With Hindenburg editing a podcast doesn’t take an age and you will feel like a broadcasting pro

Hello, and welcome to this episode of speak PR. This is Jim James talking to you from the UK. And I'm actually trialing a new software today called Hindenburg. And I'm trialing this for podcasting. Because I've been looking at the ways that we can make audio for podcasting. That is simple to do. Because one of the challenges for content creation these days is the complexity of the technology. I've been using GarageBand for 225 episodes, and it's great, but it's really made for music making. And I'm not really doing that. So there's lots of functionality. And frankly, some of the keys and so on are really not what I need. So I've been on the hunt. I've tried Audacity. And today I'm trying Hindenburg. So let's share with you some initial impressions and why this could well be a great platform for you if you're looking for a dedicated tool for making audio. Now, as you know, I'm working on the speak PR masterclass. And in that we talk about Storify, personalize, engage amplifying to know so I'm always interested in the backstory of a company. And it turns out that Hindenburg was born in 2008. In Lusaka, in Zambia. And there were two friends together on a porch in the garden. And one of them, Nick turned to the other one, and said that he was working on a community radio. And he said that the problem was that he couldn't find an audio editor that suited the project needs to be nice and simple, reliable and affordable. He said to his friend Previn. And it turns out, of course, that this was a conversation that we're starting a business because Previn actually had experience as an engineer, a software engineer. And having myself grown up in Africa, in Nigeria, at the age of eight, I really resonated with that idea of an African sunset, but also about how we need some intermediate and dedicated technology, especially in some applications, like audio where the engineering side has sort of almost taken over. And for those of us that just want to do one thing, well, the technology has become kind of a barrier, and not a tool anymore. And so the two of them, Nick and Previn decided on Create a new business, and they called it Hindenburg. Because in 1937, the Chicago reporter Herbert Morrison witnessed the Hindenburg disaster where the German passenger airship caught firing crashed. And the interesting part about that from broadcast perspective is it was the first time there was ever a real live broadcast. And so it got the chance to thinking about this being a tool for journalism really, they were solving the problem for intermediate technology for people dedicated to one task, which is radio editing. Now, in my earlier life, I worked at a company called ms Neve that pioneered the audio file, the first product in the mid 80s. That was digitizing audio. And then you could make edits on a nonlinear disc seems like a long time ago now, but we used to digitize the tape, and then edit it and then put it back on the tape at the end, things have moved along to a long way since then. But the point was that there was a dedicated device for editing. And Hindenburg looks to be an amazing, amazing, Li simple and yet intuitive piece of software that so far, having played with it for a day. Now, I'm really enjoying. So it's got a few features that I can share with you because for many of us that are looking at creating content. The content creation is the barrier from a technology point of view, and it shouldn't be. Now, the Hindenburg user interfaces are very clean. And it enables you to choose the different tracks. One of the features that's very nice is it has a clipboard, where you can actually create clips and bits of audio and cut and paste them into little areas on the right hand side of your dashboard. Now I'm already liking that feature, because sometimes there can be a phrase or a sentence that you want to keep for later. And in GarageBand, I had to create a new track to kind of file all of the little clips that I wanted and then to drag and drop them back against this idea that you could have different elements is really nice as some of those elements you might have created inside Hindenburg itself where you can record directly as I'm doing now using my RODE NT USB mic. But also you can drag and drop the audio that you've got on your desktop. So I've taken the theme music for this podcast, actually just from my finder and just dragged and dropped it. And that's really nice as well. Another feature that Hindenburg has is an auto level feature. Now for me, I have to say that I've used GarageBand, and spent much too much time trying to sort out the different levels to the extent that now, I know I'm guilty of it. But I'm sometimes sending out content where I know the levels are slightly uneven, but it's taken me so long. To get them all arranged. I'm using the broadcast Bosque buzzsprout, magic mastering where they're supposed to auto level that is, but even then now I listen. And it still isn't quite right. So the Hindenburg has an auto leveling feature, which I'm looking forward to seeing at play. Another aspect that I really like about Hindenburg is the control of the of the audio as I see it going across the screen. One of the problems with GarageBand was the sort of scrolling back and forwards and most importantly, the scrubbing of audio. Now, scrubbing means that you can play the audio back at different speeds, you can find where the where the voice stops, and where if you want to change, for example, a sentence or removing m&r, and on the GarageBand, that's not possible effective to playback at different speeds, because it's made for music. And I guess that's not really an issue. But it is a dedicated voice issue, the ability to scrub back and forwards as it's called, and to hear where the words start and stop. And to better remove those ones you don't want. The the cutting and the pasting on the Hindenburg looks really very simple. And it really resembles a word processor effect. So you've got cut, copy, paste, insert, clear split, and in and out, so you can choose where you're going to do those edits. So the functionalities looking really good for actually making edits. And I can have multi tracks, so I can have different interviewees or different pieces of music or audio on different tracks. And there's a very nice and very simple to use crossfade feature. And I have to say that I have found that quite difficult in GarageBand. Because you have to keep hitting the little sort of loudness bar and making little dots and then doing what they call automation. And frankly, it's pretty fiddly. And I think it's what's given me a bad shoulder. So this has got a quite nice grab at the top of the track or the bottom of the track. And just slide it back and forwards actually in the way that iMovie does with its audio in and out on the on the tracks, but GarageBand doesn't. So the ability to fade in and out between different speakers is something that's really useful, especially as I do a lot of one man shows but actually, I also like to do the two person interview. So the blending in and out between speakers will help the podcast not sound quite so awkward at times. So then the next part will be the display. One of the things I'm liking about Hindenburg is that I can see my audio monitor on my on the channel itself, but also on the bottom of my screen. And what I'm also getting is the clock. Now with the GarageBand It showed me beats and time and it had metronome and, and other sort of things on the display that were really irrelevant, but I couldn't remove. So this slightly more utilitarian interface on hindenberg. I'm finding quite relaxing, to be honest. And I'm liking the fact that I can see that my voice level is getting between minus 15 to minus 12 db, which is just about right, I'm not getting up to the minus nine into the red or the or the minus six. And I can see my time counter slipping away nicely. And in front of me I can see the waveform actually on the file. And it's letting me know that I'm recording at a consistent at a consistent volume. And there's another feature that I really must mention, which is that when you're editing audio in GarageBand if you edit and delete a section, the section two The right does not automatically shift to the left, which means that I've personally spent hours just dragging audio files and audio segments across to join up. It's a labor intensive and thankless job, I did find a shortcut. There's a macro, but you have to actually put that in yourself. It's not an automatic. So in the Hindenburg, I think it shows that they really understand the user workflow. Because with Hindenburg, if you put an in and out and you delete a section of audio, all the audio tracks, and clips to the right of that will move automatically. And that is going to save me a lot of time. Now, I've got some work to do myself on editing this, but one of the things I'm then going to be doing is publishing it. And this is where I think it's going to really be coming into its own as a dedicated podcast, or broadcast app. In GarageBand, I have to export it as a file as an mp3 file, and then I uploaded for the Hindenburg, I've got a publish macro within the program. And I can choose then to publish to an mp3 podcast, an enhanced podcast, I can do a file upload, I can save it to my computer, I can do SoundCloud, libsyn, blueberry, buzzsprout, pod bean, spreaker, podcast.co, and io.fm. In other words, I can actually syndicate the content directly from my device to this number of podcast players doesn't have Apollinaire, for example, doesn't have the Google podcasts, I'm still going to need to send it to my bus route, which does syndicate it to there. But certainly there are a couple in there that I'm not using at all, for example, like PR x and podcast.co. So my initial view of this, Hindenburg is looking really positive. Now, what is it going to cost me to buy this program. Obviously, if I use the plain GarageBand, I get it for free on my computer. If I use the journalist version of Hindenburg, with a multitrack editor, the automated levels, the clipboard and the Publish. And a number of other features going to cost me 78 pounds, which is including tax, if I want the journalist Pro, which is still multitrack recording, as well as editing, noise reduction and noise profiler, and 10 times publishing, and a few other features is going to cost me 299 pounds. So again, that's not cheap, but he's going to be saving me a lot of work. And it's going to be a real workhorse. So the opportunities here for, yes, paying a little bit of money. But if you're going to be creating content, frequently as a way of monetizing your podcast, and of making something that you can be proud of and using daily, then it's going to be a tool, I should think the ROI on that over a even just over a year is going to be really, really worthwhile. So if you're looking at creating content for audio, having the right tools is gonna make life a lot more fun, believe me. And if you don't have the right tools, it becomes quite tiring. GarageBand is great. It's free. But it really is dedicated to making music, or Dasa T is dedicated to making audio. It's free. For me, just some of the features in the interface, make it quite distracting Hindenburg creates offers an alternative paid Yes. But if you're serious about creating content, then it may well be worth the investment. And for the people who sat on that patio in Lusaka in 2008. They deserve of course the credit for Dave made, which is really a functional utilitarian, but extremely professional piece of audio equipment. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of speak br My name is Jim James. You've been listening to me on the new Hindenburg software that I'm trialing and in the meantime until we meet again, I wish you the best of health, a profitable business that if you're going to be making anything in content, treat yourself to the best tools you can afford. Because it really does does make all the difference, not just to you, but also to your audience.