How to record a podcast or interview in Podcaster Studio

1. How is the studio different from recording a call

If you record a Zoom or Telegram screen, the file will contain what has reached the network: a compressed picture, a "robot" voice on communication failures, all participants in one track. In Podcaster Studio the call is needed only so that you can see and hear each other. The recording goes separately: each participant's browser writes his own camera and microphone and sends them piece by piece to the server.

After recording, you have two tracks for each person — clear sound from the microphone and video with sound. You can listen to them synchronously right in the studio, give them to the editor with links or download them. This is how we record releases the FATRACING podcast.

2. What you need before recording

A computer with up-to-date Chrome, Edge, or Brave. The studio will also open from the phone, but the recording is more reliable on the laptop: the phone can turn off the screen or put the tab to sleep, and the recording will stop.

Headphones are a must for everyone. Without them, the voice of the interlocutor from the speakers gets into your microphone, and an echo will appear on the tracks, which cannot be cleaned later.

Free space in the browser: an hour of recording in 720p takes about one and a half gigabytes. The studio will warn you if there is less than 512 MB of space left.

And most importantly — a normal Internet for a return. More about this in step 5.

3. Log in and create a room

Open it podcaster.fatracing.ru and click "Log in via FATRACING". The login is shared with the site: if you are already logged in personal account The studio will recognize you by itself.

On the right, in the "Room" block, enter your name and the name of the room — for example, "Interview with the organizer". The "New room" button starts a clean room for the next entry.

The room becomes yours as soon as you start recording in it or copy a guest link. Only you can see the entries in it: if someone else enters the room under their account, they will see "The room is occupied".

4. Call the guest

Click "Link" at the top — the guest link will be copied, send it to the interlocutor. The guest does not need a FATRACING account: the link itself gives access to this room and the right to register in it. Do not send it to anyone except the guest.

Before copying the link, select "Communication Server". "Our server (Russia)" is suitable when the guest is in Russia, "LiveKit Cloud" is suitable when he is abroad. The server is shared for the whole room and is sewn into the link: if you changed it, copy the link again, otherwise you and the guest will end up on different servers and will not see each other.

5. Adjust the camera, microphone and quality

In the right column, select the camera and microphone and say a couple of phrases: the "Level" scale should bounce from the voice. The "Studio sound" switch is enabled by default: the browser writes the microphone as it is, without its own noise reduction and auto—loudness - this sound is the easiest to clean and reduce during installation. If it's noisy around you, turn it off: the browser will start suppressing noise, but the voice will become flat. It is better to switch before recording — during recording, the new setting will be applied only after "Stop".

The "recording resolution" is 720p or 1080p FHD. Changes only before the recording starts. 720p writes about 3.5 Mbit/s, 1080p — about 8 Mbit/ s, and this data needs to be sent to the server in time.

Therefore the guest almost always put 720p. If a person's recoil rate is less than the recording bitrate (you can check on any speedtest, see "Upload"), the sending queue will grow, and by the end of an hour-long conversation, only part of the video will reach the server. The permission is remembered in the browser, so ask the guest to check it if he has already recorded before.

6. Recording

When everyone is in the room and can hear each other, the presenter presses "Record" at the bottom of the screen. The recording is turned on immediately for all participants — the guest does not need to press anything, he will see that the presenter has started recording. There is a timer on top.

During the conversation, look at the "Upload" block and the "Participants" list: there you can see how many fragments each has "In the queue" and how many are "Saved". If someone's queue grows without stopping, the connection fails. It is better to notice this in the fifth minute than after an hour of conversation.

Audio is sent first, video is sent second. Even on a weak Internet, the conversation itself will reach the whole, and the video will be downloaded later.

Finished — "Stop."

7. Do not close the tab immediately

After the "Stop", the studio reloads what did not have time to leave during the recording. As long as the panel says "Recording continues" or "Check saving" and you can see "There are N fragments left", you can't close the tab — neither you nor the guest. Arrange this in advance: the guest usually closes the call first.

The inscription "The tab can be closed" means that the queue is empty. Check the line below it: if there are "N fragments did not leave after all attempts", then part of the recording is still on the device. Check the internet and click "Repeat".

If the tab is still closed, nothing is lost: the underloaded fragments are in the browser. Open the same link in the same browser and sending will continue by itself. The main thing is not to clean the site data and not to open the link in incognito mode.

8. Own copy to the computer

In the "My local recording" block, each participant can save their video with sound with the "Download my video" button (without a camera — "Download my audio"). The file is collected directly from the browser, without downloading from the server, so this is good insurance: ask the guest to save his copy immediately after recording.

A copy is stored in the browser until you delete it, and takes up space there. Clearing browser data will delete it along with everything else — it's better to save an important record to disk right away.

9. Where to find the finished record

The "Records" button opens a list of your records. Inside, you can rename the recording, listen and watch all tracks synchronously, copy the links "For the editor" and download each track as a separate file.

The recording opens as complete only when the tracks of all participants are checked on the server. While the guest is downloading his part, the recording is visible, but it is not yet possible to download it in its entirety — this is protection from a truncated file.

For recording, you can order a transcript with the "Run on Mac" button: using it, the studio collects content and chapters for YouTube, which are copied with one button. Decryption takes turns and is slow — an hour of conversation is processed for several hours, so start it when all tracks are already loaded.