April Fools 2008: OTCast Episode 01 -- "A Bit Chippy"

[Krill]

Dr Spike, Asher, Wiglaf and Wezil should get together on Skype and do this and if they came up with the goods Dan should host it.

[PLATO]

Why not do a OTcast?

...and host it on CivJunction.

[LordShiva]

WTF is CivJunction?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Krill
Dr Spike, Asher, Wiglaf and Wezil should get together on Skype and do this and if they came up with the goods Dan should host it.

Only if someone else edits it...

[Lancer]

I would like Ming and Rah to be more opinionated in the OT, as they are on this cast.

I do think this is a good concept and would make an interesting addition to the site. Though I personally wasn't available to be on the special it would have been nice to hear from posters who contribute to the OT more and are more positive in their outlook of it.

Still, like eating roadkill, parts were still good.

[EPW]

I was cut

[Locutus]

Re: Re: April Fools!

Originally posted by DrSpike
I hope that the April fool is that it's not really an April fool. Because in my view the OT cast idea is better than, say, Modcast.

Considering ModCast (and PolyCast) has considerably more listeners than this episode I have to disagree But to each his own...

As far as pulling an MtG and making this thing real, we're in principle open to that idea. We'd have to have some say over the the quality and content of the show (most obviously, things that you're not allowed to say in forum posts aren't tolerated from a podcast either, especially if it's to be hosted by us), but those can be worked out.

As Asher points out, the main obstacle would be to find someone to organise and especially edit the show. From setting up the panel and coming up with topics, to the actual recording, the whole editing process and publishing on the website and forums, making one episode of PolyCast or ModCast easily takes 15-20 hours (for the main organiser alone), and that's not counting transcription which we still have on our wishlist for all PolyCast productions (that adds another 5 or 6 hours). Some of the work can be split between multiple people but it's still a lot of man hours -- don't count on anyone on the existing PolyCast team to volunteer for this, so you'd have to find others willing to take on that task. But if people are willing to step up I think we could make it work.

[Asher]

making one episode of PolyCast or ModCast easily takes 15-20 hours (for the main organiser alone)

you'd have to be FANTASTICALLY inept for a single ~40 minute episode of people talking about nothing to take 15-20 hours to make.

[Locutus]

That just goes to show how fantastically ignorant you are

You seem to be at least somewhat genuinely interested in making this OTCast thing work, you might want to consider not starting by insulting the people you want to help with hosting and the like...

[Asher]

I'm not insulting, it's frickin true.

You cut and paste audio around, what's so difficult? Are you counting the encoding time on a 8086?

I sometimes wonder how anything gets done on this site, and now I realize it's because you guys spent 20 hours on every PolyCast episode.

[DanQ]

It is much more than cutting and pasting audio, Asher -- if that's all we were doing than indeed ~15-20 hours of post-production work per episode would be excessively high.

[Asher]

Then I suggest you re-evaluate what you guys do for an episode.

It really shouldn't be more than setting a time, conferencing in, recording it to cut/paste the audio, then encoding and posting it.

[Lancer]

If it takes that long then I'd question if it's worth it when you could open a new thread and BS about the same stuff in a fraction of the time. However it's not my time so...enjoy.

[Locutus]

In theory it should be, but as with everything in life theory and practice are completely different stories.

In reality, Skype is a piece of sh*t and most people don't have proper gear (to get really proper quality you'd have to spend easily $100-150 on equipment per host, bare minimum, which most people aren't willing to do for a silly little podcast). If you want to use cheap equipment and Skype but still want the sound quality to be remotely usable for recording purposes, sadly there's no getting around long editing times, which takes up the bulk of those 15-20 hours.

And that's not even considering the human factor: our hosts aren't trained to work the mic: they're breathing into it, eating/drinking in front of it, having it positioned wrong and moving it around all the time, etc -- that sort of stuff really affects the sound quality but is hard to unlearn (especially for guests that are only on for one show) and doing so would remove much of the fun, which is what these podcasts are in the end all about. So you could spend $100,000 on equipment (no exaggeration, that's the kind of budget 'real' radio stations work with) and the sound would still be bad.

And the time required for getting a group of people together, agreeing on a time that works for everyone across multiple continents and finding a good list of topics shouldn't be underestimated either, nor should publishing the show if you want more than just a forum thread with a link to a file server -- some of that can be streamlined if your willing to take some shortcuts but it's still a significant effort.

[Asher]

PEBKAC, quite obviously.