Static Whisper

For Voiceteam 2022 Round 2 - Walkthrough Challenge: Create some kind of documentation of your podfic process. This might include photos, screenshots, text, video, a podcast interview, etc. You might include your recording setup and equipment, what steps you go through and why, and any tips or advice you have learned. You might also talk about how your process has changed over time and why!

Disclaimer: This absolutely is not intended to be a 'here is what everyone must do' guide, and I cannot guarantee that it will be of much help to anyone new to podfic. (The Podfic: A Resource Index website is helpful to check for getting started, in my opinion.) When I first opened up Audacity to mess around with practice editing, I read the long-term nuclear waste warning message off its Wikipedia page, and I tried to find 'set it and forget it' settings.

Step 1: Find a fanwork.

I don't record tumblr reblog chains or tweet threads, and I don't really go looking around on sites other than Archive Of Our Own (AO3). As a writer, I had already made the migration to AO3 before I looked into podficcing, and I find it easier to search for fic across multiple fandoms on this site. For some challenges like Out Of The Auditary, I specifically go looking for meta, nonfiction, and other works, but overall, I mostly browse AO3 for fanfic.

There's this whole thing with having permission from the author to podfic their work, which will affect what fanwork I choose. Depending on the fandom, some people are really good at tagging "Podfic Welcome" on their works, and some authors use that method instead of issuing a blanket yes to all podfic. There are also some fests that maintain lists of works from priors years of the fest that authors have agreed can be podficced. Some fandoms do not have a large list of authors with blanket permission to podfic (or BP), so it's inevitable that I have to leave a comment at some point and ask for permission, especially if I'm browsing specific tags or relationships for a challenge or fest. I came up with scripts that I can personalize as necessary for anonymous creators and requests for a fest. (Now, you might not be able to tell at this step that I use the 'Inspired By' function when posting to AO3, but personally, I find it annoying when an author tells me that I only have permission to podfic if I do something that I already do. So, that is prominently included in the script.)

For an anonymous creator:
For an event specific request:
[Note: Some people may not like the "no response equals go ahead" part. From one comment to another, I've rephrased that to 'no response meaning not going ahead' as well. Sometimes it depends on how long ago the fic was posted, if the author still seems to respond to comments, if they have any means of reaching out to them listed in their profile at all, and how far into the future I've set the deadline for a response compared to how long it would take me to record the podfic. I used to pick anywhere from four to eight weeks, depending on what other events I needed to focus on, so I've been lucky in that - so far - I've never had someone get beyond the deadline before responding.]

Some people want to stick with BP authors, and it can depend on what type of fandom event I'm trying to find a fic for as to how successful that goal is. For example, the turn around on recording and posting podfic during Voiceteam is fast enough that I tend to stick to BP authors. I use the Tampermonkey browser extension [in Firefox] to run the Blanket Permission Highlighter script, which turns usernames of BP authors green (instead of the usual red) and adds a check mark box to the search function in order to only show those usernames in search results. The filtering happens page by page of the search results, so sometimes, I just directly check out the Fandom Permission Statements List site, search for a fandom, and go down the list of authors to check their individual listings. (It's not really a separate resource, since the highlighting script pulls from the FPS List, but I find it to be faster for some fandoms with a lot of results and very few BP authors.)

A minor heads up for people who have to look at the profiles of authors in order to look for a transformative works statement: You will probably run into a lot of profiles without one. In some fandoms, you may run into a lot of entirely blank profiles. I have only once run into a creed about how the author didn't think podfic was a "real" transformative fanwork, thought that podficcing a work was "stealing" the real fannish content (that is, fanfiction), and they would never allow permission to podfic. That's not a majority opinion across all fandoms, but clearly, I can't guarantee that you will not find people that like at some point. If you use a workskin to filter out the usernames of creators that you want to avoid, you may want to filter out any such users that you run into.

( Step 1-and-a-half. Decide on whether to read the fanwork ahead of time or cold read. )

[Note: I often search for fanworks at night when it's not ideal to record, so it makes sense to do this next step after I find a fic - probably still at night - but before recording the next day. Sometimes, I search during the day and do this step after recording but before editing. If I pick a fanfic that's short enough (like, 100 words or close to a drabble), I might do this while the audio files are being uploaded to a site that hosts audio. I'm more likely to do this AO3 draft prep before recording for unfamiliar fandoms, long oneshots, any fic that I've read where I know I need to do pronunciation research, multi-chapter works, and certain fest works where I'm working ahead of time.]

Step 2. Prepare the Google Doc with the AO3 draft information.

As someone who started out in fannish spaces as a writer, I'm used to having a template Google Doc that I copy and then I fill in the copied document's lines for title, archive warning, and all that other stuff that AO3 asks for when posting. Since there's a whole bunch of lines that are the same between fiction and podfic posting, I used a combination of my pre-existing template and Shmaylor's Podfic Posting Guide to create my podfic specific template. (My process of filling in my template involves having every Rating, Archive Warning, and Category listed out, so I can delete what isn't needed for the specific draft. I trust that anyone reading this will appreciate not going point by point when so much of that section copies from the fic's information.) This is the podfic specific section:

( A long explanation of my AO3 Template. )

The work text section is where my template has a lot of options, since I need to account for the extremely rare cover art image being included, have a oneshot option, and a section for formatting multi-chapter works. I went through several how-to posts, I've watched people customize workskins in the Podfichat Discord server, and I just don't care to fiddle around with all that. (I do not make my own cover art. Currently, I have only included it once when someone already had it with their fic. I am the last person to ask if you want to know anything about that.)

( Work Text (Oneshots) )

( Work Text (Multi-Chapter) )

This is a lot to look at all in one place, but the good thing about drafting is that it's mostly deleting sections I don't need for the particular fic. Unless I'm doing a cold read and don't fill in tags or top notes until after editing, I can get most of it done ahead of time, which means I only need the links from Archive.org before I have exactly what I need to copy and paste into the text box while posting to AO3.

( Optional: Step 2-and-a-half. Reformatting the text for ease of recording. )

Step 3. Get everything set up in order to record.

Not to be too glib, but I just get the laptop out with Audacity on it, lay on my bed, pull up the text on another laptop, and start reading.

( Read more... )

Step 4. Record.

I allow for three to four seconds of background noise, in order to remove that later in editing. Then I talk.

( Read more... )

Step 4. Editing with Audacity.

How did I pick Audacity? I used it for a few assignments in uni, and our Sound Design instructor heavily recommended it because we were 1. broke college students, and 2. overwhelmingly, not pursuing Sound Design as our area of focus. We never touched the Spectrogram mode or settings (there's, like, pink vertical stuff happening in that one), so I don't edit in that mode. I edit in Waveform mode, or the blue on grey stuff.

The process of editing looks like:

( Editing Process )

Step 5. Exporting the files.

I export as a WAV file, and then I export as an MP3 file. One of the definite 'set it and forget it' bits is selecting "Constant Bit Rate", checking "Forced export to mono", and usually the compression rate. If I remember correctly, Archive.org will automatically compress WAV files to 128 kbps if you don't upload an MP3 file at the same time as the WAV, but most people do not want to deal with the resulting size of the MP3 files once you start recording anything with length to it. I think I set 96 kbps when I was working on a podfic with music and sound effects and just left it there - hence it being included in my template - until I needed to deal with my nearly 7 hour podfic.

I saved a note in my initial [private] Podfic Resources doc, but I didn't date it or explain why I was saving the note. I can only presume that this is why I readjusted to 64 kbps and have left it there:


Step 6. Upload the audio files to a site that hosts audio.

( Read more... )

Step 7. Post to AO3.

If I've been nice to future me, I have already gotten the draft done before this step [if you remember Step 2]. It's a simple matter of going line by line, copy and pasting, on down while I go between the tab with the Google Doc and the tab with AO3 open. If I got the links from Archive.org in the template already, I can just copy and paste the whole section for the text section over. I hit preview so the notification for a 'Inspired By' work will get sent out, and then I post. (If someone has a specific note about needing to comment in their profile or that they don't trust the email notification to be sent, I'll still comment, but I slowly stopped doing in the summer or fall of 2021 when it seemed like a redundant step.)

Step 8. Cross-post to my tumblr sideblog and to this Dreamwidth.

( Details on what I include in the text of the post and how I tag on tumblr and Dreamwidth. )

Step 9. I open up my "Year in Review: [Year]" Google Doc and add in the title name and final time. (Sometimes I have to also add in a fandom section for a new fandom.)

I've encountered a running gag that podficcers love Excel and spreadsheets. Personally, I don't really use them. I use Heading 3 for each fandom, I use Heading 4 for fic and meta, and I can alphabetize the titles as I go. I usually try to keep on top of adding up the times for each fandom as I go, but as long as I put a couple question marks in the fandom's total time to indicate that I need to update it, I also might just let the tallying go until I do an end of the year post. [The end of the year post for 2021 is here, and it includes a link to my "Year in Review: 2021" Google Doc if anyone's curious as to how I live without using spreadsheets. Maybe if I ever do a lot of podfic on one year, I'll consider a spreadsheet....]

Step 10. I update my "To Podfic" Google Doc.

When I first started podficcing, I would put out monthly to-do lists for myself (here's a horrifically ambitious example), and I'd keep track of them, any fic I hadn't gotten to, and what I needed to do for fests in the Google Doc. I keep my asking for permission to podfic scripts in there, and I also have a section at the bottom for keeping track of my Podfic Bingo board (this was the space I was screenshotting for tumblr updates and the AO3 subcollection). Since I shifted to podficcing more for fandom events than just working down a randomly curated list, I mostly keep track of when I need to submit works by.

( Read more... )

Optional: Step 11. Share a link my AO3 posting in a Discord server channel.

I hardly ever remember to do this in Podfichat or Voiceteam channels. It's sort of a new and not always applicable step that I have not done for most of my time podficcing, so I just don't remember to do it most of the time.

( Read more... )

 

I went ahead and decided to backdate the posts I put into my tumblr sideblog's podfic resources tag, and I must admit that this one may not be entirely useful for cross-posting to Dreamwidth. However, it's a commonly recommended source for those new to editing podfic with Audacity.

~the-dragongirl's How To Podfic: A Highly Biased and Incomplete Tutorial. It dates to January of 2016.