PreviewCast

Although PreviewCast is recorded as a very unprofessional podcast, we like to brag that we have very professional editing. After lots and lots of practice and experiments on past episodes, we have recently come together to refine our production process. Larry edited PreviewCast during our old 2005 season (he also does some occasional editing, see #001, #016SE, et al). However, Douglas now does most of the editing of the episodes. The purpose of this article is to show how we produce our podcast, provide some editing tips to prospective editors, and to recognize all of the software that makes this production possible. We don’t have much production value, but we DO have a lot of production!

Recording
The difficulty of recording podcasts with virtual hosts is the ability to keep a conversation going between the two AND record it in real time without delays. Obviously, the optimum setup for a podcast would be everyone in front of one computer and one microphone–then all you have to do is record direct into GarageBand! But because Larry and Douglas are 3000 miles apart (and other guests are usually far apart), we use Skype (free) to hold our audio conferences. The reason we use Skype is that it is quite reliable, the audio quality of ALL members is fairly decent and equal, and it is cross-platform compatible (we’ve had Windows users on our podcast occasionally). It also has much less audio delay than other conferencing platforms. To record the conference, we use Audio Hijack Pro (US$32) to record the audio that comes out of Skype.

Some things must be checked prior to us recording. First of all, one of the problems with Audio Hijack Pro is that it records ALL audio that comes out of Skype–including Skype sound effects–so whoever records needs to turn those off. Every participant needs to be wearing headphones. If they’re using speakers, then audio coming out of the speakers gets re-recorded by their microphone, and you get echo. Headphones allows their normal speakers to be muted, but they can still hear the conversation.

Lastly, you need to check to see that the sound levels of every member is close to equal, because Audio Hijack will only give you one track with everyone in it, so you can’t do individual editing of each person’s audio. However, after recording, we drop the audio files into The Levelator, which modifies the volume of the tracks to provide a consistent volume throughout.

Editing
Editing takes place in GarageBand ($79 as part of iLife or included on new Macs). The first thing that you need to do when you start a new Podcast Episode in GarageBand is adjust the tempo down to 40 beats per minute. Tempo means nothing for podcasts, but it adjust the maximum length you can have in GarageBand. An episode with 120 bpm has a max length of less than an hour, but an episode with 40 bpm will go as long as about 3 hours!
If you’ve used GarageBand, iMovie, or any other editing app that uses a timeline, putting together the podcast in GarageBand is fairly simple. Simply drag in from the Finder or the Media Browser all the tracks you need and arrange them in the right order. One setting you may be interested in is GarageBand’s ducking feature, which will lower the volume of certain tracks when other ones are making sound. On the track controls (left side), you’ll see an up arrow and a down arrow (when clicked, the up is yellow and the down is blue). Anytime an “up” track is making sound, all the “down” tracks will have their volume lowered. Changing this can affect the quality of your podcast–sometimes ducking is good, sometimes it’s not.

A number of podcasts come released as “Enhanced Podcasts”, and PreviewCast also releases an enhanced version (see our feed). The idea of an enhanced podcast is that it enables navigation within the podcast episode by placing chapter markers at various spots in the podcast. If you know that a certain topic was discussed at a certain time during an episode, chapter markers let you jump right to that spot in the ep by selecting from the Chapters menu in iTunes. Enhanced podcasts also allow you to have the album artwork change during the episode. So say we’re talking about a blended up iPod. You can see a picture of the blended up iPod in the album artwork while we’re talking about it. And, one of my favorite features, you can also stick a text link in the album artwork! Listeners can click the link and go to a website where they can learn more about what you’re talking about! Finally, in our experience, enhanced AAC files are much much smaller than MP3 versions of the same episode!
The downside of enhanced podcasts is that they only truly work in iTunes and the iPod. QuickTime can sort of play them too, but it kinda goofs up the enhanced stuff a bit. Other players can’t play them at all. For that reason, we also offer an MP3 version on our site that can be downloaded.

To set up an enhanced podcast, make sure that the Chapters track is enabled in GarageBand. Then, move the playhead to the spot where you want the marker to start, and in the editing pane (bottom), click Add Marker. From here, you can add an image, name, and/or URL to the marker. Note that markers do not necessarily indicate a new chapter unless the “Adds a Chapter” checkbox is enabled (and an yellow diamond appears over that new chapter). You can change the album artwork or the URL without creating a new chapter selector.

Compressing
Compressing the podcast gets the episode down into a file that can be distributed and downloaded by listeners. Again, PreviewCast releases an Enhanced AAC (.m4a) version and an MP3 (.mp3) version of our shows. In GarageBand, under the Share menu, choose Send Podcast to iTunes. This will properly package up the episode as an enhanced podcast and stick it in iTunes.
We usually generate the MP3 version using iTunes’ built in conversion tool. However, because we also release our MP3 version via a Flash Player on our website, we need to use certain settings.
Go to the iTunes preferences window. Choose Advanced, and click on the Importing tab. You want to import using MP3 Encoder (you can change this back later). Choose Custom setting, and set the following options:
Stereo Bit Rate: 160 kbps; No Variable Bit Encoding; Sample Rate: 22.050 kHz; Channels: Auto; Stereo Mode: Joint Stereo
Then, choose the podcast in iTunes, go to the Advanced menu, and choose Convert Selection to MP3. You can then right-click or Ctrl-click on one of the two podcast files in iTunes and select Show in Finder from the menu that pops up. Upload it to your website, publish, and you’re done!

PreviewCast uses the WordPress blogging system and the PodPress plugin to publish episodes. However, all you really need is a blog (like on Blogger or something). When your blog is setup, you can submit your feed to the free FeedBurner service (with their SmartCast setting enabled), and they will automatically insert all of the necessary tags in your feed for podcast enclosures, submission to iTunes, etc.

That pretty much sums it up. Of course, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave a comment on the site. We hope you enjoy listening to PreviewCast!

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