Engadget Podcast 001 - 10.05.2004 / How-To: Podcasting (get Podcasts and make your own)
posted October 5th 2004 8:15PM
This week's How-To is a three part special complete with our first Engadget "Podcast" MP3. The first part is how to get "Podcasts" on your iPod. So what's a Podcast? To put it simply, a Podcast is an audio file, a MP3, most likely, in talk show format, along with a way to subscribe to the show and have it automatically delivered to your iPod when you plug in to iTunes. The show isn't live, so you can listen to it whenever you want.
Doc Searls may have said it best: "PODcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well."
For the second part of the how-to you can listen to a Podcast we made featuring Lenn Pryor and Phillip Torrone. It's about 40 minutes long, and we're thinking about doing one each week (let us know what you think, this was just a test).
The third part of the how-to is about making your own Podcast. Think of this as DIY Radio. We looked around for resources, and while there were many ways to do this, most required buying some sort of sound software application, so for our how-to we're using a Mac, GarageBand (came free with our Mac), and two free sound tools.
Getting Podcasts on your iPod
Here are the Mac and PC ways to download the Podcast MP3s, with listings for some different feeds (audio shows) following.
Mac
On the Mac side of things, there?s iPodderX, which is basically a newsreader that reads RSS 2.0 feeds with enclosures. It takes those enclosures and automatically downloads them in the background. If the file is an audio file, it then moves it to iTunes for download to your iPod, so with iPodderX you constantly have fresh content to listen to. iPodderX downloads any type of file, (even Torrents) so you can wake up in the morning with a fresh set of audio shows, video programs, or whatever else you?ve subscribed to.
PC
iPodder.NET
is a media aggregator that automatically downloads content to your machine. All you have to do is subscribe to RSS feeds, and your machine handles the rest for you. It integrates automatically with iTunes, creating playlists and synching with your attached iPod.
The Feeds
Once you?ve installed the Podcast retriever, add some feeds to which ever application you?re going to use.
Now, if you don?t want to use a tool to automatically download the MP3 podcast you can right click / option click this link and grab the MP3 directly. The good part about this method is that you don?t need an iPod, just anything that plays MP3s.
Here are some feeds that are currently floating around.
Engadget PodCast feed (our beta)
http://www.engadget.com/common/videos/pt/rss.xml
Adam Curry?s Daily Source Code
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001014/categories/dailySourceCode/rss.xml
Dave Slusher?s Evil Genius Chronicles
http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/audio/bittorrent.rss (Torrent Feed)
http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/index.rss20 (MP3 Feed)
Dave Winer?s The Scripting News
http://www.scripting.com/rss.xml
Legal Torrents
http://www.legaltorrents.com/musicrss.xml
Others
Keep an eye out here for new feeds, on podcaster.net, podcasts.org as well as googling for ?podcasts? and also check out the Podcaster?s Yahoo Groups list. We?re also going to ping some friends who do web shows as well and see if we can help get their files up in Podcastable format. We?d love to see Off the Hook and Off the Wall, just to name a few.
Making your own Podcast
We suspect there are going to be a zillion ways to make your own Podcast, after we show you how we set up ours, we?ve also including some links for other methonds that people have posted up. Once we figure out how to do the same with our PC, we?ll have another how to on that as well. The main reason you need to do anything other than hit record in a sound app for a Podcast is you?re likely to want to have other people talking, with a proper Podcast you can use iChat and record both parties talking as well as mixing in music. In our first attempt we were able to invite a friend and talk, play music as well as feed other sounds, all recording to one final track in GarageBand.
Ingredients for our Podcast recording set up
Mac (15-inch G4 Powerbook)
Headphones
Microphone (we used the built-in mic)
Garage Band
SoundFlower + SoundBed (free)
Line-In (free)
We?re going to assume you have your Mac set up, Garageband is installed, headphones, mic and you have iChat running. We?re also going to list the applications that need to be downloaded, then how to configure them all.
Soundflower
The first apps to download are Soundflower and Soundbed. Soundflower is a Mac OS X system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. Soundflower presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed.
Once you install the Soundflower application, you?ll need to restart. Then it?s time to run SoundBed.
SoundBed
When using Soundflower to send audio to and from applications, you may find that you are not able to send audio through another device to monitor audio output. In those situations you can use Soundflowerbed, an application that resides in the Finder?s Menubar allowing you to tap into Soundflower channels and route them to an audio device.
While this is not required, it makes it easy to test audio devices and turn it all on and off.
Line-In
Line-In is a simple application for OS X to enable the soft playthru of audio from input devices. In simpler terms
, you can use LineIn to play sound coming in through a microphone or any other device plugged in to your Sound In port.
Configuring the applications
Once you downloaded and installed the applications, now it's time to route all the audio to their final destination: GarageBand.
Using Soundflower
Open the Sound Preferences (Apple Menu > System Preferences > Sound).
Click Sound Effects and select "Built-in Audio: Headphones". This will play any sound effects through the headphones and not into the recording.
Click Output and click Soundflower (2ch). Before you do this you may want to adjust the volume, which is what you're hearing in the headphones.
Click Input, again, adjusting the Input level if needed, and then Select Soundflower (2ch).
Later, if you want to turn Soundflower on or off on the fly, you can use Soundbed by opening it now, it appears in the FInder's menubar as a flower.
Line-In
Next up, Line-In. Open the application and click "Enabled" "Built-in Audio" in the Input Device area and for Source choose "Internal Microphone".
For Output in the Line-In under device choose "Soundflower (2ch) and for source default.
This will take the microphone sound and add it to the Soundflower audio, which is where we're pushing all the audio to and then recording it.
iChat settings
Open up iChat and go to iChat > Preferences > Video.
For Microphone choose "Soundflower (2ch) and for Sound Output choose "Soundflower 2ch" again.
This takes the iChat sound (the person you're going to chat with) and adds that to Soundflower for recording.
GarageBand
Open up Garageband, it will likely ask you to start a new song, so click "Create New Song".
You can name yours whatever you want, and Save As any location you wish on your system. We chose test and put it on our Desktop. When starting a project, you also have other options such as Tempo, Time, Key, bpm, but we're leaving those all as default, since we're not going to be recording a song.
Click Create.
When GarageBand starts up, it will automatically have a Grand Piano track, click that track and then delete it (Track > Delete > Track).
Add a new track, Track > New Track. Click "Real Instrument" Vocals and "No Effects". Also Choose "Stereo" in the Format selection. Click OK.
In preferences (GarageBand > Preferences > Audio/MIDI choose "Built-in Audio" for Audio Output and for "Soundflower (2ch) for Audio Input.
This will take all our sounds and record them directly in to GarageBand.
You are now ready to record. Believe it or not, this is the easy way to do this for now, though we suspect there will be a simple application that will do all of this (just like blogging started out complicated, then all these great tools hit the market). Once you hit record, you're on your way. To add sound, we opened up MP3 files in Quicktime and played them in the beginning and end of the show. We also tested to see if playing sounds from website (Macromedia Flash) would get recorded too, and it does, so that means there's a lot of potential to choose what types of sounds, music, and effects you want to add to a broadcast.
You can either have your friend on iChat before or after you start recording. We had our pal on the entire time just to do some testing, and that's what we're going to suggest here. Do some tests and bang away until all the settings are working and the results are what you're happy with.
Once you've finished recording, click the record button again to stop recording. You can also click the rewind button here to listen to your handywork and make any edits if you wanted to.
Exporting to iTunes
Click File > Export to iTunes to export to iTunes, this is where we're going to convert it to a MP3. iTunes will then open up and you can listen to it there as well, but we're not done yet.
Exporting to MP3
iTunes can convert the huge file we just sent over to it and convert it to a MP3 all with the built in encoder. For this test we used the following settings:
iTunes > Preferences > Importing, Click Setting "Custom" and choose 32kbps for the Stereo bit rate, Quality Medium, Sample Rate 16.000 kHz, channels stereo and Stereo Mode: Joint Stereo. We may ultimately change these, but for now it sounds good the file it will create is under 10mb. Click OK and then click the song and Click Advanced > Convert Selection to MP3.
Once the file is converted, you can drag it out of iTunes to the desktop or find it via Music > iTunes > iTunes Music in your music folder.
From here you can send the file, post the file, put it on your iPod, whatever, but if you want people to download it automatically, here's how.
Making the Podcast feed (RSS feed with enclosures)
RSS 2.0 allows you to have an enclosure (much like you'd send an email with an attachment), so after the feed is pulled down the file is there with no waiting (besides the download time, of course). The key premise is No More Click-Wait. Ideally, when your computer isn't doing anything, it can be using RSS feeds to automatically download audio and video content. Anyone can do this, and there is no central authority, no spectrum to allocate, and it's open to amateurs, just like the Internet itself. More on that here and here.
For our tests, and for now, here's our Podcast RSS 2.0 feed that you can use.
Here's what it looks like...at least the mp3 part that is...
<enclosure url="http://www.engadget.com/podcasts/Engadget_Podcast_001.mp3" length="1023800" type="audio/mpeg"/>
Enclosure is where the file lives, length is how big it is, and the type is what it is.
So, there it is...as this gets easier, we'll likely update with a new how-to, and if you're looking for another way to do this, Hugo Schotman has an excellent overview of how he rolled his together.
Phillip Torrone can be reached via his personal site http://www.flashenabled.com
A great source of info on tools, technique, and technology:
http://log.hugoschotman.com/hugo/podcasting/index.html
I'll bet it was the primary source for the above article.
the last part of the article has hugo's site...
" if you’re looking for another way to do this, Hugo Schotman has an excellent overview of how he rolled his together."
along with a link. his set up uses soundtrack (apple, not free) and doesn't use line-in.
there are many ways to do this, this was our attempt to do it with free software.
cheers,
pt
really intresting finaly something intresting to do with my ipod ... was getting ired of listening to my library on my desktop @ home laptop @ work and ipod in car ....
OK now will their be a new file each day from engadget ? that would be the only reason i would consider using this. Well actually maybe not i have no idea what the other feeds showed above talk about "still downloading" i'll know later
Great tutorial! Couldn't you use LineIn instead of Garage Band though? Garage Band is a bit overgrown for podcasting.
More podcasts, news and applications links on
http://www.podcasts.org
Once again, great work by the engadget crew. I think you guys should do podcasts on a regular basis. This could open the door to the true power of the internet. Imagine newspapers and radio being obselete cause you can get your news/weather/stories read to you when you want it, where you want it, and how you want it.
Check out the MP3 section of FeedsterTV.com for more podcast media.
The section "Making the Podcast feed (RSS feed with enclosures)" doesn't explain how to make the feed. It only describes what the feed is. I seem to be missing something. With Radio and MovableType I'm creating RSS feeds when I publish to my blog/site. But I don't see how to literally add an enclosure to the feed. I hope I'm not missing something embarressingly staring me in the face.
Okay, so my clients have been egging me on long enough. This whole thing has me itching to get back into radio-production mode. I guess I have to go buy myself a Mac now.
Is there any way to do this with real media? I love to listen to NPR shows but they're all in real media. I'd rather not poison my iPod with Harmony. Any suggestions?
dusty, checkout wiretap from ambrosia software, i use it to create audio files from npr .ram strams all the time. it's freeware from ambrosia software.
re: Eric Lin
Is there some way to use cron + apple script/perl to jury rig some sort of automated record/convert-to-mp3 thing for real media broadcasts?
i've been using audible.com lately to do the same thing for daily new york times clips that are downloaded automatically in the middle of the night. Sure it's pay but you get alot out of the subscription plans if you use it all.
Hey Phil - great article. I read about podcasting a few weeks ago, and after reading your article tonight I went ahead and added in the enclosure tag to my rss feed. Now each article has an enclosure tag to point to the text-to-speech generated .mp3's that the backend of my blog software adn tts system automatically generate and cache on the fly for my Flash playback system that has been up now for a couple years. Now folks should be able to pick them up automatically. I dont have an ipod myself to test out - but give it a whirl - http://www.impossibilities.com/blog/ - hopefully the software will respect redirect tags - as that the only way I can currently point to my mp3's since they are created and cached in a database. Let me know if it works.
See ya - Rob
Engadget's just going from strength to strength.
Especially love your imaginative "how to" sections (use iPod as a universal remote, take digital pictures from a kite, podcasts, etc.) - keep up the good work!
:-)
Kap
P.S. Reiterating a previous comment - if you own an iPod you haven't already done so, check out audible.com. They have some really great stuff. Well worth the money.
Esp. Check out the "Hitchhiker's guide" series, read by Douglas Adams - brilliant.
Some of us in the PeeCee world have been doing similar things for a while, long before the iPod came along. My buds and I had numerous live feeds and canned recordings available at Live365 and our own personal sites. Is it still "Podcasting" in this case?
The new twist is the push delivery using rss. The downside is that, as with just about everything else, there will be a few gems scattered amongst the rubbish of the majority of program material available; the upside is that we can choose when and what to listen to, rather than sit through a 'playlist' to get to the good stuff.
Also, with the RIAA on the warpath I think the more popular shows will be walking a fine line by including music. We shall see!
How does one produce Podcasts for a single Community ? This techncology is right, but I need to know, how I can set policies for selective listening only. Where can I find this type of spec's ??
I love Podcasting and can see the potential in this.
Now for some Off-topicness:
I'm also willing to pay for content I like, as I pay Audible.com for the privilege of their NPR shows that are downloadable and without commercials or hourly news updates.
I'll admit to having recorded live streams with Replay Radio but the quality -- at least with my setup -- was terrible and I despise commercials. Not only that, but I hate it when I want to listen to something, and I can't because of recording a live stream.
I see Howard Stern just made the leap to Sirius for 2006. I hope Canada will have Sirius by then, and it's portable for those of us walking, and not in a car, or at home.
Audible.com, the RIAA, and DAB -- people in charge of radio? I don't know, I'm Canadian -- don't have anything to fear, but they will because how could their CEO's comprenhend that people like me actually buy a George Carlin cd after hearing a sample on a podcast?
Some other PODCasting tools that I have made available:
A plugin for Movable Type to automate the creation of enclosures in your RSS 2.0 feed:
http://brandon.fuller.name/archives/hacks/mtenclosures/
iPodder client software for Windows Media Player:
http://brandon.fuller.name/archives/hacks/nowplaying/wmp/
iPodder client software for iTunes for Windows:
http://brandon.fuller.name/archives/hacks/nowplaying/
"How Podcasting Will Save Radio"
http://radio.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2004/10/5/155523.html
It's a great piece.
Great idea guys, but can't you do something about the quality and the background noise?
When I tried to listen to your demo podcast with Lenn Pryor, I got this message:
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
I'm using Camino on a PB G4 with Panther.
another great audio tool for OS X is Audio Hijack (and the Pro version especially) from rogueamoeba.com
lets you 'hijack' any application on your system (not just 1 at a time either) and record their audio and output to several different audio formats. lots of effects can be applied. TONS of possibilities with this app.
great tutorial. there's a few things in there I surely would have never thought about. thanks!
Apparently I've had a "Podcast" since May, but I didn't know it was called that.
Rather than just talk, mine is a music show, where I both play songs and talk a little. Totally free. Good music.
Check it out at: http://www.thesoundsinmyhead.com
Hey - you could use a Griffin iTalk to record the PodCast, then it really would be a 'PodCast' :-)
Great article but how do I do all this in Windows.
I want to do a podcast that's music and some commentary . . . pretty much the radio show I always wanted to create, but couldn't.
The problem I'm running into here is that I can't hear the music (or anything else, for that matter) in my headphones. I've double-checked, and I am 99% sure I followed your directions correctly . . . but it looks like I have to spend 200 bucks for some commercial program just so I can hear things in my headphones. Is that right? That just doesn't make sense.
Thanks for this tutorial. It rocks.
My RSS feed sends out the link to the Windows Media file and also to the mp3 file - that item tag includes the enclosure.
Is that an acceptable way to do it or should the podcast be a seperate feed with just the mp3 link and enclosure in it?
Thanks,
Tim
I use a G4 PowerBook. Is there an easy way to select NPR archived audio files that are in Real Audio and Window's Media Player format and convert then into QuickTime files to be loaded into my iPod?
I can capture whole NPR shows live using AudiHijack but I would rather be more selective and load my iPod with individual stories.
Your PodCast was great.
Thanks.
Perry
I use a G4 PowerBook. Is there an easy way to select NPR archived audio files that are in Real Audio and Window's Media Player format and convert then into QuickTime files to be loaded into my iPod?
I can capture whole NPR shows live using AudiHijack but I would rather be more selective and load my iPod with individual stories.
Your PodCast was great.
Thanks.
Perry
How do I get my voice out of my ears? I understand that Soundflower creates a global space, but I find it very hard to record anything listening to myself with a fraction of a second delay. How do I get my voice out of my ears?
Does anybody have a FAQ on how to create a PodCast with Windows XP?
More information and tips for podcasters are on the Whole Wheat Radio blog: http://www.wholewheatradio.org/jbb/weblog.php?id=C0_17_1
I claim hereby that under Windows it is easier than with Apple Macintosh computers! I use profesisonal (commercial but cheap) Audio editing software from http://www.goldwave.com/features.php . Then I have high-quality USB Headset with nois-reduction micrphone. Check out my podcast - about smartphones (cell phones with PDA-like features) here: http://msmobiles.com/podcast.xml .
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OK, I havn't made a podcast with this technique (mostly due to me being too cheap to get hosting), but i have used this with live SHOUTcast radio shows and it works perfectly. I'd personally use Winamp and the SHOUTcast DSP for crossfading music and voice etc. Record using Audacity under "What U Hear" (with SHOUTcast taking care of adjusting mic levels), and there's the basic setup. But what about Skype? So far I've managed to get around the two-computer thing by going for a quick solution by buying a second USB microphone, placing it by my soundcard microphone and using it as my Skype recording device. (Of course, if you can get your USB mic to play through the soundcard, you won't need the first mic!)
This has worked fine for me, and has opened up a few doors for my show.
I've made a very brief tutorial on podcasting using XP... take a look...
http://www.digitalminds.com.br/podcasts/howto/
Anything on making a Podcast with a PC?
How to use the iSight as a Microphone: http://log.hugoschotman.com/hugo/2004/11/using_isight_as.html
How about a new How To that goes into a little more detail. And one that covers how to play music in a podcast.
What if you don't have an ipod, no Mac, and don't use MP3 as your release format?
I, for one, make audio-entries and release them in Ogg Vorbis format because it is simply much smaller (bandwidth savior number one if you ask me) and higher quality sound as well.
For example, I can create an .ogg file with an average of 39 kbps which sounds like an MP3 of 80 kbps. That's half the size or more!
So: Can I let my audio take part in podcasts? If so, how do I do that?
I too am interested in the problem Dann Sheridan posted about, I am recording skype out calls for use in an audio project. Any luck with solutions? Posted Oct 19, 2004, 1:24 AM ET by Dann Sheridan
Followed Your How-To To A T, but ....
How do I get my voice out of my ears? I understand that Soundflower creates a global space, but I find it very hard to record anything listening to myself with a fraction of a second delay. How do I get my voice out of my ears?
i was wondering if its possible to make podcasts on windows?
is there any info on this anywhere
In order to capture sound/video clips in the PC environment for podcasting, you might consider using the FREE Windows Media Encoder. Did I mention it's FREE?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&DisplayLang=en
I am putting together a guide and videos on Podcasting for the PC at:
http://www.podcasting-101.com
-Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
Windows Digital Media
Does anyone know if there is a tutorial anywhere as good on how to create your own podcast from a PC. I just got my Ipod and it makes me want to buy an apple but the funds are lacking since I just purchased this laptop. Please let me know here or at bfhcards@yahoo.com. Danka
I, too, would like to get my own voice out of my ears. My built-in mic port on my 15" PB is busted (came that way, can't part with the laptop long enough for Apple to fix it) and I have to use an iMic which throws a delay in.
Separate question: has anyone been able to use the setup described here to work with the latest versions of Skype? I get it all set up but as soon as hit the call button I hear a small BZZT and the audio dies. I can't hear the other person on Skype but they can hear me fine (and I can't hear myself on my headphones anymore either).
Any ideas?
Very nice article - and site, too. This is an great introduction to something that still a bit of a moving target.
The iChat angle is interesting....it's too bad iChat doesn't have an option for capturing an aiff file of your conversation.
Great tutorial.
I use a Griffin iTalk to do my Podcasts. Simply talk into your iPod and save. Plug in your iPod and automaticaly transfer into iTunes. Thats it, your very own Podcast. Just upload in the normal way.
With much help from other websites (cited in the reference here) I figured out how to record skype calls using Audio Hijack pro. Details here: http://www.raggedcastle.com/webcrumbs/archives/003724.html