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CPD23 Thing 18: Screencasting and Podcasting

Where to start on this one considering I do both of these things pretty much weekly, if not more often.

When it comes to screencasting at the Commission we use our GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar account to record both training videos and our weekly NCompass Live webinars. Granted the GoTo products aren’t free, or even cheap for that matter but considering the amount of work we do with them they’re worth every penny. I have used free services such as Jing in the past but I just don’t have any need for them any more.

Then, after any session we record, whether it be NCompass Live or another live session of training or a presentation, I use a number of programs to turn those recordings into our NCompass Live Podcast., the latest episode of which I’ll be working on after I’m done writing this. The process is somewhat detailed but on a minimal level, here’s what’s involved:

  • GoToWebinar records the video and audio from the session or I transfer the video from our HD video camera to disk using Windows Live Movie Maker.
  • Using VLC I create an audio-only WAV file from the video file.
  • I then run the audio file through Levelator to get the audio levels as consistent as possible.
  • I then take the revised audio file into Audacity to add opening and closing music and narration, and edit out any obvious and significant audio problems.
  • When that’s done I export the resulting audio file as an MP3 using the LAME encoder.
  • I then use ListGarden to generate the RSS file for the podcast

 

It sounds like a lot but after a few months of doing this every week it gets much easier.

Published by Michael Sauers

Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.

One Reply to “CPD23 Thing 18: Screencasting and Podcasting”

  1. I was quite disappointed with Levelator; I regarded the side-effects on sound quality (that is, the way it affected the sound in addition to the compression) as unacceptable for our podcasts. I haven’t found the compressor built into Audacity to be very effective for our purposes, either, so I’m still looking for an ideal solution.

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