It's not so hard, really--my podcasting method

While I appreciate Hugo's comment that I must be a machine for turning out three podcast episodes in the course of one weekend, I have to admit that I don't find it to be very difficult. The most time consuming portion for me is actually writing the script or outline that I work from. Once I sit down to record, I sit down in front of my Mac, fire up Amadeus II and record using my Sony microphone. I save the recording as an AIFF, then pull it into Audacity. Why? Because I think Audacity's effects tools are more capable than Amadeus II's, at least that's been my experience. I use the compressor, normalize it, and then amplify the file. I resave the file to AIFF. From there I hop into GarageBand 3 on my trusty Power Mac. I add the canned jingle, add my podcast's AIFF file, put the canned jingle at the end, and then make sure the volumes are okay. I next export the podcast episode into iTunes. This takes a little while, maybe 5 minutes, so it's a good chance to go grab a soda, a glass of wine, or play fetch with the Golden Retriever. Once the episode is in iTunes, I leave GarageBand until the next episode. In iTunes I convert the AAC file to an MP3 file, fix the show name up, add the artwork, and I'm ready to roll. I then drag my latest podcast episode to my desktop so I can find it easily. Up until the last couple of episodes, I had been using Vodcaster to take care of the XML feed etc., but since it can't add a couple of things I want, I've been editing my XML feed by hand. I just select and copy the most recent episode's info, paste it as a new entry, update the tags, and save it. I then copy my MP3 file to the directory in my iDisk, and I'm almost done. I fire up my web browser, use a bookmark to ping the iTunes server, and then I update the blog. Sounds like a lot, but you'll notice there's very little in the way of editing the podcast. I don't mind a few ums or small mistakes in the episodes since I think it adds some degree of reality and spontaneity. If I really screw up, then I can always chop that out. But I've found that the editing of the soundfile can eat up a lot of time if you're worried about mistakes. By eliminating this task, I can move the podcasts along much more quickly. Total time per episode--probably 1 hour, not including the script writing, which I can do any time. I'll write chunks of the scripts during the week. Do I have the most professional sounding podcast? No. But what do you want for a free online wine course? :-) Thanks to the many listeners who continue to offer their support. I hope I haven't taken away any of the "magic" by revealing that it is not too much of a challenge to knock out a handful of podcasts in one weekend.