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25th June 2006

Audacity for audio podcasts

posted in apple, podcasting |

I received a question about podcasting software and steps today from Meg, on my post “First video podcast.” I posted a response there, but am also posting here in case this is of interest to others, who may not see the comment thread on that older post.

I have created podcasts with both Garageband and Audacity (which are both free, but Garageband is just available for Macs)– 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, the program compresses the podcast as a m4a file (for audio and enhanced podcasts) or a m4v file (for video). You can’t directly export to MP3 from Garageband, as far as I know. 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 iMic 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 work 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 find 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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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 9:19 am and is filed under apple, podcasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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