Unfortunately, Giphy decided to start charging for access to the image emoji - and the amount they were asking was ridiculous.
For a short term solution I swapped it out with Tenor, but it's not the best technical implementation. For example, it won't automatically theme the gifs around your custom emoji at the moment.
Hopefully I can change that in the future, but I wanted a quick replacement in place first.
Edit: Please note that if you are using Giphy images as chat bot responses, you will need to remove them or swap them out with a Tenor image instead.
So you want to broadcast, but don't know where to begin or what's needed? This topic comes up a LOT when people want to join in the fun, so I'm going to park my thoughts here so I have a place to link beginner broadcasters to moving forward.
TLDR; I strongly recommend that you not overspend or overcomplicate your setup when you first get started.
Once you're more established and sure that you want to continue, then it might be worth the time and mental anguish to upgrade your setup like some of the pros, but it's almost never worth the energy involved to start that way.
To begin, all you need is a dedicated mic and dialing software. That's it. If you want to do calls with friends that's possible too. So let's dive in:
Don't bother with spoofing. Just get a throwaway via Google Voice or Skype. Spoofing isn't foolproof regardless, so not worth it.
Use Skype for group calls. Don't bother with using a dedicated app like Discord or Mumble to do group calls because then you'll have to figure out how to route audio to those apps and back to the dialer… which is complex. Skype is great because it handles that for you. You can do a group call with some buddies and your prank call roycipient without needing to fiddle with voicemeeter or other complicated audio routing software. Every other scenario requires complicated audio setting tweaking that will make your eyes water as a beginner.
You can even use Skype for playing background music You can either drag in music files, or connect it to Spotify.
Get a wireless lapel / lavalier mic. They are cheap and you can then move around freely on your calls without worrying too much about being inconsistent with the distance from your mic. Plus they will be pretty good about ignoring background noise. Here's an example one for $25: https://a.co/d/fidbC6G
Throw down a rug. If the room you are making calls in has a bare floor (eg. no carpet) throw a rug, towel or blanket on it before doing calls to dampen echoes. This small step makes a noticeable difference in your voice quality.
Verify your output sounds great in real time Your roycipient and your voice should have roughly the same volume. Broadcast your calls live to your Prankcast account (with notifications disabled) using our web broadcaster and have someone listen to the live stream to give you feedback on sound volumes. If you need to make microphone tweaks that's waaaay more efficient than recording, stopping, listening, tweaking, recording, stopping, listening, tweaking,…etc. Prankcast admins are happy to help if you ever need to test your audio.
That's it! You're all set.
Obviously there's a LOT we can do to improve this setup, including adding soundboards and routing channels so for example your roycipient can't hear music in between calls, but your listeners can.
We'll cover that and more advanced setups soon.
Incremental release:
Small follow on to yesterday's update:
Hey all, this is a massive update. Possibly the biggest overhaul I've worked on to date. Hope you don't mind my Christmas release coming a few days late!
Before we begin, I first want to say a huge thanks to Prankcast support admins @criefaux, @despicabledogs and @icecat who have been helping behind the scenes, with user audio issues, testing new builds, creating amazing content and dedicating their free time to help keep the platform a wonderful place for the community. If you're having any audio issues, please don't hesitate to reach out to them in Discord.
And of course, thanks to all the Patreons!!!
Now onto the geeky tech stuff:
IMMEDIATELY NEXT UP
Minor release - but lays down the groundwork for Clips!
Chat Tweaks
Misc
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.