 What's the best way to record a zoom call if your guest only has zoom? This is the Great British YouTubers podcast with me Neil Mossy. Hello, it's a place where we share advice, experience and tips with high achieving creators and performers just like you. And in this episode, broadcast journalist Jay Hurst. Jay is a producer reporter with over 25 years of experience on TV, radio and online. Now you and I both know the best way of recording a zoom call is to not rely on the zoom call. It's to get your guest to record their side of the conversation and then put the two halves together in the edit. But what if your guest can't do that? That's what TV reporters face every day, especially since the whole you know what happened. This is one big experiment. Jay is going to show us how he gets the best out of zoom while conducting the whole interview as an actual zoom recording. So the quality at the beginning of the recording is deliberately not good. And that's the reason why Jay Hurst, you are absolutely the first person I wanted to speak to about conducting interviews with high profile guests via zoom for video podcasts. So thank you. That's alright. But this is odd because we've known each other for decades. Yeah, it's coming up for 30 years in October. And I feel I need to explain also we're recording on literally the hottest day of the year here in the UK, which is why I'm perspiring like Barry White at the moment. It's not because of your grilling interview technique Jay. Okay, that's good. See you say I was the first person you wanted to talk to about this and there may be people looking at my camera and going why did you want to talk to him because it's not great. I have to say it's okay. I'm working with challenging lighting because it's really light outside. If I have the blinds open, then everything gets done on how light it is at the back of the room. Now this is my webcam I use for work. It's not great, but we can do better because we talked about difficult light conditions. Pops some more light on me. So that is using an iPhone as the web camera. I didn't even know you could do that. There's been all sorts of software put about that has done this to a greater or lesser extent for years. Every time Apple have updated the operating system, it's broken it. It's always been a bit of a hack, but there is a new piece of software called Rencubate Camo. You download the receiving app for your Mac separately. It's not done through and it's a subscription. If you don't have the subscription, you get things like you will to mark your video, but also see what it's allowing me to do. I'm actually using an iPhone which has got two lenses. So this is the telephoto lens. I can go to the wider lens. Was that touch of a button? Yeah. So I'm playing with this now in the Mac app. You can set things like your color temperature and even adjust your focus. Probably not something you're going to want to do. Shall I also improve the sound? This is the monster microphone. Jay, I've seen those on Amazon. I did not realize they look like something from It's a Knockout. Yeah, they really do. So if I turn the microphone set my levels to my Yeti, the sound should be considerably better now. Yes, it is. And that's even on just the zoom connection. So because I use this for recording radio programs, and this is an echoy room, the big on top helps reduce the echo a bit without having to sound proof the room totally. Would I be right in thinking you have conducted hundreds of interviews via things like Zoom and Skype? It's not hundreds, but it's certainly in the plenty of dozens. And the first few times I did them, I was in a television studio. If I was not doing it to run as a full interview, if I was just interviewing for a clip, they wouldn't be able to see me, but I'd be able to see them and I'd be sat a little talk back box, giving them the questions. Since lockdown started, I mean, this has become my life as a television and radio journalist working from home. I'm doing interviews over Zoom, Skype, whatever, all the time. And you interview some really high profile people, the leaders of organizations. They are people quite high up in the government. Yeah. I mean, I've not interviewed a Prime Minister over Zoom, interviewed some of them in person. Yeah, I mean, I've interviewed senior members of the armed forces. I've certainly interviewed MPs over Zoom and Skype. I don't know if I've done any ministerials over this, but yeah, absolutely. And does that put a pressure on you to have some kind of plan? We'll go through plan A in a moment, but does that generally put a pressure on you to have some kind of fallback plan in case something goes wrong with the equipment at your end or their end? Yes, touch wood. I have not yet had an interview totally fail because of technical problems. I have had several, especially actually in the early days where I have problems getting it started. Actually, I found Zoom a lot easier to do this with than Skype. But yeah, you've got to have fallbacks. And can I ask, why do you find it better on Zoom? Why is it better to have two-way interviews on Zoom rather than Skype? When you're using Skype's own recording, you get the two of you side by side. Right. It's a pair of vertical video. From my perspective for putting that on television, it means I can do that, but I have to box them vertically. When you say to someone, I want to do something on Skype, it depends whether it's going to be Skype or Skype for Business. I found that when it is Skype for Business, their setup doesn't allow me to record. This is how I've had to develop these fallback techniques to work with. And the biggest and simplest fallback technique is screen recording. That is where you literally just record what's coming out of your computer rather than relying on the Zoom inbuilt recording. So by doing that screen recording and only having them in view, so I've got them full screen on my Mac. Quick time. We'll do a screen recording. But what it won't do is it won't record the sound at the same time, but providing I've got my Zoom recording, that's fine. I can use the sound from my Zoom recording and then just synchronize it up in the edit. So if I go to the camera on the laptop, this is great. So what you can see there, I've got my video camera that I use for filming stories. I've got it filming me because I can then use that for a high quality shot of me when I'm asking questions. It generally looks better than the webcam there. You can also do that with the iPad. And sometimes I'll do that with the iPad. Shall I show you what the shot from that camera is? If you're able to, that's amazing, Jane. I think I can. I recognize that logo. Yeah. So what I've started doing is using the laptop screen for a bit of branding. I either have some work branding on there or something relevant to the story. I'd be working like this and so the whole thing would be on full screen. And in fact, if I take it out to speak of you, so it's like that. For a lot of people, I don't know that this is exactly what they'd want to do because this is what I'm doing here is a classic television thing. But it might be what you want to do. But this is the interesting thing. This is why I wanted to make this episode. For me, it's all in the edit. One of the things that camera over there enables me to do is do the jump cut. Tell us about the jump cut. Tell us all about the jump cut, Jane. So if I want to take a subclause out of the middle of something that's long and wordy, I'm making pieces that are sometimes a minute 45. Equally, I can be interviewing for 20 minutes and I want to get that down to a five minute interview. So to be able to, without editorially twisting what they're saying, shorten what they're doing, you want to make the jump cut. Now, if I just cut them, you see the cut. In traditional television, you don't do that. So in traditional television, what you'll do to get that in an interview is you'll suddenly get a shot of the reporter looking at the camera going the noddy, which you can entirely fake. Or if you're doing it from a two-camera shoot, you use a cut from jump to the second camera at the start of the new bit. But I've still got you on screen. So again, it feels like a traditional interview. You don't lose the subject. Oh, nice. So it's a more elegant cutaway because, yeah, it's the reaction of two people. For us, we're doing that, particularly in the whole working from home thing. Journalists want presence in their piece. So it's become a way of when we can't go outside and do a piece to camera or when certainly when we couldn't. But there is a time when you want to show yourself asking that awkward question as well. Frankly, that shot, even though it's not of your face, ends up better quality because I'm recording it separately. The other lovely thing about that shot is that you can get station branding in on the laptop in the background. That's a really nice touch. Yeah. And actually, if you look, see what you also see here is a pop-up where I have carefully hidden my work logo. This message is not endorsed by whichever television company. See, that would be the kind of thing that I would jump cut an edit of. So I would jump that on the edit. Jay, very generously walked us through the setup at your end. But obviously, you're dealing with who knows who on the other end with who knows what equipment. If you're working with someone and you've got time, actually give them a checklist to start with. Those laptops with the low cameras that look up your nose. No, not one of those, please elevate your laptop. Try not to have a bright light source behind you because that's going to blast everything out. I'm not a fan of people working with headphones in their ears. Interesting. Although it depends. I mean, I guess you try and have a bit of a chat with them when you first get the connection up. You don't want to crash straight in with the questions, you know, why didn't you do this? Or are we all going to die? You know, they're a human being as well. Obviously, it depends on the interview, but it's a conversation, isn't it? It's such an extra push to have to do that on a conference call rather than just having that rapport for a few minutes in real life. And the other thing I would say is when I get to the end of a recording, and again, this is not just a zoom thing. I usually say, that's great. Is there anything you think I've missed? And sometimes they'll go, that's all fine. Sometimes they'll go, well, yeah, actually. And I normally do this while I'm still recording because sometimes what they'll do is they'll go, no, I think we cover the basic points. It's duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. And they've just summed up the entire conversation and you've got the bite. And that's the really succinct everything you wanted. Sometimes that is how it goes. Yeah. That's a really great tip, Jay, that at the end of the interview to ask your guest, is there anything I've missed? That's not something I've thought to do. I mean, I'd say it depends on the kind of interview, but they're the subject matter expert. For me as a journalist, there are times when I have crashingly missed the point. It seems better to find that out before you put the piece to air. And you have segwayed us to a format point on the Great British YouTubers podcast. Do we have a little drink? I've not bothered with a glass. I'm just drinking straight from the bottle. Is that just a giant bottle of gin and tonic? It is in my head. And you two, why don't you have a drink too? That was so patronizing. Do you have any advice for what settings to adjust actually in Zoom itself? Now, this is one of the things that you can mention on your checklist, your guest, enable HD video. That's really interesting. For me, there's also a setting I use in the Zoom recording so that when it records it, it then exports it in a format that is better for external editing programs. Right. I think there's actually a tick box, isn't there, in the advanced settings? It says something like optimise for third party editor. Yeah, exactly. This has been the bane of my life. I find Zoom doesn't record a fixed frame rate. Try and have as many things as possible in the same frame rate. The one thing we've not done here, this is just the two of us sat here. The other thing that works really well and does well on YouTube videos is movement. I mean, it's hard to set up the cameras to film two of you out and about, having a conversation, walking around. But also if the two of you are moving, you start to forget and you will just talk to each other. Maybe we could demonstrate that right now. So with this setup, it kind of works against the whole idea of this episode. But with this method, you have both sides of the conversation, your guest or your co-host, each recording on a camera and you communicate with each other just over the phone. And that way you're out and about and performing the show together. Look Jay, I'm in a field in the middle of Hampshire. Yeah, I'm just hanging by the river Thames at sunset. Get out and about. What the hell? Movement makes it. We've sat here for how long? We can start with that idea. And Jay, this has been so useful, but I can now ask, is there anything I've forgotten? The biggest thing with an interview is know why you're doing it and know what you want to achieve from it. If you know why you're doing it, so why are you talking to this person and what do you want to get from them? That's the basic strategy. But if you know why you're doing the interview, why you're talking to this person, what you want to get from them, then you're on, I think, a pretty good track. Jay, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. What we tend to do at the end of the interviews, pose for thumbnails. I wonder if we should maybe just get a thumbnail. This might be new to you because it's not really something that... It feels like you're going to start a round of Gladiators any moment. And thanks for doing this on the hottest day. So hot. And please, hit the subscribe button below. If you want to see more great British YouTubers, there's a playlist and a podcast. All the links are in the description below. I'm Neil Mossy and I'll see you on the very next Great British YouTubers.