Podcast planning

[Flintlock]

Hi everyone,

I've renamed our previous podcast thread to Podcast discussion and created this one for scheduling and organising individual episodes.

If you're not up to speed with the changes we are making to the podcast, read the last page or two of the old thread. To briefly summarise the planning side of things:

• vaderSW1 is taking over as podcast host and editor. I'm helping with the organisation and I'll probably be a regular guest.
• Each episode will have around three (let's say 2-4) guests in addition to vader. Some guests will be regulars, others will appear less often.
• Each episode will be about 45-60 minutes. These aren't strict limits. The episodes will be broken down into smaller sections, starting off with the news.
• Our aim is that each show will have guests who are knowledgeable about whatever is being discussed in that show. For example, if Final Fantasy XIV has been in the news and we've decided we're going to have a feature on Final Fantasy IX, we'll have at least one guest who is comfortable talking about each of those games. Guests (all TLS members, in fact) are encouraged to come up with their own feature ideas as well.
• We're going to aim to record every two weeks. The exact timing will initially depend on the people available, but once we've got a regular schedule going, we'll stick to it. This is likely to be in the afternoon for North Americans and in the evening/night for Europeans.

With all that said, our first task is to establish who is able and willing to appear on the show. If you're interested, even for occasional appearances (as little as every couple of months), make a post in this thread with at least the following information:

• Which games you feel knowledgeable on. You don't have to be the world's biggest expert, you just need to be able to take part in a discussion, preferably without saying "I never got past X". Carlie.
• Which days of the week you are available to record on.
• If you want to appear on our first episode, likely to be recorded between the 8th and 11th of this month.

We will need every guest to have a good-quality headset or microphone. Sorry if this all sounds very formal; I'm better at organising than I am motivating. I'm sure we'll have a great time recording the shows though!

My own resumé looks like this: I'm knowledgeable about Final Fantasy VI through X and XII, particularly VII and IX. I'm available pretty much every day (but I'm on holiday for the first two weeks of July), and I'm definitely in for the first episode!

 

[Roger]

• Which games you feel knowledgeable on. You don't have to be the world's biggest expert, you just need to be able to take part in a discussion, preferably without saying "I never got past X". Carlie.

Whelp, that's me out of the running till IV, then. I dunno if the first podcast is gonna be right away be about I, otherwise I'd be happy to participate. Though, if not enough people can be found for II, you can get me. I played the remake quite far. I'm going on holiday on 26th, till then I'm probably good anyday.

 

[Tetsujin]

We will need every guest to have a good-quality headset or microphone.

How good is good?
I'm guessing it's enough if it doesn't sound like speaking through a tin can.

I appreciate a push for audio quality though, entire podcasts with crap audio are almost physically painful to listen to. There's also audio compression to consider when recording over the internet.

 

[Jason Tandro]

I don't know if I have enough of a presence on the board to be considered, but I'm more than happy to appear as my schedule allows. Since I work a night audit shift, I can appear most days as long as it's not between 9 PM - 9 AM EST.

My equipment is a Turtle Beach X22 Headset and a Yeti microphone. I record my own creepypasta on another channel as well as some podcasts with the guys at Clan Cur so I have relatively good level gear for it.

My specialty is music, like across the board for Final Fantasy. If you ever have a music centric episode or two I'd love to take part.

As for the games, I have a fluent knowledge of Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14
Passable knowledge of Final Fantasy 1, 4, 5, X-2, and the 13 trilogy. Also 12 but I never beat that game.

 

[Flintlock]

I dunno if the first podcast is gonna be right away be about I, otherwise I'd be happy to participate.

I don't think we're going to be starting the retrospective series just yet. I don't know if vader has made any plans for the first episode, but it'll probably be "welcome to our new show", "here's what's been making the news", "what do you guys think of this", "we want to hear from our listeners", "bye"... just stretched out to fill three quarters of an hour.

How good is good?
I'm guessing it's enough if it doesn't sound like speaking through a tin can.

How does one rate sound quality? Your tin-can benchmark is probably fine.

I don't know if I have enough of a presence on the board to be considered

Sure you do! And even if you didn't, what better to way to increase that presence? We don't have a minimum post count or membership time. Our host has only been here a month.

 

[Tetsujin]

How does one rate sound quality? Your tin-can benchmark is probably fine.

Although I have to be honest - *everyone* on the previous podcasts sounded tinny - with loads of compression on top.

 

[Flintlock]

Although I have to be honest - *everyone* on the previous podcasts sounded tinny - with loads of compression on top.

Well, vader said that recording through Google Hangouts is better for sound quality than Skype, so we're going to try that. There's only so much we can do with long-distance recording though.

 

[Ami]

I can definitely vouch for Google Hangouts since we used to do it for the Gamerspective podcast. From time to time, there was a bit of messing about because it wouldn't work properly for one or two people, so I'd recommend getting on a hangout early to ensure everything's running smoothly before going live.

As for the podcast, I wouldn't mind popping up at some point. At the same time, I doubt I'd be able to join since (from what I've heard) you tend to record it quite late and Flint knows what time I go to bed during the week.

 

[vaderSW1]

I see a lot of questions about what the first show topics will include. Let me see if I can answer them all in a catch all post here:

- We'll touch on some current news topics

- We'll do an introduction and talk to each person about their history with the Final Fantasy series and where they think the series should go in the future

I will put together more detailed show notes and actually send them to the participants before the show. The show notes will go over the topics we will discuss so that all can be prepared. It will also help us to keep the show on track.

I'm not going to hold us to a hard time limit of 45 minutes to an hour. I don't want to stifle a good conversation with a hard time limit. If we go over, it's not a big deal.

 

[Geostigma]

Well, vader said that recording through Google Hangouts is better for sound quality than Skype, so we're going to try that. There's only so much we can do with long-distance recording though.

Comparatively to other options both Google Hangoouts and Skype quality and codecs are trash.

Not to be condescending but it made me lol that one of the requirements is a good headset/ Mic but then the actual discussion platform is still objectively low quality lol.

If your gonna ask for good sound quality on the individual end then the actual platform should be good too. The codecs TS3 or Mumble use > Ghangout and Skype etc.

Again not trying to be condescending i just think the discussion on quality needs to go both ways. As far as free and easy options go Google hangout is kind of up there , it will be much better then Skype any day of the week and beats out Raidcall easily as well.

There is also Discord as well. It supposedly (according to the devs) uses the same codecs as Mumble but idk if the infrastructure and bandwidth usage is the same so I cant say for certain if its better than Google hang outs but if the claims are true its a free higher quality alternative to Google hangouts.

 

[Flintlock]

Gabe, it's not condescending if you're trying to help us improve the podcast, but I have no idea what you're talking about for the most part.

TS3, is that Teamspeak? Isn't Mumble a TLS member? Where can we find Discord?

I'm sure Google has the answers, but just for the future, cut down on the jargon a bit?

Maybe vader knows more about this stuff.

 

[Geostigma]

Good point

TS3

Mumble

Discord


The first 2 definitely will yield higher quality voice over Ghangouts and skype, they also have significantly less latency (idk how important that is for you guys though). They do require configuring with your mic to get the sound just right but that just means the voice comes in even clearer.

The third is a new program that's making the rounds. I haven't really used it but a friend suggested it not to long ago and I've been reading up. If the things the devs say is true it should be pretty great but thus far on my end is untested.

As far as quality go my list would go like

~Stay away : Skype, raidcall , ventrillo (ok Vent can go middle ground but I'm biased xD)
~Middle ground : Googlehang outs, Discord*Maybe
~ Good quality : TS3 and mumble.


There are of course other programs out there but I either haven't used them, hated them greatly or have heard only bad things about so I decided not to list them at all xD

I should also note that TS3 and Mumble are kinda nifty in that you can also fiddle around with how loud other users are for you. So in the case of the host recording if someone is a few decibels to loud all the host has to do is bring that users volume down making for some easy on the fly adjustments that don't require 2 people to figure out whats going on. There are also a few other cool quirks and doodads as well.

 

[Jason Tandro]

Allow me to reveal my peasant-hood:

Everything I've recorded on has been Audacity. Any podcasts (not done in person) have been done through Skype.

In my experience, Gabriel is quite correct about the Skype call quality. Even with excellent sound quality tools on both sides (like the one I did with Mr. Ite where you could hear us both perfectly) there was definitely a lot of tinny-ness.

I will download any free platform needed to help with the quality on my end.

 

[vaderSW1]

Gabe, it's not condescending if you're trying to help us improve the podcast, but I have no idea what you're talking about for the most part.

TS3, is that Teamspeak? Isn't Mumble a TLS member? Where can we find Discord?

I'm sure Google has the answers, but just for the future, cut down on the jargon a bit?

Maybe vader knows more about this stuff.

In all honesty, I'm not much of an audio engineer. I recommended using Google Hangouts because I felt that the audio quality was better than Skype and for its ease of use. I could look into learning how to use one of the programs that Gabriel recommended but I would not be prepared to use it right away.

EDIT: I just looked at the websites for TS3 and Mumble. It looks like you have to pay for licenses for those programs. I think I'd prefer to stay the free route for now.

 

[Carlie]

• Which games you feel knowledgeable on. You don't have to be the world's biggest expert, you just need to be able to take part in a discussion, preferably without saying "I never got past X". Carlie.

• 
  
  
  
  I'm up for doing the first podcast, I have a good mic and the topics are stuff I can talk about.

 

[Ami]

Allow me to reveal my peasant-hood:

Everything I've recorded on has been Audacity. Any podcasts (not done in person) have been done through Skype.

That's also a good piece of software.

I'd try and see what's best before deciding a date because there are plenty of options out there.

 

[vaderSW1]

That's also a good piece of software.

I'd try and see what's best before deciding a date because there are plenty of options out there.

I do use Audacity for the editing of the podcast. I have never actually used it to record though. I have always found it easiest to do the show via Google Hangouts and then download an MP3 of the audio through Hangouts. From there I import into Audacity and start editing.

I do want the show to sound good and I have little doubt that with decent mic's and using hangouts the show will sound decent. I would love to be able to afford some good VOIP software for use on the podcast but I just don't have the disposable income.

I think Hangouts is going to be the best place for us to start. If we come to a point where we are getting a big listenership then, perhaps, we can look into making some upgrades.

 

[Geostigma]

I just looked at the websites for TS3 and Mumble. It looks like you have to pay for licenses for those programs. I think I'd prefer to stay the free route for now.

Thats only if you want to have the company (TS3 or Mumble) handle the hosting. You can just host it yourself

 

[vaderSW1]

Thats only if you want to have the company (TS3 or Mumble) handle the hosting. You can just host it yourself

Yeah, I realize that. However, not all of us are tech savvy enough to know how to set up a dedicated server for VOIP chat.

 

[Flintlock]

Then there's free Mumble Server hosting. Maybe we should check that out?

 

[vaderSW1]

Then there's free Mumble Server hosting. Maybe we should check that out?

I'm willing to give it a shot. I'd like to take a trial run to make sure it is going to serve our purposes okay. Let me know when you have some time and we can make a 20 minute trial run or so.

 

[Lex]

There are two questions I have.

1. Do you need me?
2. If so, when do you need me?

If the answer to the first question is yes then the answer to the second question will tell me when I need to be available, which in general is any time. Sort everything else out amongst yourselves.

 

[Ryushikaze]

I'm down to join in and give Vader editing help if needed.

 

[vaderSW1]

I'm down to join in and give Vader editing help if needed.

Appreciate the offer for assistance.

We will definitely get you on the show at some point also. Possibly next episode. I'll let you know for sure as we get closer.

 

[Cthulhu]

Setting up a Teamspeak or Mumble server should be easy enough, I could put it up on TLS' servers if we'd like to give it a try sometime. I think it might even run on my Raspberry Pi here at home, although I'd have to open a port in the router for it to work,