Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 17, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Who would have thought that the fastest-growing user group for podcasts is adults aged 35 and older and senior citizens? People who want to get information as quickly as possible. Podcasts have existed for about three years, but only iTunes simplified their use to such an extent that they have now become a mass phenomenon.
Thus, an entire section of the NAB conference program, the “Podcasting Summit,” was devoted to the topic. Under the martial title “Podcasting Boot Camp,” the series began as early as April 13 with a three-hour seminar by David Lawrence.
The speaker produces a three-hour radio show every day, which he sells to several stations. This show is available – without advertising – as a podcast. David also produces an approximately ten-minute audio podcast to promote the sale of his show.
He divides the production and publication of an audio podcast into five steps: Record, Encode, Tag, Post and Notify.
Lawrence uses a Crown CM 312 headset with microphone, a Sony MDR 7506 headset, a Symetrix 528 voice processor and a Sennheiser HHB FlashMic for recording. The special feature of this high-quality microphone is the ability to record directly onto the microphone via the built-in 1 GByte flash recorder. Other devices he recommends are the Beyer Dynamix MMX1 microphone and the Edirol UA25 and FW66 interfaces. For audio editing, he points to the free audio software “Audacity”.
For encoding, Lawrence recommends converting to MP3, even though AAC is more strongly supported by Apple and has better digital rights management functionality. For pure voice recording, 128 kbit/s is sufficient, but Lawrence himself works with 192 kbit/s. During tagging, the author provides his podcast with the description necessary for publication and adds metadata such as title and category.
For posting – publication – Lawrence strongly recommends blogging software, such as software from Yahoo or WordPress. But it must be blogging software, because this is the only way to manage the metadata meaningfully. In the final step, which Lawrence calls Notify, the task is to notify users: The special feature of podcasting is that the publisher provides the information, but the action takes place on the users’ side, who subscribe to podcasts and have them automatically downloaded to their iPod or iTunes software.
Further links:
- David Lawrence
