Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
Transdiffusion Broadcasting System

Podcast help

We're starting to introduce podcasts to our output.

Podcasts are audio files that you download to your computer, iPod or mp3 player using a podcasting programme.

What software do I need?

Transdiffusion recommends iTunes from Apple. This piece of software is free and is available for both PC and Mac. It acts as a jukebox, letting you rip your CD collection to listen to from your computer; it also synchronises with your iPod, if you have one. You can download it, free, from Apple.

Most other podcast software (iPodderX for Windows, Transistr for Mac) uses iTunes for the management of the files, so iTunes is the best route to go.

For Linux users, Peapod seems to be a good option.

How do I get the podcasts?

If you're using iTunes, you can drag this link to the main iTunes window. It'll recognise it, subscribe to the feed and download the most recent podcast.

Alternatively, go to the Advanced menu and select Subscribe to Podcast... Then enter the address of our feed -

/common/xml/podcasts.xml

- into the box that appears (you can cut and paste it from here).

Other podcasting programs work in similar ways.

I don't want to do all this, I just want to listen!

Okay, then! That's a bit complicated, because of the way that podcasts work. So there are two options - one non-techncal, one very technical!

Example of a "Listen to this article" iconThe non-technical way is to look for the icon showing that an article has an audio file attached. If you click the icon, you can download the file and open it in the player of your choice.

You might need to download a player. Winamp for Windows is one choice; the files should play in Quicktime on the Mac (you've already got it).

If the file won't play for you, try saving it to disk and renaming the extension from .m4a to .mp4 - that little change makes Windows wake up to what the file is!

The very technical method is to visit the XML feed. This will bring you a page of code. In that code, you should clearly be able to see where each podcast is located on our server. Cut and paste the URL into your browser, download manager or media player.

This is all too complicated and I don't understand.

Podcasting is still in its infancy, and will no doubt get easier to use as time goes by. But you may be better off just reading our articles for the time being.