Author Topic: Pod Peeves  (Read 30507 times)

wakela

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on: March 24, 2007, 01:40:04 AM
I've really been enjoying bitching about stuff in the Pet Peeves thread, so I thought I would start bitching about stuff I don't like in podcasts.



wakela

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Reply #1 on: March 24, 2007, 01:53:16 AM
Get on with the show.

Intro music +
Apologies for getting the podcast out late this week +
Apologies for having a cold and a crappy voice +
A story about something cute my kid did

GET ON WITH IT!  Just start talking.  About something interesting.

Not a big fan of the idle banter, either.

EP gets down to business nicely.  Occasionally Steve tells us a a little personal anecdote, but it feels more professional and prepared, not something that just occurred to him.  Also, thanks to the structured nature of the show, I can expect some extraneous stuff at the beginning and some listener comments at then end, but the meat of the show is always the story. 



Roney

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Reply #2 on: March 25, 2007, 12:21:41 AM
Apologies for getting the podcast out late this week +

Steve probably has the stats but I'm fairly sure that nearly 50% of the listeners are not as addicted to the schedule as the podcaster is.

6 months later I don't care if it's a couple of hours late.



Russell Nash

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Reply #3 on: March 27, 2007, 01:04:01 PM
Not a big fan of the idle banter, either.

EP gets down to business nicely.  Occasionally Steve tells us a a little personal anecdote, but it feels more professional and prepared, not something that just occurred to him.  Also, thanks to the structured nature of the show, I can expect some extraneous stuff at the beginning and some listener comments at then end, but the meat of the show is always the story. 

This is my big one.  I always hated all of those morning drive time radio shows.  The DJ's just blabbing away totally off the cuff.  SHUT UP!!  I don't want to hear it.  There are so many podcasts that have some really great writing in them, but I don't want to listen to ten minutes of what this guy/gal thinks.  I definately don't listen to any of the podcasts that are only people rambling for 20 minutes drunk or sober.

I would listen to these podcasts if they put out a "stripped" feed.  Take out the rambling. Just give me the prepared stuff.  I end up getting sone of them off of Podiobooks just for this reason. 

Steve's is different, because each intro is a prepared commentary.  No umms, uhhs, or pauses. 

Sigler is another story.  His rants seem off the cuff, but I think there's a good bit of preplanning.  Although I sometimes fast forward his self promotion.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2007, 11:33:09 AM by Russell Nash »



Brian Reilly

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Reply #4 on: March 29, 2007, 05:37:02 PM
Sigler has started to put the non-story stuff at the end of his casts, and it works very well.

My podcast peeve is this- 90% of podcast lectures etc suck. Hard.

They seem to consist of someone in the audience with a cheap recorder throwing something up on his blog. You can tell it's being recorded in the audience because the sound of coughing, sweet wrappers etc rivals the speaker. And Q&A sessions are a waste of bandwidth. If the audience ask questions, and aren't provided with a microphone (or have the speaker repeat back the question) then the questions are going to be all but inaudible.

It's not as if these are illicit bootlegs- the likes of Cory Doctorow approve of audience members recording their talks. In fact, given my interest in Free Culture, almost everyone I consider worth listening to approves of freely available recordings of their talks. It's just a pity most of them suck.

If you are going to the effort of hiring a venue, booking flights, preparing your talk etc. then why not make sure a good-quality recording is provided, too? How much more effort is it to make sure the audio recording happens through something plugged into the venue's sound system, or at least connected to a microphone in close proximity to the speaker, and not to the fidgety guy with a packet of crisps and a nasty cough in the third row? And please invest in a microphone to hand round the audience if you don't want your Q&A at the end to consist of

"mumblemumbleCreative Commons mumblemumble Thursday mumble mumble yada yada mumble"

"Good point!"

I'm not looking for studio quality here. But a wee bit of preparation goes a long way.

The 21st Century is when it all changes, and you’ve gotta be ready- Captain Jack, Torchwood.


SFEley

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Reply #5 on: March 29, 2007, 11:06:11 PM
They seem to consist of someone in the audience with a cheap recorder throwing something up on his blog. You can tell it's being recorded in the audience because the sound of coughing, sweet wrappers etc rivals the speaker. And Q&A sessions are a waste of bandwidth. If the audience ask questions, and aren't provided with a microphone (or have the speaker repeat back the question) then the questions are going to be all but inaudible.

At Podcamp Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, they were highly aware of this.  All of the sessions in the "big" room had someone standing by with a microphone and a long cord, and audience members were all told explicitly to speak into the mic when they asked questions.

It's a lesson I'm taking with me for future events.

ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine


wakela

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Reply #6 on: March 30, 2007, 11:46:21 AM
There was so much taping going on at Grateful Dead concerts (they approved taping) that the tapers got their own section, brought top notch equipment, and anyone venturing into the tapers zone knew to keep their "JEEERRRRYYY!"s to a minimum.  Check out the mics in this picture I found.

I expect that as podcasting becomes more popular, venues will find it necessary to upgrade.  The way you can almost always find internet access in hotels.



RichGarner

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Reply #7 on: March 30, 2007, 07:19:52 PM
Oh my gosh! I have SO found my new home on the net!

I hate the three to five minutes of wasted airtime before a story! I usually go for a walk and listen to a story on my Creative Zen. The time it takes to get back to my desk is usually just enough time to listen to an episode... IF I fast-forward past all the comment's I don't care about. Sometimes it's easy to guess the time, sometimes not so easy. But it would be a lot easier if the opening intro went more like this:

Welcome to Escape Pod episode XX
Today's story: My Story by This Guy

Today's story is My Story written by This Guy. this Guy also wrote that story and this. The reader today is Some Dude whom you might rememeber from Some Place.

Without further ado, it's story time!


Anything else that needs to be said can be found on the forums. That's why there are show notes.

Ending rant cycle.

"...for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart." -Ecclesiastes 7:2


SFEley

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Reply #8 on: April 09, 2007, 06:11:07 PM
With some stats at the end for those who may listen to EP episodes and care to hear about the administration of EP ets.. This would also be good for those who listen to EP podcast months later and say "He did that! Man, that was a mistake!" or something along the lnes of that.

I'm a little unclear what you're asking for here.  Are you saying you want me to give download counts at the end of each episode?  And what "mistakes" are you suggesting I talk about?

I know what Rich was asking for: he wants me to cut the intros.  It's a fair request (and it would certainly save me some time) >8-> but it's not going to happen.  Too many other people like them.  For those who don't, fast forwarding about 3 minutes will usually skip past the rambling bits and hit the story and author information.

ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine


Russell Nash

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Reply #9 on: April 12, 2007, 11:44:24 AM
This is my big one.  I always hated all of those morning drive time radio shows.  The DJ's just blabbing away totally off the cuff.  SHUT UP!!  I don't want to hear it.  There are so many podcasts that have some really great writing in them, but I don't want to listen to ten minutes of what this guy/gal thinks.  I definately don't listen to any of the podcasts that are only people rambling for 20 minutes drunk or sober.

I would listen to these podcasts if they put out a "stripped" feed.  Take out the rambling. Just give me the prepared stuff.  I end up getting sone of them off of Podiobooks just for this reason. 

I just had a run in with one of these podcasts.

It's a short fiction etc. podcast. Just a bit of everything from different writers.  I was really intrigued and downloaded all of the back episodes before I ever listened to the first one. 

I finally got to listen to one of them yesterday.  It was the episode from January 4th. The first couple minutes were a ramble about how you can say Happy new year longer then you can say Merry Christmas.  That you can say Happy New Year all the way until the end of February.  Then she went into her Resolutions. I skipped ahead five minutes. She was talking about a diet or something. I skipped ahead another five minutes. She was talking about some other uninteresting pointless piece of crap about her resolutions.

That was ten minutes into a twenty-five minute podcast.  I canceled my subscription and deleted all of the files.  I never did listen to a single one of the short stories.

If I wanted to know this crap, I would read her blog.  She promised a podcast with original short fiction and poetry not a detailed account about the size of her ass. 

Hopefully she'll Podiobook a collection of just the fiction. I'd love to hear it.



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Reply #10 on: June 10, 2007, 12:33:13 AM
This is my big one.  I always hated all of those morning drive time radio shows.  The DJ's just blabbing away totally off the cuff.  SHUT UP!!  I don't want to hear it.  There are so many podcasts that have some really great writing in them, but I don't want to listen to ten minutes of what this guy/gal thinks.  I definately don't listen to any of the podcasts that are only people rambling for 20 minutes drunk or sober.

I would listen to these podcasts if they put out a "stripped" feed.  Take out the rambling. Just give me the prepared stuff.  I end up getting sone of them off of Podiobooks just for this reason. 

I just had a run in with one of these podcasts.

It's a short fiction etc. podcast. Just a bit of everything from different writers.  I was really intrigued and downloaded all of the back episodes before I ever listened to the first one. 

I finally got to listen to one of them yesterday.  It was the episode from January 4th. The first couple minutes were a ramble about how you can say Happy new year longer then you can say Merry Christmas.  That you can say Happy New Year all the way until the end of February.  Then she went into her Resolutions. I skipped ahead five minutes. She was talking about a diet or something. I skipped ahead another five minutes. She was talking about some other uninteresting pointless piece of crap about her resolutions.

That was ten minutes into a twenty-five minute podcast.  I canceled my subscription and deleted all of the files.  I never did listen to a single one of the short stories.

If I wanted to know this crap, I would read her blog.  She promised a podcast with original short fiction and poetry not a detailed account about the size of her ass. 

Hopefully she'll Podiobook a collection of just the fiction. I'd love to hear it.


I've also come across several short fiction podcasts with ridiculous amounts of boring intro chatter.  Very annoying.

My personal pet peeve is when sound effects or bits of narrative have you fiddling with your volume knob constantly- Darkmatter/DarkProjects being the recent one. I was stoked to find it, downloaded them all and then after several shrieking whistles and mindnumbing alarms decided to forgo listening to the rest.  blah



Russell Nash

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Reply #11 on: June 10, 2007, 11:47:44 AM
This is my big one.  I always hated all of those morning drive time radio shows.  The DJ's just blabbing away totally off the cuff.  SHUT UP!!  I don't want to hear it.  There are so many podcasts that have some really great writing in them, but I don't want to listen to ten minutes of what this guy/gal thinks.  I definately don't listen to any of the podcasts that are only people rambling for 20 minutes drunk or sober.

I would listen to these podcasts if they put out a "stripped" feed.  Take out the rambling. Just give me the prepared stuff.  I end up getting sone of them off of Podiobooks just for this reason. 

I just had a run in with one of these podcasts.

It's a short fiction etc. podcast. Just a bit of everything from different writers.  I was really intrigued and downloaded all of the back episodes before I ever listened to the first one. 

I finally got to listen to one of them yesterday.  It was the episode from January 4th. The first couple minutes were a ramble about how you can say Happy new year longer then you can say Merry Christmas.  That you can say Happy New Year all the way until the end of February.  Then she went into her Resolutions. I skipped ahead five minutes. She was talking about a diet or something. I skipped ahead another five minutes. She was talking about some other uninteresting pointless piece of crap about her resolutions.

That was ten minutes into a twenty-five minute podcast.  I canceled my subscription and deleted all of the files.  I never did listen to a single one of the short stories.

If I wanted to know this crap, I would read her blog.  She promised a podcast with original short fiction and poetry not a detailed account about the size of her ass. 

Hopefully she'll Podiobook a collection of just the fiction. I'd love to hear it.


I've also come across several short fiction podcasts with ridiculous amounts of boring intro chatter.  Very annoying.

My personal pet peeve is when sound effects or bits of narrative have you fiddling with your volume knob constantly- Darkmatter/DarkProjects being the recent one. I was stoked to find it, downloaded them all and then after several shrieking whistles and mindnumbing alarms decided to forgo listening to the rest.  blah

On that note there is a podcast that is normally about a minute and a half.  It has the world's most annoying intro and outro music.  It then also has a spoken intro that is the sme every time.  There is only about thirty seconds of original material in each podcast. 

The music is an interesting tune, but the "instrument" sound effect is similiar to electronic kid screaming, "nah nah nah".  It's brain meltingly awful.



eytanz

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Reply #12 on: June 10, 2007, 01:37:21 PM
I'm going to break ranks with most of the previous posters on this thread and admit that I usually enjoy the banter on podcasts. For me, it makes me feel part of a community and increases my commitment and interest in the podcast. In Escape Pod, I think the intros and outtros are great - in fact, my normal method of listening is to listen to the intro, fast forward past the story, listen to the outtro, and then rewind back to the beginning of the story. And I really enjoy Air Out My Shorts, the entire point of which is taking a short story and burying it with so much banter that it's often difficult to tell the two apart (especially when they interrupt the story to start riffing on some line or other). Psuedopod, on the other hand, I find less compelling, and a large chunk of that is the relative sparsity of the commentary. Not that I don't enjoy the stories - I do - but it's pretty rare that I don't listen to an Escape Pod episode immediately when it comes up, but a Pseduopod episode can sit on my ipod for weeks before I'll get to it.

What I do really hate, though, is what Russell mentioned in the above post - repeated introductions, long intro music, and especially - and this is a peeve with Escape Pod too - outro music. I really, really hate it when the dialogue ends and I have to listen for a minute and a half of music I don't enjoy just so that iTunes will consider the podcast listened to completely and remove it from my iPod. I don't mind it once in a while when there's a reason for it, but I'm really sick of hearing the same Daikaiju track. At least Steve starts the track before he finished speaking. Some of the APM podcasts have about 2 minutes of random junk at the end (I also hate outro ads, for the same reason, but at least I can see that they have a purpose, given that they help support the podcast).
« Last Edit: June 10, 2007, 04:03:35 PM by eytanz »



wherethewild

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Reply #13 on: June 10, 2007, 06:49:27 PM
Risking the ire of all present....for the last 3 episodes I haven´t actually listened to the story, just Steve´s in- and out-tro´s. My defence is that I´ve been waiting to hear about the fantasy podcast name and I don´t have the time at the moment to listen to the stories....but I will, I promise! For me, the more I get to know of Steve and the people in these forums, the more I´m interested in news of the community.

I dislike podcasts that put ads in. I guess it´s fair enough if they´re being paid for it but a 30sec ad in a podcast is a loooonnngg time, and when the ads are from other podcasters and/or people with really annoying voices or badly mixed sound/music effects then I turn the podcast off entirely. Say "Brought to you by" or whatever, but don´t give any elongated ads or fake sounding endorsements. GoToMyPC has ensured that I´m unlikely to turn on 3 podcasts I´d otherwise enjoy.

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BrandtPileggi

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Reply #14 on: June 11, 2007, 04:10:33 PM
I totally, and vehemently disagree. I didn't start listening to EP because of the banter, but damnit, I LOVE it. There's tons of great personal info in there that I find increadibly insightful, whether it be about what to expect in my first cons, the fact that my fiance and I aren't the only ones looking for more 2P cooperative games, other GREAT podcasts, or the fears and triumphs of raising a child (I was biting my lip when his boy went to the therapist about his speech delay, and then lo and behold, the next podcast we find out, "everything's okay!" How many of us sent up a cheer from within for him?)

I'm a big fan of the intros. Huge. Thanks for not letting them go Steve. Would there be a way to have the story's always start on a minute/half minute marker for those above? When relistening to something that I'm trying to get to quick, I usually just go to the 2:45 if there's talking, I can wait 15 seconds. If not, I rewind 15 seconds. That seems to just about cover it.



eytanz

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Reply #15 on: June 11, 2007, 04:18:22 PM
Who are you vehemently disagreeing with? You're just posting after two people in a row who admitted to sometimes listening to Steve and skipping the stories... :)



BrandtPileggi

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Reply #16 on: June 11, 2007, 05:33:56 PM
With the dozen or so posts before those that were not Steve. Sorry about that. I probably should have been more clear at whom I aim my vehemence at. Pow!



Russell Nash

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Reply #17 on: June 11, 2007, 07:45:19 PM
I totally, and vehemently disagree. I didn't start listening to EP because of the banter, but damnit, I LOVE it. There's tons of great personal info in there that I find increadibly insightful, whether it be about what to expect in my first cons, the fact that my fiance and I aren't the only ones looking for more 2P cooperative games, other GREAT podcasts, or the fears and triumphs of raising a child (I was biting my lip when his boy went to the therapist about his speech delay, and then lo and behold, the next podcast we find out, "everything's okay!" How many of us sent up a cheer from within for him?)

I'm a big fan of the intros. Huge. Thanks for not letting them go Steve. Would there be a way to have the story's always start on a minute/half minute marker for those above? When relistening to something that I'm trying to get to quick, I usually just go to the 2:45 if there's talking, I can wait 15 seconds. If not, I rewind 15 seconds. That seems to just about cover it.

Actually Steve's intros were always the exception.  We were complaining about pointless rambling.  Steve's intros are tight well-written and to the point.



BrandtPileggi

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Reply #18 on: June 11, 2007, 10:19:42 PM
ahhh... Disregard. Ha!



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Reply #19 on: June 15, 2007, 07:43:32 PM
How about good intro/outro music that you cant get.  You hear is every day/week, you really like it and then are disappointed to find you cant get hold of it.

I listen to "Walk in the Word" they have a real kickin track to start the show.  Only it's not even a real song just a short jingle.  Grrrr!


Listener

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Reply #20 on: June 15, 2007, 08:02:07 PM
Here's one that really bugs me:  problems with feeds.

Cases in point:

* The Fantasy Football Guys.  Their feed is telling my iTunes to d/l their shows from last year, week by week.  Which is strange because I haven't told it to.

* Suicide Girls.  They did podcasts from at least 3/21 to now, but the feed didn't start picking them up until last weekend, and then it tried to d/l all the past couple of months at once.

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eytanz

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Reply #21 on: June 15, 2007, 09:02:55 PM
Oh, yeah.

The worst offender among the feeds I subscribe to is Scientific American - they often mix their two podcasts, so that the weekly podcast ends up on the daily feed or vice-versa - or worse, instead of posting both podcasts they post the same one twice - and in addition, for some reason their daily feed often tries to download an old episode instead of a new one; sometimes up to five or six a day. It's been going on for so long I suspect it's deliberate, but I could find no mention of it on their website so I'm not sure...



Planish

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Reply #22 on: August 30, 2007, 05:07:40 AM
A story about something cute my kid did
[snip]
I can expect some extraneous stuff at the beginning and some listener comments at then end, but the meat of the show is always the story. 
For me, I dunno, not always. The part I liked best about EP109: Squonk the Apprentice was the clip of Alex (Steve's kid) saying "Hi ... hi?" in the intro. I didn't care all that much for the story.

Usually I'm more inclined to like a story if I have some idea of why it was chosen, or hear what others see in it, which ultimately adds to the enjoyment of the story itself, if I enjoy it at all. Bit of a herd mentality, I suppose.

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plantedbypiggies

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Reply #23 on: September 08, 2007, 06:25:58 PM
Pet peeves in podcasting... hee hee.

For full disclosure, I work in commercial radio*. so I hear a lot of audio, both spoken and music. So, I'm really picky about what I hear.

My biggest pet peeve has to do with editing. There have been numerous podcasts where the reader makes an obvious gaffe, stops for a few seconds, and then goes back and rereads what they messed up. That's perfectly fine. I mess up all the time when I'm reading copy. However, most of these recordings are made on a DAW (digital audio workstation), so its easy to go through and edit out the mistakes. When I hear the mistakes, it automatically makes the podcast sound second rate to me. I'd rather the product be dropped into the feed late rather than listen to stumbles.

Plosives!! I hate, hate, hate plosives. That's the huge explosion sound you hear with P's, T's, and sometimes K's and Q's. Before you begin a recording session, stand there for five minutes and get your microphone adjusted properly. Or, better yet, get a windscreen. That'll improve your sound so much.

Mixing variances are also an annoyance for me. I just finished listening to Sigler's Ancestor through Podiobooks.com. the outro for each episode would drop decibels like it was a hole filled bucket. Please keep it steady all the way throughout.

* Don't worry about any bashing you might have for DJs. I have very little patience to the blathering many of them do, too. I try to keep my own to a bare minimum.



Planish

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Reply #24 on: September 22, 2007, 10:47:49 AM
Music that is significantly louder than the rest of the podcast- ouch. Escapepod episodes sometimes do this, more usually at the end.

Recordings (usually interviews by phone) that have background noise-removal applied, resulting in that weird wind/surf sound effect. I'd rather put up with a bit of hum or fan noise, whatever, because at least it's constant and you can tune it out.

Podcasts that have a reference to a future event, but the year is not given. If you're just catching up by starting with earlier episodes, it can be confusing. I came across it recently in an installment of a novel where the author/reader said that he was going to start writing a sequel (or something) in March, but the novel itself was already a few years old.

Podcasts that are not podcast feeds, so you cannot simply suscribe to them. You have to download the individual mp3 files one at a time, assemble them into a playlist, keep checking a web site for new ones, and so on. That's really more of an abuse of the term "podcast", rather than a gripe about a podcast per se.

Episode titles that have a lot of boilerplate text ahead of the part that's unique to the episode, so that when you're scrolling through a list on your iPod Nano you have to pause and wait for the title to scroll horizontally and hope you can read it all before the backlighting turns off.
I like the Escapepod episode titles, like "EP42: Mutants of Pluto". Pseudopod, not so much. You get to read "Pseudopod 42:..." and the date, but not the story title.

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