Creating Audio Podcasts on Mac OS X

You've heard about podcasting—professional or homemade audio broadcasts available on the Internet—and you want to make your own. Before you start recording, you may want to check out the style and format of some popular podcasts.

iTunes 4.9 (or later) lets you find, subscribe, manage and listen to podcasts right in iTunes. With thousands of free podcasts—from favorites such as ABC News, Adam Curry, ESPN, KCRW and more—all organized by category, the new Podcast Directory puts on-demand radio at your fingertips.

Now it's your turn to produce your own podcasts that share your witty and insightful thoughts (not to mention your born-for-radio voice) with the world. And you can record your audio podcast with QuickTime 7 Pro on Mac OS X.

Step 1

Open QuickTime 7 Pro on Mac OS X. If you don't have it, get QuickTime 7 Pro today.

 
NewAudio Recording

Step 2

Choose "New Audio Recording" from the File menu. (Be sure an audio Input device is connected.)

 
Audio Recording

Step 3

Click the red Capture button and begin recording with your audio input device. Click the black Stop button when you're done recording.

 
Export

Step 4

Select "Export" from the File menu.

 
Movie to MPEG-4

Step 5

In the Export dropdown box, choose "Movie to MPEG-4".

 
Export

Step 6

Name your file with the .m4a extension (yourfile.m4a) in the "Save exported file as..." dialog box (this is required for compatibility with iPod). Select the desired location of your new file and click Save. You now have a file that is ready to be published.

 
 

You can publish the exported file to the Internet as an enclosure on a blogging service, such as Blogger, and wrapped in a podcast-friendly RSS feed. (Please note: the audio file must be hosted on a web server such as .Mac.) RSS feed providers, such as FeedBurner, make it easy to create an RSS file from your blog.

Want to reach a potential audience of millions? Publish your podcast to iTunes Podcast Directory (subject to it being free of copyrighted or overtly explicit material). For inclusion in the iTunes Music Store, you'll need to provide the link to the podcast RSS feed and all episodes within a podcast must be available as either AAC (.m4a) or MP3* audio enclosures.

Happy podcasting.

* QuickTime 7 Pro cannot create MP3 files. You can use iTunes to convert files to MP3.