E6: First Reflection
07/14/2024, duration: 09:15
Major Irony here. I attempted to improve the audio quality by recording this at home, with my headphones. Somehow the headphones or Audacity garbled parts of the audio. Attempts were made to improve the audio, but apologies in advance for the “less than ideal” audio quality.
In this episode of Debugging Dan, I reflect on the journey so far, having recorded and published five episodes. I discuss the challenges and learnings from recording during my commute, including background noise and the divided focus while driving. Editing these episodes has been time-consuming due to removing filler words and background noises. Recently, I improved my process using my wife’s Stream Deck for quicker edits.
Moving forward, I’ll record at home to enhance content quality and focus. I also plan to introduce more project updates and live updates, making the podcast content richer and more dynamic. Additionally, I’m exploring video recordings using my smartphone and considering a green screen for a better visual setup. Upgrading my microphone is also on the agenda to improve audio quality. Despite the delays in getting on Apple Podcasts, I remain enthusiastic and hopeful for listener feedback to shape future episodes.
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Transcript
Welcome to Debugging Dan, where I share weekly my journey, balancing life, a full-time job and side projects. I'm Dan, your host. Let's dive in!
This is episode 6 already of the Debugging Dan podcast, and today I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do a bit of a reflection on the previous episode, so I've recorded more than 5 episodes already, but I've published 5 until now. Some didn't really click with me in terms of the topic or how I talked in the episode. Some recordings didn't, and I might republish them at a later point. I have several main points to reflect on, like the method of recording that I used, how I did the editing, and also the content for the podcast. So that's what I want to focus on.
I did mention it in some of the episodes, but how I recorded the podcast was using my phone from the car in my commute to work. I drove, I drive for like 20 minutes to work in my commute. I figured I didn't have time to do talking, so I recorded from car, and I noticed two things, listening back to the recordings. There are background noises, like the blinker, other cars, stuff happens, like the right of way, and I make a note on that. But what I did find is I need to do a lot of editing because of those noises, and also when listening to it, there are a lot of silence, points, and ums and ahs. And that's because you can hear that it doesn't have my full focus. I'm driving the car, which is the highest because that is related to safety. And I also record the podcast. You can hear that my focus is divided there, which isn't necessarily great for the content quality.
During editing, I remove a lot of ums and ahs and a lot of silence, but that does mean a lot more work. And also when I listen or when I focus on the speech there, I use some stop words. Those are different per episode. So sometimes I use a lot of so, and then the next sentence starts with so, and then, and then, which is at least I find annoying. And it's also something that I think will be better when I record it, fully focused on the recording itself as I'm doing now. And also I use my earbuds to record, and there's also sometimes an annoying swallowing sound because they're close to my ears and throat. And then you hear swallowing. Um, I added that out, like with the, with stop words or with the ums and ahs, it does require more editing and pressure to be, I like to do things in one take, just chop off the beginning, chop off the end and that's it.
And then it forces me to listen more concentrated to the podcast itself when I'm editing and that takes more time. So talking about editing, the quality of the recording with these earbuds is not that great, but I use dope, the podcast, nothing that includes audio quality, a lot. So that's something that's really helps and the episodes, episodes are relatively short. So they're like 10, 15 minutes, but editing still takes some time and I don't have a lot of time to do editing since I'm working a full-time job. I have a family, I have hobbies, and I got stuff to do like everybody else. So I'd like to streamline that as most efficient as possible.
And the first of the first episodes I did, I really found it annoying, but I recently found my wife's stream deck, which she bought for controlling home automation. And I programmed it with some shortcuts from audacity and that's really improved the process. So I'm, it's a lot more simple to just go back to live while listening, go back a few seconds, start selection and selection with the press of a button. Just listen back. Oh, if I delete that, what does it look, what does it sound like? So that's really helpful and it also improves the process. It makes it a lot more enjoyable for me, which is also important.
And I feel that while listening to the podcast, I also found that the recordings itself could be a little bit more shorter and more to the point. And I think that also goes back to when I'm telling it that I was driving the car. So that makes it a little bit more difficult to remember what I was saying and focus on not repeating myself. And hopefully when I record this outside of the car, I'm going to do all upcoming recordings. I'm not going to do that in the car anymore. I'm going to do those at home. I'm just going to find five to 10 minutes to set up and record. I can fit that in a time schedule and it will make editing and publishing the podcast a lot more efficient and improve the quality.
And the third talking point I wanted to talk about was, now these are the generic topics that I mostly talk about. So doing a project, doing planning, and I'm also thinking about kind of like this episode to do more weekly or bi-weekly project updates or live updates on what I'm working on. Kind of share that and share the things that I find awesome doing it, things I've learned. So that's also something that I want to add more because I believe that at some point, the more generic topics, and I won't have that much to talk about anymore. And since it's a weekly podcast, we need to have something to talk about. That by interchanging, interchanging the generic topics with, with the life updates would be a lot better in terms of content and hopefully get feedback from other people that are listening on how things are doing.
And it might allow me to also share the content or snippets of the content a bit more on other social platforms, besides the podcast, thinking about that one thing I've been also thinking about is to start doing the podcast recording with video. So I need to figure out a few things. So my, my laptop on which I'm doing the recording now doesn't have a very good webcam and I don't really want to invest a lot of money yet into a super fancy HD 4k camera. So I'm looking to see if I can use my smartphone, a ring light that might improve the lighting a little bit. I'm looking into buying a green screen that I can set up behind me because we don't have a lot of rear room or rocks here and I don't want to have to clean out every time I have to do it.
Then I do want to have a more relaxed background while doing the recording. So I figured if I'm doing a green screen, I can set it up quickly, remove it when I'm done and I can replace the green stuff with a more sand background, something AI generated. I can vary it per episode if I'd like. So that's also what I'm, what I'm looking for. It also depends on how the audio quality is while I'm recording this, but I might also be looking into buying a better microphone. Since I'm now doing it stably and not from the car, I might also buy, I need to check what the quality is for that one or look into a more positional microphone that I can use to create better recordings.
And it would also reduce the recording time in terms of podcast itself. I enjoy doing it my favorite part, but I like thinking about topics I've set up a part of automation, the editing part. I do like to talk, um, about things that, that I'm busy with. It's like, uh, I can pour my energy and salt into it and just talk things out. Uh, so it's also kind of therapeutic for myself and hopefully, and probably when I talk about more details about the projects that I'm working on, it would be even more therapeutic. I enjoy doing it. I hope to get more or that people start giving feedback.
So, uh, YouTube, I'm still working on Apple podcasts. I submitted it on June 16th and I'm still waiting it for it to be released or approved on Apple podcasts. Last Sunday, I filled in a contact form saying, Hey, what's the holdup? Why is it still in draft? And I can't approach it yet. So I'm still waiting on that. And hopefully when it also gets on the iTunes platform where it is, which is one of the biggest ones, hopefully I'll be able to, to get some ratings or comments. And hopefully that feedback, I will be able to process that again into the recordings and, um, work with that.
So episode six, my reflection on the podcast, I really enjoy doing it. And I hope that you enjoy listening and, um, speak to you on the next one. Thanks for tuning in to debugging Dan. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. Stay curious and see you next week.
