In this episode of 1337 Wine TV, I do a video Skype interview with the man that inspired me to do video wine reviews, Gary Vaynerchuk. This is an interview that has been in the works on and off for a while. The last couple months is where I got serious with getting Gary to spend some time with me. We talk about wine, the state of internet wine shows, his possible comeback, Vayner Media, and of course, the Jets.
In a rookie move by me, and probably due to being a bit “start struck,” I didn’t hit the record button on the Call Recorder app that I use to record these Skype interviews (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). This allows me to do the split screen effect and have 2 separate video and audio files to edit. However, I luckily decided to stream this live to my Justin.tv channel and the app I use to do that is Quicktime Broadcaster. This has been set by default to record a copy of what is streaming to disk. This is a different video than what I normally post as it’s taking the feed from CamTwist (an incredible free “tv studio in a box” app on OS X) which is capturing the Skype window.
With that said, I changed my default setting for streaming to Justin.tv to make the audio stereo from mono. I had just tested all of this with no issues using the Skype Test Call feature, but the sound was still on mono (the default). I didn’t realize that changing it to stereo would result in audio that sounds like a record or tape being played back at 1/2 speed. I worked some audio magic using Audacity (another free program) to fix this. I used the Speed and Pitch effects to bring the audio back to mostly normal. Gary sounds pretty normal to me, but my voice still sounds a little slow.
My guess is that the audio I did get is all coming from my lavaliere mic, including Gary’s. My thinking is that his audio is from the iMac’s speakers being picked up by my mic. So Gary’s audio was very low compared to mine. I used the Compressor effect in FCP X to help with that. This is normal for my audio anyway. I typically use the Compressor and Limiter effects to normalize my audio. I also sweeten it a bit by adding some bass. In this case I used the Compressor and Limiter, but did some other effects to boost Gary’s audio as much as possible while keeping my audio about the same level. In the end, the audio is noticeably lower quality than what I typically get even in Skype interviews. It’s “acceptable” in the sense that if you pay attention you can fully understand the conversation, but it is definitely not up to the standards I’ve had in the past.
I apologize to my viewers and to Gary and his staff for this mistake. I’ve worked very hard and spent some decent money to improve the production value of both the video and audio of my show to get it as professional looking and sounding as possible on a small budget. This site is a labor of love and I do this because I love sharing wine with you and discovering new things. I hope to do this with Gary again in the future either via Skype or in person.
Links for today’s show:
Wine Library – The wine shop Gary works/worked at that he used for his show.
Wine Library TV – Now defunct, Gary did 1000 episodes about wine. His shows are timeless and deserve a look if you’ve never seen them.
Vayner Media – Gary’s brand consulting company
Other links:
Quicktime Broadcaster – Seriously, this is a must have app for streaming live on OS X. I used FMLE (Adobe) before and really liked it, however it’s no longer being updated and is supported on either OS X 10.7 or 10.8. This is one of those secrets, like QT7 Pro (also mentioned this the webpage), that everyone who is serious about audio and video needs to have.
Call Recorder (Ecamm) – The only software on OS X that truly records Skype calls. Waiting for the day they will do HD, but until then there’s no one else.
CamTwist – It is literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of TV studio equipment in a software package – for FREE!
Audacity – One of the best audio programs for OS X. Also FREE! I have other audio programs that are good, but I keep returning to Audacity when it matters. Probably because I’m the most familiar with it since I’ve used it for close to a decade now.
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