Libre Software and Libre Knowledge in Education

Quick Guide to Podcasting for windows Users

Christopher Harvey

Brisbane, Qld  4151
Australia

Edited by

Chris Harvey.

Copyright © 2006 Christopher Harvey (Ipod internals image by Brian Kendig GFDL)

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Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) 2006 by Christopher Harvey .

This document may used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or higher. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this document under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this document into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be included in translations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the original English.

We thank Brian Kendig for the image of the ipod internals

Table of Contents
1. Podcasting, Learncasting, Audioblogging
1.1. What we need
1.2. Create the audio file
1.3. Create and upload the RSS / XML file
1.4. Subscribe to your podcast
1.5. Podcast Generator
1.6. Legal Requirements for professionals
1.7. Notes From the Author
1.8. Links

Chapter 1. Podcasting, Learncasting, Audioblogging

What is all this terminology about? If you prefer to know what your doing before you start then follow the Wikipedia links below. If you prefer to know if this is something you can do before learning the theory then just skip to Section 1.1.

A general description of a podcast is that its a radio show on the internet and whats special is how its delivered to the user.

Like this guide, Wikipedia is Libre knowledge and contains the most accurate and up to date information available on the internet and links to the most relevant resources. Libre knowledge implies freedom to read, listen to, watch, or otherwise experience explicit knowledge to learn from, copy, adapt and use it for any purpose; contribute new insights and share these for the common good; and all of this with free software.

In this guide we will aim at just getting it to work and learn as we go.

Links for further study:

Terminology: Podcasting, Podcatcher, Audioblogging, Learncasting

Libre Software: Audacity, Easypodcast, Juice podcatcher, Filezilla, Zinf, VLC media player

Technical info: Sound Card, Audio compression, Ogg, MP3, RSS, Aggregator, FeedBurner

1.1. What we need

The essentials:

  • A computer running windows

  • An Internet connection

  • A microphone or an audio file

When downloading software its always best to have the latest stable version, below are links to the versions used in this guide and links to the homepages so that you can check that your using the best version, learn about the programmers and find more valuable information and tutorials. Most of the software has a feature that you can run to check for the latest version.

Download and install this Software:

1.2. Create the audio file

  1. First you need to connect the microphone to your computer. Locate the microphone input on your computer, it should have a little microphone icon and/or be colour coded pink and plug in the microphone.

    Note

    Sound Card.

  2. Then you have to configure the sound and audio devices settings to use the microphone and set the volume. Click on Start > Control Panel > Sound and audio devices.

    Select the Audio tab and select Volume in the sound recording section.

    Select Options > properties then select the recording option and tick all the boxes and select OK.

    Set all volumes to full, tick the select box for the microphone.

  3. Now start Audacity. Audacity has a number of tutorials at the Audacity project homepage. Basically select the record button with the red circle and start talking. Select the orange square button to stop. Select the purple back arrows button to go back to the start and then select the green triangle button to play. Its a multi-track editor so you can add and edit your music and over dubs on seperate tracks, adjust volumes and apply your creativity.

    Be aware of which audio format to use and find a balance between quality and file size. First lower the sample rate. In Audacity select File > Preferences select the quality tab and set the sample rate to 16Khz.

    If your going to use MP3 audio format you will need to download and install the LAME MP3 Encoder. Click on the File format tab, then select the find library button and browse to where you installed the LAME MP3 encoder.Then set the bitrate to 48 for MP3 files.

    Now your ready to record your show, when your done select File > Export as MP3 or Export as Ogg.

    Create a folder on the C drive called "podcasts" and save your audio files there.

    Set your ID 3 Tags and select OK

    Test your audio file using Zinf or VLC media player.

If you want help at this point try this Google search.

1.3. Create and upload the RSS / XML file

Start Easypodcast and follow these steps.

  1. Easypodcast Configuration.

    Create a directory called "online" in the directory you saved the audio files in earlier.

    Select Tools > options and on the MP3 tagging tab enter the artist name and change the source MP3 directory to C:\podcasts and the output MP3 directory to C:\podcasts\online

    Select the feed options tab and change the output rss file directory to C:\podcasts\online

    Select the Upload settings tab and enter the details of your FTP account, in the screenshot I've used the settings for the free web space provided for Education Queensland staff, you may need to contact your systems administrator, your ISP or use one of the many free hosts available online, usually you receive some free web space with your internet account. There is another option that doesnt require a FTP account that is discussed below.

    After you've filled in the details Select save and exit.

  2. By default you'll be back at the MP3 file tagging tab. Browse for the Audio File and then select generate tuned MP3. You'll notice it generates the IDv2 tags puts the new audio file in your online directory.

  3. Select the RSS Feed Publication tab. Add any new audio files and select Create RSS. For the demo I went into the C:\podcasts\online directory and renamed the files so I could add a second file in order to demonstrate the use of subscribing to a podcast.

  4. Select the File Uploading tab, add the files and select send.

    If you dont have a FTP account, dont worry, you can use any tool to copy or upload the files in the C:\podcasts\online folder to your webspace. Ourmedia is a popular free web host.

Now your podcast is ready for testing.

1.4. Subscribe to your podcast

You can test your podcast by subscribing to it using Juice podcatcher, so start Juice.

  1. Select the plus button and paste the URL of your podcast.

  2. You can now see your show listed and the latest feed automatically selected for download.

  3. Switch to the downloads tab to see the progress of your downloads.

Now people can subscribe to your podcast by sending them the URL to your feed but lets look at using Feedburner to make things easier.

The main benefits of using feedburner is the URL may be shorter and easier to remember, it provides statistics on your feed, it creates a webpage that people can read about your podcast as well as listen to and download the individual episodes.

Its easy to setup, go to feedburner and paste your feed address in the text area, tick the "I am a podcaster box" and select next.

You will need to give your feed a description, an address and details for your account such as username, password and email address.

1.5. Podcast Generator

Podcast Generator is a free, libre and open source software project by Alberto Betella. The first release of the script has been developed to implement the University of Bergamo (Italy) podcasting service.

Podcast Generator is a free PHP script released under GPL which allows to upload media files via a web form and automatically create podcast rss 2.0 w3c-compliant feeds. It also features a web administration and a dynamic web page displaying new podcasts.

1.6. Legal Requirements for professionals

Under the latest legislation which can be found at disability standards for education.You must provide a Text transcript of the Podcast. The same as you must provide captioning for video.

If a student is disadvantaged because of a dissability, in this case, a deaf person, you will be prosecuted under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.

Thank you to Adam Maxwell for providing this important infomation.

1.7. Notes From the Author

This guide was created using a free software system known as GNU/Linux using free, libre and open source software.

Please do me a favour and send me some comments. If your keen to re-write this guide just contact me instead, I'm currently looking for work in education..

Visit the Superuser Wiki to see more of our projects. It's likely it will be more up to date than this guide.

1.8. Links

Links:

If you have a podcast or know of any good ones for education please contact me so I can add them to this list.

Proffesional Education Podcasts and Support :