Redbrick Radio Podcasts

Step 1: Create your show.

Well, this is pretty simple to understand, process wise: grab the songs you want to broadcast, stick them all together, and save the result. The devil is in the details, though. You need a program to allow you to stick the files together, and you need to be able to edit the file you create to ensure smooth track transitions (see "Dead Air" ;)

Like a mixtape, you shouldn't just plop song after song - there should be some kind of link between songs. You pick the link: they sound similar, they're about the same subject, whatever, but they should flow. You wouldn't stick Atari Teenage Riot after Iron & Wine, for example, but if you stick a Cornelius track inbetween them, you could get it to work. Possibly. But that's all part of personal preference. Once you've decided on a running order, you need to create the show. To do this, I used a program called Goldwave (www.goldwave.com), but you can use whatever you like. Basically, it needs to have the ability to crossfade and mix tracks together. I won't include instructions on how to do that here, because I'm not the best person to ask. At the end of the process, though, you should have one file. It's probably going to be a WAV file at this point, as most editors decompress to that format for editing. (Yes, this may reduce the quality of the tracks if you're using shitty 128kps mp3s, but we're all using originals here and can take it direct from the CD, right? Right.)

Step 2: Create your mp3

Take the WAV file that is your show from Step 1, and transform it into an mp3. I recommend using Lame for this, and I also recommend using the "--alt-preset standard" switch. This will create a VBR mp3 that's very high quality. If you are using original sources, this is the best way to ensure a good sounding mp3.

Step 2a: Create your album art

At the moment, there's no RBRadio art. Possibly some enterprising soul will do one up (500x500 dimensions, .jpg format), but until then (and even after) you can make your own in your favourite editor. I used Photoshop to merge an Electric Picnic poster with the RB Brick logo, fyi.

Step 3: Tag your mp3

So, having got your mp3 and any album art, make sure and update the ID3 tag info. You can use whatever program you like to do this, but I recommend Tag & Rename (http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm). This program allows you to embed the album art in the ID3 tag. This will increase the size of the mp3, but given that we're talking about an increase of ~100Kb in a file that's likely to be 40Mb, that's not much of an issue.

For RBRadio, the recommended tags are:

Title: whatever you want

Artist: RBRadio, or possibly your username

Album: RBRadio

Year: current year

Genre: whatever's appropriate.

Comment: In this section, include the playlist for the show. I like to use "Artist - Song Title (Album)", but it's up to you.

If you're using Tag & Rename, you'll see an "Art" panel on the right of the tag editor. Click on Add, and link your image.

Step 4: Create an authenticated area

Follow the pubcookie instructions. The short format of those are:

Create a directory off your public_html - call it something like podcast, or radio, or MrKiplingsFlyingElephantSupplies. I don't care. In that directory, create a .htaccess file, with the following contents:

PubcookieAppID pod  Authtype pubcookie
require valid-user

Set the permissions on the dir and the file correctly, and you're done. This means that only rb users can access that directory. I think.

Step 5: Upload your mp3

Put your mp3 file in the dir you created in Step 4. Take note of its size.

Step 6: Create your RSS XML file

Take a look at ~sandman/public_html/podcast/rbradio.xml for a sample XML file. Anything that's not inside <>'s you can edit as appropriate. The important part is the <item> tag. Within this, you find the stuff that shows up in an RSS feed. The <enclosure> tag has the link to the mp3 file that you created. It has a "length=" part that must be accurately set to the length of your mp3 file. Everything else in the file is pretty straight- cast forward if you know HTML.

Put this file in the directory from Step 4.

Step 7: Link to your RSS file

The last part is the simplest. Just create a link off an index.html file in the directory from Step 4: I like the following format:

<a title="RSS 2.0: Use this link with your favorite RSS 
newsreader for grabbing the podcast. I think." href="rbradio.xml" 
style="border:1px solid; border-color:#FC9 #630 #330 #F96; 
padding:03px; font:bold 10px verdana,sans-serif; color:#FFF; 
background:#F60; text-decoration:none; margin:0;"> RBRadio </a>

This creates a nice orange box, which seems to be the standard for denoting RSS feeds these days, with the title RBRadio. Change "rbradio.xml" to your own .xml file, and away you go.

Step 8: Listen to your file.

Oh now come on, you don't expect me to do this, do you? I don't know how to use any players other than Winamp.