Zen Castor as of this recording actually offers a free plan, which gives you three people on the show, which means one host as well as two guests at the same time. It also gives you MP three recording and up to eight hours per month. This is a great starting point because it gets separate files for each individual guest, which helps a lot and editing. However, the MP three files are actually pretty compressed to 128 killer pits, and that means that the audio quality is already lost in that process. Or a lot of the audio quality has already lost in the process instead of having way files which they offer in the premium plan. But the main thing is, you get separate files locally recorded so they're not distorted or compressed by the interconnection or the process that goes into sending it over the Internet. And you just get those separate tracks for the different people. So if someone's louder, you can turn the volume down. If someone has an echo, you can remove the echo in their audio, but not in everybody else's. Those things are incredibly powerful to have that at your disposal. Now, going into the premium plan, you pay about 17 to $20. Something aren't that range. And with that, you get way filed recording with 44.1 kilohertz as well as the 16 bits setting, which, as you might remember from the local recording, we could actually choose 24 as well as 32 bid and 16 bit is all that we concurrently half inside of a browser recording that also, these two programs offer the same goes for squad cast for exam. They also have a way file with 16 bit recording. And this premium plan is especially interesting if you want to doom or editing in the end. And also, if both your for your guests actually have good quality microphones, then the wave files can be even more important and even more interesting to get. Now, let's jump on to the website from San Castor and see how all that works in terms of the dashboard of the settings that you might want to make, as well as the technical details that you might want to check before hitting that record button inside of Lancaster
6. Remote Interviews with Zencastr: So now it's time to look into Zen Castor and how to get you set up with everything they offer. First thing we see when we are on the website is this nice screen where they kind of go over the different features that they offer. As you can see, you get separate track recording. You can't record in lost less Way files, which is only a premium feature. You gotta soundboard for life editing, which is, if you are doing this kind of production where it is basically recorded just once you have the build in voice over I p. If cloud drive integrations with Dropbox and Google drive and you have the automatic post processing which I personally don't necessarily like and I just prefer to do it myself. Then you can go down here and as you can see, you have the professional plan with the monthly payments for 20 and the yearly for 18 and then you can also see you have unlimited guests, unlimited recordings, life editing on the soundboard recording in high quality MP three s, well as 16 bit wave files and then up to 10 hours off the automatic production. If you go to the free side. You can see that right now with Corona. They are actually opening this up to not have a limit on the guests. But this is going to probably change in the future again to be one host to guests and a maximum off eight hours per month. The recording is in high quality MP three, which can be argued about whether or not this is high quality. But it is enough quality for voice recording for short paper used postproduction again, something I personally don't use. So it's not really that big of a deal that they don't support this now, if you want, you can, of course, just subscribe here to the $18 or $20 per month, or you have the free plan that you can see right here, which I currently have selected. Now what you can do here is you can just think the start recording today and that will actually bring you to the log in screen or the create account screen. Now I'm going to just switch over to the tap here, which will give you the screen that you see once you have your account created and they just need your name and email address and then you get basically to this point. Some of the first things that I would do here is connect your cloud drive, which either can be Dropbox or Google Drive. This makes the process off, downloading the way files much, much easier than it would be. If you are only using, for example, the Lancaster screen itself. Here you can download those files much, much easier. Then you can see the local storage, which is literally in your browser. And as you can see, I have about 299 gigabytes off space available, which can be used here, and I have currently used with Sen castor just 14.9. But you can also see that the browser storage usually is restricted to 10% off your computer storage. So that is something to keep in mind that you really need a good amount of free space to record here. The recording settings down here, you can see use built in voice over I p. This is actually a preference of mine that I like to use this built in voice over I P method instead of using something separate, which would mean that another thing has to be run on my computer and also the guests computer, for example. But it can be helpful. For example, if you want to do the local recording still through, then Castor. But you, for example, want to do your call with Steuer iPhone, for example, to have separate means of communication there. Now, if you have the premium account, you also will Seymour recording settings down here. For example, you can activate whether or not you want to record wave files. This may be interesting because way falls are much bigger and file size, so if you don't have the amount of storage available or you just don't want to deal with it , maybe you don't want to use that. But you still want to have the premier account, for example, for unlimited guests or unlimited hours off record time now to get you started. The first thing that we want to do on this screen here is now creating new episode, and what that does is it opens up a screen where we can name this episode, and one thing that you could do here is you can name it like the guest that you are interviewing, for example, and I'm just gonna put demo name here sometimes I actually also like to just make one of these because then this link here up there actually stays the same, and I can just send that to new guests over and over again Can be a good idea. However, we also have noticed that sometimes overloading one of the sessions with multiple recordings can be quite tricky as well. So it kind of is helpful or suggested by the support him from Lancaster to create a new link for every guest that you interview on your show. Now, let's talk about what you see on the screen right here, which is basically the dashboard that you can see while you are recording your show. The first thing, of course, at the top here is actually the link for this show. So this is the one that you actually also send to your guest. And I'm gonna demonstrate that in a moment other things that you can see here is the start recording button to the left. Here, you can see for how long you have been recording, you can actually also make a timeline footnote, which means a note based on the time that you are currently at, you can invite someone and they will get a email automatically. Or, as I mentioned, you can just copy that invite link and send it to them. And then you can see that I have my own line right here, and you can also see that I have a health check past and it is ready to record now. There's multiple things that we could do here. We can highlight this, which means we are raising our hand to have to say something, and we can also mute and amuse ourselves. Once you are a host and you have multiple guests, you can also mute and un mute those other people, which can be quite helpful, especially if you have many other people on the show, which may be interesting. If you do that kind of a show opening this little knob here down there, you can see that there's way more information available now. Cloud backup, local back up, the storage, the mike as well as the hate health check, and what you can see there is that I passed my health check with the mike. You see, there's an unknown microphone, so that might be something that we want to check and also fix the local backup as well as the cloud backup. Those two are interesting ones. The recording started because they're going to show you how much off the information is already in intimate and how much is only in local storage. So that can help to just gauge whether or not everything is finished. Uploading now, one more thing before I go into the details off the health check. There's also this little thing right here, which is the settings Aiken and there you can see that for myself. I can choose the microphone and also the output. Usually you want to have some type off, headphones said here. This is highly recommended because then you actually reduce the amount of echo. And with that, you then also can actually disable the echo cancellation. Personally, I prefer the echo cancellation disabled because that means that at the end of the day, I'm gonna get a higher quality audio file because echo cancellation basically means that while I'm not talking, it's going to listen for that and see when I'm not talking and then just cut it out completely while the other person is talking. This can be helpful. However, if you are using good headphones and don't put them on maximum loudness, you can actually just use the disabled mode for the echo cancellation, which will and the end of the day give you a higher quality file. And then you can actually have more control over this in the editing process. And, of course, the last point is whether or not you want to use the built ins and castor boys over I. P. I would say Go for this if you are not really wanting to use something else for whatever reason. For example, one thing that comes to my mind would be if you want to use to capability to also records some type of video but still want to also have these high fidelity all your files. Then it may make sense to disable this and then actually use the video and the Skype mobility, like the voice over I p from those other programs. But for the most part, I would say it's easier to simply just half this enabled and use it as is now we have all this set up is able the echo cancellation Monitoring is something that if you want to hear yourself while you are talking, but this is something I don't really see necessary. And it's kind of confusing to myself, at least hearing myself while I'm talking at the same time. Most of the time, there's also a slight delay, so that makes really the whole process, even Mawr weird. So now we have all that set up. We can click the safe settings, and sometimes we have to reload this page, sometimes not. It kind of depends which settings were changing. Now, having this back here, we want to go into the health check to actually make sure if everything is OK there and you can see. Sometimes there are things that may not work out as expected. For example, you may get a warning for not having enough space available. This is especially problematic if you are opening. Send Castor for the for very first time on a new computer. It can make sense to actually close and open it again, because sometimes a tab or a browser window, a website gets only so much storage if it is only visited for the first time. So that is something to be mindful about. But it is also something that will be displayed with these support articles. You can actually see that everything on this list here pretty much comes with a support article. So if you see a warning there, then Castor can actually help you with that quite nicely. And they also have the chat available, which may or may not be online. It kind of depends on the time off day, as you can see right now, it says that team typically replies in under 20 minutes, which can be quite cool. But it also may be something that you want to be aware off because you may not have 20 minutes, especially if you have your guest already on the show. So now that see whether or not I'm recording and you can see No, the microphone is actually the one that I have selected here. Now I'm going to demonstrate how this looks when you have a guest on your show. So I'm gonna copy this year. Put it in another browser here and now we will see how this flow actually works for a guest . And as you can see, the guest is actually asked for a name. So we're gonna put something like Demo Joe join, you can see, Will you allow is an Castro to store data in persistent storage. They should say yes, which is important to actually be able to do this. Then we off course also are asked to allow the microphone access so we should say allow. And, as you can see, allow audio playback as well. And now, as you can see, we have Demo Joe here, and we have Chris Spiegel here, which are those two accounts. Then you also have the ability to have test Chet available so you can actually talk with each other. If you, for example, don't hear each other. This can be really helpful. If the microphones are not set up correctly, the guest himself can click the gear I can. And here the guest can change the input as well as usually the output and also disabled monitoring or enable monitoring. And they can raise their hand and they commute themselves. If the guest actually muted themselves, they host actually can still a Knute them and the host can also remove the raised hand after, for example, having taken a question from that guest. And now what is one of the most interesting part off this tool, or what is really interesting is that you can actually see the same information for the guests so you can actually see the health check for them as well as your own health check. And you can also have this information as the guest. However, the guest can only see his own health check and not for the other people. Now, once you have your guest on your show, it is really good to tell him that you're not currently recording already. This kind of eases them a little bit and gives them a time to just check in with you. And you ask well, a time to tell them how the whole process is going to work. Then at some point, you're going to tell them that you're going to start recording. You're going to do a count down and clap with them together. So they clap on the countdown as well to have a synchronization point and then also have 5 to 10 seconds of silence. which helps in the editing process to actually be able to remove noise more easily. And once you have all these things set up, the record button pressed ideally your mic and some kind of a boom arm like this one. Then it is time to do the clap with them the silence and, of course, start the show and start the conversation. Now, as you can see on the screen, the recording is working, the audio is actually going in and you are seeing also the data that is being transferred so you can actually see the local back up here and also the cloud backup. And you actually see that information for both people so you can see that the cloud backup is actually doing the backup while the recording is happening. However, this would not necessarily happen if the Internet speed, for example, is not quick enough. This is a good thing because that means that the conversation, the flow of the conversation, is prioritized. But the local backup with local recording is still working with full power and then once the Internet connection is better again, or once the conversation has and their focus is on uploading, then the cloud backup can actually finish up completely and with full quality. Now, once you are finished with the recording, it is good to not immediately click that stopper court button. So you say your goodbyes to your guests, for example, say thank you for being on the show and all that, and then you could stop the show. And you don't necessarily want to click the stop record button right in that second. Because usually sometimes there are either good nuggets right at that point or the use synchronization has some issues, so you might just want to leave it for 30 seconds longer. Once you are done, though, you can stop the recording. And as you can see, they're recording actually stops on both ends at the same time. And then you can also see that here you can see now the upload is complete. Now, you could already see in that process that there was an upload happening in some way and that actually helped to colic See, for the guest as well as for you. What is happening there now? As you can see, the upload is all done and you have all tracks have finished uploading and it's now safe to close this tab. And you really have to tell your guests that they should wait for this click. OK, now the guest could download their own audio and the host can actually download both audios . And because it is the free plant right now, you only get the MP three files. If you have the premium plan, you actually get the MP three file as well. Ask the wave files. Once all this is done and that message is complete, you can tell your guest your goodbyes. Thank you for being on the show and they are safe to close the tab. You're safe to close the tap. You can Then either get the files from Dropbox or Google Drive, or you can literally just download them right here from the screen. And as you can see, the download now is starting and I have to allow multiple files. But now this is actually finished downloading and in my folder for me to start editing and with that, your first remote interview is done. You have the files ready. Now let's go over a checklist to collect, see which points are important what you might want to check and make sure that it's actually set up with the correct settings, and then we're already done with this class.
7. Class Checklist: Now that we have all that wrapped up, let's go over a checklist to see whether or not we have everything set up correctly and working. The first thing is to make sure that half a good quality microphone life, the Q to you from Samson or the 80 are 2100. Next on the list is to check which solution you might want to choose. Do you have a co host that you do a show regularly with, and you want to have a solution that gives you the most quality? Then the solution with Emanuel recording might be the one for you. If you have changing guests and you don't want the other person to worry about the differences or the record button and all that stuff, then the solution with Zen Castor is a good one for you. Next, you want to make sure to give your guest good instructions. This includes what kind of room to record in what kind of microphone to use that they need headphones to actually do the recording with you, and they should also check whether the room has a big echo or other noises like, for example, refrigerators or air conditioning. And then, of course, you should also give them the information as to how you are going to record. And with that, send them a link to for examples and castor or your Skype contact details. Once the conversation or interview time comes, it is a good idea to send your guest another reminder about 24 hours before you want to interview them. Then, at the right time you go online, go into Zen Caster or whatever solution you look up for and check your own details. Make sure you have your microphone connected correctly. Set it up in the recording program that is actually going to record that audio and not anything else. And then, of course, once the guests joins, also check their details, either by talking about it in Skype or something similar, or by just checking the details in this end castor interface to make sure that they have the right microphone selected that they have their levels set correctly, that it's not spiking or anything. Make sure to also disabled the echo cancellation. If you are using headphones on both ends so that you don't need that and you can use more detail information in the editing process and lastly, do instruct your guests about the process. From here on out, I like to tell them that I'm not recording at the time there joining so that they are more comfortable, kind of go over the process, how the whole show is going to be recorded. And once we're all settled there, I'm going to sell. Yes. Now I'm going to record here and click the record button. And with that also half that instruction to give a little bit of silence and then give a clap after a countdown so that you have more information available for the noise reduction as well as the clap for this in pronunciation, which is a little tricky with the delay between you two. But it kind of helps to at least gauge that place in the editing process a little better once you're done with a conversation. I like to have a little bit of a buffer at the end, so don't just clear the recording right at this moment. When you say goodbye, you want to just keep a couple more seconds, or maybe even a minute longer. That really helps to not cut anything crucial because sometimes the best things happen right after that, so you might want to include that in your show. So that's stopping the recording at the moment you say goodbye is really a good idea once you then have clicked the stop recording button. It is a good idea to also instruct your guests to stay online until the way file finished uploading. You will see that in the Zen castor interface, and once you're done with that, you can tell your guests that they can actually leave and say your goodbyes. Thank them for the conversation or the interview, and from this point it is about you downloading those files from Dropbox, for example, or from this em caster interface. Putting them into your editing program and cutting it altogether, Making your adjustments asked, you see fit. The editing process off solo as well as interview episodes, is also going to be something that I'm going to cover in an extra class on my sculpture profile. So if you want to stay up to date, please follow that. So all of this is quite the process, but at least you now have good quality audio to jump into the editing process to make your life a little easier and the audio quality for your people to listen much, much nicer.
8. Feedback, Questions, and Outro: now you pretty much have everything you need to create high quality audio podcasts remotely from the comfort off your home. I hope this gave you a good understanding. However, if you have any open questions, please afraid to leave them in the community section or your own class project for this class, she want to have more hands on help in a consulting session. You can also find information about that on my website, chris spiegel dot com, which is also going to be linked in the description below. In the future, I'm also going to publish more classes about the different topics from the year for in person podcast, the editing of podcasts as well as just the preparation off a guest, the publishing off a podcast. All those things are going to be covered in separate classes on my sculpture profile. So if you want to stay up to date with that, please follow my profile. And if you wanna have more updates about the different things that I'm doing on different platforms, please also check out my YouTube channel or check me out on Instagram or subscribe to my newsletter. All of those are avenues to stay in contact with me more or less directly and learn about the things that I am creating. With all that said, invite your guest, create your podcast and ideally shared in the common section off the class project or the community section. I'm really looking forward to see and hear some of your first shows. That's going to be a really awesome to kind of hear those stories and share those in this medium that is so popular nowadays. Thank you for taking this fast. Go out there, make it your life and I will see you in the next class. Chow Chow.