From the Butlerniverse

It’s summer, so it is time for a quick update on current projects.

The EU Review: The show I co-host with Andrew Lupi, The EU Review, is still going strong. We have a new episode arriving tomorrow, an interview with John Jackson Miller being released in early July, and a new side series that will be announced tomorrow.

Star Wars Action News: My featurette series on approaches to collecting EU materials on Star Wars Action News is still ongoing. At this point, three segments remain in that eight-part series, covering approaches to collecting the Star Wars trading card games, home video releases, and video games. I am also a guest on the show’s 250th episode (Star Wars Action News: Episode 250), released this week. I was a guest to discuss Star Wars news coming out of E3 earlier in June.

Republic Forces Radio Network: I have now become a regular panelist for Republic Forces Radio Network, a show I’d previously been a guest on quite a few times. This summer, since there are no new episodes of The Clone Wars to cover, we are covering the entire Droids cartoon series. At the moment, the first two episodes (a “zero” episode with a series introduction and an episode covering the premiere episode, The White Witch) have been released. There will be fifteen or sixteen episodes total when all is said and done, depending on whether we have a separate endcap episode or just add our final thoughts to our coverage of the final chronological episode, The Frozen Citadel.

Beyond these projects, The Butlerniverse is mostly on hiatus, waiting for the release of my first WARS Earther novella for a behind the scenes episode. The Star Wars Action News Book Club Podcast should be returning with new episodes soon, but the club itself is on hiatus due to time factors and the sheer amount of discussions we have already recorded that have yet to be released. My commentaries for both Clone Wars micro-series DVDs should be arriving this Wednesday and next Wednesday as part of the Cantina Commentaries series from Solo Sound. I also expect to see the release of the next chapter of Andrew Gilbertson’s Star Wars: Marvels in July, in which I was a prominent voice actor.

Beyond that, I’m simply trying to work on The Star Wars Timeline Gold for its 2010 release, while waiting for the WARS novella to finally be approved by Decipher so we can start thinking about the second one in that series.

Things continue to move as summer pushes ahead. Keep an eye out for new releases of these projects.

Back in January, I introduced you to the Star Wars EU Primer Podcast, which had premiered in July 2009. This is a special podcast that acts as a means of helping Star Wars fans catch up on the Expanded Universe in one podcast series.

The Primer podcast breaks down into five episodes:

• Before the Prequel Era
• The Prequel Era
• The Empire: Rising and Striking Back
• Birth of a New Republic
• The New Jedi Order and Beyond

Every time I release a new edition of the Star Wars Timeline Gold (on which the text version of the primer will also be updated), I will be releasing a new, revised edition of the Star Wars EU Primer Podcast.

Today, I am happy to announce that a new version of this podcast has been released, and it’s a heck of an experience for EU lovers.

Berent Lawton, the current (and brilliant) “podcast enhancer” for Star Wars Action News (i.e. the person who turns an audio MP3 into an audio M4A with images that will play to correspond with the audio in Quicktime, on an iPod, in iTunes, etc.) joined forces with me back in January to begin production on a special “enhanced edition” of the Star Wars EU Primer Podcast, so that listeners can see what is being discussed throughout the entire primer series.

That new Star Wars EU Primer Podcast: Enhanced Edition has now been released! All five episodes are now available in M4A format for playing in iTunes or Quicktime. Check it out for a visual experience to go with the fan-favorite  podcast series.

I cannot thank (and praise!) Berent enough for his work on this. He really went above and beyond for this one.

If you are new to the Expanded Universe, or know someone who is, then the Star Wars EU Primer Podcast may be just the thing to help make that giant saga of a galaxy far, far away a bit easier to get into . . . and now, you can watch while listening for a much more engrossing experience.

You can find it, as always over at:

http://www.starwarsfanworks.com/euprimer.html

Just a heads-up: If you don’t regularly listen to Star Wars Action News (and you should!), you should go over there and check out their newest episode (238). This episode includes the third part of my eight-part EU Collecting series as part of my Expanding the Universe: EU Special Report segment that airs sporadically. The main topic of the overall SWAN episode is the Star Wars Comic Packs, mostly from the standpoint of action figure collecting, but then my segment takes a look at the other side of it all: the comic collecting aspect.

Once again, I bring you a case of the perils of podcasting.

Earlier today, around 3:00 p.m. Eastern, Andrew Lupi, my co-host for The EU Review, and I met over Skype to record our reviews of Wild Space, No Prisoners, and Gambit: Stealth for our special The EU Review: Episode 3.5, featuring our interview with Karen Miller, slated for release on April 1. This was the first episode to be recorded on my end, instead of Andrew’s or another party’s end, using a program that Andrew has been using well that has also served others of us well in making backup recordings. It is a free Skype recording program we have come to rely on.

Today, all went haywire.

After starting a tad late, we recorded about an hour of content to cover those novels (including quite a few mini-rants that were probably best cut anyway). When we finished the entire recording, I went to turn off the recording program. When you hit “stop,” it is supposed to pop up a notice as to the final file name, while the file appears on the desktop.

That did not happen.

After a thorough search, we discovered that something had fouled up with the recording program. It had said it was recording, but it never actually did (or never provided a file of the recording, which amounts to the same thing).

We then re-recorded all of that content over again, right after having finished the first round of recording, which pushed recording past two hours total for less than one hour of actual episode content when all is said and done.

The lesson here: Even programs you rely on frequently can have bugs or errors in them. Always work with a backup recording or make sure to record in chunks, rather than all as one conversation, so that if something doesn’t get recorded, you can immediately backtrack just that one segment, rather than having to re-record everything all over again.

The EU Review: Episode 3.5 is slated for April 1. Before that, be sure to catch The EU Review: Episode 3 on March 23 (this Tuesday), and keep an eye out for The EU Review: Episode 4 sometime in the latter half of April.

The schedule for The EU Review has been tweaked a few times lately. As of now, here is where we stand on what is coming up in the next few months.

On March 16 (or 23 if delayed), we will release The EU Review: Episode 3, which will feature our reviews of the following:

• The Art and Making of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• The Force Unleashed (comic)
• The Force Unleashed (novel)
• The Force Unleashed (cellphone, iPod/iPhone)
• The Force Unleashed (Nintendo DS)
• The Force Unleashed (Playstation 2)
• The Force Unleashed (Playstation Portable)
• The Force Unleashed (Nintendo Wii)
• The Force Unleashed (Playstation 3/Xbox 360)
• Knights of the Old Republic: Vol. III – IV (Days of Fear, Nights of Anger, Daze of Hate, Knights of Suffering)
  
• Crosscurrent
• Star Wars Adventures: Luke Skywalker and the Treasure of the Dragonsnakes

Then in early April, we will release our Clone Wars Special (or whatever we call it, presumably “Episode 3.5“), which will feature our reviews of Wild Space, No Prisoners, and Gambit: Stealth, along with our interview with Wild Space and Stealth author Karen Miller.

In late April, we will release The EU Review: Episode 4, which will feature reviews of Star Wars “fighting games.” That includes:

• The Force Unleashed: Duel Mode (Wii)
• The Force Unleashed: Force Unleashed Mode (PSP)
• Soul Calibur IV
• Revenge of the Sith: The Video Game (fighting mode only)
• The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels
• Masters of Teras Kasi

That episode will also include reviews of Knights of the Old Republic: Volumes V – VI, along with Fate of the Jedi: Backlash. The episode should arrive around April 20.

In May (shooting for May 18 release), we will release The EU Review: Episode 5, featuring reviews of Knights of the Old Republic: Volumes VII – VIII and the feature topic of the seven film novelizations (ANH, ESB, ROTJ, TPM, AOTC, ROTS, and TCW).

In June (shooting for June 22 release), we should be releasing The EU Review: Episode 6, covering the final TPB of Knights of the Old Republic, Fate of the Jedi: Allies, and other content not yet determined.

Also, for those who follow my other podcast, The Butlerniverse, you can expect to have new episodes this summer (if not before), featuring commentary and behind the scenes info about Greater Good, the likely sequel to Echoes, my WARS novella that is due out this summer, and recordings and wrap-up from ConCarolinas 2010 (which will be attended by yours truly, Jim Perry, Joe Harrison, Andrew Gilbertson, Sarah Gilbertson, and Chris Walker, all current and active members of the Star Wars fan audio community). Jim and I will also be hosting a WARS panel this summer at ConCarolinas.

So . . . more is coming, even as the school year moves toward 2.5 months remaining and summer finally comes within view, during which I will be spending some time working on The Star Wars Timeline Gold and possibly even a new film commentary from The Butlerniverse. We shall see.

A quick update for those who follow my “stuff.”

First, be sure to check out the newest episode (234) of Star Wars Action News to hear the second part of my eight part series on “collecting approaches” (or the “EU Collecting Series” as I often call it). The series began in a previous episode (228) with a look at different approaches to collecting Star Wars EU novels, and this new episode brings a segment about approaches to collecting Star Wars comic books. (For the record, the remaining six segments focus on comic packs, “choose your own adventure” books, trading card games, the roleplaying game, home video releases, and video games, though not necessarily in that order.)

Second, be sure to check out We Talk Clones: Episode 32 on the Solo Sound website. This special episode features me as a guest, as the guys grill me (friendly-like) on the “Mandalorian / Traviss / etc.” issue from The Clone Wars.

Third, be on the look out for more video game reviews in the next week or so. Tonight marks the release of Costume Pack 2 and Desperate Escape DLC for Resident Evil 5, plus the Relics Triple Pack and Dark Forest DLC for Dante’s Inferno, and the first episode of Heavy Rain Chronicles DLC (entitled The Taxidermist).

I am going to have to wait on the Dante’s Inferno and Heavy Rain DLC, it seems, as the Playstation Network Store is not currently recognizing preorder bonus vouchers for either of these two DLC items  (and it is not yet clear whether the Relics Triple Pack is something totally new or if it is made of relics that can be found in Dark Forest, making them redundant). If you are having the same problems, I’d be curious to know (use Twitter) to know whether you purchased either game via Amazon. Both of mine were and neither works at the moment. (Then again, it really doesn’t seem as though it is working for anyone. Also, there seems to be no Heavy Rain DLC for direct purchase, only via vouchers . . . which aren’t working.)

I’ll likely play through the RE5 materials tonight, since those are pay-only (not vouchered, if that’s even a word), so I’ll have those tonight.

That, or I’ll run through the end of Heavy Rain a few more times to change the endings and get my last two trophies on the only game I’ve ever cared about trophies for (he says, ending with a preposition).

For those who follow the Star Wars fan audio genre, particularly out of Star Wars Fanworks, I’m  happy to note that the 2010 Star Wars Fanworks Fan Audio Award winners have finally been revealed. They were first revealed in a special crossover episode of Spinoff (crossing over with ToscheCast), then posted (almost immediately) on Star Wars Fanworks (in  the Features area).

For those who don’t want to be spoiled as to who the winners were, stop reading now.

: waits :

: waits :

: waits :

2009 was a hell of a year for Star Wars fan audio productions. The only exception to that, of course, was in fan audio parodies. This year only saw the release of Jedi Love, which was very quickly removed from circulation due to potential legal troubles between one of the creators and an ex-girlfriend, who decided to play sour grapes and claim she’d sue over her voice being in the parody, after she recorded the lines for it.

Sour grapes, indeed.

Anyway . . .

Beyond that oddity of a basically empty parody subgenre (not counting Jedi Love because it was removed from circulation), this year saw three audio dramas eligible for awards, all of which were quite good: Blue Harvest; Knights of the Old Republic: Outcasts; and In the Shadows.

When votes were tallied, In the Shadows swept the awards, carrying on the tradition of last year’s sweep by Codename: Starkeeper. Dany Pepin, the project’s creator, has done excellent work on In the Shadows, just as he did with his previous audio dramatization of Karen Traviss’ Omega Squad: Targets.

2009 was chock-full in terms of podcasts. With sixteen Star Wars-based shows eligible for awards this year, along with seven “Star Wars and More” shows (dubbed “Fanworks Community-Based Radio Shows” in award parlance), competition was fierce.

When all was said and done, Anomaly again took a two-way tie for Best Panel of Radio Show Hosts, this time with Star Wars Action News. New podcast The Unknown Regions and my own Star Wars EU Primer took a two-way tie for Radio Show Rookie of the Year, while three categories featured returning winners: Star Wars Action News for Best Star Wars-Based Radio Show; my podcast The Butlerniverse took Best Fanworks Community-Based Radio Show; and I managed to garner the Best Solo Radio Show Host award. (These three last awards were mirrors of last year’s results.)

The Lifetime Achievement Award had previously been awarded to me (without my knowledge mind you), Rich Sigfrit, Dany Pepin, and Jeff Roney. This year, the award went to the quite deserving Joe Harrison of Lion’s Mouth Entertainment.

It was a heck of a year, and I look forward to seeing what 2010 has in store for Fanworks and the Star Wars fan audio community. My thanks go to all of those who voted, and especially to those who voted for me this year, quite against my efforts to sound like a complete twit on my podcasts.

Heh.

Congratulations to all those who picked up awards.

For those who are interested in podcasting as a hobby or professional pursuit, I have felt for a long time that it is my responsibility, having been in the genre since 2002 and having had so many interesting opportunities and new life directions due to my participation in the genre, to provide insights now and then into the podcasting hobby. (For me, this is a hobby, though it does tie into my professional life. I am not, though, a “professional podcaster,” and I don’t claim to be.)

One of the “perils of podcasting” that often arises is that online audio production teams are often not near each other geographically. For example, while I have tried to minimize geographic concerns with my own podcasts, especially ChronoRadio and The Butlerniverse, my audio dramas (except for Solitude) have been much broader in recording locations. Second Strike, for example, utilized a total of around 45 different voice actors, who were located in five different countries on three separate continents.

When a project is pre-recorded via submitted material, location often doesn’t matter all that much. For example, an audio drama might require recordings from all around the country or world, but since they are all mixed together later and usually aren’t recorded with multiple actors in one session, even when geographically nearby, it is not a major concern.

When recording a podcast, however, it is important for hosts and/or guests to interact “live,” during the recording at least, even if the final podcast will be edited later. Interestingly, the simplest ways have given way to what should be a better way . . . which turns out to be fraught with its own pitfalls.

Originally, back when I recorded the first handful of guest segments for ChronoRadio (with Krisoffer Newsom and Ian Bowie), I had my guests on the phone. We both recorded our ends of the conversation, then the guest sent me their side of the recording, which I then mixed together with the previous recording. That worked fine, but different compression could make it tougher to line things up than one would expect, as would delays via the phone line from when something was said and when something was heard, especially on cellphones. On the plus side, this gave a clean recording on both sides. The downside was more work than might be necessary.

My second approach, detailed in the first tutorial of my Fan Audio Made Easy (entitled The Audio Interview Made Easy), made use of the fact that most talk radio shows (actually on the radio) tend to have callers via regular phone lines, which leaves the host clear, while the caller is less so. We expect the guest or caller to sound like they are on a phone line. Thus, why shouldn’t a podcast or online radio show be able to do the same? Throughout most of my time as a podcaster, I have conducted interviews for my podcasts by calling the interviewee either via my cellphone or home phone, both of which have speakerphones built into them. I simply place the phone with its speakerphone underneath the microphone, then talk normally. It ends up sounding like a regular talk radio program.

That works fine for interviews, perhaps, but the sound quality from that type of recording does not bode well when being considered for constant co-hosting of a podcast. For something like that, when quality is a constant issue and the potential exists for more than two people live on air at once, the speakerphone method just won’t cut it.

Unless you can coordinate local friends to produce a podcast,  you will find yourself with a podcast that has co-hosts (panelists) that are geographically diverse. That means finding another way to record. In the case of The EU Review (and the Star Wars Action News Book Club Podcast to which I am a constant contributor and Republic Forces Radio Network, which I’ve contributed to a few times, among others), this is often handled through the use of Skype and a separate recording program.

The good news is that Skype is free. The better news is that it can also handle multiple individuals on a call, not just the two that you’ll find in most “speakerphone-based” podcast interviews. The downside is that you are now entirely at the mercy of the internet connections of all of the parties involved in recording, which, while much more stable these days than in the past, is still more of an issue than it would be with a telephone line. You are also at the mercy of any computer program issues that might arise.

Case in point:

The EU Review has had one released episode, but we have actually recorded 2.5 episodes. Our first recording of our premiere episode was lost entirely due to file and quality problems on Andrew’s end, back when he and I were recording on Skype via a recording program Andrew uses.

The next time we recorded, it worked, and you hear the result as the “real” premiere of The EU Review, released in January 2010. However, due to finicky settings on the recording program, the audio quality was not up to snuff. This led us to plan to probably end up not only having Austin Blankenship as mixer/editor but also as the recording party, so that Andrew and I would coordinate with Austin and have him record the Skype call while not participating. This was, of course, less than ideal, as it now meant coordinating three busy schedules.

Since the release of the first episode, Andrew has discovered a way to fix the setting problems that caused issues with the premiere’s audio quality, and we were all set to record the second episode for February. Unfortunately, Andrew’s internet connection (somewhat tenuous at the best of times, it seems) was battered like a newbie boxer by sleet and stormy weather in Andrew’s part of the country (while I enjoyed a dreary but decent day in the Atlanta area). We were able to record our introductions and begin the Fate of the Jedi topic, only for the connection to die on Andrew’s end. We then picked up where we left off once he was back online and managed to record both of our thoughts on Fate of the Jedi and Andrew’s thoughts on the Darth Bane novels, but the connection died again. That left my thoughts on the Darth Bane series, our take on issues 0 through 12 of Knights of the Old Republic, and our supplemental reviews of Republic Heroes for the DS, Elite Squadron for the PSP, and, briefly, Mobile Squadrons for cellphones.

In the end, the weather won, and we have rescheduled the rest of the recording for later (next Sunday or possibly earlier if we both have time). Even with only two of us, the perils of podcasting from geographically (and, in this case, meteorologically) diverse locations were able to derail recording.

My advice for fellow  podcasters is this:

Be flexible. If you want a multi-host podcast that is easy to record, you’d better have all of your hosts able to record in person. Otherwise, be willing to switch schedules, record in chunks, or otherwise accommodate for the fact that Murphy’s Law does not stop at the water’s edge between “real life” and the internet.

(This blog post is the first of several that will eventually provide a brief description of each of my other fan audio projects. My hope is that it will cause The EU Review listeners to be interested enough to check out those other projects.)

Before The EU Review premiered, my most recent new podcast series was the Star Wars EU Primer Podcast. The SWEUPP (which I don’t think I’ve ever written as an acronym prior to this, since that acronym just looks goofy) is a five-episode series, which does precisely what its title suggests: it provides a broad recap of the major events of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (beginning to end) as a way of catching up new or casual readers on the EU in preparation for future reading.

I launched my Star Wars Timeline Project with The Star Wars Timeline 1.0 back around December 1997. That original release was a whopping 4 pages, a full 25% larger (uhm, one page larger) than the version I had originally made for my own personal use, now called The Star Wars Timeline Version 0, which was only three pages long. Today, the project exists as The Star Wars Timeline Gold (technically The Star Wars Timeline, Gold Edition), which has had 47 releases since “going gold” back in January 2001. The total page count (not counting cover images) for the most recent release (July 2009), which now consists of three separate Adobe Acrobat PDF files, was 1,737 pages (a ridiculous 579 times the size of Version 0 and 434.25 times the size of the first released version (SWT 1.0).

In June 2005, I realized that newcomers would find the Star Wars Timeline Gold useful but far, far too daunting. I therefore decided to include a “primer” on the EU in the Appendices file of that month’s Star Wars Timeline Gold release.

In July 2009, I had been batting around the idea of producing that primer in audio form as a series of segments for Star Wars Action News (hosted by Arnie and Marjorie Carvalho), but we understood that the idea, while interesting, was not really feasible. The content would be far too long for such segments. Thus, I chose to record the primer into the new podcast, The Star Wars EU Primer Podcast, and then released it via my own website as a standalone series.

The Primer podcast breaks down into five episodes:

• Before the Prequel Era
• The Prequel Era
• The Empire: Rising and Striking Back
• Birth of a New Republic
• The New Jedi Order and Beyond

Each episode will be edited, updated, and re-released every time I release a new edition of the Star Wars Timeline Gold (on which the text version of the primer will also be updated). I have also recently connected with Berent Lawton, the current “podcast enhancer” for Star Wars Action News (i.e. the person who turns an audio MP3 into an audio M4A with images that will play to correspond with the audio in Quicktime, on an iPod, in iTunes, etc.), to create an enhanced version of the podcast, which should be released in the next month or two.

If you are new to the Expanded Universe, or know someone who is, then the Star Wars EU Primer Podcast may be just the thing to help make that giant saga of a galaxy far, far away a bit easier to get into.