 | Podcasting with GarageBand for MAC: Part 1posted by Bo Bennett, Group AdministratorMonday, December 7th 2009 @ 6:55 AM  (2 ratings) |
As a lifetime PC user, I bought my first MAC because of podcasting. I kept reading how the MACs were ideal for podcasting because of the software that already comes with the MAC, and some of the 3rd party software made for the MAC. So I bit the bullet and bought a MAC. About 18 months later, I own seven MACs, and just two PCs. Without question, MACs make podcasting easier and I would argue that they allow the majority of people to produce a more professional quality podcast. Perhaps the main reason for this is GarageBand.
GarageBand is a both a music and vocal production application that comes pre-installed on all modern MACs. It was designed with the podcaster in mind and therefore works wonderfully for podcasting. Unfortunately, docs and online material the clearly showed how to use GarageBand for podcasting could not be found. So it took me about a year to trial and error to discover many of the tips I am about to share.
Start by creating a new podcast project. When you open up GarageBand, you will be asked to choose the type of project. Choose "podcast".
Create your album art. A podcast logo should be 300x300px. This is the size that iTunes asks for, along with most other podcatchers. I will do a post on album art later, but for now, just realize that album art is very important. If you cannot do a great job at creating it, hire someone who can.
Drag your album art into the "episode artwork" area within GarageBand. When your podcast is playing on a user's podcatcher, you want your artwork to show. This is prime advertising you do NOT want to miss out on. Also, a lack of artwork will make your podcast look unprofessional.
Set up the recording tracks. Let's assume that you have one local mic, your guest on Skype, and your podcast music (intro/outro/transition) track. You want to have 3 different tracks to you can control of the sound of each one independently. You want to avoid mixing sources together whenever possible.
Your voice tracks are "real instruments" in GarageBand. By default GarageBand will start you off with a male and female track. Use the fist one for your local mic and change the sound to "no effects" in the info tab to the right. This is a preference of mine, but you may choose to keep the effect. While you are in that section, make sure you set your input source to your local microphone.
Adjust your track settings. The default settings for your track should be just fine. However, I can't tell you how many times I messed something up by accident and had no idea how to fix it, thus many a podcast sounded like crap! So this is worth paying attention to:
- Rename the track by clicking your mouse on the name and holding it. Naming each track helps with understanding.
- The red dot to the left means the track is recording. This MUST be on or your track will NOT record. When you click around, this frequently will go off, so you must be sure all your tracks you want recorded have this red dot showing.
- The yellow up arrow means that the track will run in the foreground -- the light blue arrow below it means it will be a background track that will fade out when another track has input. For all talking tracks, you want to make sure you see the yellow arrow.
- The "L" and "R" button is the balance for left and right speakers. You want this to be in the middle, otherwise it will sound really annoying to the listener.
- The speaker slider bar is the track volume. Keep at 0 until post production. This is when you can adjust the track to compensate for quiet guests or loud guests.
- The two bars over the volume slider display the sound your mic is picking up. You should be able to talk at a normal volume and see the green bars peak out to yellow bars. If you see too much red, your mic volume it too loud.
- If you see a "track volume" section under your track, you hit the "a" key while the track was selected. Select the track and hit the "a" key again to make it go away.
In part two, I talk about the Skype track and more.
