A Simple Checklist to Nail Every Recording Session (Full Transcript)

[00:00:04] Speaker 1: Step up your setup. It's time to record. As you record on a regular basis, you'll develop an internal checklist for making sure everything is set properly. But until then, you may want to make a physical or digital checklist to make sure every recording goes off without a hitch. Riverside makes sure you look and sound great, but you have to plug in the USB mic. Whatever room you have available, close the door and consider recording when the environment is largely quiet and distraction free. Let others know you will be recording, plug in and charge all your devices, and gather your notes and other gear to have ready. Before you record, be sure to choose the correct camera, microphone, and speaker, which is another opportunity to double check that your equipment is plugged in and recognized by your computer. We also encourage the use of wired headphones, either plugged into your computer or even better plugged directly into a USB mic or audio interface. This allows you to hear your remote guests without their voice bleeding into your mic, and you can monitor your own voice too. Now this may feel strange at first, but catching any audio issues while you record is much easier to fix than only hearing what you sound like after you're done recording. Once everyone has joined the studio, or maybe it's just yourself recording solo content, you can record a quick 10 second test recording and preview it in the studio. This way you can be sure everyone looks and sounds good. Be sure to fully quit applications like Dropbox, Google Drive, that may try to sync large files while you record and take up bandwidth. When possible, connect your computer to an Ethernet cable for more reliable speeds. And remember, both you and your guests' internet may affect the call. Once everything is ready, hit record. For your first time, record about 5 to 10 minutes of content, and then be sure to review that video. How did it sound and look? Anything distracting in the background? Were you looking directly into the camera? Take notes and try to improve the details the next time you record. Next, when you're interviewing a guest or planning a regular co-host, you can help coach them to look and sound their best as well. We'll cover that in the next video.