How we Make a Podcast
Planning & Preparation
The general arrangement is that Steve handles the production side of things, while Grant maintains the website and IT stuff. Grant also gathers the bulk of the stories we cover, and arranges the interviews.
We operate a planning system using Media Wiki installed on our server. Links to articles, planning ideas, interview subjects – anything that needs to be collated – goes into this system and is sorted through & arranged prior to recording. Normally, an hour or two of planning occurs before the record button is pressed.
Recording the show
A typical news episode of about 90 minutes takes two hours or more to record. The raw audio files are then loaded into the editing software and the arduous edit process begins. This process is described further below.
Equipment
The early episodes (one through six) were produced using basic PC microphones running directly into our computers, but we pretty quickly decided that better audio quality was a goal worth pursuing.
We did a lot of searching around for a setup that gave better quality, but at a price that didn’t send us bankrupt. We spent a lot of time talking to Max Flight from the Airplane Geeks Podcast (he uses the awesome Hiel PR40), and Cliff Ravenscraft from the Podcast Answerman show, and finally decided on the equipment we needed.
Our shows are recorded using Skype. We set up a conference call, hosted at Steve’s end, and record the audio as a WAV file. Steve uses a stock standard 3 GHz Pentium 4 system to run the planning page, browse websites, and cue up sound clips and effects. The conference call is hosted on an Acer laptop. Both systems run Windows 7. The audio clips & sound effects are cued up with Pod Producer.
Grant uses a MacBook and an Acer EEE PC running Ubuntu Linux. Bas is a total Mac fan boy, and hopes for the day when everyone else will become a “switcher”. David is also a Mac user, although we’re not sure to what level his “fan boy” rating has risen!
Grant, Steve & Bas all use (and recommend) the Behringer C-1 Studio Microphone. Grant & Bas use the C-1U – the USB variant. Steve uses the standard model. All audio is fed into a Yamaha MW-10C studio mixer. A “mix minus” feed is sent back to the laptop, and a stereo feed it sent to a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder. A backup recording is also made on the Skype machine using Pamela Call Recorder….just in case!
Recording in the Field
Both Grant & Steve have their own Zoom H2 handheld recording devices and love them. The audio quality is great, the features are suitable and they’re very portable. Grant also has a kneeboard rig that he attaches his to when recording in flight audio. It has lots of bands to keep it in place, even when pulling over +6/-1.5 Gs (he’s eager to see if it’ll stand more).
Editing the raw Data
The raw WAV files are loaded into Audacity and the edit process begins. This can take many hours as gaps are removed, “Ums & Ahhs” are eliminated, general chat and bloopers erased, and so on. During this process, interviews and various segments are spliced in. Once the body of the show is done, intro & exit music clips are added, along with our famous disclaimer clip, the blooper track (if one has been compiled) is tacked on the end, and the show is almost ready to go.
All the tracks are then mixed down into one giant WAV file. Next, they are run through the Levelator which balances all the audio. The finished product is then imported back into Audacity and saved back out as an mp3 file.
This file is then tagged with album art and episode information, all ready for public consumption.
Publishing
Once Steve has completed the editing and prepared the MP3 file for release, he uploads it to our server and lets Grant know it’s ready. Grant then writes up the show notes, links in the MP3 file and publishes the new episode to the world!
There….simple, eh?? Who said this was difficult??
