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This is my first time trying to put together a recording of something which will become a podcast, and it seems like I have 10 "post processing" steps which I am currently doing manually.

It's entirely possible (in fact, it's likely) that I'm doing this in a way which is much harder than it has to be, but I don't know how to automate and/or simplify it. I'm hoping others who know more about this process might chime in and tell me how to make it simpler.

I'm starting with an AIFF file which has to be edited (cutting off time at the beginning and ending). This strikes me as the only step which can't be automated.

  1. Edit AIFF in Fission to just contain the recording

  2. Export as AIFF

  3. Open Intro (a pre-recording mp4), Outro (same), and new recording (AIFF) in QuickTime7

  4. Create new document in QuickTime7, and then Copy/Paste: 1) the Intro, 2) the new recording, and 3) the Outro.

  5. Export AIFF from QuickTime7

  6. Open AIFF in Levelator

  7. Import leveled AIFF in iTunes

  8. Export leveled AIFF to MP3 (iTunes) at a certain bitrate

  9. List item

  10. Add tags to MP3 (iTunes) checking to make sure I'm using same tags I used in previous episodes in all required fields except for the episode title which is different.

It seems like steps 2-10 should be something I can automate, even the tagging, except for the episode title, which I can manually add before I upload it to the server.

So how can I automate this, or otherwise make it easier / less error-prone?

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  • Do you have Garageband installed?
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Sep 3, 2012 at 19:02
  • This isn't a complete answer but could be useful: I put this script together a while ago to help automate tagging podcast files. It sets tags based on the contents of a JSON file so you can re-use the tags from the previous episode automatically and change only the title.
    – Nathan Greenstein
    Commented Sep 3, 2012 at 23:51
  • @patrix I purchased and downloaded GarageBand from the Mac App Store, but when I went to launch it, it told me I needed to download 2 GB worth of additional files and I was at home and couldn't do it there. (Metered satellite connection.)
    – TJ Luoma
    Commented Sep 4, 2012 at 2:58

2 Answers 2

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You could use sox to merge files

sox intro.aif podcast.aif outro.aif output.aif

lame or ffmpeg to convert them to mp3

lame input.aif -m mono -V 2 output.mp3
ffmpeg -i input.aif -c 1 -aq 2 output.mp3

and mid3v2 to add ID3 tags

sudo easy_install pip
sudo pip install mutagen
mid3v2 --track 1 --song 'Podcast #1: Title' --album Podcast output.mp3
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  • While both answers are very helpful, this one gave me more specific information about automating as much of the process as I think is possible.
    – TJ Luoma
    Commented Sep 9, 2012 at 16:41
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For a good summary about how other people do it see How we do our home work which documents how the Home Work podcast gets recorded and post-processed:

  1. QuickTime for audio recording
  2. GarageBand for audio editing
  3. Levelator
  4. Sound Studio to adjust the sample rate, mix down to mono and add metadata

Depending on your setup and your quality requirements you can at least combine #1 and #2 by recording directly in GarageBand and also add intro/outro parts.

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