Activity 8.1 - my log on producing a Podcast

software involved

• Audacity (audio editing)
• WinFF (file conversion)
• Juice (Podcast - feed subscription)
• Switchpod (Podcast - file host)
• Google System Blogspot (Code for embedding MP3 players into Blog post)
  

hardware involved

• Olympus DS30 digital recorder

Background

I've worked with Audacity a few times but nothing beyond a quick recording to share with students. As for podcasts, I love listening to them when I'm running on the treadmill or going for a walk on the Corniche but don't see them as useful for much else. I never saw much point in creating them on the belief that unless the emotive qualities of my message or that of others was as important to communicate as the content of the message.. then I could just as easily live without them. This exercise (to produce a podcast) invited a review of that.

Recording

Interesting to think about how to prepare (questions, digital recorder) and then find a stage for my selected "sages" to speak .. then approaching them in a non threatening way to encourage a positive response to my invitation. I was surprised to see the level of support and equally strong responses to the questions. I also recall a sense of excitement about not knowing exactly what to expect..

Converting

Once done with the recording, I discovered a number of obstacles. I was already familiar with the basic operation of Audacity so that was easy. However, I was less familar with the digital recorder that I am using. I was already confronted by one seemingly major issue .. the need to convert wma (the ONLY setting on the recorder) to wav or mp3 files. This meant hunting down a solution .. an wma to wav converter. In the end I selected WinFF because it was free, and looked dead easy to use.

Once converted from wma to wav.. I discovered that it didn't end there.. I then had to open again each file into Audacity for editing. A very time consuming task .. if I wanted to produce something that I felt was worth the time to listen to .

Editing sound files

A new set of challenges with editing. This meant sorting out problems with sampling rates, creating tracks, adding fade ins and fade outs and editing sections. A couple of hang ups of the software stressed to me the importance of frequent saving of files as Audacity projects so that previous editing work would not be lost if tech problems emerged.

I noted how putting together a presentation and making it coherent felt a lot like editing an essay. I likened it to cut and paste in a word processor .. yet with sound bites.

Then the whole thing needed to be saved with consideration given to both the file's size and format. I chose MP3 because its pretty much the norm these days. I also adjusted the sampling rate to 22050 mono because this would reduce the file size to speed up the download for others and yet still provide enough fidelity to be clear and easy to listen to.

Broadcasting

This proved remarkably easy to realize. As per Martin Weller's excellent instructions (compliments of H808) .. I began by registering on Switchpod, I then followed the "Creating your podcast" steps... five in all but only 3 were absolutely necessary.
In the end Switchpod provided both a link directly to the MP3 file
and a feed link for subscription to the podcast (in the event I might want to repeat the whole thing again).
http://www.switchpod.com/users/buck_in_sand/feed.xml
http://www.switchpod.com/p22376.html

However, when attempting to carry out an uploading of the podcast to the Open University podcast wiki page, I confronted the issue of just where to put it - H808 wiki podcast page (to which I appeared to be the first customer) and the Tutor Group Wiki (which seemed to be a collection point for a slew of podcasts). In the end, I attempted to post it in both places... I had success in one site .. but not in the other and for reasons that are still not clear to me I had problems with embedding the podcast into the wiki.

Embedding player into Blog

This proved interesting to sort out. No widget (as of yet) supported in Blogger but an assortment of embedded audio players are out there to use for free. I used Odeo and the following code

Replace
[MP3 file address]

Template
<embed src= "http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_black.swf" quality="high" width="300" height="52" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars= "valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=[MP3 file address]" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>