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

[DanQ]

With a number of recording and editing experiences as well as shorter episode lengths this season, some episodes have been ~10-15 hours in editing. Other times we get a bit more... chatty and there are always technical considerations (e.g. the quality of a guest co-host's feed) that can bump that up into the ~15-20 hour range. We're certainly always looking for ways to reduce editing (and publishing) time while still producing a product that we're satisfied with.

We all like discussing Civ matters on the forums, but this adds some more variety.

[Lancer]

Something different.

I wonder if you just recorded a conference call, didn't edit anything and just let the humanity show if that would be more interesting and easier?

[Locutus]

The sound quality would be so poor that many people would probably not be willing to put up with it. No doubt you'd still have *some* people who would, but you wouldn't nearly reach the same audience you could if you took the time to clean up the sound.

To give you an idea of how bad things can get, listen to the the interviews we did with Jon Shafer and Soren Johnson (their sound specifically, not so much that of the regular hosts) and keep in mind that those are still HEAVILY edited to make them at least somewhat listenable (you can find them here, episodes 22 (Jon), 3 and 4 (Soren)). Unedited, most of our shows would have sound similar to that (maybe slightly better but not a whole lot).

And that's just quality-wise. There's a lot of 'fluff' in PolyCast recordings: we typically record 70-90 minutes to get a 45-minute show, and usually not much of value has to be cut to make that 'fit'. You *could* work around that if the hosts are willing to work to tighten up their performances, there are plenty of other podcasts that do that, but that would require a concerted effort from the hosts and make it much more like work and much less fun to do these recording sessions.

[Lancer]

Huh, that's interesting. If it's a joy for those doing it though, why not? Enjoy.

[Locutus]

If people really don't care about sound quality and basically just have a voice chat and record that, that's fine, we welcome that Not really any different from linking to YouTube videos or whatever... As long as whatever recordings people link to follow our usual rules for forum posts there's nothing wrong with that and we'll happily allow it, such people would just need to find an external host to store the files (but there are plenty of free or cheap options for that).

However, if people want any help from the administration in terms of hosting and promoting and/or an endorsement as an official PolyCast production or whatnot, we do ask for a certain minimum standard of quality, it'll have our names attached to it after all and it would reflect poorly on our other productions if the difference in quality was too large.

[Asher]

I think it's bull****, to be honest. It's either ineptitude or bull****, there's no excuses.

If sound quality is that bad and requires tens of hours to fix, did it ever occur to you to try a different technology?

If I can hear 30 people in an online voicechat with crystal clear sound (WoW, LOTRO raids...), I don't see why 4-5 people have so much trouble.

It seems to me someone should've thought "Hey, this is ridiculous, how can we fix this?". Did it ever occur to you guys to try Teamspeak or Ventrilo if Skype is so bad?

[Locutus]

Believe it or not, we're not the only ones with this problem. Check any podcasting forum/community: Skype and VoIP in general are very hotly debated topics. Unfortunately most podcasters either record in one geographic location which obviously circumvents the entire problem, or aren't afraid to throw a crapload of cash at expensive hardware, which isn't an option for us. The only other solution that seems to work is the very one we use: lots of post-production.

I agree that when superficially using the software for calls or voice chat the problem doesn't seem nearly as bad, I indeed have no problems using Skype for that myself (although to say that it's 'crystal clear' is delusional, it's no better than acceptable), but when you actually record it and encode it in MP3 it suddenly becomes painfully clear just how bad it really is.

Believe me, we and hundreds of other podcasters are always looking for solutions for this, as Dan said we're more than happy to try any new ideas. But to simply assume this can't possibly be an issue and we must be morons that we can't figure it out just speaks of your total lack of expertise in this matter.

[Asher]

Did it ever occur to you guys to try Teamspeak or Ventrilo if Skype is so bad?

And MP3 isn't great for voice -- did you try WMA-Voice?

I don't see how you can criticize my "lack of expertise" when you guys are the ones spending 20 hours making 40 minute chat-sessions... I know for a fact there's competent, reliable groupchat software as I've used it for hundreds of hours. This isn't nearly as complicated as you guys make it.

It's as half-assed as this forum software you guys have, and it creates 10x as much work for you than it should because you didn't think it through the first time.

You guys desperately need someone who knows what they're doing tech-wise.

[Krill]

Yay for teamspeak...

[Locutus]

Alas, many of our listeners unfortunately use iTunes or even iPods so WMA isn't really an option Not to mention that some (including yours truly) use other mobile devices and those too often don't support WMA either (the better ones do of course but plenty of people don't bother to buy the better ones). For all its faults, until hardware manufacturers catch up and people move away from the AppleVerse for their audio, we're stuck with MP3 as universal audio standard...

But MP3 encoding is only one of the issues, the heart of the problem lies at the source, i.e. the hardware. We really have to go in and manually clear up crud from the raw sound files, there's just too much background noise and the like on many of the feeds we deal with. In itself a little noise is acceptable but multiplied by 5 or 6 feeds it really becomes a problem. With mics you really get what you pay for, there's just no shortcut for getting around cheap-ass hardware (i.e. sub-$100) or noisy PC fans, or for poor mic handling for that matter (well, that you can train for a little, at least for regular hosts, but even then it's a slow process if you want to be laid back about it and not scare people away).

[Asher]

Sounds to me -- as I've been saying -- no one here selected the software properly.

Have you tried teamspeak or ventrilo? Both have background noise elimination features that work quite well in my experience.

I find it extremely hard to believe that hardware is another problem since I've got a $10 headset that's crystal clear...

There is simply no reasonable way it should take more than ~2 hours to produce a 40 minute show. If it is, that's a big hint you guys don't know what you're doing.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Asher
This isn't nearly as complicated as you guys make it.

Well, why don't you put together your own podcast then? It sounds like it should be trivial for you to prove us wrong and get crystal clear sound with cheap-ass hardware and little effort. We'd honestly love to hear it if you can, as said we're always looking for ideas in this respect.

But if it was so easy I don't know why so many other podcasters are having the same issues as us. I strongly suspect you'll find that sitting on the sideline and calling other people incompetent is quite a different story from actually doing some of these things yourself.

[Asher]

But if it was so easy I don't know why so many other podcasters are having the same issues as us.

Probably the same reason so many people fail out of high school...

And you're being a fool right now. I've participated in hundreds of hours of group chats online with much more than 4-5 people in them. There's the odd issue with someone's mic (volume too low, volume too high, too much background noise) but those are quickly addressed.

You then capture this stream to a .WAV file, cut parts you don't like, then encode.

I've done this before in recording WoW raids, it's not hard or that time-consuming at all. CERTAINLY nothing like a 15+ hour effort for a 40 minute podcast.

As for why I don't do this -- it's simple, it's not my podcast. You can take some genuine advice to make your lives easier (I've suggested numerous things), or you can continue to be arrogant about it and ignore my advice. Your call.

[Locutus]

Right, as usual, the first to call others incompetent and say they're doing everything wrong, but completely unable to back up your BS with anything other than your overinflated ego. Why would we take any advice from you when you're not even able to encode an MP3 for all we know? Put your money where your mouth is if you want to be taken remotely seriously (not that you really do)...

If others are interested in seriously working out the possibility of doing OTCast we're more than happy to give it a shot, but if you merely want to troll us it's not going to happen, which is not our loss.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Locutus
Right, as usual, the first to call others incompetent and say they're doing everything wrong

This is quite obvious with your claimed editing time...

but completely unable to back up your BS with anything other than your overinflated ego. Why would we take any advice from you when you're not even able to encode an MP3 for all we know? Put your money where your mouth is if you want to be taken remotely seriously (not that you really do)...

If others are interested in seriously working out the possibility of doing OTCast we're more than happy to give it a shot, but if you merely want to troll us it's not going to happen, which is not our loss.

This is your problem. I told you guys about problems with your forum software design years ago, you guys continued to hack it up to **** then realized "****, we have to upgrade and now we can't due to design decisions!".

I'm suggesting now you use software designed for group-chat instead of Skype and you dismiss it as a troll.

Here's an observable fact: You guys don't know what you're doing, so take the suggestions and try it since any intelligent person should realize 15 hours of work for a 40 minute low-budget amateurish podcast is absurd.

It's up to you to take the advice, but you just don't want to take it from me, regardless how right it is. Hey, it's not my time wasted...