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Podcasting with Audacity™ - TGJ4M-BlkD

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1. Selecting While Audio Is Playing Snap to Guides ee Track Selection Using the Mouse Menu Commands for Selecting 10 Applying Effects Applying Effects 0 00000000 0022 Generators 100 100 108 110 117 119 121 122 123 124 127 128 129 131 134 134 135 135 136 Volume Levels 0 0 eee Tone Changing Effects 0 0 200000 Pitch and Tempo 2 0 eee 11 Add a Musical Intro and Outro Choosing MUSIC esiri 60 65 ea co aw denne bea enna ewes Adding the Musical Intro 0 12 Remove Glitches and Background Noise Removing Glitches 0 000000000000 4 Removing Background Noise 13 What Next Appendixes A Get the Right Equipment Microphone Setups 0 00000 cee ee eee B Compiling Audacity on Linux Gathering Your Tools 0 0 0 0 2000005 Compiling Audacity 0000000020000 Taking Care of LAME 0 20 00200005 Conclusion 00 000 000 eee From the Library of Gregory Smith 142 142 143 148 148 152 157 Acknowledgements Dominic wishes to thank Scott Debra Williams Cauley and Robin Miller for making this book possible all of the past and current members of the Audacity development team including Gale Andrews Richard Ash Christian Brochec M
2. 1 5530 1 5540 1 5550 From the Library of Gregory Smith Remove Glitches and Background Noise 152 Remember sudden vertical changes in the audio waveform are audible When you hear something that sounds funny look for a vertical spike or vertical discontinuity like this example showed Audacity can repair only tiny amounts of audio on the order of a few milliseconds If you try to select more audio and repair it Audacity will kindly tell you that you ve selected too much and you need to make your selection smaller and more specific Removing Background Noise Audacity has an excellent Noise Removal effect that can remove most kinds of constant background noise caused by fans appliances and anything else that makes a steady sound It cannot remove sounds that change such as dogs barking water dripping or people talking The recording we made previously actually has some background noise though it is not really visibly apparent in the waveform It s audible only if you turn up the volume or listen using headphones some thing you should always do when cleaning up a recording Background noise can be soft to hear and hard to see in a waveform but still be loud enough to make the recording sound unprofessional Removing background noise consists of two steps e Teach Audacity what the noise is by finding a selection of just noise This is called getting the noise profile e Filter that noise out from
3. Font Book app Ry Documents 2 Games i 6 Music L Graphics G TZ ovim app al Pictures 2 Hardware b t iCal app a 7 Alias iChat app iDVD app 7 6 items 11 49 GB available The LAME MP3 Codec I know you re champing at the bit to run Audacity but you need to perform an important task first Download and install the LAME MP3 encoder which allows you to open and save files in the ubiquitous MP3 format So why doesn t Audacity include LAME so you don t have to hunt it down Unfortunately due to some rather silly patent restrictions Audacity can t do that To find out more about this sad state of affairs check out http audacityteam org wiki index php title Lame_Installation and http en wikipedia org wiki MP3 Licensing_and_patent_issues If you skip this step Audacity will be able to open existing MP3 files and create uncompressed WAV and AIFF files but it will not be able to create MP3 files 23 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity To get the LAME MP3 encoder head over to http audacity sourceforge net download lame in your web browser Step 1 says to go to the LAME download page so go ahead and click on that link On that page you ll see three links One for Windows so who cares about that and two for Macs Choose the correct one for your Mac and download the file Because I m using Mac OS X 10 4 on an Intel Mac I grabbed libmp3lame osx
4. Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 1 The Windows Task Manager shows all of your computer s running processes 35 Here s how to see the list of processes running on your machine which includes programs that you manu ally started as well as services daemons e Windows Right click on the taskbar and choose Task Manager When that opens select the Processes tab to see a list similar to Figure 3 1 Windows Task Manager File Options View Shut Down Help DER Image Name SnagPriv exe TscHelp exe Snaglt32 exe audacity exe alg exe cohrence exe svchost exe avgupsvc exe ctfmon exe sharedintapp exe ParallelsToolsCent avgcc exe avgamsvr exe rundll32 exe explorer exe spoolsv exe svchost exe svchost exe svchost exe svchost exe svchost exe Isass exe services exe winlogon exe cstss exe smss exe toolsrv exe User Name Scott Granneman 2 344K Scott Granneman 2 636 K Scott Granneman 21 364 K Scott Granneman Scott Granneman 9 928 K LOCAL SERVICE SYSTEM LOCAL SERVICE SYSTEM Scott Granneman 3 104 K Scott Granneman 2 516K Scott Granneman 5 504 K Scott Granneman 660K SYSTEM Scott Granneman 3 472K Scott Granneman 19 968 K SYSTEM LOCAL SERVICE NETWORK SERVICE 3 176K SYSTEM NETWORK SERVICE 4 180 K 1 SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM C Show processes from all users CPU Mem Usage 3 448 K 1 156K 3 172K 1 056 K 464K 4 688 K 4
5. The big reason is that MP3 was already widely in use by the time OGG was developed and for the vast majority of people MP3 is good enough On top of that the most popular digital music player Apple s iPod doesn t support Ogg Vorbis So who should use OGG If your podcast is about Linux or Free Software then it s a safe bet that your listeners will be able to deal with OGG and will even appreciate your use of it If your audience is the great masses then forget about it After you select OGG as your export format click the Options button and you see Figure 6 3 O Specify OGG Options _OGG Export Setup 5 10 Gree ED You have only one choice The Quality level you want to use The smaller the number the lower the quality and the smaller the resulting file size Start at 1 export into OGG and listen to the results If it sounds bad export again but go up one notch in Quality and test the file Repeat until you re satisfied Click OK to close OGG Options and you tre back at the Export File window Decide where you want to save your OGG change the name if you want and then click Save A few moments later depending on the speed of your computer and the length of your podcast Audacity should finish the job and you should have a nice OGG file you can distribute For more on distribution see Chapter 7 Upload Your Podcast From the Library of Gregory Smith 98 Save Your Podcast Expor
6. This book is all about how to create your own podcast We assume that if you re reading this book you ve already listened to several podcasts but if not here s how to get started The most common way is to use Apple s iTunes software which you can download for free from www apple com itunes If you already have an iPod you already use iTunes In iTunes just click on the Podcasts section in the upper left corner of your window iTunes includes a large directory of podcasts to choose from all of them free Of course you can use many other software programs to listen to podcasts These programs are sometimes called media aggregators or podcatchers and some other popular choices include Amarok Canola and Rhythmbox hpodder Linux To find out more search for these programs on the Internet To find new podcasts you want a podcasting directory There are far too many to name but besides the iTunes directory you may want to look into www podcast net and www indiepodder org but just searching the Internet for podcasting directories will yield dozens more Creating a Podcast This book is not a get rich quick guide or a tutorial on the creative process We assume that you already have some sort of idea for something to record that you think other people might want to listen to It could be a podcast of your favorite music home repair tips a comedy show news and commentary interviews or any number of things Whatever it is this
7. Virtual Memory 1 19 GB 1 30 GB 223 18 MB 579 82 MB 1 88 GB 602 01 MB 399 30 MB 400 05 MB 377 91 MB 369 95 MB 459 13 MB 81 46 MB 385 72 MB 381 93 MB G 372 89 MB e 12 48 44 up 20 days 23 21 1 user load average 6 65 9 23 8 49 164 total 5 running 159 sleeping 0 stopped us 14 6 sy 0 i 0 0 id 45 2 wa 4 0 hi zombie 2 i 775652k total 767316k used 8336k fre 7272k buffers 3228984k total 201860k used 3027124k fre 365984k cached PID USER PR _ NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU MEM TIME 14071 rsgranne 15 2504 748 268 S 22 6 14069 rsgranne 2652 1188 692 R 20 6261 rsgranne 137m 45m 27m 3 root 8 0 0 133 root 0 0 5952 root 0 0 4018 root 8 o 5653 root 170m 5909 root 8 0 6418 rsgranne 0 36344 16127 root o 0 23218 rsgranne 387m 1 root 2908 2 root 4 root 5 root 6 root 7 root 30 root 31 root 32 root COMMAND rsync rsync amarokapp ksoftirqd 0 kswapd0 kjournald usb storage Xorg usb storage konsole pdflush firefox bin init migration watchdog 0 events 0 khelper kthread kblockd 0 kacpid kacpi_notify From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup To learn more about daemons and Mac OS X check out Apple s Technical Note TN2083 Daemons and Agents at http developer apple com technotes tn2005 tn2083 html 37 e Linux In your terminal type top and press Enter revealing a constantly refreshed readout as sh
8. in other words to select nothing press Ctrl Shift A or Shift A on a Mac If you re going to use the mouse you first need to click the button on the Tools toolbar for the Selection tool displayed in Figure 5 12 FIGURE 5 12 You will use the Selection tool on the Tools toolbar a lot Now that you re in Selection mode click on the spot in the waveform where you want to start and then drag to the right or left until you reach the end or beginning of the area you want to define If you want to extend your selection range after you ve already defined an area hold down Shift as you left click and drag If you re a keyboard person or if you just want tighter control over the selection process move the wave form s cursor to where you want to start your selection by using the left arrow to move left and the right arrow to move right When the cursor is in its starting place use Shift left arrow to move the selection area to the left and Shift right arrow to move the selection area to the right Keep in mind that you can use both to expand the same selection area in other words you could use Shift right arrow to expand a selection forward in time and then use Shift left arrow to expand the same selection backward in time creating a larger overall selection area If it s confusing try it with one of your audio files and it will become clear If you go too far to the left and want to back up t
9. nowarn If you re still not getting anything you don t have LAME installed Fix that little issue and try again in Audacity 172 From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux 173 After you ve located libmp3lame so click Open to select it click OK to close the Locate LAME window Click OK a final time to close Audacity s Preferences You are now officially ready to create a podcast in Linux Conclusion As you see it s really not that hard to compile Audacity and LAME We ve been very detailed in our instruc tions so that even a first timer should be able to run through the entire process Even if you re successful installing Audacity using your distro s package management system you may want to also try compiling Audacity It s easy to do it s a good learning experience and most of all it s fun From the Library of Gregory Smith
10. that s a joke A joke I say or you proba bly wouldn t use that distro And there s always Google Microphone Setup If you re a sculptor your most important tools are your hammer and chisel and if you re a cook your most important tool is your knife As a podcaster your most important tool in many ways is your microphone Besides picking a good mic that s within your budget check out Get the Right Equipment for advice on just that subject you ll want to make sure that mic is set up properly on your computer Where Do I Plug It In The answer to that question depends on how your microphone connects to your computer You have two choices Either it uses the analog ports on your computer or it s a USB mic that no surprise uses a USB port Analog Ports If your mic uses the analog ports there s a bit of uncertainty in what we re about to tell you Every computer is a bit different so the ports you re looking for may not exactly match the pictures you re going to see Still you should be able to figure it out just be flexible From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 18 Audio ports on the front of a PC similar to those on the back 52 If your CD or DVD drive has a headphone port on the front of your PC next to the CD DVD tray you may be tempted to plug your analog mic in to that Don t do it Those ports are only for those particular drives and more t
11. say as an intro and an outro it will only play for a few seconds so it shouldn t matter to your listeners Besides they want to hear your words not your theme music After you select MP3 as your export format click the Options button and you see Figure 6 2 Le 9o l Specify MP3 Options i MP3 Export Setup Bit Rate Mode Preset Variable Average Constant Quality 64 kbps PA Variable Speed Fast Channel Mode O Joint Stereo Stereo ene i cance ED From the Library of Gregory Smith 96 Save Your Podcast For most people the Bit Rate Mode should be set to Variable instead of Constant Constant means just that LAME converts your audio to MP3 at the same bit rate say 64kbps no matter what s actually happen ing in the audio Loud laughter 64 Intense discussion 64 Silence 64 This is obviously simple it s always 64 but wasteful If your audio is silent why should LAME make sure that the silence is encoded at the same bit rate as normal talking That s why Variable makes a lot more sense With Variable LAME encodes different segments of your audio at different bit rates depending on what is happening in the audio at that time Loud laughter therefore is encoded at a higher rate than quiet conversation which would be higher than silence The end result is a smaller file that sounds just as good if not better than if it were encoded at a Constant bit rate After selec
12. storage in a retrieval system or transmis sion in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photo copying recording or likewise For information regarding permissions write to Pearson Education Inc Rights and Contracts Department 501 Boylston Street Suite 900 Boston MA 02116 United States of America Fax 617 671 3447 ISBN 13 978 0 13 2366571 ISBN 10 0 13 236657 6 Second release August 2007 From the Library of Gregory Smith Table of Contents Introduction 8 Open Source Software 2 0000000 10 About This Book 2 0 ee 10 1 The Big Picture 11 Why Podcast eonen aa ea Gia ee 14 Creating a Podcast 2 2 0 eee 12 Hosting a Podcast naaa aaua aana 13 SECTION Podcasting Walkthrough 2 Installing and Configuring Audacity 15 WINDOWS cesta ve en eae naa bana edo baa Se dam ee ee bee EME eS 15 MaG OSX tec esos et aara de hes hE EPE EEES ys neue eae 20 LINUX ace acu amp agh ang tite dt Aon ath achlehd Ae atone Ab Se ad eeoit dena he 26 Conclusion 2 6 ee 33 3 Hardware and Software Setup 34 Computer Setup 0 0 eee ene 34 Headphones Setup nonan aaan aaa 44 Microphone Setup 0 000000 2 eee 51 Audacity Set Pe eere sd ne does he ded de ewt he ears eas 62 Conclusion 0 ee 65 4 Record Your Podcast 66 To Script or Not to Script 22 0 000 66 Position Is Everything 0 200 2 00005 68 R
13. your only choice is Audacity 1 0 0 an old version of the software that is no longer being updated From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity Installation Double click on the disk image file and in a few moments your Mac should mount the disk image in the Finder as shown in Figure 2 7 FIGURE 2 7 The mounted eo esses ee _ Audacity 1 3 3 beta Audacity disk image C nyquist Audacity 1 3 3 beta i amp Audacity app 2 Network E Languages 5 LICENSE txt plug ins README txt 6 items 2 7 MB available Normally you would simply drag Audacity app to the Applications folder and you d basically be finished However you should not do that in the case of Audacity because your install will end up missing several important files Instead you need to mount the disk image but then leave it alone for a moment Select Applications in the Finder and then press 3 shown in Figure 2 8 21 r Shift N to create a new folder inside Applications Name this folder Audacity as From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity FIGURE 2 8 e080 7 Audacity Create a new Coe sm mm em pty Audacity W Address Book app 4 Adobe Hel er 1 0 app folder in AppleScript Applications I tanap E Calculator app amp Chess app CrossOver app L DarwinP
14. Address is easy Enter your e mail address or at least an e mail address that you want listeners to use if they want to contact you Step 3 shown in Figure 7 13 allows you to find out how many people are subscribed to your podcast I m of the opinion that more information is good to have so go ahead and click everything on this screen Besides it s all free now so it s not like it s costing you any money From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 13 Find out how many people have subscribed to your podcast with FeedBurner amp FeedBurner 3 Analyze traffic Get More Gusto From Your Feed Traffic Statistics FeedBurner Stats automatically measures the general traffic level for your feed You may also consider free GI upgrade options that can give you additional insight into how engaged your audience is with your content Tell me more about all FeedBurner Stats features FeedBurner Stats automatically tracks v Circulation How many people are subscribed Y Readership What feed readers people are using Y Uncommon Uses Other services and sites using your feed C Clickthroughs How often people click items back to your site In order to track item clickthroughs we redirect all links in your feed through FeedBurner If you want us to leave your links untouched leave this option unchecked C Item enclosure downloads podcast downloads c want mor
15. Don t forget to wear your uh red hat for that extra bit of panache If for some reason you don t want to use FreshRPMs head over to http rpm livna org or http atrpms net and try those repositories instead I ll leave it to you to dissect the details SUSE SUSE uses RPMs just as Fedora does but SUSE devotees need to use a completely different source for their RPMs First however open YaST Software Software Management and install these packages required for Audacity to work correctly e wxGTK e wxGTK compat e wxGTkK devel After you ve completed that task in Firefox or whatever browser you prefer go to the PackMan archives at http packman links2linux org Using the Search box download the following packages appropriate for your particular version of SUSE 30 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity e wxGTK common e wxGTK2 e audacity e lame Now install them I m pretty lazy so I download the RPMs into the same temporary directory Make sure nothing else is in there except the RPMs open your terminal and cd into the temporary directory then type this command as root rpm Uhv rpm That should take care of installing the packages in the correct order If your system complains about dependencies head back to PackMan or YaST and take care of them If you want to experiment with other SUSE repositories check out the big list at http en opensuse org Addit
16. FIGURE 7 3 The free version of WordPress isn t very podcast friendly 106 Videos Slideshows File Browse jpg jpeg png gif pdf doc ppt only Title Description Used 0 of SOMB Buy more Upload If you want to use the hosted WordPress you re going to have to purchase an upgrade A fee of 20 per year buys you 1GB of storage for your podcasts whereas 5GB is 50 year and 10GB 90 year In addition upgrading your storage also allows you to upload MP3 OGG and even WAV files but why would you host huge WAV files WordPress is a good solution that will make many users happy as long as they re willing to spend a little bit of money TypePad TypePad is based on the popular and powerful Movable Type blogging software To create your TypePad blog head over to www typepad com answer the questions shown in the Figure 7 4 and start blogging Keep in mind that TypePad doesn t offer any free options you must pay to use the service Because WordPress isn t useful to podcasters unless they pay this isn t that big a deal but you should know it You should also know that you get a lot more for your money with WordPress Just compare the prices and you ll see what I mean From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 4 Sign up for a TypePad blog ks TypePad Bw Get your blog up and running in just a few minutes 14 day free trial Create Your
17. You can also edit the boxes in the Selection Bar entirely using the keyboard see Table 9 1 TABLE 9 1 Selection Bar Keyboard Shortcuts Key Action Ctrl F6 Move the focus to from the Selection Bar Tab Move between controls in Selection Bar Left right arrow Move cursor in a Selection Bar control Up down arrow Increase or decrease the highlighted digit Backspace Delete the last number pressed In Figure 9 5 the selection is displayed in units of hours minutes and seconds As shown it doesn t display any more accuracy than that so it s hard to tell whether you have half of a second selected which can be important sometimes That s no problem because Audacity gives you a plethora of choices of ways From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting 133 to display the time in the Selection Bar To get these choices click on the right triangle to the right of each box or alternatively right click anywhere in the box to open the context menu Table 9 2 lists the different time formats It s okay if most of them don t mean anything to you Most of them are intended for people using Audacity for specific purposes especially editing soundtracks for video and those people will know which one they want TABLE 9 2 Selection Bar Time Formats Selection Name Example Notes seconds 005 408 seconds hh mm ss 01h 30m 08s Hours minutes seconds dd hh mm ss 00 days 01 h 30 m 08s Days hours minutes seconds hh mm
18. all sounds to those USB headphones rather than to the internal speaker or built in headphones Windows To configure your USB headphones to work with Windows you need to go to Control Panel Sounds and Audio Devices Audio shown in Figure 3 13 Under Sound playback select the headphones you plan to use with your podcast In my case it s my Plantronics headset Next click the Volume button in the Sound Playback section This opens a window that resembles Figure 3 14 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 13 The Windows Sounds and Audio Devices control panel FIGURE 3 14 You can adjust the volumes for a variety of audio outputs 45 Sounds and Audio Devices Properties Volume Sounds Audio Voice Hardware Sound playback D Default device A Plantronics Headset Volume Advanced Sound recording A Default device 4 Plantronics Headset MIDI music playback is Default device lt 2 Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth x Volume About C Use only default devices H Speaker From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 3 Hardware and Software Setup Of course depending on your specific hardware and audio setup you could see something a bit more complex as in Figure 3 15 FIGURE 3 15 fil Master Volume Even more audio Perera es outputs whose Master Volume Wave SW Synth CD Au
19. amp Culture Sports amp Recreation Podcast st TV amp Film Technology Use additi Podcastin What you put into Podcast author should be easy your name Let the world know who s behind the bril liant words to which they re listening Author is also important since it s one of the fields that the iTunes Music Store indexes You may have noticed that I skipped the check box next to Include iTunes podcasting elements This is not because you should ignore it but because it deserves special attention You should definitely check the box because you want iTunes to index your podcast and thereby get it in front of millions of potential listeners When you check the box a whole new section appears as shown in the Figure 7 9 Select an item from the Category drop down which you can see in Figure 7 10 so that iTunes knows the general subject area of your podcast From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 11 After selecting a Category you can do the same for Subcategory FIGURE 7 12 You can add up to four additional Category Subcategory pairs to your podcast s feed 114 Category Society amp Culture gt Subcategory History Hide additional categories Category 2 None Category 3 None Category 4 None Category 5 None After that s chosen you can mo
20. an hour long podcast with maybe a few extra minutes to spare Plan accord ingly Of course you could burn that WAV to a DVD which holds at minimum 4 7GB but that involves a whole host of other issues when it comes to the burning process In addition whereas most cars sold today have CD players very few at this time have DVD players so you re severely limiting your audience It s best to stick to CDs creating more than one if you have a particularly long podcast After you select WAV AIFF and Other Uncompressed Types as your export format click the Options button and you see Figure 6 4 From the Library of Gregory Smith Save Your Podcast FIGURE 6 4 Specify how you want Audacity to export your WAV or AIFF file Audacity cannot help you with burning a CD You ll need some other software to handle that However burning software nowadays is built in to many operating systems and third party soft ware is plentiful and cheap 99 e OO Uncompresse Format Header Encoding v WAV Microsoft 16 bit PCM AIFF Apple SGI 16 bit PCM AIFF Apple SGI 32 bit float AIFF Apple SGI 8 bit PCM AU Sun Next 16 bit PCM AU Sun Next 8 bit u law CAF Apple 16 bit PCM OKI Dialogic VOX ADPCM WAV Microsoft 32 bit float WAV Microsoft 4 bit IMA ADPCM WAV Microsoft 4 bit MS ADPCM WAV Microsoft 8 bit PCM Not all co Other Co a Conclusion You have only
21. at making selections the faster your editing process will be and you will get your podcast in front of the world sooner rather than later Deleting Audio You re listening to your rough audio recording and you hear a place in which you cough pause for several seconds and then cough again That needs to be removed Zoom in so that the area in question is comfort ably visible and then select the part you want to remove using the techniques discussed in the preceding section Eventually you might have something that looks like Figure 5 23 FIGURE 5 23 SE a0 gt el ll J EI TTR i Select the area you an gt mJ Jw e HP e kE n 9 Pv 2 want to remove Z 4 Core Audio Built in Output E A Core Audio Built in Microphone i 4 gs PG Intemal microptone B j i RIPE lio 9 45 Project Rate Hz Selection Start OQ End Length Audio Position 22050 DONOSmissy DOnOOmOSsy DOHOOMOOSy Actual Rate 22050 85 From the Library of Gregory Smith 86 Edit Your Podcast To remove the offending sounds go to Edit Delete or Ctrl K 3 lt K and they will go bye bye When you do so the audio in front of the area you deleted collapses backward to fill in the time gap that was created To put it another way if your audio file was 20 43 and you deleted 13 seconds the file is now 20 30 This is not the case if you use Edit Split Delete or Ctrl Alt K 3 Option K how
22. audio files as well From the Library of Gregory Smith 87 Edit Your Podcast To remove a selected chunk of audio and place it temporarily on your computer s clipboard go to Edit Cut or press Ctrl X 3 X for Macs on your keyboard When you do so the audio in front of the area you cut collapses backward to fill in the time gap that was created To put it another way if your audio file was 20 43 and you cut 13 seconds the file is now 20 30 This is not the case if you use Edit Split Cut or Ctrl Alt X Option X however In that case when you cut out a section of your podcast you leave free space behind acting as a DMZ between what are now two large hunks of your file If your audio file was 20 43 and you use Split Cut to remove 13 seconds the file is still 20 43 with a 13 second gap wherever you surgically sliced out a piece In addition you now have two separate audio clips that can be manipulated independently What if you like the way you introduced your podcast This is the Audacity podcast dedicated to all things audacious in open source audio editing and you want to use that exact same bit of audio at the end of your podcast No problem Select those few seconds at the beginning of your file choose Edit Copy or Ctrl C 3 lt C place the cursor on the waveform at the end of your file where you want the same audio to appear and use Edit Paste or Ctrl V X V Of course you can use Paste aft
23. because of my actions and I know I don t need it so it gets stopped Just use your head and if you re not com pletely sure what a daemon does check out http www sorgonet com linux linuxdaemons or http www vias org linux knowhow Inag_06_05_04b html or use Google to look up the daemon in question From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 4 Sounds and Audio Devices Properties Volume Sounds Audio Voice Hardware A sound scheme is a set of sounds applied to events in Windows To quote Van M 0 rri so n it S sO ate oat ox can select an existing scheme or save one you quiet in here aome scheme No Sounds Windows Default TO Change sounas CICK a Program Event m Wie Torg Wst ar then select a sound to apply You can save the changes as a new sound scheme Program events Windows Asterisk Close program Critical Battery Alarm Critical Stop Default Beep FIGURE 3 5 00 Sound lt gt show ar qt To quote Depeche Mode enjoy the G Output input Sl lence Choose an alert sound Name Kind Blow Built in Bottle Built in Frog Built in Funk Built in Play alerts and sound effects through Selected sound output device H Alert volume mg 4 m Play user interface sound effects Play feedback when volume is changed wv Play Front Row sound effects Output volume ag O Mute C Show volume in
24. book is about how to record edit and polish your podcast using your home computer the software program Audacity and possibly a little bit of inexpensive equipment Audacity is just a tool to record and edit audio files It happens to be great for creating podcasts but it doesn t actually have any special features intended for just podcasts and it is useful for doing many other things just useful to keep in mind After you ve recorded and edited your podcast using Audacity you still need to use other software to publish your podcast on the internet From the Library of Gregory Smith The Big Picture So you ve got your idea your computer and a microphone You re all set This book helps you set up your hardware and software and tells you everything you need to know about using Audacity to record and edit your podcast Hosting a Podcast After you re finished creating your podcast you re going to need to host it somewhere You need a perma nent location for your podcast so that people can subscribe to your podcast and get new episodes when you post them This host is the service that sends people your podcast 24 hours a day 7 days a week whenever they request it Hosting a podcast is almost exactly the same as hosting a web site so if you already have your own web site you re set Just upload your podcast to a permanent location in your own web site and you re done If you don t already have a web site never fe
25. completely free way to store and propagate your podcasts to the world For some people any aggravations due to Blogger s limitations will be completely offset because they won t have to spend any money If your budget is zero it s hard to argue with that Upload Your Podcast Most of the services and software we ve discussed in this chapter so far provide a method for you to upload your MP3 to their servers so that it s available on the Net If you run your own server however or if you use a service that allows you to use FTP to upload your podcast you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that support for FTP uploads is now built in to Audacity directly To use Audacity to get your podcast off your computer and onto the Net go to File Upload File and you ll see Figure 7 5 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 5 00 Audacity FTP You can upload FTP Connection File Manager your podcast via Name Name Size bytes Permissions FTP from within ao Audacity l Password Connect Disconnect Site Manager Upload File Upload Folder New Folder The Name is for you it s the name you re going to see after this in the list of saved connections Enter something meaningful and move on Host should contain either a domain name such as www yoursite com or an IP address such as 111 111 111 111 Username and Password are obvious They re the username and password you us
26. deck you d plug it in here e Red although it looks more pink to me is microphone input I hope this doesn t come as a shock but it s where your mic goes Why not use the blue port Because mic output is weaker than the signal from an amp for instance so it needs its own circuit and port If you use an analog headset that combines headphones and a microphone and many of you will the end result will look something like Figure 3 20 53 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 20 An analog headset with headphones and a mic plugged in to a PC s analog audio ports Photo courtesy sridgway www flickr com photos stephanridgway 259297980 under a Creative Common license http creativecommons org licenses by 2 0 deed en us FIGURE 3 21 Audio ports ona Mac are simple 54 Mac Ports Macs also have analog ports as shown in Figure 3 21 but there are only two because the input port on the left handles both analog microphones and digital audio equipment and the output port on the right analog or digital headphones speakers or other equipment can manage both From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 22 A USB headset with headphones and a mic plugged in to a PC s USB port Photo cour tesy sridgway www flickr com photos stephanridgway 259297942 under a Creative Common license http crea
27. ends Where you click is important If you click within the wave form you then can adjust the overall volume of your clip by moving your mouse up or down Up makes the audio louder overall down reduces the entirety of your audio If you want to set your initial mark for From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast the Envelope tool without adjusting your clip s volume carefully click on the blue line at the top of the band containing the waveform as shown in Figure 5 28 FIGURE 5 28 Carefully click on the selected area called out in this figure Since I want a pretty abrupt drop about two seconds after the fade out starts I now click with the Envelope tool at 10 0 This time however I click within the waveform itself I just click I don t drag my mouse as that will adjust the volume and I don t want to do that yet I add other control points at 10 5 11 0 11 5 and 12 0 just by clicking on the waveform Now that they re in place I go back and carefully click on each individual point I inserted As I click on a point I move my mouse up to increase the volume and down to lower the volume I walk through each control point until I get the results you can see in Figure 5 29 the arrows have been added so that you can more easily see the control points Audacity won t put those in there If I insert a control point and want to move it to a new location clicking and dragging it to a new location on t
28. excellent walk through which covers the issue in detail with clear instructions and helpful tips You can find it at www apple com itunes store podcaststechspecs html scroll down until you see the sections labeled Testing Your Feed and Submitting Your Podcast to the iTunes Store Read those and then continue from there Follow Apple s advice and your podcast should show up in iTunes in no time 118 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast Tell Everyone You Know Last but not least if you want people to know about your podcast flat out tell them Put your podcast s web site on your business cards your e mail signature and your Facebook or MySpace description Tell people you meet about it If you re on a mailing list and it s relevant news to share tell the folks on the list The point is get the word out in a polite way and you ll vastly increase the likelihood that listeners will check you out Conclusion You ve reached the final stage in podcasting From recording to editing you ve now uploaded your podcast and made it available to the world In some ways this is the most important stage of all Unless you podcast purely to entertain yourself you want others to hear what you have to say In this chapter we learned how to add your podcast to the global conversation May you find many listeners 119 From the Library of Gregory Smith SECTION II Advanced Audacity 8 Playing and Recordin
29. file you need select it and voila It s open in Audacity Repeat as necessary Drag and drop also works In either Windows or Mac OS just drag the audio file into an open Audacity window as in Figure 5 1 and the program opens the file From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 1 Drag the audio file icon into the open Audacity window FIGURE 5 2 Drag an audio file to the Audacity icon in the Dock 74 If you want to kill two birds with one stone just drag an audio file onto the Audacity icon and the program will open and then quickly open the file If you use Windows make sure you have the Audacity icon on your Desktop if you use a Mac drag the audio file onto the Audacity icon on your Dock as you can see in Figure 5 2 Linux users can use File Open of course but they can also start Audacity from a the command line with the name of the audio file as an argument audacity my wicked cool_podcast aup safm mp3 Audacity From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 3 The main Audacity window features your podcast s waveform 75 Orient Yourself in Audacity When you first open your podcast in Audacity you ll see something that looks like Figure 5 3 e00 Undo History Manage History Action Size Created new project 54 2 MB Project checker repaired file 0 bytes Cut to the clipboard 624 6 KB Cut to the clipboard 640 9 KB Cut
30. find out more about this sad state of affairs check out http audacityteam org wiki index php title Lame_Installation and http en wikipedia org wiki MP3 Licensing_and_patent_issues If you skip this step Audacity will be able to open existing MP3 files and create uncompressed WAV and AIFF files but it will not be able to create MP3 files From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity To get the LAME MP3 encoder head over to http audacity sourceforge net download lame in your web browser Step 1 says to go to the LAME download page so go ahead and click on that link On that page you ll see a collection of links all pointing to the same version of LAME which is currently 3 96 1 Click on one and download the file which is lame 3 96 1 zip in this case Unzip the file and you should see a collection of files and folders similar to Figure 2 6 You can ignore all of them except for lame_enc dll Copy that file into a new permanent home on your PC I suggest creating a folder right in your C drive called cleverly enough LAME and placing lame_enc dll into that In other words the path to the file would become C LAME lame_enc dll FIGURE 2 6 7 Zip File Manager The actual file you Ble Edit View Favoras To Help need is highlighted h v X i i Add Extract Test Copy Move Delete Info In the image i C Documents and Settings Compaq_Administrator Desktop lame 3 96 1 zip Size Packed Size Modif
31. it to the Internet as it will be useless without the data Instead export to WAV or MP3 or a format designed for long term storage and sharing 93 From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 6 1 You can export from Audacity to a variety of formats 000 Export File Save As podcast_20070610 a Go em EE Desktop ins Q search vron A bate wodiied Network l 20070629 Yesterday 2 20070630 Yesterday bd B cranieMae AG Neovo End User RMA pdf 4 17 07 E GranneDisk amp Audacity_101_Slides_1024 pdf 6 27 07 aN Applications audacity prefs file formats png Today X audacity prefs file formats tiff Today t SERIE bubblehouse1953 jpg Today deleteme txt 5 20 07 il Documents EXHIBIT A doc 6 28 07 Music gmail csv Yesterday Pictures Granneman Tour Summer 2007 pdf 6 28 07 k t a Me Alias Granneman Tour Summer 2007 txt 6 28 07 4 WAV AIFF and other uncompressed types OGG Files FLAC Files MP2 Files To export to MP3 you need to have LAME installed But you took care of that back in Chapter 2 Installing and Configuring Audacity right 94 external program Exporting an MP3 Let s cut to the chase Unless you have good reasons not to you should just export to MP3 MP3 is ubiqui tous with nearly universal support on iPods and other digital music players computers and even many CD players For the overwhelming
32. menu bar 38 Turn off system sounds Before you start recording yourself make sure you ve turned off any beeps boops and buzzes that your operating system could make in an effort to warn or inform you about some system activity This would also include noises such as those that IM programs make when a buddy comes online but you already turned off your IM program so we don t need to go into that right If you use Windows go to Control Panel Sounds and Audio Devices Properties Sounds and change the Sound scheme to No Sounds as shown in Figure 3 4 Click OK to close the window and you te set In Mac OS X select the Apple menu System Preferences Sound Sound Effects You can either drag the Alert volume all the way to the left effectively silencing it or uncheck the box next to Play user interface sound effects see Figure 3 5 Close the windows and enjoy the silence From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 3 6 To quote Bjork it s oh so quiet 39 e Overview E gt Notifications System Settings System Notifications System Bell J Storage Media Notifications System Notification Configuration Event source KDE System Notifications E An information message is being shown A print error has occurred E A question is being asked A very serious error occurred at least causing the program to exit A warning message is being shown KDE is exiting KDE
33. noise and raises the volume when it perceives signal Moreover Audacity adjusts the volume differently across different frequencies so that noisy frequencies might be completely eliminated and mostly clean frequencies will be unaffected during the signal but still reduced a bit during the noise e Noise Reduction dB controls how much Audacity attempts to reduce the volume of the noisy part of the audio Reducing the volume of the noise too much can cause unnatural sounding effects when the signal appears e Frequency Smoothing Hz controls how sensitive Audacity is to noise that varies its frequency More frequency smoothing will help remove more noise but it will also remove more of the part of the signal you want to keep possibly causing distortion 155 From the Library of Gregory Smith Remove Glitches and Background Noise 156 e Attack decay time secs controls how quickly Audacity switches off the noise removal when the non noise signal appears and similarly how quickly it switches it back on when the signal is silent and all that remains is noise again A fast attack decay time will avoid accidentally eliminating sudden sounds but the sudden transition can sound artificial A slow attack decay time will sound smooth but it can make the noise removal more apparent just before and after each burst of signal Perhaps the best way to learn what these sliders do is simply to experiment The Preview button is useful for this
34. on Linux 170 You ll be asked several questions The defaults are almost always just fine but in a few places such as in the Summary you ll have to come up with something on your own After you ve answered all the questions you ll see something like this This package will be built according to these values Maintainer scott granneman com 1 Summary The open source sound editor 2 Name audacity 3 Version 1 3 3 4 Release 1 5 License GPL 6 Group checkinstall 7 Architecture 1386 8 Source location audacity src 1 3 3 beta 9 Alternate source location 10 Requires Enter a number to change any of them or press Enter to continue If you want to fix an entry follow the instructions otherwise press Enter and a few moments later check install will have installed your software leaving you with a freshly baked deb or RPM audacity_1 3 3 1_i386 deb on my system that you can use elsewhere How nice You can actually do a lot more with checkinstall Check out man checkinstall for the complete skinny Look inside the source code directory you ve been working in and make sure you move the deb or RPM you just created to somewhere safe At this point delete the directory and the original tarball you downloaded you no longer need them Congratulations you ve successfully compiled Audacity From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on
35. on your podcast Better safe than sorry 142 CHAPTER 11 Add a Musical Intro and Outro To give your podcast a really professional touch you may want to add some music at the beginning and end A little bit of music can also be a great transition between two different stories in a longer podcast Choosing Music Depending on the topic of your podcast and your audience you may want to pick a theme song a familiar song that people can associate with your podcast every time they hear it It doesn t need to be long just 10 or 15 seconds is more than enough to be memorable If you don t believe me just consider how short a cell phone ringtone is Be careful when choosing commercial music for your podcast Luckily you may be safe if you choose a short enough clip in the United States courts have upheld that sampling up to 30 seconds of music may be considered fair use and not subject to royalty payments However the law is a little fuzzy in this regard and people who own the copyrights to commercially produced music are often eager to try to squeeze as much money as possible from anyone who uses their music So if you have a larger and more popular podcast you may want to choose music that couldn t possibly get you into trouble Fortunately a lot of royalty free music is available on the Internet Just like Audacity is available free of charge with no strings attached and portions of the text of this book are free for yo
36. or you can also click OK listen select Edit Undo from the menu and try again Stand up and pat yourself on the back You just finished wading through several very difficult chapters that taught you more about Audacity than you probably wanted to know at this point It s okay if it all seems confusing for now What s important is that you now have a taste for some of the more advanced things you can do with Audacity The next time you end up with a glitch in your recording or need to apply an effect you ll know what s possible and then you can just pull out this book to refresh your memory on the details of what to do Happy podcasting From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 13 What Next This book contains only a brief introduction to all the possible things you can do with Audacity focusing on the things that might be the most useful for podcasting For more information check out the Audacity web site at http audacity sourceforge net where you will find a complete user manual several tutorials and a user edited wiki full of information There s also a discussion forum where you can post questions and get answers from both Audacity developers and other users If you can t remember the Audacity web site s address it also works to type Audacity into your favorite search engine The Audacity home page always shows up at the top of the search results at least until someday a more popular web site comes along that a
37. s it doing in the Selection Bar There s no good reason really it just had to go somewhere and it s been in that corner for a long time long before Audacity had a Selection Bar Project Rate Hz Selection Start End QlLength Audio Position 44100 DOhOima4sy DOHO7m30sy DOHOOmOOSy The next two boxes in the Selection Bar are what you re interested in the selection start and end This is the main purpose of the Selection Bar The last box shows you the audio position While you re playing or recording audio this box shows you the current time within your Audacity project so that you can make a note of the time when you hear a particular event happen From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting FIGURE 9 5 The Selection Bar with one digit selected 132 By changing the radio button from End to Length you can display and control the length of the selection instead of the endpoint Which one is useful for you depends on the circumstances If you need a clip from a song that s exactly 30 seconds long you may want to set the length to 30 and then modify the start until you have just what you want Other times you may know the exact end time but need to figure out where to start independent of the resulting length You can edit the time displayed in the Selection Bar using the mouse and or keyboard To change a particu lar digit you can just click on it and type a new value see Figure 9 5
38. the rest of the recording Get Noise Profile In this recording the first word isn t spoken until just before the 1 0 second mark So everything before that is supposed to be silence and therefore anything heard in the recording is just noise Select that part see Figure 12 9 and listen to it to make sure that all you hear is noise From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 12 9 The first step in noise removal is to select an area that contains just silence and noise with no real signal FIGURE 12 10 The Noise Removal dialog Noise Removal is a two step process in Audacity 153 Noise Removal Noise Removal by Dominic Mazzoni Step 1 Select a few seconds of just noise so Audacity knows what to filter out then click Get Noise Profile Get Noise Profile Step 2 Select all of the audio you want filtered choose how much noise you want filtered out and then click OK to remove noise Noise reduction dB 24 Frequency smoothing Hz 150 Attack decay time secs o 15 Cancel From the Library of Gregory Smith Remove Glitches and Background Noise FIGURE 12 11 Now that we have the noise profile we can apply it to the whole file so we choose Select All FIGURE 12 12 After noise removal 154 Click on the Get Noise Profile button The dialog box disappears and nothing appears to happen but Audacity analyzed the sample of audio we gave it learning exactly what this part
39. to the clipboard 583 1 KB Pasted from the clipboard 998 3 KB Undo Levels Available 5 Levels To Discard fi 8 E The blue squiggly lines you see are called a waveform and they repre sent your recorded audio Basically the larger a particular squiggle the louder the audio at that point with the reverse true as well The ruler along the top of the waveform shows the length of the recording in this case around 21 minutes You also use the ruler to select areas of your audio that you want to hear or edit Let s quickly go over the other components of your Audacity window We ve already looked at a few of the interface elements in other chap ters which I will refer to but there are some new components as well In Figure 5 4 you can see all the various aspects of Audacity s window along with labels describing them You may see a big difference in the layout of the Audacity you have running on your computer and that shown in Figure 5 4 If so don t panic You can move Audacity s toolbars around within the window to best suit your preferred working style in addition Audacity automati cally moves the toolbars around as you adjust the size of the program s window It s best if you learn the names of the various components so that you can refer to them by name instead of by position From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 4 Mixer Toolbar Tools Toolbar Control To
40. tracks while recording new one C Software Playthrough Play new track while recording it Cut Preview Play before cut region 1 seconds Play after cut region 1 seconds Seek Time Short period 1 seconds Long period 15 seconds Device MME Microsoft Sound Mapper Play when previewing seconds From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 3 Hardware and Software Setup In the Playback section use the Device drop down menu to choose the speakers you intend to use In the Recording section use the Device drop down menu to select the microphone you want to use For Channels you most likely want to go with 1 Mono instead of 2 Stereo with one exception If you re using two microphones you re interviewing someone say then yes choose 2 Stereo If it s just you and one mic sticking with Stereo will just duplicate the recorded track resulting in a bigger file without any corresponding gain in audio quality This is not a good idea and is a complete waste of disk space so all you solo podcasters should pick 1 Mono Quality The Quality preferences shown in Figure 3 31 allow you to specify the trade offs you re willing to make between speed size and quality of your recording FIGURE 3 31 Audacity Preferences 1 7 ri Audacity s Quality audo 10 F Samping prefe rences pa ne esa Default Sample Rate 44100 Hz Spectro
41. window and you are now Officially ready to create a podcast From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity Linux Of all the major operating systems Windows Mac OS X and Linux the easiest one by far when it comes to installing Audacity is Linux provided you re using the right distribution or distro of Linux In the next sections we go over a few selected distros and cover the best way to get Audacity on your system If you use Gentoo or Arch or Slackware you don t need to be reading this stuff Your Linux fu is strong and you will be able to figure out how to install Audacity on your own Skip ahead to the next sections Debian Audacity is super easy to install on Debian as is most software just use good ol APT and in a few moments you ll have the program and any of its dependencies downloaded and installed apt get install audacity One caveat however If you want the latest and greatest version of Audacity you re going to have to pull it from Sid the unstable distribution of Debian As of this writing Audacity is offered in the following versions in Debian compiled for the Intel processor Debian Distribution Audacity Version Stable etch 1 2 4b 2 1 Testing lenny 1 3 2 2 Unstable Sid 1 3 3 1 To enable MP3 support in Audacity you need to edit your sources list file the master list of all your system s software repositories As root fire up your favorite text e
42. your script Write so that you speak in a personal natural style as if you re talking to a friend who s sitting across the table from you Contractions are good it s instead of it is don t instead of do not Fragments can be used effectively The old man sat there By himself While a crowd of people walked past Use inclusive language that makes your listener a party to your discussion We re going to talk about some interesting topics today Our guests have a lot to add and we re all going to learn a lot One way of writing for the ear is to use the basic subject verb object sentence structure that you learned as a kid in school Magazine articles can feature long poetic phrases that the reader will enjoy and decipher with the luxury of time but the same thought delivered on a radio program needs short action oriented sentences Watch your use of jargon and abbreviations If your audience will know what a certain term means go ahead and use it but if you re trying to reach a more general listener explain what your terminology means the first time you use it And don t be afraid to explain it again the next time you use the term Short sentences are usually better than long involved ones They re easier to read they re punchier to hear and they help make your point more clearly Even so vary your sentence length Don t sound like Hemingway I kissed her and saw that her eyes w
43. 0 characters From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast You can always change what you entered by logging in to FeedBurner click ing on the My Feeds link at the top of the page clicking on your feed s name selecting the Optimize tab and finally choosing SmartCast in the Services section 115 Podcast summary is vital because it is one of the fields that the iTunes Music Store indexes Don t forget to include your subject matter the file type you use MP3 OGG and so on your publishing schedule A new podcast every Wednesday and anything else that potential subscribers should know before they decide to commit to your podcast Use words that people might search for in your summary Enter words that describe your podcast into Podcast Search Keywords field and keep in mind that the iTunes Music Store indexes them so choose them with care However Apple recommends that you use few keywords because your title and summary should be the key to attracting listeners In fact Apple actually says that you should use keywords for common misspellings of your podcast s title your name or other relevant info Finally don t go nuts adding keywords iTunes looks only at the first 12 Do not include irrelevant or repeated words in Podcast Subtitle Podcast Summary or Podcast Search Keywords or there is a good chance that your podcast will be blackballed by iTunes Finally Podcast Author Email
44. 340K 23 016 K 4 916K 1 456 K 4 176K 11 376 K 3 284 K 372K 2 368 K v End Process Processes 31 CPU Usage 14 Commit Charge 163M 2528M e Mac OS X Selecting Applications Utilities Activity Monitor shows you a window similar to Figure 3 2 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 2 The Mac OS X Activity Monitor shows you what your Mac is doing FIGURE 3 3 Linux users have the powerful top command to see their daemons 36 e008 Activity Monitor Qr Filte All Processes i Filter Show Process ID Process Name User CPU Threads 8985 Parallels rsgranne 17 90 22 401 22 MB o kernel_task root 3 60 52 207 65 MB 67 MozyBackup root 0 10 17 161 09 MB 8087 Opera root 5 60 14 153 03 MB 109 WindowServer windowserve 16 60 4 96 88 MB 9231 Snapz Pro X rsgranne 4 50 5 77 10 MB 7908 Quicksilver rsgranne 0 20 5 41 93 MB 9230 Audacity rsgranne 2 10 5 37 61 MB 378 J KeyCue rsgranne 1 10 4 22 59 MB 8987 Vim rsgranne 0 00 6 22 46 MB 303 amp Finder rsgranne 0 00 6 21 89 MB us coreservicesd root 0 00 3 21 35 MB 365 E Activity Monitor rsgranne 4 40 5 20 48 MB 325 GrowlHelperApp rsgranne 0 00 7 16 27MB 377 E Mozy Status rsgranne 0 00 4 15 93 MB aye CPU System Memory Disk Activity Disk Usage Network Wired 844 30MB I Free 219 14 MB Active 768 93M8 H VMsize 16 35 GB Inactive 215 62M8 WI Page ins outs 578941 38199 Used 1 79 G8 PEN
45. Account Your 14 day trial is completely free You have no This is how you will log in to manage your blog 4 8 se y 8 obligation and can cancel or Member Name change your service at any time for any reason and at no It can be up to 25 characters No spaces please charge Password It s called CAN It can be at least 6 characters and no more than 15 TypePad and it s Again no spaces please a thing of beauty CNN Headline News Buzz Confirm Password Factor A TypePad blogs are First Name ithe and any to Pe navigate TypePad Last Name produces the best looking blogs we ve n seen Email Address PC Magazine Confirm Email a SECURE SERVER Birthday January 1 Bll Need help registering People under 13 years of age require a parent or guardian to register for them Create Your Blog Address Every TypePad blog has a unique address This is what people will enter into their web browser to view your blog such as yourblog typepad com For 49 50 year you get the TypePad Basic service one author one blog 100MB of storage meaning it s practically useless to podcasters and 2GB of bandwidth month A fee of 89 50 year bumps you up to the TypePad Plus plan with one author three blogs SOOMB of storage and 5GB of bandwidth per month The next step is TypePad Pro which nets you multiple authors unlimited blogs 1GB of storage and 10GB of bandwidth per month for 149 50 year I
46. As you might have guessed this effect changes the volume of the selection without modifying the rest of your recording so you can make one part louder You can use it to make a section softer as well The amplitude change is measured in decibels with O as the reference point To increase the volume you ll increase the amplitude by 6dB or 12dB for example or to decrease it you might choose 6dB for example The peak amplitude is the maximum volume seen anywhere in the selection with zero being the loudest and negative numbers below that If you amplify so much that the maximum volume is beyond OdB you ll get clipping which doesn t sound very good In fact there s a check box in the dialog and it won t let you amplify too much unless you check the Allow Clipping box Finally note that as a convenience Audacity automatically chooses the maximum volume that you can apply whenever you choose Amplify So if you want to maximize the volume you re done and can just click OK If you want anything less than that just drag the slider to the left or type a new value into either of the boxes Hit Preview to hear the results Next let s briefly learn about most of Audacity s effects grouped by category Generators The only thing these have in common is that they create new audio out of nothing e Chirp Generates a chirping sound e DTMF Tones Creates telephone signaling sounds or touch tones e Noise Generates thre
47. Default device lt Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth Volume About C Use only default devices Co Cama a Under Sound recording select the device you plan to use with your podcast In my case it s my Plantronics headset Next click the Volume button in the Sound recording section to open a window that resembles Figure 3 24 56 From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 3 24 Set the recording volume for your mic in Windows 57 Plantronics Headset Start by setting it about one half of the way up but be prepared to adjust it if necessary after you test your audio settings in Audacity Mac OS X In Mac OS X select the Apple menu System Preferences Sound Input shown in Figure 3 25 Select the device you want to use for recording in my case a Plantronics headset Adjust the volume the microphone will use by moving the slider next to Input volume When you re satisfied close the window Note that Mac OS X comes with its own volume level meter labeled Input level similar to the one in Audacity that we ll discuss later in the chapter in the section Test Volume Levels This is very cool Note also that the volume meter shows you the peak output level for the last three seconds which is also useful Thank you Apple From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 25 000 Sound It s super easy to lt gt a adjust inpu
48. L From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 8 Step 2 in setting up a podcast feed in FeedBurner 112 FeedBurner 2 Setup podcast Configure Your Podcast and Tell iTunes How to List It Use FeedBurner s SmartCast service to make podcasting easy in feeds that normally cannot support it Link to MP3s videos images and other digital media in your site content and SmartCast creates enclosures for them automatically Add elements required for a richer more detailed listing in Tunes Podcast Directory and sites using Yahoo Media RSS Create podcast enclosures from links to any rich media file C Include iTunes podcasting elements M Include Media RSS information and add podcast to Yahoo Search Contains explicit content No 3 8 Copyright message Your optional copyright message Podcast author Your optional podcast author name lt Back Next gt Step 2 shown in Figure 7 8 is really all about your podcast itself One of the neat things about FeedBurner is that it auto matically detects links to MP3s in your blog postings and sets up your RSS feed accordingly Be sure to leave checked the box next to Include Media RSS information and add podcast to Yahoo Search that helps to publicize your podcast through Yahoo s chan nels it ll be interesting to see how long this feature lasts now that Google owns FeedBurner If y
49. LIC LICENSE accept the agreement I do not accept the agreement Make your choice and click OK A welcome screen appears click Next The following screen shown in Figure 2 2 contains the license agreement for Audacity I know that virtually no one actually reads these things but this one is different Audacity is licensed under the GNU General Public License GPL and that license is both comprehensible by normal human beings and interesting to boot If you get a chance take a look at it It will help you understand why Audacity has been as successful as it has and will give you a better appreciation for open source software in general You have to select the radio button next to I accept the agreement to continue After you do so click Next The following screen is also one you should read because it contains information about Audacity including the names of the developers things to know about the software and any late breaking news Skim through it and then click Next The next screen shown in Figure 2 3 shows you where Audacity will be installed on your computer By default it creates an Audacity folder inside C Program Files From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity FIGURE 2 3 The default location should be fine for pretty much everyone FIGURE 2 4 Important ques tions to answer while installing Audacity 17 amp Setup Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode Se
50. Linux 171 Taking Care of LAME Compiling LAME Of course you still need LAME to actually save any of your podcasts in the MP3 format If you re tired of compiling you can see how to install a binary of the LAME library for your distro earlier in this chapter and things should work fine If however you want to compile LAME after all you compiled Audacity so why not compile LAME as well continue reading Grab the LAME source code from the project s web site at lame sourceforge net download php The current release is 3 97 so you ll download lame 3 97 tar gz Save the file somewhere on your machine such as the Desktop and then expand it with tar zxvf lame 3 97 tar gz In your terminal cd into the resulting lame 3 97 directory After the work we did in the preceding section this one is going to be easy You don t need any dependen cies or fancy configurations so just run through these commands configure make For the third stage once again we recommend you use checkinstall as detailed in the preceding section sudo checkinstall Save the resulting deb or RPM delete the tarball and source directory and you re finished LAME has been compiled and is now on your machine From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux Linux Audacity and LAME In the previous sections covering how to install Audacity on Windows and Mac OS X I discussed configur ing Audacity to work with LAME Ra
51. OS X daemons and have nothing to do with what we re talking about here 34 CHAPTER 3 Hardware and Software Setup Before you start recording your podcast you need to set up your computer microphone and speakers and Audacity itself Trust me taking a few moments to get everything correctly in place can make the differ ence between a podcast that sounds professional and one that sounds like a couple of drunk dudes yammering in their Mom s basement Computer Setup There are certain things you need to do to your computer no matter your operating system if you want Audacity to work at its best Close programs you don t need Even if your computer has a CPU that runs at 25 gajillahertz and enough RAM to support the Googleplex you still should shut down any program that s not directly needed for your podcast E mail web browser IM iTunes close em all If you think you need your word processor open because it contains your script print it and close the application Ideally Audacity should be the only thing running Turn off unnecessary services and daemons Of course your computer is actually running all sorts of programs behind the scenes to manage the kinds of stuff a computer does Called services in the Windows world and daemons in the Mac OS X and Linux universes many of these must run or your computer will get completely funky on you and yes that s a technical term From the Library of Gregory Smith
52. Yet other times you want to apply different operations to the same time range of different tracks If it sounds overwhelming don t worry For now just click and drag to create a selection and that will work great However as soon as you start to create more complicated projects using Audacity and you discover that you re having trouble selecting what you want come back to this chapter It will make more sense after you ve played around with Audacity for a while Selecting Using the Mouse The easiest way to select a range of audio is to click and drag If it s not already chosen choose the Selection tool from the Tools toolbar see Figure 9 2 Ese 2k From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting Do you find it annoy ing when Audacity drags the edges of a selection when you were trying to create a new selection No problem you can turn off that feature Just open the Preferences click on the Interface tab and uncheck the Dragging of Left Right Selection Edges box 130 Now click the left mouse button anywhere inside an audio track click and drag to the other edge of your selection and release Some tips e You can drag from left to right or from right to left it doesn t matter e You can start your selection in one track and end it in another track and both tracks plus the tracks in between will all end up selected e If you move the mouse past the left or right edge of the window
53. Your Short Cut to Knowledge Creating a Podcast with Free Audio Software Dominic Mazzoni and Scott Granneman SOURCEFORGE Community Press ona Audacity www prenhallprofessional com Introduction 1 The Big Picture SECTION Podcasting Walkthrough 2 Installing and Configuring Audacity 3 Hardware and Software Set Up 4 Record Your Podcast 5 Edit Your Podcast 6 Save Your Podcast 7 Upload Your Podcast SECTION II Advanced Audacity 8 Playing and Recording 9 Selecting 10 Applying Effects 11 Add a Musical Intro and Outro 12 Remove Glitches and Background Noise 13 What Next Appendixes A Get the Right Equipment B Compiling Audacity for Linux From the Library of Gregory Smith 4 PRENTIGE HALL ee PEARSON EDUCATION Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks Where those designations appear in this work and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals The author and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this work but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein Visit us on the Web www prenhallprofessional com Audacity is free software d
54. able to move the microphone s slider or if the slider always jumps back to the same value no matter where you put it it s not you it s your sound card Unfortunately some sound cards do not have level controls and some of them have controls that are not compatible with Audacity To adjust your sound card levels you have to rely on the Windows Volume window shown in Figure 3 24 or instead see whether your card demands that you use a special control panel that it provides From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 28 The Meter displays output levels of your microphone FIGURE 3 29 As you record the input meter shows you your micro phone s audio levels 61 It s time to test your setting Notice the Input level meter on the right side of the Meter toolbar shown in Figure 3 28 That meter displays the output levels of your microphone in real time as they happen LT L I Rf ci iw 0 Py 0 a TT S E 4 v 0 PY 0 The Input level meter shows you the mic s output levels If you click once on the Input level meter the one above the little microphone icon or if you select Start Monitoring from the input meter s drop down menu you should immediately see red bars appear on the meter Those red bars indicate the volume of the sound Audacity hears Start speaking into your microphone in a normal tone of voice As you speak you ll see the meter move looki
55. ar it s easy to find places willing to host your podcast A bit of warning though Hosting costs money Audio files are rather large and whoever hosts your podcast has to pay for the bandwidth used every time somebody downloads one of your episodes If you have a small podcast you can probably find some places to host it for free But as your podcast gets popular you ll prob ably exceed the limits of any free host Luckily hosting costs won t break the bank For 5 or 10 a month you can host a very popular podcast You will learn how to do this in Chapter 7 Upload Your Podcast So are you ready to get started Let s begin by installing and setting up Audacity to play and record audio From the Library of Gregory Smith SECTION Podcasting Walkthrough 2 Installing and Configuring Audacity 15 3 Hardware and Speaker Set Up 34 4 Record Your Podcast 66 5 Edit Your Podcast 205 aoaaa aoaaa 73 6 Save Your Podcast nauau naana 93 7 Upload Your Podcast 0 0 100 14 From the Library of Gregory Smith 15 CHAPTER 2 Installing and Configuring Audacity The first step in using Audacity to podcast is no surprise installing Audacity However the way in which you actually install Audacity depends on the operating system you re using The following sections explain how you install Audacity for Windows Mac OS X and Linux I
56. are that enables you to publish your blog podcast on the Net WordPress WordPress is a great choice for many people Its software is robust complete and always improving and its community is large and helpful The fact that it is both open source and free as in speech and beer is another great plus that should make WordPress a strong contender if you want to host your blog podcast yourself You can download WordPress at http wordpress org I can t go into the finer details of installing the soft ware but fortunately the web site has complete detailed instructions After it s up and running all you need to do to generate the basic RSS you need for your podcast to link to an audio file reachable on the Net is use an absolute URL such as http www mydomain com podcasts myfile mp3 Podcasters who want to use WordPress must and that is a must install an extension called PodPress written specifically to extend WordPress s capabilities when it comes to managing and working with podcast files and feeds PodPress is available from www mightyseek com podpress After you install it you ll see a new section when you create a new post as shown in Figure 7 1 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 1 PodPress makes podcasting with WordPress easy 103 Podcasting Files Media File Move Up Move Down Remove File Location Title optional Type MP3 Stan
57. ast files which plays into the amount of storage you have on the server and how popular are my podcasts which affects the costs of your bandwidth In other words the larger and more popular the podcast the more it s going to cost you Many options are available to you and your choices are going to be affected by how much money you want to spend how much control you want over your podcast s home and subscription information and how technically proficient you are In this chapter we re going to cover several of your options to help you find the best solution that fits your needs and budget Find a Host It can be tricky finding a place to store your podcasts online You want to make sure that the host you choose is reliable scalable and gives you control over not only your actual podcast but also the resulting RSS feed that subscribers will use There are several different ways to skin this cat If you re technically proficient you could upload your MP3s to your own server and then write your own RSS the file to which users actually subscribe You could do that but then why are you reading this book Go code For everyone else there are much simpler ways to accomplish the goal of getting your podcast in front of anyone who wants to hear it From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast 101 If You Need a Place to Store Your Podcasts If you re lucky and your podcast becomes popular you re eventually going t
58. att Brubeck James Crook Roger Dannenberg Joshua Haberman Vaughan Johnson Leland Lucius Markus Meyer Monty Montgomery Shane Mueller Tony Oetzmann Alexandre Prokoudine and Martyn Shaw and finally Ronit for sticking by him through the writing Scott wishes to thank Dominic for writing such fantastic software that s as much fun to learn about as it is to use Debra Williams Cauley at Pearson for metaphorically cracking the whip with a smile when it needed to be cracked Jerry Bryan Robin Woltman and Robert Citek for looking over his manuscript as he wrote it and catching mistkaes mistakes his brother Gus for letting him work on the book while they were on vacation read about it at http www granneman com go 2007trip and Libby the ridiculously cute shih tzu for letting him know when it was time to take a break and go for a walk From the Library of Gregory Smith About the Authors Dominic Mazzoni started Audacity in 1999 while he was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University studying under Dr Roger Dannenberg What began as a tool for visualizing waveforms that could run on Windows Mac and Linux soon became a complete audio editor though limited at first Today Dominic is one of several developers around the world who continue to improve Audacity mostly in their spare time When not working on Audacity Dominic is a software engi neer at Google Inc and enjoys playing the piano and composing music He lives near L
59. bit float X Hen Mute Solo a x Bkond ow 1 0 Mono 44100Hz 32 bit float 0 0 v X Mute Solo a 1 0 If two boundaries are close to one another and it s not obvious which one is better Audacity does not snap to either If you want to snap to one of them zoom in so that you can clearly position the mouse closer to one than the other Track Selection Using the Mouse You can do two useful things by clicking in the label area to the left of a track like this make sure that you click in a neutral area not inside one of the buttons or sliders From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting 136 Clicking on a track s label area selects the entire track That s an easy way to apply an effect to an entire track If you want to select all tracks you can alternatively choose Edit Select All from the menu Another handy way to select an entire track or clip is to just double click inside it If you hold down Shift while clicking on a track s label you can toggle the selection of that track For example if you want to select the first and third tracks only you could choose Select All and then Shift click on the middle track to deselect it while leaving the others selected Note that it is possible to have a time range selected but no tracks selected In that case you see only the evidence of the selected time range in the time ruler Menu Commands for Selecting The Edit menu has several commands useful for se
60. bit samples Conclusion When you start podcasting even if you are an amateur you re going to have to learn a new craft micro phones headphones software as well as a new art how to speak in a way that makes people want to listen to you In this chapter we covered the craft how to set up your tools so that they work well for you In Chapter 4 Record Your Podcast we will look at the art how to use your voice in the service of getting your message out to the world 65 From the Library of Gregory Smith 66 CHAPTER 4 Record Your Podcast You ve installed Audacity You ve set up the program You ve configured your microphone and speakers and they re ready to go It s finally time to record your podcast Not so fast Speedy McSpeederson You want your podcast to sound good right Then you need to think about some things before a word comes out of your mouth To Script or Not to Script Let s be honest right up front Not every podcast needs to be scripted In fact many popular podcasts are completely unscripted with uh s and um s and awkward pauses present all through the recording If you really want to record your podcast without a script and more importantly your audience likes the results it s simple Don t use a script However many people will want to use a script for a variety of reasons They want to be sure their points get across clearly without obfuscat
61. bout 500 pages You ll need to figure out how to disable and re enable your anti everything programs yourself I will give you one bit of help however More than likely there s a little icon in your system tray the area at the right of the taskbar next to the clock where those little icons live shown in Figure 3 11 for your antivirus program and there may also be one there for your antispyware program as well Right click on that little icon and explore See whether you can find a R way to temporarily disable your antivirus protection while you podcast and then turn it back on again after you re done It could really make a big difference Defragment your hard drive As you use your hard drive with your Windows machine over time files begin to fragment which makes your hard drive work harder and slower Fortunately Windows comes with a defragmentation tool that you can run on demand that will do ree an okay job of putting files back together in sequence To open it 2 This option wil check the volume for open My Computer and find your hard drive probably C or D PEETER Right click on your hard drive and select Properties and then select the Tools tab shown in Figure 3 12 GranneDisk C Properties General Tools Hardware Sharing Quota Defragmentation amp This option will defragment files on the volume lo Click the Defragment Now button and the Disk Defragmenter peterent non program opens Select
62. ch your podcasts will reside You should strongly consider putting your podcasts under a Creative Commons license Besides the fact that you can thereby acquire free storage forever at the Internet Archive there s also the added advantage that it will help make it easier for people to reuse your podcast in ways that you specify thereby spreading the word about you Podcasting isn t about making money hardly anyone is going to do that but is instead about communicating and collaborating with people all over the world A Creative Commons From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast If you use WordPress for podcasting you can find some great tips tricks and advice at http codex wordpress org Podcasting 102 license furthers those purposes while bringing the additional benefit of free hosting as well Give it consid eration and you might see that the Internet Archive along with Creative Commons is the perfect solu tion to your needs In fact half of the chapters in this book are distributed under a Creative Commons license See page 2 for details Host Your Podcast Yourself If you re technically knowledgeable and don t mind getting your hands dirty or if you just want to main tain total control over your blog and podcast rolling your own is the way to go Whether you have your own server or just have space on a server you ll find that it s not that hard to install and set up softw
63. ction to the mouse pointer From the Library of Gregory Smith Playing and Recording FIGURE 8 11 Press C to hear one second of audio before and then one second of audio after the selection FIGURE 8 12 The Timer Record dialog 127 Play Cut Preview C Press the C key to hear one second of audio before and then one second of audio after the selection as if the selection was deleted see Figure 8 11 0 3 0 All keyboard shortcuts are customizable Make changes using the Keyboard tab of the Preferences Timer Recording Yet another way to record is using the Timer Record dialog found in the Tracks menu see Figure 8 12 Audacity Timer Record Use it to start recording later or to record for a certain duration before Start Date and Time sto in sievizoo S oui It will take time to master the various ways to play and record in this chapter Next you ll master the art of selecting text End Date and Time 2o hoSmoos Duration 00 days 00 h05 moos From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 9 1 The region from 5 0 to 7 0 seconds in the first two tracks is selected 128 CHAPTER 9 Selecting In a word processor most operations are performed by selecting a range of text usually with the mouse and then choosing some option from a toolbar or menu for example to cut the text or make it bold Audacity works much the same way Most operations are performed by selecting aud
64. d like you re waaaay in the distance and the room s ambient noise will dominate If you re less than three inches away your listeners may hear your every lip smack and pop of every p sound If you do find yourself making too many smacking noises when you record try a healthy application of Chapstick or lip balm That can help reduce the friction and lower the noise 68 From the Library of Gregory Smith Record Your Podcast Your Breath Right before you start recording your podcast face away from your mic and take a few deep breaths Take a final breath face your microphone and start your podcast That way the first sound your listeners will hear will be your voice and not your initial intake of breath During the podcast if you re interviewing someone else move your mouth back a good distance from your mic so that your listeners don t get to enjoy your melodic breathing Just don t forget to move back into position when it s your turn to speak again If you do find that your breaths are getting picked up when you re speaking or listening make sure you talk cross mic In other words speak above the microphone or sideways into it instead of directly into the front Your Vocal Cords If you ve ever acted or done public speaking you might know there are things you can do that affect your vocal cords both positively and negatively Your goal is to clean your pipes and make your voice smooth So how
65. dard Audio iPod Compliant Size Auto Detect Included in RSS2 Vi ATOM Feed Only O Disable Player Use if this media file is not compatible the included player Disable Preview Player Use this to disable the Click to Player preview player Tag ID3 Info Show PodPress s web site offers an amazing and essential list of features It installs easily just like every other WordPress extension and you ll be amazed at how cool it is Check it out Movable Type Movable Type is popular and full featured but it s not open source It is free to acquire and run however or at least the download available at www movabletype com is free If you want support a one year contract is going to cost you 49 95 more information is available at www movabletype com pricing html Movable Type isn t hard to install so you should have it running soon after you download it I won t go into the instructions here but you can read them on the software s web site You will quickly find however that Movable Type 3 which is the version current at this writing doesn t really have support for podcasting built in You have two choices if you want to rectify this issue If you re sticking with Movable Type 3 install the free MT Enclosures plug in available at brandon fuller name archives hacks mtenclosures The plug in helps generate the correct RSS feed your subscribers will need From the Library of Gre
66. dcast FIGURE 5 25 Reduce your audio s volume gradually with the Fade Out effect FIGURE 5 26 Increase your audio s volume gradually with the Fade In effect 89 Likewise to gradually increase the volume on part of an audio file select the area and then choose Effect Fade In Audacity produces what you see in Figure 5 26 For most people the changes made with the Fade Out and Fade In effects are just fine The only real control you have is based on the length of your selection the longer the time span chosen the more gradual the fade in or out but that will produce acceptable results most of the time However if you want complete control over the changes in volume over time you need to familiarize your self with the Envelope tool shown in Figure 5 27 From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 5 Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 27 The Envelope tool gives you complete control over audio fading 90 Remember the Fade Out effect would create a very linear gradual decrease in volume In the case of this audio file I want the last five seconds to contain the fade out Specifically I want a fairly sudden drop in the first two seconds and then a more gradual lowering over the last three seconds No problem for the Envelope tool I start by selecting the Envelope tool and then click once on the waveform around the 8 0 second mark about five seconds before the audio clip
67. dencies apt get install audacity liblamed Woohoo Podcasts await Freespire The best way for Freespire users to get Audacity is through the CNR Warehouse Open CNR and select the CNR Warehouse Install Software tab Click Search CNR Warehouse and then enter Audacity in the text box When CNR finds Audacity choose it and install it Immediately after that use CNR to search for liblameO and install that as well so you can work fully with MP3 files Finito Fedora Installing Audacity on Fedora is easy Instead of APT Fedora uses the less capable yum Just become root and enter the following yum install audacity That was simple unfortunately getting LAME to work is another story Fedora doesn t make LAME available in any way so you have to use alternative sources The most reliable is FreshRPMs The best thing to do is surf over to http ayo freshrpms net in your web browser and then click on the yum download for your version of Fedora Choose the RPM package titled something like 29 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity freshrpms release 1 1 1 fc noarch rpm not the src RPM and download it Install it with this command which updates your yum config with the FreshRPMs repository rpm Uhv freshrpms release 1 1 1 fc noarch rpm Now it s time to install MP3 support for Audacity yum install lame libmad Whew All done Now you can use Fedora to create podcasts
68. dexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching On the General tab uncheck Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching and click OK Yet another window opens asking whether you want to apply the changes to the hard drive and all of its files and folders Click OK and wait a while depending on the size of your hard drive Of course if you re in love with the Indexing Service you could just turn it off right before you record your podcast and then recheck the box when you ve finished working with Audacity Turn of antivirus and antispyware scanning Most antivirus and antispy ware tools work nowadays by scanning every new file on your computer as it s opened and closed Needless to say this can really slow things down when you re trying to create and work with a multi megabyte file in Audacity This might freak out some readers but it s perfectly okay to temporarily disable your antivirus and antispyware protection as long as you remember to reenable it when you re finished with Audacity From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 11 That little multicol ored square indi cates that a particular antivirus program is running FIGURE 3 12 Defragging your hard drive regularly is a part of good Windows mainte nance 43 Unfortunately if I tried to tell everyone how to disable all the various anti this and anti that programs this book would be a
69. dio PC Speaker volumes you can Balance Balance Balance Balance gb gb 4 adjust E y Y y Volume Volume Volume C Mute all Intel r Integrated Audio Mac OS X In Mac OS X select the Apple menu System Preferences Sound Output shown in Figure 3 16 Select the device you want sound to come out of in my case a Plantronics headset Adjust the volume coming out of the headphones by moving the slider next to Output volume When you re satisfied close the window Yes Macs are that easy 46 From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 3 Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 16 Its Super easy to adjust output volume in Mac OS X 47 ee0 Sound G q Sound Effects Output Input Choose a device for sound output Name Port Internal Speakers Built in Output Plantronics Headset Soundflower 2ch Soundflower 16ch Settings for the selected device Balance i i left right Output volume u s C Mute F Show volume in menu bar Linux Sound in Linux has gotten tremendously better in recent years but it can still be tricky In particular head phones sometimes don t want to play nicely with speakers Various distros and desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME have various methods of dealing with various headphone speaker problems but if I tried to cover them all in this book I would quickly suffer various mental problems So I m instead going to present a method
70. ditor in my case it s vim all the way baby vim etc apt sources list 26 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity Add the following repository to your sources list file deb http www debian multimedia org etch main If you re not using etch check the instructions at the bottom of www debian multimedia org to find out what you should do Close sources list and update APT apt get update To prevent annoying warnings from appearing when you proceed in the future we need to add the developers keys to your keyring apt get install debian multimedia keyring Finally we install LAME apt get install liblame The repository at www debian multimedia org has many cool goodies If you like watching movies listen ing to music or just doing neato things on your Linux box you owe it to yourself to check out what s available there Congrats lover of free software you re now ready to podcast K Ubuntu If you use either Ubuntu or its cousin Kubuntu it s also quite easy to install Audacity but first you need to make sure that your system will look in the wider universe of possible packages not just the stable packages 27 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity officially supported by K Ubuntu Edit the file etc apt sources list and add universe and multiverse to the following lines below If you re not
71. ds your download should start automatically if that doesn t happen click on this direct link In my case I ended up downloading a file named audacity win unicode 1 3 3 exe From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity FIGURE 2 1 Choose the language you want to use during installation FIGURE 2 2 It may surprise you but the GPL is actu ally an interesting read 16 Installation Now that you ve downloaded the installer it s time to run it Double click on the installation file and you re first asked what language you want to use during the install with the default at English as shown in Figure 2 1 Select Setup Language A Select the language to use during the installation Setup Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode License Agreement Please read the following important information before continuing Please read the following License Agreement You must accept the terms of this agreement before continuing with the installation Note Audacity is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL This includes everything in the source code distribution except code in the lib ste directory Code in the lib src directory may be released under a different license which is GPL compatible For a summary see the README txt file and for specific details see the license information inside each subdirectory of lib stc The full text of the GNU GPL follows GNU GENERAL PUB
72. e F ATQIA In cases like that you want to use Zoom You can use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons on the Edit toolbar shown in Figure 5 20 Zoom In shows you a progressively smaller and smaller section of the waveform whereas Zoom Out shows you more and more Or you can use the Zoom button on the Tools toolbar which you can see in Figure 5 21 To use the Zoom button just click on the waveform to move in and Shift click to move out If you re zooming in and then zooming out quickly as you try to find the optimal area to select this method can be a lot quicker than clicking back and forth on the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons You can also use the menus View Zoom In and View Zoom Out but that s way too slow Instead use the keyboard commands Ctrl 1 to Zoom In and Ctrl 3 to Zoom Out Mac users that s for you As for View Zoom Normal Ctrl 2 or 3 2 depending on your OS that shows your audio file in increments of one second with about one inch onscreen for every one second Finally if you ve made a selection and you want to zoom in so just that selection area is showing in Audacity use View Zoom to Selection or Ctrl E 3 E for Macs You can also click the Fit Selection button on the Edit toolbar shown in Figure 5 22 Tee ole eR From the Library of Gregory Smith c 5 Edit Your Podcast You can t edit your podcast if you don t listen to it first The quicker you are
73. e If you use Linux and a precompiled binary isn t available for you or if you just like to tweak your software precisely to your needs you can always download the source code and compile it Even if you haven t ever compiled anything before you ll find that it s really not that hard You just need to be careful and precise and it s entirely doable Please see Appendix B Compiling Audacity on Linux for the rest of the details From the Library of Gregory Smith 33 Installing and Configuring Audacity Conclusion You can find audio editors for Windows and you can find audio editors for Mac OS X and you can find surprisingly lots of audio editors for Linux But try to find a high quality audio editor available for all three platforms Because Audacity is committed to supporting the big three operating systems it has to also support three different installation methods Couple that with the ridiculous patent issues surrounding the MP3 codec that necessitate the hoops a user must jump through to get the LAME library and installing Audacity can be just a tad more complicated than it is with your usual app However now we re over the hump and we can start actually using this great software to make a podcast that will entertain and inform your listeners Let s go From the Library of Gregory Smith Yes Mac OS X includes things called services but they are completely different from Windows services and Mac
74. e Have FeedBurner Stats GIJ also track e Individual item views and resyndication Popularity of individual items Reach Number of people who viewed or clicked the content in your feed Use FeedBurner with Your Own Domain Name You now have a FeedBurner RSS feed address set up and if you direct people to that address you will imme diately be able to use it However some people may not want their feed s URL to be http feeds feed burner com MyPodcastName Instead they want to brand their RSS feed with their own URL so it might instead look like www mydomain com podcast rss FeedBurner has a service that makes this possible and it s your great luck that it s now free since Google bought the company 116 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 14 Use FeedBurner but with you r own 1 Make sure you own and or control your domain and can edit your domain j name s DNS records domain name To activate MyBrand complete the these three steps If you run your own web server or use a publishing service that permits domain aliasing such as TypePad and LiveJournal MyBrand is for you 2 Create a CNAME entry in the DNS records for each domain name If you want to host your feeds at the feeds subdomain this is the most common e g feeds mydomain com your CNAME entry should be feeds CNAME feeds feedburner com Note The trailing period after com may be required Check
75. e actual package is not libmad but libmad0O Armed with this knowledge we would run the following command to download and install the necessary dependencies for our compile of Audacity sudo apt get install libmadQ dev From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux Here s the complete list of packages that I needed to install before I could compile Audacity with all its features It s long but it takes care of everything You can install all of them with the command apt get install listing the package name or names at the end of the line libwxgtk2 8 dev libvorbis dev libogg dev libmad Q dev libsndfile1 dev libflac dev liboggflac dev libflac dev libid3tagQ dev libsamplerateQ libsamplerateQ dev libsoundtouchic2 nyquist libexpat1 libexpat1 dev 165 From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux 166 Yes not every package ends in dev but such is life compiling software and worrying about the necessary dependencies Also keep in mind that if you ran this command you would undoubtedly find that APT wanted to grab many packages that are themselves dependencies on those specified previously That s perfectly all right just thank your lucky stars that the computer and APT has to worry about it instead of you The list of packages to use with apt get search includes the following Again a search for libwxgtk will most likely turn up something akin to libwxgtk2 8 dev
76. e GNOME go to System Preferences Sound Sounds shown in Figure 3 7 Uncheck the Play system sounds box and then click Close That s it Configure your sound card You re about to record sound so you need to make sure your sound card s drivers are up to date Most people running Mac OS won t need to worry about this and neither will Linux users as their operating systems take care of any driver issues just make sure you ve installed any necessary system updates If you run Windows however you should check out things to make sure you have the latest and greatest Go to Control Panel Sounds and Audio Devices Properties Hardware and select your sound card which should look somewhat similar to Figure 3 8 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 8 sprone Z Click Properties and another window opens in that window take a Select your sound TI eT e E look at the General tab to verify that the device is working correctly card from the list of pa T Select the Driver tab displayed in Figure 3 9 and you can view devices UB MATSHITA DVD R UJ 857 DVD CD R Wintel 82001B4 BAM AC S7 Audio Cont Sound vid details about the driver or update it or at least find out whether Audio Codecs Sound vid Legacy Audio Drivers Sound vid there are updates Media Control Devices Sound vid Legacy Video Capture Devices Sound vid Of course the best way to check for
77. e level consistent There are many good brands but in particular we recommend models from Sennheiser a recognized world leader in high quality microphones and headphones Low budget but high quality models include the PC130 PC131 PC150 PC151 PC160 and PC161 Under 100 USB Headset Microphone For just a few dollars more you can get a headset microphone that captures the audio digitally before sending it to your computer which often results in better quality and less noise Two excellent choices from Sennheiser are the PC155USB and PC166USB Under 200 Podcasting Bundles At least two inexpensive product bundles include an inexpensive but professional microphone and a USB audio device that digitizes the sounds captured by the microphone with excellent quality The Behringer product might be a better choice if you want to mix multiple sources and the M Audio product might be better for podcasting from a laptop because it requires no extra power From the Library of Gregory Smith Get the Right Equipment Behringer Podcastudio USB e 5 input mixer with EQ e Microphone e Headphones e USB audio interface M Audio Podcast Factory e Microphone e USB audio interface Under 400 Make Your Own Bundle Not happy with the choices given so far Put together your own home studio by mixing and matching one item from each of these categories Ata minimum you ll want a USB Firewire audio device and a dynamic microphone the headphon
78. e source code Or you can just go directly there in your web browser audacity sourceforge net download source Download the source which comes in a tarball For instance the current source comes in a file like this audacity src 1 3 3 tar gz From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux 164 Save the tar file somewhere on your machine the Desktop is as good a place as any In your favorite termi nal open the tarfile by running tar zxvf audacity src 1 3 3 tar gz and then cd into the resulting audacity src 1 3 3 directory Dependencies Before you start going great guns compiling we first need to install all the dependencies you re going to need to run Audacity Before I give you the complete command let me quickly explain how to find the files you need because the exact filename on your distro may be different from those on K Ubuntu If you want Audacity to read MP3 files and of course you do you re going to need a library named libmad specifically you want the development package of libmad On K Ubuntu I d enter the following RPM based distros would do something similar with yum apt cache search libmad In return I get a list of about seven packages matching my search with these two at the top e libmadO MPEG audio decoder library e libmad0 dev MPEG audio decoder development library Because you re compiling software you want the one that ends with dev Note also that the name of th
79. e to access the site you specify in Host Click Connect to make the connection to the server Click Upload File and find the file you want to upload A few moments later depending on your connec tion speed a copy of your podcast will sit on your server You can also upload folders if you want or even create a new folder in which your podcast will sit 109 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 6 Just enter your blog s RSS feed address and FeedBurner walks you through the process 110 Most people won t need this feature but it s great that it s in Audacity and it will undoubtedly be improved in future versions Create a Better XML Feed If you use the services discussed earlier in this chapter such as WordPress and Movable Type you re gener ating an RSS feed every time you publish a new post Most of these RSS feeds will work in that people interested in your podcast can use them to subscribe to your words But they are pretty basic and better options are available In fact for the do it yourselfers a variety of tools and services are available that you can use to create a podcast feed by hand for a good list see www podcastingnews com topics Podcasting_ Software html But that s way too much work for most people There has to be a middle way between the easily created but basic RSS feeds on the one side and the robust but difficult to create RSS feeds on the other and the
80. e types of noise e Silence Fills a track with however much silence you want e Tone Generates a pure tone with whatever frequency you want From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 10 Applying Effects Volume Levels These effects don t change the sound quality but adjust the volume level in different ways e Amplify Change the volume of the selection e AutoDuck If you have two tracks this lets you turn down one for example the background music when the other one is loud for example when someone s talking over it e Compressor Compresses the dynamic range by making the soft parts louder and the loud parts softer e Fade In Smoothly transition from zero volume to maximum e Fade Out Smoothly transition from full volume to zero volume e Normalize Same as Amplify but also fixes recordings that have an offset up or down in the waveform called a DC offset Tone Changing Effects These effects all change the tone or character of the sound in some way e Bass Boost Increase bass frequencies e Echo Repeat the sound several times with continually decreasing volume e Equalization Adjust the levels at every frequency to boost highs lows or anything else e Phaser Continuously modifies the phase of the sound over time creating a very modern electronic sound e Wahwah Adds a filter with an oscillating frequency similar to the sound electric guitar players get from a Wahwah pedal 140 From the Library o
81. each episode is about an hour of your voice you may want to invest in a more professional microphone setup Here are some suggestions for all kinds of budgets Where do you purchase these items The Audacity Store carries a selection of microphones and USB audio devices All profits are used to fund further develop ment of Audacity Amazon com carries a wide array of electronics including many of the items mentioned in this appendix Amazon usually has great prices and fast shipping and is known for good customer service For anything else try Google Product Search just type in the name of the item you re looking for and you can find a number of online retailers that carry it Of course it s always a good idea to spend a couple of minutes researching a new web site where you plan to purchase something if you haven t heard of it before 159 From the Library of Gregory Smith Get the Right Equipment 160 Microphone Setups Free Built in Microphone Many laptops and some desktop computers contain a built in microphone Usually these microphones pick up a lot of background noise because they re so near your computer s fan and hard drive so you will defi nitely want to take advantage of Audacity s noise removal features Under 50 Headset Microphone If you re on a budget the best investment you can get is a headset microphone The microphone stays a fixed distance from your face keeping the volum
82. eal ized this need When you click on either drop down menu you ll see the menu displayed in Figure 5 14 seconds dd hh mm ss hh mm ss milliseconds hh mm ss samples samples hh mm ss film frames 24 fps Film frames 24 fps hh mm ss NTSC drop frames hh mm ss NTSC non drop frames NTSC frames hh mm ss PAL frames 25 fps PAL frames 25 Fps hh mm ss CDDA frames 75 fps CDDA Frames 75 fps From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 5 Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 15 Aha Milliseconds FIGURE 5 16 You ve selected just over 9 5 seconds FIGURE 5 17 You changed the Selection Start but the Length is the same 82 Selection Start joo h09 m 16 182 sv OEnd Length 00 h00 m09 514 s7 lt Selection Start 00 hO9 m16 182 s7 im OEnd Length 00h00 m09 514 s7 Audio Position 00h00 m00 g Selection Start 00 h09 m20 182 sv iD OEnd Length joo h00 m09 514 s7 Audio Position For our purposes select hh mm ss milliseconds which causes Selection Start and End Length to look like what you see in Figure 5 15 Now you can make precise selections To change any of the numbers displayed in the Selection Start or End Length click on the number you want to change and use your up or down arrow keys to increase or decrease the number As you change the number others around it may cha
83. ecording with Audacity 00 00005 71 Conclusion 2 0 200 ee 72 5 Edit Your Podcast 73 Opening the File with Audacity 73 Orient Yourself in Audacity 0 05 75 Listening to Your Audio File 79 Deleting Audio 2 2 2 2 00 0002 85 Cutting Copying and Pasting Audio 86 Undo Your Mistakes 20 000000000 000005 87 Fading In and Out 0 0 0 0000000000 88 GONCIUSION o 4 s2 4c 40d aenda ka kiTa Oe a beds be eee WOR RS 92 6 Save Your Podcast 93 Exporting an MP3 aaua aana aaaea 94 Exporting an OGG 2 2 ne 96 Exporting a WAV or AIFF 2 2 0 aana aaa aaa 98 CONCIUSION ssi ad 205 02 renea Cree ews od esd va DEE E resents 99 From the Library of Gregory Smith 7 Upload Your Podcast Find a Host Upload Your Podcast 22 0 000 Create a Better XML Feed Advertise Your Podcast 00 0 20005 Conclusion SECTION Il Advanced Audacity 8 Playing and Recording Keyboard Shortcuts 0 000200000220 PlayIRESIONS ssc dares adie eS Wee oh Pha Mees Bah SEE Veg aes Special Playback Keyboard Commands Timer Recording 00 0 00020 9 Selecting Selecting Using the Mouse 200 The Selection Bar 0 00 0 00220 eee Selecting Using the Keyboard
84. ecording without losing your place HH 0g From the Library of Gregory Smith Playing and Recording a Skip to Start Move the cursor to the beginning of the audio This is often useful if you want to play everything or record a new track starting from the beginning Skip to End Move the cursor to the end of the audio There s sometimes a bit of a delay before recording begins If you enable Always Allow Pausing in the Interface tab of the Preferences you can click Pause before you press Record then when you unpause recording will begin immediately Keyboard Shortcuts You can use several keyboard shortcuts that work exactly the same as the buttons in the Control toolbar as listed in Table 8 1 TABLE 8 1 Keyboard Shortcuts for Playing and Recording Key Action Spacebar Play or Stop L or Shift Spacebar Loop R Record P Pause Home Skip to Start End Skip to End 122 From the Library of Gregory Smith Playing and Recording FIGURE 8 2 The arrows between 15 and 45 seconds indicate the current play back region FIGURE 8 3 The green triangle at 25 seconds indi cates the current playback position 123 Play Regions The current region being played is indicated by arrows in the ruler for example in Figure 8 2 the play region is from 15 to 45 seconds During playback a green triangle indicates the current playback position in this example at about the 25 second mark see F
85. egy is to get rid of everything that s visually anomalous in the waveform but ideally no more than necessary In Figure 12 4 we ve selected just the part we re going to remove Select Edit Delete from the menu or press the Backspace key on your keyboard to remove the selection After the delete the Audacity selection becomes a cursor positioned at the deletion point see Figure 12 5 From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 12 4 Selecting only the part we actually want to remove FIGURE 12 5 After deleting the pop 150 If we listen to the edited audio the large pop is gone but a tiny click remains Zooming in on the audio reveals the problem Our cut resulted in a discontinuity in the waveform see Figure 12 6 which is audible as a soft click sound From the Library of Gregory Smith Remove Glitches and Background Noise FIGURE 12 6 Zooming in on the place where we cut reveals a sharp dis continuity Even though it only lasts for an instant it is audible our ears hate discontinuities like that FIGURE 12 7 Selecting the discontinuity FIGURE 12 8 The Repair com mand in the Effect menu works beauti fully as long as the segment to repair is very very short 151 Fortunately Audacity can fix this problem Select a little bit of audio surrounding the sharp discontinuity see Figure 12 7 choose Effect Repair from the menu and voila it s smooth see Figure 12 8
86. enabled audiounits disabled prefix usr local portaudio v19 If you see something like that you re good to go If configure fails in some way you get to figure out what s causing the problem which is way beyond the scope of this book If you re really banging your head against the keyboard ask for help on the Audacity Forum at audacityteam org forum Just be as complete as possible in describing your problem so the forum denizens can help you effectively When configure works it s time to actually compile Audacity so run this command make If you ve never compiled software before you might be astonished at the sheer abundance of stuff that s going to stream by on your terminal It s actually completely normal totally expected and rather beautiful to watch as it all zooms by lickety split Eventually it will end and it will be time to install your newly compiled Audacity From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux 169 Anyone who s ever compiled anything before knows what is next sudo make install you have to be root to complete the final step However make install although venerable still leaves a lot to be desired The big problem Although make install does a great job placing the compiled software where it s needed in the various nooks and crannies of your system it s often difficult to uninstall that software if you decide you don t like it After all your package
87. er you have cut part of your podcast too Undo Your Mistakes If you decide that you ve made an error it s easy to undo your action Select Edit Undo or press Ctrl Z Z To jump back several steps or to see everything that you ve done to a file use View History which shows you something like you see in Figure 5 24 From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 24 Undo as many levels as you want with Undo History For more about incorporating music into your podcast see Chapter 11 Add a Musical Intro and Outro 88 e020 Undo History Manage History Action Size Created new project 54 2 MB Project checker repaired file 0 bytes Cut to the clipboard 624 6 KB Cut to the clipboard 640 9 KB Cut to the clipboard 583 1 KB Pasted from the clipboard 998 3 KB Undo Levels Available 5 fa Ciscard Levels To Discard 1 Fading In and Out Most popular music nowadays finishes not with a sudden abrupt ending but with a gradual fade out This is usually a nice way to end and begin your podcast as well especially if you utilize some sort of music to bring listeners in and then lead them out at the end The easiest way to reduce the volume gradually on a part of your podcast is to select the area you want to change and then go to Effect Fade Out You can see the results in Figure 5 25 From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Po
88. ere shut I kissed both her shut eyes I thought she was probably a little crazy It was all right if she was I did not care what I was getting into but don t sound From the Library of Gregory Smith Record Your Podcast like Proust either one sentence in Remembrance of Things Past is 958 words Variety isn t just the spice of life it s the spice of podcasts as well If you find yourself having trouble writing your script here s a good method that will work Just use Audacity to record yourself speaking off the cuff about your subject and then transcribe what you said clean up the text into something more polished and use the resulting script for your real podcast Speak record transcribe polish speak It s amazing how well that can work What you re seeking is easy Flow You want your words to flow naturally so that you sound credible and relaxed and so that your listeners want to hear what you have to say A script can really help achieve optimal flow and it s something you should definitely consider Position Is Everything Regardless of whether you decide to use a script the way you sit position your mouth and even care for your vocal cords can make a huge impact on your podcast s most important instrument Your voice Your Lips and Mouth You re sitting there in front of the microphone Try to keep your mouth about three to six inches from the mic If you re more than six inches away you ll soun
89. es and mixing board are optional Microphones e Shure SM 58 e Sennheiser E835 USB Firewire audio devices e PreSonus 4X4 Firewire Recording Interface e Creative Labs EMU 0202 161 From the Library of Gregory Smith Get the Right Equipment e M Audio Fast Track USB e Behringer FCA202 Firewire Mixing boards e Behringer UB502 or UB802 e Tapco by Mackie Mix 6 0 or 100 Headphones e Sennheiser HD 280 Pro e Sony MDR V6 or MDR V600 Under 600 Condenser Microphone Setup For a really amazing professional sound you need to switch from a dynamic microphone to a condenser microphone which is the only way to accurately capture the entire frequency range bass and treble and dynamic range louds and softs with maximum quality Condenser microphones require a power source called phantom power to be provided in the microphone cable so you need to make sure that the device you plug it in to is designed for phantom power you can t plug it directly in to your computer Mixing boards provide phantom power or you can choose a USB audio device with phantom power The Shure KSM series is universally recognized as the top of the line for studio condenser microphones for vocals Here s one possible system that you could put together for under 600 e Shure KSM27 cardioid condenser microphone w XLR cable e M Audio Fast Track Pro USB audio interface with phantom power e Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones 162 From the Library
90. ever In that case when you delete a section of your podcast you leave free space behind acting as a DMZ between what are now two large hunks of your file If your audio file was 20 43 and you use Split Delete to remove 13 seconds the file is still 20 43 with a 13 second gap wherever you surgically sliced out a piece In addition you now have two separate audio clips that can be manipulated independently You can also replace the coughing with silence by choosing Edit Silence or Ctrl L 3 lt L This is more like Delete in that you still have only one complete clip unlike Split Delete which results in two separate clips If you want to delete everything except the area you have selected use Edit Trim or Ctrl T 3 lt T After using that command the only audio left will be what you had previously selected so this is a great way to get rid of 10 minutes of meaningless rambling to focus on the 45 seconds of great banter that you want to use Of course you can use Undo if you suddenly realize that your coughing is sonic genius and must be preserved to find out how look ahead in this chapter to Undo Your Mistakes Cutting Copying and Pasting Audio Anyone who s typed a document on a typewriter and then graduated to word processing software has given thanks for Cut Copy and Paste Those three simple commands have made life infinitely easier for writers but they can also be used in Audacity to edit podcasts and other
91. f like most people you only use one of these systems you should feel free to skip the sections that don t apply to you First a word about version numbers This book was written for Audacity version 1 3 3 and higher If you try to use an older version of Audacity most of the examples won t work Like most software Audacity is constantly being updated and by the time you read this a new version may be available Any version at least as high as 1 3 3 will work At any given time you may find two different versions on the Audacity web site a stable version and a beta version Don t be frightened by the beta label If a stable version with a version number higher than 1 3 3 has been released that might be your best bet but if not you ll find that version 1 3 3 will work quite well The new features that were added since the last stable release are well worth it Windows To download Audacity head over to audacity sourceforge net in your favorite web browser The web page should be able to tell that you re using Windows and will offer the appropriate downloads for that OS Be sure to choose version 1 3 3 or higher because this book depends on features introduced in Audacity 1 3 3 If you selected a beta version you are taken to a page warning you about beta software Read the page and then click on the link for the software which takes you to a download page on SourceForge a web site that hosts open source projects In a few secon
92. f Gregory Smith Applying Effects 141 Pitch and Tempo Changing the speed or tempo is great if you want to stretch it to fit an exact amount of time like precisely one minute It s also useful for slowing down speech so that you can transcribe it more easily Changing the pitch is most useful for music but it s also fun to distort your voice e Change Pitch Without changing the tempo e Change Tempo Without changing the pitch e Change Speed Affecting both pitch and tempo together Clean Up Bad Recordings You ll be making use of these whenever you make a home recording and want to clean up all of the inevitable glitches that will occur e Click Removal Automatically find and remove click sounds e Noise Removal Try to filter out constant background noise e Repair Fix one particular short click pop or other glitch e Truncate Silence Automatically try to find and eliminate long periods of silence Other And finally there are three odd little effects that don t really fit into any other category e Invert Flip the sound upside down e Repeat Repeat the selection Repeat the selection e Reverse Turn the sound backward nuf eb nac tl Effects can be a great way to spice up your podcast Just don t crazy too many of any good thing turns into a bad thing after all From the Library of Gregory Smith Consult a lawyer if you re unsure at all about the legality of the music you wish to include
93. f you want to spend even more money you can Every one of these plans includes support for podcasting 107 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast Unfortunately Audacity doesn t yet support SFTP Secure FTP which means that a lot of people can t or won t use Audacity to upload podcasts FTP sends all information in the clear so that anyone listening in can acquire your user name and password whereas SFTP encrypts all traffic to and from the server People can still listen in but they ll end up with gibberish instead of anything they can use 108 TypePad is a nice service with some cool features but it s a little pricey Nonetheless it may be just what you re looking for so consider it if you want to podcast Spread the Hosting Around One of the largest and most popular free blogging services in the world is Google s Blogger It s big but it s not very full featured in fact in many ways it falls far behind Movable Type and TypePad or WordPress For instance it has zero support for podcasting After creating your free blog at www blogger com you have to upload your MP3 file to another server such as the Internet Archive and then point to it in the blog post you create at Blogger So why would anyone use Blogger Well it doesn t cost anything at all and it s easy If you have no money to spend the combination of the Internet Archive and Blogger will give you a
94. g 121 9 SelectNE xara don one Kee yer asks Saai en a 128 10 Applying Effects 0cc ccc oves cc aeve sorter dens wee Tat 11 Add a Musical Intro and Outro 142 12 Remove Glitches and Background Noise 148 13 What Next sot an hath ad wands oeeaeda corpus chead 157 120 From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 8 1 The Control toolbar which you will use frequently for play ing and recording 121 CHAPTER 8 Playing and Recording You ve already learned how to play and record with Audacity but let s take a closer look It turns out there are a lot of additional ways to control playing and recording that will make your life much easier once you master them The easiest way to control Audacity playback and recording is with the Control toolbar see Figure 8 1 mu gt a rw Play If a subset of the time range is selected in the main window only the selection will be played If there is no selection playback will begin wherever the editing cursor is To start playback from the beginning choose Skip to Start m Loop Hold down Shift while pressing Play to loop the current selection playing it over and over again until you click Stop Record Recording begins at the current cursor location or at the beginning of the current selection but always creates a new track Stop Stops playing or recording immediately Pause Temporarily pauses playing or r
95. ge of audio you can not only listen to the selection but also listen to the audio before and after the selection FIGURE 8 6 Press the Spacebar to hear the whole selection indicated by the playback region shown in the ruler 125 Play To Selection B Suppose you ve selected a range of audio see Figure 8 5 and you want to make sure it s exactly what you want to cut Of course if you press the Spacebar you ll hear the whole selection see Figure 8 6 The B key lets you play the audio from the mouse to the selection what you get depends on where the mouse pointer is Move the mouse to a part of the audio you re interested in hearing and press B without clicking the mouse button see Figure 8 7 through Figure 8 10 From the Library of Gregory Smith Playing and Recording 126 FIGURE 8 7 If the mouse pointer is to the left of the selection and you press B you ll hear the audio up to the selection 0 0 a 3 0 FIGURE 8 8 If the mouse pointer is inside the left side of the selection and you press B you ll hear the first part of the selection up to the mouse pointer 0 0 3 0 FIGURE 8 9 If the mouse pointer is inside the right side of the selection and you press B you ll hear from the mouse pointer to the end of the selection 0 0 0 FIGURE 8 10 Finally if the mouse pointer is to the right of the selection and you press B you ll hear from the sele
96. gory Smith Upload Your Podcast Due to space con straints we obviously can t discuss every service of this type If you re interested in broadening your search for the perfect podcast hosting service here are a few more you may want to investigate Odeo www odeo com Liberated Syndication www libsyn com Switchpod switchpod com 104 By the time this book is in your hands Movable Type 4 will probably be out and the new version should have complete support for podcasting baked in from the get go Even if it s not yet out the beta is available now so you can try it and get your feet wet before the final release Host Everything with Someone Else Many good companies offer the total package They host your podcast files they make it easy to generate short blog posts with info about each podcast and they generate RSS feeds but you ll want to replace them with those generated by FeedBurner as you ll discover later in this chapter Even with these niceties there are downsides All the solutions in this category suffer from two perhaps minor to you problems First these solutions aren t really free well they can be if you use the Internet Archive which IIl cover in a moment If you want to take full advantage of their environments you re going to end up ponying up some money Not a lot but it s going to cost you Second with ease of use you sacrifice control If you don t like
97. grams Default Sample Format 32 bit float Directories Interface Conversion Theme Sample Rate Converter Batch Real time Fast Sinc Interpolation v None Keyboard Mouse High quality High quality Sinc Interpolation Shaped Cancel OK From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 3 Hardware and Software Setup In the Sampling section you may want to change the Default Sample Format from 32 bit float to 16 bit If you have an older sound card it may not even support 32 bit samples which means you re just generating data that your system can t use In addition you will once again reduce the amount of data you re asking Audacity to create by 50 percent which will also make it easier for the program to write that data to your hard drive In fact here s a rough rule of thumb If you set the Channels to 1 Mono the Default Sample Rate to 44100Hz and the Default Sample Format to 16 bit you re looking at about 5MB of hard drive storage for every minute of recorded audio Therefore for a 30 minute podcast recording session expect to generate a file that will be about 150MB Keep in mind that I m referring to the size of the data file that Audacity Project will store not the size of an exported MP3 which could be much smaller If you export an MP3 from your Project and then delete the Project file you recapture that space However don t do that unless you re seriously low on disk space and are absolutel
98. han likely won t work at all with Audacity However you may find that you have other audio ports on the front of your PC ports similar to those on the back of your machine In addition you may have a special audio card installed that has its own ports The goal is to use the best most convenient sound card ports If your computer has the same built in ports on the front and back of the case like those shown in Figure 3 18 use those If on the other hand you have a special audio card installed with ports like those in Figure 3 19 you should definitely use that instead From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 19 Ports on a sound card Photo courtesy NTLam http www flickr com photos ntlam 533428720 In an effort to communicate to users who may not be that technically inclined computer manufacturers use small icons and color coding to indicate the purpose of each audio port There may be only two of those ports red and green or there may be three red green and blue or there may even be more than that For our purposes you need to know what two mean with the third as a bonus that will be important in a later book For reference purposes these three ports were shown previously in Figure 3 19 e Green is line output You plug your speakers or amplifier in to it e Blue is line input If you have audio equipment that you want to record from such as an amplifier or cassette
99. he Fansa iver the devis fale ater updating the diver rol Indexing Service isn t turned on by default but every time you ack to the previously installer iver M perform a search a little link offers to make future searches faster Uninstall To uninstall the driver Advanced If you click that you just turned on the Indexing Service Cancel 41 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup The problem is that the Indexing Service can really slow down your machine Microsoft itself admits this in its Knowledge Base article Windows XP may run slowly and you may see multiple symptoms in Windows Task Manager http support microsoft com default aspx scid kb en us 899869 You can either turn the Indexing Service off instructions can be found at the URL I just gave you or you can tell Windows not to index your hard drive To do the latter open up My Computer find your hard drive C or D most likely right click on the drive and select Properties see Figure 3 10 FIGURE 3 10 GranneDisk C Properties By default Indexing General Tools Hardware Sharing Quota Service had permis sion to index my C drive 42 Pa GranneDisk Type Local Disk File system NTFS TD Used space 7 285 293 056 bytes I Free space 4 354 142 208 bytes Capacity 11 639 435 264 bytes Drive C Disk Cleanup Compress drive to save disk space Allow In
100. he file selector dialog Alternatively if your audio file is open you can drag it into the Audacity window to import it into the same project After you ve imported your music it appears in a new track and Audacity may zoom out so you can see both tracks see Figure 11 2 In this particular example the top track is our interview and it s a mono track but the intro music below is a stereo track the top waveform is the left channel and the bottom waveform is the right channel They look similar but they re not quite identical From the Library of Gregory Smith Add a Musical Intro and Outro Yet another way to import your music is to open it in a new Audacity window and then Copy and Paste the audio This actually involves more steps because you have to create a new empty track to Paste the new audio into so choosing File Import from the menu is really the best But Copy and Paste is definitely one option FIGURE 11 2 After importing your xv background music mrt tes oo ta into a new track E 10 gi 2 Suppose we want only the first 14 seconds or so of the background music To determine exactly how much you want change the selection and then listen to it by pressing the Spacebar to play To make it easier to hear just the background music without the rest of the interview click the Solo button in the track Now you ll hear only that track In Figure 11 3 we ve selected the first 14 seconds by clicking and dragging with
101. he right by about 12 or 13 seconds so that the tracks overlap a bit but not too much To do this find the Tools toolbar at the top of the window see Figure 11 7 and choose the From the Library of Gregory Smith Add a Musical Intro and Outro FIGURE 11 7 The Tools toolbar FIGURE 11 8 Use the Move tool to time shift the first track until it starts exactly when you want it to 147 Move tool in the center of the bottom row It looks like left right arrows because it s the tool that allows you to move audio in a track left and right Actually you can occasionally use it to move audio from one track to another After you ve chosen the Move tool click on the interview and drag it to the right until it starts at the right time see Figure 11 8 Listen to the result by pressing the Spacebar or clicking the green Play button If you want to hear just part of it select the audio you want to listen to first Mono 44100Hz 32 bit float Mute Solo Congratulations You just added a musical intro to your podcast You can use essentially the same tech nique to add an outro at the end From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 12 1 This waveform has a spike at about the 1 5 second mark which is audible as a popping sound 148 CHAPTER 12 Remove Glitches and Background Noise Unwanted sounds and background noise are inevitable in audio recording Getting a clean recording without any glitches or background n
102. he waveform works perfectly If I insert a control point and decide I don t want it any longer I can just click on it and then drag it outside the track When I release the mouse the control point is gone 91 From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 5 29 The Envelope tool allows you to precisely control the fade out The Envelope tool performs the same function as the Fade In and Fade Out effects it changes volume over time but it gives you a heck of a lot more control over just how that fading occurs You may never use it but when you need it you ll be glad that Audacity s developers had the foresight to include such a powerful feature Conclusion If you re going to take podcasting seriously you re going to have to edit the initial audio that you record Sure a few successful podcasts are considerably more raw with little to no editing but that s the exception not the rule Just because a popular podcast gets away with it does not mean that you can Take the time to edit your podcast and make it sound great You ll be proud of your work and your audience will appreciate the extra polish that you put into place 92 From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 6 Save Your Podcast Creating podcasts is fun but the best part is making them available to the world After all you haven t gone through all this work just for yourself have you No you want people all over the world to be able to li
103. her software programs with similar capabilities are available why should you choose Audacity The simplest reason Because it s free Audacity is developed by a team of volunteers and released under an open source license more on this in the following section Open Source Software That means you don t have to pay for Audacity you can download it for free from the Internet with no limitations or restrictions Because Audacity is totally free no strings attached what have you got to lose by giving it a try At worst a few hours of your time Even if you find Audacity too limiting for your own advanced needs there s nothing to stop you from using other software alongside Audacity perhaps even expensive commercial software As long as Audacity is free and has some unique capabilities there s no reason it shouldn t be part of your toolbox Another reason to choose Audacity is because it is the only audio editing software that runs on Windows Mac and Linux computers Every other piece of software you will find works only on one or maybe two of these platforms Why should this matter to you Most of us have only one type of computer perhaps like the majority of people you have a typical PC running Microsoft Windows Or maybe you have a Macintosh and you ve used nothing but Macs for years But what about your friends Do they all use the same operat ing system If you work at a company school or other organization aren t
104. ic players and the ability to listen to audio programs on an iPod whenever you want instead of on the radio when they happen to be playing was a revolution that couldn t have happened as quickly if the iPod wasn t so ubiquitous Why Podcast Two main elements make podcasting so revolutionary e Listening to fresh timely programs and shows on your portable audio device not just music when ever you want to not just when a particular show happens to be on the radio A key component of this is software that automatically discovers new episodes using a syndication feed in RSS or ATOM and copies them directly to your iPod or other device every time you sync it e Finding content created by amateurs and professionals alike and even creating your own content Unlike radio broadcasting podcasting is inexpensive and accessible to just about anyone with the time and inclination This has led to an explosion of amazing amateur content out there in addition to the large number of existing audio show producers who have embraced podcasting as well Some may compare listening to podcasts to watching television with a TiVo or other digital video recorder but the key element that is missing is the ability for anyone to participate Perhaps a more apt comparison is a site such as YouTube which has some commercial content but is largely dominated by videos submitted by individual users From the Library of Gregory Smith 12 The Big Picture
105. icrophone is far enough away from your box so that fan noise doesn t get picked up and recorded No matter how you sit or talk or breathe it finally comes down to one rule that cannot be overstressed If you re having fun and you re passionate about your subject matter your listeners will have fun and will want to listen to your podcast So find something you care about and want to share and have fun Recording with Audacity When you use Audacity to record yourself speaking into a microphone you ll end up working with the Control toolbar shown in Figure 4 1 There are a couple of ways to manipulate those controls one for people who like to use the mouse and one for those who prefer to use the keyboard In order the buttons on the Control toolbar along with their keyboard equivalents and their purposes are as follows u Pause or press P Temporarily pause playing or recording gt Play or press Spacebar If part of the time range is selected in the main window only the selection will be played If there is no selection playback begins wherever the editing cursor is positioned To start playback from the beginning use the Skip to Start button From the Library of Gregory Smith Record Your Podcast That last point is so important that I m going to make it again Record always creates a new track If you ve recorded 5 minutes of audio and you then hit Stop to futz with your mic or yo
106. icular type of noise sounds like Usually one second of audio is more than sufficient to get a noise profile Audacity will happily analyze several minutes of noise if you ask it to but it probably won t help Now we re ready to actually remove the noise Remove Noise Now that Audacity has a noise profile we want it to use this profile to remove as much of the noise from the recording as it can First however we need to tell Audacity to remove the noise from the entire record ing not just from the first second Choose Edit Select All see Figure 12 11 Now choose Effect Noise Removal again and this time click OK Ignore the sliders for the moment the default values are fine This time Audacity modifies the waveform The difference is subtle and might not be visually apparent at all see Figure 12 12 From the Library of Gregory Smith Remove Glitches and Background Noise The sound is audibly different though The noise is now imperceptible and the speech is virtually unaffected Advanced Settings Audacity s default settings for removing noise are pretty good for typical examples For excellent results you will want to adjust the other sliders you find in the Noise Removal dialog box Audacity s noise removal works by assuming that your audio sometimes contains just noise and other times it contains the real signal such as voice or music on top of the noise Audacity lowers the volume when it perceives just
107. ied OB OB 2004 07 29 02 29 0B 0B 2004 07 29 02 29 0B 0B 2004 07 29 02 29 256 B 1588 2003 12 19 04 02 pa COPYING 24K 8707 B 1999 11 24 12 40 B FILE_ID DIZ 306 308 2000 03 08 07 37 Jlame exe 197K 194K 2004 07 29 02 19 FStiame_enc d rik tek 2008 07 2902 19 te LICENSE 707 6 421B 2000 12 19 12 16 we README 1801 B 833B 2002 01 19 15 52 we USAGE 29K 88386 2004 03 23 05 57 lt 1 object s selected 171K 171K 2004 07 29 02 19 19 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity If you re using Windows XP or Vista you already have a built in unzip ping program If you re using a differ ent version of Windows you ll need to install a program that will unzip files We heartily recom mend 7 Zip a free open source program that does a great job You can get it at www zip Org 20 After you ve copied lame_enc dll you can delete both lame 3 96 1 zip and the folders and files that were created when you unzipped the original download Now you can open Audacity by clicking on the icon on your Desktop if you chose to create one or by going to your Start menu and selecting Audacity there Very quickly you will be rewarded with the program s window ready and waiting for you to edit sounds Let s take care of that lame_enc dll file before we go any further however so that you can put it behind you and never have to worry about it again In Audacity open the Edit
108. igure 8 3 0 1 30 4 1 00 30 4 1 00 You can play simply by clicking and dragging in the Ruler to create a play region That s a great way to play without modifying the selection Also if you do modify the selection or the play region after playback has begun it does not affect the active play region The audio will stop whenever it would have based on the play region when playback began From the Library of Gregory Smith Playing and Recording FIGURE 8 4 Press the 1 key on your keyboard to play one second centered at the current mouse cursor position 124 Special Playback Keyboard Commands Three extra keyboard commands let you play a few seconds of audio without changing the selection They can be really useful during editing such as when you re trying to find the exact spot to cut and paste see Table 8 2 TABLE 8 2 Extra Keyboard Commands for Playing and Recording Key Action 1 Play One Second B Play To Selection C Play Cut Preview Play One Second 1 Press 1 the number one key while the mouse is pointing to a particular time and you will hear one second of audio centered at that time For example position the mouse at 1 0 seconds and press 1 and you will hear the time range from 0 5 to 1 5 seconds see Figure 8 4 o0 10 2 0 3 0 From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 8 5 An example of a selection To deter mine whether you ve selected exactly the right ran
109. in your audio file with the Selection toolbar 79 Finally the Selection toolbar shown in Figure 5 11 is used to view and change the exact start and stop time of a range of selected audio allowing you to make precise selections Selection Start OE End Length Audio Position 0OhOOmOOs 00h20m58s7 00h00m00s You ll use the Selection toolbar a lot as you edit your podcasts in fact you ll learn more about it in the next section Listening to Your Audio File As you edit your Audacity file you re going to listen to it as well In fact you can t edit an audio file without also listening to it The Play and Stop buttons will be your friends Click on the waveform to select a place from which to start listening and then click the Play button or use the Spacebar as a handy shortcut When you hear some thing problematic and need to cease play click the Stop button or use the Spacebar again which toggles between Play and Stop Selecting a Portion of Audio If you want to listen to a particular chunk of audio from 1 30 to 2 15 for instance select that part of the waveform and then click Play Audacity plays only the selected area of audio Of course that brings up the question How do you select part of a waveform There are actually several ways to do this From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast If you want to select everything press Ctrl A or X A on a Mac to deselect everything
110. io with the mouse and then applying some operation Audacity selections can be more complicated than word processor selections though In Audacity the selection involves a set of selected tracks and then a range of time Les within those tracks that is selected Normally you select ona both the tracks and the time range simultaneously by oo clicking and dragging For example to create the follow is ing selection make sure you re using the Selection tool ppum a 7 then click the cursor at 5 0 seconds in the first track and mre drag to 7 0 seconds in the second track see Figure 9 1 a From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting FIGURE 9 2 The Tools toolbar 129 Note that the selection does not extend to the third track Any operation you perform affects only the selected part of the first two tracks You may be surprised to discover just how many ways there are to select audio in Audacity When you re word processing choosing what to select is easy just select what you want to delete or select the part of text you want to replace With audio though it s hard to know exactly what you want to select It s diffi cult to see on a waveform what you want to select so you have to listen to the left and right edges of a selection to make sure you got it right Sometimes you want to select multiple tracks so that any changes you make apply to all of them but sometimes you want to affect the tracks individually
111. ion They are nervous about speaking without a plan They have some thing delicate to say that must be phrased just so to avoid upsetting listeners They want their podcasts to be tight and compact without rambling or wasted words Remember it s not an all or nothing proposition You can go script free for most of a podcast but utilize a script for a particularly important section Experiment and figure out what works for you and your audience If you decide to write and use a script there are some good rules of thumb to keep in mind Of course all rules are meant to be broken so these aren t gospel truths They are however good advice that you should strongly consider From the Library of Gregory Smith Record Your Podcast That said using a more elevated style of speech can be appropriate in certain situations If you re talking about a serious formal subject delivering a recorded eulogy for instance you should use serious formal diction 67 Your main goal is to make sure your words sound good to your listeners ears Remember this is all about the ears not the eyes There can be a huge difference between a sentence that reads well on the page and one that sounds smooth and interesting when read aloud The only way to tell is to first read your script out loud perhaps recording it with Audacity and then listen to it with a critical ear Better yet ask a friend to listen and critique
112. ional_YaST_Package_Repositories Okeydokey SUSE user you re good to go Knoppix Knoppix is a Live CD which means the entire OS runs from a CD without anything having to be installed on the computer s hard drive It really is one of the marvels of Linux and even if you ve already settled on a particular distro for your day to day use you really ought to download a copy of Knoppix burn it to CD or DVD and keep it handy Two versions of Knoppix are available One for burning to CDs and a Maxi edition suitable for DVDs 31 From the Library of Gregory Smith 32 Installing and Configuring Audacity Knoppix comes with Audacity already on the disc but to work with MP3s surprise you need to add LAME yourself Open the sources list file with your favorite text editor vim etc apt sources list Add this line to the file deb http www debian multimedia org etch main Save the file close it and run these commands apt get update apt get install liblame lame When it finishes installing congrats Not only are you using one of the coolest Linux distros out there along with the coolest open source sound editor but you can now create really cool podcasts as well And that my friend is just well cool If you re interested in learning more about Knoppix Scott wrote a book about the subject Hacking Knoppix It s a few years old now but it s still packed with good info Compile from Sourc
113. is starting up KDE logout was canceled No matching completion was found Something special happened in the program The end of the list of matches has been reached There is more than one possible match m Quick Controls C Apply to all applications Turn On All Sounds Turn Off All Sounds Actions C Play a sound L l Advanced gt gt Help Defaults Where Linux users go depends on their desktop environment In KDE go to System Settings Notifications which you can see in Figure 3 6 Check the Apply to all applications box and then click Turn Off All Sounds Click Apply and then close the System Settings window From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 7 To quote Antonio Carlos Jobim it s like a quiet night of quiet stars 40 Sound Preferences Devices Sounds System Beep Enable software sound mixing ESD Play system sounds System Sounds Select check box No sound Choose menu item No sound be Click on command button No sound Miscellaneous message No sound lt Question dialog No sound Error message No sound Warning message No sound 2 Informational message No sound Log out Logout gt Play Log in Login gt Blay se Help Ej close If you us
114. istributed with no strings attached and granting anyone the right to modify it and redistribute it under the same license In the spirit of this half of the chapters in this book see below have been released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3 0 License You are free to redis tribute those chapters in their entirety including all figures including modifying and adapting them as you see fit If you do you must attribute the authors specifically you must say that your new adaptation was based on the book Podcasting with Audacity by Dominic Mazzoni and Scott Granneman However you may not imply any sort of endorsement of a derived work or any other product For any reuse or distribution you must make clear to others the license terms of this work Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holders Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the authors moral rights Chapters 2 3 8 9 10 11 and 12 are Copyright 2008 by Dominic Mazzoni and Scott Granneman and released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3 0 license For the full legal text of this license visit http creativecommons org licenses by 3 0 The rest of this book everything other than the chapters listed above is Copyright 2008 SourceForge Inc All rights reserved This publication is protected by copyright and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction
115. ity instead of Audacity If you ve used Audacity on your Mac before you may already have that folder inside Application Support with stuff in it If so great You just saved 10 seconds of time enjoy them After you ve copied libmp3lame so you can delete both libmp3lame osx universal 3 97 zip and the folders and files that were created when you unzipped the original download Now you can open Audacity by finding it in your Applications folder and double clicking on Audacity app Very quickly you will be rewarded with the application s window ready and waiting for you to edit sounds If you re going to be using Audacity all the time and why wouldn t you since it s so cool you ought to add it to your Dock Just drag Audacity app from Applications to your Dock to create an application icon and now Audacity will be only a click away Let s take care of that libmp3lame so file before we go any further however so that you can put it behind you and never have to worry about it again In the application go to the Audacity menu select Preferences and click on the File Formats tab In the MP3 Export Setup section click Find Library and then Browse Navigate to Library Application Support audacity if that s where you put the file otherwise find it where you placed it and click OK You ll know it succeeded because Audacity displays the LAME version number like 3 96 Click OK to close Audacity s Preferences
116. lect Destination Location Where should Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode be installed cal Setup will install Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode into the following folder To continue click Next If you would like to select a different folder click Browse C Program Files Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode Browse Atleast 9 7 MB of free disk space is required lt Back l Next gt J Cancel Setup Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode Select Additional Tasks N Which additional tasks should be performed A GS Select the additional tasks you would like Setup to perform while installing Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode then click Next Additional icons Associate Audacity project files lt Back Next gt Cancel If you need to move the location for some reason and you really should have a very good reason then click Browse choose the new location and click OK No matter where you decide to place Audacity click Next to continue The next screen asks you two questions shown in Figure 2 4 Do you want to create a shortcut on your Desktop to run Audacity and do you want to associate this version of Audacity with existing Audacity project files Some people like having shortcuts on their Desktop whereas others hate the clutter If you re in the former group leave the first box checked if you re in the latter uncheck it post haste The only reason to uncheck the second box is if you re installing a second ve
117. lected area stopped 9 m 25 696 s If you then clicked on the 6 in the 16 in Selection Start and pressed the up arrow four times advancing the Selection Start to 20 182 you d see a different result as shown in Figure 5 18 This time you changed the Start but left the End the same resulting not in a selection that is the same length and shifted but instead in a shorter selection Both have their place and you ll know when you need one or the other The important thing is that you now know how to tell Audacity to provide you with the exact selection you need Viewing Aspects of Your Audio with Zoom What if you want to select three minutes of audio but Audacity only displays 30 seconds There are several ways around that issue as well To see your entire audio waveform inside your Audacity window choose View Fit in Window or press Ctrl F F on a Mac Alternately you can click on the Fit Project button on the Edit toolbar which you can see in Figure 5 19 fa es ea felon ola a e 2 e From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 20 Zoom In and Zoom Out are found on the Edit toolbar FIGURE 5 21 The Zoom button on the Tools toolbar FIGURE 5 22 The Fit Selection button on the Edit toolbar 84 Of course if your audio file is 20 minutes long you will definitely be able to see the three you want but it may be tough to select exactly those three minutes Fae ne
118. lecting these are listed in Table 9 3 TABLE 9 3 Commands in the Edit Menu that are Useful for Selecting or Modifying the Existing Selection Command Action Select All Select all audio in all tracks Select None Deselect everything and move the cursor to 0 0 Left at Playback Position Sets the left selection boundary based on audio playback Right at Playback Position Sets the right selection boundary based on audio playback Start to Cursor Select from the start of the track or clip to the cursor position Cursor to End Select from the cursor position to the end of the track or clip Selection Save Remembers the current selection time range Selection Restore Restores the time range from Selection Save It s important to learn how to select areas of audio and one of the most important and fun reasons to do so is covered in the next chapter adding effects From the Library of Gregory Smith 137 CHAPTER 10 Applying Effects Audacity comes with dozens of effects that can transform your sound This chapter focuses on understand ing the different types of effects and how to use them in general rather than the details of what every single effect does Audacity has effects in two different menus Generate and Effect The difference between the two is that the effects in the Generate menu create something out of nothing you can call them at any time and they always produce sound whereas everything in the Effect me
119. lso happens to be named Audacity Even then a search for Audacity audio editor would be certain to succeed Remember that Audacity is developed by volunteers around the world and released for free It could not exist without the continued support of generous users and contributors By purchasing this book you re helping fund Audacity development Although monetary contributions are always appreciated there are many other ways you can help out if you feel so inclined People are always needed to help translate Audacity into new languages maintain the web site test new versions report bugs and more You can find more information on the site in the Get Involved section of the Audacity website From the Library of Gregory Smith Appendixes A Get the Right Equipment 159 B Compiling Audacity for Linux 163 158 From the Library of Gregory Smith APPENDIX A Get the Right Equipment For most podcasters a good microphone setup is one of the most important tools of the trade Many podcasts are out there and you might have a hard time building up a large loyal audience if your voice comes through sounding more like a telephone conversation than a professional radio broadcast Your exact needs depend on your budget and the nature of your podcast for example if you re creating a music podcast with just a little bit of commentary you probably don t need much of a microphone but if
120. majority of your listeners MP3 is the best choice because it just works without them having to think about it On top of that MP3 files sound fine especially for podcasts From the Library of Gregory Smith Save Your Podcast This is true of Ogg Vorbis discussed in the next section as well as any other lossy audio format It is not true of WAV which is covered later in this chapter FIGURE 6 2 Specify how you want Audacity to export your MP3 file 95 The MP3 format works by compressing the original audio Sounds on the extreme high and low ends are discarded theoretically in ways that shouldn t be that noticeable to human ears You basically have a trade off between file size and quality the better the quality the larger the file size the smaller the file size the worse the quality Fortunately your podcast more than likely consists mostly of your voice If you apply a lot of compression to an audio file of music to create a very small MP3 it will end up sounding terrible Too many highs and lows will have been stripped out and the music will be flat and lifeless Even someone who doesn t have that good of an ear will be able to tell that something is wrong A recording of you talking however simply doesn t have the highs and lows of music Even with a lot of compression applied to the file it will still sound fine even to people with acute hearing If you have a bit of music in the podcast
121. manager APT or yum for instance has no idea about the soft ware you just compiled and installed To add another problem to the mix if you have more than one machine you have to repeat the entire compilation and installation process which can be tedious to say the least Fortunately there s a better way With a nice package called checkinstall you solve both problems In essence checkinstall creates a package in your system s default format deb for Debian based systems RPM for computers that use that method with a few others available and then installs it using your system s package manager Want to remove the software Use apt get remove package or yum remove package Want to install the software on more than one box No problem At the end of checkinstall s work you ll have a nice deb or RPM that you can copy over to other machines and easily install If you don t like making your life easier or if you re the kind of person who likes to carry a wheelbarrow instead of push it ignore the next several paragraphs and just go ahead and type sudo make install and be done with it Everyone else keep reading You first need checkinstall on your Linux box sudo apt get install checkinstall Now you just need to invoke checkinstall instead of make install be sure you re still in the directory containing Audacity s compiled source code sudo checkinstall From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity
122. menu choose Preferences and then click on the File Formats tab In the MP3 Export Setup section click Find Library Navigate to C LAME lame_enc dll if that s where you put the file otherwise find the place on your file system where you stuck it and click OK You ll know it succeeded because Audacity displays the LAME version number like 3 96 Click OK to close Audacity s Preferences window and you are now Officially ready to create a podcast Mac OS X To download Audacity head over to audacity sourceforge net in your favorite web browser The web page should be able to tell that you re using Mac OS X and will offer the appropriate downloads for that OS Be sure to choose version 1 3 3 or higher because this book depends on features introduced in Audacity 1 3 3 If you selected a beta version you are taken to a page warning you about beta software Read the page and then click on the link for the software which takes you to a download page on SourceForge a web site that hosts open source projects In a few seconds a download should start automatically if that doesn t happen click on this direct link In my case I ended up downloading a 7 2MB file named audacity macosx ub 1 3 3 dmg Audacity is available as a Universal Binary that runs on both Intel and PowerPC based Macs running at least Mac OS X 10 3 If you re using an older version of Mac OS X you need to download Audacity version 1 2 If you re still on Mac OS 9
123. menu you ll notice that some of them end in an ellipsis and others don t In Audacity just like in most other computer programs the ellipsis indicates that a menu item requires more information from you before it does anything So an effect without an ellipsis takes place immediately and an effect with an ellipsis pops up a dialog asking you for more parameters before it applies the effect For example the Fade In and Fade Out effects are easy to understand and use They don t need any dialog boxes and they work immediately Let s try an effect that opens a dialog instead such as the Amplify effect see Figure 10 1 When you select Effect Amplify the dialog appears and nothing actually takes place until you click OK If you change your mind you can click Cancel If you click Preview you ll hear the first three seconds of your selection with amplification applied so you can decide whether the level is correct On the top of the dialog you ll find a slider and a text box containing the amount of amplification in decibels and the new peak amplitude The slider and both text boxes are linked meaning that if you make a change to one it immediately affects the other two Try it Amplify by Dominic Mazzoni Amplification dB 6 0 J New Peak Amplitude dB ooo oo Callow clipping Preview l Cancel OK From the Library of Gregory Smith Cl R 10 Applying Effects 139 So what s this for
124. ng something like Figure 3 29 Your goal is to make sure that your audio records well before you actually start recording In particular you want to avoid the dreaded clipping effect in which your audio signal is too loud which causes Audacity to cut off the top and bottom of your signal The end result is a terribly distorted sound that will ruin your podcast If the red bars constantly hit the far right you re clipping Lower the mic s volume until your recording is loud without hitting the top of the Input level meter The red line you see to the right of the red bar is the loudest volume in the last three seconds while the blue line is the loudest volume during the last recording From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup In Windows or Linux access Audacity pref erences by going to Edit Preferences in Mac OS X select Audacity Preferences FIGURE 3 30 Audacity s Audio 1 0 preference pane 62 Quality File Formats Spectrograms Directories Interface Theme Batch Keyboard Mouse Audio 1 0 The Audio I O preferences shown in Figure 3 30 control the audio devices that Audacity uses Audacity Preferences Playback Audacity Setup Your hardware is working and ready to go but you still may want to make a few important tweaks in Audacity s preferences Device MME Microsoft Sound Mapper Ou Y Using Portaudio v19 Playthrough Play other
125. nge as well in other words if 09 514 seconds is displayed and you move the 5 up five places the number will change to 10 014 seconds You can also change adjacent numbers by moving between them with the right and left arrow keys and then use the up and down arrows to change the actual values The difference between altering the End and altering the Length is best seen with examples Let s begin with a selected area of about 9 5 seconds illustrated in Figure 5 16 The default is Length so let s use that first The length is set to 9 514 seconds so you are telling Audacity that you want the length of your selection to remain 9 514 seconds no matter how the Selection Start changes In Selection Start click on the 6 in 16 and then press your up arrow key four times advancing the Selection Start to 20 182 which you can see in Figure 5 17 From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 18 You changed the Selection Start resulting in a shorter selection FIGURE 5 19 Fit Project on the Edit toolbar shows your entire audio file 83 You ve advanced the start of the selection forward by four seconds but the length of the selection hasn t changed and is still 9 514 seconds Selection Start End O Length Audio Position 00 h09 m20 182 sv 00 h09 m25 696 sv Instead of choosing Length what if you had instead used End In that case End would change to show the time that the se
126. nu operates only on existing audio There s also an Analyze menu which is for anything that operates on existing audio but simply tells you something about it or annotates it rather than actually changing the audio the way other effects do We re going to call the things in the Analyze menu effects also because they have a lot in common In addition to the dozens of built in effects Audacity supports several types of plug in effects Audacity automatically puts them into the Generate Effect or Analyze menus depending on whether they take audio as input output or both Plug ins are beyond the scope of this book so for more information visit the Audacity web site Applying Effects The most important concept is to select audio first and then choose the effect If you go to the Effect menu when nothing is selected it won t work This applies in part to the Generate menu too if you want to place audio in a particular location click where you want it to go first before generating it If nothing is selected and you choose something from the Generate menu it appears in a new track From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 10 Applying Effects FIGURE 10 1 The Amplify effect dialog box 138 Don t forget about Undo It often takes several tries to get an effect to sound right so make liberal use of Audacity s capability to undo and redo quickly Listen to the before and after If you look at the effects in the
127. o find yourself having to pay the costs in storage and bandwidth even if everything is on a server you own and run Wouldn t it be nice if there was a place that would store your MP3s online for free forever This might sound like a complete fantasy but it s not The Internet Archive www archive org is the world s largest collection of web sites audio files text files movies and other multimedia And it s all free in terms of cost and license For our purposes take a look at http www archive org details audio_podcast which as of this writing hosts 1 447 podcast files to which anyone can listen and subscribe If you re interested in letting the excellent Internet Archive host your podcast files for free create an account at http www archive org create and start uploading your audio files There s one important condition that you have to follow however You must make your podcasts available under a Creative Commons license Creative Commons is an alternative to traditional copyright licensing that allows others to use your work within certain restrictions that you set If copyright is All rights reserved Creative Commons is Some rights reserved To find out more watch the short informative movies at http creativecommons org learnmore To use Creative Commons go to www creativecommons org select License Your Work answer a few simple questions and you ve generated a Creative Commons license under whi
128. o the right use Ctrl Shift right arrow if you go too far to the right and want to back up to the left use Ctrl Shift left arrow Mac users substitute for Ctrl 80 From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 13 By default the Selection Bar doesn t display milliseconds FIGURE 5 14 The Selection Bar allows you to choose from several display notations 81 Where did I find out all these cool time saving keyboard commands They re all right there in front of you just go to Preferences Keyboard and you can see and even modify the entire list If you want to use Audacity to its maximum productivity you need to learn as many keyboard shortcuts as possible Using the mouse can be the right thing to do at times and using the keyboard can help you be more accu rate but if you want the absolute highest precision you ll want to use the Selection Bar When you first view the Selection Bar pay special attention to the Selection Start and the End Length drop down menus shown in their default states in Figure 5 13 Selection Start OEnd Length 00h09m16s7 00h00 m09s7 By default the Selection Bar displays and lets you change hours minutes and seconds This might sound like it s fine but when you need precision to choose a specific area of an audio file you ll quickly find that it s just not good enough You need more specificity Fortunately the developers of Audacity r
129. of Gregory Smith The following commands were all entered ona computer running K Ubuntu 7 04 If you re using a differ ent distro you ll need to install the referenced packages using your distro s package manage ment system The final commands you use to compile the software however work on every Linux machine no matter the distro 163 APPENDIX B Compiling Audacity on Linux In Chapter 2 Installing and Configuring Audacity we covered installing Audacity and LAME using your distro s package manager One of the great things about open source software though is that if your distro doesn t provide a software package or if you don t like the version of the software that is provided then you can always compile your own In this appendix let s look at the process of compiling Audacity on Linux so that you truly customize this software to meet your needs Gathering Your Tools Before you build a house you gather your hammers and nails and saws and well the list goes on for quite a while Fortunately while compiling software requires that you gather some tools as well you don t need quite as many as you do when constructing a house Before you can compile software on your Linux box you need to have the necessary development software installed first sudo apt get install gcc 4 1 g 4 1 make Now go to the Audacity web site select the Download link and then look for the link to th
130. oise can be time consuming and difficult Audacity has many tools to make this process easier but it still does take some effort Removing Glitches After you ve finished a recording which you re otherwise happy with it s time to get rid of any glitches in the recording to make it sound as clean and professional as possible By a glitch we mean a click pop scratch or any other sound that you don t want to be a part of your final recording This could even include a sneeze or a telephone ringing if you want to edit it out Consider the following recording of a few spoken words It s only 4 5 seconds long and right about the 1 5 second mark perhaps we bumped the microphone causing a little pop sound You can see it as a large vertical spike in the waveform see Figure 12 1 From the Library of Gregory Smith Remove Glitches and Background Noise FIGURE 12 2 Selecting the portion of audio near the pop we want to remove FIGURE 12 3 After choosing View Zoom to Selection the area we want to fix fills the screen 149 To remove a glitch such as this one first select it with the mouse see Figure 12 2 Press the Spacebar to listen to it and make sure that you ve found what you want to remove See Chapter 8 Playing and Recording for tips on listening to a small segment of audio while editing Now that we have a closer look the glitch can be seen quite clearly in the waveform A good strat
131. ol the volume levels Audacity uses for input and output on your sound card The left slider with the speaker in front of it is for output whereas the right with the microphone icon is for input To the right of the input slider is a drop down menu that allows you to select the source of input microphone line in CD Video in and so on Next to the Control toolbar is a group of six small buttons with various icons on them shown in Figure 5 8 From the Library of Gregory Smith FIGURE 5 8 Audacity s Tools toolbar This is the Tools toolbar and it allows you to perform editing functions on your audio file that require selecting areas of your audio The Edit toolbar viewable in Figure 5 9 is useful as you work on fixing up your podcast FIGURE 5 9 yalaw lo eleele Audacity s Edit toolbar Nore information Many functions on the Edit toolbar should be familiar to anyone who s used a word processing program about the Edit toolbar Cut Copy Paste Undo and Redo should hold no surprises We ll cover the other buttons and what they can be seen at do later throughout this book http audacityteam org manual index Figure 5 10 shows the Project Rate area of Audacity php title Edit_Toolbar FIGURE 5 10 PEE Audacity allows you 22050 to see and change the sample rate of your audio 78 From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 5 Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 11 Make selections with
132. olbar Meter Toolbar Edit Toolbar The labeled parts of an Audacity window i ee ae 32 bit float jua Mute Solo Riian and Pioynack Project Sample Rate Selection Bar Track Panel Controls The six colorful buttons in the top left of the Audacity window as shown in Figure 5 5 are the Control toolbar They should be familiar to you from virtually any digital audio program FIGURE 5 5 Audacity s Control Ln gt a Le toolbar z If you need a quick refresher on the purposes of the Control toolbar take a look back in Chapter 4 Record Your Podcast in the section Recording with Audacity 76 From the Library of Gregory Smith Edit Your Podcast FIGURE 5 6 The Input and Output level meters show you the volume Audacity hears FIGURE 5 7 The Mixer toolbar in Audacity allows you to control the volume level of your microphone 77 The Meter toolbar displayed in Figure 5 6 was covered earlier in Chapter 3 Microphone and Speaker Setup in the Test Volume Levels section L L R R iw 0 Pad v 0 Those meters show you the volume levels of input and output that Audacity hears The input level is criti cally important when you re recording and the output level becomes important as you edit your podcast The Mixer toolbar which you can see in Figure 5 7 was also covered previously in the Test Volume Levels section of Chapter 3 Microphone v WE PA Q The two sliders contr
133. one choice the Format you want to use Because we re using a recording of the human voice and not music WAV Microsoft 16 bit PCM should be fine Leave everything else alone Click OK to close the options window and you re back at the Export File window Decide where you want to save your WAV change the name if you want and then click Save A few moments later depending on the speed of your computer and the length of your podcast Audacity should finish the job and you should have a nice WAV file you can burn to CD For more on that see the next chapter Most of the stages of creating a podcast are fairly involved if you want to create something that sounds great By the time you ve reached the tail end of the process things are much easier Audacity makes it simple to export your podcast into a format that people can listen to where it is most convenient for them on their iPods in their cars or on their computers And because that convenience is one of the main selling points of podcasting that is definitely a good thing From the Library of Gregory Smith 100 CHAPTER 7 Upload Your Podcast When you create a podcast you create an MP3 file For people to download your MP3 file it must be stored somewhere on the Internet You basically have two types of places on the Net that you can store your MP3 files on servers that you own or pay for or on third party servers In both cases you have two worries How big are my podc
134. orts gt i Dashboard app E oxen a Cs D Documents a en i Music E Graphics gt 2 C gvim app Jy Pictures A aati 7 Fag Aias iChat app 2 iDVD app 7 d z 0 items 11 5 GB available Now go back to the mounted disk image of Audacity and copy the contents to the newly created Audacity folder in Applications The results appear in Figure 2 9 If you re a real neat freak you actually don t need to copy the LICENSE txt and README txt files If you plan to use only the English interface you don t need the Languages folder either You can delete the files and folders you don t need after you copy them over if you want You can now eject the Audacity disk image and delete the DMG file You could run Audacity at this point but we need to take care of one bit of unfinished business 22 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity FIGURE 2 9 e00e 3 Audacity 5 i ss mm A Ce You ve successfully COACE il A a D installed Audacity i A a W Address Book app 4 A Audacity app K etwori Adobe Hel er 1 0 app v Languages gt a Ganwe AppleScript gt TE LICENSE txt i 2 nyquist gt f 3 i me Audacity 1 3 3 beta Automator app j plug ins p Calculator app j README txt Chess app x Applications gt CrossOver app A L DarwinPorts p Bey fsgranne Dashboard app C F DVD Player app E Desktop Flip4mac rs
135. os Angeles California Scott Granneman is an author educator and consultant in St Louis Missouri Scott has written three books Don t Click on the Blue E Switching to Firefox Hacking Knoppix and Linux Phrasebook and contributed to two Ubuntu Hacks and Microsoft Vista for the IT Security Professional In addition he is a monthly columnist for SecurityFocus and for Linux Magazine He is an Adjunct Professor at Washington University in St Louis teaching courses on technology security and the Internet As a Principal of WebSanity he plans develops and hosts websites for clients in nine states using a Unix based content management system From the Library of Gregory Smith Overview of What is In This Short Cut This Short Cut is designed to get you podcasting as quickly as possible The first few chapters show you how to install Audacity plug in your microphone record your first podcast and get it online as quickly as possible The following chapters cover podcasting specific topics such as adding background music or conducting interviews Finally the remaining chapters focus on how Audacity works with lots of tips and tricks to make complicated editing even easier From the Library of Gregory Smith INTRODUCTION Why Audacity Audacity is universally recognized as the number one software program for creating podcasts Thousands of amateurs and professionals alike have created podcasts using Audacity But dozens of ot
136. ounds professional and authoritative There s an old saying popular in the military that s just as relevant for podcasting failing to prepare is preparing to fail Prepare ahead of time to record your voice and you have the raw materials for a great podcast neglect preparation and you ll end up with a mess of audio that no one will want to hear Take the time and make sure your podcast sounds as great as it possibly can From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 5 Edit Your Podcast You ve successfully recorded your podcast congratulations That is an accomplishment right there but don t make the mistake of thinking that you re finished and your podcast is ready to release onto the Net No you still have some work ahead of you You need to clean up your recording and edit it to make sure that it s as close to matching your vision as possible In this chapter we walk through some of the most common editing tasks that you will want to perform with Audacity Opening the File with Audacity If you just finished recording your podcast with Audacity it s obvious which file you re going to edit so it s unnecessary to open it If you took a break after recording your podcast however and you now want to open the recording to edit it or if you plan to open and integrate more than one recording you need to know how to open Audacity files Fortunately it s pretty dang easy The easy way Choose File Open navigate to the
137. our podcast contains adult content choose Yes next to Contains explicit content That will let iTunes and other podcast aggregators know how to classify your podcast If you want to copyright your material enter that info next to Copyright message Something like Copyright 2007 Joe Podcaster will work It would be even better if you used Creative Commons which I discussed earlier in the section If You Need a Place to Store Your Podcasts From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 9 FeedBurner makes it easy to set up iTunes only RSS elements FIGURE 7 10 Choose the Category that best describes your podcast 113 Include iTunes podcasting elements Category None Subcategory None Use additional categories w Podcast image location http www myserver com podcastlogo jpg Preview Image Podcast subtitle Podcast summary Type a description you would like potential listeners to see Podcast search keywords Type in keywords separated by commas that can help Podcast author email address Your optional podcast author email address Catagory Nome ie None Arts Business Comedy http WV Education Games amp Hobbies Podcastai Government amp Organizations Health Kids amp Family Podcast St Music Type a News amp Politics when vig Religion amp Spirituality Science amp Medicine Society
138. own in Figure 3 3 Yes there are GUIs for this but they re just shiny front ends for top Don t go nuts and start killing processes right and left You really need to know what you re doing or you could up with a confused malfunctioning computer If you use Windows three of the best references about your PC s services are available at http www theeldergeek com services_guide htm http www blackviper com WinXP servicecfg htm and http www tweakvista com article38662 aspx If you use Mac OS X you really don t need to kill any background processes unless you recognize them because Apple is good about not running unnecessary daemons by default If you started it though consider it fair game For instance I installed Mozy an online backup program so in Figure 3 2 I could go ahead and kill both MozyBackup and Mozy Status Likewise with Snapz Pro X Quicksilver Noooo Not Quicksilver KeyCue and GrowlHelperApp The basic rule of thumb is if it s not owned by your user you probably should just leave it alone Linux users have it pretty similar to Mac OS X folks not too surprising because they re both based on UNIX except that virtually all running daemons owned by root will probably have been installed by the computer s owner in the first place In other words I might install the Apache web server to use for testing web sites but it won t run as me rsgranne instead using the www user Nonetheless it s running
139. r section but I do want to add something here When you first open alsamixer by default it shows the mixers for your speakers labeled Playback in the View line To shift to your microphone labeled Capture in the View line use the Tab key When you re finished recording using your headphones and you want to go back to your speakers you simply reverse the process sudo asoundconf set default card Audigy2 sudo etc init d alsa utils restart It can be a bit of a pain to get your mic working in Linux but after you do it s as good an OS to record your podcast as any of the others 59 From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 3 Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 26 Adjust your micro phone s volume using alsamixer on the terminal Treble FIGURE 3 27 4 6 pt Q Microphone_v The Mixer toolbar in Audacity allows you to control the volume level of your microphone 60 Test Volume Levels To test your mic s volume levels open Audacity and look for the Mixer toolbar shown in Figure 3 27 The two sliders control the volume levels Audacity uses for input and output on your sound card In particular the selector on the right controls the volume for your microphone Before you can adjust the slider for the mic however you need to make sure that the drop down menu is set to Microphone After that adjust the mic s slider so that it s about three fourths of the way over If you are un
140. re is In this chapter we re going to focus on a service named FeedBurner that meets our needs in several ways First it s a complete service with just about every feature you could ever need as a podcaster Second it s now owned by Google so you know that it will be available and up all the time Finally thanks to Google s recent purchase of the company FeedBurner s serv ices are now free which is a great bonus Burn a feed right this Instant Type your blog or feed address here Set U p You r Feed Bu rner Feed C lam a podcaster Next To start point your web browser to www feedburner com and create an account Then if you re not automatically taken there click on the My Feeds link On that page you ll see Burn a feed right this instant which you can view in Figure 7 6 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 7 Step 1 in setting up a podcast feed in FeedBurner 111 amp FeedBurner Welcome Let us burn a feed for you The original blog or feed address you entered has been verified Here is what happens next in the setup process gt FeedBurner will apply some of our most popular services to your new feed to get you started You can always modify or remove them later gt This new feed will be activated in your FeedBurner account You may also set up some optional traffic stats tracking and podcasting services Give your feed its ti
141. re plugged whereas Headset is obvious And because I m hearing music out of the speakers but not the headphones it s obvious that ALSA is using the Audigy2 for output Now I switch the default card from Audigy2 to Headset again using the asoundconf command sudo asoundconf set default card Headset From the Library of Gregory Smith 49 Hardware and Software Setup Sound still emanates from my speakers as the ALSA that is running is still using the old configuration It s time to restart ALSA sudo etc init d alsa utils restart Shutting down ALSA OK Setting up ALSA OK Now there s no music coming out of my speakers if you still hear music out of your speakers shut down your music program and restart it and music will definitely stop coming out of those speakers but there s also nothing coming out of my headphones Time to adjust the volume of my headphones The tried and true program to do this task is alsamixer an ncurses based terminal program that works beautifully alsamixer When you run alsamixer on your terminal it will look something like Figure 3 17 Using alsamixer is pretty simple In my case you see five mixer controls Bass Bass Boost Treble PCM and Auto Gain Bass is currently selected you can tell by the red highlight around its name To increase or decrease the volume for Bass use the up or down arrows Low volumes are white medium volumes are green and loud volumes a
142. re red To move between mixer controls use the right or left arrows Bass Boost and Auto Gain are currently muted to unmute them select the mixer control with the arrows and then press M To learn more about asoundconf try man asoundconf To find out more about alsamixer see http en wikipedia org wiki Alsamixer After I adjust PCM upward I can start my music program Amarok rules and listen to music using my headphones From the Library of Gregory Smith CHAPTER 3 Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 17 Adjust your head phones volume using alsamixer on the terminal Bass Boo Treble Auto Gai When I m done using my headphones and I want to go back to my speakers I simply reverse the process sudo asoundconf set default card Audigy2 sudo etc init d alsa utils restart 50 From the Library of Gregory Smith 51 Hardware and Software Setup Linux is completely ready for Joe Computeruser s desktop in many areas but when it comes to sound there are still some kinks to iron out The programs and commands given here can help If you re having problems with sound on your Linux box there s a great collection of docs at https help ubuntu com community Sound Yes it s ostensibly for Ubuntu but much of the advice is general enough for almost any Linux distro Anyway your favorite distro undoubtedly has a friendly helpful community to whom you can turn with questions well unless you use Debian
143. rsion of Audacity on your PC and you want to leave projects associated with that first version For most people this will be highly unlikely so leave the second box checked Click Next and you re on to the next screen which summarizes your decisions up to this point If you re happy with how things look click Install It doesn t take long to install Audacity depending on the speed of your computer After a few moments you ll be presented with the final screen see Figure 2 5 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity FIGURE 2 5 You ve successfully installed Audacity 18 Setup Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode Completing the Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode Setup Wizard Setup has finished installing Audacity 1 3 Beta Unicode on your computer The application may be launched by selecting the installed icons Click Finish to exit Setup You could run Audacity at this point but we need to take care of one bit of unfinished business Uncheck the Launch Audacity box and click Finish The LAME MP3 Codec I know you re champing at the bit to run Audacity but you need to perform an important task first Download and install the LAME MP3 encoder which allows you to create files in the ubiquitous MP3 format So why doesn t Audacity include LAME so you don t have to hunt it down Unfortunately due to some rather silly patent restrictions Audacity can t do that To
144. selection to the left Ctrl Shift contracts the selection Ctrl Shift left arrow contracts the right edge to the left and Ctrl Shift right arrow contracts the left edge to the right Selecting While Audio Is Playing Sometimes the easiest way to select an exact portion of audio is to mark the selection boundaries while you re playing audio To do this press the key to mark the left edge of the audio and the key to mark the right edge After you ve done that you ll definitely want to listen to the resulting selection to make sure it is right Press the Spacebar to hear just the selection Many additional keyboard shortcuts let you listen to just the beginning or end of a selection From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting FIGURE 9 6 A snap to guide appears the verti cal yellow line when the selection has snapped to the start or end of an audio clip from any of the tracks 135 Snap to Guides Audacity makes it really easy to make a selection that starts or ends at a natural boundary such as the start or end of a track or clip As you re dragging the mouse to make a selection if Audacity senses that your mouse cursor is near a natural boundary even one in a different track it snaps the selection directly to that boundary and shows you a bright vertical line indicating the position of the snap boundary see Figure 9 6 Mono 44100Hz 32 bit float Mute Solo a Mono 44100Hz 32
145. should speak in a boring monotone but it does mean that you should avoid extreme highs or lows in your voice Project from your diaphragm not your throat The power of a singer or a podcaster comes from breath ing through the diaphragm However don t fake it and try to sound like somebody you re not Every singer s not Frank Sinatra and every podcaster s not Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw Be comfortable with your voice while projecting it and your listeners will gladly listen to what you have to say Your Environment Some podcasts sound cool with a little background noise It makes your talk sound lived in and if you re trying to convey the action going on in a particular scene a conference say or a restaurant it can actu ally provide the perfect aural backdrop 70 From the Library of Gregory Smith Record Your Podcast FIGURE 4 1 Audacity s Control toolbar 71 However everyone else in every other situation should record in a quiet space Ideally you d use a soundproof room but that s obviously a rarity for most people In a pinch a walk in closet works well or even a back bed room Just make sure that windows are closed to avoid traffic and other outside noises As for floors carpets absorb sound a heck of a lot better than hardwood if you re stuck with hardwood invest in a nice big area rug Finally here s one a lot of people forget Computers give off noise too Make sure the m
146. ss milliseconds hh mm ss samples samples hh mm ss film frames 24 fps film frames 24 fps hh mm ss NTSC drop frames hh mm ss NTSC non drop frames NTSC frames hh mm ss PAL frames 25 fps PAL frames 25 fps hh mm ss CDDA frames 75 fps CDDA frames 75 fps 01 h 30 m 08 500 s 01 h 30 m 08 s 22500 samples 238 514 850 samples 01h 30m 08s 12 frames 129 804 frames 01h30m 08s 14 frames 01 h 30 m 03 s 02 frames 162 092 frames 01h30m 08s 12 frames 135 212 frames 01h 30m 08s 37 frames 405 637 frames Based on your chosen sample rate American video format European video format From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting 134 Selecting Using the Keyboard You can modify the selection entirely using the keyboard The currently focused track is indicated with a glowing border To change the focused track just press the up and down arrow keys After a track is focused you can change whether that track is selected by pressing Enter To modify the time range press the left and right arrow keys in combination with Shift and Ctrl If you don t already have a selection just a cursor pressing the left or right arrow keys moves the cursor If you do have a selection pressing the left arrow takes you to the beginning of the selection and the right arrow takes you to the end If you hold down Shift while pressing the right arrow you can extend the selection to the right Similarly Shift left arrow extends the
147. sten in and enjoy learn and think about what you have to say To do that you have to get your podcast out of Audacity and into a different format that others can easily download and hear When you re working on an audio file in Audacity the program stores your work as an AUP file This is a special format used by Audacity alone that makes it possible to open and save projects easily and safely However AUP files require Audacity and won t work at all on iPods computer audio programs or CD players To get the word out you need to export your AUP file out of Audacity and into another format Audacity allows you to choose from a wide variety of formats as you can see in Figure 6 1 You have a lot of choices and there are reasons for all the formats to be there But when it comes to podcasting you really want to stick to three formats MP3 OGG and WAV Let s walk through each one and discuss its advantages and disadvantages When you save an Audacity Project file such as podcast1 aup Audacity puts all of the audio data in a directory folder right next to that file called podcast1_data Whatever you do don t throw that data folder away The AUP file contains the road map to your project but the data folder contains the actual audio split across a lot of little files You should use Audacity project files to save your work while you re in the middle of editing something Don t send an AUP file to someone else or post
148. t volume Ra Baas j oo Sound Effects Output Eine in Mac OS X Choose a device for sound input Name Port Internal microphone Built in Line In Audio line in port Plantronics Headset Soundflower 2ch Settings for the selected device Input level 880000000000000 Input volume i amp Output volume ag 4 C Mute f Show volume in menu bar Linux Configuring a microphone in Linux is a lot like configuring your headphones in Linux so I m going to refer you to the Linux discussion above under Headphones Setup above that covered that topic Once again I m assuming that your headphones are recognized and working and you just need to adjust the volume To quickly recap you first find out the name of the sound card sudo asoundconf list Names of available sound cards Audigy2 Headset 58 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup Then switch the default card from Audigy2 to Headset again using the asoundconf command sudo asoundconf set default card Headset Restart ALSA so that your OS takes your changes sudo etc init d alsa utils restart Shutting down ALSA OK Setting up ALSA OK It s now time to adjust the volume of the mic on your headset using alsamixer alsamixer When you run alsamixer on your terminal to adjust your mic s volume it looks something like Figure 3 26 I discussed how to use alsamixer in the earlie
149. that I know works with K Ubuntu because I ve used it Feel free to substitute your own in the next few lines From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup If you don t have asoundconf avail able for your distro try cat proc asound cards which should give you the same info but with a lot more extraneous detail 48 Yes I know all about KMix for KDE and GNOME ALSA Mixer When they work they work well But if a problem rears its ugly head they re probably not going to help you The method I detail in the following paragraphs should work even when KMix or GNOME ALSA Mixer does not I m playing music out of my speakers and it sounds great I plug my USB headset in to my Linux box put it on my head and out comes nothing Oh I continue to hear music but it s coming out of my speakers not my headphones Because I m using a modern distro such as K Ubuntu 7 04 Feisty Fawn I know that ALSA is the underlying sound system To work with ALSA I m going to need to install a couple of packages that allow me to configure it sudo apt get install asoundconf alsamixer After those are in place I run the following command which generates the output I need sudo asoundconf list Names of available sound cards Audigy2 Headset The asoundconf command followed by the list option shows me the sound cards that my system sees Audigy2 is my main sound the one into which my speakers a
150. the mouse Note that only the music track has been selected not the interview To delete the rest of that track choose Edit Trim from the menu and you re left with just the part that s selected see Figure 11 4 Alternatively you could have selected the part you don t want and then chosen Edit Delete from the menu 144 From the Library of Gregory Smith Add a Musical Intro and Outro FIGURE 11 3 Selecting the first 14 seconds or so FIGURE 11 4 Choose Trim from the Edit menu to delete the rest of the track 145 en 44100Hz oon bit oa xl Mono 44100Hz 32 bit float Mute Solo Right now the music has a rather abrupt ending To fade it out click and drag to select the last few seconds as shown in Figure 11 5 From the Library of Gregory Smith Add a Musical Intro and Outro FIGURE 11 5 Click and drag to select the part you want to fade out FIGURE 11 6 After choosing Fade Out from the Effect menu 146 x Mono 44100Hz 32 bit float Mute Solo Choose Effect Fade Out from the menu You can actually see the waveform fade out visually see Figure 11 6 Xfinterview v Mono 44100Hz 32 bit float Mute Solo Uncheck the Solo button in the music track so that Audacity will mix together both tracks Now the main problem left is that our interview starts too early we want it to start after the music starts to fade out We need to time shift the first track to t
151. the way that your blog podcast is configured or works you may not be able to change it If your host doesn t allow you to do something you can t do it This may be just fine for many people but others may chafe at the restrictions With those caveats in mind let s look at some of your options WordPress WordPress is a great choice for many people To create your free blog go to www wordpress com answer the few questions shown in Figure 7 2 and you re ready to go From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 2 A free WordPress WW WORDPRESS blog is easy as pie to set up AOGE eter English Sign Up Features Support Story Advanced Get your own WordPress com account in seconds Fill out this one step form and you ll be blogging seconds later Username Must be at least 4 characters letters and numbers only Email Address we ll send your password to this address so triple check it Legal flotsam I have read and agree to the fascinating terms of service Gimme a blog Like username wordpress com Just a username please The free blog gives you only 50MB of space which under normal circumstances is fine but for podcasters spells disaster In fact the free WordPress allows you to upload pictures but that s about it as you can see in Figure 7 3 105 From the Library of Gregory Smith ALIADTED CHAPTER 7 Upload Your Podcast
152. ther than repeat myself for each Linux distro I give the instructions here because they are pretty much the same for every distro So why doesn t Audacity include LAME so you don t have to hunt it down and configure it Unfortunately due to some rather silly patent restrictions Audacity can t do that To find out more about this sad state of affairs check out audacityteam org wiki index php title Lame_Installation and en wikipedia org wiki MP3 Licensing_and_patent_issues In Audacity open the Edit menu choose Preferences and click on the File Formats tab In the MP3 Export Setup section click Find Library and then Browse There s a drop down menu in the bottom right of the window select All Files from it Now for the difficult part The file we want is probably in usr lib Audacity wants you to locate libmp3lame so and if that exists great Choose it and you re golden But on my K Ubuntu box that file didn t exist instead I had to choose libmp3lame so 0 which for all intents and purposes is the same file If you re still having problems try this and see whether that helps you locate a file you can use find usr lib name libmp3lame If that doesn t work and it should widen your search We re adding the nowarn option so that you don t get inundated with warnings that you re not root and can t access prohibited directories or you can just run the command using sudo find name libmp3lame
153. there several people who use all sorts of different computers Many people love Audacity because all their friends and coworkers can use the same audio editing software You don t have to search for different solutions for different types of comput ers which would prevent you from being able to share tips and resources with one another From the Library of Gregory Smith It s also nice that Audacity has been translated into more than 30 languages and has large user communities in countries all around the world If you have business partners friends or family in another part of the world you can be sure that they can use Audacity too Finally many people simply find Audacity the easiest to use That s not to say that everything will be obvious or easy at first editing audio is not usually as easy as editing an e mail But Audacity was written with the average user in mind Audacity doesn t assume that you ve been in a recording studio and that you know what a mixer bus or an edit decision list is Whenever possible Audacity lets you do what you want to do without worrying about how it works internally You still may have to learn some new terminology along the way where it really is necessary but that s what this book is for You may be wondering why Audacity is given away for free like this First it s certainly not the only such software program If you ve ever used Firefox BitTorrent or OpenOffice org you
154. ting Variable what should you choose for Quality I would recommend starting with 96kbps Smaller files and listening to the results It will probably sound just fine If for some reason it does not because yours is a music podcast for instance bump up a level to 128kbps and see whether that sounds better Don t forget to check the file size difference between the two levels Continue moving up one level at a time until you find the right one for you Just remember that every step up in quality means a corre spondingly larger file size Click OK to close MP3 Options and you re back at the Export File window Decide where you want to save your MP3 change the name if you want and then click Save A few moments later depending on the speed of your computer and the length of your podcast Audacity should finish the job and you should have a nice MP3 file you can distribute For more on that see Chapter 7 Upload Your Podcast Exporting an OGG The Ogg Vorbis audio format is great in many ways It s patent free so anyone can incorporate support for it in any of their software it sounds great even though it s compressed just like MP3 is for more on that see the preceding section and it s possible to achieve comparable sound to an MP3 but with a smaller file From the Library of Gregory Smith Save Your Podcast FIGURE 6 3 Specify how you want Audacity to export your OGG file 97 So why doesn t everyone use it
155. ting a WAV or AIFF The final format to consider exporting your podcast into is WAV Unlike MP3 or OGG WAV is uncom pressed meaning that no details are thrown out which as you can imagine results in very large files How large Assume about 10MB for every 1 minute of audio which means that a 20 minute podcast would result in roughly a 200MB file So why in the world would you want to use WAV Because if you want to burn your podcast to CD ROM you need to export it as a WAV Virtually all readers of this book will want to use MP3 or OGG because they plan to distribute their podcasts over the Net A few however may want to hand out CDs in addition to using the Net or in spite of it If that s your plan you ll want to export a WAV and then burn that WAV to a CD Everything I m saying about WAVs holds true for AIFF Audio Interchange File Format files as well Where WAV is the default uncompressed format for Windows AIFF is the same thing for Mac OS That said Macs can work with WAVs and Windows should be able to work with AIFFs Do not export to WAV and then offer the resulting files for download Your listeners will be very unhappy when they realize you re forcing them to download huge files to listen to you Besides that s why we have MP3 and OGG Use those formats for distribution over the Net There s one caveat if you re planning to burn to CD however CDs hold only a maximum of 700MB of data which would be about
156. tivecommons org licenses by 2 0 deed en us 55 USB Ports If you can avoid using analog microphones however you should A USB mic or a professional microphone plugged into a USB input device will give you far better sound and will also be easier to manage on your computer It doesn t cost much to get a decent USB mic nowadays and if you need a list of suggestions check out Get the Right Equipment And after you do get a USB mic you just plug it in to an open USB port Even better a USB mic works just as well with a PC or a Mac Simplicity itself If you use a USB based headset that combines headphones and a microphone and many of you will the end result will look something like Figure 3 22 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup Set Volume Levels It s obviously important to set the right volume for your recording Set it too high and everything sounds brassy and distorted set it too low and no one can hear what you re saying Windows To configure your microphone s volume levels in Windows you need to go to Control Panel Sounds and Audio Devices Audio as shown in Figure 3 23 FIGURE 3 23 Sounds and Audio Devices Properties The Windows Volume Sounds Audio Voice Hardware Sounds and Audio Sound playback i Default device Devices control a 3 panel Sound recording A Default device 4 Plantronics Headset v m Advanced MIDI music playback is
157. tle and feedburner com address Feed Title Granneman News Enter a title to help identify your new feed in your account Feed Address http feeds feedburner com GrannemanNews The address above is where people can find your new feed Activate Feed Cancel and do not activate Enter your feed s current address check the box next to I am a podcaster and click Next FeedBurner walks you through three screens that will set things up for you The first screen is visible in Figure 7 7 On the first screen enter the title of your feed in Feed Title Be as descriptive as possible but don t be unduly verbose Keep it interesting so that potential listeners will see your title and want to click on it to learn more Some good titles that you can see in the iTunes Music Store s Podcast section include Dan Carlin s Hardcore History Google Developer Podcast and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Title is important because it is one of the fields that the iTunes Music Store indexes so make sure that it will grab attention For Feed Address enter something that is unique to FeedBurner without spaces or symbols You could just take your Feed Title and concatenate it together as you can see in Figure 7 7 On the one hand you should try to mention your podcast s name On the other it doesn t matter what you put because you re going to see in just a bit that you re about to get a better UR
158. to do that Don t drink any milk or eat any dairy products before you go on the air Dairy products coat the throat and vocal cords with mucus so you end up losing crispness and edge in your voice Instead of dairy prod ucts try drinking a cup of hot tea no milk as that would be counterproductive to cut the phlegm and clear your throat If you need to clear the sinuses try some eucalyptus cough drops or nasal spray Sniffles sound really bad on a podcast 69 From the Library of Gregory Smith Record Your Podcast Your Position Your mother was right Sit up straight Good posture helps with your breathing and your mental attitude while you re speaking As much as possible don t move around while you re recording You want your voice to sound the same sudden bursts of volume as you move in and sudden drops of volume as your move away are disconcerting to listeners and it just sounds weird The position of the mic is something you may want to experiment with Some people like the mic to face up others like it to face down Use whatever works for you as long as your microphone can go into the position you want of course Your Voice As you talk remember to speak slowly We all have a tendency to speed up when we re excited or enthused so control that tendency Speak clearly but don t o ver e nun ci ate Pace your voice at a steady rate and keep your volume level as well That doesn t mean that you
159. u to copy and reuse tens of thousands of MP3 files are online that you can download for free and redistribute with no royalties Sometimes artists are amateurs who love creating music but don t derive any money from it and in other cases they re professional musicians who prefer to develop a name for themselves by encouraging as many people to use their music as possible From the Library of Gregory Smith Add a Musical Intro and Outro FIGURE 11 1 A recording of an interview in a single track 143 The majority of the free music on the Internet is released under one of the Creative Commons licenses You can find more information at http search creativecommons org including links to sites where you can search for free music Adding the Musical Intro After you ve chosen a piece of music that you want to add to your podcast you can add it at the beginning of your podcast and then fade it out as you begin to speak Initially let s suppose that we ve already made a recording of a podcast perhaps an interview between two people see Figure 11 1 though in this example it s only a few seconds long x interview wv 1 0 Mono 44100Hz 32 bit float 0 0 Mute _Solo a 1 0 The first step is to import the music into the same project file You don t want to select Open from the File menu because that will open it in a new window Instead choose File Import Audio from the menu and then find your music in t
160. universal 3 97 zip the current version at the time I m writing this Unzip the file by double clicking on it Mac OS X comes with a built in program that handles ZIP files You ll see a new folder in the same location as the ZIP file libmp3lame osx universal 3 97 with some files in it similar to Figure 2 10 FIGURE 2 10 e0e 2 libmp3lame osx universal 3 97 The actual file you 2 Seo ese ee TD j j j Date Modified Size Kind nthe maze CY Da at aaa E GranneMar readme txt 14 Mar 2007 7 42 PM 4KB BBEdit ument i A Applications 98 rsoranne FEE Deskop F Documents 6 Music O Pictures Fa alias 1 of 3 selected 13 27 GB available Vu You can ignore all the files except for libmp3lame so Copy that file into a new permanent home on your Mac But where In reality you could put it anywhere but let s do things in the correct Mac manner 24 From the Library of Gregory Smith 25 Installing and Configuring Audacity In your home folder is a Library folder Open that and you see an Application Support folder Inside Application Support you should create a new folder by pressing Shift N title the folder audacity with a small letter a and without the comma or quotation marks of course Put libmp3lame so inside the new audacity folder and you re good to go After you start up Audacity and use it the application will put other stuff in that folder which is why we called it audac
161. updates is to visit the web site of Be es the vendor who made the computer and look there If that proves Location PCI bus 0 device 31 function 5 Renae ate suena ae fruitless and you know who made your sound card you can go to the sound card manufacturer s web site and poke around there I m not going to lie and say it s going to be easy Sometimes finding the drivers you need can be a real hassle But it can be the magic fix to Troubleshoot Properties an otherwise inexplicable sound card issue FIGURE 3 9 Intel r B2801BA BAM AC 97 Audio Controller Properties Windows Only Considerations Verify and update General Properties Diver In addition to the advice in the previous section Windows users your sound card s riot B2801BA BAM ACI Aco Conter need to perform a few additional tasks to prep their hard drives drivers Driver Provider Microsoft Driver Date 7 1 2001 Turn off the Indexing Service Most Windows users know that they can Diver Version 1 25360 search for files by title or other attributes or even look for content in Digital Signer Microsoft Windows Component Publisher J 7 certain file types In an effort to speed up this process a bit LdiverDeais To vien detec about ts diver fles Microsoft includes the Indexing Service which scans your hard drive Update Driver To update the diver for this device when you re not busy and adds new files to its database T
162. ur papers you will have a new track in Audacity When you hit Record again you will create a second additional track It s not a problem as Audacity makes it easy to work with multiple tracks but you need to know that it will happen If you know you re completely finished using your micro phone don t forget to go back into your sound card settings for your operating system and turn the volume down or off 72 Loop or press L or press Shift Spacebar Hold down Shift while pressing Play to loop the current selection playing it over and over again until you press Stop Stop or press Spacebar Stop playing or recording Skip to Start or press Home Move the cursor to the beginning of the audio which is useful if you want to play or record a track from the beginning AE Skip to End or press End Move the cursor to the end of the audio track E Record or press R Record starting from the current cursor location or at the beginning of the current selection either way Record always creates a new track C When you re finished recording completely click Stop You ve recorded your podcast Now it s time to take your rough draft and shape it into something great using Audacity to fix issues smooth over rough spots and enhance the good stuff Conclusion Recording is the fun part of creating a podcast but there are still many things you must do to make sure that your podcast s
163. using Ubuntu 7 04 Feisty Fawn then instead of feisty you may see edgy or gutsy for example deb http archive ubuntu com ubuntu feisty main restricted universe multiverse deb http security ubuntu com ubuntu feisty security main restricted universe multiverse deb http archive ubuntu com ubuntu feisty backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http archive ubuntu com ubuntu feisty updates main restricted universe multiverse Audacity is in the universe component but you re going to want stuff that s in multiverse as well in just a minute which is why we added it Now we can install Audacity with the following command sudo apt get install audacity More than likely several dependencies will also need to be downloaded among them libmadO an MP3 decoder which allows you to open and play MP3 files but not save them For that you need LAME Because you enabled the multiverse component of K Ubuntu this is going to be easy sudo apt get install liblamed Done Hey there friend of Mark Shuttleworth you re now ready to podcast MEPIS Audacity is simple to install on MEPIS Because MEPIS is based on K Ubuntu which is itself based on Debian you just use APT the best software packaging tool on any platform Become root and run the 28 From the Library of Gregory Smith Installing and Configuring Audacity following which grabs both Audacity and the LAME libraries you need as well as any necessary depen
164. ve on to the Subcategory For instance if you decided that your podcast is best placed into the Category of Society amp Culture to be even more specific you might then say that your podcast belongs in the Subcategory of History as displayed in Figure 7 11 If you want to place your podcast into additional Categories you can Click on the link that says Use additional categories and four more Category Subcategory drop downs appear as in Figure 7 12 You don t need the additional categories so don t feel obligated to use them but they re there if you want them More importantly if you use more categories iTunes users can find your podcast in more places and the more places it s in in iTunes the more likely it will be found Upload a JPEG or PNG graphic to your web site that is 50x50 pixels and that will serve nicely as your podcast s logo or descriptive image In Podcast Image Location enter the URL that points to that graphic To make sure that you entered it correctly click on Preview Image If you want some good ideas open up iTunes and go to the Podcasts section Look at the graphics for the popular podcasts and use those as inspiration The Podcast Subtitle field appears in the Description column in iTunes so you need to keep it short If a user clicks on the circled i in the Description column of iTunes the contents of Podcast Summary will appear in a separate small window Your summary can be up to 4 00
165. ve used open source soft ware And more than half of the web sites on the Internet are powered by Apache another open source software program and many of these run on Linux an entirely open source operating system Sometimes open source developers are paid by major corporations who benefit from the software in other cases they survive on donations or consulting Audacity is a case of the latter Audacity is developed by a team of around a dozen developers around the world mostly in their spare time Audacity developers make a little money from donations advertising and Audacity related consult ing By purchasing a copy of this book you are helping to support Audacity developers But for the most part Audacity developers are volunteers they develop Audacity because they love it Besides more computer programmers of course more people are needed to beta test new versions answer user e mails and translate Audacity into new languages If you would like to contribute send an e mail to audacity help lists sourceforge net From the Library of Gregory Smith Open Source Software Open source software means that all the source code the blueprints that computer programmers use to develop a software program is distributed free along with the software Usually source code is kept secret meaning that the person or organization that created the software is the only one with the power to change it So that person can charge whatever price he
166. wants raise the price at any time or possibly worse throw away the source code and discontinue the software altogether With open source software the source code is licensed to the world so that anyone can see how the program works and even modify it if they so choose In the case of Audacity the source code is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License GPL The GPL allows you to do whatever you want with Audacity including modify it and redis tribute it The main restriction is that if you do choose to modify and redistribute even a small part of Audacity you have to do so under the same license you can t modify it and then sell your new program without also offering the modified source code Why should you care that you can modify Audacity You re probably not a programmer yourself But the fact that anyone can download the Audacity source code and modify it means that Audacity is not likely to die Even if the original developers move on to something else it s always possible for another developer to come along and continue where they left off In fact it s almost certain to happen if enough people want Audacity to continue and are willing to chip in a little From the Library of Gregory Smith 11 CHAPTER 1 The Big Picture The word podcast comes from the words iPod and broadcast Of course not everyone who listens to a podcast uses an iPod but let s face it the iPod is the current king of portable mus
167. which is what you want so you ll need to use your head libwxgtk libvorbis libogg libmad libsndfile libflac liboggflac libid3 libsamplerate libsoundtouchic2 nyquist libexpat From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux Compiling Audacity The Compilation Process After all the necessary dependencies are in place it s time to run the trinity of compilation commands configure make sudo checkinstall What s that You don t understand why I don t want you using make install Don t worry all will be explained shortly You re still inside the directory you created when you opened up the tarball and you have all the necessary dependencies that Audacity will need so it s time to run the first command configure This command tests to see whether your system has everything it needs to compile Audacity If everything is copacetic you should see the following at the end of this command s output Finished configure LIBVORBIS using SYSTEM libraries LIBMAD using SYSTEM libraries LIBSNDFILE using SYSTEM libraries LIBFLAC using SYSTEM libraries 167 From the Library of Gregory Smith Compiling Audacity on Linux 168 LIBID3TAG using SYSTEM libraries LIBSAMPLERATE disabled LIBRESAMPLE using LOCAL libraries LIBSOUNDTOUCH using LOCAL libraries LIBNYQUIST using LOCAL libraries LIBEXPAT using SYSTEM libraries LIBTWOLAME disabled RTAudio disabled ladspa
168. while dragging Audacity scrolls the window in that direction as long as the mouse button is down To extend or contract an existing selection hold down the Shift key while clicking the mouse The nearest edge of the selection jumps to the current mouse cursor location This is really useful if you know exactly what you want to select but it doesn t easily fit on the screen at once e Click at one edge of the selection e Scroll until the other edge is in view e Shift click to set the other edge of the selection You can also extend or contract a selection by positioning the mouse near the edge of a selection and then clicking and dragging see Figure 9 3 From the Library of Gregory Smith Selecting FIGURE 9 3 The cursor changes to a pointing hand when you are near the edge of a selection so you know when you can click and drag to extend or contract the selection FIGURE 9 4 The Selection Bar 131 The Selection Bar One handy way to keep track of what you ve selected and to make precise modifications is to use the Selection Bar see Figure 9 4 The Selection Bar is normally at the bottom of your Audacity window but you can drag it wherever you want by dragging the grab bar on the left side of the bar The first control in the Selection Bar is the sample rate of your project which is 44100Hz for audio CDs and most MP3s online In fact the sample rate really has nothing to do with the selection so what
169. with your domain registrar or web hosting provider if you re not sure Here is GoDaddy com s topic on CNAME setup for its customers Other DNS providers may have different instructions 3 Tell us what domain name s to use Example feeds mydomain com Add another domain MyBrand works on all the feeds in your account For example if you have a feed at feeds feedburner com myfeed it will be available at feeds mydomain com myfeed and at any other domains you specify Don t forget to add the CNAME entries for all domains you want to use with MyBrand Activate This service is inactive If you don t control your own domain or host your own site you can t use MyBrand Advertise Your Podcast There s one warning though To use your own domain name with your podcast s RSS feed you re going to need to have access to your domain s DNS records to make a change to your DNS If you don t control your own DNS you re going to need to ask your host whether they can alter it for you If you can t change your DNS you can t use this service The service is called MyBrand and to set it up you log in to your FeedBurner account click on My Account and then click on MyBrand Follow the instructions to request MyBrand activation You ll receive an e mail within a day or so informing you that you can go ahead and change your DNS settings so that you can use FeedBurner with your own domain Log back in to the M
170. y positive that you will not need that Project file any longer Interface This last change applies only to those with older slower computers and it involves the Interface preference shown in Figure 3 32 By default when you record a track with Audacity the program displays the details of the track in real time by continuously scrolling to the right If your recording is stuttering or your computer is having trouble keeping up uncheck the Autoscroll box while playing 64 From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup FIGURE 3 32 Audacity Preferences Audacity s Interface audojo Behaviors Show Hide Quality Autoscroll while playing C Enable cut lines p refe rence pa ne File Formats Always allow pausing Z Show warnings about temp files Spectrograms Directories Theme Batch Keyboard Mouse Update spectrogram while playing Quit Audacity upon closing last window Dragging of left and right selection edges Ergonomic order of audio I O buttons Tracks fit vertically zoomed Circular track keyboard navigation Present track number to accessibility aid Editing a clip can move other clips SHOORSSwOW Language Language English ooo x Minimum of dB mode display range 36 dB shallow range for high amplitude editing 48 dB PCM range of 8 bit samples 96 dB PCM range of 16 bit samples 120 dB approximate limit of human hearing O 145 dB PCM range of 24
171. yBrand page at FeedBurner and make the changes shown in Figure 7 14 After going through this process you ll be able to point subscribers to an RSS feed at your domain but still get all the benefits of using FeedBurner What a great combination Just making your podcast available to the world using whatever service you decide on isn t enough You need to advertise your podcast so that it s easy for people to find 117 From the Library of Gregory Smith Upload Your Podcast FIGURE 7 15 Advertise on Your Blog ie ea This might seem obvious but you must make absolutely sure that visitors to your blog can tell that you offer a podcast The best way to do so is to plaster the widely accepted orange RSS icon shown in Figure 7 15 on your blog Don t just use the icon though Include the words Subscribe to My Podcast next to the icon so that it s crystal clear to visitors that yes this is the link to your podcast s RSS feed Also at the end of each blog post that contains within it a link to a podcast remind readers that you have a podcast feed to which they can subscribe Include a link to the feed and that will hopefully help to increase your subscribers Submit Your Feed to the iTunes Music Store Because Apple s iTunes is the most widely used podcast aggregator in the world it s vital that you get it to index your podcast Rather than list all the steps I m just going to point you to Apple s
172. your hard drive in that window and click Defragment to get the process started The bigger your hard drive the longer the process takes so don t plan on starting to defrag your hard drive 10 minutes before you want to fire up Audacity and make a podcast It could potentially take hours so plan accordingly Backup ES This option will back up files on the volume From the Library of Gregory Smith Hardware and Software Setup To learn more about file system fragmen tation see the Wikipedia article on the subject at http en wikipedia org wiki File_system_ fragmentation Also the Disk Defrag menter that comes with Windows is adequate but better tools are available Use your favorite search engine to find a faster alternative that you can set to run on a regular basis while you re sleeping 44 Headphones Setup You could use speakers while you re recording your podcast but the resulting feedback would quickly ruin your recording Instead you need to use headphones Fortunately getting those headphones to work with your operating system isn t that hard For the purposes of this book we re assuming that your operating system recognizes your headphones and can work with them If your OS doesn t seem to see your headphones it s time to start searching Google Most headphones require no setup at all but if you use a fancy USB headphone set you may need to tell your computer to send

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