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producing a Podcast


Jeff Wexler

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The question came up on RAMPS today regarding producing a Podcast. The person asking the question needed some help using a Marantz flash based recorder, I believe. My suggestion was to ditch the Marantz standalone recorder and do the Podcast directly on the computer using GarageBand 2. I realize that not everyone has a Mac so my suggestion may be of no use, but I was struck by something that I think may be of interest to all of us. Having worked as a professional sound person for so many years, I was amazed when Apple first came out with GarageBand. This was softrware that made it possible, even for regular people, to record, edit, clean up and mix music, producing very professional and good sounding tracks. Now, with GarageBand 2, supporting 8 tracks of real time recording and Podcast production, Apple has come up with yet another amazing  product. I invite anyone to preview the Quicktime movie tour of GarageBand's capabilities: go to Apple's website

http://www.apple.com/ilife/quicktour/garageband/

I think this is an eye opener in regards to the level of sophistication and function that Apple has brought to the masses...  things which up until recently required very expensive and complex equipment and trained engineers (like us) to accomplish.

Regards,  Jeff Wexler

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Jeff,

Podcasts can be more difficult than they should be.  Apple seems to keep slightly tweeking the file format (especially for video Podcasts) and quite often a Podcast that ran perfectly one day in iTunes completely stops working.  Unfortunately (and I don't entirely mean this to be an Apple bash), Apple does a very poor job of communicating these changes to their customers, and quite often the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing there.  For example, they changed the video format in iTunes, but had not yet updated the QuickTime render for Podcasts, so you could render a video in QT that would not play in iTunes or on the video iPod.  So when people ask me, I always recommend they stay away from the Apple-specific formats for Podcasts, and go pure .mp3, which tends to be safer, and not to try to apply any DRM if they intend to make it a public Podcast.  But, to  your more important point that GarageBand starts to open up the possibilities for people to start doing interesting things with sound without making major investments, I agree.  But:

//Editorial on:

The common belief starting to come out of the Apple developer community here in Silicon Valley is that, ultimately Steve Jobs will end up running Disney, and will lose his focus on Apple as it merges into the Disney family.  Also, there is a strong belief that the move to Intel processors is just a precursor to Apple discontinuing all computer hardware, and making a version of Mac OS available for all Intel-based computers (in other words, focusing just on the software side of the business, rather than continuing down the significantly lower profit margins found in their hardware business.)

//Editorial off

My point in bringing up the above is that this could actually be a really good thing overall, since this will give us Windows folks the opportunity to use some of the tools that Mac users take for granted.  I have several times considered buying a Mac just to be able to use GarageBand for projects, since it is much more capable than Acid (this is mostly for simple scoring kinds of things).  But, I just can't rationalize the cost of a Mac just for that one application (even the Mac Mini's.)

I don't mean to bring heresy and controversy here...just reporting what some of my well connected Apple developer friends and collegues report.

Phil

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//Editorial on:

The common belief starting to come out of the Apple developer community here in Silicon Valley is that, ultimately Steve Jobs will end up running Disney, and will lose his focus on Apple as it merges into the Disney family.

I agree with concerning the arbitrary and undocumented changes Apple often makes to the seemingly easy routines it offers its users. This is unfortunate and we usually find out about these things the hard way.

Now, on to the speculation of what Steve Jobs is up to: "oh, and one more thing, I'm not going to be making any more Macs... but you can download my latest Disney creation on any computer for $9.99" I don't think is going to happen. I do trust Steve Jobs when he says he has no interest in running Disney. I think the Apple computer platform will continue although it may go through some dramatic changes far more than this transition to Intel processors.

I really don't know what is going to happen in the future. I do know that Apple's BRAND recognition is huge and the attention that is paid to Apple and Steve Jobs by the rest of the tech community defies explanation when looking at the miniscule "market share" that Apple has. Maybe that's your point --- Apple continues to be the most high profile innovative tech company out there, but this will not be tied to the manufacturing of personal computers in the future.

Regards,  Jeff Wexler

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Jeff,  you're a much more trusting soul than I am...but of course with Steve I'm a bit tainted since he threw his shoe at me in a meeting a couple of years ago.  ;-)  Let's hope that he does keep his focus and Apple continues to innovate...someone needs to be there to kick Microsoft in the butt. 

Phil

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