Sunday, February 26, 2006

One Way to Create a Podcast

A while ago I posted an entry about how to Start Your Basic Blog. I don't have as much experience with podcasting considering I just put my first one up this week, but I thought I would share how I did it for anyone who was interested in producing their own.

Because of my husband's work, I had access to professional sound equipment: A Marantz PMD 660 Solid State Digital Recorder, (another professional option is an M-audio recorder), a dynamic microphone, Electro-Voice 635A, and a cable to connect the microphone to the computer.

One of the podcasters at NetSquared, where I work, uses the Olympus DM-20 digital recorder, which isn't cheap, but is more affordable than the options above, and I think it comes with a microphone.

After I did the interview, I was able to connect the recorder to the computer via USB and download the interview (which I recorded as an MP3 at 44.1K) into my iTunes. I edited the interview in GarageBand and exported it back into my iTunes. I converted the file back into an mp3 in iTunes (Garageband exports it as an AIFF file into iTunes) and uploaded it to Gcast. I chose Gcast because you can easily embed your podcast into your blog or webpage. This seemed like the most accessible option. I know that many people don't know how to subscribe using RSS feeds and/or don't have an mp3 player.

Audacity is another free software option you can use to edit podcasts.

When I wrote a similar post to this one on on Blogher, a reader wisely commented:
That's an awful lot of audio transcoding going on (at the very least, MP3 to uncompressed for editing, back to MP3) which will introduce a loss of quality. Since you're using the PMD 660, why not record uncompressed (as WAV, for example) and edit that? Then there's less transcoding going on.

Remember, MP3 is lost compression - when you uncompress (for editing) you lose stuff.

The final step that I need to do is to register it with podcast directories like Yahoo, Podcast Alley and Podcast.net. Gcast automatically submits it to the iTunes Music store.

I hope that helps aspiring podcasters. If I can do it, you can too!




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