Publishing Podcasts from an iPad

Podcasting with Your iPad

In Podcasting with Your iPad, I shared my pick of podcast creation tools after referencing Wes Fryer's Best iOS Apps for Audio Recording & Sharing.  One of the follow-up questions asked by commenter:

Where are you uploading your podcasts, and how are you doing it?

What a wonderful compound question! Allow me to respond to each in turn:

1) Where are you uploading your podcasts?
I have several options available to me, but in truth, they are no different than the ones I've had all along. The iPad audio tools I reference in Podcasting with Your iPad all place their products in the Camera/Photo Roll of your iPad. 

1 of 2: What the Quick Export Screen in Hokusai Audio Editor looks like

Once you have your podcast--whether it's audio, enhanced podcast of pictures/images/slides and audio, or video--you can save that file to various places. Let's take a look at the export options and what the possibilities are for the apps I recommended:

2 of 2: What the Quick Export Screen in Hokusai Audio Editor looks like

Podcast Type	iPad App	Export Options
Audio	Hokusai	Quick export option allows you to open the sound file in any app you have. On my iPad, for example, I can open in Evernote, Dropbox, iMovie, oPlayer Lite, Pinnacle Studio, Box.net, WebDavNav. This is neat because you can export to iMovie then use that as part of your “sound track.” Export to Dropbox
	Garageband for iOS	Export to Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, iMovie, iTunes, Mail.
Enhanced podcast (this can be any combination of images/photos/slides/screenshots and audio)	Pinnacle Studio	Export to YouTube or Camera Roll
	iMovie	Export to YouTube or Camera Roll
	Explain Everything	Export to YouTube or Camera Roll
	Educreations	Export to a web page or Dropbox. They keep promising to make an export to Camera Roll but I haven’t seen it yet.
Video Podcast	Pinnacle Studio	Export to YouTube or Camera Roll
	iMovie	Export to YouTube or Camera Roll

*Note: You can use other audio recorder apps on the iPad to capture audio, such as iTalk Recorder, Evernote, AudioNotes. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. AudioNotes, for example, yields excellent quality audio recordings but you can't edit them until you get them onto your computer and edit with Audacity. Evernote yields OK quality audio but you will definitely have to edit in Audacity to get "boost" the audio quality. And, iTalk Recorder records straight to MP3 format, which is handy.

As you might imagine, it's pretty easy with the Podcasting tools above to publish content and share it with others. There are lots of different ways to get podcasts off your iPad as you can see above.  

Garageband for iOS export options

My preference is to save them to the Camera Roll, then run an app like iFiles which allows me to access my iPad wirelessly. If I'm focused on Hokusai (audio only podcast), then I can export directly to iFiles and then make that available for access wirelessly.

iFiles sharing files on my iPad via WiFi - note the last file in the list is the
audio file I created in Hokusai Audio Editor

 I suppose that brings us to the next part of the question asked....

2) How are you doing it?

Once you know how to get your podcast files off your iPad, or publish them, you have lots of options. Let's reflect on that a bit...

a) Publishing Podcasts From Your iPad Directly Online
The easiest way to publish your podcasts from your iPad is to send them to YouTube, although that means only teachers can see it or students from home can see it. It's the default export option in a lot of the tools available, as is Dropbox. In fact, if you're using Hokusai, you can easily go from there to Dropbox (the default or standard option), quick export to Box.net (which is a great place to put audio/video files under 20megs in size because they embed so well in web pages), or send them to a WebDav server solution like that made possible with OwnCloud.org. Note: EC3 Cohort 1 teachers have access to ECcloud WebDav solution.

Copying podcast file from iFiles to GoogleDocs or WebDav or any host shown above
is a snap.

If you're using iFiles you can also save content directly to GoogleDrive (not using the Drive app). Once the podcast file--make sure it's in a format Drive will accept, such as WAV, MP3 rather than m4a--is on GoogleDrive (or GoogleDocs), you can use the Drive app to enable sharing, as seen below:

In Drive app changing sharing preferences for "punk.wav" file

b) Publishing Podcasts from Your iPad via Your Computer
Of course, since it's so easy to get podcast files off your iPad and onto a computer, once it's on your computer, the sky is the limit. You can pretty much do anything with. Of course, I'd probably end up publishing it on Dropbox, Box.net, or a WebDav server (e.g. Eccloud in the screenshot above)