First video podcast

Published by in apple, podcasting, science on January 23rd, 2006

My son and I used iLife06 today to create our first video podcast. In the podcast he explains the background, procedures, results and conclusions from his 2005/2006 2nd grade science project he entitled, “Will Solar Energy Change Us?”

His presentation is available as both a video podcast and a special episode audio podcast (MP3 format) on his class podcast feed, the Mills Murfee Podcast. The podcast is 7 minutes and 31 seconds long.

The procedures for this were pretty straightforward using iMovie, Garageband and iWeb, included in the iLife06 suite of applications. Our steps were:

  1. Importing and editing the video in iMovie. (We used the new “theme” feature at the beginning for fun, which is similar to those available in iDVD)
  2. Adding chapter markers in iMovie.
  3. Exporting the iMovie to Garageband 3.
  4. Adding an opening music file as background music, and lowering the volume level once his presentation started.
  5. Exporting the file from Garageband as a podcast to iWeb.
  6. Editing the podcast description title and text, and the podcast entry information in iWeb.
  7. Publishing everything to .Mac using iWeb.

I was hoping iLife06 would have tools for creating an enhanced podcast straight from iMovie or Garageband, using the chapter marker images we had created, but it apparently won’t do that. Basically you can either create audio podcasts or video podcasts, but not enhanced podcasts. I thought about using the ChapterTool to create an enhanced podcast but it looked like too much trouble. From Garageband, you can choose SHARE – SEND SONG TO iTUNES to send the video podcast into your own iTunes library. Alternatively, if you select SHARE – SEND PODCAST TO iWEB your video podcast is exported and opened in iWeb where you can edit your page and publish it to .Mac or another website for which you have FTP access.

There does not appear to be any direct way in iLife06 to convert a video podcast (using iMovie, Garageband, iTunes, or even QuickTime Pro) into a mp3 file. We used Audio Hijack Pro to make the conversion. For audio-only Garageband files, you can still export them to iTunes, where you can convert them to MP3.

The published video podcast does include nice chapter marker links after the video file loads in the browser. Quite nice for a first effort we think. We certainly had fun making it, and the steps were (as they should be) fairly easy to figure out. :-)

On this day..

7 Comments »
  • http://shareski.blogspot.com Dean Shareski

    Nice work Alexander, If you saw my heating bill here in Canada, we could sure use a scientist that could figure out how to make it more efficient. You’ve got a few years to work on it.

    Wesley, how long was did the video take, start to finish? I’m looking for a Windows option for the enhanced podcast. There are a few work arounds but all are less than ideal.

  • http://rasterweb.net/raster/ Pete Prodoehl

    To get the audio portion of a file from iMovie, I usually export it as an AIFF file, then import than into iTunes and convert it to an MP3. Once it’s converted you can then edit all of the ID3 tags in iTunes (and add some cover art!) and then copy it to your desktop.

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    Dean, it took us about two hours from start to finish, which included shooting the video. After shooting the video we imported it into iMovie, edited it, and shared to iWeb and then the .Mac account. I use WinXP on my Dell at work as well as a Mac laptop, I have worked with both Windows Moviemaker2 and PhotoStory3, and I think the iLife software tools are really amazing. I would also be interested to know what windows software products are out there for creating enhanced podcasts, however, as the edtech classes I currently teach are in a Dell lab running WinXP. Podcasting News has a good link list of podcasting software, but don’t list anything for windows users to create enhanced podcasts.

    Thanks for the tip on exporting as AIFF from iMovie and then converting with iTunes, Pete. I hadn’t thought of that!

  • Adam Teale

    hey guys well done being some of the first to get the video podcast with chapters DOCUMENTED!

    i am going to be using this feature in the next few weeks to get a 12 week podcast going with a bunch of people here in Sydney, Australia

    Well done!

    Adam

  • http://www.newenglandcross.com megan

    Hey there–

    I’m trying to refine my podcasting abilities before the start of racing season, and here is my sticking point: I edit the video on an iMac, but I started my iWeb site through my laptop. There doesn’t seem to be a way to either 1) use multiple computers to post through iWeb or 2) be an easy way to move data from iMovie and Garageband around. I tried the “archive” option in Garageband, but my laptop didn’t buy it and wouldn’t open the archived file.

    Any ideas–beside editing the video on the laptop (it’s slow and old and chokes and stutters during video editing)?

    Thanks!

    Meg

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    Hi Megan! I have created podcasts with both Garageband and Audacity (which is free)– and altho I love Garageband for creating music, I actually like Audacity better for podcasting. One reason is that it’s cross platform, and so it works the same on Macs, Windows, and Linux. It also supports direct export to MP3, which is the most accessible format for audio podcasts. When you are using Garageband and you export to iTunes, it compresses the podcast as a m4a file (for audio) or m4v file (for video). Then if you have your iTunes encoding/ripping preferences set for mp3, you can use the ADVANCED menu and convert to MP3. Audacity, on the other hand, once you download the “LAME MP3 encoder” (that is free) will directly export to MP3.

    I use Garageband to create jingles for my intro and outro (actually for the intro I use a jingle my son made when he was 7) and for transitions sometimes. Those are separate WAV or MP3 files that I can then import into Garageband.

    Another reason I like Audacity is that it imports various file times recorded at different rates with different settings without a problem. Garageband sometimes doesn’t, you have to do some tweaking of the files with QuickTime Pro first, and that’s a hassle. A primary example is when I use my iMac on an iPod to record for a podcast– the file is in WAV format, but for some reason I can’t import those files right into a Garageband project. So it imports garbled. I worked around this by using QT Pro to export the file as AIFF, and had to set the rate just right, like 44.1 hz or something, anyway if you get those settings wrong it doesn’t import like it should, and I found that to be a hassle.

    So bottom line for me, I would encourage you to check out Audacity for podcasting. iWeb is very easy, especially for posting enhanced podcasts, but I primarily do audio-only podcasts. Here are some links you can checkout that might be helpful:

    http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

    http://www.speedofcreativity.org/podcast-resources/

    http://www.castwiki.com/index.php/Podcast_for_free

    Good luck!

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