There’s still some work in massaging the file for audio levels and size, but it’s actually done. We were shooting for an hour and ended up overshooting by about 22 minutes and 36 seconds. The final file size ended up being 37.8 MBs of random babble. I have no idea if any of you will enjoy it, but ***Dave and I had a lot of fun doing it. Now I just need to figure out how to make it reasonable in size and where I’m going to post it. Should I break it up to keep the quality higher or reduce the quality to keep it a single file. I also need to try and raise the volume level of ***Dave’s track as it’s a little low compared to mine.
But it’s done and that’s the important bit and, after a bit of research on the best way to do this, I’ll post it to the site. We didn’t even get through half the questions so we’ve got material for the next one if folks find this one amusing enough that you want more.
About the Author: Les
I'm the guy that runs this place.
You can contact me at: les@stupidevilbastard.com
Guess I need to just speak louder. Heh.
Had a lot of fun, too. It was (for better or worse) basically just Les and I chatting about any subject that segued to mind — from “Avatar” to the Episcopal Church to DOF to Really Awful Pictures on the Internet, only a lot less coherent than that sounds.
Gimme!
I mean… I am quite looking forward to hearing this. I do hope that you shall be able to get it posted forthwith, sir.
(ReCaptcha suspense: “lemonade and”…)
Have you considered putting it on iTunes? (should be quite simple if you stick it on your blog in its own RSS category). If you don’t think you’ll have enough bandwidth for it, let me know and I might be able to help (I have over 1.5Tb free per month and access to a CDN system which charges $0.20/Gb if necessary).
Unless there is a “natural break”, I would keep it as a single file.
I worked on it for a couple of hours last night while doing some other tech work on a laptop for a coworker. The good news is that I was able to beef up the volume of ***Dave’s commentary a bit so he’s easier to hear with only a minimum of audio clipping.
The bad news is that I haven’t figure out how to save the file back out in a way that doesn’t A) make the file bigger than it was or B) make the quality worse than it was or C) both.
I’m not sure if 37.8 MBs is big for a podcast or not. According to some of what I was reading last night that’s actually just about what you’d expect for around 75 mins of audio at a data rate of 64, which is what I recorded it at and which is recommended for just two people talking.
I’m still looking into where to host it. If I had a clue how many people might download it I’d just slap it on SEB’s server and be done with it. There’s a couple of free hosting possibilities out there, including OurMedia.org which is provided by the same people who do the Internet Archive, but I always get nervous when relying on outside services and I’m not entirely sure how much of my bandwidth I’m already consuming. EngineHosting is a great host, but their back end could do with a bit more info on how much of my resources I’m consuming.
As for putting it on iTunes, I had planned to try and do that. WordPress actually has a couple of plugins specifically for podcasting that I am going to look into as well to see if they’d be useful. With any luck I should have it up in a day or so, but today is right out as I have to leave for class in about 10 mins and from there I go straight to work. The earliest it could be up would be sometime after I get out early tomorrow morning.
Cool – looking forward to hearing the podcast! You could host it on Archive.org too, it’s free. iTunes won’t accept your podcast until you have an rss feed, and at least 2-3 episodes – so get to work on the next episodes!
I would think the bitrate of 64k or even 92k would be good for just talking, the file size sounds a little big, but I wouldn’t sweat it for a first episode.
You could always host the first couple episodes on your site, at least until you decide if you want to do more episodes.
Is torrenting it a viable option?
You could use PowerPress plugin from Blubrry.com too – that’s free, and you can get stats and possible sponsors too…
Les, would you recommend Blubrry.com for hosting the podcast to get started? It sounds like their free offering might be a good starting point in combo with their plugin.
Julian, I’m not sure what’s involved in setting up a torrent, but I’ll look into it. For the record, I sent the original unedited file to ***Dave via Google Talk and it took about five minutes with our broadband connection.
Sure, Blubrry.com’s hosting is good – i’d go with it if you can get it for free. Blubrry is an established company that’s very involved in the podcast community and is not going to disappear. The CEO Todd Cochran is very accessible and helpful, as is the rest of the company.
I listen to a lot of podcasts. NPR podcasts come in at about 25 MB for a one-hour show. The LotRO Reporter, on the other hand, is 58.8 MB for a 62-minute show. I don’t think you need to worry too much about the file size.
Avocet’s correct – my podcast usually is 30-50mb and is around 20-40 minutes, and that’s at 128mb bitrate. I wouldn’t worry about the size, Les!
Besides, it’s not the size that matters… it’s the content!
I’m just eager to throw it on for my daily commute.
I also say don’t worry about size in regard to your listeners. I download several hour-long-plus PodCasts, and the space they take has never crossed my mind.
If my iPod is running low, I just drop a few I’m no longer interested in.
Look at Robert Llewellyn’s Carpool (highly recommended > llewtube.com) – that’s a half hour video PodCast, and I always find room for that.
See, that’s part of what I don’t get about podcasts – the regular download of stuff. Have never quite figured out the habit.
I can’t wait to hear two of my fave bloggers! Let us know when it lands somewhere.
@***Dave – if you have a commute, it’s not that hard. You find enough PodCasts to fill the commuting time. It ends up being like custom radio.
For me, it also helps that my car has an iPod dock, and that I can do the sync at work. It became routine pretty quickly.
It’s so much of a habit for me now that if I forget my iPod, it’s awful when I realize. The commute just drags on.
Another vote from me for keeping the quality up regardless of size. I have never stopped subscribing to a podcast because of its size, but I have stopped downloading poor quality audio podcasts. They’re just too hard to listen to!
These days, 37MB is nothing…my phone has 32GB, my iPod 160GB. Even people with a 1GB mp3 player wouldn’t be losing much with a 50MB podcast.
For purely selfish reasons, I hope you’re going to publish to iTunes. That would most easily lend itself to my current “flow” of subscribing to material and always having the fresh material on me when I need it! Not a mandate (!), just a vote…
Looking forward to listening!
My commute is actually relatively short (I take the train into the office). I do listen to stuff in the car — but it’s either NPR news, or audiobooks (and that’s one of the only opportunities I have for either of those, too).
Not enough hours in the day. One of the things noted in the podcast is that we are neither of us the target audience for a podcast.