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First published in New Zealand Macguide Magazine - Issue 29

Apple has been at the forefront of the Podcasting revolution for some time. With the launch of the iLife '06 applications at the beginning of this year they integrated the ability to make and publish podcasts into GarageBand 3 and iWeb applications. GarageBand 3 in particular features an advanced section that allows you to create podcasts and enhanced podcasts.

You can think of an enhanced podcast as somewhere between an audio file and a video clip, comprising audio that is enhanced through the incorporation of images, titles/chapters and clickable links.

Most likely you'll experience an enhanced podcast through iTunes, which displays the images in a small window that can be brought to the front or displayed in the album cover area. The artwork that is embedded within the podcast file is triggered and displayed by the timeline you develop within GarageBand.

GarageBand saved the radio star
On launching GarageBand and choosing to create a podcast, the default layout that appears features many radio and recording terms. There's jingles, radio sounds and concepts such as ducking. By default, the layout features a podcast track which must remain (where you'll drag and drop the artwork into your podcast timeline) and a number of tracks to use at your discretion such as a male voice track, female voice track, jingles track and radio sounds track that can be used to add sound effects.

At the bottom of the layout is the browser area where you're probably used to accessing sound loops. For podcasts this will also be an area to drop the Episode Artwork and an area where you can add text information and URLs to chapters in your podcast episode.

Along the toolbar within GarageBand (located in the middle of the application window) you'll find two very important buttons that will allow you to gain access to the media browser, giving you access to audio, images and movies via a browser that connects to your iLife applications.

You'll also find access to the Track Information window. This window allows you to put important information into the podcast that will then be displayed, including a parental advisory setting and a more detailed description of the podcast episode.

Getting it all ready
Even the quietest of Macs put out some operating noise and you're most likely to notice it at the time that you go to record a podcast. My iMac G5 at home is exceptionally quiet, but I still found when I used a Logitech Headset to the record the podcast, that standing back away from the iMac and turning my head removed some of the machine noise that may have been picked up. You're likely to find that iSight cameras or other systems that have to be close to your machine may also cause problems.

At the same time, knowing that I was going to be adding in a number of images for the podcast, I decided to prepare these in advance and add them into iPhoto. Using Apple's guidelines, I made each of the images 300 by 300 pixels, as this is the default size that GarageBand outputs its enhanced podcasts.

Once I had all the images sorted, I ordered them as well as tracking down the URLs for the various sites that I would be mentioning. I then had a fair idea about the order of my podcast and the way in which the images were to be used.

Click on the Podcast track at the top of GarageBand for a moment and make sure that the Track Editor is showing. You need to add an image as the overall Episode Artwork area on the left of GarageBand. You can either drop an image file onto this area or use the Media Browser button to access your iPhoto library and drop an image from here into this window.

Next, use the Track Info button that is next to the Media Browser button to display the overall information for the episode. Set the Parent Advisory rating and add in a description of what this episode of your podcast is all about, and then it's time to start recording.

Radio Jingles
GarageBand has always had sound loops available to develop great music tunes. But with podcasts, Apple realised that users would be wanting something else…they'd be wanting sounds that others might use on a radio broadcast or radio station. These could be fantastic opening tunes, background music or small sound hits that allow you break up the flow of your broadcast whilst making it all sound incredibly professional.

So Apple has provided a superb range of jingles that vary in length, sound effects and stingers that you can drop into your broadcast, adding to the professionalism of your episode. You'll hear examples of all these with the enhanced podcast associated with this article and it's also a good idea to have some background music playing unobtrusively just to add a little more to the broadcast. If you're concerned about copyright issues or anything like that, you can also easily develop your own tunes and add a copyright notice at the end of the broadcast.

Then it is simply a matter of getting your microphone, selecting the voice track you want to use (in my case the Male track) and starting to record. You may find you have to go into the preferences of GarageBand and even possibly into the Sound panel of your Mac's System Preferences before proceeding if GarageBand can't pick up your microphone.

While you've got the voice track selected, go to the "Track" menu and choose "Show Track Info". In the screen that appears, at the very bottom of the right-hand panel is a small Details section. Click on this and you can start to see that in fact a number of sound options are being applied to your voice as you record. Play around in this area and you'll soon find that there is a wealth of options available to you to enhance your voice.

Click Art
There are a number of ways to add in artwork to a podcast. I tend to stick with the timeline approach that you use for other aspects of GarageBand, dropping pieces of artwork into the podcast track and then stretching or shrinking them to the length I want.

At that point I've got a fair idea of the various images that are going to show during the playing of the enhanced podcast. I then make sure that I have the right-hand column showing the podcast preview, the track editor showing at the bottom of GarageBand and then I go back to the beginning of my recorded file and watch and listen. At an image change I might decided to add in a link to a URL, so as these have been added automatically with the artwork I dropped into my timeline, it is simply a matter of going to that point, adding a Chapter Title, a small piece of text to appear at the bottom of the podcast display and the URL I want users to be sent to if they click on the enhanced podcast.

But don't forget that you don't need to use images simply to emphasise interactive parts of your broadcast. Images used by themselves with no clickable links enhance the flow of the broadcast and make the experience richer for users. To do this, simply stop at the point that you want to create greater emphasis and add the new image. With a little bit of thinking you can make the broadcast interactive, flow well but also look visually appealing as images appear or disappear based on the audio comments you are making.

Duck or uncover
When you start talking on a podcast, it's important that the level of background music diminishes so that you can be heard. It's possible to automate this in GarageBand using a feature called Ducking. With ducking, you can indicate via an up and down arrow on each track as to whether you consider the track a lead track (of importance) or a backing track. Then GarageBand listens to the audio levels and drops them automatically at appropriate time. Unfortunately because it is automated and it needs to hear noise before reacting, the result are mixed. I recommend turning ducking off via the menu option and instead displaying each track's volume levels and manually adjusting them to suit the levels that you require.

Publish and be…famous
There are a variety of ways to publish your podcast episode, but the important thing is to tie it into a podcast feed that users can subscribe to. This can be achieved from within GarageBand if you publish to your iWeb application and then upload to a website. My preference for NZMac.com's podcast (since the site isn't developed using iWeb) is to have episodes and the podcast feed managed through a publishing application called Cast Life (www.meddiecatsoft.com) so when using GarageBand, I simply choose "Export Podcast to Disk" from the "Share" menu.

You can subscribe to the Macguide podcast and listen to the episode developed for this article at www.macguide.co.nz

Published by kind permission NZ Macguide - © Parkside Media

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