debian podcasting from command line

[Kyle]

Sox in Debian doesn't record to mp3, but it looks like a major part of
what you want. If you start with wav or flac, you can do some basic
editing before you make the mp3 file for the podcast. You will need the
lame package to make the mp3 file. To make the initial recording, start
with something like

rec -q -r 44100 -b 16 somefile.wav

or to save diskspace,

rec -q -r 44100 -b 16 somefile.flac

Press control c when done. Now you can use sox in various ways to fade
in and out, increase or decrease the volume or add effects of various
kinds. Sorry, my knowledge of more fine-grained editing is limited to
Audacity, so hopefully someone else will have a better idea how to do
advanced editing from the command line. Once you have the recording
made, you need an mp3 file for the podcast. More and more people are
using Ogg Vorbis for this, but mp3 still plays on more devices for some
reason. If you have the server space, feel free to make both. Your Ogg
Vorbis file can be made as simply as

sox somefile.wav -C 3 somefile.ogg

I'm using 3 as the compression (-C) level here, but you can probably set
it  as low as 0 and still have a file that sounds good. Since you can
use sox to make the Ogg Vorbis file, your original recording and edits
can be flac, wav or wv (wavpack), whereas the lame mp3 encoder only
accepts wav, so your final edit will need to be wav, although your
original recording and everything else in between can be flac or wv.

And now to make the mp3 file. Again, be sure you have a wav file to
encode, as Debian's version of sox has no mp3 support. Your command will
look like

lame -b 128 somefile.wav somefile.mp3

If your not using any music, you can use 64 for the bitrate (-b) option,
and your mono mp3 file will still sound good. Hope this helps.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/


-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"