After several podcasts were recorded in front of a live audience at PodCamp Ohio, I hosted a panel with most of the podcast hosts as we discuss our equipment and workflow for live-podcasting.

Live podcasts at PodCamp Ohio

• Social Media Serenity (Thursdays at 9:30 a.m. ET)
• the Ramen Noodle™ (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. ET)
• The iPad Show (Sundays at 3:30 p.m. ET)
• The iPad Possibilities Podcast (Sundays at 9:30 p.m. ET)

Podcasting equipment used among the hosts

• Alesis 18-channel mixer
• CDVU02IP Webcam
• Video switcher and VGA switcher
• Behringer Xenyx 1204usb mixer
• No products found. for the best-sounding microphone
• Zoom H4n Handy Portable Digital Recorder for four-channel recording—vocals on one stereo track, music and other sound clips on another stereo track
• No products found.
• Blue Microphones Yeti USB Microphone
• No products found.
• Elgato 10020196 Turbo.264 HD Encoder/Accelerator to speed up H.264 encoding

Podcasting software used among the hosts

• Chris’s Dynamic Compressor for Audacity or Levelator for any audio
• Skype for bringing in audio cohosts
• Ustream.tv embedded player for live broadcasts, because of mobile edition for iOS
• Ustream.tv’s chat room or Chatango, but sometimes the chatroom is distracting for live-recording. ChatRoll is a non-Flash chatroom, but the free edition is limited to 10 simulataneous chatters.
• Look at Leo Laporte’s live setup
• Stitcher for listing your podcast in a radio-style playlist
• No products found. for audio-editing, or free Audacity
• PodProducer for playing sound effects
• QuickTime Pro for high-quality video recording

Why podcast live?

• Improves mic-presence
• Builds community and allows the community to contribute to the show
• Encourages better preproduction resulting in a better flow when you record
• Can encourage you against spending too much time in postproduction
• Scheduling a regular live show creates accountability
• Committing to a schedule results in consistent release schedule and thus more episodes

General answers on podcasting

• Editing takes a lot of time, avoid it by honing your on-camera skills. Stop saying, “we’ll fix that in post”!
• One episode per week seems the sweet spot for subscribers
• Use the mixer’s equalizer settings to enhance your audio as it’s recorded instead of postprocessing
• Releasing video seems to promote your podcast a lot more, but still offer an audio edition and remember to maintain a context for the audio-only subscribers
• Video podcasts require a lot more bandwidth, use a provider like Blip.tv or Libsyn so you don’t crash your own server
• Apple TV and Google TV may drastically increase the demand for video content, look at what NetFlix is doing by being on nearly all high-end media devices
• Use Blip.tv or TubeMogul to upload your video media once and distribute it in various formats

Follow us on Twitter

• Daniel Lewis @theRamenNoodle
• Dave Buchanan @AudioCollective
• Tim Chaten @tchaten
• Steve Bostedor @sbostedor
• Cliff Ravenscraft @GSPN

Is your head exploding?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed thinking you need to buy all of the equipment we mentioned, go listen to my episode “The Bare Minimums” to learn how you can podcast super-cheap.

I’d love to know how you podcast live or what kind of hardware and software you use.

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