WordPress.com Adds Audio: Not a Podcasting Platform… Yet

I learned today that WordPress.com has added the feature of both uploading audio files and a player. This potentially means that WordPress could be used as a podcasting platform. The only stumbling block at this point is the RSS feed.

You can now upload a file of up to 25MB onto WordPress. Not bad, but for our show it is short of the file size that we need. But for a lot of podcasts it might be enough, or you could decrease your bit rate to get the file size down. The other thing that has been added is the Audio Player WordPress Plugin. It is a common player that you would have seen before that works very well.

Consider also that unless you purchase more space then you only have 50MB allocated to you as a WordPress.com Blog owner. It won’t take long to use that up as a podcaster (our shows average 32MB each). So there is added cost there as well. But don’t make the assumption that you are restricted to the 25MB limit on file size, or that you have to buy more space here on WordPress.

There is nothing stopping you having the files hosted elsewhere and playing them from your blog here. You might have a server to host files. To demonstrate this I have embedded last weeks Global Geek Podcast that is hosted on The Podcast Network. You could have a file anywhere on the Internet. But just make sure that you host the content and are not leeching it from some poor blokes server! Some consider this theft, as well as bad form. The same as you should not embed photos on your blog unless you host them. But remember files don’t have to be hosted here to be played in the on-line player.

Okay so what is stopping WordPress.com from being able to be the “home” of your podcast? Probably the most important thing of all. You can either host the audio file here or somewhere else right. So that is the restriction on file size out of the way but once you place that file in a player on your blog you need it recognized as an enclosure. If it is not then a podcast it isn’t. The enclosure is what is needed for things like iTunes and feedreaders, “pod-catchers” in general to be able to download your podcast for the user. If it is not an enclosure then it won’t be “seen” by the RSS reader or aggrigator. By definition the audio file not being an enclosure is not a podcast, but an embedded audio file in a web page. Or “streaming audio” in other words.

I have had one file that I linked to here on the blog; recognized as an enclosure. Once, then it has never happened again and I don’t know why not. I sent a support request to WordPress.com and got nothing back. I did nothing different to what I would normally do. Go figure.

Not only that there is no micro-management of RSS on WordPress.com. You can’t tell it what to do, we are at the mercy of the guys at WordPress. They do a good job though, I have never had a problem. But you need this to be able to manage the podcast. The feed is crucial to the success of any podcast.

So while we are able to have fun with a player and be able to upload files now, which is great; we can not look at WordPress.com as a viable cost effective means to host a podcast. It may be something they are aiming for, right now though we have a cool player and that is all. As cool as that might be the file needs to be recognised as an enclosure, once that happens we are nearly there. Next is the RSS… then we might be podcasting here on WordPress.com.

As promised here is The Global Geek Podcast #034 :: Looks are Everything. Check out the Show Notes, links to everything we talk about can be found there. Plus I blog there as well as here through the week.

Nice player eh? Apparently a movie player is coming. Now, I have to figure out how to use the operators to get the colours to match the blog theme…

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Storage Limits on WordPress.com

I subscribe to the WordPress FAQ Page. I was doing some catch up tonight, reading stuff that normally I don’t get time to do and came across a post that was made at the week-end and it has caused me to rethink the way I do things.

The reason that I get behind in both blogging and reading feeds that I want to read by the end of the week is my other passion. Podcasting. I get bummed if I have not done some blogging done by Thursday because that usually means that it won’t happen until the following week. I am finalising the show notes for The Global Geek Podcast, sourcing music and everything else that goes into the pre and post production. Something has to, usually my personal blog. But I don’t worry too much as I am still blogging in another way, it just does not feel the same. Especially since I try to keep the two separate, I want people to know that I have different things to say to a focused reader/listener base. It is a hard juggling act.

So I was catching up and I saw that there was an FAQ Post called “Upload Space“. I thought… upload space…, isn’t that; sort of unlimited? Realising that I had made an assumption! But then I thought about it and guessed that some people upload huge images and whatever else they might like to and that unlimited would not be practical at all. So I found out that:

“Images and other files are currently limited to 50MB in total.”

When you consider that a blog is a long term project that may well cover years, I don’t think that it would be that hard to fill it. Even if you optimise your images and change the resolution or even use them infrequently. So I thought about what I do and I guessed that it might just be possible for me to eventually use 50MB.

The suggestions made in the post are the usual suspects: Flickr, photobucket and box.net. So I am going to start using my Flickr page for images such as pictures and stuff like that (because you should never, never “leach” another sites content!). But I thought I might use omnidrive that I previously talked about for logos and screenshots or box.net. Although both the latter have a 1GIG limit, for what I do I am going to be hard pushed to fill it. Then again even if the flickr account looks like going close to the bandwidth limit the cost of a pro account (per year) is less than storage at omnidrive or box.net. So I’ll admit, not sure exactly what I am going to do. I like the downloadable applications that the storage services offer but I like the price of Flickr ($24.95USD p.a) and it is unlimited.

The thing that you have to remember is that while a post for you might be ancient history, the page may well be still viewed and appreciated by your readers. If you want them to look the same way that they did when you posted it then you need to look at the ongoing storage of images and pictures that you used in the post. This hosting requirement will grow as time goes on and the number of posts increases. This then means that your bandwidth need increases. How much? That depends what you post and your reliance on images. Food for thought as you may well be thinking about these things as well.

What solutions are other WordPress.com users doing? If anything.

LibSyn Broken?

While The Global Geek Podcast is not hosted on Liberated Syndication anymore I have stayed subscribed to their Support Blog. What has come through from late September to now reads like a train wreck of bugs. I am not sure what is going on over there at LibSyn but it looks like they are experiencing bug after bug and network issues that are plaguing the system. Perhaps their popularity is denting their functionality.

There have been questions raised as to LibSyns capabilities to handle the traffic that they handle and the fact that their business model is one that allows users to utilize unlimited bandwidth. For podcasts this is very attractive. As long as you pay for the storage volume then your show can become as popular as it can and use as much bandwidth as is needed to support the listener base without added cost.

Judge for yourself, here is the support blog from Libsyn from the 24th of September to the 4th of October:

• Addressing concerning emails
• General Maintenance / Hardware Install
• Stats temporarily unavailable
• Partial Service Interruption – Sunday 7pm est
• Interruption Over 8pm EST
• Sunday Update On Network Overload
• Outstanding Bugs

Nothing since then.

For a podcaster this is a bit of a worry. You are worried that your feed is working, that the homepage is still up, that people are able to download content, that you are able to upload shows and edit the blog. If downtime becomes a regular thing then you lose trust in the service and start looking elsewhere, thinking that for the extra bucks you want the peace of mind. These are considerations for potential investors in podcasting as well. How are investors going to trust a show that is hosted on an unreliable service? Answer; they won’t.

Don’t get me wrong I am not rubbishing LibSyn I think that they are one company that make podcasting very easy to get into. I would just like to see them deliver a great service and concentrate on small steps to improve. Hell charge more if you have to but make what you have stable and user friendly. Statistics are very important and I know from the move to our current location that our stats took a beating. I think this was mainly due to the fact that what we thought we had was right off. In other words the statistics are useless.

I can’t speak about what the service is like now but there were some elements that I was not impressed with. I hope they remember who is paying the bills.

What Bit Rate for Podcasts?

I really, honestly do not know the answer to this question. What is the best bit rate to encode a podcast at? Also does that answer depend upon the fact that you are a listener or a podcaster or hosting service?

I do the post production work for the Global Geek Podcast. Before moving to TPN I always encoded the podcast at 44khz and 96kbps. That works out at about 35 – 40MB per show (depending on length between 40 minutes to an hour). We have what I think is great audio quality, but am I spoiling ourselves and our listeners and potentially excluding others?

We have never had a complaint about the file size of the show. No-one has ever said it was too big. People have commented on the quality and said it is great and we have worked hard to get it that way. But I now question if that is over kill. So I tried to figure out what bit rate is the most common. I did a very small survey of the podcasts I have on the computer. I only have nine on it at the moment – most of them are on the MP3 Player (where they should be).

Anyway I got the following breakdown:

Total of 9 Podcasts:

• 2 encoded at 96kbps
• 4 encoded at 64kbps
• 3 encoded at 48kbps

A conclusive survey that does not make. But maybe I am aiming too high. What quality do listeners expect of a podcast? Do they want a small file and lower quality so that they get the content without the bandwidth. Or do they want great quality and a larger file size? With the size of MP3 players now the storage is not an issue I don’t think. But I know in Australia the cost of bandwidth might be. The cost of faster connections is expensive and so many users are on a maximum of 256/64 or 512/128. So does a larger file size deter them from listening to our show? Could we have a bigger audience if we made it smaller and if that is the case what size is acceptable?

With the uptake of broadband technology there is a step towards encoding at a larger bit rate but what should it be? Perhaps 64kbps is a good place. I listen to quite a few podcasts that are recorded at 64kbps and they sound good. A one hour podcast encoded at 64kbps is about 28MB (voice only). Is this a big difference to 96kbps? Well it is between 10 and 15 MB. Will that mean the difference between more listeners and a balance between keeping your existing ones because of what they expect? Will you loose listeners by lowering the bit rate dramatically and will it matter because of the number you pick up. To me it does anyway, I care that we keep the listeners we have.

The other big consideration here is the hosting cost. I know that I had to go to the plan one up from the basic plan in order to have the podcast encoded at such a high bit rate. So that privilege cost me $10US/month instead of $5US/month. That was a cost that I thought was worth it. Also what if your podcast is being hosted by a network, what file size is reasonable for them to host? Is it acceptable that you have a higher bit rate than the other shows that are hosted there and is it necessary? Personally, I would like to find a happy medium between file size, bit rate and quality. I want the best quality at a reasonable file size. I don’t want my hosting provider to get pissed off that the show is too large. In addition to that fact; the network wants as many people to listen to as many shows as possible. If it is possible that people are “turned off” by a large file size, then that is not for the benefit of the network and I would not do it. In that instance the file size should be smaller at the sacrifice of quality for the benefit of the network and I need to accept that.

As a listener I do not care what size a file is. I have a fast Internet connection and it really does not bother me. I like high quality podcasts but I listen to some that are not of a high quality as far as bit rate because the content is good. So is good quality a cover for shit content? If it is; it is not sustainable long term. So as a listener of podcasts I don’t search for podcasts based on audio quality or file size, and maybe I have just answered my question in part.

Having made these points I will say that some basic editing will improve quality out of sight. I have turned off podcasts because they have not bothered to do this basic editing. They were unlistenable and total shit and they should have thought the same! I wonder if some podcasters even listen to it after they have recorded it. So what do I mean by “basic editing?”

Basic editing in my opinion is:

• Setting levels before you start, especially if you are recording Skype using a software application. This means setting your levels with enough “headroom” to get loud during a podcast so that you don’t “clip” the recording. And not so soft that you have to amplify it dramatically to get something to work with.
• Don’t edit the podcast as an MP3, MP3 is a “lossy” format and gets worse and worse in quality every time you re-encode it or open it and save it.
• Run a compressor on the audio to “smooth” the audio. That is take out the high’s and bring up the lows.
• Run the compressor a few more times.
• “Normalise” the audio, basically set the zero level. Makes the podcast the same volume and means that the listener isn’t constantly turning their volume up and down.
• You may need to “amplify” the whole audio after using the compressor and normalising the audio. You don’t want the listener running out of volume because it is too soft!
• Any added or imported audio needs the above steps.

Believe it or not the above takes the least amount of time in my editing but makes the biggest difference. I do go a step further and edit the actual audio and take out the umms and errs and we always stuff things up and say well we will edit that out. The time is also in the transitions and the mixing of the imported audio, making it all work together (the best that I can). So maybe you can see why as a podcaster I want it to sound as good as I can, I put a lot of effort into both the pre and post production. But is that at the neglect of other issues? Is this basic and advanced editing enough to make it a “quality” podcast?

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think. Tell me if you are a listener or a podcaster. Podcasters, tell me what you encode your podcast at and why. Listeners please answer my questions for me. As I said at the start of this post I really do not know what the right answer is, that’s why I have posed lots of questions. It would be great to get some answers, although I am not sure there is one.

Name Servers Changing, Last Chance!

Just a last minute warning that I am changing the name servers for The Global Geek Podcast. What does that mean?

I am redirecting traffic via the http://www.globalgeekpodcast.com url to the new site as of tonight. So that when anyone punches in the http://www.globalgeekpodcast URL, they will be redirected to here:  http://globalgeek.thepodcastnetwork.com. Simple really. It may take up to 48 hours to resolve though so be patient.
But remember that the feed URL has changed! Either get those details from my previous post or the new homepage.

This might seem like a bit of fuss and bother but DNS management and redirection is a great thing. For a start we do not have to remember a new URL and neither do you. Once I have changed the redirect then you will be taken to the new page. It does not matter where the podcast is hosted the http://www.globalgeekpodcast.com URL will always point to it. Cool isn’t it?

But what it does mean is pesky reminders from me! So have a look at my previous post for any further details. Or there is a widget at the top of my blog that will point you in the right direction!