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How To Use Free Tools To Create
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What Is Podcasting?
Podcasting is a method of publishing audio broadcasts via the Internet,
allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It
became popular in late 2004, largely to automate downloading of
audio onto portable players or personal computers.
The word "podcasting" is a portmanteau that combines the words
"broadcasting" and "iPod." The term can be misleading since neither
podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable
music player. For that reason, since September 2004 various writers
have suggested reinterpreting the letters POD to create "backronyms"
such as "Personal On-Demand." However, the word is rarely presented
as "PODcasting."
Podcasting is distinct from other types of online media delivery
because of its subscription model, which uses the RSS 2.0 XML (or
RDF XML) format to deliver an enclosed file. Podcasting enables
independent producers to create self-published, syndicated "radio
shows," and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution
method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using "podcatching"
software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and
downloads new content automatically. Some podcatching software is
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also able to synchronise (copy) podcasts to portable music players.
Any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can
play podcasts. The same technique can deliver video files, and by 2005
some aggregators could play video as well as audio.
Initial development
By 2003, web radio had existed for a decade, digital audio players had
been on the market for several years, blogs and broadcasters
frequently published MP3 audio online, and the RSS file format was
widely used for summarizing or syndicating content. While RSS/RDF
already supported media resources implicitly, applications rarely took
advantage of this. In 2001 UserLand founder and RSS evangelist Dave
Winer, partly inspired by users like Adam Curry and Tristan Louis,
added support for a specific enclosure element to Userland's non-RDF
branch of RSS, then to its Radio Userland feed-generator and
aggregator.
In June 2003, Dion Mellor demonstrated aggregation and syndication
of audio files using RSS in his Ed Radio application. Ed Radio scanned
RSS feeds for MP3 files, collected them into a single feed, and made
the result available as SMIL or WebJay audio feeds.
In September 2003, Winer created an RSS-with-enclosures feed for his
Harvard Berkman Center colleague Christopher Lydon, a former
newspaper and television journalist and NPR radio talk show host. For
several months Lydon had been linking full-length MP3 interviews to
his Berkman weblog, which focused on blogging and coverage of the
2004 U.S. presidential campaigns. Having Lydon's interviews as RSS
enclosures helped inspire Adam Curry's pre-iPodder script, and related
experiments leading to a variety of open source iPodder development.
Indeed, blogs would become an important factor in the popularization
of podcasting before many professional radio broadcasters and
entrepreneurs with business plans adopted the form.
Possibly the first use of the term podcasting was as a synonym for
audioblogging or weblog-based amateur radio in an article by Ben
Hammersley in The Guardian on February 12, 2004. In September of
that year, Dannie Gregoire used the term to describe the automatic
download and synchronization idea that Adam Curry had developed.
Gregoire had also registered multiple domain names associated with
podcasting. That usage was discovered and reported on by Curry and
Dave Slusher of the Evil Genius Chronicles website.
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By October 2004, detailed how-to podcast articles had begun to
appear online. By July 2005, a Google search for "'how to' +podcast"
returned 2,050,000 hits.
Independently of the development of Podcasting and its distribution
via RSS, an idea that resembles Podcasting was developed at Compaq
Research as early as 1999 or 2000. Called PocketDJ, it would have
been launched as a service for the Personal Jukebox or a proposed
successor, the first hard-disk based MP3-player, that Compaq's R&D
department had started developing in 1998. See appropriate section in
the Personal Jukebox article.
Popularization
The word about podcasting rapidly spread through the already-popular
weblogs of Winer, Curry and other early podcasters and podcast-
listeners. Fellow blogger and technology columnist Doc Searls began
keeping track of how many "hits" Google found for the word
"podcasts" on September 28, 2004, when the result was 24 hits. "A
year from now," he wrote, "it will pull up hundreds of thousands, or
perhaps even millions."
Searls kept track of the search results in his blog through the next
month. There were 526 hits for "podcasts" on September 30, then
2,750 three days later. The number doubled every few days, passing
100,000 by October 18. His prediction of "perhaps millions" in a year
proved to be quite conservative. After only nine months, a search for
"podcasts" produced more than 10 million hits.
The amateur podcasts themselves were harder to count, but there
were enough to capture the attention of The New York Times on
October 28, 2004. "There are podcasters in California, South Carolina
and Connecticut," Times reporter Cyrus Farivar wrote, "with others as
far afield as western Canada, Australia and Sweden. Though most
podcasts tend to reflect their technologically oriented audience, newer
shows are being created with topics like veganism and movie reviews.
Even conventional broadcasters are being drawn to the medium, which
allows programs to be played at a listener's convenience."
When USA Today took on the subject of these "free amateur chatfests"
with a pair of stories the following February, it profiled several
podcasters, gave instructions for both sending and receiving podcasts,
and included a "Top Ten" list from one of the many podcast directories
that had sprung up in just six months. The newspaper quoted one
directory as listing 3,300 podcast programs in February, 2005. At that
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time, USA Today reported a circulation of 2.6 million, the largest of
any paper in the United States. The story of podcasting was getting
around.
The Top Ten programs mentioned at that time gave some indication of
podcast topics: four were about technology (including Curry's "Daily
Source Code," which also included music and personal chat), three
were about music, one about movies, one about politics, and -- at the
time No. 1 on the list -- "The Dawn and Drew Show," described as
"married-couple banter," a program format that USA Today's Marco R.
della Cava noted was quite popular on American broadcast radio in the
1940s.
While USA Today was good at recalling the past, its story was less
successful about the near future: It predicted that Apple Computer
was "in a prime position to make podcasting significantly easier — but
probably won't." Della Cava said Apple had "ignored requests from
Curry and other technologists to discuss the matter, and declined USA
TODAY's interview requests for this story."
In June, 2005, Apple added podcasting to its iTunes music software,
staking a claim to the new medium its iPod had helped inspire and
name. (See Coping With Growth, below.)
Adoption by traditional broadcasters
Traditional broadcasters were extremely quick to pick up on the
podcasting format, especially those whose news or talk formats spared
them the complications of music licensing. The American syndicated
radio show Web Talk Radio became the first to adopt the format, in
September 2004, followed within weeks by Seattle news radio station
KOMO and by individual programs from KFI Los Angeles and Boston's
WGBH.
The BBC began a trial in October 2004 with BBC Radio Five Live's
Fighting Talk. These trials were extended in January 2005 to BBC
Radio 4's In Our Time. January 2005 also saw CBC begin a trial with
its technology show /Nerd. United States National Public Radio
affiliates WNYC and KCRW adopted the format for many of their
productions. In April 2005 the BBC announced it was extending the
trial to twenty more programmes, including music radio and in the
same month Australia's ABC launched a podcasting trial across several
of its national stations.
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In May, 2005, the trend began to go the other way, with amateur
podcasts becoming a source of content for broadcast radio programs
by Adam Curry, Christopher Lydon and others.
Coping with growth
While podcasting's innovators took advantage of the sound-file
synchronization feature of Apple Computer's iPod and iTunes software
-- and included "pod" in the name -- the technology was always
compatible with other players and programs. Apple was not actively
involved until mid-2005, when it joined the market on three fronts: as
a source of "podcatcher" software, as publisher of a podcast directory,
and as provider of tutorials on how to create podcasts with Apple
products GarageBand and Quicktime Pro.
The podcasting selection views of iTunes 4.9
When it added a podcast-subscription feature to its June 28, 2005,
release of iTunes 4.9, Apple also launched a directory of podcasts at
the iTunes Music Store, starting with 3,000 entries. Apple's software
enabled AAC encoded podcasts to use chapters, bookmarks, external
links, and synchronized images displayed on iPod screens or in the
iTunes artwork viewer. Two days after release of the program, Apple
reported one million podcast subscriptions.
iTunes Podcast directory lists top 100 podcasts based on the number
of new subscriptions in a given 24-hour period, which explains the wild
fluctuations in top-20 panel rankings, initially suspected to be an
active count of total number of podcast subscribers.
Some podcasters found that exposure to iTunes' huge number of
downloaders threatened to make great demands on their bandwidth
and related expenses. Possible solutions were proposed, including the
addition of a content delivery system, such as Akamai; a peer-to-peer
solution, BitTorrent; or use of free hosting services, such as those
offered by Ourmedia, BlipMedia and the Internet Archive.
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Create Podcasts Using Your PC
by Jake Ludington
This time around, I'm walking through the steps required to record and
post your own podcast using tools virtually everyone has or can easily
acquire on a tiny budget. Ultimately, if you decide to podcast on a
regular basis, some equipment upgrades such as the podcast
recording kit I recently detailed at JakeLudington.com will drastically
improve the sound quality. To learn the process, though, you don't
need anything fancy.
Depending on whether you already have one of those cheap
microphones that the OEM dealers bundle with PCs, you can record a
podcast without spending a dime. If you don't have a bundled
microphone, the third-party equivalent costs between $8 and $15 at
various electronics retailers.
The other piece of hardware you need is a set of headphones.
Headphones are important because although you need to monitor your
recorded voice, you don't want the microphone to pick up sound
coming from desktop speakers. Ideally, headphones that cover your
ears do the best job of isolating your recording sound from other audio
distractions. Earbuds make an affordable alternative.
I recommend starting out with Audacity, an open source audio
recording application. I like it so much, I bought a T-shirt from the
company to show my support. Audacity offers a solid complement of
editing features with an interface simple enough for a novice. It
outputs MP3-format audio for distributing your podcast once you
download the Lame MP3 encoder. From here onward, I'll assume you
have Audacity and Lame installed on your PC.
Before You Record
A few basic setup configurations are required in order to record a
podcast. First, connect your microphone to the microphone-in
connection on the PC. Connect headphones to the stereo line out or
headphone jack (generally the green audio connection). Don't forget to
put those headphones on. A laundry list of audio optimizations for your
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PC are recommended to keep your system running smoothly during
recording.
After you launch Audacity, make sure Microphone is selected as the
recording source in the drop-down menu on the mixer toolbar.
Figure 1. Configure Microphone as your recording source
Open the Audacity Preferences window from the File menu. On the
Audio I/O tab, verify that your sound card is selected as the device for
both playback and recording. In the Channels drop-down box under
Recording, choose 1 (Mono). Unless you are using two microphones,
the Stereo option simply duplicates the track, making the file size
bigger without a resulting improvement to audio fidelity.
Figure 2. Set the audio recording Channels selection to Mono
Switch to the Quality tab, and choose 44,100 Hz as the Default Sample
Rate and 16-bit as the Default Sample Format. Audiophiles will argue
that higher sample rates and formats are better, but for spoken word,
44,100 Hz and 16-bit sampling works admirably, especially considering
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that the resulting output will be MP3. Ignore the rest of the settings on
the Quality tab.
Figure 3. Set the sample rate and bit rate
The File Formats tab configures output options. Choose WAV (Microsoft
16 bit PCM) as the Uncompressed Export Format. Leave the OGG
Export Setup untouched. Then, find the location at which you
extracted the Lame codec to add it to Audacity by clicking on the Find
Library button and browsing to the file location. I generally unzip the
Lame codec to C:\LAME so I can find it easily, but there's no "right"
location. Once you've added Lame support, close the Audacity
Preferences window by clicking on OK.
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Figure 4. Configure output options
Ready to Record
Click on the microphone icon in Audacity's Meter toolbar to turn on
monitoring. You should see a red level indicator moving slightly as it
picks up ambient room noise. Talk into the microphone and make
adjustments to the volume until you get a level that rises close to the
right edge of the meter without turning the far-right section solid red.
If you get a solid red bar at the far right, the audio is clipping, which
means your finished file will sound distorted. Once you've adjusted the
level, you're ready to record.
Figure 5. Activate volume-level monitoring
With all the preparations out of the way, it's time to create your first
podcast. Push the Record button and start talking. When you finish
recording, press the yellow square Stop button and save the file in
.wav format. Saving is an important step, in order to make sure you
don't accidentally delete the file.
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Figure 6. Audacity recording controls
It's time to edit the audio file or save it as an MP3 for distribution as
your first podcast. Editing can be as simple as eliminating all the
places you said "um" by highlighting them and deleting them, or as
complex as adding a music bed and inserting other audio clips into the
recorded file. To keep this simple, we'll assume you're a one-take
wonder and you recited a golden monologue for your first podcast.
To save the file as an MP3, open the preferences again, choose the
MP3 bit rate on the File Formats page. (Generally for voice audio,
somewhere between 32 and 64 is good enough without making the file
size too big.) The resulting audio file gets uploaded to a Web server,
and you can link to it in your blog post.
Another important step is editing the ID3 tags for the file. You can
easily accomplish this by opening the file in Windows Media Player,
iTunes, or one of many other popular music players. In Windows Media
Player, right-click on the file in the Now Playing list and choose
Advanced Tag Editor. Fill in the Title and Artist fields at the very least,
so the proper information about your podcast will display on iPods, Zen
Micros, and other portable media players.
You need blogging software with support for enclosures to distribute
the file via RSS, like Radio from UserLand, which is available for a $40
annual subscription. Movable Type is another alternative; it's free for
personal use and has support for enclosures if you install a free plugin.
Several other alternatives also exist. Enclosures are essentially a
method to let news aggregation clients like FeedDemon, Newsgator, or
Doppler know there's a file attachment associated with an RSS feed
entry. Assuming you are using a blogging tool with support for
enclosures, you simply type a blog post as you normally would, and
use a standard HREF link to the MP3 you uploaded to your server. The
blogging software determines that the link should be an enclosure in
RSS based on the file type, and it makes an appropriate addition to
the RSS feed.
If your blogging tool doesn't support enclosures (Blogger, for instance,
currently doesn't), you can generate an free RSS feed with a
FeedBurner account, which will support enclosures. FeedBurner offers
a straightforward wizard to walk you through the process. Once you
have the FeedBurner feed created, you promote the link to the
FeedBurner feed and encourage people to subscribe.
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In each of these cases, the publication process is fairly similar. Upload
the MP3 to wherever you have Web space capable of storing files.
Make a blog entry just like you normally would, with a title, link, and
description. Link to the MP3 in the blog description and post your
entry.
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. I use
Movable Type for all my regular podcasting and blogging, but am
amazed at the simplicity of using Liberated Syndication. I created a
very basic site at the service to demonstrate the output.
Jake Ludington is the author of the best-selling guide Converting VHS
to DVD. He publishes audio and video tips at MediaBlab.com.
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Making a Podcast with Blogger and FeedBurner
Blogger is not our first choice for weblog-based podcasting. Movable
Type and Wordpress are better solutions for many podcasters,
because they offer better support for podcasting, more power and
greater flexibility.
Nevertheless, many podcasters are finding Blogger to be a good
starting place to experiment with podcasting. Blogger is a free service,
and getting started is as easy as filling out some forms on the web.
Here's a quick guide to building a podcast with Blogger. You should be
able to set up a podcast using Blogger and FeedBurner in about the
time it takes for all the images on this page to finish loading!
This how-to assumes that you already have created your podcast MP3
files, and have them stored on a web server. Note that some screens
may look slightly different as Blogger updates their site.
Go to the Blogger home page (http://www.blogger.com/) and select
Create Your Blog Now:
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If you haven't signed up for Blogger before, you'll need to do so:
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That's the hardest part. If the Terms of Service part wore you out, now
is a good time to take a break.
Back already? OK - now it's time to name your podcast.
We called ours Snorkflum, because it sounds stupid and this is a
bogus test podcast anyway:
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Next, select a template. We selected Minima, because it reminded us a
little of The Matrix:
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Once you select continue, Blogger automagically creates your blog.
First it makes you wait, though:
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Don't you love their casual "warning - excitement ahead" sign?
As long as the Blogger servers don't crash, the Internets go down or
anything bad like that, you should get a nice confirmation screen:
This is another good time for a break. You just created your podcast
blog! How awesome is that?
Now you need to Start Posting...
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From the Dashboard page, click the New Post icon:
Add an entry. To add your MP3 file, create a text link, select it with the
link tool, and enter the URL for your MP3 file:
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When you are done, select Publish Post, and you should get a
confirmation page:
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Now check out the podcast blog that you've created. Snorkflum is
available at http://snorkflum.blogspot.com/:
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Now take a quick detour to Settings tab and select Basic. Give your
site a description. Forgetting to fill out the description is one of the
most common problems with Blogger feeds. Use the description field
to explain what your podcast is, entice people to listen, and provide
some keywords to make it easier for people to find. Save this and
republish your podcast for the changes to take effect.
Now it's time to create your podcast feed. Blogger only provides a
Atom newsfeed, and RSS 2.0 is the standard for podcasting. Your
Atom feed will be at your blog's address, plus "atom.xml", like this:
http://snorkflum.blogspot.com/atom.xml.
There is a free service, FeedBurner, that can be used to translate the
Blogger Atom feed into a RSS 2.0 fee.
Go to http://www.feedburner.com/, and enter your Blogger Atom feed
URL:
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Select Next. FeedBurner will retrieve your Blogger Atom feed and then
provide you with an options screen.
Select the SmartCast option, and make sure that the Feed Title and
FeedBurner URI (way down at the bottom of the page) are OK with
you:
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Select Next. You'll be prompted for a user id and password. Next, you
should get a confirmation/welcome page:
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Note your FeedBurner Burned URL. In this case,
it's http://feeds.feedburner.com/Snorkflum.
That's it - the podcast is ready to test with a Feed Validator. Go to
www.feedvalidator.org and paste in your FeedBurner URL:
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Your podcast should be ready to go. Test it your podcast feed with
a podcasting client and get podcasting!
Submitting a Podcast it iTunes
iTunes 4.9 Upgrade with Podcasting Suppport
by T. L. Pakii Pierce at 06:28PM (EDT) on June 28, 2005 | Permanent
Link | Cosmos
Via Micropersuasion, iTunes now has support for Podcasts. At the time
of this writing, iTunes 4.8.x doesn't detect the new 4.9.x update yet if
you go to the Check For iTunes Updates from the Help menu in iTunes.
You can go here to download this latest version of iTunes software.
What's new in iTunes 4.9
With iTunes 4.9, you can now browse and subscribe to podcasts from
within the iTunes Music Store. Podcasts are frequently updated radio-
style shows downloadable over the Internet. You can also transfer
podcasts to iPod, for listening on the go.
Getting Starting with iTunes Podcasts
One of the first things you will notice after you
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upgrade to iTunes 4.9 is that in the Sources list on the left side of the
iTunes software (which manages and organizes your music) contains a
new source for podcasts. These sources are like visual folders that
identify where your audio files are, where they are sourced from and
how you have them organized as playlists.
Very helpful for managing your must and very easy to use as well as
being intuitive. For example, in the image to the right you will also see
Radio and Music Store. This is and easy way that iTunes allows you to
access thousands of audio files through the iTunes music store or
access many Internet Radio stations for streaming radio broadcasts
with iTunes.
How Podcasts with iTunes 4.9 Works
To access Podcasts through iTunes you select the podcasts Source and
you will see an empty playlist. At the bottom of iTunes, you will see
the option Podcast Directory. Simply press that option with your
mouse pointer and you will be taken to the iTunes Podcast Directory.
Figure 2. iTunes Podcast Directory
From the iTunes Podcast Directory you have quick access to the most
popular podcasts but you can drill down into categories for a wider
selection as well. I like movies and movie reviews so I selected Movies
& Television from the iTunes Podcast Directory and iTunes now
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presents the full list of available podcasts within that category as seen
in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3. iTunes Movies & Television Category
I selected the Reel Reviews podcast (see Figure 4) and downloaded
from iTunes this review Swimming With Sharks. Also, Micheal who
publishes this blog and podcast has an excellent write up on setting up
your own podcast. You should check that out.
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Figure 4. Selecting and Confirming Podcast Subscription
Figure 5. Downloading Podcast into iTunes
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Publishing Your Podcast to iTunes
Publishing your podcast to iTunes is as simple as submitting your
podcast RSS feed link to the iTunes directory. You'll need to have a
iTunes account (free) in order to do so as you will asked for your
iTunes login credentials.
All you do is click the Publish A Podcast link from the main Podcast
Directory page in iTunes located in the upper left of the page (see
Figure 2 above) and you will be stepped through the process easily.
See the following figures 6 and 7 below.
Figure 6. Submit Your Podcast Feed URL
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Figure 7. Confirm Settings, then Publish
Once you confirm settings you then click the publish button and you
get a confirmation page informing you that your podcast will be
reviewed before being available in the iTunes podcast directory.
The podcast settings in iTunes are pretty straight forward. You can set
iTunes to check for newly published podcasts that you are subscribed
to at "every hour", "every day", "every week", or "manually". You can
then tell itunes how to handle your downloads when new podcasts are
detected. You can "download all" new episodes, "download the most
recent one", or have iTunes "do nothing". Lastly, there is a retention
setting where you can tell iTunes to keep episodes based on "all", "all
unplayed", "most recent" or "last (from last 2 to 10 episodes)".
This is another great leverage opportunity for publishers. Just like
Yahoo going to an RSS centric directory with My Yahoo, publishers
benefit from the marketing and education that Yahoo is doing to
increase exposure and usage of RSS for custom news. With hundreds
of thousands of My Yahoo users, you only have to place your RSS feed
in My Yahoo and you enjoy the benefit of Yahoo's promo efforts.
ITunes presents a similar opportunity. ITunes is one of the top digital
downloads stops on the Internet today if not the top download site.
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With their 4.9 release they are promoting podcasts to their active user
base. That could result in exponential exposure for you and
exponential grown in subscribers to your podcast by submitting your
podcast feed to the iTunes directory while letting iTunes take care of
the promo efforts for generating interest in their podcast directory.
Submitting your podcast is free by the way.
iTunes, I think, is especially powerful to podcasters because as a user
of iTunes and an iPod, I think iTunes is very good at promoting new
features and generating interest in browsing and in buying downloads.
It isn't just the brand as much as I think that they provide a buying
and user experience that is second to none. Once you start using
iTunes for music downloads it really changes the way you purchase
and consume music. Now that they have added podcasting and have a
dedicated podcast directory, it will be interesting to see how podcast
publishers benefit from being a part of the iTunes directory and how
that exposure measures up against other podcast directories available
in terms of increasing exposure and getting subscribers.
It is being projected that Apple will ship more than 35 million Apple
iPods by the end of 2005. The iPod is driving significant business in
other areas for Apple to include iTunes downloads and seamless
integration between iTunes and iPods. The latest statisic I was able to
find with a quick Google search was that iTunes had over 150 million
downloads at some point in 2004. These numbers certainly present a
compelling case for submitting your podcast feed to the iTunes
directory.
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iTunes RSS Tags
iTunes uses RSS 2.0 with some additional tags. When using the iTunes
tags, you must add a namespace declaration in your feed xml, like
this:
Please use UTF-8 encoding for your feed. Other encodings are not
guaranteed to work in iTunes.
All values should be plain text (no markup or HTML). Values are
limited to 255 characters, except for which can be
up to 4000 characters. Whitespace in values is significant, i.e. it will
show in iTunes, so don’t add leading or trailing whitespace to your
values.
Here is a table showing which tags apply to the channel (podcast) as a
whole and which tags apply to individual items (episodes), along with
where the tag contents appear in iTunes:
where content appears in
xml tag channel item
iTunes
Y Y Name column
website link and arrow in Name
Y
column
Y in the iTunes Music Store
Y Release Date column
Y Artist column
prevent an episode or podcast
Y Y
from appearing
Category column and in iTunes
Y Y
Music Store Browse
Y Time column
parental advisory graphic in Name
Y Y
column
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Y Y not visible but can be searched
Y not visible, used for contact only
Y Y Description column
when ⓘ (circled i) in Description
Y Y
column is clicked
Details for tags used by iTunes
The file extension of the url attribute of this tag is used to determine if
an item should appear in the Podcast directory. Supported extensions
include "m4a", "mp3", "mov", "mp4", and "pdf".
Every should have a globally unique identifier that never
changes. When you add episodes to your feed, guids are compared in
case sensitive fashion to determine which episodes are new. If you
omit the guid for an episode, the episode url will be used instead.
The contents of this tag is shown in the Artist column in iTunes.
Use this inside an element to prevent that episode from
appearing in the iTunes Podcast directory. Use this inside a
element to prevent the entire podcast from appearing in the iTunes
Podcast directory.
When browsing Podcasts in the iTunes Music Store, Categories are
shown in the 2nd column and Subcategories are shown in the 3rd
column. Not all Categories have Subcategories.
Use a top level to specify the browse category, and
a nested to specify the browse subcategory.
Choose from the existing categories and subcategories on the iTunes
Music Store.
If a nested is specified, iTunes will show it in the
Category column, otherwise iTunes will show the top level
in the Category column.
The contents of this tag is shown in the Time column in iTunes.
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The tag can be formatted HH:MM:SS, H:MM:SS, MM:SS, or M:SS (H =
hours, M = minutes, S = seconds)
This tag should be used to indicate whether or not your podcast
contains explicit material.
The two values for this tag are “yes” and “no”.
If you populate this tag with "yes", a parental advisory graphic will
appear next to your podcast artwork on the iTunes Music Store, and in
the Name column in iTunes.
This tag allows users to search on text keywords.
Use spaces to separate keywords.
This tag specifies the artwork for your podcast. Put the url to the
image in the href attribute.
iTunes prefers square images that are at least 300 x 300 pixels, which
is different than what is specified for the standard RSS image tag.
Hence we have a custom tag.
iTunes supports images in JPEG and PNG formats. The url must end in
“.jpg” or “.png”.
This tag contains information that will be used to contact the owner of
the podcast for communication specifically about their podcast. It will
not be publicly displayed.
Put the email address of the owner in a nested
element.
Put the name of the owner in a nested element.
The contents of this tag is shown in the Description column in iTunes,
as such it looks best if it is only a few words long.
The contents of this tag is shown in a separate window that appears
when the ⓘ (circled i) in the Description column is clicked. It also
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appears on the iTunes Music Store page for your podcast. This field
can be up to 4000 characters.
Sample RSS 2.0 feed that includes the iTunes tags
All About Everything
John Doe
http://example.com/podcasts/everything/index.html
A show about everything
All About Everything is a show about everything.
Each week we dive into any subject known to man and talk about it as
much as we can. Look for our Podcast in the iTunes Music
Store
en-us
℗ & © 2005 John Doe &
Family
John Doe
john.doe@example.com
Shake Shake Shake Your Spices
John Doe
A short primer on table spices
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This week we talk about salt and pepper
shakers, comparing and contrasting pour rates, construction materials,
and overall aesthetics. Come and join the party!
http://example.com/podcasts/archive/aae20050615.m4a
Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:00:00 GMT
7:04
salt pepper shaker exciting
Socket Wrench Shootout
Jane Doe
Comparing socket wrenches is fun!
This week we talk about metric vs. old english
socket wrenches. Which one is better? Do you really need both? Get all
of your answers here.
http://example.com/podcasts/archive/aae20050608.mp3
Wed, 8 Jun 2005 19:00:00 GMT
4:34
metric socket wrenches tool
Red, Whine, & Blue
Various
Red + Blue != Purple
This week we talk about surviving in a Red state
if you're a Blue person. Or vice versa.
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http://example.com/podcasts/archive/aae20050601.mp3
Wed, 1 Jun 2005 19:00:00 GMT
3:59
politics red blue state
Common Mistakes
• Using a date or time format for that doesn't conform to
RFC 2822
The date must be "day-of-week, day month year".
The time must be in 24 hour format (no AM or PM) and must include
the time zone offset.
7/6/2005 1:00:00 PM
Wed, 6 Jul 2005 13:00:00 PDT
Wed, 6 Jul 2005 13:00:00 -0700
• Forgetting to escape ampersands
Food & Wine
Food & Wine
• Using HTML named character entities
© 2005 John Doe
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© 2005 John Doe
Unlike HTML, XML supports only five "named character entities":
character name xml
& ampersand &
greater-than sign >
' apostrophe '
" quotation "
The five characters above are the only characters that require
escaping in XML. All other characters can be entered directly in an
editor that supports UTF-8. You can also use numeric character
references that specify the Unicode for the character, for example
character name xml
© copyright sign ©
℗ sound recording copyright ℗
™ trade mark sign ™
For further reference see XML Character and Entity References
EXAMPLE OF HOW TO USE A PODCAST…
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SF author uses podcast as novel publishing method
By Peter Cohen pcohen@maccentral.com
Author Scott Sigler is using podcasting as a novel approach (pardon
the pun) to get people to know about his new book, EarthCore. There's
no charge to download the podcasts, and Sigler plans to release the
entire book in serial form on a weekly basis.
Described as "a cross between episodic modern-action fare like '24'
and classic sci-fi movies like Predator and Starship Troopers,"
"EarthCore" tells the story of brash young executive Connell Kirkland,
on a mission to make his company (the EarthCore of the book's title)
billions by unearthing the largest platinum deposit ever discovered.
"But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they
burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ...
and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand
why this treasure has never been unearthed," reads a synopsis posted
to the novel's Web site. The podcasts have been performed by Sigler
himself.
Podcasting is a term coined to describe making audio files available for
download through RSS feeds. Podcasting is being used as a way to
distribute weblogs, radio broadcasts and other content. You can read
more about it in our feature Podcasting: Hear What the Buzz is About.
This is not EarthCore's first attempt at publication. In 2001, AOL/Time
Warner's iPublish imprint offered it as an e-book, where it hit the top
spot on Barnes & Noble's Web site. It was due out for a paperback
release in 2002, but iPublish folded before that could happen. Sigler
eventually regained the rights to his novel but has been unable to get
it published again, and is using podcasting as a means of getting into
the hands of more readers -- or more specifically, listeners.
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Sigler hopes that he can attract 5,000 subscribers to the book. That
will, he hopes, "... demonstrate the power of Podcasting and generate
attention from publishers."
Sigler kicked off the release of EarthCore with a prologue, which you
can download from the EarthCore Web site now. He will release further
chapters as weekly podcasts.
He advises potential listeners that EarthCore isn't for tender ears -- it
"runs the gammut (sic) of politically incorrect topics, from language to
sex to raw violence."
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MARKETING BRAINSTORM
What business models can you use with your new podcast
recording?
1.) Audio CD (user pays shipping)
2.) Audio CD (sell CD)
3.) Audio CD (package with transcripts and/or workbook)
4.) Audio CD (bundle with existing product
5.) Podcast (giveaway)
6.) Podcast (giveaway part – promote full version)
7.) Podcast (create membership site)
8.) Podcast (use to enhance blog or website copy)
How can you create a podcast?
1.)Just talk about a subject (at least prepare an outline first)
2.)Read your articles
3.)Read your e-books (audio – by chapters)
4.)Read your blog post
5.)Read your sales copy
6.)Read other people’s articles
7.)Record/edit interviews with experts
What can you package with your podcast to enhance the
perceived value?
1.)Create transcripts of your recording
2.)Create a ‘workbook’ to go with your recording
3.)Collect articles on the subject of your recording and publish a
report
NOTE: Be sure to create a ‘resource’ page and mention it at the
beginning and end of your recording (just like you would with
an article, ebook, etc.)
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APPENDIX: AUDACITY USER MANUAL
Tutorial - I.Basics
Part 1 - Digital Audio - Part 1
What is sound?
Sounds are pressure waves of air. If there wasn't any air, we
wouldn't be able to hear sounds. There's no sound in space.
We hear sounds because our ears are sensitive to these pressure
waves. Perhaps the easiest type of sound wave to understand is a
short, sudden event like a clap. When you clap your hands, the air
that was between your hands is pushed aside. This increases the air
pressure in the space near your hands, because more air molecules
are temporarily compressed into less space. The high pressure
pushes the air molecules outwards in all directions at the speed of
sound, which is about 340 meters per second. When the pressure
wave reaches your ear, it pushes on your eardrum slightly, causing
you to hear the clap.
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A hand clap is a short event that causes a single pressure wave that
quickly dies out. The image above shows the waveform for a typical
hand clap. In the waveform, the horizontal axis represents time, and
the vertical axis is for pressure. The initial high pressure is followed
by low pressure, but the oscillation quickly dies out.
The other common type of sound wave is a periodic wave. When you
ring a bell, after the initial strike (which is a little like a hand clap),
the sound comes from the vibration of the bell. While the bell is still
ringing, it vibrates at a particular frequency, depending on the size
and shape of the bell, and this causes the nearby air to vibrate with
the same frequency. This causes pressure waves of air to travel
outwards from the bell, again at the speed of sound. Pressure waves
from continuous vibration look more like this:
How is sound recorded?
A microphone consists of a small membrane that is free to vibrate,
along with a mechanism that translates movements of the
membrane into electrical signals. (The exact electrical mechanism
varies depending on the type of microphone.) So acoustical waves
are translated into electrical waves by the microphone. Typically,
higher pressure corresponds to higher voltage, and vice versa.
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A tape recorder translates the waveform yet again - this time from
an electrical signal on a wire, to a magnetic signal on a tape. When
you play a tape, the process gets performed in reverse, with the
magnetic signal transforming into an electrical signal, and the
electrical signal causing a speaker to vibrate, usually using an
electromagnet.
How is sound recorded digitally ?
Recording onto a tape is an example of analog recording. Audacity
deals with digital recordings - recordings that have been sampled so
that they can be used by a digital computer, like the one you're
using now. Digital recording has a lot of benefits over analog
recording. Digital files can be copied as many times as you want,
with no loss in quality, and they can be burned to an audio CD or
shared via the Internet. Digital audio files can also be edited much
more easily than analog tapes.
The main device used in digital recording is a Analog-to-Digital
Converter (ADC). The ADC captures a snapshot of the electric
voltage on an audio line and represents it as a digital number that
can be sent to a computer. By capturing the voltage thousands of
times per second, you can get a very good approximation to the
original audio signal:
Each dot in the figure above represents one audio sample. There are
two factors that determine the quality of a digital recording:
• Sample rate: The rate at which the samples are captured or
played back, measured in Hertz (Hz), or samples per second. An
audio CD has a sample rate of 44,100 Hz, often written as 44
KHz for short. This is also the default sample rate that Audacity
uses, because audio CDs are so prevalent.
• Sample format or sample size: Essentially this is the number
of digits in the digital representation of each sample. Think of
the sample rate as the horizontal precision of the digital
waveform, and the sample format as the vertical precision. An
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audio CD has a precision of 16 bits, which corresponds to about
5 decimal digits.
Higher sampling rates allow a digital recording to accurately record
higher frequencies of sound. The sampling rate should be at least
twice the highest frequency you want to represent. Humans can't
hear frequencies above about 20,000 Hz, so 44,100 Hz was chosen
as the rate for audio CDs to just include all human frequencies.
Sample rates of 96 and 192 KHz are starting to become more
common, particularly in DVD-Audio, but many people honestly can't
hear the difference.
Higher sample sizes allow for more dynamic range - louder louds and
softer softs. If you are familiar with the decibel (dB) scale, the
dynamic range on an audio CD is theoretically about 90 dB, but
realistically signals that are -24 dB or more in volume are greatly
reduced in quality. Audacity supports two additional sample sizes:
24-bit, which is commonly used in digital recording, and 32-bit float,
which has almost infinite dynamic range, and only takes up twice as
much storage as 16-bit samples.
Playback of digital audio uses a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC).
This takes the sample and sets a certain voltage on the analog
outputs to recreate the signal, that the Analog-to-Digital Converter
originally took to create the sample. The DAC does this as faithfully
as possible and the first CD players did only that, which didn't sound
good at all. Nowadays DACs use Oversampling to smooth out the
audio signal. The quality of the filters in the DAC also contribute to
the quality of the recreated analog audio signal. The filter is part of a
multitude of stages that make up a DAC.
How does audio get digitized on your computer?
Your computer has a soundcard - it could be a separate card, like a
SoundBlaster, or it could be built-in to your computer. Either way,
your soundcard comes with an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) for
recording, and a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) for playing audio.
Your operating system (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.) talks to the
sound card to actually handle the recording and playback, and
Audacity talks to your operating system so that you can capture
sounds to a file, edit them, and mix multiple tracks while playing.
Standard file formats for PCM audio
There are two main types of audio files on a computer:
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• PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation. This is just a fancy name
for the technique described above, where each number in the
digital audio file represents exactly one sample in the waveform.
Common examples of PCM files are WAV files, AIFF files, and
Sound Designer II files. Audacity supports WAV, AIFF, and
many other PCM files.
• The other type is compressed files. Earlier formats used
logarithmic encodings to squeeze more dynamic range out of
fewer bits for each sample, like the u-law or a-law encoding in
the Sun AU format. Modern compressed audio files use
sophisticated psychoacoustics algorithms to represent the
essential frequencies of the audio signal in far less space.
Examples include MP3 (MPEG I, layer 3), Ogg Vorbis, and
WMA (Windows Media Audio). Audacity supports MP3 and Ogg
Vorbis, but not the proprietary WMA format.
For details on the audio formats Audacity can import from and export
to, please check out the Fileformats page of this documentation.
Please remember that MP3 does not store uncompressed PCM audio
data. When you create an MP3 file, you are deliberately losing some
quality in order to use less disk space.
Tutorial - I.Basics
Part 2 - Rules of Audacity - Part 2
If you'd like to get straight playing an imported file or recording
something, you can skip this section and come back later.
Whenever you work with Audacity, there are some rules you should
remember:
1. One clip per track
A clip is simply a piece of audio material. Imported, recorded, split or
duplicated from another track, one track can only carry one piece of
audio at a time. You can extend it by pasting material or inserting
silence in to it, or cut a piece away, but it will always be one
continuous piece of audio.
2. Audacity always records to a new track
This new track is opened at the bottom. You'll have to zoom out and
then resize the track view of the bottom most track to see what is
recorded. You can actually use the window sliders at the bottom and
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right to do this after starting to record, but this way no performance
will be lost to the windowing system.
I suggest hitting CTRL+F to get an overview of the entire project as
well. This only affects the horizontal zoom by the way(left-right
zoom). There is no way to zoom out vertically without using the
mouse yet.
3. Edit/Duplicate will not create a new audio file
This may not seem a big deal, but it is if you're editing a large live
recording.
What Audacity does is reference the original audio material until you
actually perform some kind of edit on it, such as cutting a piece
away, or using any effect on it. One thing to remember is the UNDO
function. You can undo/redo stuff as many times as you like, and
yes, even after you have saved your project.
You may ask what happens if you do, for example, cut away a piece
or mark off a 30 minute piece and split it to a new track. It only
writes changed data to disk. Since Audacity works with chunk of
audio data of around one megabyte in size, this happens quite fast.
Rest assured that the only big waiting period might be the importing
of large audio files.
Tutorial - I.Basics
Part 3 - Setup, Audio Import and Playback - Part 3
1. Create a new project
This is very important!
Audacity writes all the changed and recorded audio to a directory
called Projectname_data, which is located right where you saved
the project file itself.
Thus, select and choose a location and
filename for your project.
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Please note that when you startup Audacity fresh, only the "Save
As..." menu option is available.
To save your project later on, you can also use the keyboard
shortcut : CTRL+S
2. Check the Preferences
Again, this is very important!
Press CTRL+P or go to ... ...then check if the right output is selected
...set the sample rate of your ...and here's a crucial scree
choice... (44.1 kHz is the default)
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The File Formats settings need discussing at this point.
When importing uncompressed audio, there are two ways to do
it. "Make a copy of the original before editing" means, that Audacity
actually copies the entire audio file that you imported in to its project
data directory and in the process sets up the little overview graphics,
whose descriptions get stored in the project data directory too.
The second way is to use the original imported audio. You may think
we're actually editing this file, but no we aren't. In fact, Audacity will
now read the imported file once and simply create the graphics
overviews for them in to the data directory, and subsequently write
to disk all the audio data that you change. The original file is only
used for playback. All audio that remains unchanged will be played
from the original file.
The advantage of choosing to make a copy of the original is
that you avoid trouble, should anything in the original file change.
For example, should you accidentally delete the original file, you're
lost.
You have to make up your mind before you start a project. Choose
to make a copy of all imported files, and you'll use more space on
your harddisk(s), but it will be easier to back up the project too,
because all files that have anything to do with your project will be in
the project data directory.
The Uncompressed Export Format can be set to WAV or AIFF for
now. Please check the fileformats page for further information on
export formats.
We'll ignore the Spectrogram settings for now. The Directories
setting can be ignored as well for now, because all it sets is the
directory to use for recordings, undo data and other stuff, if you
haven't yet saved your project. Since we already saved our project,
this setting is of no importance to us, though you may want to set it
properly later on.
3. Import an audio file
There are three ways to do this:
1. Simply drag and drop the audio file in to the Audacity window. (If
you're using Mac OS 9 or X, drag the audio file to the Audacity icon
instead...)
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2. Select Import Audio ... in the Project menu.
3. Use the keyboard shortcut : CTRL+I
Audacity can import WAV, AIFF, AU, IRCAM, MP3 and OGG files.
Please refer to the fileformats page for further reference on these
audio formats.
4. Playback
The imported file should now be displayed in an audio track. The
track will look a little like this, depending on what you imported :
Trackpanel and Waveform Overview of the imported Track
If you're not sure where to find audio material, simply rip some off a
CD, or in Windows, check the Media folder in the directory of your
Windows installation.
Now click on the green Play button at the top and you should
hear the file you have just imported.
Tutorial - I.Basics
Part 4 - Recording with Audacity - Part 4
1. Create a new project
Save an empty project. Or simply use the one from the previous
part. Remember, that if you don't save your project before you start
recording or importing, that all recordings, edit and other files will be
written to directory set in the Directories preferences.
2. Check the preferences
Make sure your playback and recording device are set. If you're
going to record a stereo signal, check the "Record in stereo"
checkbox in the Audio I/O preferences.
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When picking a device to record from, make sure you've set up all
the connections properly, such as plugging a microphone in to the
Mic Input, and any other device in to the Line In of your sound
card. Then check that the gain level knob(the amount by how much
the input should be amplified) of the mixer of your soundcard is set
right.
Since most soundcards can mix the inputs back in to the outputs, the
easiest way to test your microphone is to speak in to it while playing
with your soundcard mixer. The soundcard mixer is a software either
provided by the soundcard maker, or by the operating system you're
using. The Windows mixer is pretty straight forward, though some
soundcards bring their own along. The Mac's mixer is controlled via
the Sound Control Panel, and the Linux users probably have
heaploads of mixer applications at their disposal. Just make sure
they work before yelling at your screen that nothing works.
3. Hit Record
Click on the red Record button to begin recording.
to pause the recording. Press
Click on the blue Pause button
it again to continue.
to cease recording. The cursor
will return to its previous
Click on the yellow Stop button
position, before the recording
was started.
That's it. You can now play around with your recording and explore
the editing capabilities of Audacity. Remember that you can use the
Undo function almost without limits.
II.Editing for Beginners
Part 1 - Introduction - Part 1
Sound Editing in the "real world"
Sound editors clean up dialogue tracks, cut layers of special effects,
place sounds at certain times, create ambiance tracks by cutting out
unwanted stuff and mixing in interesting or necessary sounds. Music
production engineers may cut pieces of vocals away or shift them to
a another spot in a song.
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Editing is about cutting, placing, fading, cross-fading, shifting,
duplicating and adjusting the volume (also referred to as level) of
audio material. Mixing is a form of editing too of course.
Here is an example of what is done in sound editing during the
production of a television show or film. In the next part we will run
you through a few of those techniques in Audacity.
The Path of Sound in Film and TV Postproduction
Film and TV crews have at least two people present that take care of
recording sound during principal photography of a show. Principal
photography is usually shooting the scenes with actual live actors or
real backgrounds by the way.
Sound in Principal Photography
The first person is the boom pole operator. The boom pole is an
extendible stick with a microphone attached to it. This is used to
capture dialogue either during filming or not. When not filming, it
might be capturing off-scene dialogue or retakes of lines that the
actors flunked during actual film takes. The more expensive the
show is and the more time there is to do the work, the more people
will resort to looping those takes, which is recording those lines in a
sound studio environment instead of a film studio or location.
The second person is the sound mixer, who usually sits in a place
farther off from the shooting and records the sound captures by the
boom pole operator, either via cable or wireless devices to
tape,optical disks or hard drive.
This is the raw sound material of a show. It is called production
sound and the only desirable parts it usually contains are dialogue
and body sounds. In post production, depending on the complexity,
budget size and time, almost everything you hear except for the
dialogue and some body sounds, are added later during ...
Post Production
This is where most of the stuff we'll be describing for Audacity will
happen. You've got the recording. Now what ?
After the visual part of the show is cut, the first of which usually isn't
the final one, it is handed to the sound editor. In TV shows, you'll
usually have one or two people for this, for major film productions a
whole bunch more, for which tasks will be subdivided on a finer level.
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Raw sound - Cleanup time
No shows do without film edits and many have plenty of them.
Scenes may be shot with with one or more cameras and mics. Actors
might have flunked their lines and picking up shooting prior to the
mistake might be chosen or the entire sequence reshot. The film
editor may have chosen parts from different takes for the cut of the
scene. The action might be moving along at the wrong pace and the
film editor shortened or stretched parts of a scene.
The sound editor makes sure transitions between cuts are smooth.
He or she removes undesired sounds, such as breathers of the same
person that overlap from one film edit to the next.
Material is cut away that contains unwanted sounds, such as
creaking chair legs and sharp impacts of objects on tables and floors.
Some of these may require looping of dialogue in the studio, because
the noise may have been intolerable. Also, material may sometimes
be denoised. The most sophisticated methods remove the whirring of
the camera motors from takes. It is used as sparingly as possible
though.
It's always desirable to get the best possible sound from the start,
which is the recording stage.
Adding stuff - the really big deal
After this cleanup is complete, sounds are added.
The first is ambiance. Just close your eyes and listen the sound
around you. That's ambiance. Sophistication of ambiances rises with
budgets. From premixed to over a dozen tracks, you'll find it all in TV
shows and feature films. In any indoor scene with a lot of people in
the background, nobody except for the actors being filmed will
actually talk. That flurry of conversation is added later on.
Next comes foley. These are clothes rustling(body sounds), foot
steps and objects being handled. People that have the ultimate
edition of Terminator 2 will know that all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's
footsteps and rustle of his leather clothing were created by a five
foot woman. These people are usually called foley walkers or foley
artists.
The foley editor then cleans those sound, chooses the most fitting
takes and makes sure they all sync to the picture properly. The foley
mixer then does his/her thing.
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Next come effects. Foley are effects too, but they are a special
category and can best be described as live created studio effects.
Effects are usually more heavily edited and recorded from all kinds of
places. A lot of effects are created by layering sounds on top of each
other, changing their pitch and loudness, editing bits out and adding
others.
Many effects you'll hear are phone and door bells ringing, mobile
phone beeps, doors of houses and cars opening and closing, weapon
shots, slaps, car skids, machines of any kind, space ships flying
around, explosions, to name a few.
For example, a friend of mine and I created the sound of a small
wooden rowing boat hitting a larger wooden sailing ship and scraping
along its side by pitching down a knock on a large wooden door for
the impact of the rowing boat and ship, and pitching down the sound
of a skateboard rolling and scraping along a halfpipe.
The techniques required to properly handle sounds like these are
used in all kinds of productions. Audio books, music production,
sound effects creation ... you name it.
For more on this subject, read the Audio Post FAQ at
www.filmsound.org.
So let's jump in to the fray and look at how you can handle your
sounds in Audacity.
II.Editing for Beginners
Part 2 - Cut, Copy and Paste - Part 2
From here on you may encounter funny letter combinations in boxes
like this.
These are keyboard shortcuts to the functions presented to you in
the text. These can be either single keys (e.g. SPACE) or
combinations that need to be held down at the same
time(e.g.CTRL+C). You can usually create your own. Check out the
this page for more details.
The most basic editing step is cut and paste. It's what people did
with tape and it's easy with data in computers, so take a look at
these basic operations, referred to as Cut, Copy and Paste. The
next page will handle Silence, Duplicate and Split. You may also
want to check out the reference section, so you'll know where to find
all the tools and how to resize tracks for example.
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It is assumed that you have a project open and that at least one
track of audio material is present.
Let's take a look at this example of an Audacity window:
The View
The Audacity Window
As you can see by the graphics above, the time shift tool is
selected. It is used to move the entire audio clip around inside its
track.
The cursor (little blinking line across a track and the timeline) will
remain at its position, so effectively you'll be sliding your audio
material underneath the cursor.
Let's say we want to cut out that bit in the middle then. First we've
got to select it.
Making a selection
To select the part you wish to cut, copy or paste to, use the selection
tool . If it's not activated, do so now by clicking on it in the
toolbar.
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Now press and hold the left mouse button while you drag the mouse
to mark an area.
This area is darker than the surrounding area of the clip. Note, that
even though you can mark an area larger than or extending beyond
the actual audio clip in the track, the operations will only work on the
actual clip. Playback however will work outside the clip.
Press the space bar to listen to the audio in the marked area.
To extend or contract your selection, hold down the SHIFT button
and click on the area you wish your selection to extend or contract
to.
If you click at a spot that is on the right hand side from the middle of
the current selection, you will set the right hand boundary of your
new selection.
Cutting the selection
Cut the selection by selecting "Cut" from the Edit or press
menu ... CTRL+X.
Before the cut After the cut
To undo this operation, select Undo in the Edit menu or press
CTRL+Z
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Copy will copy the selection to the clipboard.
You can then paste that data back in to any track by clicking where
you want this audio to be inserted and select Paste in the Edit menu,
or press CTRL+V.
Thus pasting is the opposite of cutting. You can also copy material,
make another selection with the mouse and then paste. This will
replace the selected material with the contents of the clipboard, no
matter how short or long either of them are.
During all operations of this kind, the bottom row of the screen will
display two things, namely the start time and the end time of your
selection. The display to the left if that called "Project rate:" and its
value, defaulting to 44100, can be changed by clicking on that
number and selecting another from the drop-down menu.
All files, no matter which will be played at that rate. Should the
sample rate of a track be different from the Project Rate, these
tracks will stutter at track sample rates set lower than the Project
Rate. Audacity will warn you , if an audio file is of a sample rate
different from the current Project Rate. Audacity will not change the
sample rate of any imported audio though.
II.Editing for Beginners
Part 3 - Silence, Duplicate and Split - Part 3
Silencing unwanted sources
This operation flattens the selection. It essentially is a cut operation
without deleting the selection completely. After all, if you cut a
second away, nothing remains. Using the Silence operation will still
leave you with a flatlined area.
When silencing parts between vocal lines, please keep in mind that a
sudden drop in background ambiance can have an bad effect, so at
the very least fade the area around the silenced part, to minimize
that effect. Rules to start with are, fade in quickly and fade out
slowly.
Alternately, use the envelope tool to lower the volume in that area.
That way, you can comfortably change it later.
Keyboard Shortcut : CTRL+L
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Duplicate
The selected area gets copied, a new track is created and the copied
material is pasted in to that new track at the same point in the
timeline.
To illustrate, here's the image from the menu reference:
The benefits of a duplicate are many. One of these is
experimentation with effects.
Some of you may say "I can do that with the original track too". But
you can't change the volume of your effect and original audio
separately. If you put some Reverb on to your audio, you can only
lower that processed audio in volume later on. If you duplicate the
audio first and use the reverb on that(with 100% reverb and 0%
original signal), you can freely change the volume for both the
original and reverb signal.
Also, you can do weird and wonderful things to your duplicates to
create special effects. You'll have two pieces of the same audio to
work with. Silence parts, reverb another, phase a third, filter another
and see how that sounds. It is so easy to duplicate a piece of audio
and do weird things to it, so try it. Combining sounds produces
magic.
A special note on performance :
The new piece of audio isn't actually copied on the hard disk.
Audacity will still play from the original audio file(s) until you change
a piece of it.
Keyboard Shortcut : CTRL+D
Split
This performs the same as Duplicate, but it also silences the selected
material, after copying it to a new track. Again, here's the illustration
from the menu reference:
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There are plenty of good uses for this function, but I'm not going to
tell you about them here. You'll have to go to the next part for the
meat of this tutorial.
Keyboard Shortcut : CTRL+Y
II.Editing for Beginners
Part 4 - Splitting and Submixes - Part 4
Moving bits of an Audio track
In all projects you'll be pushing your audio around at some point.
Otherwise, what are you doing here ?
There are techniques, easily achievable with Audacity, to cover
almost any kind shifting you'd want to do. In our example, we have
a small sentence of speech, where the speaker made a pause after
the first word. We'd like to eliminate that pause.
The part after the pause is selected
Select
Then the split function is used to pop the selected audio to a new
track
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Split
The Time Shift Tool is selected and the audio on the lower track is
moved left.
Move Audio and select for fading
Now, it's a good idea to listen to Two thirds, and not the whole
the two tracks individually for overlapping audio, are chosen to
breathing sounds for example. keep the level of audio constant.
If the whole overlapping parts
Use the solo button of the tracks were faded, you would get a level
for this. Then listen them both in drop of 3dB in the middle of
the mix. Again, you can use the those fades.
solo buttons for this.
You can check this out by taking
If you have a lot of other tracks a piece of music, duplicating it,
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playing at the same time, press and then fading the tracks, one
the solo buttons on both tracks. fading out, the second fading in.
There should be no over lapping In the middle of those fades, the
or cut-off breathing sounds. level of the mix will drop audibly.
Do a fade over last two thirds for
When you're satisfied, fade out the fade out and first two thirds
the last two thirds of the for the fade in, and you probably
overlapping upper part of the won't notice any change in level.
track, and fade in the first two
thirds of the lower overlapping Two thirds is a guideline, but not
audio. the law, so you may have to
experiment a little.
Mixing it back together again
!!!Remember!!!
The final mix is done with the Export as WAV function in the File
Menu. Here we'll be looking at creating submixes with the Quick Mix
function.
You've done a lot of edits and now have dozens of little tracks with
little bits and pieces here and there. It might look like this:
Bits and Pieces spread all over the screen
First four tracks selected for quick mixing
We can use the Quick Mix function in the Project menu to bring down
the number of tracks. However, you don't need to mix everything in
to one new track.
Select the tracks you want to mix together by SHIFT+click 'ing on
the track panels. In the graphics above, the first four tracks are
selected.
Then select Quick Mix. In this example I have quick mixed
everything down to two tracks :
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Bits and Pieces, quick mixed down to two tracks
And thus, two submixes were created. Remember though, that we
did this for convenience of not having to organize a large number or
tracks.
If you still want to shift bits around later on, you should make sure
that the parts being mixed to a track do not overlap, so you can
split it away and edit it again later.
Tutorial - III.Common Editing Tasks
Part 1 - Quickies - Part 1
This page will give you an idea of some of the possible things you
can do with Audacity and walk you through the process.
Splitting an MP3 into two separate Recording harmonies with yourself
files
• Open the Preferences, click
(Before you try to export MP3 on the Audio I/O tab, and
files, read the section on check the box marked "Play
Exporting MP3 Files for some other tracks while recording
important information on steps new one".
you need to do first.)
• Click the Record button.
• Open the MP3 file. Record yourself singing. Click
Stop.
• Select the part of it that you
want to be the first file. • Click the Record button
Listen to it by clicking the again. The first track you
Play button. recorded will play, but
Audacity will also record a
• While this part is selected, new track at the same time,
choose Export Selection as allowing you to sing harmony
MP3... from the File menu. with yourself.
• Now select the part you want • When you play the two tracks
to be the other song and
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Export again. you recorded together, they
probably won't be
Mixing background music with a synchronized. This is normal
voiceover and is not the fault of
Audacity makes it very easy to Audacity. To fix it, you will
mix two different sounds need to grab the Time Shift
together. tool and slide one of the
tracks around until it sounds
• Open one sound (for right.
example, the background
music). Recording two sound sources on
separate tracks
• Select Import Audio... from
the Project menu and open • Open the Preferences, click
the other sound (for on the Audio I/O tab, and
example, the voiceover). make sure "Record in Stereo"
is checked.
• Listen to your sound using
the Play button. Audacity • Connect one sound source to
automatically mixes them the left channel of your
together. soundcard and the other on
the right. If you don't have
• Choose the Time Shift tool an external mixer with a pan
and adjust the position of control, use a stereo/mono
one track or the other until splitter cable.
they're synchronized the way
you want them. You can even • Record your stereo track.
move tracks around while • On the button with the track
they're playing. name is a drop-down menu.
• If you hear clipping which Select "Split Stereo Track"
wasn't present in either of from this menu.
the original files, it means • Use the drop down menu
that the combined volume of again to change each track to
the two tracks is too loud. mono.
Select one or both of the
tracks and then use the • To make a panned stereo
Amplify... effect to reduce track out of each new mono
the volumes until you don't track, select one track and
hear clipping anymore. choose Duplicate from the
Edit menu. Reduce the level
• Export as a WAV or MP3 file. of one channel (using a
negative value under Amplify
in the Effect menu.) Then
choose Make Stereo Track
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from the drop-down menu on
the first track.
• Repeat as necessary for
further tracks (see Recording
harmonies with yourself
above). If mastering from
tape, a click recorded across
all tracks will help you
synchronize them in
Audacity.
Tutorial - III.Common Editing Tasks
Part 2 - Editing Vocal Tracks - Part 2
The Situation
You have: You can combine three ways
of handling this:
Vocals, Speech or Wallas (fx
made with voices) 1. Silence stuff you don't want.
You want to: 2. Substitute it with,
• remove inappropriate o a piece of ambiance to
breathers, coughing, bad prevent a sudden hole
takes, parts you didn't like in the sound texture
and bad noises
o more fitting breather,
• use only the good parts of that works better, if
takes you're cutting a
breather away.
• construct sequences from
parts of different takes 3. Use the envelope tool to
create volume automation to
pull down those parts, so
they won't sound as loud in
the end.
When do I use what ?
The first option is a tool, but is Continuous sound is the key in
rarely used by itself. those cases and having the
ambiance, even if it's just a bit of
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In audio books, radio interviews quiet dark noise, drop away in
and sometimes in dialog for a many parts by silencing them
film, the vocal tracks will stand isn't going to sound as good as
alone in many parts of your keeping a steady sound texture.
project.
Therefore filling those holes with
Therefore the second option is material on another track and
general practice. Many times, the fading the edges to make it all
third option is used as sound continuous is the preferred
well(envelope tool). The holes way to do it.
you create with it are easier to
control and change at later times, There are situations, such as
but still need to be filled up with vocals in a song, that you'd like
replacement material. to sound as clean as possible.
When using the envelope tool, The best way is to have a very
replacement material is usually quiet recording room or location.
overlayed by placing the filler The second best way is to use
material on another track right at volume automation to get rid of
the area in the timeline as the any unwanted stuff. It allows you
hole is. For this reason only to change or take back what you
silence unwanted audio if it's too did after you have made those
obtrusive. changes to the volume curve with
Bad takes are of course not the envelope tool.
usable, so usually you'll have to With volume automation you can
cut that stuff away. mute sections of the audio
Just remember, that cut and without actually making any edits
delete(cut without copying to the to the audio data.
clipboard) work like cutting
tape away and sticking the
remaining pieces together. If
you're doing things that require
critical timing, you need to keep
this in mind. Use the Silence
function instead.
The Three Options - a quick How To
Silencing
o Select an unwanted piece of audio.
o Listen to it a couple of times, adjust your selection if necessary,
and listen again.
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o Select Silence from the edit menu or hit CTRL+L on your
keyboard.
o Fade the edges of the audio beyond your selection to smooth it
out.
o Listen to it. If it doesn't sound good, hit Undo or press CTRL+Z
on your keyboard, and try again fading those edges.
o Repeat this procedure for every part you don't want in your
audio.
Substitution
1.) Silence all unwanted bits as described in the section above.
Substitution expands and improves that option. Be sure to only
silence the bits you don't want and don't forget to fade the
edges around the silenced material. Then come back here.
2.) Now that you've silenced all unwanted, create a new audio track.
3.) Now find a piece of audio that'll work as a substitute for those
deleted parts. This is usually a piece of ambiance somewhere
else in the audio track. The speaker might have made a longer
pause, so look in those areas first. Select that bit and duplicate
it.
4.) Using the time shift tool, move the duplicated ambiance directly
beneath the first silenced part in your vocal track.
5.) Now select the entire track by clicking on track panel just
beneath the Solo buttons, and duplicate it. Mute that new track.
This will be our filler for the next gap in the original track.
6.) Turn your attention back to the first bit of ambience, that is now
right underneath the bit that we silenced in our vocal track.
Using the Envelope Tool
o Switch to the envelope tool
o Left-Click in to an area to create a new automation point or left-
click on an existing automation point and drag to change the
location of the point.
o The automation you have written remains bolted to the audio, so
it will move along with the audio when you use the timeshift
tool.
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o An example:
Using the envelope tool - an example
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