The week started out with a test of Speakflow, an autocue/teleprompter. I’ve written my podcast scripts, now need to narrate them, ideally in a single take with no touching of the keyboard or mouse clicks which would be picked up by the microphone.

This cloud-based software, which is free to use, definitely falls into the category of “Best thing since sliced bread”. It was easy to use with two settings, Flow which listens to your voice and scrolls accordingly, or Auto which scrolls at a constant pace. I hit upon the speed of 1.75 with Medium sized text and this scrolled beautifully for a five-minute narration taken in one take, first time.

There is a simple editor with Bold, Italics, Underscore or Text Colour, but no option for using a colour for highlighting. You can import a script from a .DOCX file but cut/paste worked as well. Import made bullet text much smaller, which is not what you want for an autocue. I also had to find the paragraphs and add a carriage return so that the script was more spaced which is where I would interpret a slight pause in the narration. This only took a few moments before the script was ready to hit the Start button in Presenter Mode.

You could add a label to your script to allow you to find scripts if you started to get into the hundreds.

You can record a 1080p video of your narration. I’m not sure why you would do this in Speakflow, you would use QuickTime or whatever video recording software you would normally use. The only slight advantage would be that the start/stop buttons would be the same, and you wouldn’t have to try and start the recording in two different applications. The video would be downloaded in .webm format, they are not stored unless you are on the Pro (paid) version.

Over the week I have used it several times. In Auto mode it is OK if you want to speak at a relatively constant pace, although you can fluctuate the speed a little by reading faster for a paragraph or two if you balance that out with a slower pace so that you don’t run out of the text that is being scrolled to you. Apart from the first attempt I didn’t persist with the Flow mode which would allow you modify the pace of your speech.

I’ve been practising the recording for what will be the first episode of Maximo Bite Size. The first attempt at using Speakflow was narrated without hesitation, but it wasn’t recorded. The others have only had slight pauses in unwanted places and could have been cut out using Audacity. I have at least once gone through the cycle of recording, converting the .m4a to .mp3 via Auphonic and then importing into Audacity and applying some settings before exporting.

This week I’ve also been back on to Camtasia, playing with an old video, compressing the speed of the screen capture pieces, which is the body of the video and I’ve removed the voice aspect ready for a new recording. This time I want to capture me speaking to the camera, so that it will be a video overlaid with the screen capture which should create a better training video, if the presenter wasn’t hidden.

A microphone stand and isolation shield have both appeared on the door step this week and this does help a lot to cut out background noises and the echo effect of being in a largish room with high ceiling and no soft furnishings. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be trying this out in different rooms to see what difference it makes. I’ll also be trying to record video of me talking to the camera at different distances with the microphone and isolation shield just out of sight of the camera. What I am trying to work out is what room works best for both visual and audio, and I am really hoping the dining room will work out OK as that is best suited to the equipment being left out rather than packed away. Once I have worked out the visual aspect, the green screen and lighting will be next to order, but I don’t want to overdo the size of the green screen if I will never use it, for example, if it turns out I’ll never be further than a couple of feet from the camera.

The idea I’ve got is to use the same content for the Maximo Bite Size podcast as a video with one or two slides per episode. I may want to video myself recording the episode and then split the audio out for the podcast. The video of me talking would then appear in a corner of a slide. The intro and outro of the podcast would be different from the intro and outro of the video, the video then being used on a YouTube channel. This will also be the focus of the recordings in the next couple of weeks. So, plenty of practise, at speaking and making videos and trying to construct a workflow that is efficient.

On the Maximo Bite Size transcripts, I have now reached the target of 40 that I set myself at the beginning of the month. I’ll not write anymore this month as I will be taking next week off to catch up on the garden. Next week I’ll set a new target for June.

With the third chapter almost complete, and having been silent on LinkedIn for two months, I’ve announced the introduction of Maximo Bite Size and that I am working towards the podcast. What I want to do is convert my LinkedIn followers to followers on Maximo Secrets and I’ve used the silent period to point out that they will see less activity on LinkedIn going forward, so why not follow Maximo Secrets to keep up to date. The fact that I have made the announcement, will mean that I will have to start the podcast before the end of June.

On the really negative side, I am even further behind in writing up the weekly diary for ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ than I was last week. It is really crunch point now, if I don’t do something this week, it will fizzle out completely before getting started.

I’ve decided on two tactics to address this:

• Publish week 21 before week 20, and work backwards. Stop the rot. OK it will be harder for me to remember what I did 4 or 5 weeks ago, but the gap in missing weeks won’t feel quite so bad.
• Record the podcasts for Weeks 1 and 2 of ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’. If I start working up towards the missing weeks that will put pressure on me to get those weeks written.

All of this is because I think I am close to starting the Maximo Bite Size podcast, and if I am to learn and make mistakes then it is better for it to not be on the work related one. That will also have an extra dimension in that it will also be video based, so start with something simpler, an audio only podcast.

I’ve rationalised the objectives for the week, I’ll be able to go back to the old ones, but I need to focus on getting a podcast started. So, the objectives for Week 22 are:

• Write Week 21 of ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ and publish it. Stop the rot!
• Produce the first two episodes of the ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ podcast and publish it, at least on the website.
• Set up Audacity for Audio Books standards and conversion to .MP3, I understand it is possible.
• Determine which room is best for audio and video based on different distances from the webcam. 1080p to start with, but I should also experiment with 4k, the webcam supports it.
• Use different software for recording the video and work out how to split out the audio. Hopefully, this can be done with no loss of quality.