Beyond3D Podcast Episode 1 - public beta

[Arwin]

So, here it is, the public beta of the first episode of the official Beyond3D podcast.

There's no music, its a bit rough here and there, we forgot to introduce it with a date and such, we had some connection issues making Max sound low-res when we had such a great quality before, it was really hot when recording over here (more than 30 degrees in my room, and it was well after midnight before we ended), etc. etc. etc. But hey, you've got to begin somewhere! I promise we'll quickly get better at this, and I think we have a good shot at bringing you some cool interviews in the near future also.

I uploaded the podcast here - if anyone has a better location, drop me a line:

http://tirminyl.net/beyond3d/beyond3d_podcast_no_1.mp3
http://rapidshare.de/files/48197696/beyond3d_podcast_no_1_public_beta.mp3.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/271059610/beyond3d_podcast_no_1_public_beta.mp3.html

Fyi, we cut 18 minutes of warming up banter, and then cut about 45 minutes at the end as well, as I was clearly very tired, was just listing a lot of news in a boring and every slowing down way, and you weren't saying much then either, making it just a very, very long monologue that was basically just a slow and inefficient list of some of the news from gamescom. As that brings the podcast down to a still respectable 2:16:03, I think we can live with that.

Place your comments, questions and suggestions in this thread, and we'll use it to improve, tune and refine the thing until it shines like a ray-traced metallic surface.

(oh yeah, and I know I say stuff like Paralysed instead of paralelized at some point, and a few more stupid things like that - I hate it, but too tired to edit the extra syllable in )

 

[AlNom]

po-lie-gon!

 

[betan]

can we get a rapidshare.com url?

 

[Arwin]

Added ...

 

[DieH@rd]

I will listen to it tomorrow.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

For the next show we'll both be participating in show prep and discussing content beforehand to firm up a clear segment layout. Also I'm going to use a wired connection to my router to help maintain audio quality on my end.

 

[DrJay24]

Before I DL, who are we listening to? Add some credits to the OP?

 

[betan]

Added ...

Thanks Arwin, will listen to it tonight.

 

[mrcorbo]

Not a bad first effort!

Obviously, there are some rough edges, but you'll figure those out.

One quick bit of feedback on the podcast itself and I have a few suggestions for the companion thread, as well.

On the Hot Topics section, Arwin anounced all the topics and then went back to discuss them in detail. I think it would flow more naturally to announce the section and then introduce one topic -> discuss, announce the next topic -> discuss, etc. It's a small thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

As for the companion thread:

• I think you should put the date the podcast was recorded in the thread title.
• Create templates for both the thread title and first post so they remain in a consistent format. This should make it easier to do forum searches to find specific episode threads in the former case and in the latter case should both make it easier for you to create the first post and make it easier for listeners to find what the content of each podcast is.
• As per the template suggestion above, it would be great to have an outline of the content of each episode that could include episode length and file size, participants, sections included (and topics covered in each section) and other misc. info/comments. It doesn't have to be too detailed, a broad overview would do.

Other than that, I think the future episodes being more of a collaboration will address a lot of the issues in this first episode. Overall, though, it exceeded my expectations. Congrats, and keep up the good work!

 

[willardjuice]

Needs more FutureCTO...

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Cool! Downloading now. You could try podcast.com for hosting and associated utilities (RSS, etc).

 

[betan]

OK, I listened the podcast, very good beta indeed. In fact Arwin, you make it look like so easy. Of course, I'm sure that's not the case, thanks for the effort guys.

Some random thoughts:
On techish side, I think audacity has a volume normalize filter, in case you need one. Skype quality is good enough for podcasting, especially Max' response time is better than I expected. It willbe interesting to see if skype can reliably scale though, since bandwidth issues are already audible. You may want to look at "firewall free"/forwarded connection setup or upnp if Skype supports it and you haven't already done those.

Also I like RSS too.

On the content side, it just hit me really hard, it's beyond awesome that we have a beyond3d podcast, considering gaming podcasters don't generally include tech minds. Also many thanks for the SIGGRAPH overview, it's very welcome.

However I know you are aware of this, it may be best to shift monologue heavy sections to the end. As a rule of thumb, I'd say dialogs are better, opposing views are even better. For some reason, I feel like grandmaster would also be a nice fit there with you and Max.

On this note, some podcasts stream live and keep channels open for listener input like phone, voip, IRC or forum. Of course that would probably kill skype for good.

On the Hot Topics section, Arwin anounced all the topics and then went back to discuss them in detail. I think it would flow more naturally to announce the section and then introduce one topic -> discuss, announce the next topic -> discuss, etc. It's a small thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I think that initial descriptions were for first episode only, to let us know the format.

 

[mrcorbo]

On the Hot Topics section, Arwin anounced all the topics and then went back to discuss them in detail. I think it would flow more naturally to announce the section and then introduce one topic -> discuss, announce the next topic -> discuss, etc. It's a small thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I think that initial descriptions were for first episode only, to let us know the format.

I'm not sure you understood what I was referring to (perhaps I worded it poorly?). I meant specifically at the beginning of the "Hot Topics" section Arwiin said that they were going to be talking about the "Are consoles holding back PC graphics?" thread and Nvidia disabling PhysX and then had to re-introduce the topics in order to actually discuss them. I thought the initial announcing of topics was redundant since each topic could be announced as it was going to be discussed. IIRC, this latter method was used for the other sections.

 

[betan]

I'm not sure you understood what I was referring to (perhaps I worded it poorly?). I meant specifically at the beginning of the "Hot Topics" section Arwiin said that they were going to be talking about the "Are consoles holding back PC graphics?" thread and Nvidia disabling PhysX and then had to re-introduce the topics in order to actually discuss them. I thought the initial announcing of topics was redundant since each topic could be announced as it was going to be discussed. IIRC, this latter method was used for the other sections.

My bad, that's what happens when you post in a hurry.

 

[JPT]

Cool, now I got something to listen to on the plane later today.

 

[Arwin]

On the Hot Topics section, Arwin anounced all the topics and then went back to discuss them in detail. I think it would flow more naturally to announce the section and then introduce one topic -> discuss, announce the next topic -> discuss, etc. It's a small thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Yes, absolutely agree. It's tricky to balance between a strict programme and a naturally flowing conversation. We'll definitely get better at that and try to make clear transitions. Some kind of sound effect would also be cool, but for now our first priority was getting something 'on tape'. Whatever we do it should be something that is easy and natural, if only because we do this on the side and can only devote a certain amount of time to it. There was about 2 work days work in this first podcast, but there's a lot of firsts here that will be easier to deal with next time.

As for the companion thread:

• I think you should put the date the podcast was recorded in the thread title.
• Create templates for both the thread title and first post so they remain in a consistent format. This should make it easier to do forum searches to find specific episode threads in the former case and in the latter case should both make it easier for you to create the first post and make it easier for listeners to find what the content of each podcast is.
• As per the template suggestion above, it would be great to have an outline of the content of each episode that could include episode length and file size, participants, sections included (and topics covered in each section) and other misc. info/comments. It doesn't have to be too detailed, a broad overview would do.

1. Agreed.
2. Yes, that's a good idea.
3. I actually prepared 'show notes' for this one that we used, so I do have most of this (minus the times), but I didn't have time to put them in the thread this time - sleeping and working got in the way .

Other than that, I think the future episodes being more of a collaboration will address a lot of the issues in this first episode. Overall, though, it exceeded my expectations. Congrats, and keep up the good work!

Yeah, definitely. It needs to be a conversation as much as possible, I think. We'll keep working on that, and who knows we'll find additional guest speakers or regular speakers besides the developer interviews/guests we hope to have in future episodes (we're working on that already, but the results of that may take some time).

 

[Arwin]

OK, I listened the podcast, very good beta indeed. In fact Arwin, you make it look like so easy. Of course, I'm sure that's not the case, thanks for the effort guys.

Some random thoughts:
On techish side, I think audacity has a volume normalize filter, in case you need one. Skype quality is good enough for podcasting, especially Max' response time is better than I expected. It willbe interesting to see if skype can reliably scale though, since bandwidth issues are already audible. You may want to look at "firewall free"/forwarded connection setup or upnp if Skype supports it and you haven't already done those.

We had a great connection before, and I'm confident we'll solve these issues on Max's side.

Also I like RSS too.

Yeah. I'm hoping Rys can help us out here as this site has plenty of RSS feeds already, but if not (or it takes too long ) we'll try something like podcast.com as per Andrew's suggestion (thanks!).

On the content side, it just hit me really hard, it's beyond awesome that we have a beyond3d podcast, considering gaming podcasters don't generally include tech minds. Also many thanks for the SIGGRAPH overview, it's very welcome.

Thanks!

However I know you are aware of this, it may be best to shift monologue heavy sections to the end. As a rule of thumb, I'd say dialogs are better, opposing views are even better. For some reason, I feel like grandmaster would also be a nice fit there with you and Max.

Oh I agree. But actually the monologue heavy section was at the end, I just cut all 45 minutes of it. But as I said before, we'll try to get things as conversationy as we can.

On this note, some podcasts stream live and keep channels open for listener input like phone, voip, IRC or forum. Of course that would probably kill skype for good.

Skype can handle up to 12 people under decent circumstances, though of course the 4150 miles distance isn't helping (yeah, my 2500km comment was a little off )

 

[AlNom]

hmm.... just a thought for some insight regards reusing an engine & focus on art... It's pretty much what Bungie did for ODST. Don't know if you'd be able to get an interview beyond an e-mail though. It was a fairly similar situation for Gears of War 2 as well.

edit: I suppose this summarizes Bungie's experience: Link

 

[DieH@rd]

Ive listened to it this morning, and it was fine. I like all that technical speaches.

Only downside is that it was one man show. Also, host needs to practice to speak little faster. There was a lot of long pauses, but overall it was really good "beta" show. I hope that next episode will be online soon.

 

[inefficient]

Seems to be a good first effort.

I don't have a problem with Arwin's pace speaking. Shaidar didn't seem to talk much though so it was a bit of a 1 man show.

I do think 2 hours a little long for this format. I think it could have been broken in to 2 or 3 separate episodes. Due to the nature of the topics they are discussing, you can't avoid sounding a bit dry at times like a classroom lecture. But I think there will be no problem holding the listeners attention if you can find an optimal length.

I think the best part for me is when they give a summary of recent interesting discussions on the boards. For those of us who don't necessarily follow every thread, read every posting, or have time to read every sub section on the site, it's nice to have someone pull out the highlights.