From the Sorgatron Media Creators Newsletter List for September 22, 2016. You can Subscribe to it here or read the archive
A few months ago, we were looking for a light weight solution for remote recording some team members for a certain collegiate competition Podcast. One of the members brought up a program called Zencastr.
For those newer, let’s look at what a “double ender” Podcast is. A lot of Podcasters have a need to use Skype or Google Hangout to connect with cohosts or guests across the country (world?). This is a great solution, but those that have heard some of these shows, or used the voice over internet services know there are some quality issues sometimes. In the double ender, you actual record on both sides of the call locally. You end up with separate tracks with each of the hosts recorded. You then sync that track and have a much cleaner show than if you just recorded on one side. (Disclaimer: I absolutely don’t do this in many of my main shows for configuration reasons)
What Zencastr does is make this simpler. Instead of a higher learning curve and making sure people on both sides of the internet know what they’re doing, and some of the audio drift issues you see from using different kinds of computers, recording software, etc, it is an online site that handles it. As you record, you are able to chat with a simple interface and when finished, each person’s track is uploaded to the service for you to grab and edit later.
This has served not only my clients, but helped save Does This Hold Up as their hosts were suddenly split several state away from each other.
The service IS in beta, and you can get a few hiccups here and there (files don’t show up right away, disappear if you drop calls, etc) but everything has it’s faults and this seems to be a nice place to start your Podcast with as good of quality as each of its hosts can muster.