Any Possibility of a 4pp Community Podcast?

[Darknezz]

Episode 1 is up.

4playerfancast.blogspot.com/

[davethezombie]

Great show, guys. The mic quality is a bit off, and drops what someone saying mid sentence. Like you said, I know its the site that renders the quality that way, but if you could host it on a site with better quality, all the more better.

[zekana]

im listening to it now. the quality could be much better but its ok. one thing is i hear a lot of puffs in the mic.
its good as a first one and everything is still new and everything.

[mighteemax]

Great first show guys. Looking forward to the next!

;D

[GPink]

I told fishies I'd post a couple impressions of the first podcast and some suggestions about how to improve. These are just suggestions, so feel free to disregard any of the points if you don't think it's viable or helpful. These suggestions are coming from a guy that knows a little bit about podcasting, from having years of experience listening to them, and conducting exhaustive research after playing with the idea of starting my own.

First off, the podcast was very impressive with the way it was put together. Very professional, and other than the odd drop-off and cross-talk, it sounded fine. Some things I can suggest:

• Make certain that everyone in the podcast is in an entirely quiet atmosphere, and their mics are level with the point of their nose, to avoid breathing sounds. I'm sure this is fairly self-explanatory, and you've already considered it, but proper mic-control is paramount to a balanced podcast. The general rule of mic length is to place two fingers sideways lightly on your mouth. The microphone should be at least that far from your mouth, and a little more helps too.
  
• During the podcast, crosstalk is extremely annoying for the listener. Dead air is honestly not as bad as people make it out to be, and when crosstalk (people talking over one another) occurs, it is disorienting and doesn't lend to the flow of the podcast. One person should be talking at once, with minimal crosstalk for interjections. Again, it's a point that I'm sure you guys are aware of, but I'm noticing that there's some of that going on, and it should definetely be brought up during pre-show to any guests.
  
• The structure needs some work. At this moment, I'm about halfway through, and there's a lot of jumping from topic to topic going on. I'm not seeing a break in the conversation to distinguish when the podcast moves to another topic. Banter is a great idea for some of the podcast, but when banter becomes a tangent that moves the conversation extremely off-track, it's distracting, and confusing to know what you're listening to.
  
• This one is linked to the previous point. There needs to be a larger moderator role played by the hosts. It's easy to get brought into the conversation, and it's good to do, but there needs to be a time where the conversation is reigned in, and taken to the next topic. Without that, the conversation runs on, and it gets tiring to listen to. Something like "Okay okay, we're getting off track. [authoritative voice] So darknezz, now let's move into what you've been playing. "
  
• Last one. This one is important. While it's tempting to let the conversation, and the podcast continue on towards a limit of an hour and a half or more, I don't know if a fancast has the milage to continue for that long. I think a limit of one hour, with an emphasis on getting through the topics in 45 minutes, should be important. Believe me, having listened to podcasts for years, a 45 minute podcast is much more likely to be a first choice of mine, because it's much easier to digest. 2 hour podcasts are much becoming the norm, and it's a trend that, while admirable, is extremely tiring to listen to. It's a good assumption that the listeners of the fancast have at least three other podcasts to listen to from 4PP per week, so they might want something a little more bite-size.
  

[zekana]

id like to ask if we could do a japan fancast or something. we can discuss stuff on japancast as well as anime and manga we may be into at the moment. maybe a few forum moments. something like that could easily last for 30-45 minutes. it can be quick and a good way to branch off a little from just being about video games.

[Thoraxe]

I listened to the FanCast an hour ago. Great job you guys! ;D

[dafishies]

Well GPink you have a lot of things to say lol

but the main thing is that most of the stuff you talk about, there is no way around that. People will always have bad mics, and I'm not gonna kick someone out for having there mic be too close or something like that. For the length you said it should be like 45 minutes to an hour. We tried to make it an hour and it went like 20 minutes over almost. It's almost impossible to make it 45 minutes to get through everything that happend on the feed the past week, impressions, AND our favorite moments of the week. even if we dropped impressions it'd still go over. I'm not saying that what your suggesting is bad, its just that theres no way we can make it that short lol. if we did, it'd be like a 4playernewscast. We'd only have enough time to pretty much say news of what happend. Plus the fact that we havn't really gotten into japancast at all.

The crossover talk is also pretty much impossible to fix because this is on skype and we can't see each other or anything. Even if we had a webcam or something it'd still be pretty difficult. you can see 4payerpodcast doing this and they are doing a live person to person show.

Thanks for your info and i know that some of those mic things we can solve though, like the blowing through air and stuff like that.

[rabbeseking]

And I'd like to point out we really aren't aiming for professionalism, this is a fancast, for an intimate and limited audience.

[GPink]

Absolutely fishies, again, they're just passing suggestions, don't worry about any one of them if they're unreasonable for what you're trying to do. Not saying to kick people off for bad mics either, cause of course, some people are going to have different qualities for mics. The mic control helps immensely though.

As for the time, the hour is an admirable time to strive for, and some weeks, I'm sure you'll hit it, because there might not be as much on the feed, forums, or blog. And yeah, cross talk is really hard to avoid with Skype, but honestly, a short disclaimer about it to the guests of the podcast every week does WONDERS. Just something like "If you hear someone beginning a point, just hold off for a moment." Every little bit helps.

Whatever you decide to do, I'm sure it'll turn out awesome!

[zekana]

when listening to the 2nd one, around the 40 minute mark to close to the end, does it start to mess up for anyone else? some of the voices sound more metalic then before and some static here and there, almost like someone was blowing into the mic. really, it just seemed like the quality gone down hil at the halfway point on. just want to know if this happened to anyone else or if mine just got a little corrupted while downloading.

[Darknezz]

The original audio file is fine for me.

If anyone else has the same problem as Zekana, let me know, I'll reupload it.

[Darknezz]

Episode 3 is up. 4playerfancast.blogspot.com

[zekana]

wow. i never truely realized how much of a speech empediment i have until i heard myself on the podcast (yes, i was part of the podcast and i listened to it about 3 hours after we finished recording it)

also, im suprised how short it was. i thought it was 2 hours when doing it.