So at the bottom of the settings screen in Overcast is a Smart Speed time savings counter. After a 50 minute podcast it says:
"Smart Speed has saved you an extra 5 minutes beyond speed adjustments alone."
That's pretty impressive! 10% of a podcast removed without any reduction in audio quality. 5 minutes of dead air I'd normally just put up with gone!
So far I've not tried the Voice Boost effect except some quick experiments. It makes good quality podcasts sound worse and bad quality podcasts sound better. I'll have to use it on a podcast-by-podcast basis.
Wow that is excellent. If this becomes available for Android I would definitely jump on it. I can't honestly say I listen to anything with significant dead air, but if it can save that sort of time, it's absolutely worth a shot.
"According to sync stats, Smart Speed has saved a cumulative 60 days so far."
So in one day of podcast listening, all Overcast users have saved 60. Weirdly I've never thought of it as saving time, more like getting through something quicker. When I get to the end of something earlier I don't spend that time doing something else, I just move on to the next podcast.
Just a different way of looking at it I suppose. I subscribe to more podcasts than I have time to listen to, so an app like this would "save" a few episodes from getting deleted when I get too backlogged and declare a reset. I'd get to listen to them instead.
I mainly listen to podcasts to keep me engaged as a listener and prevent me from falling asleep while driving to work at 5:30AM. Having less dead air might make podcasts even more effective.
Any chance this will be completed in the near future?
God no.
It's been over 7 years since I wrote that thing. Podcasting is either professional or niche, and the technology is waaay better now. I have no desire to update or rewrite that thing. I never even published the mostly complete version, and I don't plan to. There's no "podcasting community" worth mentioning, and the general boom around it is dead.
Podcasting is just audio production. Most of the problems new podcasters have is that they don't know shit about audio or audio production. Any generic guide on audio would cover the majority of what I had or would have written anyway. There's nothing special about podcasting in terms of content or production at all.
While most podcasts sound like shit due to the aforementioned audio production problems, they usually also have bad content to begin with. The process should be:
1. I'm passionate about X: I should make X media 2. Practice and plan X media, which may or may not be a podcast specifically 3. If podcast is the best format/medium, learn audio production 4. Learn how to publish/distribute the show (RSS, etc...) 5. Practice forever
Meanwhile, most people seem to go:
1. I should do a podcast 2. What should I do my podcast on? 3. Lots of poorly researched audio production work 4. "And this is... uh... our show... Mike, you there? -cough- Is skype working? Yeah! So anyway, this is my... uh... our (laughs) show."
Comments
I don't listen to any podcast that can't accomplish this.
"Smart Speed has saved you an extra 5 minutes beyond speed adjustments alone."
That's pretty impressive! 10% of a podcast removed without any reduction in audio quality. 5 minutes of dead air I'd normally just put up with gone!
So far I've not tried the Voice Boost effect except some quick experiments. It makes good quality podcasts sound worse and bad quality podcasts sound better. I'll have to use it on a podcast-by-podcast basis.
"According to sync stats, Smart Speed has saved a cumulative 60 days so far."
So in one day of podcast listening, all Overcast users have saved 60. Weirdly I've never thought of it as saving time, more like getting through something quicker. When I get to the end of something earlier I don't spend that time doing something else, I just move on to the next podcast.
I mainly listen to podcasts to keep me engaged as a listener and prevent me from falling asleep while driving to work at 5:30AM. Having less dead air might make podcasts even more effective.
It's been over 7 years since I wrote that thing. Podcasting is either professional or niche, and the technology is waaay better now. I have no desire to update or rewrite that thing. I never even published the mostly complete version, and I don't plan to. There's no "podcasting community" worth mentioning, and the general boom around it is dead.
Podcasting is just audio production. Most of the problems new podcasters have is that they don't know shit about audio or audio production. Any generic guide on audio would cover the majority of what I had or would have written anyway. There's nothing special about podcasting in terms of content or production at all.
While most podcasts sound like shit due to the aforementioned audio production problems, they usually also have bad content to begin with. The process should be:
1. I'm passionate about X: I should make X media
2. Practice and plan X media, which may or may not be a podcast specifically
3. If podcast is the best format/medium, learn audio production
4. Learn how to publish/distribute the show (RSS, etc...)
5. Practice forever
Meanwhile, most people seem to go:
1. I should do a podcast
2. What should I do my podcast on?
3. Lots of poorly researched audio production work
4. "And this is... uh... our show... Mike, you there? -cough- Is skype working? Yeah! So anyway, this is my... uh... our (laughs) show."
I found the document the other day, and put it on the Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/ryms-podcasting-4155923