75: Using Cleanfeed for Remote Interviews (and Other Updated Recommendations)
This show has been going for over two years now and podcasting (and the technology used to podcast) has changed in those two years.
So, in this episode, I'm providing my updated recommendation on which platform to use for remote recordings; and how to navigate the interesting quirks of that platform. I'm also discussing updates on what program you can use to do solo recordings on a Mac and which microphone you should purchase.
UPDATE: I stopped using Cleanfeed in early 2021 after I started experiencing significant glitches/technical issues with the platform. I have been using Riverside.fm (linked in the resources section) ever since. However, I have to be honest and say that I’m becoming increasingly more frustrated with the platform as I and a lot of others have been experiencing issues with this platform as well. When it works as it should, it’s the best. If you’re not comfortable rolling the dice, Zoom will be lower quality but does tend to be more reliable.
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*I’m having technical issues with the program I use to record video tutorials. As soon as the support team resolves the issue, the tutorial will be uploaded*
Cleanfeed Video Tutorial (NOTE: Please do not judge Cleanfeed by the quality of the audio in the tutorial video. It was recorded via the program I use for screen recordings, not Cleanfeed.)
Riverside.fm (Affiliate Link)
Samson - Q2U Dynamic USB Microphone
Podcasting for Coaches on Instagram
Podcasting for Coaches on Facebook
My Launch Consultation Packages
Online Course | How to Start a Podcast (For Your Coaching Business)
Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 75 of podcasting for coaches. Right off the bat, I do want to bring up the fact that I forgot to make an announcement last week, you may have noticed that last week was supposed to be an interview episode, but it was actually solo. For the time being, I have decided to suspend my interview episodes. And the reason for this is the same one, as I'm sure you're having to make some changes to your normal routine for and that is, of course COVID-19. And the global pandemic. I normally record my interviews Monday through Friday during the day, because that's when a lot of my people are available to do these interviews. However, a lot of people have their children at home right now when they're not really expecting it or used to that. And my husband is actually now also working from home. So he has taken over my office, which is where I normally record. And he does still work for an actual company. So he has to be available for calls during the day. And he can't have any background noises. So that kind of makes it really difficult for me to schedule and conduct interviews. Also, I know that a lot of people are probably going to be starting podcasts right now for their new businesses that they're starting online because they maybe got laid off at their regular job, or they just find themselves with a little bit of extra time being stuck at home. So I wanted to make sure that I just provide a ton of resources right now while people are looking for this information. That's also why I went back to the basic last week with the episode where I just gave a breakdown of the entire launch process. And I did kind of go over my previous episodes that help explain those different parts of the process. So now I want to give some updates to some of those episodes. Because this podcast has been going for two years over two years, actually. And some things have obviously changed in that time. And I have different recommendations and I did two years ago. So that's exactly what we're going to talk about these updated recommendations from what I have told you in the past. If you have not listened to those previous episodes, that's fine. This is just going to be current information for you that is relevant for doing your podcast. So it's not really a big deal. But I do want to set some things straight with some recommendations before that I no longer have now. And the first one is using a program called clean feed for remote interviews. If you have been listening to this podcast, you know that I have changed my recommendation for recording remote interviews several times. And that's because this technology is constantly changing. new programs come on the market, things that didn't work now do things that used to work now don't. So this is changing constantly. And my current recommendation, and the one that I do personally use for my podcast. I've been using it since January. So I've done it for interviews for this podcast. But I also use it every week with my co hosts on my other show, which is like a true crime show. You have heard me recommend squad cast most recently. That's what I had been using. Unfortunately, they released an updated version last fall. And ever since then, I have had several issues with it. And I know some of my clients have had several issues with it. And I have seen talk of these issues in the various Facebook communities I am in as well. There are some people who can still use it perfectly fine without any issues. And that's great. I just no longer personally feel comfortable having that as my main recommendation. So now on to clean feet, there's some weird little quirks you need to know about it. The quality is fantastic. It rivals anything I've ever used before. It's better than a lot of other programs that I've used before. And I so far since using it in January and onward have not had a single issue with the tech side or the quality or connection issues unrelated to the internet, I should say. So I feel comfortable recommending it. However, there are some things you absolutely need to know before deciding if this program is going to work for you. And then especially before you actually start using it. So I will have a tutorial for everything. I'm getting ready to go over a video one so that you can see everything I'm talking about in case you're a visual learner. And you can use it for reference once you start using the program. So that will either be actually in the show notes or there'll be a link to it in the show notes and you You can find those by going to podcasting for coaches.com. Click on the podcast tab in the main menu and then go to episode number 75. But for now, I'm just going to walk you through these weird little things you need to know about. One is that the user interface is not fancy, by any stretch of the imagination, there's not a whole lot that you can do with it. So when you log into your account, you're kind of just there in the call already. And that's a little bit confusing for some people. So you can get a URL to invite other people to join the call. And all they have to do is click this URL. So it is great as far as your guests go, because they don't have to know how to do very much, it's literally just clicking a link and it opening up a page in their browser. And then they may have to if their computer like auto pops up a notification like to allow a microphone, they might have to click Yes, but that turns on their computer not clean P. And when you create this URL, it can be confusing, because it looks like it creates a different URL every single time. It's not like zoom, where you have your main meeting URL that you can use for everything. However, even though you are getting a different URL every single time, it actually all goes to the same call. So you can just create the link once and then just use that URL for everybody. where this has beneficial is if you use a program like acuity or calendly, that allows you to send out automatic confirmation and reminder emails, whenever people schedule an interview with you, you can just put that link in your like template for that email that it sends out. And then you don't have to give them that link every single time for every single interview. So again, even though the URLs look different, they all go to the same place. Another weird thing about it is that you have to select the multitrack option every single time, in order to get each person on the call to have their own audio file, which is an absolute must, if you even remotely care about the quality of your show. This makes it so much easier to clean up the audio in the post production phase when you're editing it or you send it off to an editor. So when you go to actually hit the record button for the call, when you're ready to start and you hit the record button, there'll be another page that it takes you to with some options. And you'll see that it will probably have your name at the top field and then there'll be a drop down box that defaults to everyone, meaning everyone is going to be on one audio track, click that drop down box and then select multitrack. And then you'll see the explanation that says each person will have their separate audio, then you can hit record. And you're good to go. The recording has started. At this point you conduct the interview just like any other program. When you get to the end of the interview, though, it's a little bit odd, because you don't actually hit stop recording Anyway, you actually have to download the audio files right there while it's still recording. So that's another weird one. And this brings me to my next most important thing about all of this probably is that you have to download the audio files before you close out of this browser. If you do not, then you will lose the audio files, they don't actually get stored anywhere on clean feeds platform. And this is my biggest frustration with it. But if you can really train yourself come up with a checklist, then this shouldn't be an issue for you, as long as you just don't forget. The good news here is that it actually downloads all files into a zip file, which means it's like super, super, super compressed just for the downloading, which means that takes a matter of like a second or two to download instead of a really long time that some of these other platforms take because audio files are huge, generally speaking. So what I do is, as I'm wrapping up the call, I finished the official interview or the official conversation. And then as I'm doing my little, you know, post interview, chit chat, that's when I just hit the little download button. And again, if you go to the video tutorial of this, you'll see that so you just click the Download button and it takes literally like a second or two. And then you need to have a program that will allow you to extract those files from a zip file. If you don't know how to do that, I will try to find a tutorial for you and place that link in the show notes. And the last weird little quirk about this is that actually, whenever somebody joins the call, at least in my experience, this is how it's been. Every track in the call has the same name, which will be your name. So it's a little bit difficult to tell whose track is whose especially when they're downloaded. But just take a quick listen and then just rename it. And that's not really that big of a deal. So with all of those weird little quirks, you may be wondering why on earth am I actually recommending people use this. And that's because to me personally, having very good audio, especially for a remote recording platform, having a reliable platform. So knowing that they're not going to add any weird noises to it, it's not going to just glitch out on me or disconnect or anything like that. Being able to have separate tracks for every person and being able to have something as easily accessible, just clicking a link all completely outweighs any of the negatives that come from this platform because I have used all of those other programs. And every single one of them has one of those criteria that I just listed that they don't meet. Either the quality of the audio is absolutely garbage. Or it adds these weird little noises to it. Random Because it's just kind of glitching out from a technical standpoint, or I go to download the audio file, and it's a file that's zero seconds long, it didn't actually record any of the audio. So I have lost the interview completely. Or it's messed up the volume so that everybody sounds really garbled and it goes up and down, in and out. And that just sounds terrible. So to me, it is far more gut wrenching to conduct this great interview and have this great conversation only to find out at the end that you can't even use it. So I will remember to do these few little things. If it means I don't have to worry about those things. So hopefully you find clean feed as beneficial as I do. That is my official recommendation right now, check out the show notes for the tutorial. And I will probably also put together a little checklist for you. So that if you do want to use clean feed, you can make sure that you don't miss any of these steps. Okay, and just a couple of quick updates after this. One is that you've heard me always recommend the ATR 2100 microphone from Audio Technica. That's what I've recommended since the start of this show. However, it is still a great microphone, but they have changed the cord. So now it's a USB C cord. If you have like a Mac laptop, it's what they do. So it's kinda like a universal cord. It's great that they're moving in this step, most companies are moving to this universal court system. So you don't have 18 different courts for all your different devices. But the problem is, they increase the practice when they release this new version, and you cannot get the old one anymore. So you can only get this new version called the ATR 20 100x. And I think they bumped up the price like 20 bucks or something. So now it's closer to 100. And honestly, there's an alternative that's just as great for a much cheaper price. So my official microphone recommendation now is the Samson cue to you, I will find a link and put it in the show notes for you. But I do want to warn you that if you're listening to this in real time, microphones are selling out, a lot of people are starting shows right now. So it's kind of hard for me to find a link that doesn't get sold out pretty quickly. So I will have a link for you in the show notes. But just be aware that it may be sold out by the time you check out that link. If so just do a search for yourself using the information from the link that I have in the show notes. And then the next update that I want to provide is that I have always recommended audacity for solo recordings. It's what I'm using right now to record this. And I recommend that that no matter whether you are Mac or PC, in the beginning, that was absolutely a valid recommendation. However, with the most recent iOS to Catalina on Mac devices, audacity is no longer compatible, you can still edit with it as far as I know, but you cannot record with it. It will register that your microphones there, you can select it, but it won't actually pick up any of the audio. audacity is aware of this issue and they are trying to work on fixing it. However, it's a pretty massive fix. And it's likely going to take them a very long time to get this resolved. It's already been several months. And I don't believe that we're all that much closer. So for the time being, you can use a program either called GarageBand. If you're already familiar with it, it comes default on every Mac device I believe. Or if you want something even simpler, because GarageBand can be pretty intimidating. If you don't already know how to use it. Just use QuickTime QuickTime also is default on your device. And it is pretty much just plug your microphone in and click Record once the program is open. It's just about foolproof. Just in case though you don't know how to access QuickTime, I will have a link in the show notes to a tutorial video done by a wonderful, awesome colleague of mine, Tom Kelly, and it will show you exactly how to find QuickTime on your device and start recording your solo recordings with it again, will not work for remote recordings, we have clean feed for that. But even if you are doing remote recordings, you should always record your audio locally, meaning directly to your computer with something like quick time just to have it as a backup. And then the last thing I want to mention is that in celebration of my birthday next week, if you're listening to this in real time, I am doing another ama style episode. I did one of these last year for my birthday. And it was really fun. And I got a lot of great feedback on it. So I'm going to do it again this year. So if you have any questions for me, that you want me to answer either related to podcasting in any facet, or running a business because I have been doing this business for four years now and I'm much more successful at it than I ever was in the corporate world. How I am handling quarantine and self isolation here in the county that is pretty much the fastest growing mortality rate from COVID-19 in the entire country, I believe is what our governor said. So that's super fun. And then obviously Of course just my personal life in general. I am a complete open book I literally am willing to answer just about any single question. So if you have it you can either email it to me Britany b r ITANY at podcasting for coaches calm you can use the contact form on my website podcasting for coaches calm you can Contact me on facebook just search for podcasting for coaches. And then of course, I am most active on Instagram and you guessed it, I am at podcasting for coaches. You can just send me a DM, or respond to my stories or my posts, because I'm going to be asking questions in there as well trying to get your questions for next week's episode. So, again, ask away open book, and I look forward to having you back next week where you can see if your question got answered. Thanks so much. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches calm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcasts that you create and put out into the world.