A Cautionary Take of What NOT to Do

Every Thursday night I produce a show called "Hammer and Nigel" at a local bar. I have to setup and knock down the equipment every week so it already is fraught with disaster. That being said, out of 169 episodes, only two have had lost audio. The first was early on...the second...is a cautionary tale to those who use Wirecast and don't run a backup (or forget the backup).

All good stories come with things you know you shouldn't do, but do anyway. Such as when Tom Sinclair did a couple of upgrades before one of his "That Vidblaster Guy" shows. I, being someone who knows better, decided to switch the computer components out to a new case. The road case finally was beat up enough to lose the front cover. So I did it yesterday, mid-day, with no room to truly test. The fact that I got the case to connect to the motherboard without issues is amazing. Unfortunately, it setup the disaster to come.

Once I got to the venue, I realized I forgot my H4n. I use it to run a backup audio recording, so if anything happens with the video, I still have the most important content. So already we are setting things up quite nicely for a disaster. Backup missing, new computer case.

Once the system was setup I realized that I moved one of the USB cards to a different slot, so Wirecast didn't see the camera. Instead of using the same shot and switching the source, I deleted the shot and created a new shot... Some probably see where this is going.

I tested the mics and took a quick look at the audio meter in wirecast... It was moving. So I decided everything was good. Some days I get paranoid and test all shots with their audio... but I have everything saved so it generally just works...

Sure enough. Finished with the broadcast and every time I went to the 3rd camera shot... I lost audio. I didn't see this until 40 minutes into the broadcast. It was the camera on one of our hosts. So I have a lot of editing to do...

Remember these rules:

1. Never Change Your Equipment Without Thorough Testing Time
2. Always have a backup
3. Test everything, even if it's worked a thousand times before
4. Use Common Sense

Luckily out of 169 episodes I have never lost an entire episode, but losing 1/3 of an episode sucks just as much as losing the entire thing.

And double check your thread titles so you don't wind up with a "Cautionary Take"....lol.

While on this subject. Is there anyway to set a master audio source for all shots in Wirecast or do you have to add an audio source to each shot?

In my use of Wirecast, we run all audio through our mixer.
As such, I always add an Audio shot to the lowest strip of Wirecast. This shot is then selected at all times. I then remove any references to audio on the camera shots. This ensures that as long as the audio shot is selected on that strip audio will always be present, regardless of the camera shot.

I hope that helps.

That is actually pretty smart. I mostly have Wirecast down, but I didn't even think about doing it that way. Adding the audio track to the bottom and making sure it is always selected is an excellent way to avoid the mistake I made... well that and always making sure my audio backup is in place.