Podcasting day at Crafternoon Treats HQ – finally!

Podcasting day has dawned again in my not-very-minimalist craft space. I’m a bit rusty as its been nearly a month since I last recorded. My last vlog was the one to announce the giveaway winners for the Finishalong and it was during the editing that I started to feel unwell… Food poisoning struck later that evening and I was in bed for two days then not good for much for the rest of the week. I think five of us at the Stylecraft lunch got it – such a shame as we had such a great time and the people from Stylecraft were so upset.

We have no idea what caused it as we only had sandwiches and cake but I’m really off chicken wraps now and may never actually eat one again, so maybe that was the culprit. We are all better now thankfully and I’m getting back to a routine after illness and the hard slog of Fibre East really took their toll.

Today’s episode is a bit of a catch up and I’ll be publishing the notes tomorrow when the Episode (hopefully!) is ready to go live. Its an exciting day here as I’m also launching the Fabulous Four base and 13 new colourways in my Etsy shop update at 7pm. I did get ahead yesterday and did all the photos and listings, so this afternoon will be free for the long slog of editing that’s a major feature of podcasting day, and the day after…

I was telling someone recently that while it takes only maybe 2 hours to set up, record the podcast and pack away again, editing is the real time muncher. For an hour of publishable video I typically spend 8 hours doing the editing. Watching myself for 8 hours gets a bit tedious, I can tell you, so I do it in short bursts. I’ll try to do half today and half tomorrow and then save (that takes about 3 hours) and then load up (anything up to 6 hours). I’m on a slow internet connection that is the fastest possible for where I live until some magic with fibre optic cables happens (unlikely), so its a matter of going with the flow and setting everything up to make best use of the time when I’m just waiting for t’internet to get its you-know-what in gear.

Podcasting day: recording in the morning is good

I spent quite a while last week renovating my podcasting corner and all my hand dyed yarn is now uber organised on the Ikea wine racks I bought. They are also handing for hanging shawls and it all looks very yarny and inviting.

I don’t always have the small table out but on podcasting day I position it so that I get a good ‘scene’ behind me, get all the things ready that I want to talk about, and position the camera. As you can see, my method for seeing what the camera sees is a bit low-tech. I use a make up mirror behind the phone so that I can record with the better back camera lens and then view the screen in the mirror. Apparently you can mirror with a laptop and bluetooth to the phone but I once wasted about 10 hours trying to get that to work before giving it up as a bad job. This method works for me and what’s not broken, doesn’t need fixing.

I have a new microphone now that my daughter bought me so the sound quality is much easier to get right. The light is always a bit of an unknown though and I’ve not managed to source any good podcasting lights yet. Today was a perfect podcasting day with natural light because it was bright and sunny. I set up and started podcast recording at 10.30am and was done by 12.20pm…I try to record in the morning because the window is south facing. As long as I finish before about 1.30pm, the light is bright and white rather than glaring and yellow.

Mango often comes on the podcast but he’s very contrary so I never know whether he’ll put in an appearance. For this episode, he just enjoyed the sound of my voice from his new favourite sleeping spot – the crochet basket I made ages ago. Its been around my craft space for about 3 years but its only the last month or so that he’s taken to sleeping in it.

Behind him you can see my jewellery making and stitch marker making desk, which could really do with a bit of a tidy… He’s looking down at it very disapprovingly…

Lunch and a bit of crochet

I have to take a break after recording, not because I’m tired but because the technology can’t cope. My phone is usually low on charge so I have to plug that in and then wait for the files to save to the phone’s Dropbox, then upload via wi-fi to my computer’s Dropbox. I know record in 10 minute sections so that the files don’t take as long but its usually 2 hours before the first one makes it across completely. I can’t start any editing until it does, so today I took advantage of the nice day and had an hour of crochet with my sandwich in the garden room. I’m working on a new crochet sock so it was hard to tear myself away and back to the desk.

I know that I’ve got to get on with this podcast though as I’m going out this weekend, on the Saturday for my son’s 21st birthday and on Sunday to Harrogate Bead Fair. I need to get some of the editing done today, before I need to finish of the Etsy update and then get back to some crochet sock.

Podcasting day 3pm and its editing time

So far, four of the video segments I recorded have made it over so I’ve loaded them into my editing program, iMovie, which comes free on a Mac. I’ve got used to it now so I’m loathe to change as it does take a good while to work out how to use all the features. I use two screens because that makes everything so much easier. I’ve used two screens now for as long as I can remember for the science writing I do – once you’ve tried it, its so difficult to think about working on a laptop or going back to one monitor.

I’ve set it all up and the four segments of video that have come across already are in the software. I’ve also just spent about an hour sorting out the photographs I want to include, making sure they are processed and cropped to the right size and none of the files are too big. Photos need to be quite high resolution to go into a video as some people watch the podcast on TV, sometimes on a huge screen. But go too high and the final file size of the video makes it too big to upload to YouTube. Its all a balancing act.

Putting in the photos does take a lot of time too but I like to add stills and overlays to the video as I think people are going to get bored just seeing my face and hearing me prattling on.

The next section has about 15 minutes to go, according to the schedule on Dropbox, so I’m off to get a cuppa and maybe just a few little rows of sock…

4.30pm… two more sections loaded

I’ve now got an hour of footage in iMovie, so I’m ready to put in a couple of hours editing… just got to go and unpack the Tesco Drop and Shop delivery…

Right, nose to the screen now and let’s see what I can accomplish in the next couple of hours…

Then it will be time to make all those lovely Fabulous Four listings live and then relax with a bit more sock. I’ll not bore you any more with the tedious editing process but hopefully I’ll see you on YouTube tomorrow with a brand new live podcast 🙂

Quick update on Friday 11 August at 12.20pm

I’ve finished the mammoth edit – like I thought, its taken 8 hours and 30 minutes and now the 10GB file is saving to my computer. I had to do quite a bit of clearing out to create some space, but it will be ready for the big YouTube upload in an hour’s time so maybe, just maybe, the podcast will  be live by about 7pm this evening. Fingers crossed…

xxx Kathryn

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