Speaker 1: If you want to record an interview, or a podcast, or a guest for any reason that isn't in the same room as you, it's actually really easy these days. So if right now your guest interviews look and sound something like this. Hey Tyler, thanks for having me back. This video will help transform them into something like this. Hi Tyler, thanks for having me back. I've been recording podcasts for over 10 years now with tons of different remote guests and a bunch of different technical setups. And it took me a while to settle on one that really worked, and that was Riverside. And then, after I've been using it for a while, they wanted to sponsor a video, which works out perfectly. A few days, or at least hours before we start recording, I make sure to send my guest a few technical notes about what we're going to be doing here. So it's important things to know, like that I focus more on the audio quality rather than the video, so they can just use a webcam. Make sure to use an external mic that is close to their mouth. And also that they have Chrome installed on their computer, because if they're on a Mac, Safari doesn't support all of the audio video recording that we're going to need to do. Of course, your notes might be different depending on your show. So now we're going to go into Riverside, and we're going to do this with a really basic way. I've already got a studio created, but I'll create a new one to show you guys how it works. We're going to give it a name, and this can be something general and reusable. You can keep using the same studio for multiple episodes. And choose whether it's audio and video or audio only. We're doing video as well. So now we're going to enter the studio. This is where you set up your basic audio and video settings. You're going to enter your name and choose whether you are or are not wearing headphones. I always use AirPods. You can use any kind of headphones you like. The important thing is that the audio is not playing out of the speakers from your computer, because then Riverside will need to process that and remove the extra echo of your speakers. So they'll do their best to fix the quality, but it'll never sound as good as if you're wearing headphones. Over here on the right, just make sure you've selected your good microphone, your best web camera. I'm just using FaceTime. And that your audio is coming out of your headphones. And then I'm going to click Join Studio. And now I'm just in like a green room. Nothing happens here. Nobody can see what I'm doing. I'm just hanging out by myself at the moment. But let's get some company in here. Let's invite John. And we can either do that by email or by copying a link. Usually I just copy a link and send it to the guest, however I've been chatting with them before. So that might be over direct message or whatever it is. This is what your guest is going to see as they are getting ready to join. And all they have to do is click a link to join in. They don't have to install any other software. They can just use their web browser. Or if they happen to be joining by phone, there's also an iOS app from Riverside. So you can do all of this on a mobile device too. So at this point, it's helpful for me to let John know that we're not live. Nobody can see us right now. We're just hanging out. This is the time to sort of set up our settings. You can see in the studio here over on the right, there is a recording overview. I'm going to click this edit button and give this recording a name for the future. This is a, I don't know, how to podcast. We can also see our basic audio and video settings, which are 1080 HD. And if we click on the settings panel, you can see that's the one thing that you might want to change. By default, it will make it smaller. I like to have it a little higher resolution. It's good to just kind of dig around in here, see what else there is. You can also live stream. So often when I'm doing this, I will live stream the show to YouTube so that subscribers have a little bit of bonus content, but primarily I'm pre-recording. People just can watch live and interact if they want to. Now at this point, it'd be helpful to do some sound checks. So John, can you tell me what you had for breakfast?

Speaker 2: I had a chicken and sausage soup.

Speaker 1: So over here on the right, I can see John's levels and I just want to make sure that they're approximately at the right place. When we export, we can normalize them or fix them later. We do get both tracks of audio. So last things to notice, there's also things like media. So for example, I've got my podcast outro. So if you want to add sound effects or music to your podcast live, you can trigger them there. There's also a chat room. So if anybody is watching in the studio, they can interact here as well. So John, are you ready to go? I'm ready. If we want to hit the record button, we get a little bit of a countdown. And if we were streaming live, this would also start the stream. I can tell that it's recording by this little red button in the top right. John, right now on my screen, you look kind of pixelated, but I don't want you to worry about that because it is actually recording locally to your computer and uploading that to the cloud. So Riverside will have a full quality version that we can download at the end of the episode. So anyway, that was a great episode.

Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on, John. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: I was enthralled. When I stop recording, now I can see that it is almost done uploading. You just want to give it a second. Don't close the window until it's finished. But once it's finished, you can click this view recordings button and see what we did. Once you go into a studio, you can see all of the recordings that you've done before. And here you can see previous podcast episodes. But what we've done today, that's in our new test studio. So I'm going to view those recordings. Here it is, how to podcast. And right now, I'm just going to show you the simplest way of editing that Riverside does internally. So if I click edit and export, I can decide if I'm just going to do a story, a post, or a full length video. That's what I'm gonna do right now. So this might be for YouTube. And I can see the entire recording. I can take these trim points and just move them to the sides until I find the beginning and end of what we're actually talking about. I'm going to name this episode with John and click export. When I do, I've got a few more options here and an important one is normalize audio levels. This kind of just turns everything up. Make sure that both guests can be heard and hit export. But if you want to learn how to do professional multitrack editing, stick around till the end of the video because I'm going to cover that too. So John, we just put out the M2 MacBook Air review. If you were to upgrade for music production, would you get the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro right now?

Speaker 2: I think I would get the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air screen is just a little bit too small for me.

Speaker 1: I feel that too. One thing I totally forgot to say in the MacBook Air review is that I just want them to make a bigger screen version of that exact same computer. Once it's done, Riverside will send you an email with a download link. Let's go back to the dashboard and see what else we can do with this editor. Let's look at a recent episode from the Stallman podcast. This is 120 with Jonathan Morrison and we have a brand new feature from Riverside called create clips and this is going to be for an Instagram story and I can just go through the whole episode till I find a nice short little segment that I like and it automatically resizes everything to whatever the layout is that I want and just like that, I've got a new Instagram reel to promote my recent podcast episode. Out of the many ways I've recorded interviews and podcasts, Riverside has been the easiest and most reliable. So check them out. The link is in the description. You can sign up for free, no credit card required. So that's all it takes to record a podcast. Now you can just post your audio and video to the internet and people can watch it. But let's try to make things a little more professional because if you're just talking into your laptop microphone, it's not going to sound great and we can also do things to make it look better as well. With any type of storytelling, audio quality is way more important than your video quality. So let's make sure that you have a decent microphone. A good starting point is the Audio-Technica ATR2100. This has been around for a while. It's about $100 at the moment. It has an XLR jack for more professional setups or USB if you just want to plug it straight into your computer and get some great sounding audio. The reason I like this is that it's a dynamic microphone. All the mics I'd recommend are dynamic where cardioid mics, which are very common for podcasting, pick up the room noise a lot more. Like I'm in a really echoey room right now. So if you see a cardioid mic, it does sound great, but only if you have like a padded room with lots of sound control. If you're in an uncontrolled space, a dynamic mic will always sound better. If you want something newer, that's also extremely easy to use, I recommend the Deity VO7U. It's USB-C. So on a modern computer, that means you just have one cable running right into it, no adapters required. It's going to run you about $200. It's got an RGB ring on the back so you can customize the color as well as knobs for the output and headphone volume. But if you want to take things all the way to the professional level, what I'm using right now is the Heil PR40 and this requires a half decent preamp as well. And for that, I'm using the brand new Focusrite Vocaster 2. This is made specifically for podcasting, so all the controls really are thought out towards a, you know, dialogue interview setup. It's got two XLR inputs on the back as well as outputs to speakers. It can connect through Bluetooth and it's USB-C as well. So it's really ticks all the boxes when you just want an easy to use recording device that can have up to another guest locally if you want to. The Vocaster 2 is going to run you about $400. There's also one that just has one XLR input, but the preamps in this are great. They're competitive with much more expensive devices, which I used to have to buy to use mics like the Heil PR40. It sounds great, like a proper radio microphone, but it requires a very high quality preamp, otherwise you get a lot of hiss. Now before you decide how much you want to spend on a mic, let's listen to audio samples from all three. This is a sample of the internal mic on the 2022 MacBook Air. This is a sample of the Audio-Technica ATR2100. This is a sample of the Deity VO7U. This is a sample of the Heil PR40. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button. To smash that subscribe button. Smash that subscribe button. Smash that subscribe button. There's one other mic to recommend that I don't have here and that's the SM7B. I've used it in a few different podcast episodes and it's probably what I'd actually recommend over the Heil for most people because it has a built-in shock mount and a built-in pop screen so you don't need to add those externally. Fantastic microphone. I already have one so I didn't buy another. Probably the most important part of image quality is actually your light, even more than the camera. So this one's from a Logitech. It's called the Lytra Glow. You probably saw it in my desk setup tour recently and it's got some buttons on the back so you can easily change the color temperature or the exposure. Pretty affordable way to start with some good lighting at your desk setup. Now if you want to step things up a little bit, this is the Amaran F22C. I love this thing. It's relatively compact for like a bigger light and the bigger your light is, the softer it is too. So this larger size will look more like a window light instead of a flashlight like the smaller one. It also gets crazy bright. If you want to crank it up, you can compete with whatever other light might be in the room or if you crank the saturation, you can have a kind of party like there's a lot of options in here. That's why I like this light. It's super versatile and has a great output. So that's the F22C. You can also get the F22X which is a little bit more affordable. Links will be in the description for all of the gear in here but definitely make sure you have some good light on your face. Once you've got good lighting, you're most of the way there to good image quality. Lately I've just been using the webcam for my podcast episodes because it's faster and it's easier for the guests to do because they don't need to set anything up. But if you want to go a step further, you can plug in any professional mirrorless camera or SLR or I'm recording with the C70 right now and to hook it up to your computer, it's gotten really easy these days. I use the Cam Link 4K which you just plug the HDMI into the USB and you're good to go. Once you've got your lights and your mics and you sound professional, you want to hold on to that quality all the way until you hit publish. So now I'm going to show you a slightly more advanced editing method because Riverside was actually holding on to the multi-track recordings of our project. I'm going to show you how I did this on my most recent podcast episode. Down at the bottom here, you can see there are a few different download options and I'm going to download an MP4 track for each of us. Each one is 1920 by 1080. It's a full quality local recording and if your camera supports 4K, it can capture that too. I set up my project in 1920 by 1080 and 30 frames per second because this is how it was captured. I've got my two recordings, myself and my guest. I'm going to select them both, right click and say new multi-cam. I don't need audio for synchronization because our audio is actually different. It's cleanly recorded on each side. So it'll quickly create a multi-cam that I can put in the timeline, open it up and they're already going to be in sync because they both started and stopped recording at the exact same moment. So I don't need to do any extra work there. Now I'm going to show my multi-cam angles. You can see there's me, there's Justin. I'm going to make sure both of our dialogue is turned on throughout the whole thing and when I'm cutting back and forth, I select this tool to only cut between the video and not affecting the audio. The quickest way to do the editing is I can right click, expand my audio and then I can actually see when each of us is talking and really quickly cut back and forth. Just by looking at the waveforms in under two minutes, I've edited a rough copy of the whole podcast. And then I do what's called a checkerboard edit. So whenever somebody's silent for a long time to let the other person talk, I press R for the range key in Final Cut and I just drop the audio all the way down and I go all the way through the podcast doing that every time that there's no talking. I don't need to be super precise about it. As long as I get most of it, it keeps kind of the basic wind noise or any little chair moves out of the background. Here's what the final recording looks like and you can see there's one more pro move we can do here and that's adding a two-person camera. The way I do that, if I open up the multi-cam, as you can see that I've got a compound clip here and all I've done is manually move Justin and my clip to the sides and cropped off the edges. That way I've got three cameras in my multi-cam and it just adds a little more energy to the If you look at the waveforms, you'll notice that both of our audio is a little too quiet right now. So to adjust that, I'm going to open up the multi-cam and usually just use a basic limiter for each person bringing up the gain until visually it starts to level out a bit. Limiters limit the max output level. The better way to do this is actually with a compressor but that is a lot longer to explain. So we're using a limiter today. That's a pretty quick tour of a complicated edit. So if you need more, check out my Final Cut Pro videos that go more in depth or let me know in the comments if you want me to do a full podcast editing workflow because that would take more time than I have here. Thanks again to Riverside for making this video possible. If you want to try them out, the link is in the description or use offer code STALLMAN for 15% off any Riverside plan and I'll see you guys in the next video.