Well people following me on Twitter have probably wondered why I posted that I don't want to produce Trivia War anymore. I'm just tired of the work. Each episode usually takes me somewhere between 7 and 12 hours to edit, depending on how long the shows last, how many guests are on, and how clean the audio is. I think about the podcasters who are able to record, edit, and publish an episode the same day or the next day, and do it well, and I'm sure the difference is that they are all podcasts who record everyone on one track (like Jay and Jack and Dharmalars). Robin and I have to record over Skype because of separate locations, and to keep the audio quality good, we have to record double-enders. This means that we each record our own audio, and it gets edited together. Well podcasters who record this way know that this usually results in an echo of the other person's audio on your track. You can either publish it that way, which is unacceptable to me, or spend hours silencing out the echo. When guests are involved, then I have to silence any echo on their tracks as well. Add in the music, and normal editing cuts of extraneous content and bloopers, and the hours add up quickly. Or not quickly, I guess.
Anyway, I'm at the point now where there are other projects I'd like to have time for - especially my web design business - that I just haven't been able to get to. I still love the show, love my co-host, love recording, love the trivia, games, and feedback, but I don't want to do the production anymore. So what can I do about it? Obviously, we can't record in the same room, so the next option is to lighten the work load. Robin and I tried to have him silence echo on his audio before sending it to me, but I wasn't satisfied with the finished product, and there were still several hours of work left for me anyway. Ideally, I would hire someone to produce the show for us, but I don't think that's financially feasible. Ideally, I would continue to produce the show if I could get it down to two or three hours of post-production, but I've already explained how that's not possible with our set-up. I also considered going down to releasing shows every other week but it's still a ton of work that I don't want to do.
I always thought that if it ever came time for me to move on from Trivia War, I'd like to pass it on to someone else. I'd love for it to keep going without me. I would be surprised if Robin wanted to take over production, though, because I doubt he has the time to do it either. So I guess what I'm saying is that if someone wants to take over for me, I'd consider it. I love this show, and I'd want to leave it in good hands, but I don't want it to end.
Right now, I'm looking at the next several episodes we have planned, and at the very least, I want to see it through to Pop Quiz 5 and the next Listeners' Choice. I realize we have guests lined up for March as well, so if there isn't another alternative by then, I'll proceed with those commitments as well, but that will probably be it for me.
I LOVE podcasting, as many of you know, and I'm sure this won't be the end for me. I might consider doing a one-woman show in the future, which would be short and occasional, but on what I don't know. Right now, I'm just tired.
5 comments:
I can understand why you are tired of the work, but it makes me sad that we would not have Trivia War anymore, or at the very least, no Sue. I hope you can work things out!
Hey there.
You've already covered one of my suggestions in the text when you talked about Robin removing his own echo (remember that I did the same thing with the Muppet Christmas Carol episode as I thought it would help to send the cleanest file possible).
The only other option I can think of is a Skype recorder - you can get pay ones like Pamela or perfectly functioning freeware ones like CallGraph.
You'll take a hit in quality of the voices (except your own, which will sound as pristine as if you just recorded yourself directly, but I find that people are able to handle that sort of thing in podcasts and it'll be a hugely significant reduction in the work you'd have to do.
Of course, you may not be able to spare the time for the other work, watching the movies, making up the questions etc - in that instance I'm afraid I'm not sure what to suggest.
Why not do a couple of shows with a Skype recorder and see what impact it has on your week?
The approval word I had to type to leave this message is chirmis - which to me is only a slightly jumbled form of "I'm Chris". I approve.
Thanks for the support guys! We have tried previously to record all audio on one track over Skype, and I was not satisfied with the audio quality.
I'm going to do what I can to streamline my editing process further in the next several weeks, and hopefully I'll be able to find a workable solution.
The Trivia of Future War
Sorry about the previous comment. I hoped it would be funny.
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