Tips: Using the Griffin iTalk for Audio Podcasts
[Update: This device works with previous versions of the iPod Nano and Classic and is no longer needed with the latest versions of these devices]
Faculty and staff have been using the Griffin iTalk Pro this semester with much success to record lectures and presentations. A group of students took one to El Paso, Texas, for Alternative Spring Break to record a series of interviews with Habitat for Humanity staff, local residents, and the students in the group.
While there are a couple of posts here about using an iPod with the Griffin iTalk for audio capturing, below are a few things to keep in mind to avoid snafus and to cut down or eliminate editing after you’ve recorded (although in some instances, and for more refined productions, editing will be unavoidable).
Recording:
- Be sure the iPod is fully charged and has sufficient space before using it to record.
- When the iTalk is connected, use the highest quality settings for recording so you get the highest sound quality possible.
- Be sure the device is as close as possible to the speaker.
- The iTalk captures your audio segments in clips depending on when the device is started and stopped. Use this to your advantage depending on what you are trying to capture (more below).
Lectures:
- If you are recording a lecture or class in its entirety, try not to stop and restart the device during the lecture or class. (Doing so will give you separate audio clips that you will have to connect later using an audio editing program.)
- Keep the device near-by the speaker at all times
- If there is a long introduction for a guest speaker, you may want to start the recording when the introduction ends and the speaker begins talking. Alternatively, you could record the introduction and the speaker in two separate clips just in case the introduction is something you may not want in the final production.
Interviews:
- Be sure the interviewee knows when the recording begins
- Have a list of questions ready (you may want to share these first before the interview begins). Also, engage with responses with further questions for elaboration. And let the interviewee do more of the talking.
- Make sure that the interviewer and the interviewee are in close proximity to each other and the device (for interviews on the fly and not in a formal setting, you may hold the device like a microphone and move it back and forth between persons speaking).
- If you are doing a series of interviews with different speakers that could be separate productions, stop and restart the recording so you have separate audio clips for each interviewee.
Editing and Producing:
- Editing of clips can be done in Audacity on Windows and Garageband on Macs (both free programs).
- If no editing is required, renaming, compression, conversion and adding the proper metadata to these tracks can all be done in iTunes.
- Keep in mind that all files from the iTalk recordings are large and must be compressed and converted for delivery in podcasts.
(Click the tags on the right for more posts and information on using the iTalk or for any of the topics mentioned here.)
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