I have recorded five podcasts this week, published two, and will have edited three by the end of the week.
This was not actually planned way back at the beginning of Monday.
First, the really nice unplanned part was being able to jump at recording opportunities, so that this week's Kodsnack was actually scheduled, recorded, and edited within about 20 hours before release. I also think Monday represented a milestone in that I recorded two completely different episodes back to back, with literally five minutes' break inbetween. Good times!
Second, the more annoying unplanned part was the total technical and tactical failure that was the first attempt at recording this week's Björeman // Melin. We have had most technical problems imaginable at some point or another, but this was the very first time we actually lost the entire episode. On Tuesday evening, we sat down and recorded our impressions of Apple's we-got-paid-so-much-to-push-5G-until-we-are-blue-in-the-face-event. We had a really fun three-person discussion about phones, Homepods, Magsafe for Mac pro, and wrapped up with a completely off the record discussion about what and how to watch the movies of the Marvel cinematic universe. Again, good times.
Then I sat down on Wednesday to start editing - it is after all always fun to get event commentary out soon-ish after the event - and realized something had gone seriously wrong.
As background, the way we like to record is that everyone records their own sound locally, while I record my own sound plus that of everyone else as it comes to me over whichever application we currently use to chat. I end up with a stereo file with my own voice on one track, everyone else on the other track, and, ideally, separate tracks with each other voice straight from that person. This enables me to easily line up all the individual voices, ensures better sound quality should there be network issues, and enables me to edit so that people will not talk over eachother in the final episode. Should something go wrong with a local recording, I can fall back to using my recording of everyone. I have high-quality sound of everone regardless of internet weather, and I can always fall back to my recording should there be problems with the local recordings.
Well, for everyone but me, it turns out. Somehow, my recording ended up being two identical tracks of the other participants, and exactly no track of my voice.
I stared in disbelief at the four tracks, all of which contained conspicuous gaps whenever I had been speaking, and felt that sinking feeling in my stomach.
Somewhat to my surprise, I was not banished, and everyone was up for a re-recording the same evening. This time, the Marvel discussion was included too, so I feel listeners gained something in the process.
I now have a completely separate section inside my Audio hijack setup where I also record my own microphone straight to a separate file. Yes, just like I always ask everyone else to.
So, how did that happen?
I wish I knew. I think it might have something to do with restarting an app after a recording has been started in Audio hijack. I often stream some music before our scheduled recording, to see that the streaming setup is working, so sometimes the session has been running for quite a while before I actually sit down to begin the episode. Perhaps this was one of those times where our conferencing application had discovered an update in the meantime, and I mindlessly let it update and restart because there were still a few minutes to go? I do feel like it had made more sense if I had got a completely silent channel in that case, but who knows when it comes to computers?