179 | Podcast Gratitude: Chapters, MP3 Tips, and a Big Thanks to Dan LeFebvre

[00:00:00] As I record this episode right now, it is Thanksgiving, and I am thankful for you. I'm going to say this many times throughout this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Today we are talking about things that you have chimed in on and a free tool to help you enhance and make it easy for you to create chapters.

[00:00:30] What matters. Be heard. Welcome to the podcast where you get exclusive behind the scenes tips to make your own show sound truly spectacular. This is Podtastic Audio.

[00:00:45] What's happening? How are you doing today? Thank you so much for being here. I am Chris and yeah, this is Podtastic Audio.

[00:00:57] You know, I created this show to help you and other podcasters just like you make an amazing show for your podcast. You see, I actually love audio podcasts. I do like YouTube also. In fact, I do watch a lot of YouTube, but I probably listen more to audio podcasts, probably because I'm incredibly busy and I'm, you know, physically doing other things.

[00:01:27] Whether it's driving, whether it's driving, doing the dishes, working around the house, putting laundry away, just the usual tasks that we all do throughout our day.

[00:01:35] That is a perfect time to listen to an audio podcast. And I want to say thank you once again, because as I record this episode right now, it is Thanksgiving week.

[00:01:47] Thanksgiving here in the United States of America. I know other countries like Canada also do have a Thanksgiving, but it's not the same week as it is here in the United States.

[00:01:57] And this whole podcast here, Podtastic Audio, only started because I was working on the other podcast, The Chris and Christine Show, which all started as kind of a fun hobby, something that was never to be taken super serious.

[00:02:15] In fact, when I started that show, I invested like literally zero dollars. Well, close enough to zero as I possibly could get, because I didn't think that the show would go past maybe three to five episodes, maybe five at the most.

[00:02:34] But then it was like, what are we going to do beyond that? Because having a podcast idea always sounds amazing and fun at the beginning.

[00:02:44] But then after you get going, after you master some of the basic technical problems that always come up.

[00:02:52] I mean, they always come up. Figure out how to record, how to edit, how to distribute, how to make things look good, sound good.

[00:03:00] Once you master all that stuff, and then it's all about trying to figure out what kind of content is going to go into each and every episode.

[00:03:08] And back then, I made the mistake of thinking that this show, like the podcast show, would be just like regular radio.

[00:03:20] In fact, I listened to only radio broadcast podcasts.

[00:03:26] The morning show of these radio stations would take their morning show, edit out all the commercials, edit out all of the music and all that stuff, and only have the actual talking content part.

[00:03:41] And they would mash it all together into a single MP3 file, a single podcast episode.

[00:03:47] And that's what I would listen to for years and years.

[00:03:51] And then when I launched the Chris and Christine show, I thought we could do it kind of similar to that because that was what I was used to doing.

[00:04:00] And whichever way you create a podcast, no matter how your content is, whatever you're talking about, whatever you feel comfortable creating, remember to have fun and to create something that not only you are proud of, but something that you would want to listen to.

[00:04:18] Because at the end of the day, if you don't listen to your own podcast, how do you expect anybody else to?

[00:04:25] But I'm not perfect.

[00:04:27] I am an indie podcaster just like you, using simple equipment, just a basic computer with basic gear and basic stuff.

[00:04:37] I don't have any technical background on any of this stuff.

[00:04:41] In fact, my regular job is not in front of a computer.

[00:04:45] I do not use a computer for work.

[00:04:47] I know, it might blow your mind.

[00:04:49] It's crazy to think about.

[00:04:50] So the only time I actually get to sit in front of a computer is when I do podcasting stuff here at home in my spare time.

[00:04:57] And being that I do this in my spare time all by myself with zero production team, it's just me.

[00:05:06] I do it all from the recording to the editing, to the production, to the marketing.

[00:05:11] One stop shop.

[00:05:12] I do it all.

[00:05:13] And because I do it all, I have been known to make mistakes.

[00:05:17] And what I've always said before is that you can always learn from your own mistakes, but it's also better to learn from somebody else's mistakes.

[00:05:27] So a simple mistake that I made just recently was that if you look at my entire episode catalog, like two episodes ago, you kind of wonder.

[00:05:38] It goes from episode 175, 176, and then it goes back up to 178.

[00:05:46] And you're thinking, what happened to 177?

[00:05:50] And that's the thing.

[00:05:52] I made a mistake and somehow I miscalculated or I was looking at something else.

[00:05:59] And I thought the most recent episode was episode 178, but it should have been 177.

[00:06:07] Now, this is after I completed everything.

[00:06:09] I did the artwork.

[00:06:11] I did like everything is all said and done.

[00:06:14] The episode has been released and I'm going back there.

[00:06:16] I'm like, what happened to episode 177?

[00:06:19] Oh, I must have skipped over it.

[00:06:20] Now, I could freak out and go back and try to fix everything or I can just let it go because you can title your podcast episodes however you want.

[00:06:32] In fact, if you want to start your episode journey instead of on episode one, if you want to start on episode 10 or 12 or 100, you can go right ahead.

[00:06:42] It's your show.

[00:06:43] Do whatever you want.

[00:06:44] And I know that some people don't even number their episodes at all.

[00:06:49] The reason why I number my episodes is so that I can actually reference the episode like, oh, an episode 110 or episode 103 or an episode, you know, whatever it is.

[00:07:02] That way you, the listener, find it much easier to find that episode if they're in numerical order and the actual number of the episode is in the title.

[00:07:12] Now, that is why I put numbers in the title of the episode.

[00:07:17] It makes it simpler and easier for me to reference and for you to find it.

[00:07:21] So on that note, back on episode 173, which was just a few episodes ago, I did an episode all about adding mastering chapter markers for your podcast.

[00:07:35] This episode is called 173 Mastering Podcast Chapters, Keeping Listeners Hooked with This Simple Trick.

[00:07:41] It was all about adding chapters or timestamps, whatever you want, tomato or tomato, into your podcast episode.

[00:07:49] And the way I described it was actually adding the file, the text files within the show description, like the 00 marker is the introduction.

[00:08:00] And then, you know, two minutes, five seconds is a part we talked about this.

[00:08:04] You list it all down in the show description.

[00:08:08] That way, apps pick it up.

[00:08:10] But not all apps pick it up.

[00:08:12] So not long after I released that episode, I got a message from Paul O'Flattery.

[00:08:19] He is a podcaster and a YouTuber, and he shared an amazing tool with me, an easier way to create these MP3 timestamps into your podcast episode.

[00:08:32] He sent me a link to this thing called mp3chapters.github.io.

[00:08:39] Don't worry, link to it in the show notes.

[00:08:41] And basically what it is, first off, it's entirely free.

[00:08:45] I don't see a charge on this thing anywhere.

[00:08:47] It's entirely on the web, in the browser.

[00:08:50] Basically what you do is you add chapters to your MP3 file really easy, and then you download that file back to your computer.

[00:08:59] And then embedded in the MP3 file, you will have not only your custom artwork, if you choose to add custom artwork to that episode.

[00:09:09] And of course, all the chapter timestamps will be there embedded within the MP3 file.

[00:09:16] It's incredibly easy to use, and I've been doing it probably since he sent this thing to me.

[00:09:21] And it makes it so much easier because not only are the chapters already embedded within the MP3, is that it carries over all of that data to every single podcast app that actually displays chapters.

[00:09:39] Like Apple, Spotify, I think Overcast does.

[00:09:43] I think a lot of them do.

[00:09:44] Most of them do.

[00:09:45] So it's a very easy way to actually add the MP3 chapters without having to actually type them all in to the show notes.

[00:09:54] Now, I've been doing both because I do know that when YouTube swallows up my RSS feed and takes my audio podcast version and puts it into YouTube,

[00:10:05] now having those chapters within the show notes does work for YouTube.

[00:10:09] That's kind of how YouTube does it.

[00:10:10] If you want to put chapters into a YouTube video, you have to put them into the show or episode description.

[00:10:16] That's kind of how you do it.

[00:10:17] Put them towards the bottom half of your show notes section there, and it will take care of that.

[00:10:22] But this is an amazing tool.

[00:10:24] I actually love it.

[00:10:26] I've been using it for a while.

[00:10:27] Just drag and drop and then just download it back to your computer.

[00:10:31] Very easy, very simple.

[00:10:33] Now, the only caveat I would say is that when it downloads back to your computer, it downloads it at the exact file name that you put into it.

[00:10:43] So it may make a duplicate copy or override the one you already have.

[00:10:47] So what I do is, of course, I have my original MP3 file.

[00:10:52] But when I get the one downloaded back from the MP3 chapters app, I actually title it V2, like version 2.

[00:11:00] That way I kind of know that there's a difference between the original file and this new version file that has the chapters and the artwork embedded.

[00:11:11] And it looks fantastic.

[00:11:12] It works amazing.

[00:11:13] And thank you once again, Paul, for sending this over.

[00:11:16] I really appreciate this.

[00:11:18] And speaking of listening to podcasts, you just never know who is listening to your podcast.

[00:11:25] So to my surprise, to find out that Dan LaFette of Based on a True Story, a massive podcast, actually listens to my podcast.

[00:11:35] So he was listening to episode 174, where I talked about microphones, preamps, and post-production.

[00:11:43] The podcasting audio journey explained, basically going from you recording the podcast, coming out of your mouth, going directly into the listener's ears.

[00:11:53] And I mentioned briefly about the difference between MP3 bit rates, the difference between variable bit rate and constant bit rate.

[00:12:04] So here is Dan to explain.

[00:12:07] Hey, Chris.

[00:12:08] Dan here from Based on a True Story.

[00:12:10] I loved your podcast audio journey episode, but I think I misinterpreted what you said about the constant bit rate or CBR.

[00:12:18] So I wanted to clarify it a little bit in case anybody else might have misinterpreted it as well.

[00:12:23] So the way I understood that part of the episode was that CBR levels out the audio across episodes.

[00:12:29] But CBR doesn't really have anything to do with leveling audio across episodes.

[00:12:34] That's actually where LUFS comes into play.

[00:12:36] LUFS stands for Loudness Units Relative to Full Scale.

[00:12:39] Now, the reason podcasters should use CBR for their MP3 files basically boils down to mitigating problems on the listener's side.

[00:12:49] And to know what problems we're trying to avoid, we have to get geeky for a moment.

[00:12:53] CBR is how the data is encoded into the MP3 file.

[00:12:57] So if you export an MP3 at 128 kbps, the kbps stands for kilobits per second.

[00:13:04] So that's telling the software to use 128 kilobits of data per second of audio.

[00:13:10] And since it's CBR, that is a constant bit rate of 128 kilobits across the entire MP3 file.

[00:13:17] On the flip side of that, you have VBR, which stands for variable bit rate.

[00:13:22] But VBR can actually get better quality in a smaller MP3 file than CBR because with VBR,

[00:13:29] basically you're telling the software to look at the audio and let the audio itself determine what bit rate to use

[00:13:36] within the parameters that you set, the quality levels for the VBR, of course.

[00:13:39] For example, let's say you have five seconds of blank space somewhere in your podcast episode.

[00:13:45] With CBR, the software will still fill that blank space or create that blank space in the MP3 file

[00:13:51] with 128 kilobits of data per second in the MP3 file.

[00:13:56] With VBR, the software will look at it and realize that it doesn't need to put all that data into the file

[00:14:02] for blank space, for blank audio.

[00:14:06] So that's why, generally speaking, MP3 files encoded with a variable bit rate are smaller files,

[00:14:13] but still the high quality with CBR.

[00:14:15] So let me circle back to why podcasters shouldn't use VBR,

[00:14:19] because it seemed like having a smaller file is what you want when listeners are downloading them to their phones.

[00:14:24] And that is true, of course.

[00:14:26] But unfortunately, computers have a really hard time predicting the future.

[00:14:31] If you've ever copied a large file on your computer and it says there's 10 minutes left,

[00:14:36] and then 30 seconds later it says there's 10 hours left.

[00:14:39] And then 30 seconds later it goes, well, there's one minute left.

[00:14:42] That's another example of the issue that I'm talking about.

[00:14:45] The reason computers do that is simply because it's basing an estimate of time on how long it takes

[00:14:51] based on the data it's currently moving.

[00:14:54] So that time change basically is saying, okay, it took me 10 minutes to get that moved.

[00:15:00] So I guess what I'm working on now is going to take that same amount of time

[00:15:04] because it looks similar to what took me 10 minutes before.

[00:15:07] So that's the amount of time it's going to take.

[00:15:09] And then as that data changes, it's going to try to calculate how much time is left,

[00:15:15] but the amount of data is always changing, right?

[00:15:19] As it's moving the data, it's moving different files.

[00:15:22] Now, we can get into technical details of that if you want.

[00:15:24] But that's the same sort of issue that podcast apps have when they're playing VBR MP3 files

[00:15:32] because as a podcaster, the time codes of the MP3 file matter a lot to us.

[00:15:38] We use them for chapters, dynamic ad insertion if you're doing that.

[00:15:42] Skipping ahead for listeners, skipping ahead and back a few seconds is common for podcast listeners.

[00:15:47] So we use MP3s a little bit different than music, for example, right?

[00:15:52] You're not really typically going to be doing all of those things in a music MP3.

[00:15:58] And then, of course, the time code also matters for places like Apple Podcasts or Spotify to track

[00:16:03] how much of the MP3 is actually listened to.

[00:16:06] With all of that said, using a constant bitrate helps mitigate any errors

[00:16:12] that various podcast hosts, apps for the listener, and so on,

[00:16:17] use to deliver that episode file to the listener's device

[00:16:21] because the data rate is the same throughout the whole file.

[00:16:24] It doesn't have to calculate and figure that out.

[00:16:27] I'll leave your listeners with a fun activity they can do to kind of see this in action.

[00:16:31] Pull open your last edited episode and export it as a VBR MP3 file.

[00:16:37] And then put that MP3 into the podcast app of choice and see how it handles it.

[00:16:42] I don't recommend publishing it publicly,

[00:16:45] but you know how some podcast apps let you upload MP3s directly to the app.

[00:16:48] Do that and then play the episode and watch things like the duration, the time left.

[00:16:53] Skip around and then repeat that process in other podcast apps to see how that app handles it

[00:16:59] because they're not all the same.

[00:17:01] For example, I use Pocket Cast personally.

[00:17:03] And when I did that a few years back, I hit skip ahead 30 seconds.

[00:17:07] The app did skip 30 seconds.

[00:17:09] Then I hit it again and it skipped like a few minutes in time.

[00:17:13] The duration left on the episode was always changing in the app itself too.

[00:17:18] Kind of like the changing time on moving files.

[00:17:22] Now, I just tested it again and Pocket Cast does not seem to have that issue

[00:17:26] that it did with VBR files before.

[00:17:29] But as podcasters, we don't know what app our listeners are going to use.

[00:17:33] So we want to make sure that it works in all of them.

[00:17:36] So anyway, I hope that helps clear up some of the technical stuff with constant bit rates.

[00:17:40] Thanks again for creating a great podcast and for letting me get my nerd on for a little bit.

[00:17:46] Wow. Hey, that was great, Dan.

[00:17:48] Thank you so much for chiming in.

[00:17:50] I do appreciate you listening and you supporting the show

[00:17:53] and that you actually took your time to explain the technical stuff

[00:17:59] behind the variable bit rate and the constant bit rate

[00:18:02] and MP3 encoding and how it works and why it works.

[00:18:06] Hey, this episode is all about giving thanks.

[00:18:09] And I want to say thank you once again for listening and chiming in.

[00:18:13] Your support helps me create these episodes for you.

[00:18:17] I said this once and I'll say it again.

[00:18:20] I do not do this podcast to sell you anything.

[00:18:24] Yeah, I've got a few things for sale on the website.

[00:18:27] Yeah, I do some editing services on the side, but that is not the goal of this podcast.

[00:18:31] This podcast helps me learn new things about podcasting, new tips and tricks, meet amazing community,

[00:18:41] help other podcasters and actually learn my craft of podcasting.

[00:18:46] Because when I launched into this whole thing, I knew nothing about any of this stuff.

[00:18:51] I didn't even know how to save an MP3 file.

[00:18:55] I'm kidding you not.

[00:18:56] I had no idea how to record an audio, how to save audio.

[00:19:00] Editing audio?

[00:19:01] Well, that was something tricky all on its own.

[00:19:04] You know, figuring this stuff out was not something that I was kind of born into.

[00:19:09] I did not come from the radio.

[00:19:11] I did not come from a music mastering background.

[00:19:15] I did not come from any of that stuff.

[00:19:18] I'm just a regular guy who likes listening to the radio, who likes listening to podcasts,

[00:19:24] who said, hey, I wonder if I can do that too.

[00:19:27] And when it started with the Chris Christine show, we had fun doing it.

[00:19:32] And it's been an amazing ride doing that kind of stuff.

[00:19:35] And this show was only supposed to be a simple side project show that I would only do every once in a while.

[00:19:43] And now Podtastic Audio has gone much, much bigger than I ever possibly could imagine.

[00:19:50] And the only reason for that is because of you, the listener.

[00:19:54] Thank you.

[00:19:55] I do this for you.

[00:19:57] And thank you so much for listening.

[00:19:59] And if you have any questions or comments or concerns or anything at all,

[00:20:03] you always can reach out to me.

[00:20:05] I'm always willing to respond.

[00:20:06] So you can reach out to me right on my website at podtasticaudio.com.

[00:20:12] And you keep on making your amazing podcast.

[00:20:15] And until next time, happy podcasting.