Podcasting Questions ..

Junior

I was just wondering about a few topics ..

Recording Equipment..

What do people use to record interviews etc ?
What are you using to edit the pieces together ?

Hosting...

Space isn't really a problem but hitting bandwidth limits are something i'd like to aware off, I suppose this is a massive catch 22, if the podcast isn't large and isn't popular then you won't have problems, but if it's vice versa which ya hope it is ..

So what sort of hosting should I be looking at .. Average size of podcasts ...

any other things to be aware of ? Or is it just a case of go out and do it ?

monkeyfudge

A small portable mini disc recorder and a decent microphone would probably be your best investment for doing inerviews.

And you can use Audacity to do your editing. It's a free sound editor that's actually pretty damn good.

dbspin

Hosting wise, I'd recommend either dreamhost or servage; both of whom offer loads of space and bandwidth for comparitively little money (and frankly if you're paying much less than 100 euro a year for ANY kind of hosting it'll probably be dodge). Both have drawbacks, dreamhost takes a day or two to respond to support requests; and servage only allow 11gigs of bandwidth a day (which is still a tonne). Check the links above for their specific bandwidth and space offers.

Basically mp3's at 128kbps will be about 1meg a minute, at 96kbps they'll be a little less and at 160kbps at little more. Taking 128kbps as an example, a 30minute podcast will be roughly 30megs, so multiply that by the number of listeners; say 100 max in the first week, and 1000 max in the first month, and you get the figure of 3000meg (3 gig) growing to 30000 (30gig) - per cast, multiply the later (quite optimistic listership figure) by the amount of casts you'll be doing, if one a week = 4 a month, gets you 120gig bandwidth a month. A figure which dreamhost just covers, and servage allows with ease. Again this is an opimistic figure, as without advertising or a write up on one of the big review sites, you're probably not going to get a huge number of listeners.

Obviously this is assuming that your podcast doesn't become the next diggnation or slashdot review, in which case you'll need dedicated hosting and sponsorship from someone who can pay your hosting bills - as advertising is unlikely to cut it.

Alternately, a company called blast is offering 'free' hosting, where they insert an advertisement into your cast. I haven't used this service so I can't comment on any aspect of it.

Chardee MacDennis

what about software for macs?

dbspin

Try..


iTunes

iPodder

iPodderX

monkeyfudge

Call_me_al wrote:

what about software for macs?

There is a version of Audacity for OS X as well.

Oh and the CMS that I use is LoudBlog.

Gordon

For fairly easy mac audio editing try a proggy called Spark ME. It's free afair.

dbspin

When you're compressing your mp3, if you're looking to go down to 96kbps to reduce filesize, I'd recommend googling the cracked 'Radium codec' mp3 encoder, and using a programme like CDEX (which will accept an external encoder) to encode your mp3.

Supposedly, the free lame encoder (which comes with cdex) is better, but I've found that at low bitrates (96kbps) and lower, it greatly adds to the amount of noisy on a recording (on a 'noisy' recording).

Gordon

How do I find the podcasts on iTunes?

podcom

Gordon wrote:

How do I find the podcasts on iTunes?

Just download iTunes 5.0 if you already haven't done so, click Music Store… now on the top left menu you will see podcasts click it… now you will see a vast array of podcasts you can now either subscribe to them or just grab one episode.

Gordon

Thanks for that, iTunes 4 here, I need more bandwidth methinks.