Reading Radar

How do you help people who are helping others?

Hulaboom Voom has given space on Selby to Crap Mariner for the Amazon links portion of the Tunes in SL project.

I contacted Hulaboom and asked what the parcel was costing, as I know that it’s hard to keep stuff in place long term when it’s not bringing in any money and is taking up space that could. The problem is, as I started looking at my own SL, I bet everyone’s pretty much like me, and they’re already at their pain threshold of ability to spend in SL. At the moment I’m footing the SLPN rent and that’s about it, and even that’s probably more than I should right now. And I’m not really able be in-world a lot or spend a lot of time thinking about any of these projects or in-world activities. I just don’t have that time anymore.

So what creative ways are there to help out a worthy project besides tossing out a tip jar? Tip jars aren’t bad - they just haven’t shown to generally pay the rent in most cases, long term. I have to admit it, I suck at making money. Some people are good at it. If it’s not coming in the form of a paycheck, for me it’s usually a one or two shot deal and then I have to find some other project. Those of you who know how the world works, what are some of your approaches to this?

The beauty of the Tunes in SL project is that it gets financial support for SL musicians by having people do what they were already going to do anyway - use their iTunes or Amazon music gift cards. That’s the genius, it’s not requesting a change in behavior or extra giving. Really, that’s the only way to get people to support something, or at least the surest way.

Crap did mention to me that Hulaboom has got an empty store right across from the Tunes in SL spot. If you’re someone who needs some shop space and are looking to rent out something, why not contact Hulaboom Voom and see if it works for you? That’s one way to do something you need to anyway and also support someone who’s in turn supporting a cool project in SL.

Aside from that… thoughts? Ideas? Rotten tomatoes tossed my way? Crickets cricketing in the background? How do you help out projects you believe in?

I logged in tonight to an update from Crap Mariner on the Tunes in SL project, and thought he probably wouldn’t mind if I dumped a copy on you. It’s getting close to Christmas, if you’re going to scoop up some iTunes or Amazon cards for others, do so now, and give ‘em a list of who to look for. More importantly, if YOU get some of these babies for Christmas, now YOU know what musicians from SL are in there and how to get their music. You have no excuse.

Tunes inSL Gallery Project News
Friday December 12, 2008

1) PERFORMERS

TOTAL: 35
Spacejunky has signed up.

A few performers have asked me how to get their music listed on iTunes and Amazon.

iTunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes/contentproviders/faq.html
Amazon: https://www.createspace.com/Products/AudioDownloadChecklist.jsp

I’ve been told there’s a signup fee for performers wanting to put their albums on either service.

Perhaps there is an opportunity for music fans to help sponsor their performers getting their music listed?

2) SHOWCASE

Still no word yet on Showcase. Keep your fingers crossed, but a kind word to the address showcase@lists.lindenlab.com would be appreciated.

I mean, Reuters is still in there. When’s the last time you saw anything out of Reuters?

3) RAFFLE

After looking at my budget for December, I am able to fund 12 $10 iTunes or Amazon gift cards in the runup to the holidays.

The giveaways begin on December 14 and continue through December 25. (A few people have generously contributed towards the giveaways, so be ready to find out what comes after Twelve Lords A Leaping.)

The drawing will be from the Subscribeomatic subscriber list with the following exceptions:

16 - DJ Xax at 5PM
17 - DJ GoSpeed from KONA at 5PM
19 - Phil Rossi plays the Clocktower at 5PM
22 - SRV4U plays the Clocktower at 5PM

For those nights, the drawing will be among the people present at those events.

4) IREPORT

I threw together a quick and dirty video for CNN’s iReport yesterday:

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-160629

Comments, ratings, and thrown tomatoes appreciated.
(Okay, so iDistort’s a troll who hates SL in general.)

5) BLOGS, MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS…

I am hitting the circuit as hard as I can to get the word out.

Prim Perfect
Rez Magazine
Metaverse Music
Vint Falken (RAWR!)
“Reading” Radar Masukami
New World Notes
NPIRL
Podmafia

I have a list of features and blog linkbacks on the sidebar of the website.

If you have a media outlet and I haven’t harassed you over this project, well, wave your hands a lot and I’ll harass you!

6) KONA RADIO

KONA Radio is interested in any and all broadcast-quality tracks that SL performers would like to have added to their playlist.

Contact Ravishal Bentham or GoSpeed Racer for more information.

7) SIGNAGE/SUBSCRIBEOMATICS

If you need a copy of the sign (design by Vint Falken):

Newest is always available at the Edloe location

Thanks to everyone who has a sign on display at their venue/shop/home. Moggs and Lanna have set up a Flickr group for any snapshots you have of the sign in place:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/963660@N21/

If you want me to put down a Subcribeomatic for this feed at your location, just shout.

8 ) QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/CARE FOR A MINT?

If you have any ideas for improving the galleries, making the website easier to use, links for a blogroll for the website, or other ideas - just drop me a note via IM (Crap Mariner) or via email (crapmariner@isfullofcrap.com)

Thanks to all,
-ls/cm

There’s no possible way that anyone reads this blog but not Crap Mariner’s, but that’s ok, I want to talk about how his iTunes isfullofcrap anyway. Actually, it’s riaa.isfullofcrap.com, but it’s REALLY called the Tunes inSL Gallery Project. And no matter what you call it, it’s really a good idea.

At some point, Crap was thinking about Christmas giving and realized that the ubiquitous iTunes cards that people get and give could have a really good purpose in life if SL musicians were in iTunes, and if people knew about it. At some other point, he expanded that to Amazon where everything is DRM free (on iTunes, get the iTunes Plus option for the album if it exists to get DRM free music).

Please take a look at the project, and if you are going to give out iTunes cards or Amazon gift cards, send the URL to Crap’s list of musicians along with the gift. And if you are the recipient of such a gift, blow it all on one or more of the musicians on the list. It’s the right thing to do, and you know you want to! If you don’t know you want to, that’s even better - I’m telling you that you do! Clearly you don’t know what’s best for yourself. Well, a guy named Crap does, at least when it comes to what to stick in your ears.

There are locations in-world at Selby and in the Edloe clocktower for more information about everyone involved in the project.

I subscribed to a new podcast this week after seeing it mentioned on twitter. Voices in the Machine, a podcast by Caledon residents. Their self-description:

Voices in the Machine is a podcast by, for, and about Steampunk explorers in the virtual world of Second Life®, published biweekly by Radio Riel: Real Radio, Your Reality.

I listened to episode one partly last night and finished it up on the way to work today. I like it. They did a good job of explaining some of their basic background as relates to Caledon, and did some discussion of the Openspace nonsense. They were professional and well spoken on the matter. They’d done some testing on Openspaces themselves and they put forth their assertion that LL is definitely not lying about seeing performance issues with heavily loaded openspaces. FINALLY, SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THIS!! I’d recommend them for that alone!!

Fortunately, that’s not the only reason to recommend them. I still have a couple episodes to go to get caught up. The only noticeable need for improvement was on audio quality, but it wasn’t that bad. All new podcasts start off needing a little work there, and look, I’m still messing with mine. A couple sections had me struggling to hear Gabrielle Riel compared to the others, otherwise it was an immaterial fact.

Really looking forward to getting caught up and hearing new episodes come out. It may be a fairly targeted podcast, but I think even non-residents of Caledon and those who don’t particularly get into Victorian era roleplay will find it interesting. I really like new podcasts in and about SL that have something to say, and not just a need to speak.

Last post I complained about how testing the SLim client would be hard with no one using it yet, then I woke up and created a SLim account for an alt that I use for building/scripting and getting stuff done (hence the blurred name in the picture below) and IM’d my Radar account while logged into SL as Radar, and into SLim client as the alt.

It worked really well for text IM, obviously I wasn’t going to be trying out the voice capabilities though. But for IM it was instant back and forth.

Then I noticed that Dedric Mauriac, while not logged into SL, was logged into SLim. I knew because of the icon next to his name in my friends list.

I IM’d him but got no response, so either he’s sleeping, wishing I was under the wheels of a bus, or SLim really only works to communicate with your alts. Hmmmm…..

Right now the downsides are still the requirement of a special client to use it, which 99.999% of the people won’t download, having to create an account with Vivox, which 99.999% of the people will find annoying, and all the normal considerations of the SL client, namely, I don’t think this will be an option for people who can’t have SL on a particular computer or need to get around firewalls that SL can’t. I think it’s useful if you aren’t logged into SL and don’t want to, but need to communicate with someone real quick, or if they aren’t, but are using SLim. I think it’s a nice to have, and I think for a few people, I may use it quite a bit. It would be nice to only have to deal with an IM window in-world, for example, than to deal with skype and in-world SL IM’s at once.

We shall see…. oh, yeah, the locals are still angry at the Lindens anyway, so they’re all claiming lack of interest in SLim based on that perspective too.

UPDATE:

I tried out the voice with Stuart Warf this morning while we were both out of world, logged into SLim. Once I pointed it to the correct audio devices, all was well and it worked fine. Sound quality was about what you’d expect from the Vivox/SL voice experience - not great. Vivox seems to be synonymous with “noise generator” in my experience, although in recent months it’s always worked well for conversations in SL. It’s nasty to record for podcasts though.

Also, SLim keeps wanting to default to the first account I logged into the IM client with rather than the last one. That’s annoying. Couple other annoyances with it not keeping my preferences saved, which I assume will get fixed over time.

I agree with Jane’s comment on this post, LL needs to make sure that the barrier of entry is low for people to use this. Obviously right now it’s only first look, but LL tend to gravitate towards complexity. Then again, the SL experience in general is pretty smooth compared to the Openlife Grid’s website and information for new users.

Ok, the SLim IM client thingy is out in first look form, as announced in the SL blog, but I can’t really comment on how well it works for a simple reason. In order for you to voice or text IM others using it, they also have to be using either SLim or else the new SLim compatible SL client for you to reach them. And in order for them to use the SLim client they have to already be using the SLim compatible SL client… confused yet?

It’s actually pretty simple, just not so great for getting initial impressions. To use the SLim client, you need a new version of the SL viewer. That allows interaction between the two. You need an account through Vivox to make the SLim client work. And then you need the SLim client itself.

Even though it’s really not a difficult process, it’s just difficult and annoying enough that all the people already fed up with LL (rightly or wrongly) aren’t going to be bothered to try it out. And that means no one to test it with, and that means no first impressions. At least until Saturday, which will be the first day I’ll be home and online at the same time as some people who maybe ARE trying it out.

It’s too bad the process isn’t a little more streamlined. Once it’s built into a mainstream viewer, if LL and Vivox can get the account thing ironed out so you do not have to create a separate one on Vivox, then maybe more people will use it. Right now I’m not sure how many people will.

I like the concept. I wish I knew if I liked the actual function.

BTW, can LL write even ONE blog post without people whining about “ok, that’s nice, now get back to stability” or “does vivox know that everyone is leaving SL anyway?” etc, etc? I get that you’re disgruntled. Posting OT on the blog isn’t going to fix it. Stick to the fucking topic. There’s plenty of ON topic places to post your anger that openspaces weren’t actually meant for your blinged out hair stores. I mean, I agree the price hike was bad, but I’m starting to feel a lot less sorry for the openspace abusers the more they open their mouths.

Here’s a secret: the reason I’m spending so much time lately on this whole recording SL voice thing is that I still get a lot people clicking on links to a post I used to have on the topic that somehow got lost when I migrated my blog from wordpress.com to my own host. I’m not really sure I’ve reproduced the information I had in that post.

Because of that, and because I’ve posted some stuff that doesn’t really neatly wrap up the options, this will be my last and most summarizing post on the topic. Without further ado, if you’re a Mac owner and you want to record voice conversations from within second life, here are some of the options that I’ve used in the past or present, and possibly the future.

1. Ubercaster.

This application is really intended as a podcasting app, and it’s brilliant at it. Sure, guys like Sigler will poo-poo it’s sound quality, but I don’t think he’s used it lately (it’s greatly improved since 1.0 days) and he’s also probably making the mistake of using the built-in mp3 converter. I don’t know WHY, but apps that use the LAME converter are always readily apparent to my ears. I export as AAC and convert to mp3 in iTunes. Why that sounds better, I don’t know. It does.

With Ubercaster, it’s really simple. Add a Mic panel for your mic. Add an audiochat panel. Now open the Second Life Voice Chat prefs, open the device settings, and set the input device to Ubercaster Out, set the output device to Ubercaster In, and you’re done. Click record in Ubercaster and head off to Ahern to record hours of yammering idiots with no purpose in life and way too many recreational pharmaceuticals in their medicine cabinets.

2. Wiretap Studio.

In the case of Wiretap Studio, you’re just going to let it grab your mic input and all system audio output, and record that. Unfortunately you’ll find that it’s mixed it all into one nice lovely track, which makes editing a bitch if you need to cut out yourself talking over your guest or whatever, or if you simply need to adjust levels easily.

But it’s easy, and it works. Just configure it as shown below, with Mac Audio and whatever your mic is called as inputs to the recording. Then record. Really. Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.

3. Audio Hijack Pro.

I include AHP because it is a good program, and mainly because I used to use it. But there’s one thing I don’t like about how it captures system audio. It requires installation of another program called Soundflower. In theory, soundflower is a cool, free app that lets you route sounds all over the place from one source into whatever target you want. In practice I’ve found it somewhat flaky, and in fact some programs like iShowU that use it have been known to not reset the system audio routing back to the way it was before the app was run, or they don’t capture the system audio in the recording, or whatever. Personally, I advise other options instead of anything that relies on soundflower.

Anyway, you’ll have to do the same as with Wiretap Studio, just set the device to capture to system audio.

As for capturing your mic along with that, I know it’s easy to do if you’re hijacking an app, but I can’t remember how easy it is if you’re capturing all system audio because I didn’t want to install the soundflower kernel extension just to take a picture of how the setup looks. Sorry. Again, if you already have this product, then experiment, and I’ll be happy to update this post with your findings, and if you don’t have it, get Wiretap Studio instead. Or keep reading for my final option.

4. Wiretap Anywhere plus your favorite recording application.

This option is really cool because if you like to edit stuff in Garageband, let’s say, but you’re frustrated with its inability to capture skype conversations or SL voice chats, anger no more. Now you can. Or you can use this with Ubercaster to capture all SL sounds and voice by routing all Mac Audio into ubercaster, OR you can use the voice chat panel in ubercaster to get the voice chat, as described in option 1, and then use this to route SL sounds (everything besides voice) onto a separate track in Ubercaster. Nice, huh?

To use this with Garageband, you’d set up a device in WTA for all system audio.

Then you’d open up Garageband, and in preferences, on the Audio/Midi tab, set up the Audio Input to use the WTA device you created for system audio.

Finally, add a new track, choose “Real Instrument,” and then in the track info pane, set the input source to your WTA device that’s set up to capture system audio. Then record. Yay.

To use with Ubercaster, add another mic panel, and set its audio source as the WTA device that’s set to capture system audio.

If instead you’d like to capture the SL voice as in option 1, with the voicechat panel, and then also capture the other SL sounds to a separate track, then just set up ubercaster as per option 1, then create a device in WTA that captures SL audio, and then back in ubercaster add another mic panel that uses that WTA device as the audio source.

Isn’t all this amazing?! Aren’t you glad you came back for MORE TALKING ABOUT RECORDING VOICE IN SL!?! DON’T YOU WONDER HOW MUCH A FLAMETHROWER COSTS, HUH?!!!!?

Ok, well, that’s it on this topic. This goose is cooked, this train is derailed and down the mountainside, and this bomb’s been dropped in the Nevada desert. Now it’s time for you to enjoy how easy my little pretty pictures will make your life when it’s time for YOU to record voice in SL.

Doitashimashite, avatar-san.

Other posts on this topic by me:

More SL Voice Recording Fun on the Mac

SL Voice the Ubercaster Way

Recording Voice in SL - Repub

Tonight I got to play with a piece of software that increases recording options for Second Life voice and sounds. I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s called WireTap Anywhere.

Wiretap Anywhere lets you create audio devices comprised of one or more sound sources.

In the picture above, I’ve created a device I named Second Life Sounds + iTunes. As you can see on the right side of the pane, this device has Second Life and iTunes wired into it. What happens is that you now have a mix of whatever’s playing in iTunes and Second Life sounds. Note that I didn’t say SL voice, as SL voice runs in its own process and isn’t captured this way.

Since I do my podcast recording with Ubercaster, I opened Ubercaster, added a second mic panel, and then set the audio input source for that mic not to a physical mic, but to the WireTap Anywhere device I created.

I then logged into SL, hit record on Ubercaster, and started making sound effects and playing SL sounds in-world, while listening to Mitch Kapor’s SL5B speech in iTunes. The net result was a track in ubercaster that had all the sounds from these two sources recorded in it.

Ok, there’s no voice in there, so who cares, right? Well. I do. SL issues aside, I record the podcaster meetups on podcast island in SL. I had two choices before WireTap Anywhere, use WireTap Studio (not the same as WireTap Anywhere as it can capture data from apps but not re-route it to other apps) and grab all system audio and also my mic if I wanted, or use Ubercaster and record SL Voice only (no other SL sounds) with my Mic on a separate track. Disadvantage of option 1 - it wouldn’t record directly into ubercaster so then I’d have to take that track and dump it in, plus if I recorded my mic with it, it was all on one track. Disadvantage of option 2 - it only gets the voice and doesn’t get the sounds like the typing sounds of people typing questions which help the listener understand, “ok, something is going on there,” for example.

With WireTap anywhere, using the method shown above, I can now record all the SL sounds such as typing, etc, if I want to, and then use the traditional Ubercaster Voice Chat Panel plus setting the SL Voice Chat Device Settings to get input from Ubercaster output and send output to Ubercaster input, and now have all the audio I want directly into Ubercaster with nothing else to do afterwords. And in a way that lets my mic, SL sounds, and SL voice each have their own channel which makes editing and adjusting levels so much easier.

Granted, WireTap Anywhere provides audiophiles or anyone doing wacky stuff with audio on their macs a LOT more interesting capabilities than this, but relating it to SL voice and sound recording, this is cool. If you like Garageband, guess what? You can now use this to record skype audio directly into Garageband and keep their audio and your mic audio separate for great editing results. You can also do with SL audio and voice what I detail above, except that you’d have to capture system audio instead and route that into Garageband, since it lacks the voice chat panel necessary to directly capture the SL voice. But still, if you can live with having SL voice and SL sounds on one track, you can now record them directly into garageband that way.

It’s not cheap, it’s a $120 program. But if you’re a podcaster or a person who needs to route audio all over the place to make cool things happen, it might be well worth it for you.

One disclaimer here, if you do have Ubercaster you should be able to drop on a voice chat panel and select your system audio output to go to Ubercaster Input using a simple menubar application like SoundSource. But you’ll still wind up with sounds and voice on one channel, which you might be just fine with.

Oh, and just one other comment. It amazes me daily that I can do this kind of stuff so easily in OS X and my friends with Vista say they are unable to record both their Mic AND system audio at the same time. That kills machinima, podcasting in-world, etc. Why we let any OS vendor get away with that with something as basic as audio in 2008 is beyond me.

I guess I kind of lied about that video having anything to do with SL voice. This makes me feel like maybe I should show you 20 hours with of video that DOES involve it, but I won’t. Here’s something like 3 minutes of SL voice capture with Ubercaster.

I’ll do one or two more screencasts on other audio applications that can be used to capture SL voice in the near future. Near is relative, you understand. Compared to glaciers and.. hey. Speaking of natural disasters… Crap?!

I still see people finding my blog from a link to an article I published back when this blog was hosted on wordpress.com about recording voice in SL.  To the best of my knowledge, that post covered the topic from the perspective of the Mac user, since that’s what I am. “Ah don’ do winders, yu young whippersnappers!  Now get off my lawn!”

I hate to see all the confused, lost, lonely people who just want to know how to record voice in SL go without the instruction they crave so badly, so I’m going to give a little redux on this topic here and now, for the benefit of you, the intrepid reader slash would-be voice recorder.  If a podcaster can’t help you record your goings-on in SL, who can?

There’s a video about this very topic that I posted to the SLPN video feed, and I’ve embedded it at the end of this post. Skip ahead if you want pretty moving pictures and less hard work, aka reading.

Because I’m a podcaster, and because I’m on a Mac, my first choice for this is a program called Ubercaster, made by some German dudes who realized that while there were plenty of options for recording audio, and plenty of options for editing audio, and plenty of options for recording skype conversations, and plenty of options for adding metadata such as episode info and podcast art, and plenty of option for converting file formats, and plenty of options for uploading the files to your file hosting, there was nothing that could do all this in one program. It all had to be done in multiple apps, with their own interfaces and workflow.  So they created ubercaster.

From the perspective of someone wanting to record SL voice, Ubercaster works great because the same functionality that enables it to record skype conversations also allows it to record the audio from any application that has the ability to choose audio input and outputs targets. Basically, you add an audiochat panel to your Ubercaster prepare layer, then go into SL’s voice chat prefs, hardware devices, and set the input to Ubercaster out, and the output to Ubercaster in, and you’re golden. You’ll be recording your own voice directly into Ubercaster, and it will project in-world from ubercaster, and SL voice will be routed into Ubercaster and recorded on another track.

A couple downsides to using Ubercaster: If all you really want is to grab the audio and you don’t need the other whizbang features, you may decide Ubercaster’s not for you. Also if you don’t have $80 for this in your budget, you’ll need to mug an old lady before you can proceed with it as your chosen path.  Another major consideration is that if you need to capture ALL SL audio, this might not be possible with Ubercaster as you need to be able to route through Ubercaster and there’s no way to set SL to do so.  The voice chat preferences for input and output devices are what make it possible to do so with voice.

Another excellent tool that can record SL voice along with all other SL noises is WireTap Studio.  In this case, you’d actually be using the “system sound” option to capture all system sounds, which includes SL sounds, SL voice, plus anything else your computer might be doing. And then add the Microphone capture to grab your own end of the conversation.  Disadvantages to this vs Ubercaster are that it all gets dumped in one track, and it’s not much cheaper but it has less functionality. But it does do something Ubercaster doesn’t, and that is to capture audio from apps that don’t let you configure their audio I/O targets.

Besides WireTap Studio, Ambrosia also makes WireTap Anywhere, which is similar to WireTap Studio, except that instead of recording it, it acts as a pipe to reroute your audio I/O.  So in theory, I could use this to route the normal SL sounds into Ubercaster while recording in-world voice conversations in Ubercaster via the voicechat panel as described above.  Then I’d have them on separate tracks in Ubercaster, with my voice on yet another track, and I could balance the sound and be all happy.  This app is way more versatile than what I just described, so check it out. Be advised though, it’s a $129.00 application.  Still, I’m kind of thinking hard about it.

Ok, enough typing. Watch the video for ways to podcast on the Mac, and then keep in mind that the tutorial with ubercaster shows me grabbing skype conversations, but I could have easily done the same with SL voice instead.