New Media 101: Basic New Media Gear from “New Media Question Time”

Part of the New Media 101/Blogging 101 series…

A quick clip from this 30 minute presentation — New Media Question Time for UCLA Voiceover Class.

Watch the entire presentation

 
New Media 101: Basic newmedia gear
 

Transcript:

Honestly, the technology side of podcasting has benefitted greatly from the simplification and lower cost of technology these days. What used to cost people tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to do — simply recording a video like this or recording a radio show or something like that — has been reduced to, basically, pennies. In most cases, the computer you have already has 99% of the equipment you need to record your first podcast — to do your first video. All you need to do is learn how to use the devices that are already there. You can use your webcam. You can use the built-in microphone. It won’t be perfect, but it will certainly be adequate to get your started. Now, one of the first things I recommend for people — especially voiceover people — people who are working in the audio realm — is a nice condenser microphone. This is one type of condenser microphone. This is a Blue Snowball. The great thing about this is that something like this didn’t exist until just 5, 6, 7 years ago maybe. This is a microphone — a nice, studio quality, condenser microphone, that actually plugs in to your USB port on your computer. It doesn’t require a mixing board. It doesn’t require something called “phantom power” which you may run into down the road, if you are dealing with audio podcasts and microphones. It doesn’t require any of the stuff that used to be required for recording great audio of your voice. it just simply  — using a standard USB printer cable — it plugs into the back of the microphone and that plugs into the USB port on your computer. You bring up a program — there’s free program I recommend called “Audacity” which I will put a link the video description of this video. You can get it free from the Internet ta Audacity.SourceForge.net. That is for Windows or Mac and Linux if you are a Unix user. Garageband, which is what I use, comes with every Macintosh produced these days. You can also use Garageband as a purchased item — actually now I think its free — on your iPad or iPhone. There are free and premium programs download to your mobile device and actually record right into them, as well. You will be surprised the quality you can get out of your iPhone, iPad, or if you step up to a nice USB condenser microphone like the Blue. Blue also has a series of other products. They have another one called the Yeti, which looks more like a standard, kind of, desktop microphone like you might see on Jay Leno’s desk or Jimmy Fallon’s desk when he is doing the Tonight Show. They also have another one called, I think, the Nessie. It is kind of a gooseneck-style microphone and it actually has some built-in digital effects that you can apply like echo, voice enhancement and other things.”

 

Previously on New Media 101/Blogging 101:

More information on Douglas E. Welch and Careers in New Media:

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