Computers With Ease

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related audio and video. It’s that time of year again where the holiday season is almost upon us, and I wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone the best in the holiday season, whatever that means for you.

Whether it is spending time with friends and family doing things that you enjoy, whether it means just having some quiet time alone in the peaceful and gathering your thoughts. Whatever that is for you I hope you take the time during this holiday season to enjoy it as well as reflect on the year that we’ve had. I know things have been a little crazy around here and I’m looking forward to taking several days off over the holiday season and just relaxing spending time with friends and my lovely wife Glenda.

I want to just recharge my batteries and take time to relax and not think about work as much as I have been lately. I know there’s things that I want to do and I’m going to put those off until the new year and as much as possible, try not to worry about all the things that didn’t get done.

But most of all I’m going to just relax and enjoy some time off and I certainly wish all of you the very best in the holiday season. May it be joyous and special for all of you as I know it’s going to be special and memorable for me. Thank you very much for listening.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at info@computers withease.com and if you like to stay up to date with this podcast., please feel free to subscribe to my email list. I look forward to speaking with you.

 

The post Christmas 2019 appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

The post Christmas 2019 appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related audio and video. It’s that time of year again where the holiday season is almost upon us, and I wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone the best in the holiday season, whatever that means for you.

Whether it is spending time with friends and family doing things that you enjoy, whether it means just having some quiet time alone in the peaceful and gathering your thoughts. Whatever that is for you I hope you take the time during this holiday season to enjoy it as well as reflect on the year that we’ve had. I know things have been a little crazy around here and I’m looking forward to taking several days off over the holiday season and just relaxing spending time with friends and my lovely wife Glenda.

I want to just recharge my batteries and take time to relax and not think about work as much as I have been lately. I know there’s things that I want to do and I’m going to put those off until the new year and as much as possible, try not to worry about all the things that didn’t get done.

But most of all I’m going to just relax and enjoy some time off and I certainly wish all of you the very best in the holiday season. May it be joyous and special for all of you as I know it’s going to be special and memorable for me. Thank you very much for listening.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at info@computers withease.com and if you like to stay up to date with this podcast., please feel free to subscribe to my email list. I look forward to speaking with you.

 

The post Christmas 2019 appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

The post Christmas 2019 appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

My first thoughts on version 2 firmware for the Rodecaster Pro.

The post Rodecaster Pro firmware version 2 – My thoughts appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

The post Rodecaster Pro firmware version 2 – My thoughts appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related audio and video.

Hello everyone, today I got the final piece to my new podcasting set up. I’ve now got the rodecaster Pro, PSA1 boom arm and today I got the Rode PodMic which I’ve been waiting for ever since it was announced with the rodecaster Pro and today I finally got one.

Am now using this is the first time that I’ve actually done a podcast with it and I look forward to seeing how it performs and that comparing to the generic dynamic mic that I had, which work just fine.

But one of the things that I found was I have a lot of plosives in my speech as well as a lot of breath sounds depending on where the mic is placed, so I want to see how the new podmic is because it’s supposed to have a pop filter built in.

And like many other reviewers I have found the pomic be very well built. It’s extremely heavy for a microphone, which in this case is a good thing, and I’m not anticipating anything other than extremely good results with it.

Hopefully now with all these tools in place y podcasts will sound better and be easier for me to edit with less time in postproduction, which means I will be able to get more podcasts done and put out there for everyone to enjoy.

I will keep you posted on the performance of this new microphone as well as the rodecaster Pro itself.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at info@computers withease.com and if you like to stay up to date with this podcast. To date, podcast, please feel free to subscribe to my email list. I look forward to speaking with you.

 

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Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related audio and video. My name is Darrell Hyatt, Today I wanted to talk about changes in your work flow, I know since I have been doing podcast for a while now my workflow has changed.

When I first started doing my podcast and I thought how my work was change and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions a flows I start what is your current work as you do your podcast and your video?

How many steps are in your workflow from beginning to end and secondly, what is the hardest step in your workflow? Now one of the things that comes up when you talk about workflow is, why would you change your workflow at all. What would make you even consider changing it?

Once you been doing podcast for a while one of the things that comes up is the efficiency of the workflow itself, and this is why I asked in the beginning, what was your current workflow. How many steps there where and so on.

The more efficient your workflow the more work you get done in less time. One of the other reasons your workflow may change is you have new tools that you’re working with that now require change or adjustment in your work flow and in my case, I got a new piece of equipment I got the Rodecaster Pro.

To help me make my podcast better and more efficient and easier for me to produce on an ongoing basis. One of the things that I’ve since learned is that the rodecaster Pro is Windows 10 only, so this necessitates me using my Windows 10 machine as opposed to my Windows 7 machine which has all my audio editing software on it

So first of all I had to transfer my files from rodecaster Pro onto my Windows 10 machine and then onto my Windows 7 machine for editing and that makes things a little more complicated, it and add some extra couple of steps to my workflow so that I can continue to edit the podcast.

Once I have the files on my Windows 7 machine, the editing process is much shorter. So the question I have for you now that you have an overview of my workflow and my processes have you mapped or evaluated your workflow and your processes as you create your podcast?

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at info@computers withease.com and if you like to stay up to date with this podcast. To date, podcast, please feel free to subscribe to my email list. I look forward to speaking with you.

The post What is your workflow? appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

The post What is your workflow? appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

Welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related to audio and video hello everyone, it’s now seven months into the year, and I realized that I hadn’t achieved all my goals for the first six months of the year and I thought I wonder how other creators are doing with their projects that they set out to do at the beginning of the year.

I know one of the goals that I had was to create a podcast every week and I certainly haven’t been able to complete that goal this year, so far and it’s one of those things that I would very much like to improve upon.

Another goal that I have is to get some better equipment for creating my podcasts to streamline my workflow, and allow me new options for communicating with other people who I want to include in my podcast and to do interviews with etc.

Fortunately, recently I was able to get the piece of equipment that I wanted and have had the chance to start working with it an experiment and learn how to use it.

And this is the first podcast that I’m doing with the new equipment and set up that I have so hopefully yeah the quality of my podcasts will be improved and I look forward to hearing your comments.

Another goal that I have that I have not finalized as yet is to find a way to generate accurate stats on who’s listening to my podcast. How many people are downloading it etc. and I have not completed that goal either.

I’ve also recently found that I have an interest in photography as more than a hobby and I have been pursuing that quite a bit lately. so hopefully that will work out for me.

Now one of the questions that I have for you who are listening to this is what are your goals for the first half of the year, and how have they worked out for you?

I’d love to hear both the goals that you been able to achieve as well as the ones that you have not. Please let me know in the comments or via email.. Thank you very much for listening.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at [email protected] and if you’d like to stay up-to-date with my podcasts. Please feel free to subscribe to my email list. I look forward to speaking with you.

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The post Goals review – win some lose some appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things audio and video. Today I want to talk about video editing software. This is one of the most complex issues when you want to get into video editing, simply because there are so many choices when it comes to the software itself and how do you know which one to choose.

The first thing I think of when I think about video editing software is start with something simple have an idea of what you want to do with your video. Whether it’s I simply want to remove the unnecessary part at the beginning and end of the video or whatever it may be have an idea of what you want to do when it comes to editing your video project.

This will make it easier to evaluate the software choices that you may be looking at. now the next tip that I have is start with the free video editing software packages. There are several you can find them by doing a simple Google search as I did in preparation for this podcast and I found several free programs that may be useful for you and give you a starting point. The first one was from a company called NCH software. They make an editor called videopad. There’s another one called filmmora 9

The other option you’ve got is to look at some of the 15 and 30 day free trials of software. I know Adobe has several video editing programs like Adobe Premier Pro and you can get trials from the Adobe website. Another one that I use is called Camtasia, and again they have 15 or 30 day trial for that.

These will get you started and let you learn what features you like and give you a chance to play with several different pieces of software and see which is most comfortable for your workflow.

One thing to remember here is that no one program is going to be perfect for all your editing needs. I myself have two different editing packages because I like how one program does a specific task easier and simpler than another one, so no program is going to be perfect for everything. Make sure that whatever video editing program you’re using can both import and export your video in several popular formats. It will make your production a lot easier if you’re not having to convert the finished product from one format to another.

Another important factor to consider is how good is the documentation. How informative is it and how helpful is it for you when you’re in the middle of the project and need to know how to do something? so good documentation and tutorials are going to be important, particularly while your learning and evaluating each of these software packages as you go. Be sure to experiment and have fun. During this process and enjoy your video editing adventures.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email at info@computerswith ease.com and while you’re there, go ahead and sign up to stay up-to-date when I post new podcasts. Thank you very much for listening

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The post Video editing programs – many choices appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast where we talk about all things related to audio and video and today I’m going to talk about audio editing software, which can be a difficult topic for anyone who is looking to get into audio editing simply because of the number of choices available in software.

So I thought I would talk about some of the options available and the give some suggestions, some of the key things that you want to look for in your audio editing software is, it has to be easy to use, has multiple ways of using input and multiple output formats.

One of the other things that I look for is good, noise reduction capabilities within the software. Now, as I said, there are multiple options available here, some of the ones that I’ve used are wavepad as well as Audacity. Both of those are free programs and wavepad also has a paid version. I will include links in the description to those as well.

There are trials of several programs such as Adobe audition and reaper, and you can go to the Adobe website for addition and that reaper you can just Google.

One of the things that I encourage here is to download some of the free ones, and get a trial of some of the trials and experiment and use these to see which works best for you which one you’re most comfortable with and ultimately which one works best with your workflow.

No program is going to be perfect and so you may find that you end up using more than one audio editing software based on your needs. I know for me that I end up using a combination of wave pad and audacity.

Each has their own strong points and each has things that they do really well so I tend to work with both, but be willing to experiment and see what works best for you. There are lots of tutorials available for each of these programs and I’m certain you will find one or two that work best for you.

If you have any questions please feel free to email me at [email protected] also while you’re there, feel free to subscribe so that you are kept up-to-date on when I posted another podcast related to audio and video. Thank you very much for listening.

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The post Audio software – which is best for me appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

Hello and welcome to the computers with ease podcast, where we talk about all things related to audio and video. Today I’m going to continue my series on equipment and I’m going to talk about computers.

When it comes to audio and video you can use either PC or a mac, both have plenty of options for audio and video software and it makes no difference whether you use a standalone computer or a laptop, either one is suitable.

The two things that you need are lots of RAM, which is the internal memory storage where when you’re working with programs and so on that’s where your files are stored while you’re working on them.

The other item that you need is plenty of processing power, and most of the computers that are available today are at least what’s called dual core and above. Dual core simply means there’s two processors built together to look like one, but there’s actually two processors in the computer and for doing audio/video you need at least a dual core processor. The speed of the processor itself is not that important, any of the computers that have come out in the last few years will be quite sufficient for your needs.

One of the other items to consider that’s related to the computer is your memory cards that are in your devices that you’re actually using to do the recording. Because you want your computer to have what’s called the card reader, so that you can easily take cards from your cameras, your audio recorder’s and simply plug them directly into the computer using the card reader and transfer your files to the computer so you can edit them easily and efficiently.

I would recommend having several memory cards for your devices, in case one fails or you want to have an individual memory card for each of the projects you’re doing to keep the files separate make sure that you backup your files on a regular basis just for safety.

The last thing that I want to mention when it comes to your computers and doing audio and video make sure that you’ve got enough space on your hard drive for you to store your work efficiently, and be willing to experiment with settings in your computer and see what works best for you.

I know when I first started, I was using a myriad of software and trying different settings in my camera and so on. And then when I transferred the files to my computer and looked at it. It was not what I wanted and I had to find some of the proper settings in the computer as well so they would read my video files properly, so be prepared to do some experimentation with your settings and the have fun.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at [email protected] Thank you for listening

The post What computer do I need to do podcasts & video? appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

The post What computer do I need to do podcasts & video? appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.

Welcome to the computers with ease podcast, today I’m going to start a series on equipment for those of you interested in working with both audio and video. So today I’m going to start with the audio equipment and give you some ideas of how to get started and the different options that you got for equipment.

The first one I’m going to start with is the easiest and the quickest to get you into creating podcasts and them give you the opportunity to get started and one of the easiest ways to get started is with your mobile phone, you can get apps to record your audio on your phone, and most phones are reasonably good for capturing audio for your podcast. Another option is your Webcam connected to your computer because the Webcam automatically has a microphone so you could record your audio using your Webcam directly into your computer and then edit it using any number of audio editing programs, which is another series that I’ll be talking about during this series as well.

Another simple option is to use your computer and plug-in a microphone to the mic jack or line in in on your computer if it has one, again this will record the audio straight to your computer and you can then go and edit as usual.

An intermediate option for creating your podcasts is to have an audio recorder such as I’m using here, I’m using a zoom h4n Pro with a microphone connect to the recorder and I’ve got my notes sitting here next to me on the desk. Now one of the things about this particular option that I like is using a separate audio recorder, you get better sound than you do using your computer.

But it is more expensive in terms of having to buy the audio recorder and then if you buy a mid-level microphone, the whole setup can be somewhat more expensive. I also recommend if you going to do it this way with the recorder, I also recommend buying the mic stand so that you’re not holding the microphone while you’re recording the podcast.

If you tend to move around the audio can sound different from moment to moment and using the mic stand will make sure that the mic stay steady and it’ll be easier for you and create a more consistent sound.

The last and most expensive and most complicated option for recording your podcast is to go with a mixer and a recorder which will allow you to make significant enhancements to the audio before it is actually recorded. This option definitely gives you more control over the finished product, but it is more expensive and you may also want to consider a home studio set up.

Which again will take some time and some effort, but the finished product will definitely be worth it in one of the keys here is to start with wherever you are and whatever you can afford.

It’s more important that you actually start creating your podcasts and getting your content out there with reasonably good quality. You don’t have to automatically go to the most advanced and most expensive option first, I certainly didn’t and my current set up is the intermediate set up that was mentioned earlier,

One of the other things that I would suggest in this process is make sure that you’ve got a way to save your audio files so that they are easy to find, easy to edit and are safe should you want to repurpose them later?

I hope these tips have been helpful if you have any questions or comments, please email me at [email protected] Thank you very much for listening.

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The post Podcast setup – which is right for you? appeared first on Computers with Ease » Podcast Feed.