How Do You Cast Your Pod?
September 10, 2010 6 Comments
Hey folks –
Okay, so a ton of folks on twitter the other day started suggesting that @weezul and I start doing a podcast. We’re entertaining the idea, for sure. There is experimenting afoot. Since the idea came from the internet, we want your help with a few things. First of all, we’re interested in what you’d call the show. We have some ideas, but want to hear yours. Here are a few that already came across the ‘verse:
- Justin and the Weez
- Ebony & Ivory (we’ll assume this is a reference to the 360 and PS3, yes?)
- The WeezOkay Spectacular
- It’s Okay to Weez
- Six of One, Weez of the Other
So what else ya got? We’d love to hear your show title ideas.
Okay, so now on to technology. I used to podcast regularly. Very regularly. But back then I used Garage Band and AIM on my mac. That little iBook gave it’s best, but has since completely died on me. These days, we’ll have to use a PC, and probably Skype. Which leaves me with this question – What software do you use to record your podcasts? Any recommendations for recording a show across skype?
Okay, that’s it for now… there will be more on this soon… stay tuned, and keep the feedback coming, please!
Six Okay 
I think Ebony & Ivory is the most poetic name.
The WeezOkay Spectacular has a nice ring to it too.
Your name is awesome. Thanks for the feedback!
Considered any titles without your names in it, or are you banking on your brands? Just thinking that keeps it open to expansion, plus random iTunes trollers might be more keen to trying out a title that reflects the subject.
For the software, it really depends on the internet connection and pc power with windows. If you have a good setup on both, you can use skype with audacity and just sync up the two separate tracks in audacity. You’ll be sending some pretty large files though so you’ll want to use a good ftp client. Typically for a one hour podcast we were getting two 35 meg audio files in mp3 format, syncing them up, and converting to a 50 meg file. If you’re browsing the net while recording sometimes you’ll get a small lag between the two audio tracks so you’ll have to check in at various segments to see if the sync holds. We typically did an audio countdown to sync and then deleted that later.
For equipment, you can invest about $150 into a snowball mic and a good set of headphones and it will work a lot better than a combo headphone/mic set.
If you want to use talkshoe you can call in with skype, but you need credits to call the 800 number. Talkshoe will give you one cd quality mp3 that’s around 15 megs. Not as clear though audio-wise.
For skype, get a plugin called Pamela. There’s a free version and it lets you incorporate a virtual soundboard if you want to add background music or sound effects.
Finally, if you’re a Pauly Shore or Encino Man fan, you should call the podcast Weez the Juice.
Oh, there’s a great, but not free program called feed for all that will generate a nice xml feed file for the podcast with itunes support. You can use feedburner for the feed address and keep everything nice and organized for the itunes links.
Maranda and I have also been heavily investigating podcasting for the past few months and, while we’re going to be using a MacBook, I did find that there are a few decent options on the PC. (The big plus of using GarageBand is that it has those auto-settings to make you sound good for podcasting, nothing I found on the PC does that so you have to do it all manually).
If you’ve got money to spend I’d suggest going with something like Adobe Soundbooth. For around $75 you could also go with Mixcraft 4 by Acoustica (http://www.acoustica.com/mixcraft/). It’s fairly similar to GarageBand and the new version (I’ve got 4) might have better podcast recording options.
Audacity is free, but pretty featureless. Still, if you’re just getting started it’s an options.
I’m not sure how to record someone over VOIP, but I’ve heard of people using Skype to do it.
Most importantly, get yourself a good mic. We’re using Blue Snowball microphones (http://www.bluemic.com/snowball/) and they’re amazing. The quality is fantastic even over Skype.