Yes, it’s going to get geeky in here. Whilst I’m on a train (half way between London Kings Cross and Grantham) making my way to Spring Harvest I thought I’d let you in on a few of the technical details of the website and podcast as well as behind the scenes.
Webhosting; I host with an American company called Dreamhost. They offer the most bang for the buck. 500Gb space, 2Tb transfer and free .com domain.
Blogging: I’ve got WordPress 2.3 installed and customised it with the K2 theme and the True Blue style.
Podcast: The podcast is written in iTunes friendly XML code using Adobe Dreamweaver.
Audio Editing: Primarily everything is edited in a program called Audacity. It’s free and does a great job. I also use this for the Arun Community Church family of Podcasts. Should it be required I also use Apple Logic to bring a little extra polish.
Video Editing: A bit of a tricky one this! I import raw footage using Apple iMovie ‘08 and then bounce it over to iMovie HD (’06) for editing, and if required, dubbing.
Audio Codec: In order to maximise compatibility I bounce everything out in mp3 format. In stereo this is at 128kb/s while mono ones are at 64kb/s.
Video Codec: As I’m only really targeting Apple users with the video side of things I’ve opted for two different options both rely on the H.264 video codec and AAC audio one. Apple TV users are given a 960 x 540 image (that roughly equates to 720p HD) with an overall bit rate of 3,865kb/s. While iPod users are offered a 640 x 360 image with a much more bandwidth friendly 1,613kb/s.
