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Better Video Podcasting with CueCam Presenter
Podcasting helped me find my voice. Even though I’d been recording music for decades, it wasn’t until I started recording a podcast with my friend Ivanka that I started to become confident in my own voice. I remember once I was in a triggering social situation (think - feeling casually judged by a rich person) and then I went away to work on the podcast. When I came back, instead of feeling defensive and small, I had an effortless confidence and humour that transformed the dynamic. I felt myself.
You can find the same thing. You don’t need a successful podcast, you just need to be consistent and keep turning up.
When I started recording my podcast with my friend Ivanka, we had no plan. We didn’t even have a name. We just showed up and hit record, after a couple of hours (and several hours more editing) we had our first episode.
As time went on we got better and better on-mic, with less and less editing being needed for something we were happy sharing.
But this was the problem. I was losing a whole day a week just editing the podcast. Even if I needed to cut and trim less, the edit took almost as long, because I had to listen through in real time. I’d do a first rough cut, then I’d stick it on a private Soundcloud and listen to it over the weekend, noting down time codes that needed to be fixed. Then I’d go through the whole thing again fixing up each thing I’d noted. Then I’d share another version for us both to listen to, before finally releasing the episode on the Tuesday.
It meant I had the podcast hanging over me all weekend, every week, and it was taking way too much time.
The good thing is, after recording dozens of episodes, we were getting better and better, so I said let’s just record it live.
This was a revelation. Now instead of spending hours on editing and days thinking about the prospect of editing, I could set up the podcast for release immediately after recording. I got my Mondays back and I got my weekend back.
Our podcast wasn’t the simplest format. For example, while most podcasts have some title music and a sting they repeat throughout the episode, I would pick different pieces of my own music every week, depending on the conversation. This gave a lot of life to the recordings and wasn’t something I wanted to sacrifice.
So I had an elaborate OBS set-up which I’d need to prepare with music and video clips in advance of each recording. I’d use screen recording and an elaborate Audio Hijack rig to capture Ivanka’s side. Later on I moved to Ecamm Live’s Interview Mode which made it a bit easier, but I was still doing a lot of live scene juggling, and bringing in the music breaks was awkward.
We started a new, edited, podcast later on called “Can You See My Screen” which was intended to be more useful and we hoped to build a wider audience. But this meant we had to tighten up our intros and plan interview questions. I had my intro taped to my camera on a little slip of paper.
Point is, I’ve done a lot of video podcasting and even if I didn’t have a hugely successful podcast, I did experience a full range of technical challenges.
Since then, I’ve been building CueCam Presenter, and I’ve been addressing each of the podcasting pain points as I go!
Intros, outtros and interview questions? CueCam’s teleprompter makes this trivial.
Music and video breaks? CueCam’s smart scripts make this easy.
Audio capture? CueCam uses the Apple’s ScreenCaptureKit to capture Zoom’s audio without any need for Audio Hijack.
Editing? CueCam makes it easy to come into a recording with a solid plan, meaning editing can be avoided entirely.
Recording live? Because you capture the real flow of the conversation. It also means you’ll find out immediately if there were any technical problems (instead of a couple of days later when it’s too late to fix anything!)
Tags and episode descriptions? Yeah, these can be another headache, but CueCam will automatically summarize and add time stamps ready for uploading to YouTube.
Why YouTube?
YouTube now supports podcasts directly. This means that you don’t need to pay for a podcasting platform or SoundCloud, you can publish your podcast for free. I like that.
So how can you use CueCam for your podcast?
If you’re recording solo, there’s not much to it. Set up CueCam, write your script (or paste it in) and you can record.
If you’re bringing someone else in remotely, here’s how you can do it.
Set up your CueCam script:
podcast intro / title sequence / guest intro / screen capture / interview questions / breaks / outtro / titles
It’s easy to get distracted by the technicalities.
Yeah you need a good mic, a decent camera (your iPhone will do) and a computer, but beyond that, most of the value comes from what you say.
The only way to get better at speaking is to speak. With CueCam I’m trying to do everything I can not to cloud your speech with weird technical problems.
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