CS
ShowCast
Guide

Welcome to Clerkenwell Showrooms ShowCast Guide!

The idea behind setting up this guide was twofold:
- to enable every showroom to participate
- to provide structure and guides for consideration

Guide Content Courtesy - Jono Bacon

ShowCast
Guide

CS SHOWCAST GUIDE

Included Inside

● What goes into a great podcast

● Designing your show and content

● Recommended show structure and time breakdown

● Recording your show (either in person or remotely)

● Recommended equipment

● Production guidelines

● Hosting and publication

Unpicking a Great Podcast

Podcasts are a powerful tool for building an audience around a topic, product, or service.

Designing Your Podcast

The first step is to design the key ingredients of your podcast. Consider the following:

● Topic / Focus - choose the primary topic and focus of the podcast. People generally enjoy more focused shows as opposed to general magazine shows.

● Audience - who are your target audience? This is an important consideration for where you will promote the show.

● Release Cadence - how often will you release the show? It can be tempting to release regularly but I always recommend you start less regularly, see how the show runs and then increase regularity if you can sustain it. My recommendation is to release every two weeks .

● Release day - as a general rule, avoid publishing your show on Mondays and Fridays.

Whatever your release cadence, make sure you release on the same day - people then know when to expect it.

● Number of Presenters - podcasts work best with a mix of personalities. Podcasts with a single presenter are usually dull. As such, have at least 2 presenters. I recommend 3 - 4 regular presenters .

● Presenter Personalities - try to find presenters who (a) have a great chemistry, and (b) who will disagree and challenge each other. Disagreements and tension makes for great listening, but there has to be chemistry.

● Length - how long should each show be? Increasingly, people appreciate concise media, so your show should be no longer than an hour. I recommend 20 - 45 minutes .

Consider these questions and fine-tune the specifics. This design can change over time, but people really appreciate consistency and routine, so it is best to make these decisions now and stick to them.

Show Format

The next step is to structure the format of the show. This is somewhat dependent on what kind of content you have in your show. Here are a few potential recipes, all for a 45 minute show:

Show Recipe: Mixed Content

00 - 05 mins Introduction - welcome people to the show and introduce the content.

05 - 15 mins News - cycle through a number of news stories and provide commentary.

15 - 30 mins Interview - interview a guest.

30 - 40 mins Topic Discussion - the presenters discuss a topic and share their thoughts.

40 - 45 mins Outro - wrap up the show, provide details of how people can engage etc.

Show Recipe: Topic Heavy

00 - 05 mins Introduction - welcome people to the show and introduce the content.

05 - 25 mins Topic 1 - discuss the first topic in the show and share opinions.

25 - 40 mins Topic 2 - discuss the second topic in the show and share opinions.

40 - 45 mins Outro - wrap up the show, provide details of how people can engage etc.

Show Recipe: Interview Heavy

00 - 05 mins Introduction - welcome people to the show and introduce the content.

05 - 40 mins Interview - an in-depth interview with a guest.

40 - 45 mins Outro - wrap up the show, provide details of how people can engage etc.

Equipment

You will need some key equipment for the show:

● Condenser Microphone - a high-quality mic is critical. I recommend the Blue Yeti which is a high quality USB mic that can also be used for performing guest interviews too.

● Pop Shield - put this over your mic to reduce pops when you speak into it. These are cheap to purchase.

● Headphones - ensure you have a pair of headphones to use when recording. Preferably use over-ear headphones to reduce the sound from your headphones being picked up in the mic.

For editing your show, you will need:

● Digital Audio Workstation - audio software that can combine the recorded audio, provide corrective processing, apply audio optimization and render the podcast into a single file.

● Monitors - if you want a high-quality production, you should get some studio monitor speakers such as the Yamaha HS7 .

Recording and Production

There are various methods of recording a podcast, but here are some approaches that I have found to work well.

Recording In Person

When your presenters and any guests are in person, use this method of recording:

● Ensure you have each presenter using their own mic and that it is using a cardioid pattern to ensure it primarily picks up audio from the front of the mic (this reduces bleed).

Ensure each person can see each other but are spaced apart a little to avoid.

● Each presenter should have their audio recorded separately on their own audio track.

This will mean you need to have a multi-input audio interface that each mic goes into.

● Record the intro and outro last (just in case you need to make any changes) so start with the first content segment. Pick someone to introduce each segment.

● Enable all the individual tracks and start recording. Wait a few seconds before you start speaking and then record the segment. Keep your eye on the time to ensure you sit within the target timeframe. Stop recording a few seconds after you wrap the track.

● Repeat the process for the remaining segments. Record the intro and outro last.

● Now switch to the editing phase (see below).

Recording Remotely

If you are recording with presenters and/or guests remotely, you can use services such as Zencastr in which you record to the cloud. This works surprisingly well.

Alternatively, you can record manually with this this approach:

● Ask all presenters and guests to connect via a Google Hangout (or other video conferencing tool). You will not record the audio from this session.

● For your presenters, ask them to record the audio from their microphone on their computer.

● For each segment, you will ask everyone to start recording and you will count to 10 slowly and consistently. Ask your fellow presenters (and guests where appropriate) to count with you to 10. This will create spikes in the recorded waveforms that you can use later to line up the audio (it compensates for latency on video conferencing software).

● Record each segment and when you are finished, ask all presenters to export their audio into MP3 format and put it in a shared folder such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

● Now you can move to the editing phase.

Editing

Editing audio is a complex operation to do well. Most people who do podcasts in a commercial setting tend to outsource this work.

If you want to edit it, here are some guidelines for the core editing piece:

● First, create a track for each presenter and a “guest” audio track if required. Import all audio onto those tracks.

● If you recorded remotely, line up all of the waveforms where everyone counts to 10. This will ensure that the audio is in sync (it compensates for latency on video conferencing software).

● Trim any space at the beginning or the end of each segment where people are not talking, or any content that shouldn’t be included in the final mix. Now you will have each segment of your show lined up.

From an editing perspective, I recommend you structure your show like this:

In a nutshell:

● The discussion snippet is a 10 segment sample of the discussion. I generally like to pick a really notable or funny line and include it. This “sells” the listener on listening to the show (as they get a short teaser of content.)

● The intro music plays and should be less than 30 seconds long. It fades down and the intro segment plays over it and then fades out.

● When the intro finishes there is a short “sting” which is a 15 - 20 second chunk of music that plays in-between segments. As the sting fades out the next segment can be heard.

● This sting → segment → sting → segment continues until the outro when the outro music fades in. The outro music plays under the last bits of discussion in the outro before it fades up to full volume for 10 seconds and then fades out.

Audio Production

When you have the core show edited, it is recommended you do some audio optimization to make it sound good.

In the interests of keeping this guide concise I won’t go into detail here, but here are some broad recommendations of what you should do on each audio track:

● Pan - gently pan the different speakers a little in the stereo field. Don’t pan too much otherwise people won’t hear certain speakers or if playing back on a mono system.

● Gate - make sure you add a noise gate to cut out any background noise on each track (such as traffic in the background when a person is not speaking).

● EQ - this is where you adjust the frequencies of the different audio sources to make them all sound cohesive. For example, if one person has a higher voice, you can reduce those frequencies a little and bring up the higher frequencies for others. It helps everything to sit together a little better in the mix.

● Compress - not to be confused with file compression, audio compression makes the louder parts software and the softer parts louder. This is what gives the show a professional sheen. Don’t over-compress though otherwise it will sound flat.

When you have finished editing the show, it is recommended that you then master it. Mastering helps the audio to “glue” together into a finished form and ensure it sounds good on all speakers.

To do this:

● Export - export the overall project into a single high-quality WAV file.

● Import - now import the WAV file into a new project where you will perform the

mastering.

● EQ - perform a little EQ to make the overall brightness come through.

● Compress - compress the track. This will help “glue” the different pieces together to make it sound like a cohesive whole.

I hope this guide was helpful! Happy podcasting!