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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Mark Des Cotes, my favourite thing to wear is a T-shirt and jeans, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I talk about getting back up after a fall.
Today’s Fun Fact of the Day: Did you know that there are more English speaking people in China than there are in the United States?
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What I leaned yesterday.
If you’re a listener of other Golden Spiral Media podcasts you may have noticed a round of musical podcast hosts going on this week. Several of our hosts were unable to do their weekly podcast due to illness, family emergencies and mysterious disappearances amongst bullet fire, check out Central City Underground for this last one. Luckily, as Darrell has mentioned several times on this show, GSM has grown into a large supportive family. So when a request went out for hosts to cover certain shows this week it didn’t take long for people to volunteer to lend a hand.
The aforementioned Central City Underground was one such show that needed two hosts on very short notice. Ruthie and Doug quickly stepped up and volunteered to record the show providing someone else could do the post production work since neither of them were comfortable doing it. That’s when I stepped in and offered to edit the show. Between my SILY episode each week and two seasons of Orphan Black and Under The Dome over at Solo Talk Media, I’ve edited close to 90 podcasts so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem.
Boy was I wrong.
Now as I’ve mentioned before, Darrell is the one that helped me get started in podcasting. I bought the equipment he recommended and set it up the way he told me. He also showed my how to use Audacity, the audio editing software we use, and gave me the step by step procedures to get the best sound out of my equipment. There was some trial and error at the beginning with the editing software. Darrell told me what filters to use and how to adjust them but since every studio is different, I couldn’t use the same numbers that he uses. Instead, I needed to play around with the numbers until I was satisfied with the way my audio sounded. I call this my secret recipe. Every time I record a podcast I load the audio file into Audacity and run it through these filters with my secret recipe. This takes maybe two to three minutes depending on the length of the episode. Once that’s done I start editing. You know, taking out any ums and ahs or any words I may have stumbled over while recording.
What? You thought I sounded this good naturally? Sorry to let the cat out of the bag, but we podcasters stumble over words from time to time and need to repeat ourselves. But, through the magic of editing we can remove all that extra verbiage and leave you with a great sounding episodes.
That makes me think of something. If you haven’t sent in any Friday Forum stories because you’re afraid of how you’ll sound. Rest assured. We don’t just edit ourselves, we’ll edit your submission as well to make you sound as good as we do. So there. No more excuses. Send in your Friday Forum submissions today.
Where was I? Oh yes. Friday evening I received a text from Doug saying he had sent me the audio files to edit. I finished watching a movie with my wife and then sat down in front of the computer to get started. It was around 10:30 pm. I opened the audio file and saw that it was roughly 44 minutes long. Great I thought. From my experience it usually takes me double the length of the audio to edit it. So a 44 minute show should take me roughly one and a half hours. Then I actually looked at the audio wave and began to panic. Now I’m not going to explain how an audio wave looks but needless to say, this one looked nothing like my own. When I load in one of my own recordings the audio wave has peeks maybe three quarters to one inch thick, Doug’s audio wave was a quarter inch at the most. I knew right away that my secret recipe wouldn’t work on this file, and that’s all I had been using for the past two years.
Of course I didn’t give up. Through trial and error I managed to play with the filters and got the audio quality to where I thought it sounded good. But the process that usually takes me two to three minutes had taken me forty-five.
Finally I was ready to begin editing. This is where I encountered my second obstacle. You see, I podcast alone. When I make a mistake, hesitate, or stumble my words, I usually know right away. In those cases I just pause for a second or two and then repeat myself. Later when I’m editing the show I can easily cut out the mistake and the listeners are none the wiser. Not to mention that since I’m editing my own recording I already know what to look out for.
I quickly realized it’s not that easy when there are two people talking, having a conversation and laughing at each other’s jokes. Add to that the fact that I was listening to the recording for the first time so I had no idea what to expect.
I wont go into details, but editing that show was a long and gruelling process. When I was done, I had cut out almost 10 minutes of audio and was left with a 34 minutes final cut. Finished with the editing, I prepared the file, uploaded it to our server, and finally published it for the world to hear. My estimated one and a half hours had turned into almost five. I crawled into bed at 3:30 in the morning.
On Sunday I was talking to a good buddy of mine. He’s not into podcasts but he knows my passion for them and often asks what I’ve been up to. I told him this same story, going into much greater details than I did for you. At the end of the story he laughed and said “I bet you’re never going to volunteer to do that again.” But I surprised him. You see, on Saturday Darrell put out another cry for help. This time assistance was needed with The Devil You Know, our Constantine podcast. Cory stepped up to host it, soon followed by Ruthie again. And you guessed it. Less than 24 hours after my ordeal I volunteered to edit their episode.
What did I learn?
When you fall off a horse the best thing to do it get back in the saddle. For the past two years my podcast editing experience was equivalent to one of those county fair horse rides. You know, the one where the horse is tied to some sort of merry-go-round and someone holds the bridle as you walk around in circles? Darrell had provided me with everything I needed to do my show, in effect holding my bridle along the way. But on Friday I was shown a coral and handed a thoroughbred.
For a brief moment I was in over my head. I could have just given up and handed in the towel but I didn’t. I forced through and managed to get the job done. It was long, it was gruelling, and towards the end I was hating it. But I did learn from it. I experimented with filters I had never used before. I tried editing techniques I’ve never needed for my shows. Once finished I was glad I had done it. Not only had I helped out some fellow GSM hosts that were in need, but I was now a more experienced audio editor. I still have a long way to go before I’m anywhere near Darrell’s caliber but then again, he is doing this for a living and has produced over 3000 podcast episodes so it’s understandable.
And when the cry for help came again on Saturday I didn’t back down, I saw it as an opportunity to gain even more experience. So I dusted myself off and got back in the saddle. And you know what? It went much easier. That final cut of the Constantine episode ended up being fifty-five minutes long but it only took me three hours to produce and publish. I call that progress.
Everyone is guilty of finding that comfort zone and staying in it. You get into a routine where you’re happy with the familiar and you become comfortable. You’re on the back of a horse going round and round a merry-go-round. But the problem is you’re not making any progress. You need to experiment, to learn and to grow. Only then will you realize the rut your circles have been making.
Will my experience change the way I produce my podcasts? No, I’ll keep putting out podcasts the way I’ve always done and they’ll continue to be well produced shows. But should the need arise I now know that I can step up and face the challenge. I’ve faced my thoroughbred and got thrown off. But I got back in the saddle and I’m ready for another ride.
I’m Mark Des Cotes and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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