We are trying to record voice-overs for Powtoons and are having difficulty recording the remote caller.
Windows 10
Is there a different remote meeting app we can try, or would we be better off recording individually and then mixing them in Audacity?
If you want good sound quality from both sides of the call, then recording them individually and mixing them later is the only solution. Any other method requires that the remote sound has to travel across the Internet, which invariably reduces the sound quality.
recording them individually and mixing them later is the only solution.
There are some interesting problems with that. You can’t be hands-free. You must be on headphones for good quality (see below).
Is there a different remote meeting app we can try
You might investigate the applications such as Zoom who will record both sides on individual sound files on their servers. Try this once before you schedule an interview with the president.
There is a trick no matter how you do it. Everybody should wear headphones. Most meeting distortion and damage is cause by the chat application being forced to manage echoes, feedback, and directional switching from each location. All that trash goes away if everybody is wearing headphones.
And way down at the bottom is basic recording. If you speak in a bathroom (or a modern, wood-floor living room or office), it’s going to sound like you recorded your voice in a bathroom. There is a Youtube explainer I just can’t watch because of his bathroom voice.
There is a common, new-user error that you have to do everything on one computer. That’s not how broadcasters and news orgs do it. This was done with two computers and a small sound mixer. Denise sounds like she’s sitting beside me. She’s actually three time zones away on a Skype call. We’re both wearing headphones (this was a production test and has edit errors).
https://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/DenisePodcastVer5.mp3
Koz
Thanks guys.
I’ll try Zoom, but if that doesn’t pan out we’ll record separately and put them together.
Post back with what worked.
Most of our solutions dance around the fact that Audacity is free and doesn’t cost anything. I recently had a dinner with a court transcription worker and she had pay-to-play software which would, in fact, record both sides as clearly as possible without all the other tricks or work-arounds.
In the early days of Skype, there was a company who provided a recording software which actually worked pretty well…for a while. As Skype got better and better at voice management, Skype changed the drivers and client software.
I’m picturing an alarm bell ringing at the recording software headquarters and a phalanx of coders would rip the new software apart and figure out how to work around it—and issue and update of their own. Of course, while this was happening, you were dead in the water if you were depending on their software for your production.
It wasn’t fun.
Still isn’t. It’s a constant struggle which is why most services offer server recording now.
Or do it the way I did it which is to turn one computer completely over to Skype/Zoom/Meetings and use the other one to record the first one’s microphone and speaker sounds. The two computers have no idea each other is there. They like it that way, and it doesn’t matter which chat service you use.
Koz