How to nail your long distance interview recordings

Today on 5 Minute Mondays, you’ll learn how to nail your remote interview recordings.

Watch our Auphonic Tutorial for Podcasters to see if it will help your workflow.

If you're looking for a plugin to help remove reverb in your recordings, consider the ERA 4 Reverb Remover.

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Transcript

Travis:   0:00
today on five minute Monday's you'll learn how to nail your remote interview recordings. Welcome to five minute Mondays. We're bringing the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing.  

Travis:   0:15
Now. Today we're gonna be answering a question from Katherine. Katherine's question is what equipment is the minimum for recording or conducting a remote interview if we use the mikes with stands of the boom arm. But there's a background noise going on, mainly air conditioning or some conversation. Is that effective? And then what kind of filters work best for final production of audio that's captured in large spaces?  

Travis:   0:39
So I'm going to answer each of these in sequence and make some assumptions that I think are what Katherine is going for that would be relevant to you. Ah, as a podcaster, the 1st 1 is what equipment do you need to actually do? A long distance interview recording. So all you need is a one person set up, so whatever you would normally use to record by yourself in your home or in your office wherever you record, that is all you need. Gear wise, you don't need any extra equipment in order to long distance interviews. What you do need is a software that will allow you to capture that audio and then use that in your final episode. And there are two that I really recommend. The 1st 1 is Squadcast, which was designed for podcasting. Specifically, it's something that I've shifted almost completely to with my podcast interviews when I'm doing those long distance and just been super happy with the quality of those interviews. But Zoom is another really good solution. It's a online meeting space, and you can record those meetings. And the cool thing about Zoom is if you're just doing one other person, so it's just you and one person on the call. You can record those forever for free. So if you're looking for something to dip your toes in and just kind of get your feet wet, you could go with Zoom. But if you're gonna be doing these long distance interviews consistently than definitely investing a software like Squadcast.

Travis:   1:58
now, the second question is, how do you deal with background noise? So the second in the third question I think it's important before we get into solutions to first say it's easier to coach your guest on how to give you good audio rather than trying to fix bad audio in postproduction, right? So just sending them an email beforehand, saying, Being a quiet space, you know, use a microphone. Or if you don't have a microphone used like a Bluetooth headset or apple earbuds, something that will capture your audio, that's not your speakerphone. Just giving people a couple simple instructions to let them know. Hey, this is kind of the situation need to be in to make sure that you have good audio. Don't be in a taxicab driving to New York City when we do this podcast interview that will go a long way.  

Travis:   2:44
But if after you do that you do have some background noise, then what you're looking for is a noise or hum reduction filter. And most audio editing software's will have that. If the one that you using does not, you can look for a plug in that does that or you can use a software like Auphonic, which is an online software that can do that noise and hum reduction for you, and I'll leave a link to our Auphonic tutorial for podcasters in the show notes for this episode. So that's what you do with background noise. Um, if you're doing the background noise and the hum reduction on your own in your editing software, it is helpful to record a 10 seconds Silence Audio put silent air quotes there because you're gonna have that background noise. But that's gonna make it much easier to isolates those frequencies if you're not talking to each other in that period. So that's just a little helpful. Tidbit.  

Travis:   3:35
If you're trying to edit that out yourself and then as faras capturing audio and large spaces, I'm guessing what Katherine is talking about is echo or reverb. Um, you are looking for a D reverb effects now. There are plenty of plug ins that will take care of that for you. If your editing software does not have that function or doesn't have that effect built in, then you can check out the ERA 4 reverb remover, which is an audio plug in that you can install and use in apps like GarageBand Audacity, Hindenburg Adobe Audition. It works in basically most of the audio editing software is that you would be using, and so you can download that. Do a 14 day free trial, see if it's something you want to use into the future. But again, you should focus more on getting your guest to be in a good recording situation and good recording environment so you can capture good audio instead of trying to fix it on the fly in postproduction.  

Travis:   4:33
Well, that's it for today. Hit the subscribe button if you're watching this on YouTube, or you can subscribe to the five minute Money's podcast on your favorite app, squeeze even more podcast-related content into your life. And if there's something you want me to cover on a future episode of the podcast, make sure you click the link of the show notes to submit your question. Thanks for listening and is always keep podcasting.