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Podcasting Blog
Audacity Updated
5/09/2008
The very popular among podcasters audio recording application, Audacity has received an update. Podcasting News has a full rundown of the changes, including many bug fixes. It is nice to see some interface fixes, too, as I’ve felt Audacity has always suffered on the UI side.
Got a Podcaster Birthday Coming Up?
2/14/2008
Don’t forget that I’ve put together the finest collection of gifts for your favorite podcasting friend, family member, neighbor, or stranger! This isn’t just a list for holiday gifts, but great to find something to buy for a birthday gift or something for yourself, too. Filled with books, hardware and more, the store is broken out into … Continue reading »
Greg Cangialosi on B2B Podcasting
2/13/2008
While on business and conference-going on the west coast, my co-author of The Business Podcasting Book Greg Cangialosi was interviewed today for the City Biz List about B2B podcasting. After a short introduction Greg gets right to the point about why podcasting matters to business:
Simply put, podcasting presents yet another opportunity for an … Continue reading »
Hardware Recommendations
- Kustom KM4 Mic with Cable
- Behringer XM8500 Microphone
- Shure SM58 Mic
- MXL MXL V63MBP Computer Desktop Recording Kit
Masthead
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Ryan Irelan, Editor - listen@podcastfreeamerica.com
Introduction to Podcast Workflows
A beginner's guide to podcast workflows. What a workflow is, how to improve it and ideas for automation.
You’ve probably read many articles online that go on and on about setting up your podcast workflow. I know I’ve written about it before. It sounds complicated and full of flowcharts, diagrams and 3-hour meetings with upper management, but it’s actually very simple.
Let’s start with the basics.
What is a podcast workflow?
Simply put, a podcast workflow is the process you go through to produce an episode of your podcast. This can be everything from conceiving the idea to finalizing the mp3 file and uploading it to your web host or it can be a small part of that entire process. It really depends on how you work and which part of the podcast for which you’re responsible.
My workflow as an example.
Let’s unpack this a little more and use my podcast as an example. I consider my podcast workflow to be the production of my podcast: recording, editing, file preparation and publishing. That doesn’t mean I don’t do planning, brainstorming and writing. I do, but they’re not part of my production workflow.
- Record voice in SoundStudio
- Edit any mistakes or long pauses.
- Compress and gate for noise reduction and enhancement.
- Save as wav file.
- Run automation script that compresses the file to mp3, attaches intro and outro to main content mp3 file, adds ID3 tags, updates RSS feed and uploads to my server.
That is my podcast workflow. It’s nothing fancy, but it did take some trial and error to get the finer details hammered out and working flawlessly. A large part of that is the automated section (the last bullet point), which saves me a lot of time and manual work. In this case that’s my automated workflow, which a mini workflow inside of my larger podcast workflow. Got all that?
Automating your podcast workflow.
The technical aspects of automating your workflow are beyond the scope of this introductory article on podcasting workflows, but I do want to talk about how you can determine which parts of your podcast workflow you can automate. Here’s a simple that will help you comb through your workflow and make it more efficient:
- Identify areas where you repeat the same task every podcast episode
- What tasks do you perform that don’t require anything more than your hand to move the mouse or type the keyboard? Which tasks don’t require you to compute anything or make decisions?
- Are there any tasks that you just don’t like doing? Maybe they can be automated to make your podcast production experience better and more fun.
For my podcast workflow automation, I simply chose the tasks that I hated to do and that I knew could be automated. Those were: compressing the files to mp3, editing in the intro and outro audio, tagging the files and upload them to the server.
How much you can automate your podcast workflow will really depend on what kind of podcast you do, to what extent you have you to be involved manually and the tools you’re using. I’m fortunate that the tools I use can be automated easily through scripting.
The Take-Away
As you produce your podcasts, think about the steps you take, write them down and try to improve, streamline and, if possible, automate your workflow. Sometimes it just takes recognizing repeated tasks to make your podcast workflow go from difficult and time-consuming to more fun in less time.
For some more examples of podcaster workflows, check out the last section (titled “Your Workflow") of this wiki page or Podcast Academy’s series called Podcasting: Workflow Management (Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5)
I’ll be leading a session at the Podcast & New Media Expo at the end of September 2007. If you’re looking to learn more about podcasting, the expo is a great investment.
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