.FLYINGHEAD FUN WITH PODCASTING
.TITLE Editing your podcast with Audacity
.AUTHOR Jorge Sosa
.SUMMARY Welcome back for round three of my podcasting series. My first article showed you how to plan a successful podcast. My second article suggested some digital devices for recording your podcast. Now, all you need to prepare your recording for primetime is Audacity. Not chutzpah — although possessing some never hurt anyone — but Audacity, a freeware, open-source, sound-editing program available for Macs, Windows, and Unix computers.
.OTHER
Welcome back for round three of my podcasting series. My first article showed you how to plan a successful podcast. My second article suggested some digital devices for recording your podcast.
Now, all you need to prepare your recording for primetime is Audacity. Not chutzpah — although possessing some never hurt anyone — but Audacity, a freeware, open-source, sound-editing program available for Macs, Windows, and Unix computers.
Audacity is so robust, you might feel guilty not paying for it. But, yeah, it’s free. Nab it now at its official Web site, http://audacity.sourceforge.net. Once you’ve downloaded and installed Audacity on your computer, you’ll need one more add-on to create MP3 files. MP3 files are the universally recognized format for distributing podcasts.
.TEASER Tap here and learn how to make your podcast sing.
The add-on is an MP3 encoder called LAME and you can download it online at http://lame.buanzo.com.ar. LAME is distributed separately from Audacity for legal reasons I won’t get into. It has something to do with patents on the underlying technology for the MP3 format. I don’t understand it all myself, but my imaginary team of high-powered legal consultants tells me I won’t get sued for downloading the LAME encoder and, likely, neither will you.
.H1 Perfecting your sound
Now that you’ve installed the necessary software, it’s time to transfer your recorded audio onto your hard drive. The process for doing this is different depending on what kind of recorder you used.
For instance, the Marantz 660 I use at work records onto a removable flash memory card. I just pop the card out of the recorder, plug it into my card reader, then drag and drop the audio files from the card onto my drive. Some other recorders have internal memory and connect to your computer with a USB cable. Check the instruction manual that (hopefully) came with your recorder if you need help transferring the audio file to your computer.
Then, open your audio file with Audacity. Your recording should appear in a window that resembles Figure A. Those blue fuzzy bars are a visual representation of the audio you’ve recorded.
.FIGPAIR A Audacity lets you edit your raw recording with a simple interface.
Hit the play button and you can listen to how you sound. If you’re like most people, you might feel weird hearing the sound of your own voice. Guess what? Audacity can’t make you sound like Orson Wells or Kathleen Turner, but it can help you sound a snappier. Every time you hear an awkward pause, an "um" or a "you know," you can just zoom in and delete that portion of the audio. I do it all the time for my weekly podcast at work — but don’t tell anyone!
Another tip for making your podcast sound more professional is adding theme music. If you’re a musician, you can record your own. If you’re musically challenged like me, you can get a friend to do it for you or you can visit a handy Web site called Pod Safe Audio. At http://www.podsafeaudio.com, you’ll find a ton of free music created by artists under the Creative Commons license. This means you can use any of the music you find at Pod Safe Audio for your podcast, provided you don’t take credit for the musicians’ work (and, in most cases, you credit them appropriately).
Once you have your music picked out, you can open it with Audacity, then cut and paste the portion of a song you want to use as your theme music at the beginning and end of your podcast.
Look at Figure B and you’ll see four tracks.
.FIGPAIR B You can add theme music to the beginning and end of your podcast by inserting extra tracks.
The top two represent the audio I captured using a digital recorder. The middle two tracks are the left and right stereo channels of the opening theme music to the podcast. The bottom two are the outro portions of the same theme song. Audacity lets you fade the theme music in and out, as quickly or as gradually as you want.
.H1 Exporting your podcast
OK, so now you’ve got your podcast sounding as professional as you can get it. There’s one last order of business. It’s time to export your podcast as an MP3. First, you’ll want to select Project->Edit ID3 Tags. A window that resembles Figure C will pop up.
.FIGPAIR C ID3 tags give your listeners more information about your podcast.
Use the "Title," "Artist," "Album" and "Speech" fields to give your audience information about your podcast. These tags will show up in whatever MP3 player your listeners use to play your podcast.
If you installed the LAME MP3 encoder, you should be able to select File->Export As MP3 to generate your MP3 file. Now, just post it to the Web site of your choice.
That’s basically all you need to know to start podcasting, except for the getting-it-on-the-Web-site portion. Where you take it from here is all up to you. Good luck!
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Audacity, visit http://audacity.sourceforge.net.
For more information on LAME, visit http://lame.buanzo.com.ar.
For more information on Pod Safe Audio, visit http://www.podsafeaudio.com.
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