[GNHLUG] [DLSLUG-Announce] DLSLUG Podcast Now Available

[Ben Scott]

On Feb 15, 2008 7:15 PM, Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com> wrote:
>    http://dlslug.org/podcast

  Excellent!  Bill gets a gold penguin sticker for doing what many of
us have only been threatening to do.  ;-)

> Please provide feedback if you give it a try.

Delivery:

  You've got good bandwidth on the host.  Downloaded in 76 seconds
(1:16).  70367 KB file, so that's 925 kilobyte/sec average.  Peak rate
was over 1 megabyte/sec.  I've got Comcast, which does an initial
burst at a higher rate for each connection, so it's hard to
characterize.

Audio quality:

  Played fine with XMMS on Fedora 6.  I've listened to the initial
five minutes, and did random spot checks throughout.  I can hear the
speaker just fine.  Very clear.  No background noise.  No cracks,
pops, or hiss.

  When people asked questions, I could barely hear that someone was
speaking, let alone make out what they were saying.  As has been
discussed before, source quality is key.  You can either mic the
questioners, or have the MC or speaker repeat questions for others to
hear.  This often benefits the live audience, too -- audience members
behind a questioner sometimes cannot hear comments directed at the
stage.

Content:

  Unfortunately, the subject matter for this podcast was apparently
heavily dependent on the visual aids.  I take it you were seeing
movies or stills about Penguins and related research in the antarctic.
 So I spend lots of time wondering what I was missing.  :)  I suspect
coupling the audio recording with the original slides/movie/whatever
the presenter was using would be a huge improvement, without wasting
resources on a video recording of a slide presentation or talking
head.

Legal:

  As I'm sure you know, you should explicitly identify your copyright
policy.  Can this be saved for later replay by downloaders?
Redistributed to others?  Used for derivative works?  Redistributed
via commercial services?  Keep in mind that you should (as a matter of
good taste, if not legal requirement) ask each speaker for their
desires regarding such.

Presentation formatting:

  An introductory audio lead-in should be included, to identify above
copyright policy if nothing else.  It would also be nice to know what
the heck this podcast is about.  :-)  If the "live" introduction is
not suitable for podcast, record one separately.  It's also good form
to have a lead-out that concludes the recording, so listeners know
they got the whole thing.  This is also the perfect place for a
trailer -- identify next month's presentation, so people are
encouraged to "tune in next time, same time, same URL".

  Example lead in:

  "You are listening to 'Where Penguins Dare To Roam: Linux Under the
Antarctic Ice Shelf with Project S.C.I.N.I.', presented by [person].
[One or two sentence explanation of who/what S.C.I.N.I is and what the
presentation is about.]  Recorded 7 Feb 2008 at DLSLUG, the Dartmouth
Lake Sunapee Linux User Group.  More information on the web at double
you double you double you dot dee el ess el you gee dot oh are gee."

  Example lead-out: "That was [repeat description and by-line].  Next
month's scheduled presentation is [whatever - include date, time,
location, for those who might want to come in meatspace].  More
information on the web at double ...".

  With smart editing, you can literally cut-and-paste the duplicated
parts.  The DLSLUG blurbs can be recorded once and kept on file for
endless re-use.  Heck, just record the description and assemble the
rest with a shell script and stock recordings.   :)

> I'm still looking for some open source software that has a compressor which can operate on
> an audio file based on a moving window, rather than the whole file.

  I don't think I understand what you're asking for.  Are you talking
about VBR (variable bit-rate)?  LAME can do that.

  Given that this was basically a spoken word recording, have you
checked out the SPEEX codec?  In my limited tests, it yielded
*significantly* smaller files vs MP3's of the same perceived audio
quality.

-- Ben