Yesterday my old friend Larry Anderson from the National Center for Technology Planning emailed me about the podcasts and videos I've been posting this week from Bangladesh (http://www.andycarvin.com). He asked me some questions about the setup I use for creating the content, saying it would be useful to share with my friends and colleagues. So here are some details about my setup, responding to Larry's specific questions.
1. What are you using to record your audio? I have several ways of recording audio. If I'm just sitting in my hotel recording a podcast that doesn't require much audio mixing, I use the internal microphone on my laptop, using the open source audio editing tool Audacity. Audacity allows you to save your files as MP3s and compress them as well. Meanwhile, if I'm moving around while recording my podcast, I use a handheld digital recorder - specifically, an Olympus WS-200S. With 128 megs of RAM, it holds almost six hours of high-quality audio in Windows Media format. I then use the open source tool Easy WMA to convert it into an MP3 and compress it. I wrote a review of the WS-200S here: http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2005/06/my_new_olympus.html Some of the podcasts I've recorded have had Bangladeshi music. To mix the music with my voice, I generally prefer the video editing software Final Cut Pro, since I've used it a long time. It's not designed for audio editing per se, but I'm a lot faster at doing it with FCP rather than Audacity, which has a somewhat more technical interface. 2. What are you using to capture your video? Until yesterday, I was using two cameras: my old two megapixel Canon A60, and my new eight megapixel Konica Minolta Dimage A-200. The A60 (before it was stolen, at least) shoots AVI format video at 15 frames per second, while the Konica shoots Quicktime video at 30 frames. The Konica lets you use the zoom lens while shooting, but its audio is much poorer than the A60. So generally I shoot more often with the older camera; all the videos I've posted so far were recorded with the A60. 3. Are you editing the video in Final Cut or something similar (or iMovie, etc.)? I use Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. I've been using FCP for about five years and absolutely love it. First time video bloggers often use iMovie, which is really easy to use. But I prefer FCP because I can do more complex edits and compress it to my own specifications. 4. How are you getting those rather large files hosted in such fine style? My blog is hosted by ibiblio.org. They provide free, unlimited hosting for websites that are created for the public interest. I've been with them since the late 90s and am grateful for their generosity. Other video bloggers also use sites like ourmedia.org for free hosting, which I highly recommend. 5. How are you mixing the audio? Do you use GarageBand or Final Cut or something to lay down multiple tracks, then mix those down to a final output? See my response to question 1. Lastly, I'll just add a few thoughts on compression. For video, I use a compression codec called 3ivx. It's accessible when I use Final Cut Pro as File/Export/As Quicktime Compression option in the drop-down menu. I click the options button and make a variety of adjustments, setting the codec to 3ivx, lowering the audio quality somewhat (since I often have content that's not CD quality anyway) and setting the frame rate to 15 frames per second. So that's a quick overview of how I'm recording my podcasts and videos. -andy -- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
