The Music Educator’s Network

admin April 7th, 2007

This tutorial will explain how to embed, stream & podcast multimedia files through the use of the plugin called podPress.

In order to embed, stream or podcast any multimedia file on your blog it is your responsibility to make sure you are doing so legally! Musiced.net does not condone or allow the illegal use of multimedia files.

Let’s say you have recordings of student compositions with their commentary and peer feedback from when they were performed. Now you would like to create a series of podcasts for your classroom or to embed a recording on your blog. This is very easy with the podPress plugin.

Step 1) Below the space where you write your blog you will see a blue line with the word Podcasting. Below that, find the blue line with the word “Upload”

Part I - Preparing The File to be embedded in your blog

Note: The length of the media file cannot be over 15 minutes long and must be in a compressed format such as mp3, .mov etc. If your file is over 15 minutes you can split it in half and treat it as two separate files.

The first thing you will do is upload the file you want to embed

Step 2) Click the Browse tab and select the file you want to embed, stream and/or podcast

Once you select the file you will upload fill in the “Title” and “Description” text fields and press upload

It may take some time for the file to be uploaded to your blog

In this case we will use the mp3 file of a recording of “Northwoods Police Report” composed by Todd Harper. (Thanks to Paul Cantrell, the piano performer on the recording, for posting the mp3 on his blog with a creative commons license.) When the file is finished uploading you will see it in blue text under the “Browse” Tag

Step 3) Click the “Add Media File”box under the Podcasting section

Drag the file you wish to embed into the “location” field

Step 4) Give it a title if you wish

Step 5) Choose the type of media it is using the “type” drop down menu

You have now prepared your media file to be embedded in your post

Step 6) Choose where in your post you wish the file to be embedded and stream from. (The default location will be the start or end depending on what you choose in the podPress options tab.)

To control exactly where it will show up, go to the point in your post where you want the file and type the following (without quotation marks) [”display_podcast”] It will look something like this [display_podcast]

Step 7) When someone click the play button of the icon your file will stream!

Part II Podcasting and Additional Options

Now if you have the time please watch this video tutorial (start watching at 1:54). It will detail the various options that are available for podPress plugin as well as how to set it up to create a podcast channel on itunes.

Step In the Podcasting section click the “show” box next to “post specific settings for itunes”

Now you can choose specific options for the specific media file you just embedded

Step 9) The options are pretty self explanatory and the little blue question marks will give more detail. The main option to use is itunes block

If the itunes block is set to no  the file you embedded will be added to your itunes podcast channel

If the itunes block is set to yes then the file you embedded will not be added to your itunes podcast channel and will only stream from your blog post.

Additional information can be found on the podPress website.

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