First things first, I have no business telling you how to produce and record a podcast. My podcast, for the year and a half it existed, was released sporadicly, and had you listened, you would have had to wait months for me to release a new episode, and then get slammed with two hour long episodes a week.
But for the most part, that was only towards the end of my podcast's life span, in the beginning I was doing about one show a week...but I was doing them completely wrong, and technical problems plagued me for the show's entirety.
But because I love(d) podcasting, I wanted to write a blog about the behind the scenes of podcasting, so if your interested in starting your own podcast, here it goes:
What you need for podcasting:
- Broad band internet - but of course this is obvious.
- iTunes - You need iTunes so you can make you can publish your show.- if no one can hear it is a podcast really recorded? well...it mine as well not be. you can download iTunes here, from Apple's website
- a microphone for your pc/Mac/home-made-Linux-rig. - if you have a laptop or netbook you probably have a microphone built in, other wise, they cost any where between $9-$200
- Audacity recording software - I've used several recording softwares, this is by far the best. it's free and you can download it here
- A website - you need a website so you can store your files and your feed. (see below) you have several options with this. you could make a website from a free (terrible) service, like Webs, or you could use Podbean. I tried both at first and then went with podbean. podbean does the feed for you, which saves allot of time. I'll get into more detail latter.
- A feed- writing a feed requires a moderate knowledge of the dreaded HTML and it's quite time consuming as you must update your feed every time you upload a new website. once more, I will go in detail latter in the post.
- TIME, TIME, TIME!
Now that you have the first two requirements, let's go on to step three: Audacity.
like I said, Audacity can be downloaded here: http://download.cnet.com/Audacity/3000-2170_4-10058117.html
Now before you can save Audacity files as .MP3 you need the LAME encoder. (yes, it's a bad name, I know.)
LAME (with instructions for installation) can be found here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3
Once you have LAME installed open up Audacity.
Recording with Audacity.
Recording with Audacity is simple- just click the record button with all the arrow pointing at it.
editing is the hard part...
Editing with Audacity
ok, so now that you have your recording you need to edit out every thing you said that you don't want in the podcast- this can be things like rambling, interruptions, back ground noise and etc.
I'm going to show you a few basic and useful ways to edit your recording.
for this I'm going to use a .MP3, rather then a original recording. the process and steps you take will be exactly the same for your podcast recording, I'm just doing it with a MP3. because it will be easy to give example this way.
(NOTE: to edit a already made .MP3 in Audacity, just drag and drop the file into the Audacity Window.)
I'm using the .MP3 song "Teenage Riot" by Sonic Youth for my example.
why? because it was the first song I saw when I opened itunes :D
The Red arrows point to the recording, the green arrow points to the edit menu, and the yellow arrow points to the "time shift tool" I'll explain all of this latter.
So I've decided I want to remove the beginning intro of the song (the beginning rift.) and skip straight to the the main instrumental/vocal section so I'm going to press the magnifying glass button, and then I'm going to click any where on the recording, until it shows me the song's time in periods of five seconds.
after zooming in and listening to it, I've found that the intro (the part I want to remove) ends at the 1:20 mark. now I'm going to click on the selection tool (the one that looks like a "I" and I'm going to click and hold on 1:20, next I drag my mouse left, back to the 0 mark. (this works like highlighting text you want to copy.)
next I click edit and go to cut. or you could press ctrl+x
now my file is 1:20 shorter and when I press play the intro is gone, so we know it worked.
Now where going to try something harder: we're going to amplify, fade in/out, trim & move sections back and forth to deferent spots on the track.
So let's say now I want to turn this song into a ring tone.
Since I can't use the whole song, I need to determine the section I want as the ring tone. this is a great way to isolate large parts of your recording , or to capture sound bytes from other recordings.
I've determined I want to use the first 25 seconds (first 25 of the above edit, not of the original song. this would be 1:20 to 1:45 of the original.)
so I'm going to highlight the part I want to keep, like I highlighted the part I wanted to cut above.
now that :25 to :00 is highlighted I'm going to click Edit, then trim.
this is what the song looks like now:
Notice that it's only 25 seconds long.
but I don't want my ringtone to come on blaring loud as soon as it comes on. I want it to fade in. and you want the same for every episode of your podcast your going to record. so highlight the first five seconds of the recording, now go to Effect, then fade in. now highlight the last three seconds and hit effect, fade out. press play. much better! if your Mic is a little low, or if your mouth was to far away when you were recording, you can boost the volume: highlight the entirety of the recording and hit effect then amplify, from the pop up window you can adjust how much you want it to be amplified by adjusting the slider..you can also make it quieter by dragging the bar to the left.
if trimming created dead space, click on the "time shift tool" and drag your recording to the beginning.
also, if cutting sections out created dead space, just drag the two tracks together.
now to save it as a .MP3 click
"file"
"export as .MP3"
And that's the basics of editing a podcast. I'll get into the website, feed and getting on itunes in my next post.
0 comments:
Post a Comment