Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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In the past few weeks I have worked with several different programs in an attempt to create a way to easily integrate the audio portion of PowerPoint (either narration or a captured PowerPoint show) with a podcast — uploaded to a website — that can be subscribed to by a "podcatcher;" i.e. an RSS aggregator that is capable of creating playlists and transferring the files to a mobile device for offline listening.

We've gone through various stages:

We captured a PowerPoint file with Camtasia Studio, extracted the audio portion as a WAV file, and posted it on a hosted site with BlogMatrix. (Unfortunately the subscription expired).

We used Broadcast Builder to create a simple RSS feed for a web page that will be updated regularly. (We still needed to upload the final pages and make sure we had corresponding web pages and links on our web site).

Now, finally, we've found a program that works directly with audio (from PowerPoint or elsewhere) and creates a podcast with an RSS feed component — and it works with iTunes. The product is called Propaganda is available for under fifty dollars from http://www.makepropaganda.com.

As we saw previously, with Camtasia Studio 3 we can capture an entire PowerPoint presentation, add it to the editor, and extract an audio file in WAV format. But for a podcast we want it converted to MP3 or WMA — in an RSS feed.

Propaganda is not an RSS wizard like those we've seen before — it's an audio mixing program into which we can import our WAV file and add it to the playlist.

Figure 1098

What's nice is that by using the Publish feature, we enter the RSS wizard similar to what we've seen in the past. But in addition to creating and publishing an RSS feed, we get the chance to encode (convert) the audio file into an MP3 (or WMA) for a podcast.

Figure 1099

In the next panel we can upload the entire project to any web site, or use a hosted provider that comes with Propaganda for 90 days.

Figure 1100

The result is a total solution on our web site with three components:

Show.html web page with links to:
Show.mp3 (or .wma)
Feed.xml (for the RSS aggregator)

The important thing is to set up your FTP connection correctly and to load the three files into the correct (sub)folder.

Now you're in business. You can create a podcast button that links to the Show.html page and put it on your home page, or send the link in email.

Figure 1101

While this basic podcast web page is stark, you can easily make it nicer with an html editor. The important thing is that there are two links — one to simply download or listen to the file and the other to get the RSS feed.

Figure 1102

We've seen similar XML generated pages before, but this one was created simply from an audio mixing program. While we imported a WAV file extracted from Camtasia, you could just as easily record directly into Propaganda.

What I love about this solution is that since it's made specifically for podcasting, the enclosure info is correct right away and you can use the feed info two ways:

In an ordinary RSS Aggregator like RSS Bandit, you can subscribe and download the file.

Figure 1103

But in iTunes, you can drag and drop the feed URL directly into the podcast panel, and you get a direct link that lets you listen to the podcast, add it to your playlist(s) and eventually export it to a mobile device for later playback.

Here I can add a rating in iTunes that will automatically add the podcast to a specific playlist. We're using iTunes here as an example, but obviously any "podcatcher" will subscribe to this feed and work similarly.

Figure 1104

If you're working with PowerPoint originally, the process becomes quite easy:

Capture your PowerPoint in Camtasia Studio 3 and extract the audio was a WAV file (or use your narration segments which are linked WAV files in your presentation).
Import the file(s) to Propaganda's library, create a playlist, and publish it to your website.
Create a link to the podcast page or send email linking to the Show.html page to allow your listeners to subscribe or listen to the feed.
Keep adding (appending) to the Show.html page with more podcasts from Propaganda.

Your subscribers will have the information downloaded directly to their podcatchers for easy retrieval and listening. This way any PowerPoint presentation can be added to a subscription feed as an audio podcast to be listened to any time.

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