Let's A Some Q's! [S4E07]

Thank you to everyone who sent in questions via Twitter and Instagram! This week I answer literally all of them, and we cover everything from finding motivation to start a creative project to pieces of gear that ended up being surprisingly underrated (and of course a sprinkling of Rodecaster Pro tech support).

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S4E07 | Series Episode 70

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello and welcome. My name is Tom. This is the Enthusiasm Project Season Four, Episode Lucky Number Seven. And to celebrate Lucky Number Seven, uh, I wanted to dive in and do a QA episode because we haven't done one since season three. And you know how important these absolutely not arbitrary season delineations are. But really, a QA, I they're so much fun, and it's a great way to kind of make this thing, which is typically a one-way street, uh, more of a two-way street. So I this time reached out for questions on Twitter and Instagram. I use the Instagram story feature where you can do a response, post a little box, and people can post answers to it. I'd never done that before, and it worked so well because it's like the most organized way to collect questions. And I've done something a little different this time. So what I want to do, I've got basically what I think is like the perfect amount of questions, and I want to try for the most part to just go through all of them and spend as much or as little time on each one as necessary. And I've done something a little bit different than I have in the past, which is other than like just skimming through to see that they are there, they are in fact existing. I haven't read these or prepared any kind of responses or anything like that. And that's not purely because of laziness. It's actually because I just sort of think it might be more interesting to kind of just if we were actually having a conversation and you were like, hey, Tom, question, I would be like, hey, answer, instead of let me sit here and formulate a response. Not that that's bad, because in a way that might be more effective, but I don't know. Just wanted to try something a little bit different. So we will start with Twitter because that's what I'm looking at. So again, thank you to everybody who sent in questions. I really, really appreciate it. I uh I'm sure we'll do it one more, maybe one more QA episode this season. Maybe. Actually, honestly, I don't know if we have time because the last half of this season, I have some cool stuff to share that's gonna take multiple episodes. So we will see. And I'm quite excited about that. But we'll get into that later. Look at me, teasing stuff. Okay. Uh so here we go. First question, very appropriately, comes from Gary Cantrell at Gary Cantrell on Twitter. Have you ever had interest in wanting to do a video version of your podcast? Oh, this is like this question. I I'm not a video podcast guy, but I'm a video guy and I'm a podcast guy, and video podcasts are hugely popular. I am stuck in the the feeling of personally, uh what is the saying as uh Fluff from Riff's Beards and Gear says the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Meaning that for me, and I could be wrong. So if you're like, Tom, oh my god, we've been waiting for a video podcast. We gotta see your beautiful face while we hear this amazing stuff, you know. I I could be totally wrong, but the vast majority from what I have seen and understood, and also just my own personal listening habits, is people listen more than watch. And even when there is a video component, it's cool to see, and then it kind of gets set off to the side, and people just listen anyway. The video component would open it up to being posted on YouTube, which also is kind of another can of worms because that would probably mean starting another channel. I'm not a huge fan of wanting to start a second channel right now, so it just doesn't seem practical for me. I did try and do a recorded version where basically I just it was nothing fancy. I literally just recorded myself recording a podcast episode and put that up on my Patreon like last month just to kind of see. And as of right now, let me go into my YouTube dashboard and check out that episode. Um, because we'll have to do it by date here. The that was a weird sound my tongue just made. Um, let's see here. Where was it? I started putting on my Patreon when I was doing interviews with people. So, you know, I did one with like Raphael and Jared, and um, I have Heather from fellow filmmaker. When I started recording their interviews, just because we were doing you know Zoom calls or ecamm interviews, I had those and I figured, hey, this is cool. So I asked all them, and they said it's cool if I put them on Patreon. And so that's that's what I did. But for me, my podcast episode that I have up on Patreon has zero views. So I don't have a thriving Patreon, but you can see nobody has watched it, so you know. Uh it's just bringing video into audio is just such a beast, and then you still need the audio component because to distribute it on audio platforms, you you still need that infrastructure there. It's something that's interesting, you know. Some people have great success with it and some people don't, and I think it really does depend on the show specifically. It's maybe something I'll dabble in at some point. But for right now, um, the e the beauty of podcasting is how easy and accessible it is, and how the the equipment and the tools kind of get out of the way and let me just do the podcasts and bringing in video would kind of flip that dynamic. Not really something I'm looking to do right now, but you know, we'll see as time goes on. But this is a perfect transition into question number two from Patrick Boberg at Patbobom on Twitter. What are your thoughts on Patreon and or YouTube channel memberships? What would make you consider participating in them? I'm not sure, Patrick, if you're talking about participating as like a patron or a member or having them for people. So I do have a Patreon, patreon.com slash Tom Buck. And it's pretty basic, but it's uh I don't really promote it at the moment. And the reason for that is because I would actually like to try and grow either a Patreon or a YouTube channel membership, but I kind of don't know which one to do. And I don't, I know some people do both, and both feels a little messy to me. It wouldn't really be that difficult for me, but for the members, I I don't, I just feel like they might, even if I was posting the exact same extra content to both things, YouTube members and patron patrons, patrons, um, that they would they they might feel like they're missing out. I'm paying for this and they're getting something. Like I would just feel kind of bad about that. And I haven't quite figured it out. So Patreon, the creators get more of they get more of the the income, and YouTube takes like 30%, so you get 70% of everything that comes in. So YouTube takes significantly more. I think Patreon takes 85-90%, something like that. I could be wrong. But so Patreon is better for actually getting more of the money. And if if you are a supporter of someone, more of your money actually goes to the person. Whereas YouTube, they take more of the money. But for someone like me and what I do specifically, the thing about YouTube channel memberships is they're so easy to integrate. I actually have it all set up. I've gone through and I've added all the little things, I've made all the tiers, I've gotten it all approved by YouTube where all I need to do is press the button to make it public, but I just haven't done that yet because I'm not sure that I want to. But it's so easy to, you know, you can create a community post that's only for members. You can schedule videos right natively into YouTube that are only for members. Where it's not that different than Patreon, where you just like upload an unlisted video and then share that to Patreon. So it's not like it's like two extra small steps, but the native integration of YouTube memberships for a YouTube creator, especially for someone like me, is really nice. Uh, you know, Patreon, I guess, has more of an opportunity for um like blog style posts or even community discussion among members, which I like. I'm kind of leaning towards Patreon because I also just really like them as a company and where they come from and their whole philosophy. And that is a big thing that early on when I started monetizing my channel, that that philosophy of your art has value and it's okay to get paid for creating stuff was something that helped push me towards being okay with monetizing my stuff, which was a very important step. So I just have a soft spot for Patreon. But I would be very interested to know if anyone wants to share with me uh what you think. You know, would it should I go, you know, like should I actually promote my Patreon? Should I have YouTube channel memberships? Does it make sense to do both? And then for me personally, I'm a patron of quite a few people. And uh I the thing that makes me I never go for benefits. I really don't care personally, like if they have you get this and you get that. I in some cases I almost don't want anything because some people will be like, oh, if you're this level, you get a t-shirt or a sticker or whatever. I'm like, I kind of don't want like more stuff, I just want to support somebody that I get a lot of value from and someone that I appreciate, and someone that that I just am happy that they get to do the thing that they get to do, you know, maybe full or part-time because of viewers like you. And that's that's kind of what goes into me. So I don't look for perks for the most part. I do like having access. There are like I'm a patron of Luke Towen who does scale models, and his channel passed a million subscribers late last year, so it's a big channel, but on his Patreon, he's super active, he's super nice, and it's so easy to like actually engage. So if you want to be able to kind of like have dialogue, ask questions, depending on how people run theirs, it's a pretty good way to do it. So I do like that. And another thing, too, that I like, and this is gonna sound like a weird flex, but okay, is when I do live streams on my channel now, not that I do them, I'm really happy that like lots of people watch it and it's really cool, and the the chat goes crazy, and it like I could just do the live stream until I pass out, basically. Like there's there's not a lull, like it grows, and it's really, really fun, but it can be kind of difficult. Like I really need Heather there to moderate the comments. I can get distracted, I can fall behind on stuff, and it it can be a little over, it can be kind of tough to have that dialogue. Whereas one of the things that I would like to start implementing more in the membership things, whether it's YouTube or Patreon, are members only live streams because they will be smaller, which means it's a little easier to have like right now, it would be awkwardly small, where literally like nobody might show up. But if it can be kind of a smaller number where you can really kind of have more of a back and forth, I would love that in terms of community building. So I think it was a long, wandering answer, but those are my thoughts on those things, and I would love to hear thoughts and feedback uh from anyone who would like to share that with me. Here's Bob. Speaking of guests on the show, uh, just Bob's on Twitter. I remember when you first asked a question on this and I heard you answer it on the podcast, and I was so freaking happy. Thanks for that. Made my week. That's not a question, Bob. I'm just kidding, but that's amazing. And uh, if you haven't checked out Bob's channel, she has been absolutely killing it lately. When we talked and she was here, she was doing her podcast and was which could be called the Bobcast. Oh, I love that. And that was going well, but she was kind of like dabbling with the idea of making non-podcast YouTube videos, and then she just went full into it, and the channel's been going awesome. So, congratulations on that, and everybody should check it out. Gold Ranger at Shin Gil on Twitter. How do you manage a work-life balance when your partner is also a content creator? It can be tough. Uh, fortunately, Heather and I both have the same philosophy of we're not trying to make our lives fit any existing mold. And so we know that doing this stuff is, you know, it's her job. It's it's my like second full-time job at the moment. And it's also just the thing that we like to do. So it's going to spill over into, you know, what you would call free time or off time, is just thinking about this stuff, talking about this stuff, because we do enjoy it. And so we're pretty good at not beating ourselves up for that, but also just recognizing when you know it can cross the line into where it's now you can see that we're being stressed out or we need time away. And so one of one or the other of us is pretty good about, hey, let's take a break, let's do this, let's you don't need to do that for the rest of the day. Like, let's this weekend, you know, not do any of that kind of stuff. Like, we're pretty good at moderating and regulating, but it's also just a fun thing, and we like working together on stuff, so it's it's something cool to, you know. It's one of the first things we connected over when we met, so we like sharing it. And let's see here. Patrick Rambles. Speaking also of somebody whose channel is just going off the walls, uh, maybe depending on where you're listening to this, just cross the million view marks. So congrats, Patrick. What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started on YouTube? There's probably a lot of things, but I guess the one thing I wish I would have known when I started on YouTube was that it was okay to want to make YouTube videos. And I've talked about this. That one of the best things Heather did for me when we first met was she like gave me permission to make YouTube videos. Not that she was the one that had to give permission or anything, but I started my channel and dabbled in making a few videos and was feeling, you know, I was having fun with it, but I didn't really know where the channel was going, and I still felt a little goofy, and I definitely didn't want anyone in my real life to know that this is a thing I was doing. And when I met her, you know, some of the first things she said was like, Oh, you should definitely have a channel. Oh, this is so cool. Yes, you should you, you know, she was just all about you should do this and this and this and more, in like a in a way that was, yeah, this idea that you're feeling very nervous about is actually super cool and it's totally okay. And you can be in your 30s and starting a YouTube channel or whatever, and it's it's great and it's accessible and it's it's a valid thing to want to do. And just having that feedback from somebody, especially somebody I admired, was huge. And I'm glad that I got that, and I'm very grateful that I did so early on, but I always wonder how many people were in my position where they needed that and then they didn't get it. And so, what I would say, the one thing I wish I knew is that if you want to start a YouTube channel, it's absolutely okay to want to start a YouTube channel, and it's okay to jump into it, and it's okay to take it seriously and set aside time for it, even early on when nobody's watching. And you know, if you think I'm gonna upload a new video every Tuesday, and then you know that if you miss a Tuesday, literally no one will know because nobody's really watching, but you still want to be consistent and you still want to do that and you want to make it a priority for you. I think that that's really important, and I think that that's okay. And if there's nobody around you and nobody in your life directly to tell you that that's okay, I'm telling you right now that that is absolutely okay, and you should just go for it. Uh Arlie Greenwald at Arlie underscore G. Do you edit your podcast or rely on a service? I made a weird noise right now when I opened my mouth. I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm just making weird noises all day today. But in addition to that, I am a control freak and I do all of the things by myself. The only things that I've net that I've not done on my own, which is brand new, is I was on Alicia Way's podcast last month, Creators on the Come Up, and it was so much fun. I think we talked about this in in past episodes. And he offered to, he asked me if he could have like some of my graphics and assets and things. And then he made all of these like e-camm live overlays and graphics packs based on that stuff, and they're so cool, and I love them, and I'm gonna start using them soon. I'm really excited about it, and that's like the only time I've ever let anybody else do any kind of like design stuff with my thing. I'm such a control freak, I do everything top to bottom. So it's totally just me. But I'm not, I don't necessarily like that. Doesn't mean I look down on people who edit a service. One of our um like mastermind clients for Heather and I uh is a financial advisor who makes amazing videos, he records his videos, scripts them, does all that, and then just sends it out and hires an editor to put it all together because he doesn't have the time. He's not trying to be a video editor. That's not a thing that brings him joy, and it's cool. So for some people, outsourcing that stuff is great. For me, I I do everything on my own, top to bottom, whether it's podcast, video, for better or worse. I do everything on my own. And let's see here. Oh, I just oh, I was making mistakes on Twitter as I was going through these questions. I was accidentally unliking them, like clicking them and clicking the heart. Sorry, hope you guys weren't offended by that. Uh Josh Scott at Josh Cott Josh Scott928 asks, What is your favorite video that you have created? I I there's a few that just immediately pop to mind. I've talked about my Iceland video before, which uh like hardly anybody watches, even though it's a couple years old. I love that video and traveled all around the world to make that video, and I'm so proud of that video. So that's one of them. I do love my scale model water tower video, but there's something I guess the better thing is I've never made a video I didn't like. You know, there's parts of videos where I'm like, this could have been better, or I messed up on that, but I'm really proud and excited about every video, and that's not a like braggy, cocky thing. That's because I really, really, really try to do something in each video that I'm excited about. Maybe it's a cool intro sequence, maybe it's a point that I'm making, dumb jokes that I'm proud of throughout the video, whatever it is, even if it's literally just you know a very simple quick tech talk kind of video, or if it's something, you know, 3D printed scale model water tower, which uh definitely was an unusual video, but also a really fun one. The the 3D printed water tower video, at the end of it, there's like a you know, cinematic B-roll sequence of the 3D printed water tower. That's like one of my favorite things I've edited because it's so ridiculous, but I can confidently say, without exaggeration, that it is the coolest cinematic B-roll sequence of a 3D printed airbrushed water tower on YouTube. I can guarantee it because it's also the only one. Uh, let's see here. Kevin, basic filmmaker, asks, I would like to know exactly how you light your space. Every time I see it, I'm jealous, so bright and clean. Maybe you made a video on that already. I've done studio tour videos, and I'm going to, I think it's probably the next video I record is going to be a lighting setup video specifically, because I've gotten a lot of new lights lately. So I can't explain that via audio very well. If only this were a video podcast. I'm kidding. But I have 13 lights. So when when I'm recording in here, there's 13 different lights on everything from my big key light to a little accent light, 13 total. And as of either late December or early January, every one of those is a dedicated video light. Quite a few of them are RGB lights too, so I can change the color even if they're not, even if I rarely do, I can. But the key is that dedicated video light thing was such a game changer because I was using some lights that were like cheap um RGB floodlights from like Amazon, or I was using um like Philips Hue bulbs, which look really cool, but the problem with those is that they all flickered a lot, and so if I was accidentally using like a different shutter speed, or if I was trying to do high frame rate footage for like a slow motion thing, I had to be very careful of what areas I was filming in because I needed to avoid lights that were gonna flicker, and it was just getting so so frustrating. And I tried to find all these little options of like maybe these ones won't, and these ones won't, and everything was just flickering. And I said, you know what? Every light in here just needs to be a dedicated video light, so that way, no matter what shutter speed, what frame rate, what settings I'm using, it will never flicker. And that has just been so so nice. And uh, I've been getting a lot of questions and comments about lighting lately, so I appreciate that. So hopefully that means it's looking nice, I guess. But also, I do actively try to. To do bright lighting as opposed to like kind of the dark and moody lighting that is a little more common or a little more popular. Not that I don't like the way it looks, I do, but I just I just went the other direction. When they zigged, I zagged. It's a joke from it's a joke from last week's episode. So thanks. That's everybody on Twitter who sent in questions. Now the vast majority of questions came from Instagram, which is very exciting. It's so easy because they're all just right here. So let's jump over to Instagram. Uh podcast underscore host underscore naldo. Honestly, how important is the audio bitrate the lowest acceptable bitrate? Oh boy, we're getting right into the right into the thick of things. So your audio bitrate. Okay, if you're an audio pro, you might want to just like rip your speaker out if I say something incorrectly here. But you could kind of think of audio bitrate as an equivalent to video resolution. You know, high bitrate would be something like 4k, 8k, super crisp, super clean. Low bitrate's gonna be muddy and and and sort of funky and just not as high quality, not as rich and full. Um, I I do let's see, I can just look up my stuff here because I can't remember off the top of my head. Uh, but I keep everything, let's see, the lowest acceptable bitrate. 192,000 is kind of like the average. That's sort of for podcasts at least. Um48,000 is probably as low as I would go because I feel like below that is when I start to hear just sort of like a garbliness or things start to sound like they're kind of underwater a little bit, and it just sounds a little compressed and weird. It doesn't mean it's not usable, it just I don't know that someone who's not me would notice that, or the average person would, but since I spend a lot of time listening to audio and recording audio and editing audio, those little things just jump out a little bit more. So I I keep it at 48,000 or higher, and you know, typically the higher the better for the most part. Uh, Jeremy Aaron Kester asks, Is there a way to only import selected channels from the Rodcaster? There is not. If you're a Rodcaster Pro owner, you know this. You can do single track where everything that's what I'm doing with this show right now. The music, and you know, when I'm when I make a goofy joke thing like, Do you know why Batman uses a shore SM7B and Robin uses a shore SM58? It's because they're a dynamic duo. The uh rim shot there is all just being mixed into one file. The music at the beginning of the show, all that stuff, just one audio file that gets uploaded. If I had multi-track turned on, when I imported, it would import every track separately. So if I decided I wanted to cut out the music or cut out the sound effects or whatever, I can edit each track separately. But the problem with the Rodcaster, which maybe could be updated, is you have no, it's an all-or-nothing situation. You have no way to select it. So it's either you do the stereo mix down where it's everything, or you get all the tracks at once, which isn't really a big deal. It's kind of annoying because your, you know, your desktop or your folder will get filled with files. And if you're only using three tracks and now you've got like nine or eleven or something taking up space, it can be annoying, but then you can just delete them and yeah. Hope maybe at some point in the future there'll be a firmware update that lets you select which tracks you want to bring in. I think that would be that would be pretty cool. Um, let's see. That Dave Dillon asks, what do you talk about when there's nothing to talk about? Have you heard of Q ⁇ A episodes, Dave? Uh that's there's there's some truth to that there. It's tough. And that's kind of like uh for me, that is a reason, as arbitrary as my seasons are, that's kind of where they fit in. Is I can sort of outline ideas and and get things going. And then once I get to 21 episodes, I can I know that okay, if I want to take a couple weeks of a break and sort of like readjust and and come up with new ideas, I can do that. So it's kind of like these stretches here. Uh but QA episodes help. And I actually have a lot of things I want to talk about. I just can't talk about them yet, unfortunately. Ah Pat, you're here again. Pat Bobom now on Instagram. Why are Zoom products so ugly while roads are chef's kiss beautiful? I don't know. Um, Zoom products, and I'm sorry if anyone from Zoom is listening. Zoom products tend to deliver amazing sound quality. I've never been unhappy with the sound quality of a Zoom product ever. If anything, I've always been blown away by it. But they're built terribly uh for the most part. I mean, certain things like I don't know. I mean, even like I'm thinking of like the Zoom H5, which is a little recorder, and overall I think that is a very well-built thing, but even dumb stuff like the SD card door will fall off, just not even from being abused, just after you use it like for six months or a year, it'll just kind of fall off. Like Zoom products do weird stuff like that, where they're just they have build quality issues. Some of their stuff is, you know, like the H5, I think it looks great. I think the H6 looks great. Um, they do weird things like the new, you know, like the P8, which is kind of their roadcaster competitor. Functionally amazing, but it's like this weird cheap light gray plastic. Like, I don't, it just looks like it's from the early 90s or something. I don't know. And then they did that thing, the H8, which like it's literally called the Hate, and I hate the design of it. It looks like a an insect or something, it's like an eight input audio recorder. Again, functionally amazing, but I don't know who I don't know what they like ingest into their bodies before they go into their design meetings, but they they need to change it. Uh Omar underscore Zemudio underscore Zemudio asks, Do you think you still need a cloud lifter for the SM7B? The SM7B specifically, I would always pair with a cloud lifter or Fethead or some kind of booster because it's a very gain-hungry mic, and I can speak to the first time I ever used an SM7B about seven years ago. I started producing podcasts for the school district that I was working for, just using the gear that we had on hand, which was mostly like camera microphones, kind of rigged everything together actually into a Zoom recorder, into an H4N. And that's what we started with. And the school district like it, liked it a lot, and eventually, after a few months, gave me a budget to order some better gear. And of course, I was like, well, every radio station I've ever been to or worked at used the SM7B, so I'm gonna get the SM7B and ordered four of those, and I was so excited to have like our own. And once I plugged them in and started using them, I was so underwhelmed with them. And the reason for that was because they were not going into a cloud lifter, so they didn't have the gain that they needed to sound their best. Uh, there are things like speaking of Zoom, the P4, the P8 are supposed to have something ridiculous, like 72 decibels of clean gain, which in theory would mean you could use a really gain-hungry mic like the SM7B with those recorders and not need to not need to add in any other gain. I haven't done that myself though, so I can't say in general. I think a good rule of thumb though is if you want to get the best out of that mic, you need to have some kind of gain booster for it, which does kind of then raise the price. The mic's $400, but then you're gonna add in $100 or $150 for a FET head or a cloudlifter. Now it's a $500, $550 mic. Just something to consider. Uh Aaron Sorrio, how can I eliminate the hum background noise? I'm using RodeCaster Pro and Pod Mic. That's true. Well, the Rodcaster Pro, the Pod Mic directly into the RodeCaster Pro. I got the best results, not using a cloud lifter by keeping the gain level to 35, speaking as closely to the mic as I can, and then I would I would raise the channel level up to almost the top, like one notch from the top, usually. And it and it sounded pretty darn good. Don't forget with the RodeCaster Pro, it seems to be a very common issue. I don't know that it's on every single unit, but I kind of think it is. Uh, the headphone preamps are noisy. So, like right now, I'm using headphones into the Rodcaster and I hear a lot of hiss, but that hiss isn't there than when I play back the file on the computer or when I upload it. And it took me a long time to realize that. You can kind of drive yourself crazy. I made I made a video about this a couple weeks ago, but it it can you're trying to get things to sound clean, and no matter what you do, there's always hiss. And then I learned that the headphone preamps are just noisy for some reason. I don't know. I guess that might have been an area where they just couldn't just use something cheaper than maybe they should have, and there's always hiss there. But the actual preamps, like the mic preamps for the RODCaster, are incredibly clean. And I guess it's better that the recordings will always sound better than they do in your headphones, but it can definitely drive you nuts. So make sure your hiss is actually on the recordings and not just in your headphones, and gain at 35 and then boosting the volume as much as you do. Got good results for me. I have been using a cloud lifter for the past for a while now, and I do like it because it just kind of eliminates that issue altogether, and that works well. And if you're still having issues with hum and stuff or hiss, you can always throw it into like something like Adobe Audition and run some denoising. They have some amazing like noise removal tools that don't ruin the quality of the audio. Uh, the oh wait. Thorpe Creative asks, Do you edit or just upload? I watch your YouTube videos, but I can't remember. Oh, podcast. I was like, yeah, my YouTube videos are heavily edited. Podcast for the most part, no editing. I know, amazing. It sounds like this is just perfectly edited. There's definitely no weird noises that just fall out of my mouth and stuff like that, or dog barks in the background. That's kind of the point of this show. I've talked about it before, is this is my personal podcast, and I I like just kind of running through it and typically not editing it. If I'm doing an interview, yes, I will edit that. If Peter and I are doing our podcast, I definitely edit that just because there's always that little delay where we're on other sides of the planet and things just sound weird. And and since I do have both audio tracks, it does become easier to like, you know, like I don't know, he'll be talking and telling a story, and then I just hear myself go, and it's like, why did you do that, Tom? So I can just cut that out. Or because I'm talking to someone else, I have the tendency to go, mm, mm-hmm, mm. And it kind of gets in the way of story, so I can just get rid of all my annoying sounds there. It's a weird thing when it comes to podcast interviews because naturally you want to, when you're talking to someone, you want to respond to them to let them know that you are engaged with what they're saying. But in recorded interviews, that can be so distracting for the listener. So it's sort of a weird thing. You ask someone a question, hey, you know, tell me about blah, blah, blah. And then when they're talking, you're just like trying to actively not respond or non-verbally respond, at least, like a lot of nodding and things like that or smiling, but trying to not overwhelm your audio track with weird little noises that are going to distract the listener. So that kind of stuff I definitely edit out. And once you start going down that route of podcast editing, it's such a rabbit hole of trying to then make everything sound as good and perfect as possible. So yeah. Uh Xavier LT, how to get more sponsors or get money out of a podcast. I would really like to know the answer to that too. Uh, I've never monetized a podcast yet. It's something I am interested in doing, but of course, interested in doing in a way that doesn't make the podcast terrible and doesn't take up a bunch of time or ruin the flow. Um, there's a thing, and this happened a lot. Like when I worked at a TV station, one of my jobs for a while was working in Master Control. I don't know how this runs now or if it's still this like hands-on or if it's more automated, but this was back in like 2002 to 2004-ish, like that time frame. Master Control was where the TV station would play all of the shows for the day. So we were the ABC affiliate, and we were the Fox affiliate, and we were the Univision affiliate. So it was actually three channels, and somebody would be manning like each channel station, and it looks like NASA mission control. There's monitors everywhere. There were just VCRs because everything was on like beta tapes, and you just like, oh, it's time for Jeopardy. Okay, put in the Jeopardy tape, and then you kind of you know when you're supposed to go to commercial, so then it goes to commercial, and then you have the commercials that have been, you know, purchased for for that slot are there, and then you have to log the exact time that they played so that way the the client has reference that the commercial actually played. And the reason I'm bringing this on, why the heck am I even talking about this? Uh oh, sponsors and money is what I learned was watching some of these shows, not necessarily something like Jeopardy, but like a lot of these talk shows or a lot of news shows, it would be, you know, and I'd be running the commercials. They would go, okay, like, welcome. Today we're gonna talk about this amazing thing, and it's gonna be so great. So let's take a break. And when we come back, we're gonna talk all about blah, blah, blah. And be like, oh, cool, can't wait to hear about that. Then commercials and they come back and they're like, Welcome back. We've got so-and-so with us, and we cannot wait to dive in and talk about blah blah blah. But did you hear first that this little thing happened over here? Yeah, oh, amazing. And look, here's a uh joke thing that's happening over here. Okay, now sit tight, person, because as soon as we come back from this break, we're gonna talk about blah, blah, blah. And then we go back from the break, and then they're like, okay, now let's dive into it. Tell me, you you were gonna say something about blah blah blah. And they're like, Well, blah. Oh, that's that is so crazy. Okay, let's take a break and come back and finish up that thought. And then they come back from the break and like, well, today we've been talking with this person, we heard all about blah blah blah. We'll see you guys next time. And I'm like, Well, they never actually even did, they never said anything. It was a whole show and nobody said anything. And I've listened to that's daytime television, which like is mostly garbage, but I've heard podcasts kind of there's some that I've listened to that it sort of evolved to that, where like it almost feels like every time someone's about to hit the rhythm with a story or get to a part I'm really interested in, it's like, oh, now there's a commercial break or an ad read. And sometimes it can be very, very smooth where it it sort of like fits in naturally, but other times, like, especially if it's a live ad read, it just derails the entire conversation because now someone's talking about some unrelated mattress or whatever for two and a half minutes and then they come back and like, oh, that thing you were saying, you know, when we were having a natural conversation and everybody's like thrown out of it. So I don't want to do anything like that. I I if I learn how to monetize a podcast, then I'll let you know. I uh it's a question I can't answer right now. But I would also say the same thing with YouTube. If you get into podcasting specifically with the goal of monetizing, you you're definitely setting yourself up for failure. And it's also important when it comes to monetizing podcasts, the numbers are so different from YouTube, so much smaller, but the listenership is so much different. Like it's it's so much more engaged, and what I would call like quality listeners. That's my compliment to you. That I don't know how that translates because you're you're fewer people are listening, but they're more engaged. So it's I don't know. I don't know how that affects the like the costs and the numbers and things. Uh Bailey Stone 006, not 006, Bailey Stone 06 underscore asks, what is your favorite, absolute favorite part of being a media teacher? My favorite part would be when I get to okay, there's there's a thing that happens, it hasn't happened in a while because we haven't actually been in the classroom, but when like the controlled chaos is running smoothly, if that makes sense. So I've shared knowledge with students and we've covered topics, and now everybody's kind of working on stuff. And when I can walk around my like classroom lab studio space, and you know, there's everybody's working on something, but everybody's working on something different. So you can literally walk by, you know, this person is doing a digital design, this person's doing a photo thing, this person's writing a script. There's a group over here making a stop motion, someone's setting up a costume for a scene here, someone's editing videos over here, and I can just go, you know, group by group and just sort of help out with whatever. So I'm not teaching everybody the same thing at the same time. I'm helping these people figure out how to make their stop motion more smooth. I'm helping people figure out how to set up the mics for a podcast they're recording. We're working on lighting for a photo shoot, and it's just like you can kind of just bounce back and forth, and all that different stuff is happening at the same time. It's it's a really, really like invigorating environment to be in. And then when you get to help students find creative solutions to problems, you know, like they have an idea, but they don't know how to bring it to life, and sometimes that could be because they don't know how to use something, like they want to mount something somewhere and they've never used a C stand before. And then I can explain them, you know, the magic of the C stand. Or they have an idea for something and the solution doesn't really exist yet. And so we have to kind of think, okay, what would be a way to achieve that? And do we need to like rig something up? Can we, you know, like what can we do to make that happen? And that that kind of creative problem solving is really fun, it's super rewarding, and from the teacher perspective, it's also the stuff that is going to help them the most going forward because people might not ever want to see that video project again, but them being able to bring ideas to life and overcome obstacles and and that sort of thing, that's going to be the skill that sets them apart in the future. So that's I would say that's my favorite part. That's what popped to mind first. Ah, uh, Wormful Angel asks, Do you think video is necessary for starting a podcast? I'm glad you asked. I don't, although you're doing an amazing video podcast right now, by the way, but I don't think it's necessary. I think it does depend on the audience. Some people really, really love their video podcasts, but I have found that myself personally, and many of the people I know who listen to video podcasts, they watch the first few minutes, you know, they see the the setup, the hosts, and this, and then the thing just kind of gets set down and plays on its own over there. And that's a lot of effort for most of it to still just be listened to, in my opinion. But uh, you know, and uh some people have made it work where video is a definite, you know, important part of their show. Uh Stefan Sotella, Steph uh Sotello asks, Roadcaster Zoom pod track. I've not used the pod track yet. I'm trying to get a review one in. Um, so that would be great. They're just out of stock everywhere. And I'm trying for the very first time. Actually, I've never asked a company to send me a review product before, but I don't need one and I don't have the budget to just buy a pod track right now. And so I'm asking, like, hey, this is what I want to do. Could you send me one? And they said yes, but they just don't have any in stock yet. So I'm waiting on that. So we'll see. But Roadcaster. Uh, Alexander Krago Z asks, What made you start podcasting? Great question. I started listening to podcasts in 2009, I started producing podcasts in 2014, and then I started making my own podcasts in 2019. So there was a 10-year gap from the time I started listening to them and thinking this would be cool to actually making my own podcasts. And I wish I had done that earlier, just like with YouTube, starting earlier is like the only regret that I have. But the big reason this was my first podcast, and the reason I started it was because I was kind of feeling muted. And you might have heard me talk about this before, but teaching in the classroom, even with great students, even with great classroom management, you can't get through more than a couple sentences at a time without having to stop and you know, ask someone to be quiet, answer a question, have the phone ring, somebody walks in the door, fire alarm goes off. Like you're just trying to get your thought out makes you feel like a crazy person sometimes. That can be very frustrating. And YouTube is an amazing creative outlet. But YouTube videos, you know, like there, you don't want your YouTube video to just drag on or breathe, or I don't want to say don't want it to breathe, but there's an expectation I think the audience has with YouTube videos where there's absolutely not going to be any wasted time. You know, if there's I I've gone through and edited out breaths. If I am making a point in a video and I say, this thing's really great. And another thing is I will absolutely cut out that little breath and trim it down, and that, you know, doing that throughout the whole video ends up cutting down a minute or something from the time. So that kind of thing with YouTube, or I might think like, I should really tell people the context of this thing, and there's my maybe not time right now. Maybe that's the thing they wouldn't listen to. And you can see it on YouTube. You start doing that stuff, and sometimes that's where your viewer retention will. Drop off. So podcasting was a great way to go. I want to say something. I want to explore a topic. I want to communicate something. And I don't want to be interrupted. And I want it to be in a medium where it's okay for things to breathe. And it's okay for things to go on for a while. And most of the podcasts I listen to are at least an hour long. And that's that's enough time to really explore a topic and kind of get that out of my system. So that's why I did that. And 10 out of 10 would recommend. Far Schul Waltrop asks, our podcasts are 60 minutes too long. It's a perfect follow-up question. Too long? What do you think is the best length for a podcast? Very personal question. Um, I know some people who love short podcasts because they can listen to a couple of them every morning or just do, you know, if you have a 15-minute commute and there's a 15-minute podcast you can listen to, you're done. I personally love longer podcasts. I love them when they're at least an hour. I try to keep my shows at about an hour, sometimes a little over, sometimes a little under because I don't want to just drag it out. But to me, an hour is enough time to kind of like dig into something, explore it, not do what I just the example I gave of the TV station where you never actually dive in. An hour gives you time to dive in. Some podcasts are longer than an hour, which especially if it's a topic or a guest that I'm interested in. When there's something you're interested in, you see it's a new episode, and then you see that episode is like two hours long or something. Oh, it's such a good feeling. It's like discovering a new season of a show that you love. It's just like, yes, I have so much now. And I love that. I get kind of bummed out sometimes when I'll find someone I like on a podcast. I'm like, oh, I can't wait to hear more. And then I look and it's 17 minutes long. I'm like, oh, I'm not even gonna listen. So for me, I love longer podcasts, at least an hour or so, but it's a very personal thing. It depends on you, your audience. Um, but I pretty much never listen to anything less than that. Uh Muhammad Al-Nathir asks, can you make an episode about what you teach? I could. I can, I can never include I can never include um like students or or anything like that, because obviously I can't record or film stuff during contract hours, and since my students are minors, they can't be involved at all. So that's very like that's why like I talk about the stuff that I do, and then you don't really see it that much. But I could definitely do an episode about specifically like what I teach and how it works and what that journey's been like. That might actually be a great idea, so thank you. Uh, Jeff Zenisek asks Can you use the Rodcaster Pro as an interface for lives on iPhones? Yes, you can. And again, I actually mentioned this in a video, but uh thank you to Diana Gladney and Dean Niman for explaining how to do this to me. How to do this to explain to me how to do this. Don't do it to me. Uh yes, you totally can. The key is using an actual TRRS cable. And the reason for that is I get the question a lot of people saying, I've connected my phone, but nobody can hear anything. So you connect the phone with the little TRS cable to the Rodcaster. The Rodcaster is picking up audio from the phone, but nothing is getting sent out to the phone. So if you have a caller, they can't hear the other people, they can't hear the sound effects, whatever. If you're trying to use it with Clubhouse or something like that, um, your sounds aren't carrying over. And that's because you need an actual TRRS cable. And the way to tell that you're using one, any auxiliary cable will take phone audio and put it into the Rodcaster. But the TRRS is the one where at the tip of the cable there's three black rings. Uh, most auxiliary cables just have two, but uh you need one that has three black rings on each end, and that third ring is what's gonna allow the roadcaster to basically take over the microphone of your phone. And so the the sounds that are coming from the roadcaster will then go in to the sound. So you can think of the other two rings as not the technical explanation, but the other two rings as outputs, and that third ring is an input for your phone. So just make sure using an actual true TRS cable and then um just plug it into the smartphone input, and you should be all set and ready to go. Um, just Bob's hanging over here. How are you so awesome? Well, let's see. I I guess I shouldn't give away my secrets. I play to my strengths, uh, but thank you. Uh Hauser75 asks, if you could add just one more feature to the Rodecaster, what would it be and why? You know what I'm looking at right now, actually, just by coincidence, is a list I've made of uh five features I would love to see in the Rodecaster 2 if they ever make one. And just to go in line with what we've talked about earlier, better headphone preamps. Um, and I've actually talked with a couple of people at Rode about this, and they're interested in knowing more. Um, so it's I know it's not just me. It seems like everybody I've talked to with a Rodecaster has noisy headphone preamps, but Road almost seemed like kind of surprised by it. So I'm not sure if it's if it is something that only affects a few or it's something that develops over time. But I would love clean headphone preamps. So what I'm listening to in my headphones is exactly what it sounds like on the recording. That would make things so, so easy. Um, and another simpler one is in the last firmware update, the beta version had a reverb effect, which was super cool. It was great, and then the release version didn't have that effect anymore. And I would just love to have that reverb, maybe even some other effects brought back because it was so cool. I loved that. Uh DJ Louis says, My question is too long. That's what she said. Mike the Alvarez, oh Mike, what's a tool in your arsenal that you really had doubts about but was really useful? That is such an interesting question because typically the opposite is true. There's something where you're like, I'm gonna get this thing and I'm gonna use it all the time and it's gonna change everything, and then use it once and it sits on the shelf, and you're like, oh no, I I never use that. I think the the obvious choice right now is the Mac Mini, the M1 Mac Mini, which my most recent video as of this recording is all about the M1 Mac Mini, and I put it through kind of a ridiculous stress test there, and it handled it like a champ. I just bought the cheapest base model, which now you can get refurbished for like under $600. That thing, because I just bought that for situations like this when I'm doing a podcast or I'm doing it, doing a zoom thing, and I just want it to be quiet because my MacBook Pro, the fans are so so loud, even though the computer is very, very powerful and very, very fast. The fans are ridiculously loud and it gets picked up in podcasts all the time. And I got the Mac Mini to solve that problem, and I just expected it to use it for those things, and literally, like, I don't even have my MacBook Pro anymore. I I send it in as a trade-in and I'm like waiting, waiting for them to verify the conditions so they can hopefully send me money, but it's that good. So something that I just thought would be like this will be okay, and then it just changed everything, was the Mac mini. And Mike, I know you have the Mac mini too. The Mike Mini. Uh Francisco's here. Francisco dot cruise with three Zs. Question from your student. Speaking of, is it difficult to do both YouTube, do both teaching your students and YouTube? Yes, it is. Uh, because it's it's like uh as things have grown, it's just become two full-time jobs. And I've talked about this in the past. It's not that it's difficult because they they both make sense and they both have priority, but it it uh, you know, like they both demand time to be done well. And for the past over a year now, I would say it really has been the time of two full-time jobs, and uh it's very, very tiring. So that is very, very difficult and definitely not sustainable. So that's what I'll say there. Uh obviously, underscore blue says, Can you do an Adobe audition tutorial for podcasters? Love your content. Well, thank you so much. I have a few uh Adobe audition videos, I have another one that's coming out this week, and I feel so bad because it's I know I shouldn't care about this. My audition tutorials never do well, which is actually not correct. The people who watch them seem to like them a lot. There's just not a lot of people that watch them. And uh, you know, it's a bummer because I really love audition, love talking more about it. But yes, absolutely, and to do a not not shameful, to do a shameless self-plug, uh, the podcast course that I'm working on will talk basic audio editing. But the plan is should that course go well, one of my future ideas is to do an advanced audio editing course. So obviously that wouldn't be a free thing, um, but that would kind of dive into more advanced audio editing. And if I can ever get, you know, Adobe Audition tutorials kind of off the ground a little bit on my channel, I would love to do some more specific to podcast editing. And let's see here, last but not least, Alexander.small, how to start a podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. The answer is this is like the the least satisfying answer I could give you is to just get started. Don't get stuck in planning purgatory. Yes, I do think you need to have a plan. We can have that discussion all day about strategizing and ideation and coming up with your idea and those sorts of things. And you don't want to just jump in and have no idea of what you're doing. But I've seen so many people just get stuck in once I get this equipment, once I get this plan, once I write and record a whole season's worth of episodes all at once, then I'll be ready to get started. And what happens most of the time is time just passes and nothing happens. Whereas if you just jump in, your first whatever it is, if it's your first podcast, first shows are gonna sound rough. Your first YouTube videos are probably gonna be not the best. Your first blog posts are probably gonna be a little awkward. Doesn't matter, just get started because you you really just can't get better until you get started and work with whatever you have, start with that, upgrade as your needs become a parent, and that's just kind of the way to do it. But you have to jump in, like you cannot swim until you jump in the water, and after that, you can come up with all the strategy you want. You'll learn along the way. If you look at a thriving YouTube channel right now, and you're like, they have hundreds of videos, and look at this beautiful channel banner, and all these subscribers, and they know how to do community posts and all stuff. You're don't try to do that. Like, make a video. I remember like you know, my channel banner was literally like a 10-year-old graphic that I had on my computer when I started because I was like, ah, who cares about channel banners? And it wasn't even for like seven or eight months that I was like, I realized these are actually very important and will change everything. And then, you know, I I've gone through many, many iterations of a channel banner, and they actually do make a huge difference. But starting the channel, that wasn't something that I even needed to concern myself with. It was much more about can I make a video? Can I edit it? Can I put it out there? What happens if someone watches it? What happens if someone comments on it? Oh my gosh, what happens? The second video I made got my first dislike, and it was like immediate, you know. Like I published a video, it had like four views and one dislike, and I was like, oh god. Uh so you know, that uh that kind of stuff, like just going through the process, and it sucks because you want to be at the level of proficiency. You want to be up and running. I'm feeling this right now as I'm like working through the course that I just mentioned because it's my first, it's the first time I'm making a course, and so everything is new to me. Like I've made lessons before, made videos, I've done all that stuff, but I've not done it in this context. And it sucks because everything is new and everything is overwhelming. But I know that once I push through and do it the one time, then it will, you know, it won't be new anymore. And then I can do it again and again and again. And that's kind of the same thing. Like you just got to get started, and you want to be good, you want everything to be perfect, but you just have to go through those growing pains, you have to go through that learning curve and and just persevere and get through it. But like I've said an infinite number of times almost, the only regret that I have is not starting sooner. So if you're thinking about it and you have the itch, like go to YouTube and click create account or sign up for a blog website, or you know, go to Anchor right now and use your phone to record and upload a podcast today. Because you absolutely could. Don't wait longer. Every day, every month could just be one more episode, one more, one more rep in, one more chance to build an audience, to to grow your thing and do what you want. So that's that's I think a great note to end on. I feel motivated to go make a thing. Oh, wait, I'm making a thing right now. So thank you to everybody who sent in questions. I really, really do appreciate that. It's really, really fun. And I'm looking forward to future episodes. Got some super exciting stuff to talk about. I know I'm being like cryptic and things, but uh, it is the way that is. If you're interested in my podcast course that I mentioned, you can go to HiMynamistom.com, and then right on the homepage is a button you can click, which is very clearly a button that says uh join the wait list. And pot the course is not out just yet as of this recording, but you can sign up for the wait list, and I can uh hint that those of you who sign up for the wait list may be privy to some sort of early bird discount, you know, like older folks get at restaurants, but you can be any age. Anyway, uh cool. That was a way to not make sense at the end of this. Well, thank you so much for listening. Uh, if you have feedback or thoughts or follow-ups on questions or anything, feel free to reach out to me at Sodarn Tom on all the things. Uh, I'd love to hear from you, and I will see you next week.