Podcasting

While I've waited for my arm to heal I've been preparing my first podcast.

I know I've blogged about podcasting in the past so this post is more about my experience over the past few days than it is about podcasting in general.

Podcasting Programs

Audacity & GarageBand

Generally, the programs I see recommended most often are Audacity for the PC and GarageBand for the Mac (although you can get Audacity for the Mac as well). These programs are both free and the initial learning curve isn't brutal.

Final Cut

Final Cut Pro is a bit pricey but if you already have it, or you don't mind spending a few hundred dollars, Final Cut is a great program for Podcasting.

Final Cut is both easy to use and powerful. I should note that so far all my attempts have been very basic. The most I've needed to do was splice out failed attempts to communicate in anything vaguely resembling English, and slap a filter on the audio to enhance audio captured by the default, built-in, microphone. (And, yes, I squandered a good hour applying effect after effect and laughing like a demented hyena. My favorite, completely absurd, filter was the Robot.)

The iPad and Final Cut

When I first bought my iPad 2 I had dreams of using it to take footage and importing that footage into a program like Adobe Premiere (on the PC) and editing it.

Yeah, that didn't happen. There was no straightforward way to get the video off my iPad and into Premiere. I was reduced to editing each sequence in my iPad until it was under a minute in length and then mailing it to myself. After that I'd save the clip to disk and then import it into my project.

Not simple. Not easy. Not fun.

With Final Cut, though ... wow! I can import video directly from my iPad into the program in one seamless step. And it doesn't crash as much as Premiere did.

Sorry, I know this is starting to sound like a commercial for the Mac. My apologies, it's just that I've been in geek heaven over the past couple of days playing with Final Cut.

My Podcasting Plans

Enough about video and audio editing! This is a writing blog.

My tentative plan is to take some of my favorite older posts, update them and make a podcast based on that material. I don't know how many I'll do, but I want to try doing at least five and see how they turn out. At the very least it will be an interesting experience and I'm sure I'll learn much.

Another idea I had was that I could do short interviews with other artists. And next year I would like to, if possible, narrate my book Until Death. But that's for the future. Hopefully I'll get my first podcast up this week.

Have you ever created a podcast or narrated one of your stories? If not, why not? If yes, how'd it go? Can you give us any advice? :-)

 Other articles you might like:

- Good Writing: Using The Senses
- Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel
- Michael Hauge On How To Summarize Your Novel

Photo credit: "Starry Starry Winter's Night" by jumpinjimmyjava under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.