[LUNI] I'm hoping to join you for the next meeting and Linux Podcasting advice

[Chad Sutton]

I may have met some of you already if you were at Flourish. The Friday
round table at flourish was awesome! I was at the Ubuntu LoCo table
most of the time.

I've just been working on an open source podcasting document and I'm
looking for ideas and advice. Do any of you podcast using only Linux?
If so what tools are you using? Do you use VOIP clients to hold round
table discussions? If so, what clients are you using? How are you
recording the conversations?

Here is what I'm doing now.
This is also documented at http://chadarius.com/node/97. The process I
used was for the podcast that my gaming group just started at
http://lordsoftyr.com.

Tools used:

2 Kubuntu 7.10 PC's, Gizmo VOIP client, Gizmo VOIP conference feature,
Icemat Audio headset and usb card, Audacity audio editor, Podsafe
Music from http://music.podshow.com,

Process:

   1. Use only SIP compliant VOIP clients (iChat, Gizmo, Ekiga) so
that everyone can use the Gizmo VOIP conference call number.
   2. Use two Gizmo clients on your end. One to participate in the
call and one just for recording. The PC that is recording with Gizmo
should have its speakers and mic turned off. Otherwise strange echoing
or feedback will occur.
   3. Everyone call in using the full phone number that you get from
Gizmo (It should look like 1-222-xxx-xxxx). Using other methods
doesn't seem as reliable.
   4. Record the call. Everyone will hear a message that says that the
call is being recorded. Make sure that at the end of the call everyone
is off mute and you record about 10 seconds of "silence". This is for
later on when you use the noice filter feature in Audacity.
   5. Hold your podcast session
   6. When completed... immediately back up the recording file. Be
default it saved it to the root of my home directory. In fact, I would
think of cutting it to a CD just in case.
   7. Find your intro/bumper music on the PodShow web site.
   8. Use Audacity to fix the sound. Use the Leveller, Compressor and
Noise Removal effects in Audacity to smooth out the levels from
different people and remove any hum or static that is there (remember
that 10 seconds of silence? Use that as your sample for the Noise
Removal effect). Don't be worried about totally messing up your
podcast with Audacity. It has multi-level undo and you backed
everything up right?
   9. When you are done, export to MP3, Ogg, etc...
  10. Make sure all the MP3 meta data is filled out. Artist, Album,
Track, etc... and upload to your site for inclusion in your RSS feed.
You are done!

The one thing that would be cool is to figure out how to use 2 sound
cards,  2 voip clients, and perhaps pulse audio to do this all on a
single PC. Sometimes I'm on the road and using just my laptop would be
nice to be able to record the podcast instead of relying on multiple
machines.

-- 
Later,
Chad