Podcasting for Free
There are many elements to building a podcast, firstly you need to record your audio, then put your files up on the internet, then have an internet page where people can find your podcast and lastly it would be nice to have an RSS feed that people can use to subscribe to your podcasts. You can do all of this for FREE, although it is easier to pay one of the many podcasting services... but they aren't free.
What follows are a few pointers that will show you how I do all of my podcasting for FREE.
Check out my podcasts ( which have never cost me a penny ) at http://Cthulhupodcast.co.uk and http://PrintAndPlay.co.uk
Step 1: Beg, or borrow a microphone.
Step 2: Download "Audacity", this is a free sound recording and editing software package. At the time of writing the Beta version is the best and works really well. Once you get this up and running you'll be able to record your podcast.
Step 3: Next you need to "Host" your audio files, your MP3's. This means putting your files on an internet server somewhere on the internet This is the bit that usually costs the most. You can do this for FREE. Nip over to Archive.org" and take a look. They want to host your media files! Register an account with them, log in and you can upload files that they will store on their servers, all for free. When you upload a file to the Archive they let you select a license under which it is hosted, such as "Attribution Non-Commercial No Derrivatives".
Step 4: Now you need a web site, where people can come and find your wonderful new podcast. Google is your friend! Google own "Blogger" which is a free blogging service. Blogs fit with podcasts nicely because you can make one blog post for every episode of your show. So register yourself at Blogger and create a blog with a name to match your podcast. For instance my Cthulhu podcast is as at CthulhuPodcast.blogspot.com
Step 5 : The next step is to get an "RSS Feed" for your podcast. People will often use a Feed to subscribe to a podcast so having one gets you a lot of listeners you might otherwise lose. Once again Google is your friend. Google own "FeedBurner" which is one of the biggest of Feed services. FeedBurner is FREE. If you have registered with Blogger, then you now have a Google Account which you'll need get into FeedBurner. If you donn't have a Google Account it's easy and free, go to Google home page and you'll see a link to Register and account with them.
Once you have an account you log in and look around at the available services, one of those is FeedBurner, jump into FeedBurner and create a feed. When creating the feed they will ask you if your using Blogger and want to use that as a source for your Feed, of course you say yes! Once the feed has been created it will automaticly scan your blog and when it finds links in a blog post that go to a media file such as an MP3 it will add them into your Feed.
Step 6: So all you have to do now is add a link to your media file into a blog post and you're up and running!
The FNH Guide to Good Sound (pat pending)
Here's what i do to my voice recordings to make the sound the best I can.
Step1 : Record your whole show, and you get a wave form like that below. Ensure that you leave the recorder running for 5 seconds after you finish speaking. You'll use this "dead air" in step 2.
Step 2 : In this step you hightlight the whole wave form ( hint : [CTRL+A] ). Then use the "Normalise" feature which you'll find on the "Effects" menu. Just use the default settings. Don't ask what this does exactly because I don't know! It just makes things biggester. After you've done it, the wave form will look something like this...
See how it's bigged the wave form up, including that silence at the end!
Step 3 : This step is the Noise Removal.. In Audacity's noise removal you have to go through a two stage process. First highlight the "silence", that's the five seconds of silence you recorded, and use the Noise Removal feature to "sample" that so called silence. Then highlight the whole thing again ( CTRL+A again ), and go to Noise Removal again and remove the noise. You'll get a wave form like that below.
So now the sound has been bigged up and cleaned up. On to step 4.
Step 4 : In this step you'll need to download another piece of software called "Levelator", it's free.
Levelator only works with "wav" files, so you need to export your sound from Audacity into a "wav" file. Then it's just a case of dragging the wav file onto Levelator. Levelator will then process the file creating a new wav file with the word "output" in the name. Open that processed file in Audacity and it'll look like this...
What's it done then? Simply put it's made the loud bits quieter and quiet bits louder, giving you a more constant volume across the whole track. For instance imagine you're listening to someone giving a speech, they start at a normal level of speech but then near the end they get passionate and the volume rises. Well once that speech is put into someones headphones the loud bit can bit a bit painful and they will have to start messing with their voume control, which takes them out of the experience. Well, if you've run your files through Levelator they wont be fiddling with the volume knob!
Levelator is really nice bit of kit. Even if you shouted or whispered into the microphone is all ends up at the same volume but still sounds like you are shouting or whispering. Clever stuff!
And that's all he wrote. :)
If you have any questions or comments : - Felbrigg Herriot @ Hotmail .co .uk
There are many elements to building a podcast, firstly you need to record your audio, then put your files up on the internet, then have an internet page where people can find your podcast and lastly it would be nice to have an RSS feed that people can use to subscribe to your podcasts. You can do all of this for FREE, although it is easier to pay one of the many podcasting services... but they aren't free.
What follows are a few pointers that will show you how I do all of my podcasting for FREE.
Check out my podcasts ( which have never cost me a penny ) at http://Cthulhupodcast.co.uk and http://PrintAndPlay.co.uk
Step 1: Beg, or borrow a microphone.
Step 2: Download "Audacity", this is a free sound recording and editing software package. At the time of writing the Beta version is the best and works really well. Once you get this up and running you'll be able to record your podcast.
Step 3: Next you need to "Host" your audio files, your MP3's. This means putting your files on an internet server somewhere on the internet This is the bit that usually costs the most. You can do this for FREE. Nip over to Archive.org" and take a look. They want to host your media files! Register an account with them, log in and you can upload files that they will store on their servers, all for free. When you upload a file to the Archive they let you select a license under which it is hosted, such as "Attribution Non-Commercial No Derrivatives".
Step 4: Now you need a web site, where people can come and find your wonderful new podcast. Google is your friend! Google own "Blogger" which is a free blogging service. Blogs fit with podcasts nicely because you can make one blog post for every episode of your show. So register yourself at Blogger and create a blog with a name to match your podcast. For instance my Cthulhu podcast is as at CthulhuPodcast.blogspot.com
Step 5 : The next step is to get an "RSS Feed" for your podcast. People will often use a Feed to subscribe to a podcast so having one gets you a lot of listeners you might otherwise lose. Once again Google is your friend. Google own "FeedBurner" which is one of the biggest of Feed services. FeedBurner is FREE. If you have registered with Blogger, then you now have a Google Account which you'll need get into FeedBurner. If you donn't have a Google Account it's easy and free, go to Google home page and you'll see a link to Register and account with them.
Once you have an account you log in and look around at the available services, one of those is FeedBurner, jump into FeedBurner and create a feed. When creating the feed they will ask you if your using Blogger and want to use that as a source for your Feed, of course you say yes! Once the feed has been created it will automaticly scan your blog and when it finds links in a blog post that go to a media file such as an MP3 it will add them into your Feed.
Step 6: So all you have to do now is add a link to your media file into a blog post and you're up and running!
The FNH Guide to Good Sound (pat pending)
Here's what i do to my voice recordings to make the sound the best I can.
Step1 : Record your whole show, and you get a wave form like that below. Ensure that you leave the recorder running for 5 seconds after you finish speaking. You'll use this "dead air" in step 2.
Step 3 : This step is the Noise Removal.. In Audacity's noise removal you have to go through a two stage process. First highlight the "silence", that's the five seconds of silence you recorded, and use the Noise Removal feature to "sample" that so called silence. Then highlight the whole thing again ( CTRL+A again ), and go to Noise Removal again and remove the noise. You'll get a wave form like that below.
Step 4 : In this step you'll need to download another piece of software called "Levelator", it's free.
Levelator only works with "wav" files, so you need to export your sound from Audacity into a "wav" file. Then it's just a case of dragging the wav file onto Levelator. Levelator will then process the file creating a new wav file with the word "output" in the name. Open that processed file in Audacity and it'll look like this...
Levelator is really nice bit of kit. Even if you shouted or whispered into the microphone is all ends up at the same volume but still sounds like you are shouting or whispering. Clever stuff!
And that's all he wrote. :)
If you have any questions or comments : - Felbrigg Herriot @ Hotmail .co .uk
