This is my last chance to blog for credit this quarter. I got so busy working on podcasts and videos in the last few weeks that blogging had to take second place, and that translated into not blogging at all. Last night I finished the first and second versions of our group podcast and now I’m waiting for feedback from my group before adding images for an enhanced podcast. I’ve got a few minutes this morning before heading up to Kirkland to teach an all-day video class, so I’m going to blog about whatever pops into my head.
It seems to me that there really is no ideal software for creating podcasts. My brief experiment with Audacity made me crazy because I found I could not accurately navigate around the timeline, due to the fact that the playhead disappears when you hit pause. I do a huge amount of razor sharp trimming and volume adjustment, so I need the playhead to stop on a dime while I’m listening and remain visible so I can see where I am.
GarageBand is pretty good for doing precise edits and it’s certainly wonderful to have all those loops available, right there in the same program, for adding music and sound effects. I actually have all of the Jam Packs, so I’ve got thousands and thousands of loops to choose from.
I discovered the biggest drawback to GarageBand when I got feedback from my group on my first version of the South Lake Union Walking Tour. A couple of people wanted me to add new material or re-do sections of the narration that would have expanded the timeline. Because my podcast is made up of hundreds of individual voice, music and sound effects clips, this would have meant moving all of these to make room for the new material. There’s no problem doing this, except for the fact that I also have scores and scores of volume and pan keyframes that are associated with all these clips.
In Garageband, you place keyframes on the track, not on the clips. This means that when you move a clip, the keyframes that control its volume and panning do not move with it. You must move these or else delete them and re-do them at the new clip location. This is different from other editing software, such as Final Cut Pro, in which keyframes are placed in clips themselves and so move with them. Adobe Premier actually gives you the choice to adjust volume (and perhaps panning as well) either in clips or on tracks, or in both.
Of course Final Cut Pro and Premier are video, not audio editing platforms. Nevertheless, I almost wish I’d edited our group project in FCP. Not only would I have the freedom to expand the timeline and add new material freely, without worrying about moving keyframes, but I’d also have access to FCP’s fairly sophisticated audio filters, including a Notch Filter that lets you EQ out a precise spectrum of sound frequencies. This can be handy for getting rid of, say, the whine of an air conditioner without losing too much of similar frequencies in people’s voices that you want to hear.
And of course any professional sound engineer would tell me that I need to be using ProTools. But ProTools is quite expensive and I’ve heard that it’s somewhat difficult to learn. For most podcasters, I’d think ProTools is probably overkill. Then there’s Apple’s Logic, which is probably comparable to ProTools in sophistication as well as difficulty.
So, it seems like there is a great opportunity for someone to develop the perfect podcasting platform – somewhere between GarageBand and ProTools. Or perhaps the folks at Apple could improve GarageBand with podcasters in mind. The most important thing they could do, as I indicated above, is provide the option to place volume and panning keyrames within clips rather than (or in addition to) placing them on the tracks.
When I get home from teaching tonight, I plan to start work on the enhanced podcast version of our group project, with graphics and still photos to illustrate the audio. I am definitely not planning to do this in GarageBand, even though Garageband provides a track for images. Confident in Final Cut Pro’s capabilities for manipulating images, this where I will be finishing our podcast.
