[GarageBand\IWeb] Podcast (mac)
I've decided to build a tutorial on how to build a so called enhanced Podcast. I did so with the most basic tools one could find- Garageband and iWeb, I might do some research on how to do this on Windows later on, but for now as to keep this whole thing VERY simple I'll stick with OS X/iLife.
I. What the freck?:
So you've got your mix all nice and finished, but what about releasing it? DJTechTools-Forums are the first place to posting, Soundcloud etc.-BUT, what about getting it listed on iTunes? Now that would be awesome!
So, just to clarify what you need up until now:
For Part 1:
- your Mix
- Garageband to build your enhanced Podcast
For Part 2:
- iWeb to build a simple site and more important the RSS needed for iTunes later on
- some kind of web-space that will have sufficient space for your mix and lets you upload all the files. me.com works perfect for Apple-Fanatics, but a real web-space does work just as well.
II. Preparing the Podcast:
If you ever subscribed to Podcasts like Joachim Garrauds ZeMixx or Beatport Burners, you might have seen the cool linking of the Covers directly to Beatport/iTunes or other sites. Why don't we do this as well?
Enter Stage 1- Garageband:
- Open Garageband and select "New Podcast"
- Enter a location where you want your podcast-project saved to
- You should be welcomed by a screen like this:
http://alpha-lambda-chi.org/Alpha-La...band-Step1.jpg
- Now you need to locate the Mix you want to convert into a Podcast. I'm getting mine from the Traktor-Directory, /Music/Traktor/Recordings/yyyy-mm-dd... .wav
- Simply drag the file into Garageband, it'll show a "Importing.." Message (may take some time), followed by a "Converting Sample Rate..." (may take more time), after which the track will show up as a new track in Garageband.
http://alpha-lambda-chi.org/Alpha-La...band-Step2.jpg
- First thing you might want to do is pull the Wave-File to the beginning of your track. As an alternative you might want to record a small intro-speech and insert that to start of the cast. Depending on how much of a radio-show you want to produce, Garageband comes with a reasonable assortment of jingles; simply click the "eye-button" in the lower left of the window and you'll find plenty of waves to experiment with.
For the purpose of this tutorial I will keep it simple and just use my mix to enhance it with covers and links.
Now that you have your Mix imported and ready to tag, here comes the hardest part. Researching where to insert the splits- points where you transfered from one track to the next. As well as noting the track-names, Artists and Cover-Arts you want to include. A track-list is a very good thing at this point. If you did not prepare one beforehand, do not fear- I'm using an older Mix today as well, so that I need to find the tracks myself as well.
I'm assuming you want to didn't prepare a track-list, otherwise you might want to skim through this section only briefly:
- Hit the play-button in the lower half of Garageband to start listening to your track again. What you want to do is listen until you encounter a split, rewind a bit and pause the playback as good as you can on the split.
Kind of like beat-gridding your tracks in Traktor. When you found the point you want your "chapters" (that's what they are called in a Podcast) to be split, simply pause the playback and click on the Podcast-Track (should be the topmost track in Garageband).
http://alpha-lambda-chi.org/Alpha-La...band-Step3.jpg
- At the bottom of the windows, Hit the "New Marker"-Button to insert a chapter-marker. You may notice that next to the time there are coloums for a Picture, a Chapter-Title, an URL-Title and the URL itself. This is where you will insert the pieces of information you want your Podcast to display.
http://alpha-lambda-chi.org/Alpha-La...band-Step4.jpg
- I'm just using iTunes (which holds a copy of my Traktor-Library) to find the song I used and then pull the information from the tags. Note that you cannot extract the album-art from iTunes (AFAIK at least, if anyone knows a way, feel free to share it with you- that will save you the hassle of searching for album-covers with Google).
http://alpha-lambda-chi.org/Alpha-La...band-Step5.jpg
- For the URL I'm using the "Copy iTunes Store-URL" as long as the song is available there. Otherwise I use either the myspace-page of the artist or if I purchased the song on beatport, I use a link to beatport.
- After you have tagged all your tracks and made a title for them, you might want to put a Cover on your mix by dragging a picture to the left slot. As well as the individual tracks using the center slots. Think of the Episode-Picture as kind of a main title-picture, while the pictures linked to the individual tracks are chapter-titles.
- As a final step you should save your Podcast and then go to the menu "Publish" and depending on whether you want to use iWeb to build a site or just manually publish it somewhere select "Send Podcast to iWeb" rsp. "Export Podcast to Disk".
- You can leave the settings as they were (AAC,Music-Podcast), but make sure to check the option to limit your thumbnails to 300x300px. Otherwise you could waste valuable diskspace with large covers. After clicking on the export-button, specify a Podcast or a directory to which the Podcast should be exported to. Now Garageband will go to work again, building your Podcast. This will take some time again.
http://alpha-lambda-chi.org/Alpha-La...band-Step6.jpg
That's it for today- In a few days I'll add the second part- publishing your podcast on an iWeb-Site and getting it into iTunes.
To see the finished Podcast check out
http://alpha-lambda-chi.org/
