Plans for 2022

Computers With Ease
Computers With Ease
Plans for 2022
/

[display_podcast]

Here are some of my plan for 2022!

What are yours, I look forward to hearing them & helping you reach yours.

Posted in Audio, Podcasts | Leave a comment

Happy New Year

[display_podcast]

I would like to wish everyone Happy New Year

 

 

Posted in Audio, Podcasts | Leave a comment

Happy Hollidays

[display_podcast]

May the holidays joyous and wonderful for everyone.

Happy Holidays

 

Posted in Audio, Podcasts | Leave a comment

Last quarter 2021

[display_podcast]

The last quarter of 2021 is here!

Have you met your goals? Have they changed?

Posted in Audio, Podcasts | Leave a comment

My workflow

[display_podcast]

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related audio and video.

Good afternoon everyone in today’s episode. I thought I would talk about my individual editing workflow that I use for my podcasts, and I’m going to start with a couple of questions for you.

What is the workflow that you currently follow when you are doing your podcasts, whether it be audio podcasts or video podcasts? The other question is how much editing do you do and what programs do you use? I’m am going to talk about not only the process that I use but some of the software that I use as well.

Once I create the actual recording of the podcast, then I begin the editing workflow portion and just so you know I use a Rodecaster Pro with a Rode Pod mic to actually do the recording of the podcast. and as I say once I start the editing process I begin by removing the background noise that’s inherent in any podcast, no matter how you record it, there’s always background noise unless you’re in a professional recording studio which I’m sure most of us are not.

Then I add any gain or volume increase as necessary throughout the recording and then finally I go and I remove any unwanted noise unwanted words like um ,ah all of those annoying things that we all tend to do, sometimes without even knowing it.

Now in terms of software that I use for the editing process I use a program called wave pad. I will put a link to it in the notes. There is a paid version and a free version of the software. I’m currently looking at experimenting with other programs, but this is the one that I’ve been using pretty much since day one. When I started my podcast what seems to be a long, long time ago now.

Finally the question of how long are my podcast. It depends on each episode, and the length of the episode also dictates to a certain degree, how long it takes to edit because the longer the episode the more editing that may be required so it’s an individual thing. But certainly once you find a process that works for you stick with it and make adjustments as necessary. If you find something isn’t working for you or you find a way to improve the overall productivity of your podcasts or the quality of podcast itself. I hope this is been helpful.

I would love to hear your comments and questions, email me at info@computers withease.com and if you like to stay up to date with this podcast., please feel free to subscribe to my email list. I look forward to speaking with you.

 

 

Posted in Audio, Podcasts | Leave a comment

Audio editing without going crazy

[display_podcast]

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related to audio and video.

In this episode I’m going to talk about how to do audio editing without driving yourself crazy, and the first thing you want to talk about is not necessarily related to editing itself, but you have to record your audio before you can edit the audio that you’ve just created. So my thoughts on recording a podcast or whatever it is that your doing is use whatever method of recording you have at the time.

The next step in audio editing is to come up with a process for editing, and what that means to me is okay what steps am I going to follow when I think about editing this podcast so that I can put it out in the world in whatever way that is for you. One of the things that I think about here in terms of process is make it easy to follow and something simple.

Now you can start editing almost anywhere and in my case it took a while for me to figure out the process that works for me in terms of editing and I’ll be covering that more specifically in a separate podcast.

Now one of the first editing steps is to remove the background noise in the recording, and that could be anything from electronic noise from a fan or computer or something to outside noises from the environment outside of wherever you recording. Another frequent thing that is found in recordings mine included is when you say um, ah or some other sound when you have a moment of I’m not sure what to say.

There’s also the question of volume of your recording, you want a consistent volume level across the entire podcast and you may find that you have to raise the volume on a certain portion and lower it in other places. Or if you’ve got several individuals that are part of your podcast one person’s voice maybe louder than another persons and so on and so you have to try and balance that.

One of the other things that I’ve noticed while, I’ve been doing my podcast is depending on your style and your pace you may find that there is blank space in your recording that is longer than you want, and you may want to trim that out.

Another thing that you may want to do in your podcast that may require some adjustments is if you add intro or outro music similar to what I have at the beginning and end of all of my podcast episodes, and once you got you music in at, the beginning or end, or in between your segments and you’ve done all your editing and you’re happy with your result.

Then you want to finalize recording and prepare it for posting to whatever website or podcast service that you are using, and you may want to add that to your editing process as I generally do so that when I’m done the editing process the podcast is completely done it ready to go.

The last step in considering your editing so you don’t drive yourself crazy is evaluate your overall process and then make changes as necessary. And here I have a suggestion for you is, when you are going to start doing a podcast start writing down each of the steps you do and the order in which you do them so that you have an idea of your overall process and you can start there and work your way through it and see if there’s any changes that you need to do.

This episode has an accompanying download. If you would like a copy of the download. Please send an email to me at darrell@computerswithease.com and I will send you the download. Your email will not be sold or distributed in any way. It will be added to my email list

 

Posted in Audio, Podcasts | Leave a comment

Mic levels & gain

[display_podcast]

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related audio and video.

Hello everyone in today’s podcast I want to talk about mic levels and gain. This is been one of the issues that I’ve struggled with ever since I’ve been doing a podcast and am still struggling with. Even though I’ve changed my equipment over time, as I’m sure many of you have.

The first thing I’m gonna briefly talk about is the equipment that I’m currently using. I’ve got a Rodecaster Pro, I’m using a Podmic also from Rode. What I use, as far as editing software is a program called Wave pad and I’ll put a link to that software in the notes.

One of the problems that I’m finding at the moment is that my gain settings on the Rodecaster Pro for the mic is at 35 to 40, so I’m driving the preamps significantly hard. This is leading to a high noise floor in my recordings, meaning that there’s a lot of background noise in the recording, which I have to try and edit out later in this is not necessarily always easy thing to do.

Now next let me give you some statistics as to my set up in terms of the settings before I tell you how I managed to fix this series were of problems. As I said before, the mic levels on the Rodecaster were between 35 and 40 and the maximum for the Rodecaster is 55.

My noise floor on a recording within my wave pad software was – 39 DB and that’s after trying various adjustments in the settings within the Rodecaster itself to try and eliminate or cut down the noise floor that I started with.

Upon doing some research I found that I basically had two choices, either go with a Cloudlifter or a Fethead. Both of these devices are designed to give you more gain or boost into your microphone while not increasing the noise that is generated significantly.

Upon deciding to go with the Fethead simply because it was one device you plug-in and there’s no additional cables, no additional set up required. Just plug it in, turn on phantom power and let it do its thing.

Upon doing that I found a significant change in the noise floor the Fethead website said that the Fethead would give you approximately 27 DB of gain. Now once I plugged this in I was able to turn my levels down on my Rodecaster from between 35 and 40, down to 15.

So that means that on working the preamps, much less that I was before, and upon doing a test recording my noise floor went down to approximately -45 to -48 DB from, -39, so this has made it significantly easier to edit. There’s a lot less noise that I have to try and eliminate and overall the recording is much cleaner.

The other thing that I’ve done is gotten a better XLR cable in case that was part of the problem as well. I’m very pleased with the results and would love to hear what other people have done to make their recordings with the Rodecaster cleaner, or any specific settings that you’ve been able to adjust that have made a difference for your podcasts and your recordings.

I’d love to hear your comments and questions email me at info@computerswith ease.com If you like to be notified when I release a new podcast episode sign up for my email list. I look forward to hearing from you

 

Posted in Podcasts | Leave a comment

Learn & Do

[display_podcast]

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related audio and video.

Hello everyone today I wanted to talk about something a little bit different. Our work environment over the last several months has changed and until recently we haven’t been able to go back to work in the traditional office sense that we had been use to up until the whole the Covid 19 pandemic started.

It recently got me thinking about how things have changed even for someone like me who is used to working from home. One of the things that I notice is that we spend much more time alone with the social distancing, and so on I work in my own small office for example. And my wife has her office in another part of the house, so even though were close by we are technically in different areas of the house.

One of the other things that I notice is that our Internet usage has gone up because you’re looking at more stuff on the Internet, whether it’s watching YouTube videos, Netflix, Prime video, whatever it happens to be. I notice our Internet use has gone up.

Another thing is how do you keep busy because being at home? Many people find that there’s more and more distractions and so it’s how do you develop the discipline to continue working.

Now one of the things that I did during this at home time was I took the time to start doing a lot of research on going paperless. I have begun to be more and more disheartened with writing on paper, and then trying to file the pieces of paper and then it’s a matter of remembering where did I file that when I needed it.

So I started looking into not only going paperless, but using my iPad as an option for doing the things that I would normally do using paper, and so in doing that research I learned what software programs were available to me and I did a test of each one and that led me to the need for new skills, in that I had to learn how to use each of these programs to be able to evaluate which one would work best for me.

So that was a learning process which I found at times somewhat frustrating, but I have now started to move completely away from using paper for the majority of my notetaking , thought process, idea generation material. It’s a matter of not only finding a solution but working with the solution long enough to make sure that it fits your needs.

It also means that your workflow and your processes may have to change to accommodate the new tools that you’re now using instead of the ones that you’ve been used to for however long.

Having said all this, I have a question or two for you that I would very much like to hear your answers to.

Number 1 How has your workflow changed, and what have you changed in your workflow itself ?

The second question I have for you is in this switch with your workflow and your tools, what new insights have you gained through this process?

I would love to hear your comments or questions please feel free to email me at info@computers withease.com and if you like to stay up to date with this podcast., please feel free to subscribe to my email list. I look forward to speaking with you.

 

Posted in Podcasts | Leave a comment

Rodecaster Pro cover

[display_podcast]

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related to audio and video.

Hello and welcome to the computers with these pumpkins, where we talk about all things related to audio and video hello everyone, I want to do just a short podcast here on an item that I had purchased to use in conjunction with my Rodecaster Pro that I’m finding very useful that I thought other individuals with the same piece of equipment would like to know about.

I’ve had my Rodecaster for almost a year now and one of the things that I have wanted to find was some sort of cover to put over that piece of equipment to protect it from things such as dust, dirt, and so on, falling in to the fader controls, etc.

Recently I found a place called digital deck covers and they make covers for the Rodecaster Pro in a variety of materials and colours and so on, and I went ahead and purchased one, and I got it several days ago and it’s very well-made, very simple but very effective and I found it exceptionally useful because I can cover up the Rodecaster when I’m not using it.

I don’t have to worry about things such as dust and dirt. We also have several cats in the house and they like to walk all over my desk and sometimes they end up walking over the Rodecaster, so having a cover on top means that I won’t get things like cat hair on it and will make the product last longer and hopefully work better over the long term. If you would be interested in something like this, go ahead and check out digitaldeckcovers.com. I will put a link to it in the show notes and the thank you very much for listening.

I’d love to hear your comments and questions, email me at info@computerswithease.com. If you’d like to be notified when I release a new podcast episode sign up for my email list. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Posted in Podcasts | Leave a comment

Covid 19 – from a creators viewpoint

[display_podcast]

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related to audio and video.

Good afternoon everyone, today I wanted to do something a little different. I want to talk about what’s going on with the Covid 19 situation and I want to talk about it from the perspective of a creator. Since I do a podcast and there’s many of us that do as well as others that create in many different ways.

Speaking for me, I found that I thought initially that oh boy. This would be nice to have some quiet time without all the distractions and be able to get some things done. One of which was work on my website and several other things.

And I also thought I would be able to put out more podcasts in a short period of time because their wouldn’t be as many distractions and etc. etc. etc. but that has certainly not been the case for me anyway. I found the exact opposite.

There’s been more distractions, instead of less with all the important news and so on That has been part of this Covid 19 situation, It’s just been a total mind draining experience, both mentally and physically. And I don’t say that to insinuate that myself and others are not interested in what’s going on. It’s just that is so much coming at us all so fast that our minds and our bodies just can’t keep up.

I don’t have the energy to do both, listen to what’s going on about the situation and create content at the same time. One of my biggest difficulties is trying to remain calm and positive. You know, it’s just a matter of I can’t keep up, and by the end of the day I’m so mentally burned out that I have to say to myself, I’ll try and do better tomorrow.

So one of the things I wanted to say to everyone else out there who’s the creator and as well for those who are not necessarily, but are busy with all the other things that are part of life at this time. Be kind to yourself, don’t be too hard on yourself, give yourself and everyone else around you and those close to you. You care about. Give them a break. Take time to do the small things that will energize yourself and keep you going for the next day and the day after that, because when I think about everything’s going on one day at a time is the only way that I can handle all of this major stuff, and there’s no point being hard on our self and trying to think a week, a month ahead because it just going to overwhelm us all.

So once again be kind to yourself. Do something nice for you, and your families and your friends as often as you can, and we will all get through it and be better for it. When we are through it. Thank you very much for listening.

I’d love to hear your comments and questions, email me at info@computerswithease.com. If you’d like to be notified when I release a new podcast episode sign up for my email list. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Posted in Podcasts | Leave a comment