Files Of Doom

Hello there

Oh, what’s that? You were looking forward to Reboot?  Yep same. Have a look at the header pic and you’ll see Rob’s sound file – the bits I’ve circled are relevant (as you’ll know from the pattern if you’ve any knowledge of sound files)…

So, we did record it, so I’ve heard it.  It was fab.  Bright and early on Friday morning.  I’m actually writing this at 14.02 on Friday afternoon after spending an hour with the edit and eventually having to wave the white flag. Double annoying because, as I said,  it’s a really good episode, but I shall explain.

We record Reboot on Zoom, so all three of us are on there with video, and we record it with our respective microphones in person, wearing headphones so we don’t pick up the voices of the others. Those files get sent on to me and I put them all back together again. We have also learnt from experience to record the isolated files of all three of us on Zoom itself, which serve as a back-up.  I’ve had to use back-up files a load with Reboot, and nine times out of ten they are ok (with admittedly inferior sound quality).  There have also been two occasions when the zoom back up has failed, and one of those was today.

Because Zoom meetings are only forty minutes we record it in two parts, generally recording an hour and ten in total which I then chop down to 40-50 mins. When we came back for the second part of the recording today, Rob had his head in his hands and was saying his mic hadn’t recorded the first bit.  We cracked on, knowing we had the Zoom back -up, and that I’d have to use that, but when we were done, and Jon listened to the Zoom back-up, he said he thought it might be distorted.  An hour into editing I realised it was happening too often, so in all Rob’s dialogue it would go crackly from time to time.  I was managing to edit around this, but when he said something important and it was crackling, I start to run out of options.

That’s why there’s no podcast attached here today, and we are going to just re-record the episode next week, as it had us performing the script Jon wrote, a feedback section, and a load of dirty sound effects from Rob. There was a lot of ongoing conversations that we can’t really just skip past.  Hugely frustrating, made worse for me as I was trying to get my posts all sorted for Monday through Wednesday as I’m about to drive up to Cumbria to see Kim for a couple of days and have got that part of my weekend scheduled to the minute to accommodate the stupidly long driving hours.  Best laid plans of mice and men…

We can have a written post though, right?  I mean, it’s all I can do as tomorrow already has an encore post scheduled (it’s the Top Trumps ParaPod cards all in one place) and I didn’t really fancy doing two back-to-back encore posts.  This is – at least – new content, even if it is just me sulking.

If you’ve done any stuff that is reliant on recording, you’ll know only too well that every now and again, recordings fail, and things are just gone forever more.  It’s an awful feeling when it happens, as it seems to mainly happen when you’ve done really good stuff.  The realisation when you hear the file back and it’s either silent or crackly or distorted, and you know you can’t repair it. It’s also not an option to put it out, because hearing it is even more frustrating than not hearing it.

I remember one time where myself and Ed did Herring’s podcast at the Stand in Edinburgh and got a call not long after to say the audio file was corrupted.  Richard decided to still put out the audio file as a release, but I refuse to believe that anyone made it beyond two minutes of listening to that.  We all sounded like malfunctioning Daleks and it’s just an awful thing to try to decipher it.  If memory serves, a few days later somebody sent Richard a bootleg of the show, where they’d been secretly recording it themselves in the audience.  That was listenable to, but there’s a lot to unpick with why somebody would go to a podcast recording and secretly record it themselves, huh? Far be it for me to jump to conclusions, but I very much doubt this was “just in case the official recording didn’t work”.  More likely it was just in case something was said off the record that was then cut from the episode and they would have the proof on their phone.  Not for blackmailing or owt, but certainly to cause issues for the people involved.  Bootlegging is a whole other conversation really.  In this instance it saved the day (accidentally), but I’ve always felt really uncomfortable with the idea that somebody had gigs wired for sound. I guess there’s no issue if it’s just so they can re-live it themselves at home, but it rarely stopped there.  They get shared around, put on forums/file-sharing, and before you know it you’ve a product that you have no quality control over or ability to clarify context.  I bet there’s plenty of folk who have been condemned or dismissed on account of some muffled phone recording through a fan’s trouser pocket.

As I say though, that’s a whole different chat.  I was writing about the doom of finding a recording had failed.

In Reboot, there have been several times that recordings have failed, and they’ve had to be abandoned or repaired.  The main ongoing sound quality issue we had was me being able to hear the other people talking on supposedly isolated tracks.  These would all still fit together, but on Zoom we are all talking at different times because of internet delays or lags, so the files never fit together.  That’s really what the edit is, me making them fit together and rejigging when we’ve spoken over each other, which is a job enough in itself without having to also trawl through the audio files removing peripheral tinny chat.

Loopholes, so far, has had zero audio issues.  We’ve both returned clear audio, and there have been no recording failures but there definitely will be.  That’s mega good luck that.  I make a joke with Reboot that I’m the only person who has returned perfect audio every episode, which is true, but I’m not daft enough to believe that one day I won’t try and transfer from the memory card and find there is no audio there.  It really is as random as that.  You don’t have to have done anything wrong in the set-up, or press the wrong buttons, some days the recorders seem to just not fancy remembering what you said.  That’s why I generally have back-up recordings happening at the same time, but we have been particularly unlucky when we’ve had to resort to them.  Like today.

None of these things beat the two ParaPod fails, which were really awful.

The first one was in – I think – series 2, when we recorded a section that was literally a one-shot deal.  It was one of the times where I had an ace in my back pocket and had a grand reveal. We recorded it, all happening in real time, and the result was brilliant.  Then the Tascam recorder, right at the end of the section, went dark. It just switched off.

Now, retrospectively I take full responsibility for this.  For the longest time - literally years - I worked the Tascam on batteries.  Every Peacock & Gamble podcast recorded on it was with batteries. I’d have it all charged up ready for the recordings, and it was only years later that I realised it had a port for an adaptor plug.  That is bonkers that I never even considered that as an option. Obviously, I now always record with it plugged in, but it’s utterly baffling to think of how many recordings I made in the stupid old way.

Anyways, the moment the Tascam went dark it was the same sort of mood as I imagine one has when a fire breaks out in a house.  A sort of urgent spring into action.  I was trying to recover the file on the computer, whilst also noting down exactly what had been said in the section we had just lost.  Again, I will never for the life of me understand why recording equipment doesn’t have a failsafe built in, so that if a device is close to running out of battery it autosaves what has been recorded so far.  Doesn’t though, and the file was lost.  We immediately re-recorded the section, “as live” and it came out grand, but I always know that it wasn’t authentic.  99.9% of the released stuff was, but that was a re-enactment (albeit an accurate re-enactment just a few moments after it really happened). I shan’t say what exactly it was, but I’ve no issue with anyone speculating.  I just think confirming it would be a bit mean-spirited.

The other major recording fail was far more damaging, and it was during the movie.  I’d arrange for Barry to be regressed, and we went to the house it was happening at and recorded a lot of footage.  It was a lot of deep footage too, and there was a real sense of occasion and emotion in the room.  When we got the footage back, the locked off cameras filming the regression hadn’t recorded and the footage of the aftermath was also missing. There were a lot of things going on that day and the Director of Photography at that time was very distracted.  At one point they left a camera on a mantlepiece to record and, because I was actually in the scene and things were happening live, I wasn’t able to drop out to “direct”.  I was terrified the footage wouldn’t exist when we got it back, and so it was.  I guess that occasion was equally due to neglect and not doing it properly, but the feeling on discovering it wasn’t there was the same.  Doesn’t matter if it’s ineptitude or an act of God, there’s the same drop in the pit of your stomach.

Looking at these things positively, I guess it’s just a risk of the profession and something you must accept.  It happens sometimes. The vast majority of stuff I’ve recorded, or directed to be recorded, has existed and made it, but those little speed bumps still make you tear your hair out a bit.  I’ve been relatively blasé about it today.  There was a time I would be pacing the house seething, but now I just plonk myself down and knock out a written piece explaining how annoying it is, rather than losing my day to annoyance. Let’s be honest, it’s a nice little break.  Not like we are short of audio in these here parts, is it? And count yourself lucky I didn’t decide to do an autoharp podcast…

So, next podcast will – hopefully – be Loopholes on Wednesday, and those of you who may have fallen behind can have a breather to catch up should you wish to. We’ll no doubt reference this in next week’s Reboot and repeat as much of what we did today as authentically as possible. There’s every chance Rob’s recording failed because he was farting so much.  Must have been like Chernobyl in his digs this morning.

Hope you have a wonderful beginning to a wonderful week over there

Sending very much love

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