Category: RadioZoom

Posted on

The Levelator is an interesting beta program

I have to stress that point. This program is in beta, so do not count on stability to be one hundred percent. If you are an audio nut, then you’ll want to consider adding Levelator to you audio editing tools.

Do you believe in magic? You will after using The Levelator to enhance your podcast. And you’ll be amazed that it’s free (for non-commercial use).

So what is The Levelator? It’s software that runs on Windows or OS X (universal binary) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It’s not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It’s much more than those tools, and it’s much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler’s application window, and a few moments later you’ll find a new version which just sounds better.

Have you ever recorded an interview in which you and your guest ended up at different volumes? How about a panel discussion where some people were close to microphones and others were not? These are the problems the post-production engineers of Team ITC solve every day, and it used to sometimes take them hours of painstaking work with expensive and complex tools like SoundTrack Pro, Audacity, Sound Forge or Audition to solve them. Now it takes mere seconds. Seriously. The Levelator is unlike any other audio tool you’ve ever seen, heard or used. It’s magic. And it’s free. [gigavox]

I was half inclined to use this on the podcast that I released today, but time was a bit more of a factor. However, I did a slight trial run this afternoon and met some not so good results. I’m not saying this is a horrible program, but maybe you shouldn’t do what I did.

When it installs, try going with the defaults. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I didn’t want desktop shortcuts and all that junk. When it installed, I have no idea where it went, but some careful searching found it. On top of that, when I dragged the AIFF of the episode of RadioZoom I released today[rz#114] into the program, it hung. I tried to cancel it and quit out, but no going. That’s when it beach-balled and showed progress like it was doing something.

When I force quit out, and you can start to see the stupid things starting to happen, the program went away. Something somewhere was still doing something because my hard drive space was being eaten away. I even quit down to where no other programs were running and relaunched the Finder. Eventually, whatever it was, stopped and all my eaten space came back.

So, I stress that this is a beta version of the program, but a great concept for a utility. I haven’t had the opportunity to really see if it works, but I thought I’d pass on the word about this.

Posted on

RadioZoom Episode #114 – One Year in Vancouver; The Crazy Canucks podcast; Sounds of the SkyTrain; 1907 Film of Downtown Vancouver

Published this morning, RZ#114 is ready for listening.

I haven’t done anything like this in quite a while, so I decided to take the minidisc and lapel mic with me as I had some things to take care of yesterday. It has been one year since I moved to Vancouver, so I talk a little about what the whole experience has been like. I also hesitate to say that this is the official, one year episode as Rebecca wants to do some recording on the topic as well. A second part might materialize soon.

I also talk about the new podcasting project that I launched this past week. The Crazy Canucks is an extension of the “Hockey Talk” segment from this podcast, but check out the website to get more of the story. Also, I had the opportunity to partake in a project regarding the oldest, surviving film footage of Vancouver from 1907.

56:39 minutes
radiozoom.net

Posted on

Announcing a new podcast: The Crazy Canucks

A few months ago, Rebecca[miss604] and I brainstormed an idea for a podcast that seemed too good to pass up. With the friends that we have been making in the world of blogging and podcasting, The Crazy Canucks was born.

We’ve brought together Vancouver Canucks Op Ed, the Canucks Hockey Blog, the Canucks Outsider, Miss604, and my adventures with RadioZoom into a podcast that is probably unlike anything you’ve heard before, and nothing like anything I’ve ever been apart of. And you don’t need an iPod to listen!

The Crazy Canucks

[krey-zee, kuh-nuhks]

Local Canuck Bloggers to Host a Weekly Roundtable Podcast this 06/07 NHL Season

Current album art: The Crazy Canucks podcastVANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA (October 2, 2006) – Coming this October is a podcast the likes of which Vancouver has never seen. It will be a collaboration of hockey bloggers and the brainchild of a podcaster who all have one thing in common: The Vancouver Canucks.

The Crazy Canucks will be a weekly podcast about the team, the players, the organization and the league. Our goal is to have a fan’s point of view, since we’re not cable TV and we’re not local sports radio. Agree or disagree, leave us a written or audio comment and tell us how you really feel.

Listen and subscribe to the podcast, which will be available weekly on TheCrazyCanucks.com.

For more information contact: feedback [at] thecrazycanucks.com

Look for the premiere episode to debut this week as the Canucks kick off the regular season on Thursday. Subscribe or listen directly on the website. It doesn’t matter how you hear it as much as it matters that you come be apart of the podcast. Afterall, we’re fans just like you.

Posted on

Doing my part in documenting local history

Jason Vanderhill[flickr] is a guy I met at the Vandigicam event that Rebecca and I attened a few weeks ago to do a podcast[rz#110] during. A short time ago, Jason contacted me to aid him in a project he is working on with members of the Vancouver Historical Society. I wasn’t completely sure I was volunteering for, but the idea of lending my knowledge of recording in the field sounded like fun.

Turns out, the oldest film of Vancouver is the same piece of footage that I heard about from Dave Olson when we hung out during the Celebration of Light.

Last week, I was helped Jason capture some audio that is to go into a project about this film that was discovered in the basement of a house down in Australia. Nine minutes of a movie where William Harbeck[vancouverhistory.ca] put a camera at the front of a cable car as it goes through Vancouver in 1907. Very cool stuff, and it made me overly happy to have ventured over the Granville Bridge by foot on such a gorgeous day.

The film has been shown publicly, but I have yet to see it. I’m not sure what the whole plan is for the final project, but this is something I am very lucky to have a hand in. I’ll be sure to update here when I know more. If you can get a chance to see this piece of history, I’m betting that the images of Vancouver from one hundred years ago is a trip.

Posted on

I might be at the Portable Media Expo

My immigration status is still unchanged. That means I cannot go to the Portable Media Expo in California, at least physically. In fact, it’s already started by the time I make this post. The keynote is over and people who claim to know more than you about podcasting are beginning various sessions about different topics, mostly how to make money off this stuff.

Dave Slusher is one of those guys. He speaks for the trees. Er, I mean hobbyists. Amateur podcasters that do it for the love and not the money. He also put out a call for URLs, logos, and a voice comment regarding why you podcast and would you keep doing it if you knew, tomorrow, that you were never going to make a single dime from podcasting. He’ll be using these things in his session with a goal of highlighting those who do this for the love, not the dollar signs.

I gave him all three, and he emailed me to let me know he got it. If it wasn’t for the fact that I listened to Ted’s latest edition of Island Podcasting, I would have never known that he was doing this. My listening to the Evil Genius Chronicles got a little backed up. Even though I emailed him the stuff yesterday, I got in “right under the wire”.

So if you saw or heard of RadioZoom at the PME, be sure to leave a comment and let me know.

Posted on

RadioZoom Episode #113 – Hockey Talk: Canucks Hockey Blog (canuckshockey.blogspot.com)

Another adventure with interviewing bloggers who publish content about my favorite hockey team, episode #113 is served.

A Skype interview with blogger J.J. Guerrero from the Canucks Hockey Blog, Rebecca and I learn more about the guy behind the blog, why he loves the Vancouver Canucks, and gather some insights about the team. The other interesting thing to note about J.J. is that he worked at GM Place for about nine years as an usher. He has a lot of knowledge about the team other that just loving the guys like we do. We don’t spend a lot of time setting up the episode because it really speaks for itself. If you dig hockey, then you’ll really enjoy this one.

45:02 minutes
radiozoom.net

Posted on

RadioZoom Episode #112 – Slurpees; Birthday Weekend; Canucks Hockey Talk; Vancouver Trivia; MySpace; Weird Al; Miss604 In Print

Recorded in haste, late this afternoon, episode #112 has been posted.

Back to the studio, Rebecca joins me for an episode that we are squeezing in before a busy weekend starts for the both of us. My birthday is coming up on Sunday, and we’ll be attending the Canucks game againt Anaheim in celebration. We get into a variety of topics, including Vancouver Trivia as my one year anniversary in Vancouver is quickly approaching.

As you will learn in this episode, we were crunched for time as we were getting ready to see Snow Patrol in concert a few hours after recording this. Check back to these show notes in case I forgot to add something at the time of posting this. I’ll do my best to update later if I have.

45:33 minutes
radiozoom.net

Posted on

RadioZoom Episode #111 – Six Song Donut Spectacular: September 2006; Farewell to WOXY.com

A little late getting an episode out this week, but I’ve been battling an all out attack on my sinuses for the past six days. That being said, #111 is up and ready for download.

WOXY.com ends a long running history of being one of the best sources for alternative, independent music today. In this six song(plus two), I pay my respects to one of the greatest radio stations, terrestrial and internet-only, to have ever existed. All songs in this episode were artists that I discovered through WOXY, tracked down, and received permission from.

Today marks another page in rock and roll history. Septmber 15, 2006 will forever be the day that the music stopped, for good, from WOXY.com. Even if it begins again, it will never be the same as it ever was.

56:00 minutes
radiozoom.net

Posted on

Podcasting and the Meta Argument

At BarCampVancouver, Ryan Cousineau[wiredcola] led a session called “Sturgeon’s Revelation”[wiki]. The idea that “ninety percent of everything is crud” was the center piece of this session, applying it to pretty much everything that exists in the world of Web 2.0[wiki]. The main topic of focus, however, was podcasting[wiki].

Darren Barefoot made a recent post regarding social networks and podcasting, citing that the resources are not there for the medium as there is for photo, video, or link sharing. This idea speaks a lot to what Cousineau was getting at with his session, and much of his thoughts on the topic is posted on his blog.

When it comes down to it, there is not an easy way to share content within a podcast unless you listen to it. You can’t Google search for information that can be found in a podcast. There are such things as show notes and tags that people apply to the material that they publish, but not everyone does it, nor does everyone do it the same way.

The only solution to this problem is to transcribe podcasts in their entirty so that anyone searching for a topic can locate it in your podcast as well as anywhere else on the web. Quite often, this is where people with low opinions about podcasting derive their argument, and I’ve heard this thought propelled by a lot of bloggers. Yes, blogging is a very quick way of publishing information for the world to read in nearly real time. It is instantly indexed, searchable, and archived.

Generating audio for a podcast can be done in the same way, but often is delayed and ineffective with being timely. The podcast itself, in its raw form, is a bunch of ones and zeros, and no one has developed a way to index the contents of a podcast so that it is searchable across the internet. No matter how great of material that you have in a podcast, some one finding that gem of information inside forty minutes of a mp3 won’t happen unless they download it and listen.

This is where I start to agree with the point that Cousineau is saying and the thoughts presented in Barefoot’s post. The conversation that you can get from podcasting is vastly different for the ones that happen through blogging, Flickr, or YouTube. “Feedback” is the better word for what goes on with a podcast. Continue reading “Podcasting and the Meta Argument”

Posted on

Sticking to a schedule for podcasts

Allow me to continue a long standing discussion among podcasters and critics out there in the medium, but when is the best time for putting out podcasts?

It all comes down to a schedule, right? There should be certain things that people can count on with your podcast. Content, style, quality, frequency(as in how often you publish new material), and location. I could have said five, distinct elements, but there is way to much to consider or even begin to argue over what is and isn’t more important to think about. If you’re not careful, you can fall into a vicious circle, and I’m saying that based on experience.

For the most part, I like to have subscribers and listeners count on me to publish one, new episode every week. That is not as easy as it sounds. No matter how much or little that you create, you are constantly fighting with what is coming up for your next production.

RadioZoom is what it is, and I love creating content for it. The name itself will never limit me from doing what I want with it. It’s my creation to do what I see fit. Even that doesn’t make everything that much easier.

Continue reading “Sticking to a schedule for podcasts”