Technicals
Audio and Video Recording
We planned to stream our podcast in both audio-visual and audio only platforms. We decided to
start with a budget set up, without diminishing the quality of the podcast. We were convinced by
the fact that the audio is a key for quality output, irrespective of the type of the podcast,
audio-visual or audio only.
It was tricky to pick an appropriate microphone that could fit our budget, deliver the desired
quality and also fit to our recording setup. After a thorough research, we picked a Samson Q2U, a USB/XLR dynamic microphone. Honestly, for what we paid, we are extremely satisfied with its
audio quality. VB- Audio VoiceMeteer, a virtual audio interface software and Audacity, a digital audio editing and recording software were used for audio recording. This helped us to
cut the cost low as these are open source and free software. However, VoiceMeteer has a downside.
It is limited to USB input and only supports two mics at a time. This set up works best for two
people, unless a single or two mics are used to record multiple voices. The handy set up guideline
can be found in the link here. Now, in the quest of a free audio recorder that could support multiple inputs, we found ARDOUR. Thanks to our friend Bijay for spotting ARDOUR. ARDOUR can record each audio track separately
and gives flexibility to duck them independently as well.
Three camera angles setup was used to record the video. We opted to use our mobile phone camera (iPhone 12 Pro, Samsung S9, Samsung S10, Samsung Galaxy Note 20
, Samsung A50, iPhone 11). Some mobile phones have a video recording time limit. A50
had a 35 min recording limit. We did not realize it until we shot the first episode. All the video
editing was performed in WonderShare Filmora.
Audio and RSS Feed
While managing the video version of the podcast is done with YouTube Studio, managing audio podcasts is not as straightforward as there are multiple podcast distribution
platforms like Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify etc... For this reason, most podcasts use rss feeds to manage their episodes.
Currently, we distribute our podcast to Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts. We used the rss
feed service from rss by purchasing their educational
licence ($4.99 per month). Eventually, we considering moved to Anchor, which is a free service by spotify to distribute podcasts.
Registration and Distribution
Although you can register your podcast without any episodes to rss, distribution to Apple, Google and Spotify requires the following:
- At least one episode uploaded
- Cover art and episode art (Minimum 1400px * 1400px). These files should be less than 512KB for Apple Podcasts.