In a previous blog, I said I had dismissed GarageBand as a podcast editor because of its seeming inability to generate uncompressed masters. Readers suggested I give it another chance.
In particular, reader “Henry” advocated using the “share to iTunes” option as a means of getting an uncompressed mixdown of my show.
Initially, this didn’t seem right, as the file created in iTunes was a compressed M4A, with the level of compression controlled by a preference in GarageBand that offered four quality choices. I still wasn’t happy about this, as even the highest quality setting would still mean that I might still have to create compressed podcasts from a lossily-compressed master at some point.
The thing is, when you share, GB performs a CPU-intensive “mixdown” of your tracks, and then exports it to M4A. I figured the mixdown had to live somewhere, and was probably uncompressed (or at least losslessly compressed).
Looking inside the .band bundle with “Show Package Contents” in the Finder, I found that the “share” action had created a new “Output” folder, with a 280 MB AIFC inside it. Bingo.
One thing I noticed is that after this initial share: after editing, subsequent saves of the project kicked off a new mixdown. Not too bad on a dual G5 (a minute or so for a 30-minute show), but I think I’ll generally want to avoid exports and the implicit mixdowns until the project is substantially done.
That said, having done one episode in Final Cut Express and another in GarageBand, I really do like working with GarageBand’s GUI. Since I don’t have video, the application can dedicate more screenspace to the audio tracks, meaning I can have more of what I’m working with on screen at one time.
There’s an interesting workflow difference: I have one source file that I’m cutting many small pieces from. In FCE, my workflow was to open it in the viewer, set in and out points, then drag it to the timeline, then repeat with different in and out points. In GB, the in/out-point metaphor doesn’t exist, so I throw the whole source on the timeline and do splits to get my audio into just the pieces I want. This works because the edits are non-destructive. If I find I’ve cut too close to the sound, or I want to look for more of the natsound before or after the soundbite, GB lets me just stretch the edge of the segment to reveal more of the original sound I had originally cut out of the split.
So, having done four podcasts now, two simple ones for O’Reilly and two more ambitious ones for myself, and having done one each in FCE and GB for each series, I’m thinking that I’m going to settle in with GarageBand for a while and see how far it will take me.
While I agree that in a broadcast environment, not working from anything but the uncompressed master is certainly a best practice, I have trouble seeing what all the fuss is about when we're talking about podcasting. This stuff is going to be scrunched down into an iTunes compressed file or a good old MP3 played at relatively low fidelity over typically not so great ear buds. The small amount of sonic headroom you'd give up to compression wouldn't be noticable to anyone but an audio engineer. I use GarageBand every day for podcasts and I have Logic, ProTools and FCP. It's just easier to work in GarageBand. Anyway, thanks for the hack. For the odd time I am doing something that needs to live uncompressed, I will get inside the package and go to work.
I really wish it were easier to get hold of the uncompressed edit though.
One of my main annoyances with Garageband particularly when working on normal band music is that the only way to get your music out is to send it to iTunes. I only want a quick mixdown that I can e-mail to someone, so why do I have to:
1. Export to iTunes
2. Convert to AAC/MP2
3. Find actual song file
4. e-mail
I want to be able to:
1. Click "Export to File"
2. Choose the options I want and hit Go
3. e-mail the file
To get an uncompressed 16-bit aiff from GarageBand 3, delete the podcast track in GarageBand. Then the export to iTunes will send a 16 bit aiff file.
The only drawback is you lose your chapterized podcast. Since I distrbute mine in mp3 anyways, it's not a big deal for me. Still it would be better it you could just do File -> export and choose aiif or wav.
Scott: you're right - the practice today is to crunch down to lo-fi. Heck, what I've been putting out right now has been mono MP3 at 64kbps (and I could probably use an even lower bitrate). But history has taught us that when you don't keep pristine originals, you often come to regret it. Like Warner Bros. cartoons washing and reusing cels - saving a little bit of plastic in the 40's and losing a collectors market later on. Or the BBC wiping the master tapes of the early "Doctor Who"s and losing opportunities in the later home video market. Or Hallmark converting the entire Filmation library to PAL and then throwing out the film negatives, so NTSC versions of "Fat Albert" and "He Man" have to be made from PAL masters and thus run 4% too fast. Anyways, my point being that we don't know for sure that we won't want higher-quality versions someday in the future, so it should be a good practice for everyone to keep a highest-possible-quality version for archival purposes. After all, burnable archival media is extremely cheap.
Mike,
I've had a lot of luck using automator for these tasks. I have a task in my workflow that takes an aiff file, archives it, opens iTunes, creates an MP3, and then moves it from the iTunes music directory to a directory where the original project exists. It's hacky and there really should be more automator actions built into all of these apps.
D
Scott- Not to single you out -- you're being entirely practical -- but I thought of an example of what I'm talking about. Ron Moore's "Battlestar Galactica" podcast is apparently used as the commentary track for the DVD box sets, and they'd certainly want to master those from a better-than-podcast-quality source if possible.
You learn somthing new every day! I've been using GB since it was first introduced and I JUST NOW found out that splits are non-destructive. I've never thought to drag the beginning (or end) of a split segment back out to see everything is still there. That's pretty handy info. Thanks.
Brad: Yeah, isn't that awesome? Then again, it's such a QuickTime way of doing things: deep down, everything is a pointer, so the split isn't a run of audio bytes, it's just pointers into an audio source. Want to change the split, just move the pointers.
Tried the hack, and noticed that it's an AIFC file - what's the "C" for? iTunes shows it's only 705kbps instead of the typical 1411 of a CD rip.
k.
how do u get garage band so i can make my ringtones