346-What's In Your Podcasting Toolbox?

0:04 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2025, and today it's the Podcast Toolbox Roundtable. We're swapping go to tools, real struggles and smart solutions for everything from short form video to full on production workflow. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse or Chatter, hit the share button. Bottom of the screen on Clubhouse, top of the screen on Chatter. And if you're listening via podcast, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give me about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:20 Good morning again, podcasting, Morning Chat. Thank you for being here. I am your host, Mark Ronik, and on stage with me we have producer Ashley Feller, Dr. Faye, Sid Meadows. And over on the Chatter stage, we have Nick Nall back and I'm waiting on Jonathan Howard. Oh, and Matthew Bliss has joined us as well. Good to have Matt back after a little bit of a summer break. I'm checking here to make sure I am properly making Nick a moderator on Chatter, and I don't think it's working, but that's OK. We'll figure it out. Oh, we're good. OK, cool. Yeah, I now I see the little moderator badge.

2:02 And also we've got Leah here from the Chatter family, who she's the one if you recall last week I had mentioned Leah has helped me get a little more comfortable here on Chatter. So it's good to be back on both platforms. Of course, we are also on YouTube live. I see DRS peeking over there. You are more than welcome to join us, however, and I want to. First, before we dig into several things this morning, I want to say hello to Sid Meadows, who is back from his European vacation. Sid, good morning. Please share what your biggest highlight from your trip. Good morning.

2:45 Good morning, everybody. Great to be back with you. So it's like I've been gone a really long time, which I guess I kind of have been, but great feedback. We had an amazing trip, got to see lots of the, let's see, Spain, France and Italy. So a lot of fun. We had to spend a lot of time on the boat hanging out. I was, what's my biggest, like highlight? I'm going to have to say the food. The food. Was I was just going to ask you because I'm a foodie. So my question to you would have been, what is the very best thing, very best meal that you had? And what is something that maybe your taste buds didn't get along with? The second night we were in Barcelona, we stayed at a kind of fancy hotel and in the hotel was a restaurant called Peco Paso Paso Pico Vera. I think it's what it's called.

3:34 I got a picture of it and it's a 2 Michelin star restaurant. If you don't think about restaurants, having a mission star is really great. Having two of them is like pretty spectacular. So we went to this dinner there. It is a tasting menu, chef tasting menu. And it was 16 courses and it was small plates, which is what you'd expect from a tasting menu, right? And it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten of that particular dinner. The best thing that I had was the tuna tartare that was covered in an amazing caviar. The worst thing I had in that dinner was anchovy in puff pastry that this really wasn't for me, but it was an amazing dinner, was paired with wine. So I mean, it was pretty spectacular. I will say our last night dinner that we had in Barcelona was traditional paella dinner at a local restaurant on the beach. That was seafood paella with seafood basically caught that day.

4:36 So that was pretty spectacular. But the food in general, for the most part of where we went was just spectacular. Wow, I'm hungry and jealous. Like just because I was just in that neck of the woods not too long ago and I'm now reminiscing and missing my time there. And how is Spain? Because that was where I spent most of my, all of my time was in Madrid, in Portugal. And I don't think you were in. Were you in either of those places or just Barcelona? So we were in two ports in Spain. We were in Barcelona, which is where we boarded the boat and then my Orca, which is the first stop that we made, which is really great. Then we did France and then Italy. And so most of the stops were actually in Italy. I think it was one stop in two stops in Spain, one stop in France and then the restaurant Italy. And I mean, the history, the architecture, the stories, the tour of Rome, I will tell you, is a really, really special moment to stand in Saint Peter's Square. Even if you're not Catholic, we're not Catholic, but even if you're not Catholic, you have to understand and respect and appreciate just the fact that you're in the Vatican City and being there, seeing the Sistine Chapel and observing the history of that.

5:50 I mean, it's just so spectacular and very moving to be able to experience all that. It was definitely a trip of a lifetime for us. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that Sid. I'm glad you guys really enjoyed yourselves and well deserved. Hopefully you're feeling well rested. Excited to jump back into real life? Well, I've been up since 1:30 this morning. My time is 8:30 and Barcelona starting. It's going to be a long day. There's definitely a nap in my future today. I would say so thank you for being here this morning. You certainly didn't have to be here considering you've been up as late as you have and probably very well, not yet maybe, but you will be very jet lagged at some point today.

6:35 Definitely get that nap. And Matt Bliss, welcome back, my friend. How are you? I've been a bit busy recently because of my podcasting business stuff. As all the content creators know, you take a month off, you've done that month of work before you left. So that on top of being in Australia and meeting a bunch of people that I haven't seen for two years and renegotiating the mortgage and checking on our property and doing bank stuff and changing addresses, I didn't really have a restful holiday in Australia. But I'm back at it now. I feel sorry for Sid. I didn't have the terrible jet lag he did, but I did have to fly for over 22 hours to get to Australia and then 22 hours back again. So maybe that's just like the reset button that means you don't get as much jet lag.

7:25 So that's true. Glad to be back here. Just watching a big edit edit export now and figured hey, it's 12:00, might as well check in with you guys and see what's going on. Very cool. I'm glad you did. So great to have you back for many reasons including that. So let's dig into all of the conversation today. Today was inspired by a mailbag question that really opens up the whole conversation around your podcasting toolbox. And it's been a minute since we've gone through these. I got a way to navigate through this so that's not just a hodgepodge. So the first way I want to do this is I'm going to go to an icebreaker question. And this one is very simple.

8:07 What's your biggest tool regret? In other words, what's a tool that you got maybe that you were really excited about or at least optimistic about that it was going to either save you time, make things more efficient, whatever that reason is. What's your biggest regret and why? And I'm going to jump right to Dr. with this one. Dr. Would you take it away first since you're always buying tools as? An app sumo aficionado. I have bought a lot of them and I've actually returned a lot of them also and I keep all my purchases and returns on a Trello boards I can keep track of.

8:48 Did I buy that? I'm not sure if I Oh yeah, I bought that. OK, so I'm looking down the list of things that I have returned. And the most recent one was a program having to do with newsletter mail. e-mail marketing is what I meant to say. e-mail marketing was called in charge and it was my fault that I just didn't have the time to get into it. I just didn't have the bandwidth to get into it. But it had a lot of bells and whistles and I could just see in my head, Oh my God, I'm going to have to really dedicate a lot of time to this. So this is like an. E-mail marketing thing.

9:29 Yeah, I did return that one also. There's another one out there called One Take. I wound up returning it, but this is kind of interesting. One Take will take the Umm's and AAS out of your videos and without the jump cuts. So basically it looks like if someone is saying it just looks like they've opened up their mouth for a breath or something, it looks very, very natural. And it's called 1 Take. And I think the only reason why I returned it is because I wasn't really doing a lot of video at that time and there was something else I want to buy and I was within that refund window that I could get the the money back. Yeah, I think that's the only reason why I returned that one. There's been a lot of ones that I have purchased that I thought would do the job for editing, but I tell you the only one that I really gravitate towards is the Resound Resound dot FM. That's the one that I like and I keep looking for ones that are better.

10:36 The thing with Appsumo is that you have this 60 day period that you can try it out and they're really, really, really good about returning the money. You can either have them return the money to your account or you can do like a, you know, Appsumo Bucks and just take it as a credit. So and right now I have about $300 that is just waiting for me to spend. So I think those are the ones that lately that I've been looking at. Very cool. Thank you. Dr. And I do like and appreciate how you are keeping yourself somewhat disciplined by keeping that spreadsheet and being able to say, OK, yeah, I bought that one and it's expiring at such and such a date. So you know when to actually cancel if need be. A lot of us can get caught in that trap, subscribe to a lot of things, and then forget about it. I'm going to interrupt you for a second. You know which one that I bought, returned, bought again because I thought, well, you know, maybe they've evolved, returned it again.

11:37 And I think I bought it for a third time and returned it third time. And that was Cap Show. But since I have Caps Magic which I use a lot, Cap Show is just not making it for me. And I'll be curious to hear if anybody else uses Cap show as well. I'm really fingers crossed. I'm hoping Jonathan comes because I know Jonathan does know a thing or two about a lot of these short form editors, video editors, and I've been really impressed with the the content he's been putting out on social media. And I know Dr. you probably have to go make some eggs right now. Yep, I just she just sent me a message behind the. Scenes.

12:18 Yeah, go ahead and do that. Sid, did you want to jump in? Yeah, I think Ashley had her hand up first, so go to her and then come to me. OK. Go ahead, Ashley. Good morning. Thanks. Good morning, Sid. So one of my regrets is a physical tool and that is the Osmo Pocket too. It's a shame because I really love it but I've had it less than a year and I have noticed that unless I have it on a monopod or a tripod or something that connects to the bottom mount where you there's like a a thread at the bottom where you can attach it to something. Unless I have it on there it vibrates uncontrollably and you can hear and see the vibration on the video.

13:00 So every time I use it now I have to put the camera on something, otherwise if I just hold it, it'll vibrate like a 90s cell phone. I don't have any experiment experience with that, so I can't speak to it at all, but thank you, Ashley, Appreciate you bringing that and hopefully people are getting some good insights here as far as what tools maybe have caused other podcasters some trouble. Maybe it's something you want to avoid or at least be cautious of. Now let's check in with Sid and see what he wants to add. Sid, did you want to answer the icebreaker question? A tool you've purchased that were somehow downloaded and now don't enjoy.

13:43 So yeah, I do. And but I'm going to say I enjoy it. And the reason I'm used saying it is this is really about I don't know how to use it, which is my Rd. caster pro. I enjoy it, but I don't use it anywhere near to the full capacity that it's capable of. So if I learned at the time and effort to learn how to really use it, I'm sure it would be a tool that I would not want to get rid of. But I don't use it very well. So do you use it at all Sid? Yes, I use it. When I record, my microphone is connected to it, so I don't use it for anything other than that. Totally makes sense.

14:24 And I'm going to come to you, Matt, in just a second. And I think that this is an issue or maybe not an issue, but it's a common thing. I think that a lot of podcasters, especially ones that get started early on, they see the road caster pro, maybe they hear some other podcasters talking a lot about it and how great it is. And they feel like, yeah, this is a tool I just I have to have if I'm a podcaster. But there are so many other options that maybe are less less loaded with buttons and things and gadgets and more simple, in other words, and also more affordable too. Because let's be real, these Rd. caster pros are not the cheapest things in the world.

15:06 You could be spending anywhere from 500 to seven, $800.00 for these things. So not cheap, but yeah, so I get it. And I'm sure there are probably other people listening right now, so that can relate to that. Let's check in with Matt. Matt, did you want to chime in on the Roadcaster Pro or did you want to share another tool? I can add my own tools, I've got a dishonorable mention and the actual tool, but to talk about the roadcaster, their marketing is just spectacular in that sense. Like they've Rd. has had the Roadcaster, they have the Procaster which is their XLR microphone and the Podcaster which was their initial USB based microphone and they have the pod mic. I think their marketing does a lot of convincing for people to purchase their products for podcasting specifically. I feel that pain with the road caster. I need to pick up one of those one day. But the dishonorable mention that I have is for the Scarlet 2I2, which I purchased before I left Australia. That's the two channel audio interface that Focusrite offer, very basic one.

16:14 When I left Australia, though, I was prepared to do all of my podcasting work on a laptop. And the laptop that I bought with Windows 11 and a number of performance management tools embedded in the laptop meant that the Focusrites after about 30 minutes wouldn't receive or monitor audio signals properly anymore. And it got to the point eventually where I just had to repurchase the old audio interface I used in Australia to replace it. And that fixed the problem straight away. And if you've ever seen anyone complain about Focusrite hardware, that's going to be like an example of the kind of things that people complain about. But the actual thing I I purchased and have never used was back in my days of trying to find the perfect set of plugins to improve audio for other people and for myself.

17:06 And the plug in that I tried is called Gull Foss from Sound Theory. Now what it purports to do is kind of like what Da Vinci Resolve, not Da Vinci Resolve DX, Revive Pro, and Adobe Enhance do. It's kind of an AI algorithmic sort of plug in that balances signals and equalizes audio content to make it ideal for what your brain will pick up or what will be perceived ideally, which already sounds complicated. And that's partly why I regret it. I also regret it because it's largely a tool built for either movie making, filmmaking and balancing dialogue audio with backdrop audio and music and that kind of thing, or it's used for music. It's not really great for podcasting dialogue and now we have so many tools available that it's just not worth having now.

18:06 It was only €177. I think at the time I might have had 10 or 20% off, but that is a plug in that's just sitting in my rack. I never use it and I don't think I'll ever find a way to use it again unless any musicians in the audience are on stage Have any advice for me? So yeah, big regrets. Nick, any tools that you could share with us that maybe are we're problematic and then we'll dig into the tools we're actually using I've. Been thinking this whole time you guys are talking like any big stand out ones that I was absolutely despised and there's none that I've like returned but some that I've stopped using.

18:48 One of them was Zen caster. So when I first started podcasting, I went with Zen Caster and it's very similar to like Riverside and Swod cast remote recording platform. And as soon as they had introduced video it just all went to crap. It just sucked so bad. And that is actually what got me looking at other tools and landing on Riverside. And I had such a great experience with Riverside right out of the gate. You know, others were complaining that they had issues and I hadn't looked back since. And you couldn't beat the price compared to like. I was really interested in squad cast here and other people other professional podcasters were using and Riverside had such a good price point and the quality was insane. So I guess Zen caster I guess would probably be the one that sticks out to me the most.

19:42 Thank you, Nick. Appreciate that is so I'm gonna share now, if you don't mind, let's jump into the mailbag because that's what was inspiring this conversation on tools. This comes from Joe and Joe is from Atlanta and says this. OK, so here's where I am. I use Lipson to host squad cast to record interviews. I'm pretty happy with both. I used to use Riverside, was also happy with them, but I used a script to edit audio on solo episodes so I get squad cast for free. After I run an audio episode through the script, I touch it up in Audacity then run it through Offonic.

20:27 And for those who may not be familiar, Offonic is an audio enhancement tool. And he goes on to say I'm happy enough with my audio only setup. He says for video, the script is very difficult to use for video editing. I think Alex can agree. And I don't want to deal with the learning curve of it right now. Right now I'm running through iMovie to Minvo. So I think now he's jumping from long form to short form here with this neck. That next sentence, he does iMovie. I think probably. And actually this is how I often was doing it. Not as much lately, but occasionally I still do.

21:09 I'll bring in the original recorded video into iMovie just to make basic cuts, basic edits that are just a maybe a little bit easier when using any kind of desktop tool. So I'll put it in iMovie, do those cuts, then I'll grab it and put it into something like or I will use Minvo to add extra stuff to it at more B, roll more moves on the video, etcetera, he said. I've had bad results with Minvo but apparently they've cleaned up their act some but looks like they'll go out of business soon and I'll stop right there and say there is no actual proof of that yet, but that was a rumor that Joe had heard so we'll just leave it there because I really don't know if that's true or not.

21:57 Joe goes on to say with that said, I need something that's easy with with taking my long form podcast video and chopping it up into shorts and five to seven minute videos. He says. I see Opah's clip is $15.00 for pro level, which isn't bad, but I hate having to go piece meal here and there and everywhere. I guess I'm trying to see what else everyone uses and why to make an informed decision. I know there's cast Magic podcast so etcetera and not sure what to sign up for honestly. I can leave Squad cast in descript if it makes sense. I just don't. I just need to land with a set up that's a low learning curve and the tech and meets my needs. Does all that make sense?

22:41 Yes, it makes sense. So let's talk about long form, short form, and I think maybe let's start with short form tools. And actually, Nick, since you're here and I know that you usually have to leave a little bit early each morning, let's start with you. Now, you and I used to use Minvo a lot. I like I said, I still do. I know you're not using Minvo as much lately, so share a little bit about maybe why you're not using Minvo as much lately and what would you use in place of that? Yeah, I haven't used Minvo a lot lately and mainly it's because I don't, I haven't had content to run through it because I haven't been making content. So that's a pretty easy one. I would probably still go back into Minvo if I had the content to run through it.

23:28 That said, outside of Minvo and giving Joe's experience with Riverside, I don't know how long ago he was using Riverside, but the combination of you have experience with Riverside and you're not totally digging the script right now, I would probably revisit Riverside. Even if you didn't record in Riverside, which I would, if you can, you now have the ability to upload episodes into Riverside specifically. So you could upload your video that's already recorded, already done, edited in iMovie, whatever, and then run the magic clips, do your editing for short form, etcetera.

24:08 But Riverside has come a long way. So if it's been a while since you've used Joe, I would think about just trying it out again. I I think their editor has gotten a lot more robust and you'll probably like it better than the script if you if you use an iMovie and you're not like in the script right now. Yeah, I'm with you, Nick. I think that Riverside is a little underrated when it comes to short form clips because I think so many people are more used to boasting about how great it is for recording and even some talking about the long form editing. People enjoying that, especially with the built in AII, know a lot of novice podcasters who don't have a lot of editing experience like to use it's AI editing tool to really do all the editing for them, whether it's long form and short form, but really the short form. I'm now using it, so I still will use Minvo on occasion, and I think that's just because I'm more used to using it for this kind of thing.

25:05 So what I'll do is, like I said earlier, just like Joe, I'll use iMovie to do some basic stuff I used to and then I'll move over to Minvo from there. Now I'm actually doing every that initial stuff that I used to do it with iMovie, I'll do in Riverside now because I find it's editing tool really precise. It's feels like I'm using a desktop app editing app specifically. I really like it. And and you know, it does have a lot of the same things as an Opus as as Minvo, where you can add B roll. You can upload your own pictures, videos, etcetera. You can use from their own catalog. They have a whole license free catalog that you can choose from.

25:51 So yeah, I'm with you, Nick. I think that Riverside is great, especially for the podcaster who's looking to streamline their workflow process because it really has just about everything you need all in one place. Sid, I saw you had your hand up. Go for it. So you were reading his question mark. My head is swimming with all the different tools that he's having to use. I don't do any of this right? So I don't have anything to add to what tool he should use to make this better or easier. But man, this screams to me that there should be a tool available that's an all in You said different tools just to get one episode ready.

26:45 And that's where I think Riverside plays a great role. I think that it will it, it can handle most of that, especially with anything regarding production, because as we've said, you can record there or you can record somewhere else and upload to it and then you can do all the editing you want from there. If it's a long form video that you're uploading, it'll even do just like Opus, just like Minvo, it'll find those highlights from that long form video and isolate them, edit them for you and let you go in and either take it as is or go in and tweak it a little to your liking and and then exporting it and posting it everywhere. I think that is really one of the best all in one solutions.

27:30 Ashley, how about you? What are you using for short form clips? I'm actually using Descript and just my brain. Like whenever I'm editing a podcast and I see an interesting bit or a couple interesting bits I can put together, I'll highlight them in specific colors and I'll have a good color like, OK, this is this kind of a clip. This is another kind of clip. And then I'll just go through and there's a feature on the script that says find all highlights and you can export all of those highlights to separate projects and go in and fine tune them and basically do whatever you want with them. Thank you, Ashley. And Billy caught it, as I did, Billy says in the chat. I use my brain, Ashley.

28:16 I love that. Yes, I think that's that's an important thing to highlight too. Yeah, sure. We want to find all the things that helps us streamline things, make it easy, help us think a little less because we would rather our brain power goes somewhere else. But there is something to be said about identifying those clips yourself because there are plenty of times, at least for me on this very show, that whether it's Minbo, whether it's Riverside, it spits out that those clips. But that's not really those really to me aren't the highlights. Like it didn't really nail anything that I made either a mental or physical note. Like that's the that's something that we need to isolate and share across social media.

28:57 So, yeah, being able to engage with your own content and make those notes on the fly and then go back and revisit it. I think there is definitely something to be said about that. I appreciate that Ashley Dr. How about you? How are what are you using as far as short form video tools? Short form. I get so much shade for this. Oh that's right, a little embarrassed even to say, but I like using Canva for short form. I don't think you're alone, even if you get shaved. Oh no. Who was that? I missed it. Is that Nick? I'm so used to it and I like doing the crossfades on it and it's just really easy and it's aesthetically pleasing to look at.

29:48 It's not dark, it's light. I have a problem with the black screens that. You you prefer? Yeah. You don't like to do night mode? I don't like to do night mode, not when I'm working. Has it made any improvements? So you know what, I think a lot of us that are might have grunted like Nick, we are feeling like, you know, oh, there's it's just not flexible It it's limited in what it can do. Do you feel like it's improved over time? Because I know you've been using it for a little while. I've been using it for a little while and they make updates all the time. For instance, give me a for instance that you couldn't do before. Well, I think it's just, I think for the biggest thing for me was the precision editing, right? So like, if I really wanted to get to, you know, the 10th of a second and cut it right there, I always found that to be really challenging.

30:41 Right. Well, that's where your arrow keys come in, because if you can arrow to the right, to the left, it's this tiny, tiny little increment little ways, and it does a pretty good job. My biggest gripe with it, especially like if you're going to pull a full episode into it, was that it was so slow. But then even beyond that, if I were to try to export even just a a 32nd video, I feel like you would export for like 3045 minutes before I'd ask. Oh my gosh. No, no, no, no, no. It takes about for like 1/2 hour video. It could take probably about four minutes for 1/2 hour video.

31:22 Wow, OK, that's not too bad. They've made some significant improvements. They certainly have in so many other areas and I haven't played a lot with the video sides for for a while now, so I'll take your word for it. Dr. Maybe I'll play with it just to get the experience and see what I think and then report back. Yay. Yeah, how about for captions? Does it spit out? Captions. You know what the captions are a sorry thing on on Canva. So I use a platform called Wave dot video. Yep, wave dot video. So I do all my captions there. So basically you do all the editing in Canva, you get it all together, you export it and then you drop it into wave dot video and have it add the captions on the screen.

32:12 I do. OK. All right. Cool. Has anybody, has anybody heard, not heard the tool that they're using that's on stage right now as far as short form editing goes? Is there a tool that you're using that we haven't discussed yet? I've found for almost anything that I do for clients or for myself that Davinci Resolve Studio offers the most and it's incredibly function rich. It's requires a bit of fiddling to get used to using Davinci Resolve as a video editor, but it offers almost everything as long as you've got the trained brain to use it in the way that you want.

32:53 And part of this comes with a caveat in the sense that I've looked at all these tools and how they work and thought more intentionally about how I want to use the AI that those tools would use. So generally in in concert with Davinci Resolve Studio, I will take the transcript and use either ChatGPT or some similar LLM to process and ask it for what any of these shorts or whatever tools would be prompting it to do to select for you. And that actually makes it easier for you to for me to select the clips that I want and then edit them in Da Vinci Resolve and add captions and do all those things.

33:37 So Ashley's answer of my brain I think is a very underrated tool in this space. Da Vinci Resolve Studio, while expensive, is great for it I think. OK, there you go. A vote for Da Vinci as well. OK. And then yeah, so I'm here. What I feel like we've come to is if where Joe the mailbag question. Joe was looking for something to really streamline his process, trying not to use multiple tools. I really think that Riverside sounds like it would be for him. And I will say again, I still enjoy using Minvo. I like the tool. It has made some big improvements.

34:19 So if you're somebody like Joe who used to use it and then got frustrated with it, say three to six months ago, it's come a long way since then. It's moves a lot faster. The exports, generally speaking, move a lot faster. One of Nick knows one of my big complaints was how long those exports used to take, and on occasion it still does. But what I appreciate about Minvo now is normal export time is very quick, but when it seems like it's slowing down, it actually tells you why. It'll tell you that you know, there's the, there's a busy queue and you're in line for the export because they must have like a lot of users using it all at once in that particular moment.

35:03 So it slows things down temporarily, but ultimately it it does a good job. It exports pretty quickly in most cases. And I like how many different features it offers by just using a click of the button. You don't have to learn a lot of the software to say do a slow move, a slow close up in as you're talking to the camera, right? Or to just do a quick pop of your camera just to keep people's attention. And the, you'll see my videos, go look and you'll see what I mean by that pop 'cause I like to use those sometimes to emphasize a point or what have you. But it's all very easy. It's just basically flipping a switch, pressing a button. So either that or Riverside I are my personal favorites. Let's also talk about some recording tools. OK.

35:54 And Riverside, since we've already talked about it, I'll just we'll briefly say again, being an all in one tool, it makes a lot of sense if that's what you're looking for. Use that to record video. I use it for my short form video recording too. You know, these days when you're trying to just record right to your device, say a camera, and I'm not talking about your phone, but let's say an actual video camera. Most of the time it doesn't have a built in microphone, not the not the real heavy duty high quality cameras. They don't have a microphone or they don't have a built in SD card, although they should, most of them should. But the point is, is that there are multiple things you have to start considering when you're using the the fancy cameras. And I have a fancy camera.

36:42 I'm using one right now to record to and stream to YouTube. I have the camera, but that my camera too doesn't have audio. So I have to figure out a way to make it all work. So I plug it right into my Roadcaster Pro. Everything is plugged in together and I use Riverside to capture audio and video seamlessly. But what else are you guys using? What is everyone using to record their podcast? And some of us are audio only, so you can share a little bit about what you're using. If that's you, go ahead, Ashley. I use. Either the Zoom P4 or the Zoom H4 E And with either of those you can use them as like for example, if you are using your iPhone as your camera, you can use a data cable and connect that to your interface as yeah, through the cable as an interface.

37:36 And then you have the same audio that's on your recorder automatically built into the videos. I like that. And just for those who may not know, some newer podcasters, that's really more for audio recording, which is what I asked, you know, if you can tell us audio or video. So yeah, Ashley's sharing her solutions, using hardware to record the audio. Yeah, the Zoom P4, the Roadcaster Pro, the H 6, I think I heard you say, yeah, all of those great hardware tools for recording and making it pretty simple and straightforward. Anyone else want to share any type of recording tool you're using for your podcast recordings?

38:17 I just want to quickly shout out OBS as an open source platform that's pretty much for everything. I think it gives a lot more options in terms of local recording. So this unless you use some tools with it, it's not going to be great for remote recording with guests. But if it's just you, then video and audio recording to then put somewhere else for post production or even sometimes not post production. You can just one and done it through OBS as well. But the only caveat that comes with is that it is an open source tool that is 100% flexible and customizable. But that also means it's the thing that is very unapologetic about not telling you what you should do with it.

39:01 So if you do elect to use OBS, then you'll be looking at tutorials for a few hours, you'll be doing testing for a number of hours on top of that. But once you understand it, it's actually very effective to get a very clean signal from both audio and video. And more than likely you'll know how to manually live stream to platforms. You'll be able to do streams with guests at some point and then do a bunch of other stuff too. So it's it's a very flexible platform, but it requires a lot of effort on top, much more than Riverside or Squad Cast or any of those other platforms would. When you say a lot of effort, do you mean specifically to the learning curve or even once you've kind of mastered the learning curve, there's still a lot to to manage? Both OK, like here if we're talking about juggling, where learning what the ball looks like, what handling spherical objects is like, then you start to learn to juggle, and you keep adding balls and balls and balls. And then an OBS update comes out and all of a sudden the shape of the spheres change, so you have to refigure out how to juggle again.

40:09 And then someone else comes in and starts juggling with you, but they're dropping balls. So you have to figure out how to add more balls to figure out their dropped ones and whether you can even juggle with them in the first place. It can get incredibly complicated from both the learning curve and for troubleshooting when things change and adjust. And you know, that comes with any platform, but I think with OBS, it has a very high overhead of that. So if you're not a technical person, you know, be ready to get technical with it. And also, if you're not a Mac person, disregard this whole conversation, right? Isn't it Mac only? I think, I don't know, you could probably Jerry rig ECAMM to do some stuff with it. I have used OBS with Macs in the past and it can work. There's just even more technical stuff you have to have to worry about.

40:55 Like the routing of audio particularly I think was the biggest issue that I had to the point where I was in my old government job. And this is during the pandemic when I was trying to figure out how to put myself in two places at the same time to record and live stream meetings from Teams, Microsoft Teams to YouTube on two separate devices. And then discovered that one of those live streams didn't have audio because I hadn't set up the MacBook correctly. So Macbooks are definitely like extreme hard mode, whereas Windows is just normal hard mode. And I don't know about you Linux users, you might be able to do it. That could also be in this the extreme hard basket as well. Thank you.

41:36 Matt. And I see Janae came up here. I figured he might come up here after figuring in case he just joined us a few moments ago. I figured he had needed to figure out what were we discussing, and I knew once he did, he'd probably won't come up here on stage. So Janae, we're currently talking all different tools and we're in the segment right now of recording tools specifically. Did you want to comment on anything Matt's sharing or did you want to share a tool of your own that you use for recording? And what do you like about it? I love this question and I I heard Ecam, I heard Mac. I was like, hey, I need to chime in. I've been using ECAMM for the past 160 episodes on my podcast and with this new ECAMM they have integrated it with Zoom. So the guest still comes in on Zoom and on your side on ECAMM side, you can then create different scenes. The output content that I get, I get a full program video that I can publish to my YouTube channel. I get 2 separate audio files which is 4 separate audio files. I also get 2 separate video files, my own video and the guest video unedited straight out. It's called isolated or ISO so they have that mode in built in. It's really powerful and I've I've loved it. Between the workflow and the output, it just makes my life so much easier.

43:02 And with the recent additions of virtual microphone and all the things that they keep adding to it, it just makes it more and more powerful every day. Thanks. Thanks, Janae. And I might have missed it. What were you using? I know you said you've been using it now for like the past 160 episodes, I think is what you said. What were you using before that? I'm ashamed, but I still, I used Zoom for the past many, many years, especially when I started interviewing guests on the show. I've I've played with Riverside, Zen Caster, Squad Cast, all of those applications which were pretty clean, but Zoom just makes it so much easier for the guests, especially they're not experts like us as hosts, so they'll go wherever you bring them. And the Zoom integration with the Callen their apps is so clean that it just makes it so much simpler for the guests to arrive on that platform.

43:59 So that's what I used for the past hundreds of episodes. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Sinead. And look, I get it because I think a lot of podcasters will sometimes shame other podcasters. How can you use Zoom? But let's just be real for a moment and acknowledge the fact that Zoom is something that more guests are going to be comfortable using versus tools like Riverside or Squad Cast or what have you. So that that's one advantage to using it. And it's also something that has improved over time. Sure. In the, let's say, when we're talking over the past five years, that's really when Zoom came on and a lot of podcasters started using it as well. We had Zoom, people were comfortable with it, people were using it.

44:46 And then, you know, now there are some bigger and better tools out there. And the bottom line is, is that it's OK to use Zoom. The quality has improved greatly. There are settings as Dr. and I have talked about before there. And I say that because Dr. edits for some of my clients and there are some clients that just refuse to get off of Zoom and then sometimes are too intimidated and refuse to go in and just change a couple of little settings. You can get HD quality video from Zoom and yes, you, I think the when you start paying for it, you get more flexibility, more options as well. So you can get the HD quality, you can get separate tracks, right? That's a big one for a lot of us who are serious about our editing, we want to have multiple tracks. Yeah, go ahead, DRI.

45:37 Was just about to say sure is. That's my big thing about zoom. It's just such a simple, simple little check mark on a little box to get those separate tracks and it's what most editors would prefer is those separate tracks. Yeah, I'm always, I'm one of the few, or at least in the camp of being OK with single tracks. Yes, there is so much more flexibility when you have multiple tracks because you can really clean up a recording so much more and more effectively when you when you've got multiple tracks. But I I can make the single tracks work and I think sound pretty damn good.

46:20 But I think that's really, if you want the best opportunity for the best editing. Yeah, you want, you want multiple tracks. My biggest thing with the separate tracks is that in an organic conversation between two people, they will automatically talk on top of each other. That's just what it is. And what I like to do with separate tracks is I move those conversations to where it's at. Each one, each person is understood, each, even if it is like 1/4 of a tiny little bit of a second, that one will come in right after the other one. I will move those conversations so each one can be heard instead of one on top of each other.

47:00 Thank you, Dr. Appreciate that. And now I'm going to go to Matt. Go ahead, Matt. This is going to be the shocker. And I think if we were having the same conversation a year ago, it wouldn't be the same. But I think Zoom comes back into play again, not just because of their enhancements for video and audio recording. And I'm sorry, Mark, I'm also in separate track camp. I don't think I could deal with single tracks. But you know, you, you make work with what you get. You can't always choose what you what someone gives you. But the thing that I would compare very directly between Zoom and Riverside is that the right reliability of Zoom overwhelms Riverside to the greatest degree, more so now than ever, because Riverside is starting to focus more on their editing and AI integration and all these additional tools it feels like they're recording is starting to fall by the wayside a little bit.

47:57 There's more errors than I think I've seen for myself and for my clients that use it. And we're seeing a lot of reports from other people on forums, you know, grain of salt with those frustrated users about it. The thing is, no one really complaints about the connectivity and the support from Zoom. They might complain about the quality, but if you know guaranteed that someone is going to be able to use an application, they don't require additional support to make it happen that regardless of the quality, you're going to end up with a product at the end. I think that speaks to Zoom as a product for podcasters these days more so than any other aspect of it. Yeah, the reliability.

48:39 Yeah, that's it. And the the knowledge, like we don't call it teamzing or blue jeansing. We call it Zooming because the pandemic just created that as the Kleenex of video remote tools that people just understand. And cornering that market is one thing, but the reliability of the technology is huge. And I think Riverside is just reaching a little bit further out. And that's not to say that the script rooms wouldn't be. I know Squad cast has its own set of issues that I've had to unpack regularly. But yeah, I think that's the biggest thing, support and reliability. Thank you, Matt. I think that's really important to mention and I appreciate that you did. And look, Riverside, I used to have more issues with recording early on when I started.

49:29 Well, actually this is yeah, I've been recording via Riverside to capture video to use for, for social media for a long time now. And I used to have a lot of recording issues. Specifically it was the syncing. My audio wouldn't sync up to the video and it was quite frustrating. They were pretty good. Riverside about fixing those issues for me. I would have to just notify them and then after a few hours they'd say OK, it's fixed, but it it was an issue. And here's what I personally, I'm not saying this is the case, but my experience, what I've seen is I think some older computers or slower computers, less powerful computers have a harder time handling something like Riverside.

50:15 I upgraded earlier this year my computer to one of the newest Mac minis with that M4 chip in and some other upgrades within it. And it's really sings. I mean, this thing just flies and Riverside is not an issue whatsoever. I have really, I think never had sinking issues with it since I've been using this and really never had any issues since using this. So that is something to consider, you know, as I was promoting touting Riverside earlier, as you're all in one tool, I guess the caveat there is make sure that you have a computer that's powerful enough to handle it. If you've got a computer say over the past year, 2 years, maybe 3, but I would say maybe one to two years.

50:59 I think you're in fine shape overall, not knowing what guts you have inside your computer. But overall, I'd say you're probably in better shape if it's an older computer. I would encourage you to 1st test Riverside a few times using their free version until you can get a good feel for it. Jeff has joined us on the stage and then we're going to try to wrap things up. Jeff, good morning. Did you want to add about this the recording tools? I use zoom. I feel like it's always something I had to not admit out loud because well you guys argue what a podcast is or isn't. Somehow it never included zoom. But anyway I wanted to share how I do it. I use zoom but I always record on the road caster pro and I always use the audio from the road caster pro not the zoom.

51:46 Not because I think the zoom is is bad or anything, but I do grab the multi tracks from zoom and I consider that a backup because I have like this crazy paranoid that the interview. Will you weigh all that time, do the interview and then something happens, right? Zoom, your power goes out or something like that. So I always back it up on the road cast when I usually use that audio and then I use I've been lately using the video from the from zoom to put on YouTube. But but the other thing I wanted to mention is that thing that Dr. mentioned, at least it used to be this way, is if you record to the cloud on zoom versus to your computer, the multi track setting is a different check box.

52:31 OK. And that's I feel like that's kind of newer too. I don't feel like it used to record multi track to the cloud initially originally. I don't know, maybe I'm thinking incorrectly, but OK, that's good to know. So you have to look for the right setting if you are recording to the cloud and you want multi track. Yeah, I 'cause I made that mistake once. That's how, that's how you learn. So screw everything up and then you become an expert. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate that. I like hearing yeah, team Zoom. I like that and I will for Matthew, I'll read what he wrote in the chat here. He said Riverside is still the best of the podcast recording platforms and offers the most. But as Mark said, the amount of users that have poor computers and don't know why it isn't working is contributing to some of the failure rates reported in forums and stuff.

53:22 Yeah, and I think that's a big one too, Matt. I see a lot of people that will go in and complain, oh, Riverside sucks and it's not working for me. And then after a little bit of digging, you find out they have like an 8 year old computer that they're trying to run it on and that's really the issue. All right, so with that, we are back tomorrow at 7:00 AM Eastern Time and we are covering all the headlines around the world of podcasting. Thursday we might dig into a few more tools, a few more areas of podcasting and the tools that we're using, I'll let you know tomorrow if that's the direction we're going to go. So join us every Tuesday through Friday, 7:00 AM Eastern Time time over the summer. We'll be back to a Monday through Friday schedule come this fall.

54:05 Would love to have you there. And real quick, if you're listening this long, thank you. And if you're listening this long, that means we've probably added some kind of value to your morning. And if you don't mind, go to podcastawards.com and vote for the podcasting morning chat under 2 categories, the Adam Curry People's Choice Award and the Education Award. We only have about two days left, well, including today 3 to vote. So just when you're voting, make sure to go to those categories, choose the from the drop down menu. It's all alphabetically listed and we are under T for the podcasting morning chat. If you haven't voted yet, please, please, please give us your vote. Let's try to get a community win for the podcasting morning chat in one or both of those categories.

54:51 So until tomorrow, make it a great day everybody take care.