Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sandwich on February 21, 2006, 07:33:25 am
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Ok, I need to learn about and implement podcasting for the weekly sermons at my church, where I work. The problem is, I don't have any idea where to begin. Here's what I'd like to happen; perhaps some of you could point me in the right direction:
I'd like to first experience the end-user's experience of a podcast - what the sync process (?) involves, how it gets transferred from website to PC to player, etc. I have an iRiver H320, not an iPod, FYI. I assume there is some sort of podcast client program to install on my PC that manages podcast subscriptions just like RSS aggregators do, with the added function of downloading the audio file and tossing it onto my MP3 player... right? Or does the aggregator just download the MP3, and the iTunes-equivalent program toss the media file onto the player? Are there playlists involved - something that gets updated each time the podcast gets new content, so that I can just load up the same playlist each time to hear the latest instead of finding the latest file?
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In theory, a "podcast" is just a fancy way of saying "audio or video file made available on a regular basis". You don't have to have any special program to view them, most places either let you download it directly as file or have it streaming on their website. That's what I do.
The advantage of having a specially designed program to do it (or iTunes) is that it automatically downloads new content, so you don't have to go and find it yourself for each new episode. iTunes also has a nice database of podcasts, so you can browse. Ideo and PodNova are websites with this same functionality (database) but right in your browser, where you can also listen.
To the best of my knowledge, iPodder is the standard and/or best dedicated podcasting program, though their website is down, so a quick Google search brought up Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php") as a viable alternative. Also, if you have iTunes, that does the job as well, so you don't need to download any third party apps. I hear the new version of iTunes also has some features for uploading podcasts, though I can't comment first hand since I don't have it.
Also, you might want to download this video, it has a nice overview of how to create podcasts.
http://revision3.com/systm/podcasting/media