A whole industry has grown out of a problem with podcasts and videocasts.
There are major companies that exist solely to provide storage and bandwidth for these tools.
They are designed to broadcast podcasts efficiently but they really aren't that different from your own website.
Why is this? What has caused these companies to appear? The answer is that most people tend to be very wasteful when it comes to the size of their podcast files.
Their own websites have a problem with wasted bandwidth and size as a result.
These companies exist to overcome this problem by solving the symptom.
But there is a better way.
In this article I'm going to show you two simple ways of keeping your podcasting files small to keep speed up on your website.
But first let's clarify why you want to do this.
There are three basic reasons why you want to minimize the file sizes.
First the amount of storage you will use.
Most web hosts limit the size of storage or charge more once you exceed a certain threshold.
Second is the amount of bandwidth you will use.
Again most web hosts limit the amount of bandwidth or charge more above a certain threshold.
Finally, the transmission itself takes less time.
Therefore you are less likely to run into situations where bandwidth is temporarily being overloaded.
As for the speed of your website, it is affected by four factors.
The size of the files you send.
The number of people who are accessing your site.
The number of other sites being accessed.
And the size of the pipelines (bandwidth and processing power) of the host.
So how can you reduce the size of the podcast file? Most people who are new to the recording of podcasts make one major mistake that affects their file size.
They record in stereo.
Now stereo is a great format for recording.
It gives depth to the record.
It imitates your ears and provides a more realistic sound.
However, if there is only one non-stereo microphone generating sound it is somewhat irrelevant.
And it requires at least twice the amount of storage as a mono recording.
So always convert recordings to mono.
The second major mistake is to record a higher quality sound than is actually needed.
If the podcast was recorded by phone then a recording of 11,000 kHz, 16 bit is more than sufficient to get the best quality.
Similarly, most headset recordings are satisfactory for podcast needs at 22,000 kHz, 16 bit, only music and master recordings have any need for 44,000 kHz, 16 bit recording.