FAQ
Below are some of the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) received. If you do not see the answer to your question, please feel free to contact us. Please note that we receive thousands of emails each day and oftentimes we are unable to respond. While we endeavor to respond to every inquiry, it is not always possible. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.
Blue Plz! is now on indefinite hiatus. Please disregard the following.
Blue Plz! is the original shock-jock World of Warcraft audio broadcast, hosted in the style of right-wing American radio hosts, with a distinct British flavour. It is purely World of Warcraft talk, delivered in a punchy, hyperbolic and larger-than-life manner, covering current events and Blizzard’s future plans.
Blue Plz! is now on indefinite hiatus. Please disregard the following.
Blue Plz! is broadcast live every Friday at 8PM GMT, 4PM EST, 9PM CET, usually for around 90 minutes. You can use any SHOUTcast compatible player to listen to Blue Plz!, including Winamp, iTunes and VLC. You do this by downloading a playlist file from any of our broadcast servers and loading it in your chosen application. The links to these playlist files are provided on the Livestream & Chat page, under the Shows drop-down. Once you have a playlist file, you don’t need to download it again and can use it for all future broadcasts.
Blue Plz! is now on indefinite hiatus. Please disregard the following.
Yes, the download, streaming and subscription links are all provided in every Blue Plz! post. You can also subscribe directly via our RSS feeds on the front page. Blue Plz! is provided in mp3 format.
These shows were discontinued due to a focus on regular video content.
The host of these shows, John “TotalBiscuit” Bain, has been referred to as “The Cynical Brit” since 2005. It’s a label that stuck.
John felt that in order to further explore and advance his chosen medium, it would be best to setup a new site with a new vision. WoW Radio was not a suitable venue for general gaming shows. He wishes all the staff the very best in their future projects.
On-site advertising and merchandise.
We currently do not have any inventory available for on-site advertisements, YouTube ads, etc.
The Cynical Brit does not advertise gold-selling, RMT services, power-levelling, hacking or account trading services due to ethical concerns. There are no exceptions to this rule. We reserve the right to reject any advertising request if we believe it is not in the best interests of our community.
From time to time our ad server does populate an undesirable advertisement. We are aware of this issue and are doing our best to filter them out as we are notified.
Tips or donations can be sent to donations[at]cynicalbrit.com and will be used to fund our regularly scheduled SHOUTcraft Invitational which provides StarCraft 2 content to our community.
People often ask about TB’s setup and methods, so here it is Feel free to use any of this information as you see fit. Info is provided as is and should not be construed as a recommendation or endorsement. This setup is non-ideal so please don’t blame us if you end up buying things like this and complain they don’t work as you wish them too. Please note that we do not provide hardware or software support. All questions regarding those matters will be disregarded.
*Recording methodology*
For WoW, he records in 720p with FRAPs at 30fps. He records sans commentary, puts the footage into Adobe Premiere. He then replays the video while recording a commentary track over the top. Simple as that. It is not particularly time-consuming, actually the worst part of it is finding a replay that is interesting, then coaxing Starcraft 2 not to trigger the ATI Crossfire Bug that STILL has not been fixed after 3 months of beta. WoW and ISS2 videos are exported in h.264, 2-pass VBR at 3-6mbps bitrate with audio in 128kbps 48khz AAC format.
SHOUTcraft is recorded differently. TB casts all his material live, using Xsplit to stream to Justin.tv. He also FRAPs while doing so and records audio in Adobe Audition, which is running in the background. He then process his audio using compression and normalisation settings, export it as a wav and then sync it up with the FRAPsed recording. He does NOT record his mic with FRAPs because that results in decreased quality. He also uses this method for WTF is? and anything else that he’s doing completely live.
TB uses the following equipment:
Cynical Rig Mk2 Codename “PLAGUE”
Intel i7 980x @ 4.1ghz
12gb G.Skill Trident 2000mhz X.M.P.
Asus Rampage III X58 Motherboard.
2x Nvidia Palit GTX580
RAID 0 Western Digital Blacks 1TB
2TB Western Digital FRAPs drive
3TB External Storage.
160GB Intel G2 SSD.
Audio equipment :-
CEntrance Micport Pro audio interface.
Electrovoice N/D767a Super-cardoid dynamic microphone (it’s nice, but TB never recommends this setup for anyone since there are more cost effective and better sounding mics available, he just happened to have these on hand at the time). The mic is pop-shielded and backed with sound-absorbing foam tiles. He’s still not happy with the overall ambient noise level so he’s replacing the fans on his computer with something quieter.
Software :-
Adobe Audition 3 (basically the best multitrack audio editor he’s ever used)
Adobe Premiere CS 5 (can you tell he likes Adobe products?)
FRAPs
