March 20, 2017

56: How To Avoid Technical Glitches When You Record Interviews

10 minutes

Do you record interviews with guests for your podcast? Have you ever run into a situation where something goes wrong with the connection? Skype crashes. The voice of your guest is delayed. Every other word is a stuttering nightmare. It’s not uncommon and it’s not something you can always correct. But there are things you can do ahead of time to make the likelihood of technical problems less when you record interviews. That’s what this quick-and-to-the-point episode of Podcastification is all about.

[2:49] Three words: or two if you are a pro-hyphen person: Hard-wired connection.

We’re so used to using wifi for everything it’s hard sometimes to remember that there is another (better) alternative. If you can at all arrange for your computer to be connected directly into your router via an ethernet cable, you’ll do away with some possible points of weakness in your interview recording setup. You won’t be sharing bandwidth with other devices in your home, microwave ovens, cordless landline phones, or anything else. You’ll have a dedicated connection that goes DIRECTLY into your internet service that will make things a lot more stable when you record interviews.

[4:51] When you’re recording interviews, do you REALLY need those programs open?

One of the things I run into during my workday is that the longer I’ve been working, the more tabs or browser windows or programs I have open on my computer. It’s great to have them available so easily, but when it comes to recording interviews over a distance (Skype, Ringr, etc.) those open windows can be a possible failure point. On this episode, I walk you through the “why” behind the issue and give you some suggestions you should consider, including the most common problem programs that work in the background and disrupt the smooth operation of your computer memory while you’re doing your interview recordings.

[7:50] Everything on this episode applies to the guest you are recording an interview with.

That’s right. You can take everything you hear on this episode of Podcastification and apply it to thing son the other end of the line. Your guest needs to be coached by you - the podcaster - in what THEY can do to ensure that you get the best quality recording possible and avoid things that could disrupt your recording and cause you and them to have to set aside time later to record a second time. Nobody likes to waste time, so be sure to pass this information along to your guests too. When you record interviews for your podcast, you need these tips!

resources we talked about in this episode