Anyone podcast buffs in the house?

Me and a friend have put together a podcast. I’ve signed up to Libsyn and it’s basically saying the file is too big at 186mb

It’s seems like my options are to split the file or find another place to upload it. Does anyone have any suggestions.

How is it encoded? You could lower the bit rate. Libsyn's own recommendations are:

Spoken Word Shows:
Stereo Bit Rate - 192 kbps or lower (In Mono this gets cut in half)
Sample Rate - 44.1 kHz
Channels - Mono

Music Shows:
Stereo Bit Rate - 128 kbps or lower
Sample Rate - 44.1 kHz
Channels - Stereo
Stereo Mode - Joint Stereo

How is it encoded. That’s a good question.

Mp3

The podcasts I listen to are about 1MB per minute and Libsyn's recommendations will get you between 0.5 and 1MB per minute. Unless your podcast episode is three hours long it seems that lowering the bit rate would be the answer.

Any idea how to do that?

We went to a recording studio to have this recorded. The guy who recorded (rightly I should point out) wanted some more money to edit and mess about with the recording more.

I can’t really afford it. I was hoping to upload it without too much faffing.

Windows media player does it

Zillions of other bits of software too
Assume there will be an equivalent on Mac

Have a google around.

Wmp has an edit option but it’s greyed out.

Audacity likely would be an option to sort

Is it easy to use?

Yep very - takes a tiny but of getting the hang of but incredibly easy and of course free.

As well as the specific recommendations already given, there are also many online converters. Googling 'compress mp3' gives several options on the first page of search results.

Ideally you would compress from a lossless format (e.g. WAV, FLAC). Generally, taking a lossy format (like MP3) and further compressing it will not give as good a result. I am not sure how much difference it makes in practice, particularly if it is just voice.

I will audacity a try tonight and see if I can split it.

Failing that compress. But is compressing 186mb into 100mb even possible.

Yes definitely