Working From Home Resources/Advanced
WebStudio is great and all, but doing a show all by your lonesome gets a bit samey. Perhaps you want some company on your show, someone to share the airwaves with.
Sadly, at the time of writing there's no great solution for this. This page will attempt to summarise the current best practice for getting other people on your show.
Pre-Record Links
If you can't get your co-hosts' voices into WebStudio live, a good option is to pre-record your links. This involves you recording your chatting in advance, then uploading it into Show Planner, and then playing it out live in between songs in WebStudio.
The advantage of this is that it requires no special fiddling on the day of the show. It's just like any other WebStudio show, except that you play your link recordings instead of doing them live. This is certainly the lowest-tech approach.
A related advantage is that you can try your links over and over again until they sound good, which may make your show sound slicker. (Though it must be noted that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and to not stress about it too much.)
The obvious problem with this approach is that you lose the immediacy of live radio, which is certainly undesirable. Also, sitting there pressing the "play" button over and over again can get a little boring.
To use this approach, follow this guide. (If you can't access the document, contact someone on the Management Team on Slack.)
Pre-Record Entire Show
You may be thinking, "if I'm pre-recording bits of my show, why not edit it all together in one go?" And indeed, this is possible. There are quite a few caveats though:
- This is very time-consuming. You will need to record all the links, and then edit them together with the music, in advance.
- You will need legal copies of all the music you want to play - you cannot download songs from Show Planner.
- You will need to tracklist each song as it is played (otherwise you are in breach of the Presenters' Contract).
- Currently there is no way to play it automatically, so you will need to play the show out via WebStudio at the scheduled time. (The Computing Team are working on this though.)
Given the above, if you wish to use this approach, please speak to the Programme Controller (pc@ury.org.uk or @Michael on Slack) and he will point you in the right direction.
Have Someone Else Mix It
If you don't have the technical skills to mix a multi-person show yourself, you could ask someone else to do it. A number of our presenters and technicians have the skills and equipment to do it - so for you it'd be as simple as joining a Zoom call.
One massive caveat though: many (if not all) of those people are extremely busy at the present time, with uni work, URY admin, and personal commitments. Don't count on someone being available at the time you need.
If you want to do this, ask around in #remote-broadcasting in Slack. Make sure you have this sorted at least a week before your show. Remember that ultimately your show is your responsibility, and we will not be held responsible if you can't find someone to mix it for you. For this reason, you should always have a back-up plan.
Mix It Yourself
If you're adept with audio routing (either physical or virtual), there's no reason why you couldn't mix in your guests yourself - essentially, mix them on top of your microphone feed into WebStudio.
There are many different ways of doing this. We have a guide to one way, using Voicemeeter on Windows. If you're using macOS or Linux, there are certainly tools for that. If you prefer to do it in hardware, there are ways to do that too.
Remember, however, you do this at your own risk. While members of the Engineering and Computing teams may make an effort to support you, there are no guarantees, and responsibility remains with you if your show goes wrong. For this reason, this should only be attempted if you know what you're doing and how to fix it without anyone from URY helping you.
Bribe The Computing Team To Implement Native Multi-Person Shows In WebStudio
I'm told they accept payment in alcoholic and/or caffeinated beverages.