Make Use Of Podcast #45: How to Podcast pt. II

In part two (here’s part one) of the Make Use Of How to Podcast podcast, I’ll take a closer look at Audacity, the multi-track audio editor you’ll use to do all your recording and mixing.

I’ll also take a look at what multi-track means, why it’s important and how to record and edit your voice track.  Next time, I’ll go into detail on mixing your music, sound effects and audio clips into the podcast.

The podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

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Jason Mayoff

Jason Mayoff is a dad, a tech geek and a Canadian radio broadcaster (CJAD 800). You can also find Jason at his a href="http://www.pleasantnights.com/">photoblog.

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  • Marc

    Jason,

    I recently started to list to the MUO podcast (since #34) and I have enjoyed most episodes.

    I’m writing because of a technical problem I’m having with your podcast – your ID3v2 tag always has an incorrect length, for instance #45 has a ID3 length tag of 43:06 – when in reality the podcast is only about 11 minutes long. This problem has been with all of your podcasts that I’ve downloaded.

    FWIW, I listen to 53 other podcasts and none of them have ever exhibited this problem.

    Why is it a problem? I use Rockbox (love it) on a Sandisk Sansa e250 (really like it). One of the best features is the ability to set the FF and RR buttons to skip forward/backward a user specified amount of time with a momentary touch and go into FF/RR mode when holding the button down. I set my skip time to 15 secs.

    So if I’m listening to a podcast and I miss something or want to have something repeated all I have to do is hit the RR button and Rockbox will jump back 15 secs in the audio stream. Unfortunately the algorithm in Rockbox appears to use the ID3 length, the current time code and the amount to skip to calculate where to start playing — and when the length is incorrect I end up nowhere near where I want to be.

    So my request is please set the ID3 length tag to the correct time.

    Thanks,
    Marc

    • http://www.pleasantnights.com/ Jason

      Marc,

      I will look into that and let you know what I find out.

      Thanks for your comment,
      Jason

    • http://www.pleasantnights.com/ Jason

      I believe I’ve discovered the problem. I encode the podcast as with a variable bit rate and according to at least one source “many MP3 players may inaccurately report the duration of VBR-encoded files.”

      The next podcast will be encoded CBR instead of VBR. Please let me know if you notice a difference.

      • Marc

        Jason,

        If by next podcast you mean #46 (Mapple’s) then no joy. The ID3 Length Tag said 15 minutes while the podcast was only 5 minutes.

        Note: This is not my MP3 player reading the Length Tag incorrectly – if I look at the podcast file with any ID3 tool (like ‘MP3 Tag Tool’) it will show the incorrect time in the Length Tag.

        The MUO podcast files that I have looked at have been obtained in one of 2 ways: I use Juice to download the podcasts, but this last time I downloaded it directly from you website.

        The incorrect ID3 Length Tag is created on your end I believe.

        Some more info – if I load the file into Windows Media Player it shows the correct length. If I load it in to another media player, like FooBar2000 or VLC Media Player it shows the incorrect ‘ID3 Length Tag’ as the length.

        Thanks,

        Marc

        • http://www.pleasantnights.com/ Jason

          No, actually I was talking about the next one after Mapple. This one. Does it work any better for you?

        • Marc

          I’ll give it a try as soon as I can – I’m in NH and haven’t had power since last Fri! I’m reading my email via dial-up as I do have phone and a laptop. Oh joy!

          Thanks,
          Marc

        • Marc

          Jason,

          That did it. Thanks! I just caught up on podcasts#47-50 and they all worked fine – the fixed ID3 Length Tag allowed Rockbox to correctly jump forward and backward.

          Thanks again,
          Marc