How We Record

Coordinating the schedules of four international airline pilots (with guests) who are often on different parts of the planet can be a challenge. We generally exchange our schedules when our airline rosters become available and schedule various times throughout the month to record sections of the podcast. The fact that we’ve chosen to have multiple segments often augments the difficulty so, at times, you’ll notice that one or two people are missing. This generally means that they’re flying.

Episode one through four were recorded in a manner that you won’t see in future episodes. We’re slowly trying to achieve a level of sound quality and production value that compares to traditional radio programs… so as we start producing more episodes we hope that you’ll see sound quality improvements incrementally.

Audio equipment

Zoom H2 & H4n

We have historically used a mixed-bag of microphones but we’re slowly rationalising our equipment meaning that everybody will be using Heil PR40 type microphones. Until that happens, the audio quality is affected overall.

We use conversations on Skype for recording and run the audio through a Yamaha MW12C  USB mixer that feeds raw wave audio into a solid state Zoom H2 or Zoom H4n recorder. Audio is recorded locally on a PC as a backup. That raw audio is first imported into Levelator and then later into Adobe Audition or Audacity for editing. You won’t see the benefits of our editing process until all our hosts have synchronised their means of input.

After Marty edits the audio, he creates show notes and publishes the episode live to the world.

We also use the H2 and H4n for recording audio ‘in the field’, although we’re looking into more effecting means of achieving better results.

Music on the program is either released under a Creative Commons licence or we have permission from the author for its use.

Video Editing

Sony HXR-NX5P

We record our high-end video using two full-HD 3-chip digital Sony HXR-NX5P cameras. We also use a smaller HDR-XR550 ‘handycam’ fitted with an integrated BeachTek splitter for XLR microphone input for some web video production. We mainly use Sony UWP wireless microphones and the Heil PR40 for sound. For post production video editing we use a number of products from the Adobe CS5 Master Collection – most notably Premier Pro and After Effects.

Our studio is littered with lighting, blue screens, green screens and other peripherals.

We are available for corporate work

Yes, we are available for corporate video and audio. Please contact us.