Post in [Webcasting Community] RSS, Podcasting and iTunes

2005 Nov 22 13:12 UTC

Professionally, The Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee
http://www.netcaucus.org is repackaging its videos from panel and
speaker events by posting the audio in a podcast. It has been very
successful. We have tripled our bandwidth usage some months, and it
only takes us an extra 10 minutes or so to prepare the RSS and MP3.

Personally, the podcast system works really well. On my wife's web
site http://www.showbizradio.net we are able to very easily make MP3s
available through her online radio station, and off of the web site.
If you have audio available from any source that can be digitized
easily, there really is not much of an excuse to not create a
podcast. Adoption rates may be low, but it will increase.

I believe the bit rate we use is 32Kb, but I'll need to check to make
sure. iTunes has its own specification, which gives you extra fields
for embedding information about the podcast that the iTunes Music
Store will render. http://phobos.apple.com/static/iTunesRSS.html

So far, I haven't heard of any complaints about or problems with the
MP3s. I have had one comment that we should use an Ogg Vorbis audio
format, but the adoption rate for our target audience for Ogg is low.
Creating a podcast will take some time up front to get your head
wrapped around the issues, but if you've successfully done video
webcasting, the audio is easier. The most difficult part is getting
clean audio to make available. Mike