Comments on Podbang 2009
It was really fun, first of all. It was great to have an excuse to spend a bit of time with a single story. It was also rewarding to have some access to the experience of creating some fan-work, since I don't write stories myself. I read fanfic; I also listen a lot to podcasts of various kinds and have made some of my own in work-related contexts, so the podbang proposal was very appealing. Best of all, though, was the thought that it was a gift--that was not only inspiring, but also helped to contain the otherwise limitless range of choice offered by the huge array of amazing fic available.
What I learned: that I loathe Garageband. It's a surprise--otherwise I'm an unshakeble devotee of the Cult of Mac, but I found Garageband--though pretty to look at--terrifically inefficient and frustrating. I recorded and edited all 4+ hours of my podfic with Garageband, and it consumed unnecessarily vast amounts of time in "mixdowns"--not such a big deal, maybe, when your podcasts are 10 minutes long but really dreary when they develop some length. Plus there's ultimately no way to correct variations in volume (at least none I was able to discover); what I ended up doing was putting the whole thing through something called "Levelator" which settled things down a bit. I find I like Audacity better, although I note that some participants had serious problems with it and am interested in hearing more about that.
The nice thing Garageband offers is an easy way to create chapters, and attach artwork.
I also decided to stop fooling around with tiny lightweight microphones and get a proper one.
On the whole--I've had a great time. I'm grateful for people's comments (never got those before, nice!) and I'm looking forward to downloading and listening to other people's recordings. I recommend it to everyone.
What I learned: that I loathe Garageband. It's a surprise--otherwise I'm an unshakeble devotee of the Cult of Mac, but I found Garageband--though pretty to look at--terrifically inefficient and frustrating. I recorded and edited all 4+ hours of my podfic with Garageband, and it consumed unnecessarily vast amounts of time in "mixdowns"--not such a big deal, maybe, when your podcasts are 10 minutes long but really dreary when they develop some length. Plus there's ultimately no way to correct variations in volume (at least none I was able to discover); what I ended up doing was putting the whole thing through something called "Levelator" which settled things down a bit. I find I like Audacity better, although I note that some participants had serious problems with it and am interested in hearing more about that.
The nice thing Garageband offers is an easy way to create chapters, and attach artwork.
I also decided to stop fooling around with tiny lightweight microphones and get a proper one.
On the whole--I've had a great time. I'm grateful for people's comments (never got those before, nice!) and I'm looking forward to downloading and listening to other people's recordings. I recommend it to everyone.