recording
Showing posts with label recording. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recording. Show all posts

6 Ways to Connect with Your Students in a Zoom Yoga Class

^^ These are all engaged, attentive, powerful Baptiste Yoga teachers! ^^

What makes an extraordinary Zoom yoga experience for your yoga students?

I've been taking LOTS of yoga classes over Zoom since the US went into Coronavirus quarantine. My first Zoom class was with Austin Kapetenakis, and I'd basically been waiting years to be able to take his class (since we met at Level One in 2016).

The most powerful Zoom classes I've taken are the ones where the teacher has seen me and spoken to me by name during the practice. If I can see the teacher's face and they look engaged, happy or interested - I'm engaged more as a student. If I can see them looking off screen at something else, that is a way for me to check out (the teacher isn't interested). My least powerful classes have been the ones where the teacher is doing all the yoga and is not engaging with us students in any meaningful or specific way. If I wanted to watch a fitness video to do yoga, I would do that. I want the engagement that comes from a live yoga class. I want to know that the instructor can SEE me and is holding space for me for my practice. I want to know that the instructor is OUT HERE with us the students and not in their head or their body because they're doing the yoga. I want to be called out, encouraged, supported and this happens by being seen and by being acknowledged by the instructor.

First off, I know that it is hard as crap to lead a Journey Into Power when you're doing the asana. You can't breathe when you are cueing breath. You can't see your students when you teach from the mat and the most powerful thing that rises from leading Journey Into Power is seeing your students and letting your students see you. This fact hasn't changed just because we are using Zoom and aren't in a physical yoga studio.

I wrote about my experience and takaways from the Baptiste Power Yoga Instructor's Course I took (led by Luca Richards) and all these things STILL APPLY even in virtual yoga classes.

Foundational Elements to Leading a Extraordinary Baptiste Power Yoga Class:

  • Look, listen and give tools
  • Speak into each and every
  • Look for what's needed in the moment
  • Have a clear purpose for playing music if you do play music
  • Build in active rest and recovery into a beginners class
  • Keep beginner students in the vinyasa, allow them to have their experience (whatever that is)
  • Use essential language. Movement > body part > direction
  • Teach to the middle-strongest students and up. Their energy will empower newer students in the room.
  • Offer a challenge to your students by giving them space to take themselves to their edge (whatever that looks like for them from moment to moment)
  • Teach from Journey Into Power as written
  • During Integration, get the students moving
  • Be with the students in the room and keep the energy moving forward.
  • Allow for flow in Awakening by removing obstructions to movement
  • Reestablish drishti, ujjayi and foundation in the Grounding sequence
  • Establish trust with your students by giving them a clear measure of how many repetitions or breaths will occur for each pose.
  • Count sequentially with the end number first, then count up 1, 2, 3, 4.
  • Switch sides on the second to last number as the transition between sides
  • Keep your delivery strong through Opening sequence
  • Leave people in the experience of themselves

What is different and needed when teaching virtual yoga with Zoom

  • Have good lighting on your face so the students can see YOU as they might look up at their screen during their practice.
  • If you are leading class from a position close to your laptop microphone, the laptop microphone will be sufficient for your speaking audio.
  • Do. Not. Multitask.
      • No texting
      • No typing
      • Turn on do not disturb if you use a Mac laptop, mute system sounds if you're using a Windows laptop. This will keep students from hearing your message or email notifications through your laptop microphone
  • If you demonstrate the poses while you're teaching
    • Use Bluetooth earbuds with built-in microphones so your speaking will be audible when you are far away from your laptop.
    • Make sure your body is well lit if you are demonstrating for your students
  • If you know you have beginners in your class, work with one of your more experienced students in class and "Spotlight" them in Zoom so the newer students can learn by creating shapes with their bodies.
  • It is not necessary or required for YOU to do the yoga with your students simply because you are teaching from a video platform like Zoom.
    • See your students as they are practicing. 
    • Speak to your students by name and speak to what is needed.
  • When sealing the practice, unmute all participants, acknowledge your students after the three OMs are complete and all the students' eyes are open. 
    • This is an opportunity for connectedness, acknowledge them and make eye contact and have their microphones ON so they can contribute to the closing of class.

Zoom meeting settings best practices

  • Mute participants upon entry ON - Automatically mute all participants when they join the meeting. The host controls whether participants can unmute themselves.
  • Participants video ON - Start meetings with participant video on. Participants can change this during the meeting.
  • Join before host ON - Allow participants to join the meeting before the host arrives
  • Screen sharing - Host Only
  • Annotation - OFF
  • Whiteboard - OFF
  • Remote Control - OFF
  • Enable waiting room - optional
    • If the waiting room feature is enabled, attendees will see a customizable "Please standby" sort of message, letting them know class will begin soon. The meeting owner admits each participant into the meeting one at a time.

Teaching with music over Zoom

  • Screen Sharing to share audio over Zoom
    • I've had a couple classes where the instructor was using screen sharing and I've found that the bluetooth earbuds/mic audio gets compromised in favor of the clarity of the music at my end of the Zoom call. The teacher's audio was a little "tinny" and "thin" sounding but the music was clear. The exception to this has been when the teacher is wearing a wireless mic headset for their speaking audio. I believe this is because the wireless headset mic is not bluetooth audio.
    • The instructors who teach with this style of wireless mic headset are Bethany Lyons (Lyon's Den NYC), Paige Elenson (Healthy Happy Hour Nairobi Kenya) and the instructors at Indigo Yoga Studio (Fort Worth TX). Go take a class with one or all of them so you can hear the difference in the wireless mic audio compared to laptop audio or bluetooth earbuds.
I dropped into a Zoom yoga class recently to check out a teacher I'd been curious about (not a Baptiste yoga teacher) and came to find that the first 10 minutes of the Zoom call was filled with the participants doing the following:
  • trying to tell everyone else to mute themselves
  • trying to tell the instructor they couldn't hear her (she wasn't using a mic and was very far away from the video and mic source)
  • trying to tell the instructor they couldn't see her because she was so far away and not well lit
  • trying to tell the other participants to stop sharing their screens

The teacher never saw any of these chat messages because once she started the Zoom call, she walked away to the front of the room and got on her mat and started talking (although nobody could hear her). Once everyone finally muted themselves, she was still hard to hear. It was a follow-along-and-watch-the-instructor-do-the-yoga yoga class which means that as a student, you had to constantly be looking over at your screen to see what was being done by the teacher. This became potentially dangerous (IMO) as the teacher moved her body into a shoulder stand. I could see other students on the screen try to mimic her shape, while twisting their necks around to see their screens. Several other students were sitting on camera, texting on their phones, not engaged in the class at all. 

The class was an excellent example of how sideways a Zoom yoga class can go when simple guidelines like muting all participants on entry, disabling screen sharing, using a microphone and good lighting aren't followed. 

In conclusion: when I take a Baptiste Yoga class online, I expect a similar experience to being in a Baptiste yoga studio - having the instructor see me and teach from the methodology. If the teacher is teaching from the yoga mat, doing the practice, they can't see me or anyone else and I might as well be working out to a YouTube video. 
Read More

Using A Wired Headset With A Mic To Record Your Teaching


This is a follow up to my original "How To Record Yourself Teaching Yoga" post, now with another (probably simpler) way to record the audio of you teaching. In my first post, I briefly touched on using an older Apple or Android device to record the audio of your teaching by using a wired headset. You probably have a few wired headsets from previous phones you've bought over the years, you just need to make sure your headset has a microphone in it.


 Newer phones now require adapters to use 3.5mm wired headsets because they've stopped putting headphone jacks into phones. Which adapter you need depends on what kind of phone you have.

For this example, I'm using an old pair of Apple headphones which also have a microphone. I taped the wire from the mic to the earbud back onto itself to make it neater. The earbuds still work so I didn't want to cut them off of the headset wire. If the earbuds didn't work anymore, I could cut them off so the microphone would be the only part of the headset wires I'd use.


I slipped a tiny binder clip over the microphone wires so I could clip the mic to my shirt.


You could any number of things to keep the mic secured to your shirt. Safety pin, duct tape, gaffers tape, a clothespin - basically anything you've got on hand to keep the mic securely fastened to your neckline so your recording won't be muffled by your clothing.

Apple devices have the Voice Memos application already installed by default. I downloaded and installed a free Voice Recorder application on the Motorola Android device I used in this example.

The device you're using to record your audio should be put into Airplane mode, have the screen locked and then you can tuck it inside the waistband of your leggings or pocket of your shorts while you're recording your teaching. The device you use to record your teaching audio cannot be the same device you're using to play music into the studio (if you teach with music) because it is not possible to stream bluetooth music from a device and record an audio input to the same device at the same time. You probably have an older phone you're not using which can be repurposed into a voice recorder.

Here are the steps you can use on an Apple device to use the Voice Memos application to record your teaching, save the file, export the file off your phone so that you can share the recording with other people. I find it easiest to use Dropbox to save files from my devices, but there are many options (Google drive, AirDrop). I would caution against trying to send your recording via Mail or Message because the file size of your recording may be larger than what is supported by Message or Mail.


Here are the steps with an Android device as an example:


Once you have the audio recording copied onto your laptop or PC, you can refer to my post on "How To Edit Your Yoga Teaching Audio File" so that it will be ready for sharing with others.

If you are interested in sharing your audio recordings as a podcast, here is a post I wrote "Sharing Yoga Teaching Audio Recordings As Podcasts". If you're not interested in paying for your audio to be hosted/shared as a podcast, you can always upload your recordings to Mixcloud like Will Martin is doing.
Read More

How To Record and Edit Your Yoga Teaching Video Files


The first thing you'll need to decide on is what type of device you'll use to record your video. In the past I have used cell phones or iPads clipped to tripods, but last year I found a great deal on an older model SJCAM (a GoPro knock off). The model I purchased is the M10, it records in 1080p, doesn't have wifi built in but does have a display screen on the back of the camera so you can see what will be in the frame. Having wifi built in would mean that I could export the video from the camera to my smart device (cell phone) but I don't need that feature. I needed a dead simple video camera to record me teaching yoga (submitting a video of me teaching is a requirement to obtain Baptiste Yoga Certification).

I found a good deal on the SJCAM M10 ($62 shipped). It shipped with a ton of different attachments and accessories (a waterproof enclosure) but it did not come with a lens cap. Luckily, I found a seller on eBay who 3D prints lens caps for the SJCAMs.

The primary accessories I use are the open top double threaded tripod mount, the 3D printed lens cap and a flexible tripod.

I prefer using the open top camera holder/tripod mount because it allows me to provide a local power source to the SJCAM as well as easily mount the camera from the top (clamping the tripod to a wall mounted light fixture) or the bottom (placing the tripod on a flat surface or window sill).

I've had the internal battery give out on me before the class was over and as a result, the video recording was a waste because the camera shut down half way through class. Providing local power to the SJCAM can be done by plugging it into wall power with a USB cable and any USB wall power converter. If you'll be recording where an electrical outlet is not present (or if you don't know if one will be available or not), you can use an external battery pack to provide power to the camera over the same USB cable you'd use with the wall outlet adapter. This gives you the flexibility of not needing an electrical outlet as well as not relying solely on the capacity of the SJCAM internal battery.

You will need a microSD card for the camera of your choice to record your video files. Most video camera manufacturers recommend using Class 10 memory cards (Class 10 cards have a much faster read/write speed than Class 1 cards do and are therefore are preferred for use in video cameras). Some cameras won't be able to read a memory card if its storage capacity is higher than 32GB, refer to the specifications for the camera you ultimately choose to be sure you're purchasing a compatible memory card. The microSD card will typically ship with a microSD adapter. You'll use this adapter to connect the memory card to your computer and copy off the video files you've recorded.

Another option is to purchase an SD/microSD to USB adapter (the gold colored adapter in the upper right hand corner of the picture above). This adapter will connect to any USB port on your computer and allow you to view data on SD or microSD memory cards.
Refer to the user manual for your camera for camera specific settings such as auto white balance, ISO, loop recording mode etc. I have set my SJCAM to record at the highest quality, use auto white balance and I've turned off recording audio. The video files the SJCAM will record are 4GB each due to the file size limits of SD cards. One hour of class will typically be in two 4GB 'chunks'. Since I don't record audio from the SJCAM, I sync the audio I record from my Sanyo with the video files in Camtasia (which is not free) but you can achieve the same functionality with an application called OpenShot Video Editor which is free.

As you can see in the screen captures above, the video editing interface for OpenShot is remarkably similar to that of the video editing Camtasia. I'll be using OpenShot as the video editor of choice in this blog post because it is free.
There are a few things you'll need to think about before you copy the video files off of the memory cards. You'll need enough hard drive space to hold the video files you're editing as well as the size of the video files you'll be producing from the original recordings. I recommend having at least 20GB or more free on your hard drive. If you're editing an hour's worth of video, that's 8GB +/- right there, plus at least 8GB for the video file you're creating from the original content. I have problems with Camtasia crashing if my hard drive doesn't have enough space to hold the video file I'm creating and I suspect it would be the same thing with OpenShot.

Use a microSD to SD card adapter or a microSD to USB adapter to copy the files your camera  created to a folder where you can find them. Launch the OpenShot Video Editor application and import your video and audio files. It is common for the video camera to create file names that increment with each clip created. As you can see, I have three files and #1 is has .001.MOV in the file name. Clip #2 has .002.MOV in the file name and so on.

The files you import will be displayed in the 'Project Files' window in the upper left hand corner of the screen.

By default OpenShot video editor puts five tracks at the bottom of the screen for you to add video or audio into (tracks 0-4). We'll only be working with one audio and one video track, so we can remove the unused tracks. Right click each track and select 'remove track' until you are left with Track 0 and Track 1.

Select the first video segment in the series from the 'Project Files' window, right click it and select 'add to timeline'. The video segment will be added into the timeline of Track 1. Click the orange 'jump to end' icon at the bottom of the 'Video Preview' window to move the playback 'cursor' to the end of the timeline for the first video segment you just added to the timeline. Doing this will make it easy for you to add the second video clip at the end of the first video clip.

When adding video clips to the timeline, accept the default settings shown by clicking OK. Select the second video clip and add it to the end of the first video clip. Continue this process of 'jump to end' followed by adding video clips until all video clips have been added to the timeline of Track 1.

Select the audio file to import and add it to Track 0. Doing this will allow the audio file to overlap the video segments which is what we want.

Find the beginning of the audio file by listening to the playback (if you have already edited your audio file using Audacity, you can skip this step since you've already trimmed the audio playback so that the beginning of your audio file is already the actual beginning of class). Once you've found the beginning, click the razor tool and make a cut in the audio file at that spot. Delete the beginning portion of unnecessary audio by hitting the delete key on your keyboard. Deselect the magnet tool (turning off 'snapping enabled') so that you can adjust the audio file freely from left to right to get it to be in sync with the video playback.


When you have the audio in sync with the video, use the razor tool to make a cut to the beginning and end of the video. Delete the unnecessary snippets. Select all of the video and audio sections (edit, select all) and drag them to the beginning of the playback timeline. Export your video.

When exporting your video, give the file a name and save it where you can find it. For video quality, choose YouTube-HD. Your video will export at 1080p HD video quality (most likely the same quality at which you recorded it, depending on your video recorder).

Wait for your video export to process. Preview your video to ensure it is of good quality and that it sounds and looks the way you expected. Now you can upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook.
Read More

How To Edit Your Yoga Teaching Audio File


Continuing on with recording audio from your yoga teaching classes, this post deals with how to edit the audio files that you've recorded.
Now that you've got an audio recording, I recommend using Audacity to open/edit/enhance your audio files. It is a free application, there's a version for Mac and Windows too!
It is a good habit to start the audio recording well before you begin teaching so you won't forget to hit record! In this short video, I show you how to use the Audacity application to open a recording, trim off the beginning and end audio (before you actually started teaching), adjust the bass and export the file to mp3 (for distributing into podcasting services) as well as saving it to flac (if you want to share your recordings on mixcloud.com. I also cover how to embed appropriate MP3 tags and artwork into your mp3 files.


To open an audio recording in Audacity, click File, Open. Find the audio recording on your computer, select it and click Open.

Use the selection tool (looks like a capital I in the tool bar at the top of the Audacity application screen) to place your cursor into the wave form and find the beginning of the class recording by playing the file back. Once you've found the beginning, click Edit, Clip Boundaries, Split.

Double click the 'beginning' part of the file you want to remove and hit the delete key on your keyboard. Repeat the process of using the selection tool and playing back the audio recording to find the end of the class. You can choose to fade out the end portion by clicking Effect, Fade Out. Use the selection tool to mark the point between the end of the class and the part you want to trim off. Click Edit, Clip Boundaries, Split. Double click the end of the recording you want to remove and hit the delete key on your keyboard.

If the audio is too loud, adjust the volume down by clicking Effect, Amplify and entering a -1 or -3 value into the Amplification field. If the audio isn't loud enough, enter a value of 1 or 3 into the Amplification field. If you want to adjust the bass of the audio recording, click Effect, Bass and Treble and use the Preview function to make the recording sound good to your ears.
If you're going to put your recordings into a podcasting service, you'll want to make your stereo track mono by clicking Tracks, Stereo to Mono first before you export to MP3. Export your MP3 files as constant bit rate, 96kbps files by clicking 'options' next to the Format: MP3 field in Audacity.

Embedding artwork into your MP3s will be a thing you'll want to do if you want to submit your recordings to Apple's iTunes or Google Play as podcasts. You can use the application Tagr (on Mac) to embed album art.  Your artwork should be 1400 x 1400 pixels. Simply drag and drop the artwork into Tagr and then save to disk to finalize the artwork embedding. Tagr isn't a free app, it is $8.99 in the App Store, but I couldn't find a suitable free app to do what I needed.

My next post will cover recording video of your yoga class and using a free application called OpenShot video editor to sync your teaching audio recording with the video of the class.
SaveSave
Read More

How To Record Yourself Teaching Yoga


There are a great many reasons why you would want to record the yoga classes you teach. You could share them with your students, friends and family. You could publish them online as I blogged about here, or you could submit your content to YogaDownload.com, HitPlayYoga.com, AudibleYoga.com or any other number of online yoga sites. It is also a good habit to record your classes and take your own classes in order to see how your words land with you when you're the student instead of the teacher. As you listen to your own classes, you might discover things that help you to evolve and develop as a teacher.

For this post, I will stick to the basics of recording your own audio yoga classes. Some yoga studios have built in sound systems with wireless microphones for the instructors to wear (as in the image on the left up above). For this type of sound system, work with the owner/manager of the studio to record your teaching. If you don't work at a studio with a sound system and wireless mic setup, this post is for you. If you want to record your own audio with a small wearable microphone (see the image in the upper right hand corner above), this post is for you!

There are many different devices you could use to record your audio. You can use your phone (Apple or Android), a dedicated audio recording device (like the xacti I use) or any digital device that can record audio, preferably with an external microphone input. Using an external microphone is preferred so that you're recording less of the room audio and more of your voice giving the class verbal cues for the asana sequence.

Not all lavalier microphones are made the same. Some have a battery, others do not. Some may not work with the device you've chosen to use. For example, I have a lavalier microphone I'd previously purchased to use with my digital camera, but it did not work to record audio when I connected the microphone directly into my iPhone (4S or 6Plus) so I had to buy an adapter for the microphone to make the correct connection to my iPhone. I used this method of recording my audio until I was gifted a previously owned Sanyo xacti audio recorder.

There are sellers on Aliexpress who are selling lavalier microphones that are supposed to work with Apple devices and not need an adapter. I haven't purchased one of them, so I can't say for sure if they work as advertised. You'll want to purchase a lav mic with a short cord, so that you're not also wearing a big bunched up bundle of mic wires. I had another lav mic with a short cord (no idea where it came from), it works well with the xacti digital recorder.

If you are repurposing an older iTouch or other Android device, the first thing you'll need is a good belt clip or holster type clip for the device. You'll clip the device to the waistband of your shorts or leggings (most likely with the device clipped to the inside of your waistband for extra security). Finding a holster/clip for your device shouldn't be too difficult if it is a fairly current model.

If you are using a digital audio recorder (like the Sanyo xacti) you may find yourself with a problem finding a holster clip to hold the device (because it wasn't originally intended to be worn at the hip). For the Sanyo recorder, I made a holster out of a small piece of aluminum sheeting, cut with tin snips to fit based on a template I made out of lightweight cardboard. The little 'tab' of metal that covers the front of the Sanyo when it is inserted is designed to prevent accidental pushing of the buttons on the recorder. I used double sided tape to secure two strong magnets to the back side of the aluminum, then made a magnetic backing section by securing two small pieces of metal to a small piece of aluminum (as seen in the pictures). To protect the xacti from damage with insertion/removal from the holster, I lined the holster with a small piece of fabric glued in place with contact cement.

If you have an old phone headset you're not using any longer (but the microphone still works), you could use this as your wearable microphone. Cut the earbuds off of the headset, leaving just the microphone on the cord and use a small binder clip to secure the mic to your shirt. Run the cord on the inside of your top so you don't get tangled up in the wire.

Now that we have the holster problem sorted out, let's move on to how to record the audio. There are many apps to chose from for Android or Apple, for simplicity's sake, I'll keep this focus to one app for Android and one app for Apple.

Sony makes an app called Audio Recorder for Android devices. With it you can record stereo or mono MP3 files with your Android device and then upload those MP3s to a cloud storage service (in these examples I'll use Dropbox). Install the app, make a test recording and follow the instructions above to upload the audio MP3 to Dropbox. I'll cover editing the audio files in a separate blog post.

TapMedia LTD makes an app called Recorder for Apple devices. It performs the same functions as the Android Audio Recorder app. Download and install the app, make a test recording and follow the instructions above to upload the audio MP3 to Dropbox.

Now you are able to record your speaking voice when you're teaching yoga classes. Once you have recorded a teaching session, upload your audio to a "yoga teaching" folder on Dropbox. From there you can download the MP3 of your class to your laptop and edit the MP3 file (trim the beginning and end) for better sound quality before sharing or publishing online. My next blog post will cover the basic tweaks I do to my recorded classes before sharing/publishing them online.
Read More

Sharing Yoga Teaching Audio Recordings As Podcasts


Recording the classes that I teach allows me to share the recording with others as well as be a student in my own class and see how the practice lands with me when I'm on my mat. I use a Sanyo Xacti ICR-XPS01M but there are many new digital voice recorders on the market now. 

I use Audacity to edit the audio files. It is a free app and they have a version for Windows and Mac computers. To edit the ID3 MP3 tags on the mp3 files, I use a Mac app called tagr, Windows users could use mp3nity. After I've adjusted the levels and trimmed the beginning and end of the audio files in Audacity, I export my mp3 audio into a constant bit rate format at 96kb and save the files to mono not stereo (to keep the file size of the audio tracks smaller). 

 A friend who runs a podcast recommend that I setup an account with libsyn.com. I chose the $15/month option because each one hour mp3 I have is about 45MB. If the classes that I teach go well, I'll be uploading at least four classes a month, so I chose the 250MB/month plan. I found a discount code on a podcasting website to get the first month free with this code: TBW.

The podcast show art was created in Photoshop, but there are several free online image editing tools that could be used. Pixlr  is one I've heard of people using. Libsyn lists the requirements for show art file sizes here.

Once I'd created my show art and tagged my mp3s, I uploaded my files and filled out the show notes for each audio recording.

Getting the podcast published into the iTunes directory was a matter of following the steps on Apple's podcast site, testing my RSS feed with iTunes (each hosting provider will have a way for you to find the RSS URL of where your files will be found by iTunes or Google Play. As a Libsyn user, I had to take my RSS URL (http://jentechyoga.libsyn.com/rss) and Open iTunes, choose File > Subscribe to Podcast, type your RSS feed URL in the text box, then click OK
If you see your podcast content in itunes, you know the RSS feed is working properly.
The next step was to validate the podcast through Apple's Podcasts Connect. This was a little trickier because the steps listed in Apple's how-to document online didn't work. I found the link to Podcasts Connect after doing some googling. 

Now the audio classes I've uploaded are viewable in iTunes and Google Play. You can subscribe and download the mp3s for your home practice or if you'd like to take a class from your hotel room when you're traveling for work (like I sometimes do).

Putting my recordings into iTunes and Google Play took a little more time (and money) than setting up profiles on Bandcamp and Mixcloud did, but I've seen way more activity with the podcasts than in Bandcamp/Mixcloud. I hope you enjoy some of the classes I've published. If you do, please let me know!
Read More
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)