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Foxdenuk's blog

The Absolutely Intercultural session

Tue, 2006-12-12 10:38 — Foxdenuk

This was my first live show. It was short and I had responsibility for very little but still I had problems concentrating even though I have quite a bit of experience hosting live online multimedia meetings. A huge thank you to Jeff for seeing to the webcast hosting, streaming and recording. What was there left to do? Hosting and keeping an eye on the chat. I discovered that all my attention was centred on the hosting and I missed most of the chat as a result.

Skype was not optimal but the recording is usable (which is one of my main goals). Have a little question about how I download Jeff's audio file. It behaves differently on different computers and here at work it opened in in Windows media player and I was able to go to files and 'save as' but then got only the first ten minutes?? When I tried save as again I was horrified to find 3 Gb waiting to be downloaded so stopped the second attempt. (The first attempt had told me the file was about 37Mb which seemed reasonable).

My first telephony recording...

Sun, 2006-12-10 19:47 — Foxdenuk

... happened during this evening's webcast academy weekly meeting. I thought it had happened last Thursday but when I listened to the playback I found that the flat level of noise was not me being recorded quietly but was in fact noisy silence.

However over the last week I have made progress in eliminating echo on Skype by dividing the job of recording and playback between my USB soundcard and my internal soundcard.

And this evening I managed to make a recording. The attached file is not coherent as it consists of three test slices of the meeting and I have not edited it at all. I notice that the sound levels are very variable. I was controlling sound levels through Audacity but the recording would need more manipulation to level them out  even further if I were publishing this.

Skypecast booking system broken

Thu, 2006-12-07 17:35 — Foxdenuk
As I continue to fail to record using VAC, I thought it was just my luck that I couldn't book a Skypecast for Monday. Using the skypecast booking system and having chosen the date I got the message that it was not possible to book a session more than two weeks in advance. I found this baffling but having notified Skype support they have replied that this is a problem they are aware of and which they are working to rectify. Just in case anybody else out there is experiencing the same frustration.

Recording success, communication failure

Thu, 2006-11-30 21:14 — Foxdenuk

I have finally today succeeded in recording both ends of a telephony call after much playing with sound settings and after experimenting with a different computer and different versions of Audacity. My settings were as follows:

Equipment: Laptop with wireless connection

External USB sound board Audio Advantage Roadie

Headphones and mike plugged into the Roadie-
  1. Control Panel Settings
Ø          Audio: Recording, RoadieØ          Playback, RoadieØ          Voice: Recording RoadieØ          Playback Roadie
  1. Sound Properties
Ø          Recording: Stereo MixØ          Playback: Mike checked
  1. Audacity (ver 1.2.3) I/O
Ø          Audio in RoadieØ          Audio out: Roadie
  1. Skype
Ø          Audio in RoadieØ          Audio out RoadieØ          Let Skype decide: unchecked
  1. Audio Repeater
Ø          Wave in sound cardØ          Wave out: Roadie

I don't understand why this combination works. The settings in audio repeater seem to be exactly the opposite of those recommended in Jeff's screencast. I wish I understood more what I was doing!

My progress (or lack thereof) to date

Tue, 2006-11-21 07:48 — Foxdenuk
I cannot attend a meeting on Thursday (nor on Sunday) as I am in Germany for a long working weekend.  Webcasting has not crept to the top of my agenda yet, but rest assured that it will very soon (have been preparing for the German trip).  I am not sure that my set-up at home (from where I am most likely to webcast) is fast enough for webcasting.

Step by step

Mon, 2006-11-13 18:27 — Foxdenuk

I am beginning to realise that what I need to produce is a set of procedures which are tailored to my equipment and set-up. I also realise that, had I come to webcasting via the webcasting books available currently on the market then I probably would never have even attempted it, as the extracts of books currently available that I have seen sound sooo complicated. Anything published was probably written at least a couple of years ago and I guess things move fast.

I am also beginning to realise that it is highly over-ambitious to think that I could host a webcast before the end of the year. Since I had sound problems yesterday, all I could do was watch Jeff's desktop in the webhuddle. What an education! Constantly switching from one window to the other, adjusting this, adjusting that, keeping an eye on the other. Not sure I'm up to multi-tasking to that degree as well as keeping up my end of the conversation!

How I could use webcasting

Tue, 2006-10-24 13:36 — Foxdenuk

I have been giving some thought to how I could make use of webcasting skills. The first option which springs immediately to mind is in our Absolutely Intercultural podcasts. I wouldn't want every episode to be a webcast but I can see a place for occasional webcasting on that format.

I have just been asked to lead a project about experiential learning in which I have to deliver inspiring teacher training courses in that area so that struck me as one of the sub-projects my participants could do.

I am also project leader for a European project developing mentor training materials and I had already decided that we would have some online training sessions prior to our next meeting in March and so it is possible that these sessions could be in the form of a webcast.

My intro

Tue, 2006-10-24 07:45 — Foxdenuk

Well it seems that I didn't upload the file last time. So here we go again.

Audacity behaving strangely

Mon, 2006-10-23 14:51 — Foxdenuk

In preparing my short recording for my intro I mixed down what had been a stereo recording but everytime I opened the file after saving it, it was back to stereo. Strange, I do this all the time but this time it just didn't seem to want to allow me to edit it down to mono. I'll be interested to see what I sent out, mono or stereo?

Experiment with recording both ends of a Skype call? Is it cheating to use Pamela? This is a sKYPE ADD-ON which I use. I paid about 15 $ for it and it seems to work well enough once you have got the trick of dampening down the sound of the caller so that the person you're calling can be heard properly.

My first recording

Mon, 2006-10-23 14:42 — Foxdenuk

Here is my intro recording, unedited. My challenge is going to be sounding coherent live so I challenged myself to see if I could record something which could go out as is.

A long time ago I used to do something which I think is peculiarly British and that is hospital radio (people joked that people felt worse rather than better after listening to hospital radio) so I have a little experience of live performance (apart from teaching of course!). I also did a couple of radio interviews, again a very long time ago bit the interesting thing was that the live interview went far better than the interview which I knew was being recorded where I ended up straying off the subject rather badly.

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