I decided to use Google Plus’ Hangout for the National Dialectics podcast I’m starting up this week. I have some out of state and out of country friends I wanted to take part in the podcast, so I decided to use Google Hangout. I’ve used it before and had a good experience. Hangout would also allows for people to “call into” the show or just watch a live recording.
That being said, I had to figure out how to get the Hangout recorded. I found a great tutorial here. It explains how to record a Skype call using GarageBand, LineIn, and SoundFlower. I replaced Skype with Google Hangout and all worked out well. Below are the directions for using Google Plus Hangout, GarageBand, LineIn, and SoundFlower to record a podcast.
From Digital Media Cookbook – modified for Hangout.
What You’ll Neeed
- Google + Account
- GarageBand (comes with Mac)
- The Soundflower software
- The LineIn software
- Start by going into the System Preferences (Apple Menu>SystemPreferences…) Click on the Sound icon. On the Sound Input tab, select the input you are recording with. On the Sound Output tab select “Soundflower (2ch)”
audio preferences
- Log into your Google Plus account and click on the “Start a hangout” button (lower right hand side of the page). Click “Settings” in the hangout window. Change the “Speakers” dropdown to “Soundflower (2ch). Save.
google hangout
- Open up the Garageband program and choose the Preferences (GarageBand>Preferences). Click the Audio/MIDI icon. Choose the audio output that you wish to hear the GarageBand output from. The Input should be set to SoundFlower (2ch)
garageband
- Finally open up the LineIn program. In the Input from field select the microphone you are using. In the Ouput to field select “Soundflower (2ch)” and then make sure to click the Pass Thru button.
lineIn
- You are now ready to record in GarageBand. Start a new Podcast project.
- A Podcast Track, a Male Voice track, A Female Voice track and a Jingles track. You will record your microphone and the the Google Hangout chat on the Male Voice track. Be sure to turn on the (audio) Monitor in the Track Info area of GarageBand.
garageband-screen
- If you have all of the above settings correctly set, you should see the audio level indicators move when you speak into the microphone AND when people on Hangout are talking. If that is the case then you just need to click the record button in GarageBand, and then begin your “show”.
Thanks to Digital Media Cookbook for the tutorial.
Enjoy.