Archive of Online Surgery Sessions

Recording audio podcasts

Session date: 23 September 2009

On this week’s session Joel Eaton uses a screencast to take us through tips and techniques for recording audio podcasts.

Online Tutorial - Audio from JISC Digital Media on Vimeo.

Topics covered during the session

Topics covered included: promoting your collection; recording audio for presentations; and reducing noise in audio recordings.

Transcript of questions and answers (edited to remove personal data)

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Zak (JISC Digital Media): Welcome to our first online support session.

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Zak (JISC Digital Media): Speaker/headphones are required if you wish to listen to Joels 10min video starting at 13:35


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Emily: fab, ok! i'm due to record some podcasts soon but have never done it before!

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gavin @ jisc digital media: what were you thinking of using?

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Emily: err i'm not sure

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gavin @ jisc digital media: you on pc or mac?

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Emily: its going to be done in-house, we have some software here that we've been using for a while

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Emily: pc

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gavin @ jisc digital media: audio only or mixed media emily?

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Emily: audio only for my presentations

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Matt: We have just bought our IMS through Portfolio. We are now about to brand the image catalogue, consisting of digitised slides from our slide collection. However once the services is up and running, I need to think of some clever ways to promote it across campus (for free). Any suggestions? All staff emails never work.

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Emily: @matt maybe some kind of clever marketing campaign, using images? website, or social networking tools?

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Would you be able to give some short presentations about it to key people in various departments?


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gavin @ jisc digital media: @emily - so are you concerned with audio copyright, images, or... oh! ok see you later - mail me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you want to chat about podcasting :)

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): The video is available on Vimeo and available to all for embedding, etc http://vimeo.com/6698660

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gavin @ jisc digital media: actually better still send enquiries to helpdesk on .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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ed: What about having a contest and adversiing that?

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ed: Who can find this image?

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ed: first to do so gets a bottle of plonk

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Matt: On campus users only

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Matt: Tis is a good idea. My main issue is branding the IMS - we need a snappy name and logo. Have been begging staff to take part over our library blog http://www.libraryblog.co.uk

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Zak (JISC Digital Media): @ed good ideas for promotion thanks

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): You also need to find some  'champions' within each dept who will pass on the message

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ed: Agreed - champions - very important

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Matt: Absolutely. I have had two already @Antony, but they are just trying to get their images hosted on the system!

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ed: there is no publicity that works as well as 'word-of-mouth'

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Matt: As well as have librarians catalogue them as a service!

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ed: Snappy Name & Logos are always hard

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ed: you seem to end up always with something  really standard

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Zak (JISC Digital Media): @matt perhaps making a short promo, 1-2mins using a screencast to show the department champions who in turn will re-show it to others.

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Matt: Yep  - trying to stay away from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). but something along those lines is always innevitable

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): @Matt If you are looking for logo and new name then a small competition for the best suggestions would be good and will get people looking at the system

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ed: I have one client, who after years of thinking on this ended up just calling the collection <name> 'Images'

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Matt: haha

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Matt: I sure am

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Matt: Im the digi res librarian, slowly introducing new technologies to the place

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ed: Cool, nice job!

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ed: I was a photographer then....

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ed: but doing more general education/learning/media stuff now

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Where I used to work we ended up calling our database  'Swimming Pool' just because the opening screen used an image of someone diving into a pool... a real splash screen, but a terrible name!

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ed: 'Pool' is nice though

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ed: 'Image Pool'?

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Matt: That give me an idea - **** photography competitions, hosting on the IMS

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ed: Yes that would be good

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Matt: Image Pool - will add that to the list

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Matt t: Millions of photographers at ****

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ed: It would be really nice to have more access to students images

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ed: I worked with **** a while ago on ****.ac.uk

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ed: trying to do that

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Matt: This whole thing cost us £13.5k so I want to make sure it is well liked

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Matt: hosting students images is a sound idea, especially if I can get the photo department a client to upload them

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ed: Talking to Extensis, it looks like they might re-position the program a bit

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ed: but it will be likely more expensive once they do!!

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ed: I presume you are using v8.5?

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Matt: No, 9

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ed: Oh Really!!!!!!

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ed: how is it going?

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): With the package you already have an extra client for the photo dept shouldn't cost much more

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ed: they have recommended to me that I don't upgrade till next year!

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Matt: yeah - its fantastic. Really good bit of software. They also now have clients running through web browsers

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ed: Indeed they do!

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ed: and it works well?

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Matt: It doesnt run well on Snow Leopard apparently, but we all like it

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ed: Good!

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ed: I am very pleased at that and relieved

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ed: I have a client who is thinking of buying Portfolio

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ed: and I was reckoning on trying to load v8.5

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ed: for the moment and then upgrade in the Spring

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Hi Vince

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Vince: Hi all

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ed: Are you using the SQL back-end?

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Matt: fair enough. 9 does seem, to be pretty stable though but we have a years support as part of the licence

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): We have around 15 more mins of this session.

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Matt: All through SQL connect, yes

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Matt: Sure no probs.

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Vince - if the Web Tour window is up you can click play on the Online Tutorial Audio

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Vince: THanks Ant - Am doing so - nice voice - who is it?

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Joel Eaton presented our audio screencast

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Unfotunately he can't be with us right now, but we have Gavin our other audio expert


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gavin @ jisc digital media: voice recorded with a Rode NT2000 and Apogee Ensemble fyi - which probably helps too! treated with some compression and EQ in post

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Vince: Still watching the tutorial - for future Surgery sessions might it be suitable to let us see the materials before so we can come ready with questions?

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Matt: Watching the vid for the second time - i lost acess last time!

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Zak (JISC Digital Media): @vince yes we could look at that. Maybe we should have our vimeo channel on the surgery page so anybody can view what we have then ask questions. Questions arent limited to the screencast, just thought it would be nice to show something during the hour. Thank you

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Thanks to everyone for joining in  - as you know this is a first so if anyone has suggestions for improvement or places to advertise it that would be great!

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Next one in two weeks' time...

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Matt: Word of mouth is the big1. I will let me colleagues know, especially our images librarian

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Matt: thanks guys

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Vince: One question - I occasionaly have audio that has levels to low and boosting the gain brings up hiss - what filters should I use besides EQ to reduce the hiss?

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Thanks Matt for spreading the word

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gavin @ jisc digital media: you can try a noise gate vince, or a noise reduction plugin

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gavin @ jisc digital media: noise gate will onlyu cut the hiss in gaps between words though

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Vince: Thanks Gavin

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gavin @ jisc digital media: best thing is to make sure your record level is high enough to begin with - correct level setting is vital to good sound quality

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Vince: And what about Audio that's clipped because of high levels - anything I can do to reduce

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gavin @ jisc digital media: not really - clipped audio is pretty much unsaveable :(

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Vince: I know - but when Guessed so - problem is filming speeches where there's applause, etc so levels can really vary

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gavin @ jisc digital media: is this audio you are getting from users which they are generating themselves?

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gavin @ jisc digital media: a good hardware compressor/limiter shouild prevent overload in the first place - mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and i'll try and give you a couple of suggestions

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Zak (JISC Digital Media): Thanks all, time to wrap up now. Hope to see you and yours at the next session

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Vince: Gavin - Thanks, will do

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Nigel: Hi Ant, the video was very very slow I think it must have been my connection but apart from that it worked well.

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gavin @ jisc digital media: new advice document on compression/limiting and dynamics processing online in the next week or so too...

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Thanks for the feedback Nigel

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gavin @ jisc digital media: thanks everyone :)

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Vince: Thank You!

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Ant (JISC Digital Media): Thanks for dropping in - hope to see you at the next one