Looks like sometime last night we blew out the bandwidth on our hosting, so a few of the older LOSTCasts are unavailable right now. I got the latest one up, and the link in the previous post reflects the new URL. Josh upgraded his hosting to allow for additional bandwidth, but it looks like those changes haven't taken effect yet. I'll try to get the rest up on OurMedia as soon as possible.
Thanks for everyone's patience. Although it's a pain to deal with bandwidth... it means we're doing well. That, and we're learning how to optimize the file size of our podcasts.
Just listened to your last podcast. I used to work as a sound engineer and I've got a tip to help you cut the size of your MP3 files.
There seems to be an echo in the room you record that's audible in the podcast. It's not enough to be annoying, but it can affect the size of your recording given that you're using a variable bit method. The echo gets recorded, so any dead air, no matter how short, is getting filled up with some degree of reverberation. With variable bit recording, completely (zero signal) dead air will take up almost no file space; High-frequency information (like the echo) takes up the largest amount of space.
Sound proofing will help cut down on the amount of high-frequency information in the file, and should help cut down the size. The space savings may be marginal, but I thought it'd be worth mentioning.
Simple soundproofing can be done by just making sure there are few hard, flat surfaces in the room, or things like duvets or empty egg cartons hung on the wall to absorb sound.
If you've got the tools, you might also want to run the audio through a gate/limiter, and the gate can be adjusted to "clean" the reverb-filled dead air.
Great show, keep it up.
Posted by: Zang | October 27, 2005 at 05:10 PM
the year can't be 2009 because Jack doesn't know that the redsox have won the world series.
Posted by: max | January 08, 2006 at 06:36 PM