Speaker 1: If you want high quality audio and video for your podcast interviews, then you gotta drop Zoom and start using one of these four tools that I'm sharing today. But before unpacking the details of each of them, I don't wanna keep you waiting, so let's look at each one of them and see how the audio and video quality compares. So I'm gonna recruit my friend Peja, who lives literally 5,911 miles from me for a truly remote podcast test. So let's hop into the first one now. What's up Peja, how are you? Hey Ryan1, I'm good, thanks for asking. So to record today, I'm using the Canon M200 DSLR and on the mic, I've got the Audio-Technica AT2020. What are you using to record today?

Speaker 2: I am using a Logitech C920 webcam and for my mic, I have a SM Shure SM58.

Speaker 3: Nice, nice, the SM58 is a classic.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great budget setup. I actually got it to start recording a podcast. Oh, real quick, well, what's the best way to grow my podcast?

Speaker 1: Yeah, good question. I'd recommend probably starting with the free training I have on growmypod.com or if it's easier, you can just click the link right down below this video. Awesome, I'll be sure to check it out, thanks man. Yeah, yeah, no worries, no worries. Cool, but hey, I gotta bounce because I gotta share some more details with Ryan2, so I'll see you in a bit. Cool, see ya. And so you can more easily compare the video quality. Here's each of the platforms we just looked at side by side. Now, let's look at what I think are the five main factors for consideration in each of these, cost, ease of use, quality, stability, and unique features. And I'll include links to each of these platforms down in the description below this video. Now, first, let's look at cost of each of these, starting with Riverside. And no, this isn't in the order that I just showed you just a minute ago. To get started on Riverside, the lowest tier they offer is a free tier. That'll get you unlimited recording of single-track files, which means the audio and video of each person will all just be merged into one, and you'll get two hours of separated audio and video. So if you did 30-minute interviews and released a weekly show, that would cover you for almost a month. The downside here is that the files will have a Riverside watermark on them, and you'll only get them in 720p versus up to 4K, which is offered on the paid plans. I'd recommend most podcasters look at their standard plan for 15 bucks a month, which will get you five hours of 4K audio and video on separate tracks. Next up, we have Iris. Now, Iris is like the new kid on the block here. Right now, they don't offer a free tier, so you'll need to dish out a minimum of nine bucks a month to use it. And with that, you'll get two hours of separated audio and video content in 4K. This is the same amount of recording time as on Riverside's free tier, but here you won't have to worry about that watermark, and you'll get that high-quality 4K footage. To get a comparable amount of recording time as you get on Riverside, you'll need to bump up to their $19 a month tier. Now, on Zencastr, you'll find a free plan that pretty much mirrors Riverside's free plan, two hours of separated tracks, recording audio and video in 720p. The only difference between this and Riverside is that on Zencastr, they don't offer the unlimited merged files recording, like on Riverside. And they have an $18 a month tier, but honestly, their pricing page, to me, is super confusing, and I'm not sure how much recording time you actually get here. It says everything in the free tier plus and lists all the stuff, but it doesn't say how much audio and video recording you actually get. So I'll assume you still get the two hours mentioned in the free tier. It also doesn't say the quality of the video if it's higher, like 4K, so maybe we can just assume it's the 720 like mentioned in the free tier. Now, the line item that says unlimited recording master storage might mean you get to record unlimited hours, but I'm not 100%. To me, this is a big fail on the Zencastr side for not making the pricing page more easy to understand. Now, let's see if we get some more clarity on our final platform, which is Squadcast. Similar to Iris, Squadcast does not offer a free tier. Now, on Riverside and Zencastr, we looked at their monthly rate if you were to pay annually. Iris didn't offer a pay annually option, so that was pay monthly, just so you know. Now, on Squadcast, you'll see that when you switch it to pay annually so we can get a nice side-by-side, the lowest tier actually becomes unavailable, which is super strange to me. Now, it might be because they don't even offer video recording on their lowest tier, I'm not sure, but if you do the math on their lowest video recording tier that is available at an annual plan, then it will cost you around $33 a month to use Squadcast, making it the most expensive option to get started with. And with that tier, you get 12 hours of 1080p recordings. It doesn't say anything about 4K like we saw on some of the other platforms. Now, when it comes to ease of use, I think Iris and Riverside both led the pack here. Both have an extremely intuitive interface and offer a little friction to get in and start recording your interview. Zencastr was pretty simple as well. The only thing that I got hung up on when we went into Zencastr was I went to hit record and I was naturally looking for a red button. And for some reason, it turns out they made their record button blue. So I'm looking around, looking around, thought I would see red, didn't. Eventually found that blue record button, which actually turns red after you click it. Now, in my opinion, Squadcast has the worst interface and I've recorded several other videos actually about this. It's really difficult to figure out how to navigate, especially if you've never used the platform before. But once you actually get into the recording session, it's more or less pretty straightforward and they actually have a red record button. Now, quality is one of the factors that you probably care the most about. So let's do a side-by-side up on the screen again and drum roll. Here are the names. Which looking at this do you think looks the best? Let me know, drop it down in the comments below this video. And now that we know the names of each, let's replay that clip again so we can see each of them playing one after another. What's up, Peja, how are you? Hey, Ryan1. I'm good, thanks for asking. So to record today, I'm using the Canon M200 DSLR and on the mic, I've got the Audio-Technica AT2020. What are you using to record today?

Speaker 2: I am using a Logitech C920 webcam and for my mic, I have a SM Sure SM58.

Speaker 3: Nice, nice. The SM58 is a classic.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great budget setup. I actually got it to start recording a podcast. Oh, real quick. Well, what's the best way to grow my podcast?

Speaker 1: Yeah, good question. I'd recommend probably starting with the free training I have on growmypod.com or if it's easier, you can just click the link right down below this video. Awesome, I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks, man. Yeah, yeah, no worries, no worries. Cool, but hey, I gotta bounce because I gotta share some more details with Ryan number two so I'll see you in a bit. Cool, see ya. Let me know down in the comments which one you thought had the best audio and video quality. For me personally, I think they're all pretty similar when it comes to the output quality. So the deciding factor would be one of the other criteria if it were me. Now, when it comes to stability, here I'm talking about the chances that you record an interview and it doesn't save or the audio and video is out of sync, something like that. To get the most out of each of these, make sure you and your guest are on Chrome and then close all the other browser windows that you might have open, tabs, programs, any of that kind of stuff. I found that if you're on Chrome and Chrome with that tab open is the only thing there, that is when you're gonna have the best luck and the best prevention of anything going astray. And you can let your guests know that when they join as well. Like, hey, if you have a bunch of other applications open, close those and please, if you can, close out of any other tabs in your browser that are not this one. And one note that I didn't mention in the quality section is that when you are recording the interview in each of these platforms, like in the actual interview itself, not in the output, the quality is going to look bad. So if you're in one of these and you hit record and then the quality gets really bad, like don't freak out because that will not be represented in the final output. It'll look nice and crisp on all of these. Now back to stability. During these four test recordings, three of the four worked flawlessly. The only one that we had issues with was Squadcast. And I'm not sure honestly what happened, but we hopped back on to record again and it worked just fine. I'm wondering if it maybe was the account upgrade I did, it just hadn't kicked in yet because I think I was on their $20 a month tier, which now I know is audio only. And maybe when I bumped up to the $40 a month tier, again on the monthly pricing, not the annual pricing, maybe it just didn't kick over enough or not enough. It didn't kick over in time. And when I recorded that session, it was audio only. So I'm not gonna hold it against them. I'm gonna assume that's what it was. And if it was, then we can just say all of them for our test purposes worked just fine. Now you'll see each of these platforms get criticized online for having stability issues. But if you use the tips I told you above, all of them honestly should work just fine. We put all of our clients on Riverside and haven't had a single issue in over a year. Now, when it comes to unique features, here are some things that I like on each of them. Let's start with Riverside. Something they have that the others don't is the ability to edit audio and video by editing the text. Like editing and transcript edits the audio and the video. If you've used Descript before, it is just like using Descript. Now it isn't as full featured as Descript, but it does have the basics. And to be honest, that's all most podcasters will need is those basic features that it does. This editor allows you also to create social media content from your recordings, which is super cool. And the last unique feature I'll mention about Riverside that I love is the public link button that you can get and give out to anyone that needs access to your files. Say an editor. We use this for our clients so they never have to download anything from Riverside. And we don't ever need to actually get their login directly to their account. It's a subtle little feature, but it is super useful if you're working with an external person. Now with Iris, I really like how all of their tiers have automatic uploading to Google Drive or Dropbox. And you also get access to the automatic audio mastering on all the tiers, which is something offered only on higher tier for Squadcast and Zencaster. This basically removes background noise, levels your audio, does EQ, compression, stuff of that sort. And on Zencaster, something you won't see on the others is that they act as a podcast host. So you can upload your audio files directly to them and distribute to all the platforms, bypassing the need for something like Simplecast or Libsyn. And you can actually access this on their free tier, which is pretty damn awesome. Now on Squadcast, even though they don't have an editor built in like Riverside, they do have some great integrations. And their Descript integration in particular is awesome because you can easily move files from in Squadcast directly into Descript for editing. And they also have a Zapier integration, which gives you, if you know anything about Zapier, the ability to pretty much integrate with anything. And if you're a really techie, which I'm not, they have a public API that you can build pretty much anything on top of. Now we covered a lot in this video, so here's a quick overview of what I think. Now, whichever option you like, there will be links below this video to sign up. Myself and my clients use Riverside, but I think any of these platforms will be a big level up compared to something like Zoom. And once you get your podcast audio and video nice and crispy from one of these tools, be sure to check out my free training down below this video on how you can grow your podcast and create a profitable content funnel. I'll see you there.