The life cycle of a NeowinCAST show

[Rob Veteran]

Hello all!

For those of you that somehow manage to miss the buzz, Neowin release a weekly podcast hosted by Christopher Vendemio (bangbang023) and Rob Wright (Rob). Covering some of the more discussion-worthy items of news from the previous week, the shows have a light-hearted feel and have a very open invitation for listener feedback. Through the new voicemail numbers, you're very welcome to give your views and suggest topics for discussion.

Last week a popular feature on the forums was the beginnings of a commentary of how the editing process occurs and just what's involved. This week we're going to try giving you a bit of feedback on today's recording and just what happens when. We'll update this post as we go through, so feel free to ask any questions and we'll do our best to give you some insight.

All times are GMT on the day of recording.

08:00 - Rob gets up ready for work and checks on the voicemails, encoding all the credible ones to MP3 format and sending them to Chris.

16:00 - Chris wakes up and checks out the voicemails, taking a look at the past week's news and compiling a show itinerary before sending to Rob.

17:00 - Rob leaves work, checks the voicemails once more and sets up the third PC used to record the show live. We use Ventrilo, a popular VOIP client with adjustable audio codecs to achieve the best sound quality possible. In total, three PCs are used - one to record, and two as clients during recording.

18:23 - Prior to recording, Rob spends a good 20 minutes untangling his headphone cable. Getting knots out of stretchy audio cable is no fun.

18:29 - Chris starts the Ventrilo server, participants connect for initial microphone levels check.

18:46 - Recording starts, welcome and first news item.

18:48 - First mess up of the night - Rob fluffs his words and ends up swearing. Restart methinks.

19:10 - Some nice rants by Chris and Rob...

19:25 - Special guest getting ready...

19:30 - Brief break, Rob eats some Skittles and Chris blows his nose. Oh yes. Special guest connecting.

19:48 - Show is now complete. Chris begins editing the RSS feed and prepares the news post and Rob begins the long process of editing the show.

19:53 - Rob exports the recorded file to a WAV file. The raw, unedited NeowinCAST this week is 46m15s in length.

20:35 - Rob: 12 minutes edited. Bored, but motivated.

21:08 - Rob: 25 minutes edited. Slowly losing the will to live.

21:47 - Rob: Core editing done. Headache. Applying compression.

21:54 - Rob: Edit in the voicemail, and top and tail the audio file with the theme music...

22:03 - Rob's bladder almost bursting, doing final audio tweaking and exporting to MP3.

22:09 - Final edited show: 40m59s in length, 937MB of raw audio, compressed at 128kb/s MP3 to around 38MB.

22:11 - Uploading MP3 to super-secret-staff-server for Chris.

22:20 - Chris is nowhere to be seen... Rob shouts at his IM client but somehow Vendemio doesn't hear.

22:25 - Chris gets back to see the IM and begins downloading the final file for ID3 tag editing and album art embedding.

22:28 - Chris begins uploading final file and prepares front page post for final publishing.

22:34 - File is upload, RSS feed is uploaded and news is posted on the front page. The process is complete.

...

Edited November 15, 2007 by bangbang023

[Veedems Veteran]

Yeah, being off today allowed me to sleep in for once. Felt so nice to get more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep.

[Veedems Veteran]

Man, took a while to get the show going, but we finally got into it. I only screwed up the intro like 5 times before finally getting through it lol. That's what I get for sleeping in. My brain is still asleep.

[Corris Veteran]

Woo!

I await the

21:47 - Rob: Core editing done. Applying compression. Then edit in voicemail.

21:50 - Rob: Goes to the loo.

21:57 - Rob: Returns from the loo.

22:05 - Rob: Makes a nice cup of tea to dunk hobnobs in.

[Veedems Veteran]

The process is complete. Poor Rob lol.

[Rob Veteran]

Ok now my eyes are drooping :p I need some food.

The two aren't necessarily connected, I know.

[Rappy Veteran]

Good Work Rob!

The play by play is quite cool :p

[DR3AMxCATCHER]

Listening to it now, I really like this one.

[Shof]

i like your choice of words rob :p

[Allan]

Ah ... what's a "cast"? :rofl: wait I mean, Neowin has a Neocast? wowsers ...

haha don't kill me guys.