Free tools that are great for podcasters
Many ipadio users consider themselves to be podcasters too. What’s the difference between a podcast and a phonecast? Definitions are certainly blurry, but whilst a phonecast is usually quite a short piece of audio designed to be shared on the web and embedded, podcasts tend to be slightly more premeditated – planned in advance and perhaps edited, before being uploaded as an MP3 through the ipadio website. ipadio is home to loads of uploaded podcasts, including Jonny Dobby’s excellent Edinburgh Man podcasts, The Pod Delusion, the Badcast, the 21st Floor Podcast and many more besides.
So I want to ask – what tools are best to use if you want to edit your recordings before uploading to ipadio? Here’s some of my favourite tools to use:
- Audacity is a free audio editor that’s dead easy to use. You see the wave in front of you and can chop and change bits you don’t like with great ease!
- Levelator to my mind is the best kept secret in the podcasting business! Also free, its simply a case of dragging and dropping your audio file on to it, and it’ll seemingly magically balance the volume of your podcast so that it’s all fairly consistent, rather than loud-quiet-loud-quiet. If you’ve ever seen that episode of The Simpsons, where it turns out there’s a big secret and that trucks drive themselves with a magic box, it’s just like that.
- Zamzar this is a good one if your podcast is recorded as, say, a WAV instead of an MP3, which it needs to be to upload to ipadio. You simply upload your file and Zamzar e-mails it back to you as an Mp3. Perfect!
- Podsafe Music isn’t a tool per-se, but is a great way of sprucing up your podcast. I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, so you can find out more on my blog entry here.
Are you a podcaster? What tools do you use? Tell us in the comments and I’ll post again in a few days with your recommendations!
Posted in General Blog Posts on June 3rd, 2010
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I’m a fan of Audacity – and there’s a free plug-in available for WAV/MP3 conversion. Pamela for Skype (pamela.biz) is a quick and simple way of recording VoIP calls, although it doesn’t offer as many options as the commercial software I usually use.