teaching and learning

This is a bit of a record of what I did to make the podcast, what software and hardware I used, and some tips with the three step process of RECORDING, ENCODING and then CREATING the XML feed. I kept these notes mainly for my own use in documenting the process, but several staff have found them useful in putting together their first podcasts.

Hardware Used

Fujitsu S-Series Lifebook
$5 swap meet microphone, later replaced with a $29.95 Logitech USB microphone
Sony Headphones

Software Used

Audacity audio recording, mixing, mp3 encoding (free download)
Dreamweaver MX 2000 for creating the web page (any web editor will do)
Notetab Light for editing the .xml documents (free download)
Itunes for playing and checking the feed (free download)

HOW TO PODCAST

For those of you trying out podcasting; a colleague of mine, Stefan, has pointed me to some really useful resources, which I’ve broken down into sections. I’ll probably keep adding to these resources as I find good ones.

Recording Audio

I used the freeware AUDACITY for recording the audio. It’s a great program, easy to start using, but the advanced features are beyond me as yet. I’m getting better! I eventually bought a microphone that stood up on the desk close to my face; most experts seem to recommend the USB style microphone. Since I started working with podcsts, I’ve also tried various more fancy audio tools such as Sony’s Acid Express (lite) and Adobe Audition 2.0. Adobe is nice and feature-full but in my opinion it’s over-kill for spoken voice audio.

I found these freeware SOUND LEVEL METERS handy for getting the levels right. You can see levels in Audacity, but these are more like the ones from old stereos, and were more intuitive for me, especially when I was first starting out. It was just like when I used to record audio cassettes of music mixes!

There’s other programs emerging. They SAY that Apple’s software Garage Band is excellent for recording podcasts, there’s nothing quite as good in the Windows format yet, or not that I’ve seen.

There’s a nice list of podcasting software at Podcasting News

Making MP3s

There’s a couple of ways to create the compressed mp3 files needed for the final podcast. Wav. files are way too big, and most mp3 players won’t play them anyway. The idea is that someone downloads your podcast, loads it on to their ipod and listens to it as they walk along.

You can compress the file straight out of AUDACITY (by installing the freeware Lame encoder) or you can use Itunes to do it. Remember, that you probably don’t need CD quality audio compression for files that are basically talking, and reducing quality will reduce the file size considerably. Following the specifications of podcasts I’ve downloaded from Itunes, I usually opt for these settings which I’ve noticed a lot of professional voice-only podcasts use:

• 64kps
• 44,100khz

XML/RSS Feeds

I took a while to get this right! Luckily, there are some nifty little programs that promise to help out here. One’s a freeware program called Podcast Feed Creator, but it had trouble creating the date fields properly and threw up four errors. Mind you, that could be okay because you could use the created file as the basis for your own xml file.

There’s also a shareware program called Feed for All which has a 30 day trial period. This is a great little program and if you used it every day for the 30 days you would probably have the xml thing figured out by then.

It created a better .xml document, but the RSS validator still came up with two errors (missing email addresses!) You’d think it would work, but Itunes didn’t like it. The problem was that when Feed for All asked me for webmaster and author I put in my name, but it really wanted my email address (it would have been nice if it said that but when in doubt RTM!) I added the email and RSS Validator okayed it. I then tried it in Itunes. Itunes could see the podcast, but wouldn’t download it.

So, I looked again at Feed for All and the mini-tutorial bit on their website and added some optional bits. Here I discovered the ENCLOSURES bit, which they reckon is optional, but mp3 wouldn’t download without! Changed that bit, copied the xml file into the directory where my mp3 is, uploaded it and tested it, and it worked!

I then pasted the .xml feed into the new version of Itunes, and I subscribed to my very own podcast!!! The final SOURCE CODE I created is here, and might be handy for others to look at.

Other Resources

How to create a MP3 and Feeds – Pretty good instructions, and comes with a 10 minutes podcast

RSS Validator – Test your feed. It tells you the errors, not necessarily how to fix them!

Podcast Tools – everything you need to know about RSS

Podcast Icons - I found the images here at this site.

What is Podcasting (from Wikipedia)

26/2/2007