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October 21, 2005
Publish a podcast
While I feel lazy presently with digging around for new designs and designers to put on the spotlight (but promise is I will soon), there are other things I'd like to share.
We have, officially now, a podcaster in the house. She did it and talks of course about knitting (about our turtle too) and the cast is located YouKnowWhere.
This makes me wonder about what makes a good podcast, about tools, style, scripting and skeletoning with a few good advices in the mix. One striking exception, I won't talk about podcasting on a PC. We're not at war but that is firm, you the user do not have to fiddle with soundcard's drivers or having to crack that very expensive sound-edit program just to produce a decent MP3. I assume you are not a geek and you're on a Mac, that is it.
Let's also dig a bit forward and say you have Tiger on your Mac or get a copy. My advice? Get a copy. It's cheap for a whole Operating System and you'll love it.
Recording: Open Quicktime and start a New Audio recording. Make sure no striking or loud noises are going to interrupt your speech, landscape noises on the other side are legit. Important: almost all variants of Macs have microphones embedded so don't start looking for a mike, it's more than likely straight under your nose. Don't be shy, make sure the Input Level is decent (try a couple times record and playback while fiddling with your System Preferences:Sound:Input). It is preferable that your script (you should have one) has a skeleton and is good that you put your skel in writing for reference. It is ok to have an accent, to use an accent if you do not have one and to pause. To slow down and accelerate is a feature that you can put to good use if you know what you are going to say in advance. A refrain at the beginning of your cast and at the end is very recommended, I suggest a short intro and a longer closure. You may easily break copyright by doing this but sure enough you won't get into big trouble right away. It is not ok to fall asleep, shout or read too fast. A good podcast should stay between 10 minutes and 20 minutes. Less or more is either literature or comedy. One thing that my half noticed and nobody else yet, a Powerbook is almost silent compared to G5s which are heavily equipped with fans of all sorts, if you have an iMac and a Powerbook record on the 'book.
If you do not have Quicktime you may use the free WireTap (google it) or any other free utility that lets you record audio. WireTap Pro produces straight MP3 and is a mere 9$ shareware app from Ambrosia.
The output file will be of type MOV, actually a sound-only Quicktime movie format. If you have other audio to intermix to your recording you'll use a bit of cut and paste in Quicktime (you can copy and paste different formats) or iMovie. Save everything as an AIFF (do not be intimidated by the file size) or as a Quicktime Movie (MOV).
Now open iTunes and make sure that your input encoder (Preferences:Advanced:Importing) is set to MP3, or you'll risk to encode everything in AAC or MP4 and cry the day away. Only an iPod, iTunes and few other devices can read AAC and there's still a few out there that don't have an iPod. Drop your file into iTunes, select it and choose Convert Selection to MP3. Note that from the same Preference pane you can tweak the quality of the MP3 file which will affect its size. You are looking for a max of 10 Megs for your output MP3 file. If purpose is to stream your file for the web look for 4 Megs or less.
You're ready now to distribute, hand over for iPodding, on a CD, email, drop it into your FTP and link to it from a web page or stream it using a flash streamer (google it).
Don't forget rule #1: podcast only if you have something to say. There are so many other ways to say nothing that do not require a podcast. But don't forget rule #2: do it only if you believe there is an audience or that you can create one for your cast. If you just don't believe that somebody will buy your 5 minutes starring at a progress bar, why bother? And have an eye open on rule #3: often, less is more.
If you are going to try based on this skinny guide let me know what you get. Next time you're doing video, which requires more make-up :)
To browse for other podcasts and check quality, style, techniques and to compare what you've done with others go not too far. Open iTunes and browse Apple's Podcast Directory.
Wave.
Posted by lck at October 21, 2005 07:31 PM
