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March 28, 2005

J. Craig Williams: What's your podcast setup?

Podcaster and videocaster J. Craig Williams of May It Please The Court offers his seriously detailed blawgcast setup....

Kevin,

My podcasting setup is very simple and designed more than anything else to accommodate recording from different locations. In the simplicity, however, lies the beauty. I use a set of Altec-Lansing AHS-302 computer, behind-the-neck headphones/microphone that can be purchased for under $25.

I use this headphone/microphone set because it's foldable and easily transportable, plus Altec-Lansing produces a high-quality product. I use Audacity shareware with a Lame MP3 plug-in to record the podcasts. I record the podcast typically on my Motion Computing Tablet computer because it's the most portable and versatile. As long as I have an internet connection, I can upload the podcast to May It Please The Court in a manner of minutes.

That's it, plain and simple. Podcasting for under 25 bucks (excluding, of course, the computer necessary for the recording). While I'd love to have Evan's set-up, and I understand the value of it, I don't have the luxury of a studio to broadcast from every time I podcast. I frequently post from work, home, on vacation, while traveling and even remote locations.

Now, for the hard part. While in high school, I started broadcasting training. I obtained my 3rd Class FCC license in order to broadcast on radio, which I did throughout high school and college. Admittedly, what I was doing was at first nothing more than small, 3-watt 88.1 FM broadcasting, but I held down a steady daily show during the week while a teenager. I also broadcast on our high school closed-circuit television station at the start of each school day. No great shakes, but it was a start.

Then, in college I locally-hosted a public radio show called "All Things Considered" and did some NPR pieces along with more news anchor work for a local public TV station. Ultimately I landed a commercial radio job while still in school. I worked at a small AM / FM radio station in Virginia, and broadcast news, weather and sports on the FM side, and did nightly and weekend music (radio disc jockey) shows on the AM side. All during that time, I had voice coaching from my teachers and professors, and then when working commercially, required professional voice training. My undergraduate major was in Radio, TV, Film and Journalism, and I got plenty of practice.

I've since kept my finger in radio and TV, and podcasting gave me the opportunity to get back into it more fully, and do something I really enjoy. I still practice - reading each page of the front section (top right to lower left) of the newspaper out loud, with a voice coach listening and critiquing my speech.

That said, I'm not a professional by any stretch of the imagination, I haven't jazzed up my podcasts with bumper music, and I don't alter my voice with an equalizer, brightener or any other available electronic means. It's not that I don't want to - I do - and I recognize that my podcasts would sound much better for it. But from what my listeners have said, keeping it simple keeps it interesting.

You may know that I also videocast blog entries. I call it vlawgging or recording a vlawg, since it's a bit more than a vlog. My setup for the video is similarly simple, with just a couple of expensive parts. I use Serious Magic's Visual Communicator 2 to record my vlawgs. It's great software because it has a teleprompter feature, you can see a video of what you're recording while you're recording it, and it has green screen effects. That combination of features makes it look more professional than it really is.

For lighting, I the standard set up - hair light (overhead, pointing down), back lights, side lights, front box lights and up lights. It gets hot when it's all turned on. My lighting system is not at all of the quality you'd find in a television or photography studio. The lights are inexpensive construction lights on stands from Home Depot (http://www.homedepot.com), together with some daylight bulbs to soften the light a bit. I've also got some standard video lights for the minor side and up lights.

My teleprompter set up is ingeniously simple: it's my Tablet computer in its dock, a mirror with a flexible arm that clamps in position in front of the Tablet to "flip" the text into the teleprompter glass, which then reads "right side up" when I look "through it" at the camera. That way, I can read the text that's reflected on the teleprompter glass by the mirror as it's scrolling on the software, all the while recording the video on the Tablet computer for easy upload. The teleprompter glass is from Edmund Optics and was the most expensive piece. It's held in place at a 45-degree angle by clamps and flexible arms that can be purchased from any professional camera store. That way, I look directly into the camera instead of off to the side. I built a small teleprompter box out of dowels to keep the shadows down.

The camera is an Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks Pro. I also use a Panasonic D-Snap SVAV100 for clips while on the road. If you're thinking about videocasting, stick with the webcam if you're going to use Visual Communicator. The software communicates much better with a webcam than a video camera, although with some extra effort, you can import video clips.

I'm doing this podcasting and videocasting by myself on a moderate budget, and I don't have what I'm used to at my fingertips anymore. It would be great to have a recording studio with the high-quality equipment to podcast, and I'd love to get back into a television studio again to record video. I have to remember that MIPTC is on the internet, not the airwaves.

But I practice law full-time, and podcasting and videocasting take a back seat to my practice. I'll have to rely on listeners and viewers to tell me if they think I need to make wholesale improvements in my equipment before that investment will be made. Likewise, viewers and listeners can suggest improvements in both my audio and video recording - I'm always open for suggestions, and willing to make changes.

By the way, MIPTC has enabled audio comments - anyone can call 206-338-3088, so anyone can talk on MIPTC. Call in an let me know - I'll post your audio comments on May It Please The Court.

The tough part, however, is space on the server. Podcasts and videocasts take up a huge amount of space (see this post) - we're now out of room. Once MIPTC relocates to a bigger server with much more space available, podcasting and videocasting will begin again. I expect to be back up and running within the next two weeks.

Thanks,
Craig

Posted by Kevin J. Heller at March 28, 2005 07:20 AM

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