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Just stumbled across this thread and would definitely be interested in joining a workshop group! I'm moderating a new panel game-style comedy podcast called Actually Happening, and would love to get some feedback from people who don't already know the panelists personally. We just finished our first episode; you can listen/download/subscribe at https://www.itsactuallyhappening.com. (Audio quality still needs a bit of work -- recording five people in one room is always a challenge.) We're going for a vague history/current events/politics theme. If you're not familiar with panel games (they're a British thing), think Wait Wait Don't Tell Me with a whole lot less structure and no actual score-keeping. None of us are pro comedians, but we do have an interesting array of day jobs -- the first episode cast includes an animator, journalist, comic book editor, mathematician and opera composer.
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Mar 17, 2011 03:08
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reflex posted:Does anyone know much about SEO? Typing in "This Canadian Life" or "this cdn life" only bring up the iTunes link on the first Google page. My homepage doesn't come up at all and I have no idea why. Does anyone know what I can do to boost up my homepage? How much control does Blogspot give you over the backend of your site? Do they offer any SEO plugins? If you have to do SEO manually, make sure that all your meta/description tags are set up properly, that your episodes are well-tagged and that your site is generating an XML sitemap for search robots to use. You can submit said sitemap to Google, and connect it to an account to monitor results via Google Webmaster Tools. It sounds like your page may not have been crawled at all yet, actually -- links to it from other places should help the robots find it if you can't do the sitemap thing.
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Mar 25, 2011 03:23
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Finally got around to signing up for the Gooncasts wiki, and I'll make a page for Actually Happening once I get approved to do so. I also made a basic little logo for Gooncasts, if anyone wants to use it. (You'll need to add some padding around the edges.)
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Apr 25, 2011 20:04
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krushgroove posted:Can't find the PNG file for the logo. Also, did you sign up already for the Gooncasts site, because there's no sign-ups waiting to be approved. Ah, apparently in disabling hotlinking to my website images I've disabled it for myself as well, as the file only works when I'm logged in. Here you go:  And I just realized that signing up for Gooncasts was not the same as signing up for Wikidot -- sorry!
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Apr 25, 2011 21:04
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krushgroove posted:The logo looks fine, at least someone did one! I'll get it on the site ASAP I wanted to do something basic, as we have a pretty wide range of podcasts in style, scale and subject matter. When I get a chance, I'll try to write up a basic tutorial on using Wordpress + Podpress for hosting a podcast, too. Most of the guides I found when I was getting started are incredibly out of date.
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Apr 25, 2011 21:36
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krushgroove posted:Is everyone who's put their info on the Gooncasts.com site happy with the front page (apart from the current lack of a logo)? We can pretty it up if needed, maybe with individual logos for each show on the front page. I'll check the front page and make there there are no dead links or whatever. How flexible is the site layout software? It would be good to redo the homepage so it's more directed at people who are browsing for new podcasts than for people setting up the site. I'm experienced with designing for Wordpress, but I ought to be able to squash things into shape via Wikidot too. There are 8-10 podcasts listed at the moment, so a grid of small logo images would look good -- we can use everyone's iTunes/RSS images, usually 144x144px. It might also be good to move the signup instructions to a separate page, and just have a link to them. krushgroove posted:Fake Green Dress - can you do a squarish one that will fit in with a sidebar style web site design? Twitter, Facebook, etc., do square icons and it would be good to have the option for that for the different site styles we've all got. I can definitely give you a squarish version of the logo, but I'm not sure exactly the sort of thing you mean -- can you give me an example? I've seen a pretty wide range of sidebar widgets and icons. Also, I can do banner ad design, and chip in toward that, but I have no idea what kind of content people want in the ad, and no witty ideas of my own to offer.
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Apr 26, 2011 16:47
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krushgroove posted:I'm making the most of my holiday time and overhauling the front page, adding a gooncaster page (which was on the front page, to explain how to sign up and what to put on your page) plus a 'what is podcasting' page so people new to podcasting know how to subscribe and what to do. I'll look into adding the various logos to the front page in a bit. Site's looking a ton better already! Here's a possibility for a square sidebar logo, with and without a show-promo image:   I'm not 100% sure what we'd use these for (advertising each other's shows?), or if this was in any way what you had in mind, but I'm liking the dark blue bars as a subtle reference to the look of the forums. And I had a play around with Photoshop and here's my idea for a really simple banner ad. I'd need a small square logo image from everyone who wants in on the thing, as I'm just pulling stuff people posted on the site at the moment.   (If there's 8 shows, there would be two of frame 1, 4 each.)
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Apr 26, 2011 19:54
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krushgroove posted:Aww yeah, I like that first square one but then I'm a sucker for simple clean designs. I was thinking of the square ones for individual shows as something that people could use if they had an agreement with a particular other podcast to promote them specifically. They could also work like this, as a way to give people some branding or for the Gooncasts homepage:   And here's a not-exactly-square little site tag: 
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Apr 26, 2011 20:40
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krushgroove posted:Got it! Big question for the banner ad: do we want to include specific shows or not? I don't mind updating the design (or passing it to someone else) if we have to add new podcasts.
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Apr 28, 2011 16:01
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krushgroove posted:No idea! The last time I posted I think I suggested some things for it but yeah we definitely need to get moving on this. I mean, the My Little Pony fans have a drat banner ad now (which makes me think of your Pony fan show, Lou). Let's get the banner ad up! I completely forgot this thread was here and have only been checking the workshop one. Is there any solid agreement about the ad? I think you're right that coordinating/updating everything so we can include show logos might be a problem. I'm thinking we should just do the logo as roughly the left third of it and then some changing text as the right 2/3, but if anyone has any better ideas...? EDIT: Just had another silly tagline idea: "Put goons in your ears."
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May 26, 2011 21:43
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How's this?
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May 26, 2011 23:58
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 Centered logo. (If I make the blue end before the bottom we get a little too much white space.)
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May 27, 2011 00:09
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krushgroove posted:Fake Green Dress - Have you been able to play around with the banner text? Files were at my office, so I couldn't fix it over the weekend. Here you go! 
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May 31, 2011 20:37
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krushgroove posted:That looks awesome! Is the Gooncasts logo finalized too? I imagine it is and I just have to go back in the thread to stick it on the wiki site. Just need to know what size you need it to be for the site.
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May 31, 2011 21:04
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krushgroove posted:The size is fine - I put the logo you made originally on https://www.gooncasts.com and the original square one you made on my show's site, https://www.digitalporridge.com so anyone can see how it looks in situ (scroll down and to the left on my show's site) I like this theme a lot better! One question, though: why does it say "example menu" up top?
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May 31, 2011 23:58
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Slightly weird question, but you guys are all used to vocal recording so you might be helpful: we're recording another episode tomorrow, and I'm fighting a respiratory infection and don't quite have my voice back yet. Any suggestions for a) meds/tea/etc. that will help me get it back faster/make talking less painful, or b) post-processing effects that will make me sound less like I'm dying? We can't reschedule because one of our panelists is leaving town for a few months right after.
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Jun 1, 2011 17:08
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King Lou posted:I am really down in the dumps tonight, guys. I got an email midday asking me if I wanted to get into Earwolf's podcast contest as an alternate because someone dropped out. I responded right away but realized I was responding from the email they'd sent the invite to. So I sent one from that email address when I realized my error and they got back to me right away saying I was too late. They got someone else. They did say they really liked my podcast but man... I am DEPRESSED about it. That sucks, man. Fingers crossed that this means you're in for sure next time something like this comes up.
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Jun 20, 2011 18:05
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Song For The Deaf posted:If you want to both record in the same room, you don't have much choice other than to buy an interface (like the M-Audio Fast Track Pro) and a couple of mics. This is a better, more expandable solution (you're not stuck with those mics forever), but also quite expensive. My podcast usually records with five people in the same room, and after a few episodes done with just a stereo mic in the middle of the table, we bought a Zoom R16 multitrack recorder used off eBay. It is awesome (sounds great, records eight simultaneous tracks to SD!) and we love it. It's basically an entire audio studio in a box. The one annoying thing is that it's only meant to work with real mics, not PC/voip headsets, so we're still trying to figure out a mic setup that will give us decent isolation on each track for not too much money. Also, figure out a structure you can use to move the conversation along when it gets slow, and don't be afraid to edit ruthlessly. Particularly when you're starting out, you want people to hear the best and only the best material. We use about a quarter of what we record, and I often want to cut out even more than that.
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Jul 5, 2011 16:43
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Song For The Deaf posted:You can do 29, 59, 89, or 119. This kind of thing must be a scheduling nightmare, for whoever is putting it together. It's a little discouraging, since one of my favorite things about podcasting (versus being on the air somewhere) is that you can let stuff breathe. I was all excited for this until I saw the time requirements. Not only do we have no set episode length, my show just isn't that long! We've certainly never hit the 29 minute mark.
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Jul 8, 2011 01:01
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mcsnitches posted:I'm looking to set up a quasi-professional podcast with a friend, planning to order a nice kit of microphones and mixers. I know Audacity is the bread and butter of most editing setups, but is there any other podcast specific programs that are worth checking out? What do fellow gooncasters use to edit their programs? Honestly, at the cheap end of the spectrum you could do a lot worse than plain ol' GarageBand. It doesn't have the flexibility of a pro editor, but it's particularly nice when you're just starting out because it includes track presets for different sorts of voices. I personally don't enjoy cutting in Audacity because it merges all the edits so I can't go back and tweak them later. On the more expensive end of things, I'm about to get a copy of Audition, and I'm looking forward to trying that out on the next episode of my show.
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Jul 21, 2011 22:27
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We'd been cutting our podcast in GarageBand, but after the latest update it simply became unusable on an older Macbook. (Seriously, there's no way to do anything even close to precise when playback won't stop until several seconds after you hit 'stop'. Ugh.) But now, thanks to work I'm running Adobe Audition and it is such a breath of fresh air! So nice to have software that actually works the way I expect it to, instead of the way Apple wants it to. I can't wait til our real microphones show up... EDIT: This seems like a super-good deal for someone setting up a 2-person podcast: M-Audio interface + what seems to be an LE-style version of ProTools for $39 Fake Green Dress fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Aug 2, 2011 |
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Aug 1, 2011 20:42
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I'm curious what you folks think about show length. My podcast has ended up twice as long as usual for our past two episodes, and I'm wondering if it would be better to split it into two parts and release them a week apart? We're only a monthly show and I think not being weekly has cost us listeners on a few occasions. We've also talked about doing mini-episodes to fill the weeks we're off, but does anyone actually listen to five or ten minute bonus shows?
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Dec 17, 2011 01:41
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Song For The Deaf posted:Podcasts are like goldfish, they'll generally grow to the appropriate size. You're not being held to a broadcast schedule where you need to be 22 minutes to fit commercials in. What you should be more worried about is whether or not you're using the time optimally. If you're hitting hour-long show times, but don't have an hour's worth of things to say, consider cutting back. I'm more just wondering if shorter, more frequent episodes would be better than only being monthly but having a longer show? We don't really want to record more often because it's hard enough getting five people together once a month.
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Dec 19, 2011 21:52
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Anyone have any experience with rescuing corrupted/incomplete sound files? I love my R16 recorder dearly, but one of our panelists kicked the plug out of the outlet in the middle of recording and we lost possibly the funniest thing we've ever recorded. I'm pretty bummed, but I can't imagine the data is actually gone for good. I've tried a couple of different file recovery programs, but so far all I've managed to salvage off the SD card is the *previous* episode of the show and a couple of totally bizarre files that seem to contain at least part of the Lost Episode. But when I bring them into Audacity as raw data, it crams all four channels on one track and cycles through the channels in 2.5 second chunks, one after another. It's weird and unhelpful and would be a nightmare to try to edit from. Anyone have any ideas what else I can try?
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Feb 17, 2012 23:26
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King Lou posted:I used these guys to repair a corrupted video file. Their software is able to see inside the broken video/audio and recover it. May be "Mac only" That's actually a really useful link for my day job (thanks!), but I'm not sure it would be much good for my current situation: I think most of the data is floating around in random sectors of an SD card and has yet to be recovered. If I can find it all but only in weird scrambled form, maybe I'll see if they can make something out of it?
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Feb 18, 2012 02:23
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We've just launched the first ever animated version of our podcast, and I'd love some feedback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYf9dzlxAMg It's all done with Kinect motion capture (I am an animator by day), which means we can turn around new episodes pretty quickly now that the puppets are built.
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Jul 25, 2012 19:28
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Song For The Deaf posted:It's not really strategic at all, except that releasing stuff BY Friday is good, since downloads spike as people download stuff to listen to over the weekend. We release on Tuesdays, and we actually find the opposite to be true. We have relatively few weekend downloaders -- seems like most of our traffic comes from people who listen while commuting to work.
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Aug 14, 2012 05:21
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