SYN and Omny Studio Compiled by James Blake, Using Resources Created by 121Cast, October 2015

SYN and Omny Studio Compiled by James Blake, using resources created by 121cast, October 2015

THIS GUIDE IS FOR Flagship Executive Producers Flagship Daily Producers Seasonal Producers Panorama Daily Reporters

NOTE The SYN Website alongside Omny Studio is always updating, so this guide may have some instructions to things that don’t exist. If this is the case, just let us know at [email protected] so that this guide can be updated.

TABLE OF CONTENTS OMNY STUDIO OVERVIEW – PG 2 PROGRAM ELEMENTS OVERVIEW – PG 3 RECORDINGS – PG 4 CLIPS – PG 6 EDITOR – PG 8 PLAYLISTS & PODCASTING – PG 9 SLIGHTLY MORE ADVANCED – PG 12

OMNY STUDIO…EXPLAIN!...PLS.

Omny Studio is an audio capturing, editing and publishing program that has been created by Melbourne based company 121cast.

The program can be accessed by web browsers to do everything from listening back to raw live recordings of your show to editing pieces of your shows to publishing podcasts to the SYN Website, iTunes and the consumer app Omny all in one click. For a video explaining the program, just head to tinyurl.com/OmnyStudioOverview

You’ll notice that there is another program called Omny, this is made by 121cast as well but is geared towards listeners.

Beyond being used at SYN and other community broadcasters, Omny Studio is also being used by major Australian radio networks like Southern Cross Austereo.

SYN Nation seasonal It’s A Match used the program to upload full podcasts to iTunes and Omny in the middle of 2015. The show was able to gain an audience in the thousands and saw a strong following in the US. So strong that there were more US listeners to It’s A Match podcasts then there were Australian listeners.

Omny Studio is free to use for any SYN program and if you need any help understanding it you can just email [email protected] or hit the ‘Help’ button in the top right of the screen but we’ll explain this later.

ALRIGHTY, EXPLAIN ALL OF THIS TO ME

I’ll just start by saying that if you enjoy having things explained by video instead of reading things just go to http://tinyurl.com/Omny90 but if any of it doesn’t make sense read on friend!

Logging in for the first time • If you’re are part of a Flagship just email your EP and ask for an Omny Studio login • If you’re a Seasonal producer, email [email protected] for an Omny Studio login • If you’re a SYN Nation Hub volunteer email [email protected] for an Omny Studio login

Getting your bearings When you log in you will see seven buttons on the left of the screen, here is a quick explanation of each

• Recordings These are raw captures of audio captured from your show • Clips These are audio files that are ready to be published • Editor You can use this to edit single or separate recordings into clips • Playlists and Podcasts This is where you organise how your content is published • Search • Analytics Here you can find out how many listeners your content is getting and where your audience is coming from as well as how they access your content • Settings

USING THE PROGRAM SYN METRO VOLUNTEERS

In this section, we’re going to just look at four areas; Recordings, Clips, Editor and Playlists & Podcasts.

Recordings

Whenever your show is on air, Omny Studio will be listening out for your show, when it hears a segment going live to air it will capture it.

Any source that is ‘on’ on the panel when your show is on will be recorded. One thing that you don’t want recorded is music because it can’t be included in your podcast and it makes the editing process longer. To avoid capturing your music, you need to make sure that the AUD Bus on the channel that your music is coming from is switched off.

AUD Bus

4 In the above image, all music is being played from AUX2 so the AUD Bus on the AUX2 channel would need to be switched off. To do this all you need to do is press the AUD button. If the button isn’t illuminated then that means it is off.

The AUD Bus stands for ‘Audition Bus’ so think of it as what audio needs to be sent to Audition on the Edit PC in studio. Of course, this button does more then just send audio to Audition, it also sends audio to Omny Studio. The AUD Bus does not have an impact on what audio is sent live to air.

Keep in mind that the PGM Bus (which is located on the left of the AUD Bus) does have a direct impact over what audio is put to air. If you ever see a PGM Bus that isn’t illuminated in an on air studio, press it immediately. If it doesn’t illuminate please call the emergency phone on 0402 620 214.

The beauty of utilising the AUD Buses is that it makes editing so much easier. When Omny Studio recognises that audio isn’t being sent to it, it will automatically stop recording, meaning that when it comes to editing you have individual segments to deal with.

Imagine the recordings section is like having a USB drive with all your show content on it except you don’t have to do anything to get your audio on there.

All recordings are private within SYN, which means that only other hosts and producers on your program can access these recordings.

Clips

Clips are the single pieces of content that you want to publish to the world. Clips can be shared individually on social media platforms and can be embedded into the SYN website or they can be associated to a podcast stream, more on this later in Playlists & Podcasts.

Clips can either be a single segment, like “Luke’s Pie Review” that you might want to share on Facebook because it was a really killer review or they can be an entire podcast of a show like “Luke & Sarah’s Pastry Smackdown” for an audience that didn’t hear your show.

So to recap, you can upload small clips (a segment) and large clips (a show). You can upload a large clip like an entire show and have this appear only on iTunes and the SYN website and still upload smaller clips (segments) from the same show and make these only appear on social media platforms. This is explained in Playlists & Podcasts.

Now onto how to make clips.

You have a couple of choices when making a clip, you can choose to create a clip using the ‘Editor’ section which involves editing recordings from the recordings section or you can simply upload a clip.

The key difference between these two options comes down to how you create the final product. Using the recordings and editor option within Omny Studio means you are getting all of your raw files from the Recordings section and doing all the editing in the Editor section.

Whereas uploading a clip means that you have either recorded the show in studio in Audition or you have used the audiologs and you have edited the file using Audition or some other audio editing program. So you have created the final product outside of Omny Studio and are using Omny Studio as a hosting platform rather than an editing/hosting platform.

To create a clip using the editor within Omny Studio, just click on the editor and select New Cut and to upload a clip that you have made outside of Omny Studio just click the upload button located in the top right screen. 6

No matter how you create a clip, the next step is to make it presentable to the world. This involves giving the clip a Title, a Quick Description, some Tags, some Artwork and a content rating.

Most of this is self explanatory, but this is how you can make your content stand out to an audience. Remember that when you publish a clip that it will then be accessible on three different platforms so making your content stand out is important.

Give your Clip a brief title (and remember a title that teases the audience works well on Facebook and Twitter) and an eye-catching description and give it some simple tags like: Interview, Finals Chat, Peking Duk to make it easier for you to find the clip later on (maybe even years on). If your clip is an interview upload a picture of your guest, otherwise your show picture will do.

Remember that your content may be reaching an audience which has never heard of SYN before, they might not be used to hearing content from us, so when it comes to giving your show a content rating just think ‘would a parent want their 10 year old to hear about this?.

It’s A Match chose to rate their content as explicit because they were talking about sex and relationships. This means that, on iTunes for example, a visible warning appeared next to the show’s episode.

To make your clip publically available on the SYN website, Omny, iTunes, Facebook and Twitter you have to click ‘Public’ in the publishing subsection.

Once you click save changes, your clip will be available online automatically on the Omny consumer app, you can also go back later on and make some changes if need be. If you want to share your clip just scroll down to the share on Facebook or Twitter buttons. To associate your clip with your podcast, go to the Playlists & Podcasts section for instructions.

7 Editor

This is an in-site audio editor it works like a rudimentary version of Audition or Audacity, which makes ‘cuts’ out of files that are in your recordings or in your clips.

If, for example, you produce a one-hour talk based show you’ll often put to air five separate talk breaks. If you want to upload a podcast consisting of all your talk breaks, all that you need to do is click ‘new cut’ in the editor section and then pull each of the individual recordings into the timeline at the bottom of the screen. You can include show media in between each break by uploading show media as a private clip. This means that you can use the clip for editing purposes but the individual clip won’t be uploaded as a podcast on any publishing platform. The best part about keeping your show media in your clips as unpublished files is that you only need to upload them once and that regardless of the production drives being online or down you will always have access to your show media for your podcasts.

The editor acts just like any other popular audio editor, but is skewed towards allowing you to quickly put together a podcast and get it out the world shortly after your show has finished. For more intensive editing you might want to consider downloading your recordings from the recordings section and editing together a podcast using programs like Audition.

Playlists and Podcasts Okay, to understand how to get all of your clips onto the web lets just take a quick step back. What we know so far is; what a clip is, an individual piece of publishable content.

We also know how to make clips, either by using the recordings section of the site and editing within the site or by recording a show with Audition and editing it in Audition too.

Now we need to think about how we organise all of this mush into one cohesive feed for both podcast publishing programs and our audiences to understand.

This is done through playlists. A playlist in the context of Omny Studio is a collection of clips. A playlist is a feed that can be read by iTunes and the SYN website, the beauty of these feeds is that once you submit the feed to iTunes and embed it into the SYN website all you will have to do for future shows is associate your clips (aka episodes) to that playlist.

Plain English: I have a show called “Lookin’ Fine”, I create a playlist called “Lookin’ Fine Podcasts” and have the link to this playlist submitted to iTunes and embedded in the SYN website. Now when I make new episodes for Lookin’ Fine, I upload the final show (which I edited in Audition) as a clip. I then publish that clip and put it in my Lookin’ Fine Podcast playlist. In no time at all I have my podcast appearing on iTunes and the SYN website.

So, what we will walk through now is how to create a playlist

Step 1. Open up the Playlists & Podcasts section and click ‘New Playlist’

Step 2. Add in all the details, remember that what you put in here is going to be seen when your audience accesses the podcast. A high quality image is important in order to be accepted by iTunes. You can go to http://bit.ly/ApplePodcastRequirements for more info on this. Fill out the additional iTunes podcast information but leave ‘Podcast RSS feed episodes per page’ section blank.

Step 3. Make sure you select ‘Public’ to make your show accessible to the public. Once you select ‘Save Changes’ this playlist will be live on the Omny consumer app but a couple of steps will need to be taken to get everything working on iTunes and then SYN website.

Now lets look at how to add a new episode to the playlist (so that you are updating my podcast)

*Remember to upload a new episode to your playlist (aka your podcast feed) you’ll need to upload the file as a clip first

Step 1. Select your playlist from the Playlists & Podcasts section

Step 2. Click the button in the top of right of the page called ‘add a new clip’

Step 3. Now you can either select the clip based on what your most recent clip is or by searching for it. Just hit the tick to add it. By default selected clips are automatically published to your playlist (aka your podcast feed).

9 Step 4. Remember as clips are published to your public playlist, your podcast will automatically update on the Omny consumer app, on iTunes and on the SYN website. However if you are setting up your podcast for the first time there is some work that you will still need to get through first, bring on the next step-by-step guide!

Lets take a look at publishing a playlist to the SYN website

Step 1. Go to the playlist you want to publish in Playlists & Podcasts

Step 2. In the playlist you want to publish onto the SYN website, click ‘sharing’, this tab runs across the top of the page alongside ‘Details’, ‘Clips’ and ‘Analytics’.

Step 3. Highlight and copy the scary looking code which is in the box under the headline ‘Embeddable playlist player for your site’.

Step 4. Log into the SYN website and click ‘Add Content’ which you can see by hovering over your avatar in the top right of the screen.

Step 5. Click ‘add Blog Post’ and give the blog post a title and upload your show image, you don’t need to type anything in the body. Associate your show to the blog post by typing in your show page name in ‘Show reference’.

Step 6. Click ‘switch to plain text editor’ under the body text editor, this will change the body text box, here is where you paste the scary looking code that you copied earlier from Omny Studio.

You can switch to a plain text editor by clicking the blue link

Step 7. Click save at the bottom of the page, and give yourself a pat of the back and treat yourself to a non-descript honeycomb based chocolate snack, you have gone and got yourself a self-updating widget to all your podcasts on the SYN website. Heck yes!

10 Lets take a look at submitting a playlist to iTunes and the SYN website

Step 1. Take a deep breath, this is the last 100m of the marathon, you can do it.

Step 2. Go to the Podcasts and Playlists section in Omny Studio and click on the playlist that you wish to make available on iTunes .

Step 3. Double check that all your details are up to scratch, remember that what you put in here is going to be seen when your audience accesses the podcast. A high quality image is important in order to be accepted by iTunes. You can go to http://bit.ly/ApplePodcastRequirements for more info on this. Fill out the additional iTunes podcast information but leave ‘Podcast RSS feed episodes per page’ section

Step 4. Now just click ‘sharing’; this tab runs across the top of the page alongside ‘Details’, ‘Clips’ and ‘Analytics’.

Step 5. Highlight and copy the Podcast RSS feed, it will start with http://www.omnycontent.com

Step 6. Send the RSS feed to [email protected] who’ll confirm all your details and send the feed to iTunes

11 Slightly more advanced, lets talk possibilities

VOX POPS!

Alright mate, calm down, but yeah this is pretty cool.

In recent years, Smartphones have become increasingly better at recording audio, with some phones featuring dual microphones to allow for noise cancellation. If you regularly use vox pops in your show or if you’re interested in spicing up your content with some outside stories, opinions or ideas then this is a useful and affordable alternative to a Zoom or other external mic.

If you have an iOS device, you can download the Omny Studio app and record straight from your phone. Just select the program you’re on and then start recording. The recording will then appear in your ‘Recordings’. What’s the benefit of doing this? Well you won’t have to deal with SD cards and you won’t need to email your recordings from one device to another. Simple!

MINICASTS!

If podcasts are full on burgers, then minicasts are the sliders of the podcasting world.

Minicasts are short versions of full podcasts, they can be your best bits, movie reviews or just be interviews that you’ve had on the show. Some audiences prefer to listen to shorter shows and minicasts can be great at roping in audiences into your show who search the name of an interview guest. A good rule of thumb for a minicast is that they should be no longer than a five to seven minute tram ride.

Minicasts allow you to package already broadcast content in different ways to access a wider audience. To create a minicast, just make another Playlist in ‘Playlists and Podcasts’ and submit the RSS feed to the Online Editor.

BUT MY SHOW IS MAINLY A MUSIC SHOW

This doesn’t mean you can’t podcast! Yes, you can’t include music but interviews can be really interesting and sometimes is the most sort after content. Putting up minicasts of interviews with artists is one way to expand the reach of your show and draw people in to listen live.

We are looking into options for music based shows to put entire shows online, this may not be run through Omny Studio and there are some legal bits and pieces that we need to work out.

12 That’s it! Get uploading! Share! Scream! If you need any help with using Omny Studio please shoot an email to [email protected]. Now, fly!