Hi folks, anyone with Yahoo associated email addresses may not receive a notification from Prankcast. Yahoo is currently limiting email notifications from Prankcast as spam. I don't have an ETA on when this will change, but according to Yahoo it's temporary.
If this impacts you and you do use Yahoo and want to receive notifications, I suggest updating your email in your notifications preferences, or using an alternative method (discord or SMS) until it is resolved.
Some more fun updates that make the listening, editing and participation experience more enjoyable for broadcasters and users a like…
I can't tell you how many times I'm listening to an old clip and hear myself answering a question in chat, but I forgot to say the question out loud, so I have no clue what question I'm answering. Well, wonder no longer:
Now you can play chat back in real time as you listen to showreels.
Every chat message is shown alongside a timestamp, so you can get the right context from the broadcast.
There's a slider, so you can speed scrub through the chat and broadcast.
To try it out, just scroll down to the Chat Replay tab on the Post page and click the Start / Open button:
This only applies to broadcasts that have saved the audio to Prankcast. Hosts can view it even if your content is in draft form and not published.
Privacy control over chat replay:
As a host: You can disable individual replay on certain chats, if you want. You can also disable this globally for your account in your Settings > Content > Post Settings, if you never want your chats to be replayable along with your broadcast.
https://preview.prankcast.com/milkbox/settings/content?panel=postsettings
As a user: If you don't want your name appearing in past chats that are replayed, you can hide your username and avatar. This setting is available in the Settings > Personal > Advanced menu.
https://prankcast.com/app/settings/personal?panel=useradvanced
I added the ability to add tags to timestamp for ease of filtering in the future.
Easy Mode:
Click the Save Timestamps button in the chat menu and use the GUI. There's a dropdown menu that lets you choose one preexisting tag or specify your own.
Advanced Mode:
To tag a word via chat message, just add - in front of an alpha_numeric word of your choosing (no spaces). You can use an _ (underscore) to hyphenate two words into a single tag. You can add multiple tags per timestamp in this mode.
Example usage: /t 00:15:32 -offensive Recipient uses racist language.
The output would be:
timestamp: 00:15:32
tags: offensive
notes: Recipient uses racist language.
Example usage: /t 01:25:31 -credit -doglettuce Towing the wrong car.
The output would be:
timestamp: 01:25:31
tags: credit, doglettuce
notes: Towing the wrong car.
You can see the updated full list of chat timestamp commands in the previous post: https://prankcast.com/prankcast/posts/3770-prankcast-v0-9-5-7-capture-timestamps-in-chat-during-live-broadcasts
Thanks to @icecat for this awesome idea! You can now preserve timestamps, along with a note as you listen to a live broadcast.
There are 2 ways to save a timestamp and anyone allowed in your chatroom can do it:
Here's the full list of methods to create a timestamp via chat:
Click the Save timestamp button that appears in the bottom left of the chatroom, when the chat options menu is expanded and a broadcast is active. It will then give you a simple modal where you can edit the timestamp, and add an optional note.
You can find your saved timestamps listed under the individual post associated with that broadcast after it ends. Clicking the individual timestamp will immediately start playing the audio. If you have transcripts turned on, you can switch to that tab after to see associated text at that timestamp.
Following up on the introduction of automated transcripts earlier this week, you can now add timestamps to your audio post / showreel description directly!
Use clock formatting to get it to work: Just format them exactly like a HH:MM:SS clock: 00:00:00 with leading zeros for it to work. For example: 01:02:43 will work. 1:02:43 will not. Note that this will only work in audio posts.
Current timestamps for files are also now linkable. When listening to audio you can now share the current timestamp you are listening to by clicking the 3 dots menu and choosing "Current timestamp" from the list.
Known bug: This will only work on published posts, not drafts. Unfortunately it's a bit of work to address this, so I may not do so.
Alternatively you can append ?t=XXX to the URL, where XXX is the number of seconds into the audio. For example: https://prankcast.com/milkbox/posts/3689-breakfast-sandwiches?t=116
Kindly let me know if you run into any issues! Next up is letting users preserve timestamps during chat. I wanted to include that in this release but ran out of time.
Broadcast Stats
Stats batch catch up. I'm currently running a batch process that is calculating past listens. It will probably be complete tomorrow, so until then some older shows may show 0 listens.
Pagination Individual broadcast stats are now paginated, so you can go back in time to past broadcasts.
And lots of additional tweaks to make things better, including some bug fixes for user blocks. Good times!
Now you can get all broadcasts and audio uploads transcribed, so they are easily searchable. This is also automatically integrated with the search box on the homepage, so you can find that exact call your looking for right from the home page. To see an example visit: https://prankcast.com/milkbox/posts/3670-speed-notary-prank-call?show=transcript
Transcript Caveats
Misc Fixes
Next up: simple audio clipping and better timestamp control.
In your content settings you can now see a barebones stats visualization of your listener performance over time. I'll add some additional stats to this as well. Thank you to @mrbiggs for the suggestion.
To access it please visit the Content Tab in your settings:
https://prankcast.com/app/settings/content?panel=broadcaststats#broadcaststats
then open the Broadcast Stats section
It is limited to the the most recent broadcasts for now, but I'll add pagination in the next incremental update to let you go further back in time.
I have replaced the underlying component that we used to play live broadcasts with a new streamlined one. There is no visual indication of changes, but the new one has allowed the following updates:
Active listener numbers and listening members list update in real time during broadcasts. They are now using websockets instead of database calls, similar to how web chat works. On that note, the listening tab during live broadcasts is now restored.
There should no longer be conflicts on Android devices when other device audio plays while you're listening to a stream. This is not thoroughly tested across all devices, so please let me know if you run into issues.
EDIT: I had to roll back this part of this update due to some other issues popping up with Android devices.
Misc fixes
Temporarily disabling the listening tab list
This is the tab that shows up in the chatroom during active broadcasts.
It's showing cached member information instead of realtime information. It will temporarily just show the list of current chatters when you click on it.
Listener counts are displaying lower than actual numbers
Some browsers aren't pinging the server to update that they are still connected (even though they are). For now assume the number of listeners is at least the number in chat, plus 10-30% on average.
Hopefully this will be fixed this weekend. I'm looking into adapting a completely new player that should have way more control on my end.
That is all. I'll prettify them this weekend so they match the new chat layout.
I think that was the last major bug from the transition to the new site.
edit: lol spoke too soon. I see that short posts sometimes display an "expand" button unnecessarily
HUGE update representing months of work. This update has taken major steps to simplify the site and provide a better experience for all, listeners and hosts alike.
Before diving into the update, I owe a huge thanks to:
Posts are now ready
New Homepage
New User Profile Pages
Chat v4 is live
RIP Light mode
Directory
Contributor-only features
Misc Fixes