Guide: How to make an Enhanced Podcast on Windows XP

Since there is little to no support for enhanced podcasting on Windows, I wanted to make a guide to show how I make my enhanced podcasts on a Windows XP machine. I am going to use my podcast (React House Music Podcast) for the example.

To start things off your going to need a program called Slideshow Assembler. This link has both files that you need. I say both files because I installed them both. I am not sure if you actually need the front end for audio podcasts, but I didn’t try without it.

Once you have this installed, your going to want to collect your audio file (in .mp4 format) and the images that are going to run throughout the podcast. It is easier if you collect all of these files inside the Slideshow Assembler directory (ie. C:/Program Files/Slideshow Assembler/Yourpodcast) Here is a shot of my collected files:

You will notice I have one extra file in this folder. This file is the .pod file, Its going to to direct Slideshow Assembler to do what we want it to. We are now going to edit this file to make it work for our podcast. The easiest way to start editing the pod file is to copy the example .pod file (most likely stored in C:/Program Files/Slideshow Assembler/Example 1) over to your project folder and rename it something you can remember. When you open the file the first section should be pretty self explanitory. This is how i filled mine out:

[Podcast]
altfolder1=rpe1
basename=React Podcast Episode 1
audiofile=React Podcast Episode 1.mp4
shownotes=shownotes
artwork=title.jpg
imgwidth=300
imgheight=300
editpointcount=9

You want to make sure that any file name is written out perfectly. I had an image that was .jpeg, I put .jpg in the podfile and it missed it the first time around. After this section there come the points, you want to make sure you have the correct amount of point entries depending on what you set ‘editpointcount=’ at. Editing each point is self explanitory. Mine look like the following:

…
[Editpoint_2]
start=00:00:10.00
chapter=Simi - Errore di Sistema (Original Mix)
image=1.jpg

[Editpoint_3]
start=00:06:28.00
chapter=Radio Slave - Grindhouse (Dubfire Terror Planet Remix)
image=2.jpg

[Editpoint_4]
start=00:14:33.00
chapter=Mark Knight and Funkagenda - Shogun (Jimpster Mix)
image=3.jpg
…

Things can get trickier if you want to add links to your points, but following the example file will lead you in the right direction. Filling in the information at the bottom is easy and I will leave that up to you. I deleted a few lines and ended up with this:

[metadata]
;;
;;
;; &  for data type 21
;; @  for data type 0
;; @” for data type 0 with character data - if you need at the start of the string include ” twice (e.g. @”"Some text )
;;
;; all other are strings (type 1) - only lyrics can exceed 255 bytes
;;
©cpy=2008 ReactPodcast.com

©nam=React Podcast Episode 1
©ART=React Podcast

©gen=Podcast
©day=2008-08-26

catg=podcasts
desc=React Podcast Episode 1

Once you have your .pod file finished navigate to Slideshow Assembler in the start menu and click on Command Prompt.

Since we created our directory inside the Slideshow Assembler directory it is easy to navigate to our folder. My folder is named rpe1 so I type ‘cd rpe1′ and it moves me into that folder.

Now we execute the command that makes our ‘enhanced’ file. You type the following: ’ssa -q4 yourpodfile.pod’ and hit enter. You can see how I did this below:

Slideshow Assembler will then process all the files and as long as nothing went wrong your command prompt should look similar to this:

When all is said and done you should have a new .m4a file inside your project folder. Open it in iTunes and make sure it works!

Thanks to Jr Learns Media for Slideshow Assembler

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