The basics of your podcast begins with recording and editing.  All the podcasts that I have made, are interviews with people, on the telephone, as I have discussed in earlier sections of the web page.  On my computer I have several programs that allow me to record sound files.  The program I use to record my podcasts is WavePad mentioned in the software section.  The reason I use this program to record the podcasts is WavePad is my favorite program to edit podcasts.  When your are saving mp3 files you loose a bit of quality.  The more times you save the file the more quality you loose.  So using the same program to record and edit the podcasts makes a lot of sense to me.  Besides, WavePad works just fine to record the podcast.  I will proceed with the assumption that you have followed my advice and installed WavePad and have your audio input hooked up and ready to go.

RECORDING

When your ready to start your recording with WavePad you simply click the round red record button on the bottom bar.  At that time a window opens up and you have to put the settings in you want to use to record.  You have two choices, one the sample rate and I always record at 44100 and check the single channel button and click OK.  That window then closes and another window opens up. 

WavePad remembers your settings but the first time you need to set them.  On the top left side is where you enter the "File Info" and you will see a place for the file name and it may be "grayed out" but don't worry about the file name because you can put that in when you save the file.  Just below the file name you will find a section for the playback settings and a place named "device" and here you select the computer sound card.  Below that is a slider to set the volume.  You want the volume to be as far to the right as possible but not so far as to cause the red bars to appear.

On the top right side (Recording Settings) is again a box for you to select your computers sound card.  The next box below you want to select "Microphone."  Then below that again adjust the volume.  It during your recording you see that the red bars are appearing you can move this slider back slightly to the left to get rid of the red bars.  Once your actually recording you don't want to change the recording slider anymore than you absolutely have to.

If you click on the advanced button you will want to check "auto start" and audio trim."  If you look at the bottom right of this window you will see the elapsed time of the recording running and the recording volume meter.  Since this first time is to just get the setting correct click on the black square button to stop the recording.  Then click on the red X on the top right to close the recording control.  When the window closes you will see the waveform of the recording you just made.  All you have done at this point is to set the recording control settings so you can now close the test recording and get ready for your first real test.

Now start the recording again and this time pick up the telephone.  You will be recording the dial tone so click any key on the phone and the dial tone will go away and say test 1 2 3.  Stop the recording and then listen to what you have recorded by pressing the green play button on the main tool bar on the bottom.   Once you see that everything works you will want to make a test recording by calling a friend and record the conversation.  Be sure and tell them that your recording the conversation so you don't break any laws.  Different stats and countries have laws about recording telephone conversations so you want to make sure that the person you are interviewing is aware of the recording.

When your actually recording the podcast you will want to be sure and instruct the person your interviewing, on the rules of a good interview.  Tell the to relax and talk in a clear strong voice into the telephone mouthpiece.  Tell them to keep the mouth piece close to their mouth.  Also assure them that you will edit the podcast and take out anything they don't want in the finished podcast.  Tell them if they say something that they did not want to say then to just pause and start over again to make it easy for you to edit the podcast.  You might assure them that you can't add anything to the podcast but you will delete any mistakes that either of you make so you both sound as good as possible.  One other note:  I never let anyone listen to a podcast interview before I release it to the Internet.  Once the interview is done it's done but I don't tell the interviewee that.

The first thing you want to do when you have recorded a podcast is to save the file before you do anything else with it.  Saving the file with WavePad is simple and straight forward.  Click File - save as - (name the file) - select mp3 as the file type and click save.  Then another window opens and in this window on the left side make sure the following settings are there, selected or checked.

Constant bit rate

Bit rate (kbps) 128

Check high quality

On the right side of this box under "Error Protection" select include CRC to detect errors and then save the file to a folder on your hard drive.  I then copy this raw podcast to a CD so I am sure to never loose the interview. 

Once the raw uncut podcast has been safely saved it's time to edit the file and now the work begins.

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