Podcasting Setup, Recording and Cofiguration

The other day, Tim Wilson pinged me on IM to ask about how I'd setup Windows to record the Ed Tech Coast to Coast podcast. He was preparing to give a series of presentations on podcasting at the TIES conference. His site, The Savvy Technologist , gives a great rundown of all things podcasting.

My process is a bit cumbursome, but works pretty well. The biggest drawback is that it takes two computers, though the second one could be replaced by a recording device and then I could use the first maching to to do the edit on. Here's what I do:

1. Login to my Skype account on computer #1 and create a conference call with any of the folks I want on the recording.
   
2. From the line-out of computer #1, I plug that into my mixing board. In my case, I use a Mackie Blend 6 , but just about any mixer would do.
   
3. Also plugged into the mixing board is my microphone - an ADK condensor mic .
   
4. From the mixer, I use one of the sends (a line-out from just my microphone) plugged back into laptop #1. This allows folks on the skype call to hear my voice (without using the built-in on my laptop).
   
5. If I have other folks recording with me, I just plug an additional microphone into the mixer. This allows me some flexibility to controls the volumes using the mixing board. The main drawback is that all the users on Skype come in as one-channel (not a unique one for each user)
6. From the main out on the mixing board, I plug that into computer #2 (the line-in). I have audacity running on computer #2 and record the mixed podcast from the mixer.
   
7. Once the podcast is recorded, I do any and all editing (adding an introduction, music, deleting unnecessary pauses or background noises) and then save it as an mp3 file.
   
8. From there, I can upload the file to whatever host I want to use. I've used Odeo as one location to host podcasts, but could use any Drupal-enabled site (that is, enabled with the audio module) from which I could then just register the RSS feed for the podcast (the audio category if applicable) with iTunes .

This process is quite a bit simpler, of course, on a Mac. In that case, I simply create a conference using iChat and then open Garageband. It asks me if I want to record the conversation in iChat and brings each user in as a unique track. That is great because I can edit each person individually and delete mistakes, etc. And, from Garageband, integration with iTunes is fairly simple and its done.