So we have I think like 45 slides three demos and two people and 35 minutes So I think we need to just jump on into it and keep the pace going pretty quickly We're gonna try to make sure that there's time at the end for questions also Because typically with these sessions we've had lots and lots of questions We want to make sure that there's time for that too So yeah, so this is the cross-plane the projects introduction session and deep dive session So it's you know kind of a combined thing which is always interesting because we get to cover the full spectrum of cross-plane stuff But you know for people that are already already familiar with it There's kind of some introductory material you may have heard a few times by now And then folks that are new on their cross-plane journey might get a little lost later on But we'll try to keep everybody all together through this whole thing So my name is Jared one of the creators of the cross-plane project and I have my my friend here Chris Christopher Who's a prolific maintainer on the project as well? All right, so introductory material Let's talk about what cross-plane actually is and the best way to think about it is that it is a framework In order to help you build a cloud native control plane So, you know, we talked about control planes You know cloud providers have been managing their infrastructure with control planes for years and years, right? That's not a new concept itself but we wanted to be able to a You know create a framework so that all of you could build your own control planes to manage your Infrastructure and your resources etc and inject your own opinions into it as well You know and have a nice framework to do that with so kind of think about the top and the bottom of the cross-plane project So on the bottom here, there is you know, you can manage any type of infrastructure It's very extensible there so you can talk to any cloud providers on premises stuff It's very extensible and on the front end you can you know bring together There's resources and kind of declare your own platform API is your own infrastructure API's So highly extensible on the both the front and the bottom So just a quick history about the project. So this is the CNCF project, right? That's why we have this maintainer track talk and we're looking at it as a neutral place for companies and you know organizations Individuals etc to all come together and work on this mission of enabling cloud native control planes So we've been doing this for a little bit. We started this project. The first code was written back in 2018 So it's been a good You know for four years or so plus We donated it to the CNCF though in 2020. We got to a 1.0 milestone later that year We are now at the incubating stage of the of the CNCF We've got a 1.12 release coming out on Tuesday So just a few more days until that comes out there's some exciting stuff in that and then we are hoping to continue progressing towards a full graduated status with the CNCF Hopefully later this year So there's definitely some help that we could use from folks that are using the project successfully getting in production Ensuring your story with us in the adopters file So there's just some numbers project still continues to grow You know people are starring at people are contributing to it that my favorite stat of the whole thing though Is the top right one where you know over 1500 people have contributed to the project in some way now You know that's pill requests. That's issues. That's you know all sorts of things of Many people coming together with this mission of cloud native control planes, right? So I love that and that's my favorite stat by far So I'm gonna turn it over to Christopher here to get started with you've got an introduction so far We probably still don't really know what cross paint does from what I've said So let's start at the bottom layer and let's work our way up So let's talk first about the fundamental basics of cross plan We have here something called managed resources and this could be anything outside of a Kubernetes clusters if it has an API so Let's have a first look in one of the providers we have in the ecosystem It's for AWS and as you can see here, we can manage Hundreds of objects outside of the Kubernetes cluster. So to mention a few it's like networking databases Kubernetes clusters and We can managing them all in the Kubernetes way and that's also the idea from cross plane So have a look now on the right side. You see the AWS console for a three bucket And normally you have for a three bucket something like a region you get an Resource arm for the bucket you have a creation date and you also have something like attack on your S3 bucket And if you're looking now a little bit on the left side, this is the 100% Kubernetes resource View from the S3 bucket so you can see we have here the API version and the kind For this S3 bucket and we also using the versioning for our APIs We have also full metadata support for labels and annotations and we have here the spec and the spec is our Our thing how the object in the API looks like so our special stanza here for cross plan is the for provider section And everything what is under for provider we shipping to the API So if you're creating something we using all the The fields here and send it to the API This for provider thing here is high fidelity. That means if an resource in the cloud provider has hundreds of Configure things Then we have also hundred of configuration options here in the YAML file And it's a two-way communication when we're talking here from cross plan that means if you creating this bucket now in the API then we have also return values from the API and we Publishing these return values under the status at provider and in the case of an S3 bucket you can see here we get an arm and We updating this also in Reconciliation loops every time what we're getting from the API is we publishing here and the ads status provider Then we have something like events. So every time we are communicating with the API We saving the things in the events So in this case you can see it was successfully created But you can also thinking about if the authentication is not working in the API then you get in message here And the cool part is you can because it's Kubernetes you can have all your current Tools you're using for Kubernetes Adopted to the things here because events and so on. It's the same like normal resources in Kubernetes So look a little bit deeper when we are installing our providers in the Kubernetes clusters the first thing what happened is that cross plan installed the CRD's in the clusters and What happened then is for example, if we want to apply a three bucket then we have controllers for groups of resources and if you're applying on the left side now our S3 bucket in the Kubernetes cluster then the S3 controller watches on the API server and gets a feedback that there's a new resource available in the cluster for S3 bucket and directly starts talking with the S3 API from AWS and then it's thinking about is the object currently available So there's three bucket in the API if it's not available. It starts directly creating the resource in the API and if it's Currently available on the AWS side then we calculating a difference and Applying it and starting to manage it fully So if you're looking a little bit more in our providers in the internal stack then on the very bottom level what we're using here is Kubernetes runtime so that our our provider or controller Can be run in the cluster and it's also taking care of all your things what you're using like ingress services local answers in front of her services and If you're programming with Kubernetes then you have something called API machinery So what we're using here very very heavily is the custom resource definition and the open API spec What we're using here and the cool part here is that you can create your Custom types in Kubernetes and then it's acting like a normal resource in Kubernetes You're knowing like Qt city. I'll get update delete everything is working like with your normal resources Then we have the controller runtime. So it helps us for the reconciliation part so like create update delete events and the controller knows then what to do and What we have here from the cross-plane community part is the cross-plane runtime So because we creating not resources only in the cluster outside of the cluster and for this we have here to create update and delete thing and On top of the runtime we have custom logic. This could be everything. Yeah self-coded Create update and delete methods, but this could be also very very automatic what we're providing in the cross-plane ecosystem All right, so, you know, that's kind of showing the what I can kind of refer to as the bottom layer of cross-plane like You know you can create infrastructure and cloud resources, etc And cross-plane will go and make that happen out in the real world, right? But that's still that's a control plane But I think there's a lot more power that comes out of cross-plane when you can start injecting your own opinions in and you Can start building your own platform API essentially So the whole concept here is that you take a lot of those Managed resources that Christopher was referring to you can kind of assemble those together and Expose that as a higher level abstraction. You know a kind of a self-service Infrastructure API you can think about it. So a tangible Example here is going to be what does it take to expose a workload cluster an application cluster for your developers? Let's say and so you you could for example take together GKE a node pool the networks subnetworks all this sort of things You know some some roles some security policies blah blah blah You can compose that all together and then offer that as a very simple cluster abstraction to your developers So they could self-service, you know create a workload cluster if they needed one this idea extends You know across the entire ecosystem of cloud provider resources So it's you know not just about creating clusters and managing clusters, right? It's about databases caches Message queues buckets like all that sort of stuff there too, right? So this becomes a very powerful concept when you can you know essentially build your own opinionated cloud native platform You know it like we've seen before that that's it's declarative, right? It's mostly YAML configuration, right? You don't have to write any code But we're actually showing a new demo today in which you can inject code in to make it do more things that make it more powerful So here's a little picture to kind of put a little visualization to what we're talking about So if you work your way left to right in this diagram here The developer is on the left, you know, she's eating her popsicle and she's ready to kind of get ready to provision some infrastructure for herself So you know she can create a simple, you know the simple abstraction from your platform API that you've defined for her She can tune a couple of configuration knobs on it and then you know underneath the covers That's going to go to a composite resource and you know like what does that definition of that at runtime mean? That could be a whole bunch of managed resources put together So really we're kind of going left to right of a simple API and underneath the covers this environment complexity this policy these guardrails This configuration etc and a strong separation of concerns Between the developer getting their infrastructure and you as a platform engineer that's kind of design this platform for them You know another tangible Description here of you know developers the interface they get is they want a small postgres database That's what they get. That's what they get access to that's that's all that's exposed at that layer underneath the covers, right? We've got a composition for AWS. We could have one for GCP. We could have you know a golden a silver doesn't matter There's multiple different compositions that you can implement for one particular Infrastructure API and then we see here that that folds out into RDS Parameter groups the DB security groups all that sort of stuff So this is like this is kind of what the YAML looks like here We're not going to dive into every line of this but you can think about you know It's time to define your infrastructure API and so in crossplane you do that by creating a composite resource definition So you're essentially in here defining you're saying cool. I want to create a new postgres instance for sorry a new postgres API for my developers and then you're gonna go ahead and go ahead and define the scheme of it This is the shape of that API. This is what the developers are allowed to configure what they're allowed to set And this is the API for your opinionated control plane that you're designing right now Underneath the covers you've got to say at runtime. What does it mean when a developer creates an instance of this? Simple postgres API. I've given them. What does that actually mean? And then you can start specifying all the resources that they compose that API underneath the covers and you know get more specific about it And then of course you can provide a bunch of patches to it You can take you know configuration values from the user you can flow those down apply them to the resources that you're composing together and essentially You know have something that's configurable and Influensible by the developer who's whose self-service creating this infrastructure But it's still something that you as a platform engineer have designed and implemented and you're taking their their Configuration values and you're flowing it in but it's still you know, they're not you're not giving them direct access to the cloud creator API So you're not letting them do whatever they want. It's but the guardrails that you're setting down so You know we're gonna talk about you know, we've talked about cross plane as a framework, right? And so there's multiple different ways to extend cross planes. We can think about different extension mechanisms So we've you know providers are a way to teach cross plane new tricks of how to Configure provision manage various resources and various different environments cloud on premises, whatever So we call those providers and literally like like Christopher was saying anything that has an API You can write a cross-band provider for it. There's a pretty rich ecosystem of them right now But you know the community is out there and building more, you know every week we see more providers So that's that's one extension point and then when you are declaring and building your cloud native control plane Your opinionated platform you can package those up into a set of what we call a configuration in cross plane It's essentially a bundle a package of your infrastructure API's into a reusable, you know, publishable Deployable unit. So that's the that's a good way to think about extending cross plane So within the ecosystem, you know There's there's a number of logos on there for providers that we have and that continues to grow every day But I think a big takeaway here is that if there are scenarios that are important to you all or environments Or you know providers or whatever that you want to cross plane to be able to support then you know This this community does kind of listen to that when people can rally around an idea or rally around the scenario or use case for cross plane We see new providers pop up and spring up out of that so we have a nice neutral home to collaborate on all that together and Then there's also a place to you know visualize and see and discover and share all these So there's a marketplace around this as well for you know Essentially publishing your providers and extensions and cross plane and you know rally around those as well All right, cool. So that's a lot of stuff that we've covered before So now we're going to start diving into stuff that we have not seen before So this is all like new functionality that has not existed at a previous cube con before so I'm pretty excited about this stuff So this kind of guess is more or less the start of the deep dive session. All right So we just talked about compositions. It's a very very powerful concept in cross plane And you know, we saw what it looks like that for instance, you know You want to expose a simple database Objects or API to your developers and you'll let them configure How many gigabytes of storage is it going to have backing it and that's really all you're going to let them do right? You're not exposing the environment complexity underneath You're not allowing them to do anything more complicated than that. You're exposing to them a simple API Underneath the covers this you know, you can specify a set of resources You can specify how information and config value from the user flows down as patches But that's been somewhat limiting so far, right? We've had composition in cross plane for a while, but there are most certainly use cases that it does not cover So if we think about what are the limitations of composition today in cross plane? Well, you can't do complicated logic stuff, right? There's no flow control. There's no conditionals.  There's there's no real variability to it And also you can't get real runtime information that would influence the these these resources that you're composing together Basically patching and you know transforming and whatnot in composition in cross plane. It's not a programming language, right? We consciously did not want to grow a complicated DSL. That's that's you know expressed in YAML They would you would have to reinvent a lot of things around that and tooling and You know to make that work out Well, it would be half it would need to be very consciously designed with all this functionality in place And I don't think that's the right place in cross plane specifically So to solve this problem in cross plane we've introduced the concept of composition functions so this was as a v1.11 which is in January it was released as an alpha feature and So it's it's it's now available. You can start using it and the feedback we can get right now is really important as well as we Continue to mature it, but essentially what you can do instead of it's like statically defining these resources that you want to compose and You know how you want to apply configuration to them You can instead specify a pipeline of functions to run of actual code that you write So any logic that you want to include for your use case is now on the table You know, there's no limitations about what language to write it in that doesn't matter as long as you can receive You know a a function IO object and do some manipulations and write it back out. That's all you need So you do Python go JavaScript, whatever This opens up the possibilities to do a lot of new things in cross plane that you have not been able to do before And we're trying we're trying to find the sweet spot between declarative no code You can build your opinionated platform with cross plane without ever writing any code We're trying to find a sweet spot between that and you know building and rolling an entire controller and writing You know Kubernetes client code and reconciliation logic and all that stuff, right? So we're trying to find a sweet spot there So what this ends up looking like is that you know We've had compositions before and then that was a set of resources that we're composing together in the patching and Transforming logic, but now in addition to that you can still do that But now also you can specify what functions do you want to execute over these over these resources? What code do you want to call? So for instance, we have a function section here that's you know calls my cool function And then that'll go do something it'll manipulate the resources at runtime and give them back to cross plane to go make it happen Quick architecture diagram basically this whole thing runs as a sidecar Container to the main cross plane container inside the cross plane pod and then the main cross plane container speaks of a GRPC to the function runner container and inside that The default implementation of the cross plane function runner will invoke a set of rootless functions containers to Execute your code and in a series of pipeline pass them along to each other continuing to manipulate the data So that's what it's the architecture looks like But then let's see some running code now and see what this looks like here in an action So I need to make some things bigger on my screen. I recognize that so let's just start making text bigger and Then let's also look at here. Let's make that a little bit bigger too. Okay, so We're gonna look at an example here where we you know This is a classic example that comes up in cross plane all the time where somebody is like okay I have an abstraction that I want to give to my developers and underneath the covers I want to create a variable number of resources I do not know what how many resources that I'm gonna create until at runtime the user tells me to So we're basically looking at a simple claim here for a robot group. This is a fake thing. It's not real, right? There's no maybe AWS robot group service. I'm not sure, but it's not real It's an example of somebody, you know, your developer saying cool I want to make a robot group which is a group of robots and I want five robots Please give me five robots before and cross in composition across when you can't do that You you just can't have it's a static list. You can't have a variable number of these resources, right? So we hear about this all the time, you know for loops and conditionals like if this then create the resource We hear about that all the time So let's see that actually in action now Let's go back to our prompts and I think we still need to make this a little bit bigger probably Let's just see so I want to apply the composite resource definition I want to apply the composition as well and let's see what that composition actually is We look at the composition and it's similar to the example I showed before of when we see a robot group being created What we're going to do is we're not going to have any resources We're defining what we're actually going to do is we're going to invoke a function We're going to call this this Xfn mini function is what I've called it We're going to call this function here to create the number variable number of robots that the users asked for essentially So let me refer to my notes real quick. This is not for you all to see so don't worry about how small it is But yep, okay, let's go ahead and create an instance of that robot group That said what did it say it said five robots or something like that? I think it was right So what should happen right now is that the composition machinery should kick in It should look at the composition. It should see what function to run It should invoke that concept the function within that container That logic within the container should run It should create the these resources and a variable length And hopefully We have a number of five robots. I guess created now which we do which is great So our code executed and we also have some other logic in there that randomly assigns values to them as well Just to show like hey, you can do a lot of things in the programming there So we have each robot has a different color, which is very nice now I don't think folks would appreciate how happy I am that this worked because I don't know if any of you All have hit the docker hub rate limiting issues with everybody. Yes, you do feel that So this worked at home when I built it like at 1 a.m. Last night here here in the conference center It didn't work 30 minutes ago. So So all that to say this talk brought to you by Express VPN All right, so that is working. That's great. Let's look at one more thing Is what does that code look like right? We we did something cool So it's it's a little cluttered here. Sorry about that But essentially in our main function here I've written some go code where I read in the incoming cross planes telling me hey the user wants you to do this So I read the function IO. I go ahead and say, okay, there's some observed stuff There's some desired stuff right now. There's no observed robots. We're starting at zero So I make sure that any robots that exist or what we account for them And then for how many robots you've asked we go ahead and generate those robots We create those definitions for them and then we write that IO back to cross plane to make it happen So it's a fairly streamlined sort of thing read it in figure out what to do Write it back out to cross plane and let cross plane do all the all the heavy lifting there so I let me get back to the slides and I think that's it. I'll pass it back to Christopher on the other laptop here So Yeah, cool, let's talk about another feature For the cross-plane community it's observe only resources So in the past we had in the community a lot of questions regarding data source support like the guys and Terraform have or how they can adopt their legacy deployed objects from the API's to cross-plane and It was hard because you need to know the external name like the identifier and you needed to add all the Required names also from the resource from the resource you want to import. Otherwise, it was not possible to import the resources So we shipped a new feature as alpha for some of the providers and the cool part here now is that the provider Will observe existing resources without taking the ownership of it, which means You can import it and all the fields will be displayed under the status what I showed previously Because it's an alpha feature. It's currently only available if you're passing the enable management policy to the controller config and study provider with this and after that We're doing a few things under the hood for the CRDs we have in the providers. So we're using CRD validation rules that we can create managed resources without providing all the required fields We using their cell validation from Google in these CRDs and Regarding this we have a few API changes We want to introduce any providers if they are want to have support for observe only resources So we introduced a new spec manage policy and with this management policy We have now three new options or like adoption from the old ones, but we have full control So to this is the behavior we have today if you're running the Resources, we have often on the lead which is today the same like in the deletion policy the often and then we have observe only What we also want to change now is we have the full state Under status at provider, which means this is now a super set of spec for provider So we are displaying all the possible attributes under the status and then you Then you then you see how easy it is to observe the resources and Perhaps also changing after observe only mode to something like full control that you start to manage this resource also And in the future we also want to start deprecating the spec deletion policy. So for now We adding the management policy To the to the spec and have also the deletion policies So there is something like a table available at the moment in the design document What does it mean if you setting full control and management policy and setting a deletion policy to often orderly? There's a few things you need to check at the moment and in the future. We want to remove then the deletion policy on it So how it looks like now for VPC So thinking about your network team providing you the VPC and you don't you can't manage it But you want to observe it that you can use Fields from the VPC for other resources you have in your compositions. So you need to Set an external name now set under spec the management policy to observe only and the only thing you need under for provider as the region So in this case you is east one and then the provider starts to observe only the resource and at the end It looks like this you see at the status at provider you get now all the informations from the resource like cider block DNS host name support whatever and Yeah, that's quite awesome and helps a lot of people. I hope to adopting to cross-plan Let's see this very short hands-on so You can see here the controller config part what I was talking about enable management policy We configuring then and they provided a controller config and on the VPC side you see here I have a very easy VPC I have a label here an annotation to an existing VPC in the AWS account setting the management policy to observe only and I have here the region to use central one in this case. So then Create this VPC We can describe this VPC And if my internet is working then you'll see now there's all the fields now for this Observe only VPC. So there's nothing under spec for provider But all the fields we get them back from the AWS API is now available and you see it's a lot of things At the moment if you want to change now from the observe only mode to full control You need to copy pasting this status at provider things to for provider. There is an enhancement issue open that we want to Want to change it then if it comes from alpha to beta or general available feature that the provider will dust this Automatically for you if you're changing the management policy Cool this is everything now for the Observe only feature we shipped in one of the providers So and there's one other topic in the community. So like I need metrics to observe my resources What I have in the cluster so thinking about We have in crossplane like crossplane core. We have the providers. We have compositions We have claims like everything like this and normally guys asking in the community like so how you can Enable observability tools like Prometheus Grafana to see the status of all the objects and the systems so We had one idea in the community Building something similar to cubes that metrics, but the problem in cubes that metrics was that you need configure cubes that metrics for all the resources you want to have done there and Observed you need to configure it and it's very hard because you have the providers you have the compositions and so on So what we built up here is service called X metrics We will publish this right after the talk because I had no access to this but in general We have an endpoint for the metrics then available We're doing something like a state snapshot During the Kubernetes API and then we have a few options So like we're getting all the information from compositions from managed resources on the cluster level and on the claim level They are names-based and we're getting also the information like last transition time creation time Also the the if it's ready to sink through something like this and how does it looks like we have CRD support for this so like in this case for cluster resource We have a cluster metric here and under spec for match name. We have a string It has rec X support and in this case here We want to configure for our VPC. We import it now the metrics. So it's VPCs is to AWS up on dial and What happens afterwards is all the metrics are available then in your prometers for example, and you can also start building Dashboards out of it in Grafana. So let's have a look how it looks like as an demo So we have here as I said the cluster metrics and we want to apply this now in our cluster So like so you see now this resources created in the cluster we switching now to my Web browser and you can see automatically now a prometers endpoint is available for this metrics part And you can see that the VPC we created for the observe only resource We have no all the metrics available like is it doing is it available in the API one of the last transition time, etc, etc It's also the case. It's easy to change for example, you know here direct X group So say we want to see everything from easy to group in our in our X metrics, so we apply it again It's configured now and if you refresh it you can see it's no giving you all the Metrics you want to have from the easy to group. It's also possible to configure it like categories from CRDs So one of the popular Category is for example managed in cross-plan So you can say give me all the metrics from all the CRDs with matching for example the managed category And then you get all the metrics are created Yeah then Thanks, Christopher. So let's finish this off here. So we've got two minutes I think we might have let you down in terms of having a lot of time for questions I apologize about that, but we'll be here to keep that chat right after too But anyway, so you know we have built a community around cross-plane a lot of you here in this room We're participating in it you were what mate is making this project awesome, right? You're contributing code you're contributing feedback and issues and all that sort of stuff So please continue doing so there's lots of other ways to get involved as we continue to grow and scale the project And then I guess the final call-out here is You know we as we're making our graduation proposal We want to hear the stories from all of you that are adopting Cross-plane right now as you go to the main cross-plane cross-plane repo go to the adopters file and there's instructions there for how you can Share your story and tell us about how you're using cross-plane. So That's that I think that's everything and then we'll take questions. Maybe just one because I think we've got one minute All right awesome first question Thanks Coming from Terraform a you could detect dangerous operations using the plan Maybe some change in the cloud object will cause a recreation of the object. Maybe it's dangerous So is there anything like any kind of safeguard? Similar thing in cross-plane that will prevent me from doing dangerous operations Yeah, so so typically, you know, it depends on how the provider is is implemented But then a lot of the providers do have that same sort of safeguard Involved in them of you know, if this is something that would you know potentially destroy the resource or something like that then it won't it won't do it basically but essentially though You know, that's that's not Yeah, not a very very common thing and the cross-plane tries to take a philosophy of never deleting your resources You know without you explicitly asking to do so. That's a pretty strong philosophy Like sorry say that again. It's on a provider level. Yeah exactly it within the providers themselves that logic of like, you know The big specific mechanics of that cloud fighter and its API's and what's gonna do changes and what's not so alright So we'll be up here at the stage for a little bit too if anybody wants to come and chat, but thank you so much everybody


Hello everyone, my name is Salim Bonsanti and I'm the developer for Wundernet. First, just an apologize from Paul, who's our project manager who's not, he's only able to at the moment, so I'm doing the presentation on his behalf. Yes, next slide please. So, yeah, I want to comment those numbers because I don't know how to comment, I'm not on this job, so I would skip this and go to the next slide. So we have some five sprint goals, and these which are to release Wundernet 3.0 to deliver the developer web, we have webinar on model academy to produce the developer documentation and to engage the model user association. And also, yeah, we have this working progress job with the model LMS integration with the model LMS team. Next slide please. Yes, last week we actually released model, in some way we released Wundernet 3.0. I say in some way because we didn't actually put it in production, so we don't have it in model.net. But we released it as a developer environment, a working environment for third party developers for the community. And on the repository and we published it in our NPM, in our private NPM registry. It's not as yet published in the public NPM registry because we want to stabilize it a little bit and it has to become stable in upgrading versions. We have a small document for the developer environment on this link that you see on the slide. Next slide please. Oh yes, just a couple of words about Wundernet 3.0, so previous slide before, still on the previous slide. Wundernet 3.0 has a big difference, the biggest difference between Wundernet 2.0 and Wundernet 3.0 is about accessibility. Wundernet 3.0 can be extended by developers and Wundernet 3.0 moreover will address also a number of functionality that are missing in version 2, such as an organic permission and user road system and all the green pages that are not present in version 2 yet. So, we will actually publish Wundernet 3.0 on Wunder.net as soon as we finish with the development of these new features. So, another sprint goes has been the opening of the Moodle Academy course, the Moodle Network for Developers and the first webinar that we had on the 30th of November that opened this course. So, we had the recording of the webinar that we had a couple of weeks ago. You can just click on the screenshot you see on the slide, this is a link to the Moodle Academy page. After the webinar, we really get many valuable feedbacks from people who attended it and we open some discussion on forums and in the Githl Abysses page. Next slide please. Contextually, we started Redacting Documentation for Developers. We have a quick start page on this link and we started checking out Moodle Dev.io repository to insert and to extend it with the Moodle Network section. There we will have a throughout documentation for the system from the architecture to quick start guides and API guides and API documentations. Next slide please. Also, lately, even before the webinar, but even more after the webinar, we had much engagement for the community and especially from the Moodle User Association, particularly from Japan and Italy. So, we engaged them to be part of our product discovery and some of their representatives will join us or will join our product advisory group that we will be setting up early in the coming year.


Hey, it's time for tech talk number 23. I lost count 23 Is that right? 23 and we got lots to talk about I mean No, George is still has the flu and he's still you know in in his shed in Topanga Canyon But it's a really nice shit as far as sheds go. It's insulated. It has heat electricity Wi-Fi all And you live out in nature, it's just gorgeous out there. Yeah, but you're feeling better I'm doing a little bit better. I'm I'm well. I'm way ahead of where I was a week ago. So Doing a lot better thing. That's good Well, it's Christmases this week and Hanukkah starts this week. So we're gonna talk about lots of toys. Aren't we? Gear and whatnot what to look out for and things that you might want to give a shot for your upcoming year and voiceover Right, absolutely. So stay tuned for that. It's tech talk here on voiceover body shop. Come on up right now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO Studio and each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and Now live to drive From their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California. Here are the guys Hey there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Wynnum and this is voice over body shop or VO B. S. Tech talk number 23, you know, I we tend to forget to tell people George This is what you and I do professionally You know what? This is not a hobby that we just hang out and just like to talk about Voice over stuff and gear and stuff. We actually do this professionally. We we make house calls You know, I we do when we're not sick. That's right And you know or we're taking care of somebody that's sick or something along those lines but when we do get out there we like to see people studios, but we can do it remotely as well and we use zoom and All sorts of stuff where we can control your computer. We can see the space you're in There's amazing things that we can do with technology to help you Get the home voiceover studio you need and we do it through a bunch of really cool services And if you want to talk with George who does this full time, this is what he does He is the master of it But he's not over a master. Yeah, but yeah, I'm over at George the tech or George the dot tech which is my short donate domain name and you can head over there and check out my drop-down menus for all sorts of services and Many of you find there to be too many options So obviously just contact me and we'll point you in the right direction. Do you give certificates for? For the holidays, you know what? I wish I had a way to do that I'd like to talk to the guy that developed my CRM about how important that is and That doesn't exist yet That's yes, yes And you can find me over at Home voiceover studio calm where I do the same type of stuff. I'm a professional voice actor myself I really know what it takes to make sure that you sound the way you're supposed to sound and Because I know that the procedures and all those sorts of things you can talk to me about what's going to work for you And I'll understand specifically what that's about plus I want to hear your audio and I have a special service on my website Home voiceover studio calm you can click on the specimen collection cup send me your audio and I will analyze it and see if you've got audio that is that I guess the best way to put it is it doesn't sound Bad because the idea is not to sound great. It's to not sound bad And that's what we do we make sure you sound great But we're not the ones responsible for your coaching or how you sound professionally as a voice actor We just want to make sure that you get captured properly and then it's not a distraction to someone listening to your audio Actually, it's a pretty good explanation of it. I think so too. All right good So we've got your tech update for this week and so you've been sitting around Blowing your nose and coughing and stuff, but you've been looking at stuff What are some of the cool things that people want to might want to think about is the holidays are here? Well, you know, I I like to give as many cautionary tales as anything else I'm not like, you know by this by this by this you're gonna love it, you know, like that's not my thing So I'll tell you exactly what's going on out there and what I've been hearing about people talking about what's landed in my lap to try out and maybe something You guys never thought of before but um first of all this one had a lot of discussion this week by the way Yeah, I well, there's I there's this microphone from a company called TZ audio It's called the stellar x2 and if you're wondering if you've ever heard of that can name in that company probably not Because there are a tremendous number of microphone manufacturers in China Who come up with microphones that promise, you know, to be the miracle microphone that? Sounds exactly like something 10 to 20 times more expensive You know as at a ridiculous low-cost and then they make sure they put them into the hands of the the most followed vloggers youtubers and And then that might sort of becomes a phenomenon and this is one of those mics and The problem in it. I've been reading the threads in the groups and I'm like, oh man. This is all too familiar Everybody's so excited. They're like I'm getting mine soon. Damn it. They're out of stock. Oh, they're back in stock. Yeah, you know What do you think of this mic? Oh my gosh, and then people are like wait a minute This might doesn't quite sound like the one in the video. I saw on YouTube This one's a little bit noisier than I thought. Hmm. What's going on? so guys Guys and girls when you're buying microphones, especially microphones, you know Other things like Mike mounts and arms and accessories and things you can experiment and get some cheap stuff It's not, you know, no big deal with but when it comes down on microphone You got to get something that's gonna be backed by an existing a company that that has a support network a warranty Customer service years and years of track record and even if they don't have years of track record at least a team behind it The the product that has a years and years of track record And that they're gonna be able to support that product cuz and and I am seeing you know again on this mic There they supposedly have some knowledgeable support behind it, which is interesting and good But the thing is you know when they send out a mic to be reviewed by a youtuber You can guarantee it's gonna be the best one they've ever made It's gonna be the best sounding with the best parts Guaranteed to be exactly, you know a gold standard mic that they've QC quality controlled made sure it's working perfectly And then sent that mic out The mic you get there's no way to guarantee it's gonna be identical internally and even if it is there's no guarantee That's good. It's been the quality controlled and checked So you're gonna get that mic and it's gonna be a total crapshoe whether it's gonna sound as good as that other mic that you Heard on that video There's did they have absolutely no That's to make mics this cheaply. There's no way they can mass produce them And do quality control and check and see that every mic sounds within the specifics that are parameters that are really tight That is as much as anything what you pay for when you're buying the top names and mics like Audio Technica MXL Sennheiser anointment.  You know somebody wrote to me said Dan have you tried this thing yet? And I'm like why?  Yeah, but it sounds like a u87 I'm like the only thing that makes you sound like you're on your on a u87 is a u87 And if you really don't know what that kind of a mic sounds like You really it's it's kind of a crapshoot thinking well, maybe this does make me sound great But you got to remember one really important thing You don't hire you and if you're trying to do things to satisfy your own ears. You're making a big mistake Yeah, I mean and who's to say that a u87 is the best sounding mic on your voice in fact a lot of people that have plenty of means have tried u87s and Oftentimes put them back in a box because it doesn't work for them Yeah, we had Daniel on last week and he says I had a u87, but it didn't work in a smaller booth Right, right. So it is. Yeah, it's not necessarily a pro to have it sound like the u87. It's it's cool that it Theoretically does as many many other microphones that are being I mean basically almost every mic is being sold now That's a large diaphragm condenser mic is Essentially based on roughly the design of a u87. I mean that was that's sort of the the frame You know, that's the model mic that everybody wants to achieve So they plead me there's plenty other companies doing it and some of them are actually offering You know consistency from mic to mic. So anyway, watch out for that when you're shopping for mics And keep that in mind And if you are gonna get one of these things boy, you better make sure they got a return policy I'm darn toot. Yeah. Now. I also so recently I do have a mic from a Reputable vendor that I've been that I'm using tonight actually and that's the road ntg for plus Let me see if that can be moved within frame I don't think so because I just lost the battery on my second camera So I don't know if I can easily put it in the frame because I had a wider lens before well There's the tip of it. Oh looks like a microphone Look at it. Yes. It looks like a microphone. It looks like a shotgun like I'm gonna turn The side and then slide the computer because I want you to see that it just has a few unusual features I have a number of different cool things on it. It's got some buttons on it. Yeah So a shotgun microphone as you guys are probably a lot of you are aware are very focused sounding Like, you know very focused they have a smaller pickup pattern And so they tend to focus in on the voice avoid a bit of the bounce around the room and That's kind of a pleasing thing The the 800 pound gorilla of those mics is the Sennheiser 416 And it's proven itself time and time again and in the world of shotgun mics Just like the norm in u87 is the one to be the 416 in the context of voice over Is clearly the model microphone to beat and so many companies are trying to do just that This one does a pretty darn good job of emulating a sound of a 416 for someone who wants to have a second mic that they can travel with I call it a stunt mic. They don't quite want to have the Invest in a second thousand dollar microphone This one does a pretty darn good job of getting a sound that's similar very similar And one of the keys that we found in testing it is to engage this button right here, and this is a high Let's move my finger over to here. There you go This is a high boost button kind of unusual most mics don't have a boost button But this one does and when I found that when you turn that on this mic's character becomes a lot more similar To the 416 When it is off it sounds more like their road NTG 3 which a lot of people bought years ago Because they wanted to get that sound of a 416 with all for a little less money And they found that it didn't sound like a 416 NTG 3 sounds quite different But this one doesn't sound that far off this with that high boost button turned on It also has a low cut button which is nice so you can have it filter out more low end And then the other button on here is a power button. So it's internally powered For most of us Right. Yeah, well for most of us It's irrelevant because almost all voice actors all voice actors Let's put me be clear all voice actors are gonna have an audio interface with phantom power So right now the mic is being powered from phantom power And that's the power button is lit up blue to indicate it's being powered by phantom power So this mic was clearly designed for other uses in mind as well, and that's mainly video so you can plug this thing with the right cable into a video camera into a DSLR camera even into your phone with the right cord and This thing has an internal lithium battery and will power the microphone So that's makes a lot more flexible than a typical shotgun mic. So anyway, that's the road NTG 4 plus literally unboxed it and plugged it in today for the first time and Sounding pretty good considering. It's capturing my nasality quite nicely In great detail. You can tell exactly what's going on in your sinuses Isn't that wonderful? The other thing they have going on which is something I don't think we've actually Here we go Sorry something we haven't had chance to I think actually talk about it all in this show yet Is this little guy the road? AI one Hmm. This is a their interface that they came out with sometime last year and We're a quick rundown of the pro of the pros of it is it's is it's pretty compact? No, it's not bulky, you know, definitely travel worthy And it's super minimalistic in terms of its features and controls which I think is a good thing You simply hold down the gain button to turn on phantom power And then if you want to mute your headphone monitoring you just press this button Now the headphones are off press press the other knob again the headphones come back on It's very minimalistic and on the back. It's just excellent TRS balanced for if you need a plug-in speakers and then a USB C Cable which is the standard now. I mean really all new gear made in the last year should have a USB C at this point What else do you need? Right, it really it's this this is definitely obviously aiming at like the people buying the scarlet solo The Steinberg you are 12. It's a similar featured item I haven't gotten to do a super duper interface shootout We definitely want to do this one of these days because man between Dan and I we've amassed a huge pile of interfaces Not the most interesting thing, but it would still be interesting to see if there's any real differences from one to the next Yeah, I don't think there's really a change in sound between them so much as there is features And how it is that it can help you in your workflow, right, right? the What was I gonna say? Oh the one thing I think that distinguishes this possibly is that the headphone amp in it is actually pretty Impressive and just to prove that to myself tonight. I'm using Headphones that are you know studio headphones that are notoriously not necessarily easy to to drive I'm using some really old so old that all the nameplates and everything has fallen off by now But these old AKG 240 headphones these are like one of those venerable studio headphones and they they require or they use them They have a 600 ohm impedance And when you're searching for headphones Headphones with high impedance numbers are tend to be harder to Get a good sound out or at least a loud sound out of you know if you plug in this headphone Into a scarlet solo and you want to hear what you're doing.  You're not gonna hear much It's gonna be extremely quiet this thing I have the the headphone output running right now at about three-quarter volume and I'm getting plenty of gain I'm get it's it's plenty loud enough in my cans and that is I think pretty darn impressive for the very affordable Compact simple audio interface, so it's got a very usable Headphone amp so anyway for about 400 bucks Maybe I have to do a little price check could be a little higher Maybe four fifty five hundred shotgun and interface together. It's a pretty Pretty nice rig if you really really want to enter the world of shotgun mics and and not be quite Investing too heavily into something that maybe you maybe you're not quite ready for you know $1,000 a little dear for a lot of folks, but this is a lot more affordable. Yeah now What are these neurophone things? Neurophones, okay, so this has a little backstory. All right They were right out of reach I to grab them so How how how in Cessan are those Instagram ads? That you see I'm on Instagram a lot because I'm on multiple accounts and They start those ads start popping up and this is one of those products that had hammering my feed for months and months this headphone was a Kickstarter product that eventually did get made and It's made in the it's designed. I'm not sure if it's made in Australia, but it's what does it say? Well designed in Melbourne, Australia made in China But okay get to cut to the chase These are called Nora phone and what makes these things really unusual is they are they have a built-in DSP So that they analyze the sound of your hearing Not saying I know how they do this properly or if it's truly accurate, but they truly do make an attempt at analyzing your hearing Load in to the headphones internal DSP this new curve They call it a color For your head ears and your taste not even your taste. It's not based on taste It's just based on how this thing measures your hearing and then that is What you're gonna hear out of the headphones. How can it measure your hearing? I don't quite get that But it's crazy. It is crazy. So so the rest of the story is why did it end up with them? I got dragged along to the mall on Black Friday. I love you You know, we did some we did some makeup shopping and stuff And then I stumbled on a pop-up shop and it was this company Nora phones and I was like, ah, here's my chance To try something I've wanted to try and sure enough she and I both tried them out They had a they had a very cleverly set up subscription program and I walked out with the headphones You didn't have to buy them up front four hundred dollars up front or I think it's like 15 bucks a month I'm paying for these headphones. Yes subscription headphones Crazy, right?  They just send you another pair If you just keep paying the subscription, they just keep sending you more pairs. That's a fascinating model It's really bizarre. But anyway, let me get to the weirdest part of all look at the inside of this headphone Notice anything strange. It's a an earbud Then we can okay, I'm good. Okay Yes, these these are not really actually around the ear headphones as much as they're in the ear headphones and That is something that's the part that for me the jury is out on By the time I started demoing them I started getting sick and having anything shoved into my ears just drove me crazy and with this sickness Also came along like an amplified tinnitus So having these things in my ears was not what I wanted to be doing But I tried them out a little bit I spent one night just sitting in my house for two hours listening to all kinds of music and in definitely enjoying it But they do go into your ears Now that's why they seal so well. They have incredibly good noise cancelling for flying. They would be amazing But they also have a bass driver that circum that goes around your ear And it's like a massive bass driver like you can physically see these things vibrating The bass it's actually out of control. There's a spot. That's about 30% up that sounds pretty good But anything more is insane But the point I'm trying the for me. Why did I get these headphones? I Thought if these headphones truly do measure your hearing and they really are tuned to your hearing Then if I'm listening to your audio as voice actors, am I hearing the most accurate? What it is that you're sending me possible. So when I make You know judgments on sound quality and set up your processing am I going to be doing it more accurately? And that's what remains to be seen for me because I I've gotten used to the several pairs of headphones that I wear on a regular basis and These just don't sound like any of them So I'm wondering just because it's more accurate theoretically does that make it make it better?  You know the thing is it's one of those things. How do you prove? How how do you prove that that really works and that really truly is accurate?  Yeah, we got this well the one thing here about foam windscreens Okay, the foam windscreen you talk about it and then I have some thoughts on that okay Yeah, so I mean for a while now people that have a foreshock on Mike I've been just saying especially when traveling just keep the windscreen on the mic because It's generally gonna say it's not gonna change the sound all that much and it's just gonna at least generally protect the mic It's not a pop screen Out of the mic now that was my theory then recently a client of mine said that a technician at a major company said I'm sure you don't recommend that you do that because the foam disintegrates over time and little particles fall into the grills of the microphone and Start clogging the little ports on the mic and then that now has to be clean And she was kind of taken it back. She couldn't believe that a Supplied accessory left on the mic would actually cause problems in the long run But it really made me change my mind about that suggestion and but you know, it all makes sense I've been telling people to avoid acoustical foam for years for the same reason and this is no different I mean the pop screens that are the windscreens that come with some of these mics. They disintegrate terribly I'll make a huge mess and that includes what goes into the microphone So Dan, what's been your experience? Have you do you throw those things away? Do they sit on a shelf? Have you ever bothered using them? Well, here's the way I look at it The actual name of the thing says it all it's a wind screen Right unless you're a reporter out on the street There's no wind in here, you know, and we're talking about I mean and that's really what that thing is designed for That's that's a that's for a road and that is for it's designed as a video mic Meaning you're gonna be outside with it and you're gonna be shooting it and it will reduce wind noise Now some people talk about well if you're using let's say a 416 or another type of shotgun mic If you're using it really close it helps to have a you know a pop screen on it And if you're using a condenser mic really close, you really do there's there was the one that that hook studio came up with This guy here that fits on the end of a Shotgun mic and I if I'm doing promo work or something that requires me to really use that 416 in a way that you know You need to be close mic. I may throw this on there But if you don't need it You really don't need it It's the the mic really should if you've if you've got it set up properly You probably don't need to have a windscreen on it You really don't need a windscreen on a 416 or any kind of a shotgun mic and when you're using it in a studio indoors because Am I popping the mic right now no pop pop pee pop pee pop pee Right microphone is about three or four inches from my face right now, and I'm still not popping the mic You'll notice that George and I never have a plosive because we know the mic has to be set right and if you've got your mic set And you've got the proper mic position and you're using proper mic technique You can say Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers all day long and you're not gonna get any plosives So don't get sucked into this vortex of I gotta have a windscreen on there Unless you're doing this in your backyard. I wouldn't worry about these are sometimes used indoors for one reason I've done boom operating before when you Miking more than one person and you literally swing the mic like from one place to another Without the windscreen you actually hear wind as you swing the mic like that actually what's the position? It's like this right you're holding that Right like this over your head It's crazy, but anyway, so you don't need that you don't need it and avoid it and don't get the dirt and your mic Sounds like a great idea. All right. Well, we got one other topic We're gonna talk about with the with some equipment in just a minute But we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back with that and some of your questions and a little discussion about Multitracking right after these announcements This is Ariana Ratner and you're listening to voiceover body shop VOBS dot TV Well, hello there, I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big-voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat Were you this is virgin radio? Well, okay? We're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values a leader for California and a voice for America It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smartphone But it's so much more. It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song It's the end of the road for red When hope is lost the I8 from BMW Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish. Hey, it's J. Michael Collins Bet you think I'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves But I will give you my email. It's J. Michael at JMC voiceover dot com Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show Well, thank you JMC. I am waxing my mustache anyhow, let's talk about our good friend Harlan Hogan and His magnificent website for you voice talents out there voice over Essentials comm that's voice over essentials dot com Look, you gotta have equipment to do this and you don't have to have is George and I are always talking about the most expensive equipment out there but you need to have good stuff and Harlan only has the best stuff on his website the stuff that's going to work for you and not cost you an arm and a leg and he stands behind it and You know that you're gonna get it really quick because he's really good at Shipping his stuff and getting it to you as fast as possible. So he has a lot of cool things that he has manufactured specifically for his website like the Harlan Hogan via one a microphone Which is you see right here that I am actually talking to in this very moment that you are hearing my voice and seeing me talk into it It doesn't sound It's it's not a u87. It's not a 416 It is what it is and it sounds just as good as any other microphone and it's at a great price point and It's designed for voice over you cannot say that of any other microphone That's out there on the market Harlan designed this and had it tuned specifically for voice over and it works great on men's voices on women's voices and People will think that you're using a much more expensive mic But no you're using a Harlan Hogan via one a plus the Harlan Hogan signature series headphones Which are fabulous and Here they are right over here as he steps off the set well and falls into the Parliament building of Hungary this is the the Harlan Hogan V.O. Optimized headphones Magnificent. There's comfortable new pads. They have a disconnect on them so you can you know if you fall over and into your set and You won't lose it. You won't break the the cord. They're great So make sure you try those and a lot of other cool stuff go over to voiceover essentials com try not to fall over while you're doing it and Actually, if you're on our website go down to the bottom of our website a home page You'll see a picture of Harlan Hogan there click on that that will take you right there Peruse all the great stuff He has the microphone the headphones the porta booths the porta booth pro the porta booth plus And all the other great things he has at voiceover essentials calm all at a great price and he stands behind it You don't like it. You can send it back, but why wouldn't you like it Harlan? Thanks for being our sponsor all this time we love you and What would voiceover body shop be without you? We'll be right back Yeah, hi, this is Carlos. I was rocking the voice of Rocco, and you're watching voiceover body shop And we're back in one piece. I hope um So one of the things we wanted to talk about tonight was It has to do with the the Apollo twin everybody's like I gotta have an Apollo twin What's going on with that? Well, I've been I've been you know big time kind of digging on those things for a long time on And as I as I followed gear and recommended gear over and over over the years Chances are at some point that manufacturer will let you down And it just I think it's just a matter of time maybe matter of just you know numbers sheer numbers But in this case they they've been having issues with the Apollo twin mark 2 And I think also the the father the Thunderbolt one as well as I think the USB one and possibly also the arrow and that the common thread seems to have something to do with The phantom power so People have said that you know when they're using phantom power at Mike's the there'll be a hiss that starts to develop in channel one over time And people have done different things to try to eliminate it long story short I won't drag you guys into the dirt here because this is only only relevant for people that have this problem But the chances are you may end up being having it replaced with another unit that has the same exact problem so we Tim tippets who also likes this unit a lot. He started a thread on the Apollo Universal audio Apollo Facebook group and what he's basically doing is collecting your tickets to be anybody's submitted Technic tickets with universal audio We're collecting them to try to build a case because it seems that they're not sure That the issues are the hardware or not. They seem to think it might be drivers or something else So if you are one of those people Get on that Facebook group submit your ticket so we can kind of gather a bunch of information and get it back to Universal audio there's actually somebody from Universal in that Facebook group Monitoring that and we want to make sure that you know The problem is solved at the manufacturing end because clearly they they've made a very large number and That have a similar issue and they're just tend to be sending back sending the customer another unit Likely with the same problem So it's just a place that we can maybe build a little bit of a case So yeah And if you're not a producer if you're not really doing a lot of heavy-duty production is is a is an Apollo twin the best thing for you to be using It's really complicated. I mean I've set them up for people. I have it sort of as they say down to a proverbial science So I gotta be honest and if you're gonna buy one and you don't buy my services set it up You're it's a total waste of money Like little because you won't have a clue what it can or what you shouldn't do With it and it'll get you in trouble like again. I've been I have the thing I have figured out all the tricks and I can make the thing work. Well, but for I've had several people buy them and realize It's not what they needed and send them back. I've had people I specifically told them not to get it Even though they had the money to buy it because I wanted them to have something they just could understand and easily Control and adjust with minimal fuss. Yeah Yeah Like in yeah, not that it's not a bad unit is despite some of the issues that they're having with it It's an amazing unit for what it does But if you don't know what it does why it does it how it does it and how you set it up to do what it does It's not worth it if you're thinking about it talk to me Ask me Ask me why you should have it like if you're thinking of buying one Tell me why you want to buy it what it is you're looking to achieve And if it's something that you will but will be improved I'll tell you but for many of you ain't gonna make a lick of difference because you can do you're gonna do everything in Post and for the mass vast majority of you, right? It's gonna be done in software later So you're not you don't need to mess around with it on the way in that's and that's that's the truth All right now. All right. Yeah, I got an I got an email this week from somebody who was watching a Video from a very popular online voiceover instructor Talking about how we like to listen to music to get the mood of a read while doing an audition Now when I was in radio, I would I didn't have to do that I would actually listen to the music while I was recording the commercial Because it would be a record and I would have my finger on the record player and cue it up And the music would play and I would adjust the levels and do it in real time Well, we don't need to do that anymore But this particular instructor was saying well, I do this and this is how I do a better read so this person was like what equipment do I need to do that and You know my first answer and when I told you George about this this morning. He's like Was plug in your five phone listen on a headphone And it's not gonna play over into your recording So just listen to the music and you'll get the get the feel for it. The other way is with multi-tracking and Multi-tracking is something that I suppose people should learn how to do because if you do podcasts or anything like that Multi-tracking is the way that you have multiple audio sources Aligned properly in a production. I do hear people occasionally saying they're being asked to Send an audio with music right mixed in, you know, like basically they're being asked to produce, right? You do need to know how to do this if you're gonna produce right and we can teach you how to do this by the way It's it's one of the things that George and I do is we teach you how to properly do these things If you want to learn how to multi-track Contact one of us and we will give you a quick primer on how it's done It's not complicated for just adding music underneath and stuff But it really is the way it's way to do this So you need software that will do this like Adobe audition or you know everybody loves Pro Tools But you know, unless you're producing Hollywood soundtracks, you don't need Pro Tools, but audition Reaper and Video ones gaining popularity Yeah, you can actually do it with audacity as well actually you can you can do basic production and audacity Yeah, it's not elegant, but it will you can do multi-track production, right? so That's the answer to that question and then of course I said why don't you ask the guy that did the video? Which probably would have been you know probably would have saved me an awful lot of time as well, but But he's like well no, I would have probably had a pay him to do it. Well, you can keep asking me questions You're gonna have to pay me too Anyway, so we got a couple of questions here from our our wonderful audience out there one of them from our good friend Larry Hudson Who says what is your favorite? Your latest favorite warm mic for $250 to $400 What do you think guess what he means is a mic that isn't bright, right doesn't have like a really tussily top-end, right? Favorite uh depends on what your voice is. Yeah, I guess the Audio Technica AT what is it called the 40 40? Yeah, or the 40 43 40 47. Yeah, but it's pretty spendy It's definitely not $400. Let me think of another one. No sure KSM 32 is Is not bright. It's not an overly bright mic so I would define that as a warm mic and Yeah, I think that matches that. I think that meets that $400 price range I think I try to cat know an MXL like a Something 89 like a CR 89 one time and it was pretty warm Sounding that was in that lower price range But my go-to from what people that don't want to top a hyped sounding mic in that price range is probably the sure KSM 32 Try a ribbon mic Yeah, I mean ribbon mics are ribbon mics are weird. They're all over the map some of them are Super dark and bottom heavy others are tuned to be brighter and sound more like condenser mics Yeah, and there's a really all of it right. Yeah, but they're making them now and I mean yeah and more affordably too Yeah, and and they're they're they're very nice For doing very specific things and if you want a nice warm sound The right ribbon mic might be a good answer for that We've got an interesting question from J Horace black, which is you know somewhat essay-sut style here is is Just upgraded to a Mac mini 2018 from the older 2012 version good idea Noted they did away with the Thunderbolt connector and have a USB-C connectors and two HDMI's So I got an adapter to be able to plug into my Thunderbolt Apollo twin. Well, there's your problem right there However, it's not recognizing the interface George Dan have you run into this issue with the newer Mac minis? If yes, is there a workaround? Can you think of an answer to that one? Should we start there? Yeah The only adapter I know of that's a guaranteed to work is the $50 Apple USB Sorry $50 Apple Thunderbolt 3 adapter Anything else? There's absolutely zero guarantee. It's gonna work So if you're gonna plug your Apollo twin into anything new from Apple now You're gonna have to shell out to the Apple dongle division And buy a $50 adapter That's the only one that so that's not the one you bought and all bets are off That is literally the only adapter I've successfully and granted I haven't tried others because really there's very few companies actually make it They made I think Apple may be the only one that does make it Which is probably why it's 50 bucks But yeah, you got to buy the proper Apple Thunderbolt 3 adapter. Yeah for sure I think it's it's probably a matter of Planning ahead and not buying something because You can there are you know, they're there it's you know, there are unintended consequences of these sorts of things He goes on he says my good friend is a manager at Apple Well, there you go And we're going to troubleshoot this in the Apple store tomorrow to see if it's a bad connectors or something for now I went back to my older Mac mini my goal in getting the new Mac mini was to be able to use my use both my 27 inch K 24 27 inch 4k monitors as the older Mac doesn't have the capability as well as having more processing power for editing video For the on camera side of the business There's a good reason to buy it. Yeah, it's a good reason to buy it But there are two separate issues and and you really have to think about is it going to be you know What are the specs and don't buy something without really knowing what the specs are would you agree?  I try to keep at least one in the car But it's easy to forget But definitely when you buy new hardware check every jack in connection and make sure you're gonna have what you need to make it Work and of course you do have your old Mac not like you're dead in the water You you were smart enough not to like buy the new one and take the old one and ship it off to your grandkid or something Cousin so, you know, you gotta have a sort of an overlap when you're upgrading hardware You gotta have an overlap, you know from the old to the new and there's a period of adjustment So we've got a you know, that's not unusual the the Mac mini has four USB C Slash Thunderbolt 3 ports and you got to make sure you know that those are Those ports have two totally different sides to them. They are USB C Which is can be adapted to almost anything at this point But they're also Thunderbolt 3 which means they're compatible with Thunderbolt 3 stuff as well as Thunderbolt 2 and Do not buy adapters that are just USB C adapters To try to use with a Thunderbolt thing They will look exactly the same on the ends because they're the same USB C jack and I'm a huge fan of the USB port I mean, it's extremely well made the plug is reversible It's hugely superior to anything else from USB But it is not just because something as USB C doesn't mean it's Thunderbolt 3 So you got to know that that's really important. Yeah, don't take a chance on that Yeah, one last question here from again from Larry Hudson, and I didn't hear anything about this Yes, he says any knowledge about audacity being compatible with Mac OS Catalina Many I know are dead in the water because they updated to Catalina by accident and Now audacity won't work other than doing a workaround with a terminal So answer if there's a workaround with terminal then you're good to go Honestly When is it gonna be a when's it gonna be supported ask? Ask the company. Oh wait, there is no company. It's it's open source. Yeah, it's a bunch of volunteers So it's gonna take them as long as it takes to support it the most inside baseball you're probably gonna get is Being on the Facebook group on on Fraudacity because there's one of the developers is known to hang out in there. Yeah, so you're probably best to find out From him if there's like an early beta You know version that is working on Catalina, but at this point, you know, it's It's a it's a it's a shame You know, we all have been saying don't upgrade to Catalina I'm still saying and I will for the next six months to a year But it's gonna happen your chances are you're gonna mistakenly and it's gonna nag you to install it And you're gonna just click the wrong damn button one day every morning I'm looking at this thing and it's like you want update, right George said no speaking of There's now it says yes, I ain't doing it. Yeah, I can't remember if I mentioned this on the show already But there is a trick that is a terminal based command. It's called a sudo Super user do Command that will tell the Mac to stop asking you to install Catalina Do a quick Google search. You'll find it. Just search for have Mac stop asking me to install Catalina And there's a very simple code that you can copy paste in the terminal and it will it will stop nagging you But if you accidentally do it, can you go back? To Sahara or whatever that thing was called. Yeah, Mojave. Yeah, Mojave Sahara Mojave if you if you if you are using the time machine and backing your machine up Then not that it's simple simple simple to do it But yes at that point you have a way you have a means back To get back to the old version But you got to do it quickly because what I'll do is the system will then re-reback itself up again to the new version And eventually that old version of that's backed up on time machine won't be there anymore So you got to do right away. The really the best thing to do is immediately just take it into the Apple Genius bar and say dude. I got to get back to Mojave. This is my business And they will definitely help you so that's probably the best way to go I've not noticed that but then again, I don't use Audacity a whole lot But I I do have it on this machine and I do have Catalina on this machine I actually think I have used it and it has worked so it's you have used it successfully for it has not had problems That's right. All right. Well, that's more tech information than you could possibly handle this week again You're probably again. You're probably making you know Hanging candy canes and and lighting candles and doing all those other things you do this week But thank you for listening to all this amazing information and hopefully we've enlightened you and once again If you want to get a hold of George, where do you go? Head over to George the dot-tech and I can find all my tech support stuff There's self-service as well as ways to book me for a real-time session either remotely or on site here in the LA area and Dan also is available online over at home voiceover studio dot-com Yes, home voiceover studio dot-com. There it is right there. All right. Well, we're gonna take a quick break We'll be right back and wrap all of this tech stuff up right after these messages Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky the voice of Rocco and you're watching voiceover body shop Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead now There's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra comm Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level stay in touch with market trends Coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online Sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books Auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus Reports on how to ace the voice over audition. It's all here at voiceover extra comm That's voice over Xtra comm as a voice talent you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do they break or don't look right on mobile devices They're not built for marketing and SEO. They're expensive You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live So what's the best way to get you online in no time go to voice actor websites comm like our name implies voice actor Websites comm just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control no need to hire someone every time you want to make a change and our upfront pricing means you know Exactly what your costs are ahead of time.  This is the time of the show where we get to talk about one of our wonderful sponsors source elements Those are the creators of source connect that is a software that voice acting pros are being demanded to have in their home Studios by the commercial studios of the world. How do I know this? Well, I've set up software for everybody on every platform and in every scenario you can imagine And this is the one that people are being requested to get it's a standalone application Doesn't run on a Google Chrome browser so you have a lot more stability involved and This software has been tried and true tested improved the whole nine for well over 10 years now So if you really want to be establishing a business and voiceover that works with the top studios in the world Top agents that kind of thing make sure you have source connect locked and loaded in your studio Absolutely important go get a 15-day free trial at source dash elements calm 15-day free trial You don't need an I lock little USB dongley thing to get set up with source connect standard right away So go give it a try and tell them we sent you we'll be right back right after this Question what's the biggest challenge you have with voiceover? What's been the puzzle you need to solve the question you need answered? Well, David H. Lawrence the 17th and the coaching team at VO heroes comm want to know as we head into the new year They're planning new courses and new training and they want to find out what you need most and it's easy to let him know Just drop him an email at David at VO heroes comm and let him know what you'd like to know Is it tech oriented? Is it about auditioning? Is it about booking more work finding an agent podcasting audio books? performance questions Whatever that one thing is that keeps you up at night that makes you scratch your head or that you've always Wanted to know about success in VO Email David and ask the email address again is David at VO heroes comm. That's David at VO heroes comm This is Anthony Mendez. You're watching voiceover buddy And we're back to say goodbye Well, that was a lot of information and that was really cool But that's what we do. I know next week. I think we're gonna have a bit of a party show We'll see who shows up for that Could be yeah, yeah, and you'll be feeling better by then. Oh, please. Yes And then it'll be 2020 2020 is Barbara Walters used to say Who are our donors of the week? Let's go take a look heading over to my notes we have Michael Kearns Rob Ryder Christy Burns Joseph Harrison Brian Rausch Graham Spicer Antlion Productions Michelle Blanker and Sarah Borges. Thank you everybody. Thank we appreciate it Hey, show us your boots. We want to see what your boots look like like this really elegant one here The entire city of Budapest We want to see what you guys are doing with your boots They're your voiceover shrines. We want to highlight them and you could have us sitting in your booth Which is really kind of cool. Send them to and to make sure you take them in portrait not landscape and send them to the guys at Vobs.tv Alright also We'd love to have you live in the studio. We're here every other Monday night I think we'll have a few people here next week But right to us again if you're in the Los Angeles area You could be here on a Monday night and we're doing a show that night We'd love to have you right to us again to the guys at Vobs.tv and mark the subject as audience All right, let's see you guys. I know Hey, we need to thank our amazing sponsors like Harlan Hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements VioHeroes.com voice actor websites.com and J. Michael Collins demos and of course the Dan and Marcy Leonard Foundation for the betterment of live Voiceover studio webcasting and replays as well And of course Sumer Lino for the amazing job She does as our technical director making it seem effortless But we have to towel her off after every show because he's really sweating it out and of course Lee Penny For being Lee Penny. So thanks, Lee for being very Christmasly. Yeah, and that's what we'd really like to say to all of you Is happy holidays? Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy whatever else you celebrate this time of year George and I are here to help you out with your home voiceover studios And we'd like to both wish you all the best in 2020 but we'll get to do that next week too. Anyway, that's right. That's gonna do it for us this week I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shop or V.O. B.S. Happy holidays, everybody