Recording Tips For When You Have A Weak Internet Connection

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Hey everybody, Tom Hazard here. I decided to go live with this on my personal Facebook page. Normally I would do something like this on my business brandcasters page or feed your brand podcast page, but I went live on my personal with this message right now. Because what I'm about to share with you applies not only to the podcasters out there that we support here at Potitize, but also there's a lot more of my friends and even family that are using tools like Zoom to communicate with each other. And some of those are being recorded. And this is really think of this as a public service announcement for all podcasters. Live streamers who use a video tool like Zoom is what I'm using right now going live on Facebook. But there are other tools that do it as well. And we're finding a lot of people are experiencing problems with their Internet connection right now and when they're recording it, especially if you're recording a something you want to save and hear later, see later. And of course that applies to all you podcasters out there.

That you may think you're recording everything properly, but there have been a lot of issues people are having in the last recent weeks, month or so where their recording quality, their recording, they think it's really good, it's going to be acceptable. But at least when we get it and review it to produce it, the audio may not always be there. And what I'm really talking about today is to raise awareness of, you know, your, to be aware of your Internet connection and how strong is it. And you know, lots of us probably have Internet connections through a cable provider. We don't anymore here. We used to through a cable provider. But when you have it through cable, when a lot of people are on the Internet in your neighborhood, your Internet bandwidth, your signal, you know, goes down and everybody sort of, they can siphon off your bandwidth. You know, in the neighborhood there's like this pipe carrying all this information on the Internet and the more people that are on it, it gets divided by all those people and your Internet connection can get weaker and that can impact your recording quality of your episode. And so I want to explain why that is. And I also want to give you some tips on how you can be aware of this and what you might do to try to improve that situation going forward.

So, first of all, to be aware when you are recording. Right now, I'm going to speak specifically to Zoom. There are many. I know people are using WebEx and GoToMeeting and probably Google Hangout still. And there's lots of other tools even I don't know how many people are still using Skype. It's not exactly the same anymore, but that's another potential tool you could be connecting with somebody on and still have Internet bandwidth issues. So Zoom at least gives you feedback. I think a lot of programs do give you feedback as to your signal strength in your Internet connection, if you will. I'm not talking about WI fi, okay? If you're using WI fi, I'm not talking about your internal WI fi in your environment, because that should be pretty solid if you have any kind of modern WI fi, but the Internet connection itself, Zoom will give you a little feedback. It's kind of like a signal bars, almost like you see on a phone. And if it goes down, you know that, hey, your Internet bandwidth that you're using is not that great, and it may be causing problems. And if it gets really bad, Zoom will put this big message in a black bar across the screen, right across, like my face here with white letters saying, your Internet connection is unstable. And when that's happening, even though you may be talking and you hear yourself, your guest, if you're interviewing somebody on the other end of that Zoom call may not be hearing you. So you need to be aware of that. You know, if they're not hearing your question or the context, you're putting around something so that, you know, you're expecting them to comment, they may not be able to hear you. So, you know, this is something that's really good, especially in a podcast interview situation, to prep your guest ahead of time, saying, hey, if at any time the Internet drops out and you don't really understand what I said or you didn't hear the question, just let me know. We can edit this. We always edit these recordings, but just ask me to restate it. Don't try to answer a question when you heard half of it or you didn't have all the context, you know, prep them a little bit for that. And at the same time, I want to raise your awareness that, you know, sometimes it may not be you. I mean, we have now FiOS here and really strong Internet connection, and we're not having near as many problems as we used to. But even with that, with so many people home over, you know, with the stay at home orders, with so many people home, a lot more home Internets are being used at much higher levels. And the reality is that.

There'S going to be some bandwidth issues. Like I said, there's a pipe that all this communication is traveling through the Internet, and the more people using it, the more crowded it gets, the more that there are going to be potential problems with you having a clean connection and communication with your guests. So here's one first really important tip to be aware of is that if you're noticing any bandwidth problems or you're hearing any, and it may not be you, I was just saying that a minute ago, it may not be you, it may be your guest or the person on the other end. Their Internet may not be as robust as yours. So then go ahead and make sure that you're able to hear that guest, because guess what? If there's some Internet dropouts and some of that electronic distortion and you're not hearing them very well, I hate to tell you, but I have to tell you, and I'm here to tell you that your recording is not going to be any better than what you're hearing of your guest, because their voice and their video, if you're doing video, is coming through the Internet, coming through that pipe. And if you're hearing it kind of garbled or every other word or not good enough to be a good quality recording, then it won't record any better than that because you are recording here on your side. We always are recommending all of our clients do record on their local computer, not in the cloud. Now, the reason we do that, just as a quick reminder, is that when you are recording in the cloud, you only get one recording, one audio file, with both of your audios, yours and your guests, mixed, and you can't separate them. And we don't recommend that. We always recommend you record on your local computer. And then there's a, especially in Zoom, there's a checkbox that says, and you should go into your recording tab in your preferences on Mac or your settings in Windows for Zoom and check that box that says save a separate audio file for each participant. And what that does is that, you know, if there are two of us talking in a conversation and we both talk at the same time, let's say, you know, I wanted to interject and say something, but the other person was Talking and I accidentally jump in too soon. I thought they were stopping, but they didn't, and I speak over them. Really what we would want when we edit that episode is to have the guest be heard and not me. Now, if we recorded in one file, nothing we can do about it. If you both talk at the same time, we either leave it all in or we can edit it all out. But I can't separate you. But if you check that box, it says save a separate audio file for each participant. Then you get multiple files, you get one for you. And when you're talking, you'll hear you, but when the other person's talking, it'll be silent. And then same thing for them for their recording. When they're talking, you'll hear them, but when you're talking, they're recording, it will be silent. That allows us to take where the two of us are talking at the same time. We can do a few things. We can either move it and slide the two apart. So maybe what I said was okay, even though I talked on top of that person, but we would be better if I said it after they were done. We can actually move it apart and essentially extend the length of the entire conversation a little bit. Or we could just take one of us out and leave the other one in. So that's an important thing. But again, when you do that kind of recording, which is recommended.

If I'm hearing my guest and it's kind of sketchy, there's nothing that's going to make that any better. So you may want to add, there's a few opportunities, a few possibilities for how you can improve this situation. One is to go ahead and ask your guests if they could repeat what they just said. Because, you know, you can just say, hey, pause. We'll have a couple seconds of silence, start again with that complete thought, and then as long as you hear it, it's going to be good, it's going to be recorded. Fine. And it can be edited and be very, very clean as a professional show when it's done, by the time it's published. So that's one opportunity. Have them repeat it. Another tactic. Now, this depends on how well you know your guest, how tech savvy they are. If they're another podcaster, they probably can handle this, no problem. But if you've got somebody who really hasn't used these recording video recording tools like Zoom very often, this may or may not be something you want to do, but you can give permission for your guest to record the same session. So you can record it on your side, they can record it on their side. And if you give them that opportunity to record and they are willing to upload that recording to a Dropbox or Google Drive or something and give you the recording when you're done, then we actually can take the recording from their side. Because when they're recording them, even if their Internet is bad, they're being recorded locally on the computer without going through the Internet. So their part of speech would be clean and so would yours on your side. So that's sort of a little more complicated way. But if you give them the ability to record, they're willing to give it to you. We can put all that together and make it one clean thing. So even if the Internet connection wasn't so great, but you understood what they said, so you're able to have that valuable conversation or have that dialogue, that question answer interface, as long as you understand the context, go ahead, have the conversation and ignore the quality of what you're hearing from them as long as they're recording. Because you know when you get it from them, it's going to be solid.

Another tip is if you're like me and you're working from home and your kids are home, and my kids are home every day now. I mean, I've been used to working independently and working from home for years. So has Tracy, and that's great. But having the kids on top of us all day long, no, we're not used to that. We don't usually do that. And when they're home, they're either online in a class situation, they're using Internet more, or they're playing Minecraft with their cousins for an hour every day. We actually scheduled that. That happens in our household. There's one hour from east coast to west coast where all the cousins get together and they play Minecraft, or when they're allowed to, they may be streaming and watching something on their device, their computer or their, you know, Kindle. And if they're streaming a lot of stuff at the same time you're recording, guess what? That's gonna really hurt your local bandwidth of your Internet connection and your WI fi. I highly recommend is another important tip that before you're going to record that episode and you should know when you're gonna do it, it's probably scheduled with a guest. You should ask your kids to do something else during that time. Maybe go out in the backyard and play a little bit, or get some sun, read a book, whatever. But stop the screen time. Don't use My Internet, because I need it for my recording. So that may help you very well. And, you know, if you don't. If you're someone that's a do it yourself podcaster and you don't edit your stuff, you just really record it, you're putting it out live on Facebook, maybe like I am right now, and that's it. You're gonna leave it, or you're gonna download that recording and then you're gonna put that out as a podcast later. Maybe you're not gonna record at all. Then you've gotta be a little more creative in how you address this issue. And if you don't hear your guest very well, you just gotta politely being in. In the moment of recording, being live in your show you're recording, you've gotta politely ask them, hey, could you repeat that? There was a little connection problem. And I wanna make sure our guests hear that. Address the elephant in the room for your audience, whether they're live on Facebook or they're actually, you know, watching later as a podcast published, you know, days later or even a week later. Address the elephant in the room. Acknowledge that. Hey, you know what? Everybody knows. I think every podcast listener today knows. And if they don't, they're a very new listener and they're going to learn quick that podcaster hosts conduct interviews over the Internet. They're not always together in the same room with their guests when they do it, and especially now. Nobody, I hope, is in the same room with their guest when they're recording. So you want to then.

Ah, you know what? This is a real good example of the trials and tribulations of live recording, because I just lost my train of thought. But you know what? I'm being real with you about it. What? I was on a roll. I know, and I totally lost my train of thought. I think I looked over at my wife and she's looking really beautiful today. And that. That just distracted me. So hopefully you can forgive me for that. But you just got.

So. Damn it, I wish I knew what I was saying. Internet kids, Netflix. Oh, don't edit. All right, here we are. Acknowledge the elf in the room. Like, I just acknowledged that I lost my train of thought. Guess what? I could probably leave that in a podcast and my audience would be fine with it because I'm being real with them. I'm being authentically me. And listeners, viewers, they really like that as much as anything else. You would probably say they want you to be real with them. They don't want you to have a facade Right. So anyway, acknowledge the elephant in the room that, hey, guys, we're recording this over the Internet and we've got a little issue with the connection. So could you just repeat that for a guest? Want to make sure they heard this because I have a feeling this is valuable information that they'd like to hear. So there are ways you can deal with that in an authentic way that listeners will still appreciate. One of the things I do, of course, and we recommend from all of our customers, just going to say it right here. We're going to recommend you all use a good quality microphone, not just the one built into your computer, because it makes a huge difference in the quality of your sound. And listeners do want professional sound. They understand maybe your quality is going to be better than your guest because they may not have a good mic and it's coming through the Internet, but at least you, the host, should have stellar audio. So let's see tips about recording on Zoom. So, oh, Facebook, I want to talk about going live on Facebook. And actually after that, last thing I'm going to talk about is background if you're doing video. So let's see, what was the first. Was the middle thing. The first thing I just said, Facebook going live. Damn it. Really, it's. You know what, I'm an early bird. I'm a morning person, and it's in the middle of the afternoon and it's been intense. So forgive me for that. So going live on Facebook in February, I got a brand new MacBook Pro computer. Okay. And a lot of the reasons, I had one that was seven years old. I don't get a new computer every year, every other year. It'd been a long time and it was due and I was having all kinds of problems with it just because it's old and technology's changed a lot. So I got a new MacBook Pro, and I was really looking forward to improved performance with, you know, Zoom and going live on Facebook. And I had not been having some good experience right out of the gate with this new computer, especially going live from Zoom. Now you have to have a paid Zoom account to go live on Facebook from it. And, you know, I've always had that. But there's a point at which you start your Zoom meeting and then you click a button that says, go live on Facebook. It opens up your browser, connects to your Facebook account, and lets you start to create, you know, type in a title and description and go live. Well, at one point, there's this black screen and you get a little circle almost Like a watch, right? That while it processes and gets ready. And it was getting hung up there all the time and I wasn't able to go live. Very inconsistent. And what I found. And I hope this will help you if you've been having this trouble. Number one, yes. Having a new modern computer is going to be very helpful. Definitely. And you want to, you know, your technology, if it's newer and faster, you're going to have better performance. That's always true. But more importantly, I'm one of those guys that I leave my Chrome browser up pretty much all day and actually days on end with all kinds of crazy tabs in it because, oh, I don't want to forget to do that. I don't want to forget to do that. So I leave it up. I don't close it down and clean it out every day. That was hurting me. And that was, I think, my biggest issue with going live on Facebook. There's something about Chrome and your cache and how much stuff that your computer is keeping in RAM memory, that when you have all those different webpages still up, it's having to store all that stuff in temporary memory, leaving less temporary RAM memory for the Zoom communication. And guess what? These video Zoom communications are very demanding. They need a lot of system resources. So the lesson for me was, you know, hey, knucklehead Tom, you know, you gotta turn your computer off and reboot once in a while or shut your Chrome browser and clear your cache. You want to have a pretty clean. If you want things to go really smoothly, you got to have a pretty clean situation without a lot of overhead on your computer. So mostly I found that comes down to my browser. And of course, if you have an older computer and your hard drive is almost filled up all the time, that's a bigger issue. That's what I was having back in January with the seven year old MacBook that I'm constantly. The hard drive was too small and I had to constantly delete stuff off of it. That became an issue too.

Okay, so last thing quickly, before I go, I want to share with you about your background. If you're gonna do video, uh, oh, I'm getting a late breaking news for something else. Yes. Oh, okay, good. Thank you. Good point. That'll fit right in here, Tracy, because it's related to. So if you're gonna do video on a regular basis and you're gonna use that video, and I would argue even if you're not gonna publish video to YouTube, but you're doing anything live on Facebook, you're using that video, you need to be intentional about what is all around and behind you in your environment. Now, you don't have to be like me. And I'm actually using a green screen. I'll give you a little peek behind the curtain here, and I'm gonna just briefly go, none. So now you see, hey, this is my green screen background, right? But. And here is my background that. Now I really love this virtual. I mean, they have a virtual background and they call it virtual background. I guess it is virtual no matter how you slice it. But it is actually using the green screen to make the quality much better. I got this roller shade green screen just recently off Amazon and got one and tested it. It's actually hanging from the ceiling. It pulls down like a roller shade when I need it, and I can put it away when I don't. And I love it. It's fantastic. Works incredibly well to the point where I actually bought another one for another location, another room where sometimes I do some of these things so that I can do this anywhere. But you can change. You can use any, you know, you want to know the right proportion. And they have that information on zoom, the size, the background you need to make it. Basically it's 16 by 9 proportion. And for. For that size image and create a background and you can change them on the fly. I have different ones for different types of meetings that I use, different podcast episodes that I record. I'll have different ones. And you can even use videos. And I've been playing with that too. And that's kind of fun, actually. I'll show you one quick. I've been having fun with this because, you know, anybody who really knows me knows that one of my things is 3D printing. And this is one of my designs. It's kind of distorted, but it's a necktie that's 3D printed. And I created this, you know, video that sort of oscillates and repeats, you know, and I use that when I record something with just me and tracy on the 3D printing podcast. So, you know, you can have different purposes and have different backgrounds, and it works incredibly well. But if you're gonna use this background feature, you gotta have a really modern, fast computer. I think they, their recommendation system requirements are an i7 processor or more or better or newer. So if you have an older or a slower processor, this might not work as well for you. That's just a limitation of it. And if that's the case, what would you do with your background? I'm gonna Peel back the curtain literally here and show you what I used to do. And of course now I'm trying to get this thing to go up. And there we go. Live, live broadcast. You can see I actually had a have and have had for a long time a printed fabric backdrop behind me of sort of the same thing. But it has lots of problems. I mean, it's not stretched really tight. It's fabric, it's hanging, it moves. I've, you know, people get in the way. So you use the green screen and it's just, it's really clean now. Depending on your hair, there can be a little fuzziness around you. I find lighting has a lot to do with that. Really good lighting. I've got a diva light and if I turn my glasses up, and I'm sure some of you have seen this already, but if I look up, you can see, hey, I've got a light up there. Projecting good light into your environment makes it better. And then I'm just using the default camera on my MacBook Pro right now. But if I use a USB webcam like a Logitech or there's a bunch of different kinds out there, a hundred bucks or less, you don't have to spend a lot. Using that kind of an external camera makes not only you look better, your color of your skin and the, the cutting you out from the green screen quality is better. The virtual background, the whole system actually works a lot better when you use an external USB camera. So also another thing I do want to let you know because remember we started talking and this is relative to this virtual background. When I started this broadcast, I was talking about Internet and making sure you have awareness of things with Internet. Well, as much as I love this virtual background stuff, I think it's really killer. It really has a negative impact on your bandwidth. It takes a lot of bandwidth to do this and processing power in your computer too. So it's not only is your processor need to be a very fast one, like I said, I 7 or better. In reality, your Internet connection, you got to have a strong one. This is a lot of information and data that's being pushed through your Internet connection. So I find that Internet companies are offering faster speeds at lower prices now. They're getting a lot of business from everybody. They're not hurting as much as other businesses. More and more communities have fiber optic available, which gives you much faster speeds where this just becomes a non issue. I'll tell you, in Southern California, I'm paying like $104 a month for the fastest Internet, that's FiOS and it's getting me 500Mbps upload speed and usually something less than that, which is kind of surprising download speed, but really good Internet and it's not terribly expensive, at least for me because I'm on zoom, usually more than half the day, sometimes all day long in my business. So anyway, I think I've gone on enough. I hope you have are getting some value out of these tips for recording, especially live broadcasting, but also just recording quality audio for your podcast. I don't want to see any of you think you've had this incredible interview. It's really good stuff. And then at the end of the day when we go produce it for you, we're not going to be able to hear your guests very well. That would just be a tragedy and I don't want to see any of you have that problem. So anyway, hope you enjoyed it. Do you have any questions or if you want to know, you know what I'll do? I'll post a link for that green screen roller shade eventually in the comments under this Facebook post. So if you want that, I'll put that there. Probably going to put this out as an episode of Feed you'd Brand my podcast for podcasters so there'll be a blog post eventually. Probably going to be a week or two because I have others in the queue, but there'll be a blog post that'll have links to those resources as well. So anyway guys, hope you enjoyed this. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you again soon.

You've been listening to the Feed you'd Brand podcast. We'd love to hear your comments on today's show as well as suggestions for future topics and guests. Visit us online@feedyourbrand.co or on social edyourbrand. Thanks for exploring content marketing and podcast influence with us.