Podcasting: Encoding for Flash
I've mentioned here before that I started using the LAME mp3 encoder to prepare audio files for publishing to a podcast (if you are using OS X, you can use darwinports to install it for you). While it is a little usability-challenged since it's a command-line tool, once you have the settings figured out, it's easy to use. My big reason for not using iTunes to do this is that I was getting a lot of file clutter putting files into iTunes, encoding them and then receiving them again through the podcastâ??ultimately giving me three files. I don't want them in my iTunes library until I get them via a subscription like everybody else.
I thought that everything was going well with the settings that I've been using until I tried listening to an episode in Odeo and got a earful of chipmunks. Odeo, and a handful of other podcast subscription sites uses flash applications to deliver audio files through the web browser. The flash player requires that audio files be resampled at bitrates that are multiples of 11.025khz. This apparently is not a standard way that mp3 encoders work.
So, here are the settings that I have settled on for encoding mp3s for podcasts:
== lame --preset voice --resample 44.1 --nspsytune -q 1 --lowpass 6 --noshort file.aif file.mp3 ==
I got the most help on establishing this from the Hydrogenaudio forums and then tweaked it to work for Flash.