Speaker 1: So you want to start a podcast but you just wish someone would walk you through every step of the process from very beginning, setting up your microphone, to recording, editing, to publishing your show all in one video? That's exactly what we're going to do right here. So let's start with a microphone. I'm actually going to recommend the Audio-Technica ATR2100X. I know it's a long name. We'll put a link to this microphone in the video description. It's about $70 on Amazon but it is really flexible and it could last you a long time in your podcasting career. I've probably bought this microphone like five times giving them away to guests and podcast co-hosts because it really does sound incredible. And one of the great features is you can connect it via USB or XLR so as your podcast setup grows or if you want to use multiple microphones with an audio interface then you can do that with this microphone as well. In this video we'll do just a USB microphone because it's the simplest most direct connection to your computer. As you can see on the back of this microphone there's a little bit of a difference between the audio interface and the audio interface. There's a USB-C connection and a headphone jack. This three-pin connector is the XLR but we're not going to be using that for this setup. Just USB-C to the computer and we're going to plug our headphones into the microphone. If you order this microphone on Amazon it actually comes with two USB cables USB-C to USB-C and USB-C to USB-A. So you should be able to connect this to whatever computer you have with the cables that are included in the box. They also include in the box this little microphone stand. This is really key. You don't want to be holding the microphone for an entire podcast recording. You want to be able to hold it for a long time. So you don't want to be recording. Not only will your arm and hand get tired but as you hold a microphone it might move around slightly causing some clicks and pops in the recording. So it's really in your best interest to use a microphone stand like this one, a desktop stand, or if you have a desk where you can actually mount a microphone arm this will clamp to a desk and holds the microphone like this. If you go with this particular microphone you'll have everything you need right in the box. I'm going to set the microphone here next to my laptop and connect it with a USB-C to USB-C cable. This is a MacBook Pro. It has a USB-C port already on it but again one of the cables in the box will work with your computer. This particular microphone also has an on and off switch. If that switch is in the off position nothing will be recorded and your guests won't be able to hear you. So make sure that switch is flipped upwards or in the on position. I'll also put links to this which is a windscreen or pop filter that you should put on top of your microphone. They're pretty inexpensive on Amazon and really helps reduce some of the mouth sounds and plosives like when you say peas and bees. You won't hear that as harshly in the microphone. Again you can get like a pack of 10 for just a few dollars. Highly recommend using it with your microphone. Now besides the computer that you'll be using to record the other key piece of equipment are wired headphones. Two reasons why you want to use wired headphones. Number one if you're recording with a remote guest having wired headphones it's another thing you don't have to worry about. You don't have to worry about batteries running out on things like airpods and one of the most important things about recording a podcast is listening to your own voice as you record. It's going to seem a little strange at first but hearing your own voice will help you with mic placement, knowing how far away it should be from your mouth, and if something's wrong with the recording like it's distorting you'll hear it while you record rather than later when you can't do anything about it. So with this microphone in particular plug your headphones directly into the microphone. There's a headphone jack in the microphone and you'll be able to select the microphone as your audio input and output device. I'll show you that in a second. Now the pair of wired headphones does not have to be an expensive pair of headphones. They can just be cheap wired headphones you have around the house. As long as they have that headphone jack connector you can use them. Now that I have my microphone and headphones into the computer I'm ready to record. Hopefully at this point you already know what you're going to podcast about, the topic, planning your episode, but if you need help with launching a podcast and planning for it we actually have videos for that on the Riverside channel. I'll put a link to one above and in the video description. Planning for an episode is an entire process. Thinking about the topics, pulling up articles and links of interest, if you're doing an interview style podcast preparing those questions and sending them to your remote guest or interview guest ahead of time. All of that are key parts of a successful podcast. We're just going to work with the technical aspects right now but again if you need help planning your podcast you can check out the links in this video's description and we can help you out with that as well. Now to record the podcast I usually record with remote guests. People all over the world, different states, so we record online. I use Riverside to record all of my podcasts. Riverside is basically an online studio that you access in the web browser. You can invite anyone else around the world just by sending them a link and it records high quality audio and video for each individual guest. Having those separate high quality tracks is key especially in the editing process which we'll get to in a second. So here I've gone to riverside.fm logged in with my account and now I'm going to enter one of my virtual studios. If you need help creating studios in Riverside or just learning how to use the platform in general we have lots of videos on that as well. I'll link a playlist above and in the video description walking you through how to use Riverside from beginning to end. I'm going to jump into one of my studios here. I'm going to select that I'm using headphones and then here on the right I'm actually going to choose my microphone and audio inputs. Now because we plugged our wired headphones directly into the microphone I'm going to choose the USB mic as my audio input and my speakers. So here under the microphone tag. So I'm going to choose the ATR2100X as both my microphone input and my speaker. Now if you're just doing an audio podcast you can just use the built-in camera on your computer and it'll record that but you could just use the audio. If you do want to add video to your podcast and there's lots of reasons to do that check out this video above or in the description on why putting your video podcast on YouTube will really help with Discovery. If you have a modern iPhone and Mac computer you can actually use a feature called continuity camera which will wirelessly use the rear camera of your iPhone for a webcam here in Riverside. And you can even get accessories like this little Belkin MagSafe mount where it'll hold the iPhone on the laptop and you can have a high quality camera right here. We have a whole video on using your iPhone as a webcam with your computer. We'll link that above or in the description. Now that I've chosen all those settings I'm going to go back to the studio. Now that I'm in the studio I can invite my co-hosts or other remote guests via a link. They'll also appear in the studio when they open it on their computer. Be sure to tell them to open that link in either Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, or the Brave web browser. And I can get that link by clicking invite here and you'll see here I can choose guest link and then click copy link, text or email that to them, and once they click it they'll appear here in the studio. You can expand each person's audio devices by clicking the menu here on the right side. Make sure the audio input and audio output are the same. If you want to add audio to your audio output and cameras are all chosen properly and then you're ready to record. Once everybody's set hit the big record button at the bottom of the Riverside studio. You'll get a countdown and you're off and running. Now you're recording your podcast. You and your guests are having a great time and let's say you've now finished the recording. You're done with the episode. Hit stop there at the bottom. Make sure you let all your guests and co-hosts know to stay around until they see that their files are 100% uploaded. You'll see upload complete at the top of the screen. Each of your guests and co-hosts will see that as well. And now you're ready to download those separate files so you can edit them or you can even use Riverside to edit your show. I'll click view recordings here from the studio or you can also navigate to the studio here in the Riverside dashboard and here click view recordings. Riverside saves your past recordings so you can always refer back to them. Redownload those files if needed. And again here if I scroll down each guest will have their high quality raw video and raw audio. That's an uncompressed wave which is the highest quality audio you'll get from your Riverside recording. And I can download these files and edit them somewhere else. Or to edit directly here in Riverside click edit and create clips in the top right. You can choose a 16 by 9 video which is something you could upload to YouTube. We'll automatically place you and your guest or co-host side by side in this video and you can adjust this layout if you want. Maybe you want to do a vertical video. You can do that. You can choose what tracks to actually export. And you can even select use audio only if you're just doing an audio podcast and you just want that finished audio file to upload to your podcast host. You could keep the aspect ratio of the original video, round the corners, or un-round the video. You can also adjust the aspect ratio of the original video. You can also adjust the aspect ratio of the original video. And we also have these AI layout features which will focus on the active speaker large in the window and place the other speakers in small picture-in-picture windows. You can upload custom background images or even a custom logo to overlay on the video version. And one of the powerful new features of the Riverside editor is you actually get a full transcript with every recording and you can edit your content just by deleting words or sentences here in the transcript. If I select text and hit delete it will actually remove that portion from the exported clip that I'm about to save. You can search for specific words, you can click the arrows to find every instance of that word, then you can delete full sentences, individual words, remove silences, edit all of your content right here in the Riverside editor. When you're ready you can click export and you can export a video all the way up to 4k resolution or if you're exporting audio only you can export an mp3 which is the format you'd want to send to a podcast host or uncompressed wave if you want to do more editing in a different application. Toggling normalized audio levels Riverside will attempt to make sure there's volume throughout the clip so if you had one person a little louder and one person a little softer Riverside will even that out throughout the clip. If someone had some background noise like a fan or air conditioner you can also check that box and Riverside will try to remove that as well. Then I'll click export and I'll get an email when I'm ready to download that mp3 file. If something happened to the audio of one of your guests or co-hosts and you need to repair it, maybe there was some background noise or it was a little too echoey in their room, we actually have a whole video helping you repair that bad audio. Check that out above or the link in the description. The audio version of my podcast in an app called Ferrite on iPad. To do that I would actually download the individual uncompressed wave audio files here in Riverside. Here I'll download both my audio and my guest's audio. I'm saving that to the downloads folder on my computer. Now depending on your devices you can get those audio files to another device like an iPad several different ways. I'm going to choose to select both of them, two finger click or control click here on the Mac, hit share, and then I can actually choose to airdrop files over to my iPad. It will send those audio files to my iPad and a menu will appear asking what application I want to save these files to. I'm going to choose Ferrite. Again that's an application you can use to edit audio right here on iPad and now I can edit these tracks together. We do have a whole video on producing podcasts directly from an iPad including editing it with Ferrite. We'll link that video above and in the description. Once Riverside is done exporting that clip that you edited before you'll see it here on the recordings page and I can click the three dots and download this mp3 file which is the edited version of my podcast ready to upload to a podcast host. I'll title that file episode one. Now I have an audio file ready to publish to a new podcast. If you chose to do video as well you can upload that video to YouTube or Spotify video. We'll put links to some tutorials on how to do that process in the video description. Now if you're starting a new podcast you need to choose a podcast host. A hosting provider is where your audio files will live and they generate what's called an RSS feed that you can then submit to things like Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher and other podcast apps. So if you're creating a new audio podcast you'll need to choose a podcast host. We have videos on some of the top choices for podcast hosts. Here I'm actually going to go to transistor.fm to start a new podcast. You can create a free account and use a free trial just to get everything set up and you're going to create a new show here in Transistor. If I choose create a new podcast it'll ask for the title of my show, a description for the show and you'll need some podcast artwork. If you need help with podcast artwork you guessed it we have a video on the channel about that as well. Link will be in the description. But you want to create a square image about 3,000 pixels by 3,000 pixels. You can use tools like Canva, Pixelmator on a Mac, Photoshop or any amount of graphic design applications. Once you've decided on a podcast title, description and uploaded your artwork you'll choose the categories your podcast fits into whether that's business, entertainment, choose the category that best fits your content. You can also choose a secondary category which is discoverability. You can put your own name for the author and show owner and then you're ready to create this new show. Once your new show is created you can add a new episode for that podcast, title the episode, put a description and you'll upload that mp3 file that you either downloaded from Riverside or exported from another editing application like Ferrite on iPad. Add a description for your show and then publish your first episode. After you've published your first episode live here in your podcast host you'll then go to Apple podcast dashboard and Spotify to view your show and make it public for everyone to discover. Once you've submitted your show to Apple podcast and Spotify and they've approved it it's then published for the whole world to listen to. If you'd like a step-by-step process of submitting your show to Apple podcast and Spotify check out the video above or in the description and we can walk you through the very end of that process. And that's how to produce and record your very first podcast episode from setting up your microphone to editing to publishing it on a podcast host and then everywhere on Apple podcast and Spotify. If you have any questions on the process, drop a comment below this video. We look at every comment. We'd love to help you there. And subscribe to the Riverside channel. We have lots of content on building a professional video podcast setup, three-point lighting if you're really going pro level, and even how to use AI to automate your podcast process. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you in the next video.