Sessions
A session is the room you record in. You set it up, invite people, record as many takes as you like, and end it once everyone's recording has made it to the server. This page looks at the session from the host's side. For what it's like as a guest, see You've been invited.
Creating a session and inviting people¶
You create a new session from the landing page or from your sessions list. Each one gets its own link with a 12-character id, and that link is also the invitation. You copy it from the menu at the top right and send it to your guests however you like. The same menu also has Live Listen, a second link for people who only want to listen in live.
Your guests don't need an account, just the link and a name. A session holds up to 8 people, you included, or as many as agreed on Business.
You can also create a session well before you record. Nothing happens in it until someone presses record, and if you already know the date, podsink helps you get it into your calendar.
Scheduling a session¶
If you know when you're recording, you can give the session a date. In your sessions list, "Schedule for later" sits right next to the button for a new session. On the home page you'll find it in the menu next to the main button once you're signed in. And whenever you're signed in, the arrow beside "Record" in the top bar opens it too, and so does "Schedule Session" in the menu, as long as you're not in a running session. You give the session a title, a date, a start time and a length, either 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes or your own, up to 12 hours. Times are in your browser's time zone, and the form tells you which one that is. You can plan up to a year ahead and have up to 50 upcoming sessions at once.
When you save, podsink shows you the invitation. At the top there's an .ics file to download, which Apple Calendar and most other calendar apps can open, and it comes with a reminder 15 minutes before the start. Below it, one click opens the invitation in Google Calendar, Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 with everything already filled in. Every version has the link to the room and a few tips for your guests: which browser to use, why headphones help, and that they don't need an account. It ends with a link to a page for guests with more on getting ready. If you'd rather send it yourself, say through a messenger, you can copy the invitation text or just the link further down. The invitation comes in English or German. It starts out in the language you're using podsink in, and you can switch it with one click.
You add your guests in your calendar and send the invitation from there, so replies and everything after them go through your calendar. That way the invitation comes from you personally, and we don't need any data about your guests. podsink doesn't send them anything and never sees their addresses. It's one way we practise data minimisation.
Scheduled sessions sit at the top of your sessions list under "Upcoming", soonest first, as long as the "All" filter is on. From each card you can add the session to your calendar again, change the date or step into the room with "Join". If you've already recorded something, say a soundcheck, you can end the session there too. Once the date is over, the session moves down into the normal list.
The date tells everyone when to meet. The room itself is open the whole time, before the date and after it, so a guest who's early can already come in.
If you move the date, the events in your guests' calendars stay where they were, because podsink can't reach them. So after you save, podsink reminds you to move the event in your own calendar as well, which can then send your guests the update. The same goes for removing the date, deleting the session or ending it. None of that reaches your guests' calendars, so podsink points this out each time, and you update or cancel the event in your own calendar.
The title¶
A new session starts out as "Untitled Recording". A click on the title in the session is all it takes to change that, or you can use the keyboard shortcut. The title later shows up in your sessions list, names the download file, and appears in the reminder mail before a recording is deleted. So a name that says what it was about makes the recording much easier to find later.
Before the recording¶
You go through the same waiting room as your guests. There you pick your microphone, speaker and camera, answer the headphones question, check your camera preview, and then join. Once you're in, everyone can already hear and see each other live while you wait for the rest. That live picture is just for talking, though. The recording runs separately and hasn't started yet.
Recording, stopping, recording again¶
As soon as you press record, everyone in the room starts recording at the same moment, each on their own device (the controls have their own page). Press stop, and every take ends together. After that you can keep recording in the same session as often as you like. Each take becomes its own recording, and the download keeps them apart as "Recording 1", "Recording 2" and so on.
There are two limits. The first is your budget of recording hours, because once it's used up, no new take starts. The second is about running several sessions at once. An account can only record in one session at a time, so if another of your sessions is already recording, podsink offers to take you there instead of starting a second take.
Ending the session¶
Stopping a take doesn't end the session. You end it from the menu, but please only once you're really done. Ending closes the upload for good, and whatever is still on someone's device at that moment stays there and never reaches the server.
That's why the end dialog checks first. If every track is in, it asks once and ends the session. If someone is still uploading, or podsink can't tell for sure, it shows you who's behind, and inside the session also by how much. You can still end anyway. A little patience pays off here, because after every stop the last few seconds are still on their way.
Every live session in your sessions list also has an "End session" button. It opens the same dialog and checks who's still uploading first, too. From the list it names the people only, without how far along they are, and it counts anyone whose upload isn't complete as still uploading.
Afterwards the session shows up as done in your list, along with the download and how many days it stays available.
What happens without you¶
podsink doesn't let sessions run forever, but it waits a long time before stepping in. From the server's side, someone on shaky wifi looks exactly like a closed laptop.
- If a take hasn't sent any data for a long time, podsink stops it. The session stays open, so anyone who comes back can still upload the rest.
- If a take runs past your plan's remaining hours, it gets thirty minutes of grace and is then stopped.
- If a session has had a take and then nothing happens for a while, no recording and no uploads, podsink ends it. If uploads are still pending, it waits considerably longer. A session that has never recorded is left alone, so creating one days ahead is no problem at all. And if the session has a date, podsink won't end it before that date is over, even after a soundcheck days earlier. The usual wait only starts once the date has passed.
The session in more than one tab¶
If you have the same session open twice in one browser, podsink lets you know. Recording keeps going everywhere, but two tabs sharing one microphone can cause audio trouble, so it's best to keep just one of them open.