Scrapblog Series : More Content - Try a Podcast

Podcasting is BIG now. Crafting Podcasts are a big theme. Check out all the links to Craft podcasts that I have shared with you here on this Scrapability links page. And then consider how easy some Blog Services make it to create and publish to your site (or a holding website) your own podcast. All you need is a recording device, some software (which can be free) and some minor tips.

Some References First:

• Scrapability’s List of Broadcasting or Podcasting Crafty Blogs.
• Scrapability’s Podcasting 101 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about)
• Craft Sanity (Episode 14) and CraftyPod (Episode 24) did a joint podcast in April on how easy it is to podcast, with quite a few links available on these blogs also.
  

So, You Want to Podcast - Some Ways to Do It

1. Plan Before you Begin

Firstly, suss out the competition - there are quite a few crafty type podcasts out there already, but you may be after something different. Have a script prepared of what you are going to record, and make sure you take note of any links you may use during "the show" - these should be listed as Show Notes on your blog also. Start off small - content for 15-20 minutes would be nice - many people don’t like listening to podcasts which go past the 30 minute mark.

2. Recording your Bits.

Obviously, you need a microphone (and a computer - but if you’re reading this, then you have one, I hope) and some sound recording software. For the microphone, make sure it’s a reasonably priced dynamic type model. It should be unidirectinal also (not omnidirectional - which means the recording would pick up outside sounds like someone playing or a dog barking next door). Other recording devices are now available nowadays including headsets, and even VOIP phones, as long as the device can pipe through to your recording software on the PC.

Before you start recording, remember to check your sound levels also. Plug your microphone in and go to the Sounds and Audio Devices section in Control Panel. Set the microphone level to midway, and do a few test recordings. Resist the urge to crank up the recording level too high, however - this will distort the sound. Spend some time experimenting.

3. Recording Software to Play With

After recording your digital self, you’ll maybe want to play around with the recording, jig it into the correct MP3 format to allow others to download it. You can buy some software to do this, or you could take a look at the following -

• Windows Sound Recorder lets you record, mix, play and edit audio, but it is pretty basic.
  
• Audacity - Free Audio Editor for many platforms (including Mac and Windows) You will also need the LAME MP3 encoder download to allow the creations of MP3s. See more on Audacity usage below.
  
• Sound Soap - a tool for cleaning up the noise from your recordings. This can also work as a plugin to most Audio Unit, DirectX, RTAS or VST host Programs
• PodProducer is also apparently very good, and entirely free.
• MixCast Live is also good, particularly as you can publish your podcasts directly to feed directories such as bigfeeder.com using it. A limited trial is available, and the full product will only cost you $12 US / £7 UK at time of writing.
• If you get really really serious about your podcasts, and want some top quality software, try ePodcast Creator. The full version is $89.98 / £52, with a 30 day free trial.
• Garageband (see the link below in podsafe music section) can also be used for Apple Mac owners. See the tutorial on how to do this at apple.com.
  

3. Music To Add In

Once you get sick of yourself talking all the time, perhaps you want to use some music - maybe at the start, maybe as intervals to space out your actual recorded content. You can’t use all those music MP3s you’ve downloaded for personal use. Not without contemplating paying over lots of money for the digital rights, and licensing fees to the recording company- everytime someone listens to your broadcast!

But there are websites setup to give you pieces of music useable for podcasts. Check out -

Royalty Free (Podsafe) Music

• GarageBand - podsafe music can be found here.
  
• Podsafe Music Network
• Podsafe Audio
• Op Sound
• CC Mixter

A Show Theme for You

• Podcast Themes - for a reasonable price, you can have your very own theme music for your podcast created.

Small Music Bits

These two provide small free snippets of music, useful to put into your podcast to break up different sections.

• Shockwave-Sound
• Looperman

Using Audacity

The following is relevant to Windows PC users, but Audacity is also usable for Mac Users.  

Audacity is free, and it’s pretty much all you might need. Here are some very brief step by steps and notes for you. Play around. And Audacity’s good for your MP3 music selection also. You can split, mix, fade and add special effects to any recording. It’s also useful for trimming unwanted material from the beginning and end of file - for internet radio recordings for your own usage, for example.

Note that Audacity can handle all popular types of sound file, including MP3s. However, it is not capable of creating MP3 files (which you need for a podcast) without the help of an MP3 encoder called LAME. It just needs a single LAME file called lame_enc.dll, and the below will also install this, to make it all work.

1. Downloading and Setting Up

1. Download Audacity. You will find it at the link above, or do a search for it over the internet - it’s available all over the place. Download to the desktop, rather than opening straight away.
2. Install the downloaded file (it should be named audacity-win-1.2.4b.exe) by double-clicking. Go through the installation screens, accepting the terms and conditions until you reach the final screen. Don’t click on the Finish button here until you have removed the tick to launch Audacity straight away (you want to install the LAME file into this in the next step). Leave Audacity open
3. Download the LAME MP3 encoder also. A link is above, but you may also find it here at mp3-tech.org. You will find a file under Encoders, called LAME 3.94-nn where nn will be the newest version number released. Take the latest. You may be asked whether you want to allow the program you have just downloaded to open - Click on Yes this time, accept the terms and conditions and follow the rest of the steps to install Lame.
4. Once this is done, shut down the installer and close Audacity.

2. Some Usage Help

1. Launch Audacity - you will first need to select your language.
2. Load an MP3 file (or other file type) using the Open option on the Project menu. Stereo files are displayed as a pair of waveforms in the top half of the screen, representing left and right tracks.
3. To join another file to this one, load the second file using the Import Audio option on the Project menu.
4. Depending on the size of your monitor, you may need to use the Fit Vertically option on the View menu to see both tracks.
5. You can select the entire second track by clicking on the grey panel to the left, just beneath the L/R slider control. On the Edit menu, click on Copy. Click with the mouse at the end of the second track and then use Paste to place a copy after the first. You have just added either a music snippet to the end of your first section, or your voice recording to the music theme starter for your podcast, as two examples.
6. Once you have finished creating your full track in this way, you can save the newly combined track (make sure it’s selected with a darker grey colour) by opening the File menu and selecting Export Selection as MP3 (Lame cuts in at this point). Click on Save - Because this is the first time you have exported an MP3 file, Audacity needs to be told where to find the Lame encoder file you downloaded. Click on yes, and navigate to the Lame folder in the Program Files folder on the drive. You will find the lame_enc.dll file in there. The export will begin as soon as you click on Open. You won’t need to do this step again next time.
7. Removing unwanted segments from your audio files (all your ums and ahhs, and the time someone yelled at you while recording) can be done in two ways - using Trim or Cut. To Trim, select the part you wish to keep and drag the mouse pointer over it, then use the Trim option from the Edit menu. This discards everything other than the part you selected. Cut works similarly, but will Cut out the part you selected.
8. Remember to save your file at the best quality but lowest bitage you can get away with - for general audio files with small amounts of music, you can save at 96kpps (kilobytes per second) whereas your better quality MP3 music tracks are often saved at 128kbps, and are therefore much larger.
   

Publishing Your Podcast

Storing Your Pod files 

Now that you have a podcast all created, and you already have a blog, you’ll need to think about how to get it out to your audiance, and where it should be hosted. If you host the MP3 files on your own blog, and people can download and listen to them there, we are talking about a very large amount of bandwidth.

The amount of storage space you need depends on many factors - the length of each show, the audio quality (general talk talk type podcasts with little music will work well at a lower level - 96kbitz would be good), and how many you want to hold available at the one time ie if you have two or three shows available at once, that’s triple the storage needed to hold them. Which is one of the good reasons why many podcasts are available only for a limited time on the blog page.

Bandwidth is another matter. If your podcast is 20MB in size, and 300 people download it, that’s 300 x 20 = 6000 or 6Gb of bandwidth you have to recover.

You can store your podfiles elsewhere away from the blog.

RSS Feed

Create an RSS Feed for your podcast. This will allow people to subscribe to it. For podcasts you will need an RSS feed, not Atom. Many blog feeds can be in Atom (like the one from Scrapability). If you need an RSS feed service, try out Feedburner. It’s free also. With FeedBurner’s SmartCast™ service, you can use any blogging tool that creates a feed to publish your podcast. If your blog post contains a link (<a href=""></a>) to an audio file, Feedburner SmartCast converts it to an RSS enclosure that programs like iPodder, iTunes and NetNewsWire recognize.

Feedburner also has many other useful tools for your pod-feed including statistics, easy subscribe buttons for your blogsite, pinging automatically feed directories when you have a new feed, and other publisher services.  

Other hosting services for podcasts, can often do this for you also, with podcast wizards. Here’s a recommendation from the Windows Dev Centre How to Podcast tutorial (linked to below in the Credits and Links section) -

"If you want to keep your podcast separate from regular blog postings, or if you don’t currently have a blog, the simplest way I’ve found to publish a podcast is to sign up for the $5 account at Liberated Syndication and follow its podcast publishing wizard. The service automatically uploads your MP3 file, and creates the RSS feed and blog post associated with the podcast, all in one easy step".

For further recommendations, check out Jason Van Orden’s website, which has so much information and choices, that it provides answers for any podcasting newbies (link below also).

Blog Publicity

Your blog will be your main point of call for the podcast (even if not hosting it there). From your blog, people should be able to pick up the shownotes (normally a list of links and discussion points found on the episode of your podcast - but see the Jason Van Orden Link recommended below if you want to learn how to write up some decent show notes). The podcast should be announced and noted on your blog to allow readers to keep up to date with where to find the podcast file, and the RSS feed to subscribe to.

Credits and Links:

This blog article was cogged together from information gleaned over the internet, and from two particularly helpful printed articles in UK Computer Magazines (listed below). Everyone is talking about podcasting nowadays. Other interesting web references for further reading are also listed.

• Computer Active Magazine, Issue 214 - "Tidy Up your Music with Audacity" article, pages 32-33
• Webuser Magazine, Issue 131 - "Create Your Own Podcast, Part1" pages 40-41
• How to Podcast - by Jason Van Orden - pages of help, interesting articles on anything from bandwidth calculations, hosting recommendations, to how to write Show Notes. An excellent website for newbies.
• Feedburner - check the Get Started with Podcasting link also - it makes recommendations for hosting sites to hold your files, if your blog can not.  Feedburner even helps you through if you already have a blogger, typepad or wordpress blog.
• Garageband tutorial at Apple.com
• Another Audacity Tutorial at Transom.
• Another Podcasting How to Tutorial, including using Audacity at O’Reilly Windows Development Centre.
• Blogger has a Quickstart Guide to Podcasting using Blogger and Feedburner, including publicising your feed using tools provided at blogger, or buttons available. A full tutorial for Blogger and Feedburner is also available from Podcast News.

And that’s all there is to it…

Comments

[mp3 sound tool]

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[kekexili]

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