← School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast
School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast
Podcasters Share Best and Worst Platforms for Interviews
00:51:17
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- [00:00]
A
On today's episode, it's question of the month and I asked you what you were using for remote recording. And one creator thought they'd found an easy way to record remote interviews until the experience went so badly they asked for a refund. And in this episode, you'll hear that story along with other people that have chimed in explaining what software gets it right and which ones get them wrong. And if it's actually worth the risk. Hit it. Ladies School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson. Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, where have you been? Didn't you hear me just say, I've been doing this since 2005? What the heck? Well, anyway, we forgive you. We're glad you're here. Here's what we do here. We help you plan, launch and grow your podcast and today we're talking about recording it, especially if your co host or your guest is on the other side of the pond. And we are going to start off with Frank. Bravo, Frank. Take it away, buddy.
- [01:15]
B
Hey, Dave. Frank. Bravo. Here I host your Tech Makeover, the podcast that helps simplify and get more out of technology in people's lives. The main show I do is mostly solo, so I record everything locally, but I also produce a hyperlocal video podcast where I record with guests on a regular basis. This show is where I've stress test most of the remote recording tools out there and what I've learned actually matters when I get clean audio and video from someone who isn't a podcaster. I started where a lot of people start, with zoom, and honestly, for audio only, zoom is usually fine. I find that it's familiar, people use it, and the friction to get guests to call in is basically zero. If your show is audio only and guests are only occasional, maybe you don't need to overcomplicate it and just use Zoom. But where you need video, zoom wasn't cutting it for me. The recording quality was inconsistent and every time the Internet hiccuped on either end, the video and audio would show it. That's where I moved to Streamyard and I haven't looked back. What I like most about Streamyard is how simple it is for the host and the guests to connect. I send a link, they click on it, they're in in the browser, no less. There's no app, no account, and in 10 minutes you know you're not getting those can you hear me things. But you're actually ready to record and because of that I love it. And you can also record locally on each end. Now this is a huge thing because even if the Internet connection isn't perfect, the recording file is totally clear because you're recording it locally. For new podcasters, I'd recommend that you start with this. Start with Zoom. If your show is audio only and your guests are only occasional, but you want to test it, make sure you test it because that's how you know if it'll work. The quality of the show is the difference and getting good audio is very important. If you're doing video or recording with guests regularly, then investing in Streamyard is super good to do and then really easy to do and really inexpensive actually. And it will save you a lot of pre show stress. Thanks again for this and if you're interested More About Me Frank Bravo. You can find my show@youtechmakeover.com thank you Frank.
- [03:21]
A
And of course I'll put a link to Frank's website as well as Streamyard in the show notes@schoolofpodcasting.com 10:37 I am going to mention this now since he mentioned Streamyard because it's confusing. When you go to their website they have a free version but the one that most people use is the core and that's $44 a month if you're going monthly. But it says for individuals only. And so I went over and looked at their plan usage policy and it says the free and core and then they have an advanced plan are intended solely for personal use or for individuals using streamyard services as part of their work, such as freelancers and their collaborators. And I don't want to interpret this, but that sounds a lot like maybe you and me ask your lawyer friends like I don't know, Gordon Firemark. But that sounds like that. And it says the core plan is tailored for individuals creating that are looking to expand their reach stream to multiple platforms and create their own digital brand. And so I'll put a link to this plan usage policy in the show notes again schoolofpodcasting.com 1037 and the core plan is $44. The advanced plan is 88 bucks and that's the one I think that everybody was like holy cow, that's expensive. Next up we got Todd the Gator.
- [04:47]
C
Hey Dave, it is Todd the Gator here with the Guardian down roundtable and 50 years experience required, soon to become Lessons in the Rear View podcast. We use Discord for all our remote recordings. We are a Gaming community. So it makes sense that we use Discord. But you don't need a community to use Discord, by the way. You can create a server for free and just use the integrated voice channels to connect remotely to your guest. I've used it for my solo interview shows and it's worked really well. Discord does have bots though. You can invite to your voice chat party and it'll record separate tracks if you don't want to use any outside recording software or hardware. But honestly, I don't rely on these bots. I don't know how consistent they are, but I record my video live streams using OBS open broadcaster software, and I record a separate audio file using my Rodecaster Pro, which is a lossless wav file, which that's what I use for my audio episodes. If for some reason my Rodecaster decides to crash, I can still use the audio from my OBS recording. And even if that crashes, I have a third backup and that is my replayable live streams that are on Twitch and YouTube. The audio will be more compressed, of course, but I can just throw it into auphonic and clean things up a bit and, you know, if it really comes down to it, in case of a really bad week. So I do basically have three forms of remote recording, but everything flows through Discord voice channels. We use a live voice and video feature that Discord added years ago called the Stage Channel. You can basically create an event to alert your community and it also message your members. Once you go live, they can join the stage like streamyard does and even request to go on stage and talk with you. I mean, we've used it for strictly recording our formal podcast, but sometimes we have community shows where everyone can just jump in and talk with us live. I use the quote talking stick method like the Native Americans did around the campfire. At least that's what I think of when I think talking stick. So whomever is holding the stick talks, and until someone figuratively passes the stick to someone else, nobody is allowed to talk over the speaker. So far it's worked out pretty well. I've had up to 15 people on this stage at one time, but I really don't recommend it. If you're a new podcaster, it can get really out of hand. I haven't really used other programs like Zoom or streamyard or others, but I've been really pleased with my methods. Not to mention that Discord is free. I know, Dave, you don't like that word. But don't worry, I pay a monthly subscription to boost my community features and improve the recording quality. It'll you can record at higher hertz or higher stream rates. So Discord is making their money. A lot of people kind of make fun or minimize Discord, but it can really be a powerful tool that doesn't really cost you much to use it. I've been using them for over eight years now and it's been pretty consistent in quality. I mean like every service out there you have maintenance, downtime or you know, where stuff just isn't connecting very well and we, we get through it. Somehow we get through those, those really rough weeks. Like I mentioned earlier, we go live every Thursday night, 9pm Eastern on my YouTube and Twitch channels covering topics that affect our gaming hobby as adults. The channels are Todd the Gator It's T O D D T H E G A T R. The podcast is called Guardian Down Roundtable where my co host and I invite members of our adult gaming community to jump in on the show and present a topic that they want to discuss on the table. The topics can be wide ranging to say the least. We also go live in our now 8 year old discord community on the live Stage channel like I mentioned earlier. So I'm recording three platforms simultaneously and if you want to check out that community, the invite link is Discord GG guardiandownroundtable all one word. I'm starting a new solo podcast called Lessons in the Rearview where I present topics and stories and lessons that I've learned from living a life as a 32 year business owner, 34 years being married, a gamer, a father of a son and daughter, and now the new role of grandfather. So I share stories of my mishaps but also my breakthroughs and wins. It'll be coming soon. I do have the domain, it's lessonsintherearview.com but until then you can go to 50 years experience acquired.com that's 50 years experience.com to listen to my past episodes covering anything from money, relationships and running a business and whatever else crosses my mind. But as usual, thank you Dave for all you do sir to get podcasters on track and take care.
- [09:32]
A
Thank you Todd. Now realize Todd is in gaming so Discord fits in right to that. But you don't have to be a gamer. I just, I know for me, I personally don't like the look of Discord, but who cares what it looks like as long as it's easy to join and it makes it easy to record. But that is something you, you might want to consider. But Next, we got Chris from Cool Cars With Chris.
- [09:55]
D
I had just purchased a full year of Riverside Pro, and shortly after that, I canceled the entire thing because Riverside failed to do the one thing I wanted it to do and the reason why I bought it in the first place. I am Chris and I am with the show Cool Cars with Chris talking about cool cars. I have a cool car, my co host has a cool car, and we do the show remotely sometimes, most of the time, sometimes in person. But going way back to when I first started podcasting with the Chris and Christine show, we were looking for ways to record, you know, interviews and people over the. Over the Internet back then. And for some reason, I tried a few different techniques. I think I tried even using a good old fashioned, like phone call, you know, somehow recording a phone call, doing it that way, horrible audio, don't do that. And then somehow I just discovered, like through googling and whatnot, I discovered using clean feed, cleanfeed.net it's audio only, which I know some people are like, well, everything has to be video these days. But it's very good. I've done a lot of episodes there, probably into the hundreds, multiple hundreds of episodes. And I had continued to use it to record my clients, podcast for them live. Everything comes into me. I record everything for them. Easy peasy. But as things evolve, more and more people are kind of expecting to have video with the interview. It's kind of like a known thing these days. Although audio is fine, more and more people are kind of requiring video for their shows. And I remember back when I did Podtastic Audio, a sponsor of mine was Riverside fm, and I used it back then for interviews, and it seemed to work out just fine. So recently I said, if I'm gonna do more video stuff for my new show, Cool Cars with Chris, which needs visuals for cars and things like that, sometimes I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go fire up the old Riverside and see what it can do. In fact, I'm gonna pay for an entire year's worth of Riverside because the new show Cool Cars with Chris is doing fairly well on social media platforms like Instagram and so which is a visual platform. I need to get clips and video clips for the show and figure, well, I know Riverside does all of that, right? And so I'm gonna use Riverside, record the episode in Riverside, have it, you know, slice up all the cool social media clips, all the cool stuff, do the insta editing the magic clips, have it, do all that stuff. Great, let's do that. And so I do that and I try that, and guess what? Riverside failed to deliver the clips. It showed the clips, it said they were there. Here you go. Click the download. And it never could download. And I went back and forth with their tech support over maybe like five or six different chats, different emails, and eventually the one thing that I wanted Riverside to do for my new show, it couldn't do. So I said, forget this, screw this, I'm quitting it. So now I'm still using Clean Feed to record the podcast via audio. High quality audio, end to end, anywhere in the world, effortlessly. It's very fast, it's very quick, but it still doesn't solve the video problem. So how do I get video back and forth? So I like last week played around with trying Video Ninja. Now that is vdo.ninja. it is a little more technical. It is free, but it does deliver video end to end with audio too. But it's still, it's a little technical. I'm still working at the Kinks, but I did a very successful episode using Video Ninja like last week. And maybe I'll do that, but it still doesn't fix me getting all the cool clips for social media. So for that I've turned to using Opus clips. Now there's a free version I'm toying with. Right now. There's a paid version. You can do stuff. You drop your video in there, Whether it's from YouTube or your own, you know, real video, you drop right in there, it will slice up all the clips and all the stuff you need for social media. That is that. So like I said, I have used clean feed.net for years. It's been very easy to use. It works great. It is audio only, so there is that. But I mean, maybe you or other people will have better luck using Riverside. Like I said, it worked okay until it didn't. And it didn't do the thing that I wanted to do. So I jumped out and I quit it. Anyways, you can find me at coolcarswithchris.com and happy podcasting to you.
- [14:31]
A
Thank you, Chris. I know James Cridlin and Sam Sethi from Pod News Weekly Review. They use Clean feed. I know Adam Curry, the actual POD father, as in like he helped invent podcasting and John C. Dvorak use it for no agenda. So it's not super expensive. Clean feed, it's $36 a month. There is a free version. The free version doesn't give you separate tracks, which makes editing a whole lot easier. But again, links to everything. Schoolofpodcasting.com 10:37 Next up, we have Ed. And the name of his show makes me chuckle.
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E
Hi, Dave, this is Ed and I co host a podcast called the Day's Dumpster Fire. My co host Kara and I, we are looking at moments in human history where as a species, we try to tackle a problem and we plan for everything. We put in every contingency, we think of everything so that nothing could possibly go wrong. And then five minutes after we implement this plan, it all falls apart and blows up in everybody's face. We look at these moments in human history of these incredible failures so that we can learn from them and really kind of help you help yourself in terms of like, hey, I really, really had a bad day, made some terrible mistakes. I really screwed this up. Nothing worked right. Well, there's a lot of people in history that messed up, probably way worse than you did. So be sure to go to the days Dumpster fire dot com. That's our website. We have a fast growing library there, plus articles and Kara's artwork and all that fun stuff. Be sure to go check that out. And to answer your question,
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A
we use
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E
a platform that would do everything. Like the quote you, David, it slices and dices and even juliennes, right?
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A
And if you order now, we'll throw in a set of these Ginsu knives.
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E
It could record your voices. It could use AI to edit everything. It could remove all the filler words. It can make you sound, you know, like Howard Stern on the radio.
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A
I don't know, man.
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C
I can't take it anymore.
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E
It. It had like intros and outros and templates. It. It did everything. And the problem with these kinds of websites is that it will do everything but, like at 80%. And we found that when we would record on one of these, and there's many of them out there, too many to even name that we would end up with all these weird artifacts. Our voices would get cut off. There were times where we would sound like a robot, but I'm not even sure how that happens. And then the editing on it was atrocious. It was very, very slow. If you tried to edit like I do where I use the waveforms because I'm old school, they were unusable. And then you would have to wait for the website to kind of catch up when it was scrubbing. It's just a mess, right? It's just. It's just not worth it. The platform that we do use is Zencastr. I'm pretty sure a lot of you have heard of it? We like it at the Dermisafire because it starts off as one thing and that is it's a recording platform. It is a remote recording platform that records you and your co host or your guest voice and it will then upload that wav file when you're done with the session. So like it, it uploads its independent recordings that are usually free of weird artifacts and, and all that kind of stuff.
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D
They're.
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E
Lately they've been kind of getting into, you know, the AI scene and the hosting scene and stuff like that, but for the most part they've held pretty firmly to that. They are recording platform first. Now, one tip I recommend, whether you're using ZenCastr or, you know, Riverside or whatever, is that most of these websites, they have a feature where if you turn it on, it will kind of reduce the background noise, right? For some odd reason, you may find yourself recording in a kitchen or recording in a bathroom or a cave or a cathedral or something like that. And the reverb is going to be horrendous or for some odd reason. And Dave, I know you can relate and, and everybody else at school podcast could probably relate that whenever you record, you're going to have that neighbor that has to perpetually mow their lawns, right? And it's constantly going on in the background only when you are recording. Or you have a squadron of fighter jets that are flying circles over your house or that helicopter that has to hover over your house for whatever reason. A lot of these websites have this feature. If you turn that on, it can, it can reduce that, if not eliminate it. It's a really handy feature. However, what I have found is that if that feature is running and you've got two people talking on a podcast, if somebody overlaps the other person, the algorithm, the algorithm, the software or whatever, it kind of freaks out and it like cuts people off mid sentence or mid word. And it's. Yeah, it's. It's kind of jarring at times. So I recommend, especially if you've got an okay setup, I mean, we could go on for hours about how like a hundred dollars can get you into a really, really nice setup. If you're recording using something other than your cell phone or your microphone on your laptop, you're probably going to get decent enough audio where you can turn that noise reduction off and that should eliminate most, if not all of those weird blips and errors. So I recommend going with that. I recommend zencastr and. But more importantly, I Recommend you guys going to the Daze Dumpster Fire dot com. Check us out. And as always, Dave, we, we all love you over here at the Day Stumps Fire. You do a great job. School of Podcasting is an amazing show and congrats on your partnership with PodPage and whatnot. So, yeah, you're doing a great job. And until next time, everybody, keep it a hot mess.
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A
Ed, thank you so much. And yeah, it's not a partner. Well, I guess it's a partnership. But the School of Podcasting was purchased by PodPage. So the school of Podcasting, which has been a side hustle for 20. Whatever. Two years. 21. Yeah, 21 years. Sorry I'm adding, let's not age myself. I do that fine on my own. But they actually bought the School of Podcasting. So the School of Podcasting is now part of my day job as the head of podcasting over at PodPage. Now next up, and Tim, I gotta let you know, both Tim and Barry were very, very, very detailed and I appreciate that. It's also technically kind of a 40 minute show and so I've edited you down just a smidge, but the one and only Tim.
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F
Hey, Dave, this is Timothy Kimo Brian, your head instigator at Create Art Podcast, your guide to the podcasting world at Find a podcast about. And my newest podcast, which is about my journey with the diagnosis of MS, and that one is called my solo Ms. Journey. And you can find that one@mysolomsjourney.com and that's where I take you from the initial. I don't want to say diagnosis because I wasn't diagnosed back in 2009, but I take you from 2009 to current day with things that I would tell myself, talking about medications, diagnosis and kind of what was going on in my life with that diagnosis.
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A
Now I'm going to jump in. Tim had mentioned blog talk radio that's no longer available. So I cut that out. Go back to Tim.
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F
I got into Squadcast when it first came out, actually met the guys that were running Squadcast at, I do believe it was DC Pod Fest many, many moons ago. And I used that and I use it today and it is. It was recently bought out by description and I like it. I know some people have some issues with it. I've had the occasional blip with it, but with the amount of interviews that I've done and I use it with my clients on their interviews, I would say I've probably done over 500 interviews with that and I can probably count on one hand where there was some mess ups and sometimes it's user error, sometimes it's issue with the system, but for me it has a really good track record. SquadCast does. Now it's bundled with Descript. Now here's the thing and I know the folks from Descript listen to your show, so I'm going to talk to them for a moment if you don't mind.
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A
I forfeit my time to Tim.
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F
Descript also has what's called Rooms. Now it is similar to SquadCast. It is a remote recording feature. Because Descript is no longer going to be supporting SquadCast. I don't know, they bought them out. Why are you changing this? I don't know.
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A
It's Descript, they change everything almost on an hourly basis.
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F
But the problem I have with Rooms is that you can not future date stuff. You can't put stuff, you can't plan stuff out. You have to, you know, go ahead and set up a room and then you give the link to somebody else and you're there. Why I like to script is I can, you know, put my guest's email in there and it'll shoot out an email in that email. It'll give, you know, the date and time the link. It'll give a couple of tips on how to have good sound quality. So I really like that and I wish Descript would just move that over to Rooms and be done and done. Now when I'm in squadcast, I can push all that stuff over to Descript and do my editing there and happy, happy, joy, joy. But come on, descript, come on, if you're going to do it, do it. Don't, don't mess around. Do it anyhow. That's what I'm using right now. That's what I would recommend. With a caveat, let's throw an asterisk on that. As long Descript says, well, when you go into SquadCast, it says, you know, descript is no longer supporting this. So with the caveat that as long as squadcast still works with descript, I would use squadcast. If you're new, I think squadcast is perfect for you because it does everything for you. You don't have to think about it. I hope that answers your question, Dave, and I hope it helps out somebody much like you have helped out many of us in our podcast journey. I can't wait to see you at Empowered podcast conference number three in Charlotte, North Carolina, August 21st through the 23rd, where you will be speaking. And guess what? I will be speaking on a panel as well. So it's going to be great to share the stage with you and have a great one. Dave. And again, thank you for all that you do. We all owe you a lot for all that you do. See you soon.
- [27:13]
A
See you soon, Timmy. And yeah, we'll be talking about Squadcast here in a bit when I wrap up. But next up we have Barry Kessler. And Barry does remote interviews, but he does them in person. So if you've ever thought of doing in person reviews, Barry has a tool, and he's used a few. He's used the PodTrack P4, he's used the Tascam DX10. But his favorite is the one that I kept in his clip because Barry, again, I had to edit you down a smidge here. And here is his favorite tool for recording in person.
- [27:52]
G
My name is Barry Kessler. I do a podcast called the Puerto Vallarta Travel Show. It's an interview show and it's a guide to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Each of my podcast episodes, I generally give the news of the day. I talk about upcoming festivals and events. And because Vallarta is a tourist town, there's always something happening somewhere on the bay. And so my podcast gives someone who's come into town, or someone who's already in paradise, as I like to call it, gives them something to look forward to so they can make plans. Because now they've heard the podcast, maybe they've downloaded episodes that they're interested in. They've looked at my back catalog so they they know what to expect when they hit the ground after flying into Puerto Vallarta. I've been using the Zoom H6 handy recorder ever since my first interview nine years ago. I like the H6 for its versatility, and I would heartily recommend the H6 to anybody beginning a podcast, but especially if you're recording remotely. The microphones that I use with the Zoom are the Audio Technica ATR2100, which I'm pretty sure they don't make anymore. I have a three or four old ones of those. They've survived over the ages and they're very obviously they're very sturdy and tough because I haven't killed one yet. But I do use the Samson Q2U's. I have several of those, and you can still buy those. They're an excellent product. Both the Q2U and the ATR2100 are dynamic microphones, and when I'm recording all by myself, I've always used an ATR 2100 for all of my podcasts at my podcast studio. Microphone. My first H6, because I've had two of them, only let me down twice. Once was my fault. I wasn't paying attention. I was being sloppy. I was being lazy. I wasn't using headphones, and I happened to run out of room on my SD card. And I didn't notice that because, well, I was being sloppy. And then the last time that she let me down sing this song. It was the day my H6 died. Yep, the death of the H6 was a total surprise. I was up in the town of Mascota, and I thought originally the reason it wasn't working was the batteries were dead. But no, the H6 was. It was dead, Jim. And in this case, I ended up pulling out my Android phone. This is, you know, running out of room. Got to figure out something to do. I opened up my authhonic recording app, placed the phone on the table, and I went for it. And after I ran it through a phonic, which I did, it did wonders with the file. The interview was saved. It sounded great. So don't give up. I mean, use anything you can, especially if you're far, far away and you can't come back and get that interview again real quick. So that's what I've used to do. My remote recording for my podcast with the Zoom H6 being my recorder of choice for remote podcasting. And my podcast is called the Puerto Vallarta Travel Show. It's a guide to everything Puerto Vallarta. You can find it at www.puerto vallarta travelshow.com and Dave, again, thanks for all you do. And from Mexico, amigo.
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A
Thank you, Barry. And in a second, I'll talk about the pros and cons of that. Because if you're new to podcasting, when we get into these kind of discussions, every answer begins with it depends right after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, have you checked the calendar recently? June 3rd is right around the corner. And that's when podcasting in six weeks starts. It's eight. Every week I lead you for an hour. From planning your podcast all the way to getting it into Apple and Spotify. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is for you. And the best part is we're experimenting with something, and that is we're only charging a dollar for more information. Don't wait. Go now. Schoolofpodcasting.com six weeks. Here's some PodPage news. Blubrry has chosen PodPage to replace their built in Website tool entirely. That means every Blubrry hosting customer gets a professional automatically. Updated podcast website powered by PodPage included with their hosting plan for PodPage. This is more than a partnership announcement. It's validation that podcast podcast websites deserve dedicated website tools built specifically for podcasters. Check out podpage by going to podpage.com preview the School of Podcasting yeah, yeah, yeah. So as I mentioned, it kind of depends. Like for example, the H6 is a great piece of equipment and one of the reasons Barry liked it is you can clamp on different types of microphones. So if you don't have a microphone, like Barry busted out his phone, you actually can have a microphone built in. When I had an H6, no matter what I put on it, a sock, a foam, whatever, I could not stop that microphone that was kind of built into it, no matter the capsule from popping peas. So I moved to and that now for Barry, that works. He's doing things in person for me. I like the Podtrack P4 and now the P4 next is the latest version of that because not only is it a recorder, but it's also an interface. So if you're live streaming or whatever, you need this to go in and record on your computer. Interface with it. It's an interface and a recorder. So again, it depends on what you're trying to do. But the P4 and the H6 are very similar except the H6 has a built in microphone into it and it can be an interface or it can be a recorder. The P4 is a recorder and an interface. And last Friday we do this every Friday we call it Lunch with Dave. And everyone at the School of Podcasting gets together and we're kind of throwing this idea around. And so someone brought up Zencaster and it was Buck from the War Room Online Journal that's part of the US Army War College. And he's used Zencastr, I don't know, two, 300 times, maybe had one issue. And John Jermengo from the Boomer Bunker, he was like Zencaster, right? So we heard somebody mention Chris, like Riverside, oh, give me a refund. I know other people that have used Riverside and absolutely loved it. And so I actually reached out to Riverside because that is a popular item and it is either a love or hate situation. And I said, there's got to be something people are doing that potentially cause issues. So the blog is called how to Not Mess up youp Recording in Riverside. And. And the first one is your Internet. Yeah, it still matters. And I know you're going to be like, but Dave, Riverside records locally. Yeah, that's correct. But according to my research and as well as I was working with Riverside tech support, your Internet still affects your live conversation. So even though it, you know, records locally and also how fast your files upload afterwards, now they say the minimum is, is 10 megabytes. I can never remember. That's megabytes or megabits. Anyway, 10 megabits per second is the minimum. And to that I go, never go by their minimum. It says recommended 25 megabits per second. And so that would be the minimum. And so you want to do is a speed test. I believe it's speedtest.net you can check your Internet because otherwise if you're like, oh no, we got 11mbps, you're really, really. Yeah, that could be it. So there's that. Then the other one, your browser isn't fine. So what I mean by this is if it's Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, those are the two that Riverside plays the nicest with. And before you say mine's up to date, you want to go in, click on the three little dots, go into help and go into about Google Chrome, and let's make sure that it's updated and you're using the latest stuff. Then the other one is your computer. Yeah. Might be the problem because it's your computer that's doing the heavy lifting. And if you're like, well, I want to do it on my phone again. Just because you can. Because I know Riverside has an app. It's a podcast. It's not a Zoom call, it's a podcast. And most people do that on an actual computer. And here again, it says your minimum ram should be eight gigabytes. Yeah, don't go by the minimum. It says recommended 16. And recommended means. Yeah, that not. Well, you know, if you want to. So the other one, before you record, you know those 47 tabs you have open?
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Yeah.
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A
It's time to close them, say goodbye, you can come back to them later. And then you want to shut down Zoom or Dropbox. The best thing to do is reboot on Ask the Podcast Coach. Two weeks ago, I broke my routine. I always reboot my machine before going live. And I didn't. And well, yeah, I ended up. I actually had a train wreck. I had to stop the show and go, everybody come back in 15 minutes. So again, was that, in that case I was using eCamm, which is a great tool for recording remotely. But it, you know, if the computer's all messed up because again, you got 37 tabs open, you know, or if your fan on your computer sounds like a jet engine. Yeah, you might want to do that. And they said there are people actually rendering video in the background while you're trying to do a live stream. That's not a good idea. And then there's the old, why isn't it recording my mic? Well, you know, we get people on that all the time. And when I hear horrendous audio, and I heard a bunch this week, people were using the built in microphone of the laptop. And I'm here to tell you that doesn't work. I don't care how much you paid for the Apple, you know, and it said you can use. No, no, you can't. And so you also then have to give Riverside permission for that microphone. So again, you click on the little lock icon in the address bar, you go to microphone, you go allow, you go to camera, you go allow. And then you refresh the page. But you need to do this before your guest joins. So you're not doing tech support live on your own show. You know, do some testing. In fact, if you're getting ready to do your first interview, interview anybody, but not your guest, Cousin Ernie or Aunt Mildred or whoever, do somebody. Don't let your guest be the guinea pig. And then when they join, have them tap on the mic. You just go, hey, can you do this for me? And that's me tapping on the mic. And if you see them go, but you don't hear. Yeah, that means it's not listening to that microphone. So keep that. And the last thing. Well, I don't know if it's the last thing. We've got a couple here with Riverside. Don't close the tab like a maniac because it is uploading the locally recorded file. So wait till it says you're good to close that. You know, if it says uploading, you're not done. Keep that in mind. Go get a coffee, let it finish. Especially if your Internet's kind of slow and so your audio setup matters more than you think. And they say bad audio usually isn't Riverside's problem, it's user error. That's why I reached out to them and they said they can't clean up bad audio. Well, they kind of do, but a lot of times it's garbage in, garbage out. So there's a little gear icon. You can choose your microphone and your headphones and do that every time. Don't assume it's going to choose Right. And then also since it's kind of browser based, they have a list of extensions like AdBlock, UBlock, Ghostery, VPNs, all sorts of things can cause issues. With Riverside, you want everything stripped down to the bare minimum and make sure you actually have disk space. And so keep in mind, especially with video, video files are huge. As in ginormous, as in really, really big. And so I mean, with audio, it's basically 1 meg a minute. With 4k video and it's 15 not megs gigs an hour. So again, it adds up quickly. And so here again they say the bare minimum is 20 gigabytes free. Nope, sorry. Safer is 50 gigs. And maybe instead of recording in 4K, because I see that a lot, I'm recording in 4K. It's kind of stuttering. Yeah, because your computer can't keep up. 1080 would be the minimum I would do. So if you want Riverside to work, don't overcomplicate it. Have solid Internet update, your browser, have a decent computer, have enough disk space and don't rush the upload. So that's some thoughts on Riverside. I got more thoughts we mentioned all in one. And I know as much as I just talked about Riverside, Riverside is trying to do a everything. And as I forget who it was might have been Ed or Chris. When you get into a situation where they're trying to do everything, they do it all about, you know, 70%. And there are times when they're 70% will be perfectly fine for what you're doing. But realize when, like, let's take Riverside, they're hosting. I know they're a media host. It's very, very, very basic. Like when you go into an episode, you can't put a link to your website. And in my opinion, there we go. That's a no. No. So keep that in mind. But I don't have a problem using buzzsprout or Captivate or Blubrry or whoever for my media host because you know what they do? They're really good media hosts. They do one thing. And so that's where you might want to use Clean Feedback or you know, try one of these other video tools if that's what you're going to do. For me, I am a. I believe that wholeheartedly. It's nice when you get something that does two things and they're both really good. But there's a reason that PodPage is not a media host, because there are other people like Buzzsprout and Captivate and Blueberry and rss.com and Transistor that they do one thing. They're media hosts and they're very, very good. We build websites for podcasters. We do one thing very, very good. Now we integrate with a lot of people so that you're not just handcuffed to PodPage. But I am not a huge fan of all in One, I think you find later. I did one earlier. Well, actually late last year, it was System Syste, and it slices, it dices it even, you know, it's an email, it's a website builder, it's all this stuff. And I went ahead and I moved from ConvertKit for my email list to System and I even really played with it for quite a bit. And then when I went to integrate it with other things, everything integrates with. I still call it ConvertKit, but it's just kit Again, link in the show notes and I'll put a link in the show notes to the blog post where I talk about this. And it seemed great until all of a sudden everything I used didn't tie into it anymore. You couldn't integrate it with everything. And even though it was going to be cheaper in the long run, it was costing me time. And so sometimes all in One isn't all it's cracked up to be. So make sure that you try it and if it does everything you want it to do, that's great. But here is something. As someone who works with an online software, podpage.com here's what happens. And I mean it happens with every single remote recording. Someone will come to me that I wholly trust and they'll say, oh, this is the best tool ever, it's amazing. And then someone will say, I just wish it did this one thing. And they will say that to the developer and the developer will develop it and then they launch it. And guess what else? They launch bugs. And then you can go to Reddit and everybody is like, hey, what's the best alternative to whatever the program you're using? And people go, I don't know, I don't have a problem with it, blah, blah, yada yada. And meanwhile, the developers are still trying to fix the bug. So about the time you spent all this time trying to move to a new platform, the bugs are gone and you just left last week. And then everybody goes, man, this is the best thing ever. You should use it. I love it. I just wish it did this one thing. And so again, it goes from being stable and very helpful and then it goes right in the toilet and then it just repeats so as someone who hangs out on Reddit a lot, I see this where everybody's like, it's the best, you should use it. And then literally three weeks later, it's the worst. What's the best alternative? And then another month and a half later, it's the best. So this is why all that to say you should. This is why I like the Podtrack P4 being a. Not only an interface, but a recorder or the Rodecaster Duo or the Rodecaster Pro. If you can have multiple things recording. That way if your, you know, Squadcast or your Clean feed or whatever, something messes up because it's going to, I always say give it 400 episodes, it doesn't matter, something will mess up. And when you have more than one things recording, then you've captured it and that's where video really is like not gonna happen because it's nothing to have. Especially one of them is hardware, right? If you're recording your audio to a piece of hardware like the Rodecaster and you're recording it to Streamyard or whoever you're using, you don't have two videos. And so that's one of the problems about recording video. Now if you're doing a live stream, then you have to, because you're probably streaming that to YouTube as you record it locally. So that's one way to do that. But do you want to live stream an interview? I don't think so. So keep that in mind because as always, it depends. But if somebody said, Dave, what's the most reliable one? I would say, and this came up again in lunch with Dave at the school of podcasting streamyard. They got bought by a company Bending Spoons and they raised the price and we all went, oh, that's the end of streamyard. But they've actually added more features and I don't have ecamm is one where I don't have people that said, oh, I lost a recording in eCamm. Nope. But that's Mac only where Streamyard is. It's web based, so you can use that. I again would just use Chrome to use the tool that it's looking for. There are other ones. There's EVMux, I'll put a link to the one, the Ninja one that was mentioned. But for me, if you're looking for reliability, I would go streamyard. And if you're on a Mac, check out ecamm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, where am I gonna be August 21st through the 23rd charlo it North Carolina empowered podcasting three I went last year and the minute it was over, I'm like, I'm going back to this one. You got to check out this one. Especially designed for independent podcasters with the maximum capacity of 250 people. I love that because I get to meet everyone. Check it out. Empowered podcasting dot com.
- [48:52]
F
Ooh, now that's a good question.
- [48:55]
A
This might be the one that I get no responses for because when I ask people this question, they kind of freeze. And that is how do you measure success for your podcast beyond download numbers? And I'm not even going to say what that is. I'm going to leave it open because I don't want to lead the witness. I need your answer by June 26, 2026. Don't forget to say a little bit about your show, including your website address so I can link to it in the show notes. Just go to schoolofpodcasting.com? again by June 26th. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks again to everyone who sent in their answers. That's@schoolofpodcasting.com 1,300. Next week, I want to talk about here in the States. It was a big deal. There was a TV show that got canceled and it got kind of political. And I'm going to approach it from a non political side because, you know, when you go political, you lose 50% of your audience. But there are other reasons why the late show was taken off the air that we should probably look at from a creator's point of view. Until then, I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do. Thanks again for tuning in. I do value your time and I appreciate you spending it here. Until next week. Take care. God bless. Class is dismissed. If you like the show, please share it with a friend. If you like the show, pretty, pretty please share it with a friend right now. Frank. Oh, I forget Frank's last name. It's really cool. What is it? Hold on. Frank. Bravo. How cool is that to be in some sort of broadcasting and have the last name Bravo. If you're new to the show, near. If you're near to the show. I lost my voice, man. What's your near? Yeah,