Living Under a Rock? – PHD-027

PHD027 - Living Under a Rock?

iOS 8 Update with “podcasts” app included. - Make sure you podcast is ready by Shawn Thorpe

CBS loses suit by patent troll, Personal Audio
National Podcast Day!  - September 30th
New Podcasts about podcasting (new to me anyway)

The Podcast Report - Paul Colligan

The Podcast Reporter - Fred Castaneda

Keep it simple stupid!  -

I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about some of the minutia of things that most people won’t see or need to worry about.  Such as the feed address.  Normally in powerpress the feed address is http://yourdomain.com/feed/podcast/.  If you want to change that you can start a new channel with what you want at the end such as http://yourdomain.com/feed/mygreatshow/  but that adds complication to everything.  I’ve even had people worry about the links under the player having a different text color than they want for the link.  Another way is to add the static feed plugin. That way you can make your feed address http://yourdomain.com/whatever-you-want.xml . I’m sure someone out there will want to get rid of the .xml but sometimes you can’t have what you want.  The important thing is that your feed functions and updates when you put out an episode.  The address doesn’t matter much. It’s good to have your own domain name (as I always said) but the rest of it is kind of picky.  Stop it!  99% of the people that subscribe to your show in iTunes, Stitcher and wherever else will never see the feed address or the feed itself.

I guess the brings up a bigger problem I see with a lot of podcasters.  They get all caught up in the tech of it.  Focusing on the tech when everything works is the wrong way to go about it.  Believe me, I know how that can be.  I’m all about the techy side of things.  The most important thing about your show is your show.  Make good content and have fun with it.  Don’t worry about the minor picky things.  Once you get your feed working and your website working, go about the business of producing your show.  Promote it everywhere you can, and as long as people get your content, how they get it is beside the point.  It is interesting, but not the most important thing.

Along that same line…

Podcast Review swaps.  by Dave Jackson  on Podcaster News

Question of the week

Q:  I use audacity to record/edit my show.  I notice the default setting for mp3 is 48,000hz sample rate at 128kbds bit rate.  Is this a good setting for podcasting?

A:  Well, no.  Let me explain. The standard for MP3 in podcasting (no, it’s not that other rates won’t work) is between 64kbds and 128kbds. So that part is good (although a bit large file size per minute).  It’s the 48000hz sample rate that should be changed to 44.100 to be the most compatible with players out there.  IF someone has a really old mp3 player, 48000hz will sound distorted where 44100 will not.

A bigger problem with audacity is the “LAME” mp3 encoder that comes with it.  Just as the name implies, it’s lame.  At least at a constant bitrate (in your case 128kbps). It sounds great with variable bit rate for music, but for voice and podcasting, you want to use a constant bit rate.  The easist way to get a good sounding MP3 is to use iTunes to convert your file from wav.  To do this, first in your itunes settings, make sure in the import settings, you have mp3 selected.  Then out of audacity, save the file as a .wav file.   Drag it into iTunes and right click.  Select “Make MP3 version”.  Then put your iD3 tags in that file and use that for your podcast.  By default, itunes will make a 44.1khz 128kbps file.  If you want to save on file size, and have the software (Adobe audition and others) save the mp3 at 96kbps or even 64 if it’s mostly voice.  This can save on hosting costs and make your shows quicker to download for your listeners.

Powerpress 6

Take a listen or watch the latest update in the powerpress podcast.  If you are using powerpress, it will be in your dashboard.

PHD027 – Living Under a Rock?

iOS 8 Update with “podcasts” app included. – Make sure you podcast is ready by Shawn Thorpe

CBS loses suit by patent troll, Personal Audio

National Podcast Day!  – September 30th

New Podcasts about podcasting (new to me anyway)

The Podcast Report – Paul Colligan

The Podcast Reporter – Fred Castaneda

Keep it simple stupid!  –

I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about some of the minutia of things that most people won’t see or need to worry about.  Such as the feed address.  Normally in powerpress the feed address is http://yourdomain.com/feed/podcast/.  If you want to change that you can start a new channel with what you want at the end such as http://yourdomain.com/feed/mygreatshow/  but that adds complication to everything.  I’ve even had people worry about the links under the player having a different text color than they want for the link.  Another way is to add the static feed plugin. That way you can make your feed address http://yourdomain.com/whatever-you-want.xml . I’m sure someone out there will want to get rid of the .xml but sometimes you can’t have what you want.  The important thing is that your feed functions and updates when you put out an episode.  The address doesn’t matter much. It’s good to have your own domain name (as I always said) but the rest of it is kind of picky.  Stop it!  99% of the people that subscribe to your show in iTunes, Stitcher and wherever else will never see the feed address or the feed itself.

I guess the brings up a bigger problem I see with a lot of podcasters.  They get all caught up in the tech of it.  Focusing on the tech when everything works is the wrong way to go about it.  Believe me, I know how that can be.  I’m all about the techy side of things.  The most important thing about your show is your show.  Make good content and have fun with it.  Don’t worry about the minor picky things.  Once you get your feed working and your website working, go about the business of producing your show.  Promote it everywhere you can, and as long as people get your content, how they get it is beside the point.  It is interesting, but not the most important thing.

Along that same line…

Podcast Review swaps.  by Dave Jackson  on Podcaster News

Question of the week

Q:  I use audacity to record/edit my show.  I notice the default setting for mp3 is 48,000hz sample rate at 128kbds bit rate.  Is this a good setting for podcasting?

A:  Well, no.  Let me explain. The standard for MP3 in podcasting (no, it’s not that other rates won’t work) is between 64kbds and 128kbds. So that part is good (although a bit large file size per minute).  It’s the 48000hz sample rate that should be changed to 44.100 to be the most compatible with players out there.  IF someone has a really old mp3 player, 48000hz will sound distorted where 44100 will not.

A bigger problem with audacity is the “LAME” mp3 encoder that comes with it.  Just as the name implies, it’s lame.  At least at a constant bitrate (in your case 128kbps). It sounds great with variable bit rate for music, but for voice and podcasting, you want to use a constant bit rate.  The easist way to get a good sounding MP3 is to use iTunes to convert your file from wav.  To do this, first in your itunes settings, make sure in the import settings, you have mp3 selected.  Then out of audacity, save the file as a .wav file.   Drag it into iTunes and right click.  Select “Make MP3 version”.  Then put your iD3 tags in that file and use that for your podcast.  By default, itunes will make a 44.1khz 128kbps file.  If you want to save on file size, and have the software (Adobe audition and others) save the mp3 at 96kbps or even 64 if it’s mostly voice.  This can save on hosting costs and make your shows quicker to download for your listeners.

Powerpress 6

Take a listen or watch the latest update in the powerpress podcast.  If you are using powerpress, it will be in your dashboard.