From the course: Producing Professional Audio and Video Podcasts

Professional audio and video podcasts

From the course: Producing Professional Audio and Video Podcasts

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Professional audio and video podcasts

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- Hi, my name's Rich Harrington, and welcome to this course where we'll be exploring podcasting. We're going to take a look at it and what it takes to do it in a professional way. Now, professional doesn't mean that you have to be monetizing it, but it does mean that you are going for pro quality. And if for some reason, your podcast does have a business purpose, well, we're going to address some of those strategies, as well. In this course, we have a lot of different things that we're going to cover and these are designed to really help you get the most out of your podcast. I'm going to share practical experience built with years of podcasting background. To start, we're going to take a look at a working definition of podcasting. This way, we all understand what podcasting is and isn't. There's a lot of different options out there these days for web video and streaming and podcasting has some unique features that are critical that you understand, both technically and strategically. We'll then move on to preproduction approach. This is the planning that you put in to coming up with the show's concept, as well as getting ready for each episode. If you don't have a plan, things aren't going to go as smoothly. And I'll share with you a lot of experience built from years of serving as a podcast host. I've interviewed hundreds if not thousands of people for my podcast, and this really helps if you understand what you're getting goals are and what each show is about. We'll also talk about production approaches. What's your strategy for acquisition? We'll address that two major differences here between audio and video, but we'll also briefly touch upon screencasting, which is a genre of video, so you know how to actually share the content of your screen. I'll then walk you through some of the essential things that you need to set up a podcast studio, from minimal equipment that you can get by with just a laptop and a mic, to some extra add-ons that can really improve the audio and video quality of your production. We'll also take a look at some specific podcasting techniques, things you want to do when you're actually in the middle of an interview or talking to one of your guests and things you need to understand about different things related to audio and video capture. We'll explore some different tools that are available to make it easy to collaborate with people remotely, as well as what you need to understand if you're going to be working with them in the field. We'll talk about some different tools that you can use on Mac and PC computers, as well as web-based tools to allow you to collaborate with people in different locations. We'll then explore the basics of editing a podcast. By no means is this complete, but we'll focus on some of the key things you need to understand, such as frame rate and frame size, as well as audio sample rate. And we'll give you an introduction to a couple of software tools that are quite useful so you know what to explore deeper on your own. Once the files are done, you need to be able to deliver them, and podcasting has some very specific file formats that need to be used. I'll show you how to balance the quality of the file with its overall size so you can speed up your downloads. We'll also talk about hosting the files, which services are available to make it easy to distribute your podcast to a broad audience. And we'll make sure you understand some of the delivery mechanisms and how to really control what information is being shown in the podcast directory. This will include making artwork and entering in descriptions for the show. My name is Rich Harrington, and I've been podcasting since the very beginning of the medium. I've been on both sides of the microphone, serving as a host, as well as a guest on many different podcasts. My company has also produced podcasts for a variety of different organizations, from non-profits and government agencies to large corporations. And I've worked with many different podcasters as both a coach and a mentor. I'm going to share these practical techniques with you to really help you take your podcast to the next level. If you want to produce professional quality results, you've come to the right place.

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