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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Podcasting for E-Learning: Introduction to Audio Production

Having outlined the conceptual terrain of podcasting, it's time to look at the nuts and bolts of podcast production. In this part of the series, I won't delve too deeply into script-writing: I'll return to that subject in a later series of blog posts, but if you have a look at my series of articles on instructional design to understand my orientation on theoretical and pedagogical approaches to this activity.

Today, I'm going to talk about digital audio, and the basic hardware and software you'll need to begin creating your own podcasts. As I indicated yesterday, the principles of multimedia have been understood for over 80 years, but wide usage of digitally factored technology did not begin in earnest until the 1970’s, because theory had to wait for hardware and software to catch up.

Until recently, recording audio cost many thousands of dollars, used specialized and sophisticated equipment, took up lots of space (in the form of a dedicated recording studio), and required years of specialized training, followed by years acquiring hard-earned OTJ experience to make even the most basic recordings.

In the last five years however, the price of recording audio has gone down, while the quality of consumer recording devices has increased exponentially. Now, it’s even possible to create and deliver reasonable quality audio via your cell phone with a Edge connection to the internet. But we’re not going to do that today. Today, I will describe the essential hardware and software you’ll need to begin recording and producing good quality audio for integration for podcasting and e-learning.

You will need…

Activity

Requirement

Audio source

A Narrator

Capture

A Microphone

Encoding

Audio editing software

Recording Medium

Audio Tape (i.e. DAT)

or

PC Hard Drive

Playback

Playback Device

  • PC
  • Laptop
  • PDA
  • Cell Phone
  • Portable Media Player

Speakers

Headphones

And this is the audio production process (see Figure 1).

Podcast_Production_Process

Figure 1. The Audio Production Process
[Click to Enlarge, 145k]

Production Step

Component

Process Description

Audio Source

Voice–over narrator

Reads script based on objectives of learning initiative

Recording Device

Microphone

Captures analog sound waves and coverts to electronic signal

Conversion

PC soundcard

Turns electronic signal into a series of digital bits

Encoding

Audio Editing Software

Software saves the audio as a sound file (i.e. WAV)

Editing

Audio Editing Software

The audio file is edited, & enhanced. It is rendered in a playback-friendly format like MP3

Distribution

LAN, internet, CD, DVD, memory card

Content is published for distribution via the Web as an audio only file (i.e. podcast), in a format like Flash, or for delivery via CD/DVD, memory stick

Playback

Soundcard, Speakers, Headphones

Media is reproduced via software or hardware player

More...

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1 comment:

DrSGriff said...

In order to minimise latency (delay in A/D conversion) and make use of high quality condenser Mics, Your readers may want to consider a decent External Sound Card. The improvement over on-board sound, especially with that which comes with a Laptop, is very noticeable.