Making your own podfic is not difficult, nor does it have to be an expensive hobby. You just need to know where to get started and how to do it.
On this page, I will explain the steps for making a podfic.
1. Environment: Find or create quietness
There are a few ground rules to recording good audio, and the most important one is that you cannot fix a bad recording environment in post-production. High-end audio editing software will allow you to hide ("filter out") some noises, like a ticking clock or a humming laptop fan, but this will also make your recording less crisp and resonant. This is why checking your environment is step 1, well actually it's step zero - because I'm going to need you to be real honest with yourself about your environment before you continue with any other steps. I want you to have a fun, fulfilling experience, and enable you to create a good product that you can be proud of.
Begin by thinking about your options for where you can record. If you own a decent laptop, you can consider different rooms, otherwise you're stuck with your desk/workspace. Sit down in the recording space, close your eyes, and listen. What do you hear? Which of the noises can be eliminated?
Accoustic issues that can be fixed
This is what I noticed at my own desk, and how I dealt with it:
ticking analog wall clock (solution: remove while recording)
the external fans of my gaming pc (solution: disable fans while recording, leaving the casing open to help with cooling - don't do this if you don't know the basics of handling computer hardware, this could permanently damage your pc!)
traffic from outside (solution: record at night)
bird noises (solution: record at night)
people mowing their lawn (solution: record at night)
random notifications on my phone or computer (solution: do-not-disturb mode)
occasional, unpredictable noises like airplanes/helicopters/the house creaking/a door slamming (solution: record through it and edit them out)
As you can see, with a little bit of tenacity and persistence, it's possible to record even in difficult environments. But if I possessed a laptop, I could have easily moved to the basement for recording and removed 90% of annoyances.
Accoustic issues that can NOT be fixed
However, there are also some conditions that are not fixable, and if these are your only choices you might need to reconsider recording at home:
reverberation - if your room has an echo (think: staircase), the recording will sound like shit. This is not fixable in post-production. There is no filter, no tool, no magic to remove it. Reverberation happens when there are too many accoustically reflective surfaces in your room, from which your voice can bounce off of. Ceramic tiles and large windows and any large, smooth surfaces are the devil. Things that help include putting down a fluffy carpet and using thick curtains. Reverberation is the reason you'll see Harry recording in places where there's foam on the walls, or sheets/blankets hanging up around him.
constant noise - if the traffic can be heard in your room even at night, or there's a constant ticking or humming noise that you cannot disable, that's not good. If the noise is very even, like an evenly whirring fan, you can filter it out (but be aware that this will make your recording sound muffled). If it comes and goes, don't record here.
privacy - depending on the material you want to record, you may want to make sure that nobody can hear you record certain scenes ;) Besides, if they can hear you... most likely you can hear them, and any small noise they might make, on the recording. It's best to make sure to be alone.
Once you have decided on a recording environment, it's important to stick with it, at least for the duration of your current podfic.
2. Equipment: You won't need much
To record podfic, you really only need a computer/laptop, and a microphone. Optionally, you can get more tools to make recording more comfortable or improve the audio quality. If you're not sure yet whether podficcing is for you, you might want to borrow the equipment from a friend at first. The items I recommend here represent my personal, subjective preference for beginners, I'm not affiliated with any of the brands or websites linked.
Computer/Laptop
Requirements:
USB port for your microphone
4 GB of ram is more than enough for recording podfics. It's the editing that takes up power and storage. If you have your eye set on something long, say more than ~50k words, or are curious about using music/sound effects, I recommend 8GB ram for a smoother editing experience.
keyboard (obviously)
a mouse with a quiet scroll wheel (remember: anything that makes noise is the enemy)
software is discussed in section 5
Microphone
best: A USB condenser microphone. I was quite happy with the Blue Yeti for a year until it randomly stopped working, now I'm using the Cherry UM 9.0. Putting the microphone on the table stand that's in the box works just fine, just elevate it with a few books until you're talking straight ahead into the microphone while sitting with good posture. If your mic has more than one setting, choose "cardioid".
alternatively: A headset with microphone arm, e.g. a gaming headset
budget alternative: Whichever earphones came with your phone, like wired ones with a mic in the cable, or AirPods work ok too. I strongly recommend against trying to use your phone to record podfic because it sounds shite, trust me.
Pop filter (optional but recommended)
When you speak, airwaves leave your mouth. These airwaves are strongest on so-called plosive sounds like "P", "T", or "K". If you speak them directly towards the membrane of your microphone, they will create spikes in your signal that sound unpleasant to the listener. The purpose of a pop-filter is to disperse these airwaves before they can hit the microphone, without affecting audio quality.
best: A pop filter that can be clamped to your desk and has a movable arm. Acceptable filters are available from a low price, or you can often find used ones on ebay or craigslist. The movable arm is good because the pop filter is most effective when it is close to your mouth, but the microphone should be at least 10 cm from your mouth.
alternatively: Some microphones come with built-in pop filters, or have snap-on pop-filters as accessories. While these look cool and might seem like less hassle, they're pretty ineffective. Save this money and spend it on something else.
budget alternative 1: You can literally stretch pantyhose across a wired clothes hanger and get the same result as with a professional pop-filter. Just requires a bit of DIY-mentality and creativity to get that contraption to stay where you need it.
budget alternative 2: There is this guy who claims that with the right microphone positioning, you don't need a pop filter at all. I haven't tried out what he says, and it's more of an advanced tip anyways.
3. Fic: Decide on a story to record and get permission from the author
Choosing a podfic
The next step is to decide on a podfic. If you're just starting out, I recommend starting with something below 10k words. (Or you could do it like me and jump right into recording a 160k epos - if you're passionate enough about the story you might be able to pull it off. But from experience I strongly recommend against recording something long while you're still learning the skills: In the beginning you will get better quickly, and your first chapter will sound much different than your third.)
To get a feeling for what it's like to record yourself reading things out loud, and what you're comfortable recording, I suggest choosing something rated G or T. Fluff is perfect to get you started. It's best to look up several candidates you'd like to record, because next you need to get the author's permission - and you might not get it.
Time commitment
New podficcers tend to be surprised by the time it takes to create a podfic. As a rule of thumb, every 10k words of fanfic will result in approximately one hour of edited podfic, and every hour of edited podfic takes at least 5 hours of work. This is not an exaggeration.
Getting permission
It's the golden law of podficcing to never record without the author's permission. There are several ways to get permission:
the author might have posted a "blanket statement" (explained on this other sub-page)
leave them a comment on AO3 (or wherever else they posted it)
try sending them a dm on social media, or if their dms are locked you could try tagging them in a post
If you're not sure what to say: It usually works well to genuinely compliment their work and ask them if they'd allow you to create a podfic of it. Be prepared that they might not know what a podfic is, in which case I invite you to send them the link to the FAQ!
4. Start recording
Once you completed steps 1-3, you're ready to start recording!
Install and set up Audacity
Audacity is the most widely used free software for recording audio, and for good reason. It's pretty solid and comes pre-installed with a few useful filters. You can download it here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/. This quick start guide for Audacity is good. Once you've familiarised yourself a little bit with the software, go to Audio Setup, select the correct "Playback Device" (your headphones) and "Recording Device" (your mic) and then you're ready to hit the red-dot "Record" button!
Advice for recording
To quote from a wonderfully on-point tumblr post: "Everyone has a different approach to podfic, and that’s a-okay. In general, try to speak at a pace at which your reader can understand you, although obviously depending on the mood you’ll vary your speed. Clarity and enunciation are important, as well! You’ll soon become very aware of the way you speak, and things you have to watch out for. Spacing is a wonderful creature, too. Remember to give your listeners time for the words to sink in."
Begin your recording by reading out a header, and remember to not just stop at the end, but to finish the recording in a way that makes it clear to the listener that you're done (e.g. say "The End").
Here's an example of how you could read the header:
audio_LIAW intro.mp3Once you've recorded no more than a few minutes - check your recording. It's best to notice audio issues early, so you can fix them immediately. Get comfortable listening to the sound of your own recorded voice, you'll be hearing it a lot if you want to be a podficcer. It may be awkward at first to hear your voice without the bone conduction that happens while you speak, but you'll quickly get used to it if you gently allow yourself to like it.
Experiment a little, in the beginning. Notice how the recording sounds different, depending on your distance to the microphone, and play around a bit to find the sweet spot. If you're too far away, your voice won't sound "close and intimate" to the listener. But don't get closer than 10 cm either, even if you think that it'll make you sound nice and sexy - speaking very close to the mic will make it pick up all your mouth sounds, and your recording will be overpowered. In post-processing, you can easily make your voice sound like "more" but it's not easy to make it sound like "less".
Mouth sounds: I make them, you'll make them, we're all human. Pay close attention to it in the first bit you record, and learn to recognise when you make them. Here's how to reduce mouth sounds:
good distance to the mic
always have a glass of water nearby, a moist mouth is a quiet mouth
don't brush your teeth right before recording. It dries out the walls of your mouth and you will sound like a goblin
there's endless advice on the internet about food and beverages during recording. Here's my personal experience:
water is best, juice is fine, nothing carbonated or you'll burp (you'll burp anyways, don't fret about it, just edit it out later)
for some mysterious reason, I had really good results with milk and buttermilk. The internet strongly advices against it, but it worked great for me. Just experiment!
you can eat before the recording, just nothing that would make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth. We want the tongue to be free to move around with no friction
if your voice is getting tired during a longer recording, I've noticed that I can cut down on the recovery time by having some food. Yoghurt worked well for me, or soup, or anything that moisturises the throat as you swallow it
alcohol has pros and cons and you have to decide for yourself and experiment, if you so wish. The pro is that it'll lower your inhibitions to read out smut, and make you more relaxed, which will make you sound noticeably more relaxed (but there's other, better ways to relax). It could work well before a very explicit scene. The con is, that you'll be less attentive and make more mistakes that you won't notice, and that it'll make your sinuses swell up. If you can't breathe properly through your nose, you can't record, simple as that.
Mistakes
Some people record the whole story in one go and edit out mistakes later, others fix mistakes as they go. It’s a personal preference.
I personally love the "clapping" method. Everytime you notice that you made a mistake, e.g. if you stumbled over a word or had to sneeze or whatever, you clap your hands loudly (or snap your fingers, or use a clicker). This will create very loud (= large) spikes in your recording that are super easy to find later:
don't be afraid to get emotional. What might feel "over the top" during recording, might come across as just enough on the finished track. It's perfectly fine to move around a bit, move your hands, etc. A particularly wonderful thing is when the story makes you smile or cry - this comes across beautifully on a recording, and in my opinion, having that extra layer of the reader's emotions is the very best aspect of listening to a podfic!
sit up straight and consciously breathe into your tummy. More on posture and other finer skills will follow in the Advanced podficcing page.
5. Edit your recording
The editing process
To avoid re-inventing the wheel, I'll quote from an amazing tutorial by Paraka, who describes the editing process so beautifully:
Noise removal. Audacity has a noise removal tool that can remove some ambient noise. It's still better to record in a quite place since noise removal only does so much and can make your voice sound tinny or robotic if you do it too much.
To use this tool, you're going to need to find a place on your time line without you talking (there's normally some right at the beginning or end of the recording) that's representative of the background noise you want cut out. Highlight that section and go to Effects -> Noise Removal. This will open a box with two parts. First you need to choose "Get Noise Profile" which will close the box. Then select the entire track (or which ever part you want to remove the background noise from) and go back to that window (Effect -> Noise Removal). This second part deals with the rest of the options, you can play with the settings but for the first try I suggest just going with the default and hitting "Remove Noise". It might take a minute or two to process (depending on how big the file is).Go through the recording for mistakes. This is where I'll cut out all the stumbles I've made, repeated sections or particularly loud breathing. To edit out a mistake, look for the beginning of where things went wrong (before the spike, if you used the clapping method) and drag your mouse to the right, past the spike. Then hit the delete button on your keyboard.
Rerecords. If during step #2 I realize that I've made a mistake that no amount of editing will fix, I'll go back and rerecord that section to edit into my podfic. I try to avoid rerecords if I can or will rerecord an entire section (or perhaps the entire fic if it's short enough) because most of the time when you edit a different recording in, it'll sound different from the rest of your recording (your voice could be different, your volume, the background noise, etc).
Edit the pacing. The next thing I'll do is listen to the whole podfic and see how the pacing is. Did I leave too long a pause between sentences? Did I not leave enough? Adding in or cutting out dead air can make the podfic flow much better. If I'm adding in a pause, I try to find a quite part near the section to copy over. I don't want to add in muted time, since it'll sound weird if there's low level background noise in the other parts.
Final listen through. Once I think I'm done, I'll give the podfic a final listen to. I try and listen to it as I would any other podfic (often when I'm at work), that way I can see how it stands up. I can make sure the volume is where it should be and that I can follow the story as I multitask.
How fast people edit a podfic depends on the podficcer, however I don't think I've heard of anything less than 3-4 minutes of work for every minuted of finished product.
Exporting as MP3
Now you're ready to save your podfic in a version other people can listen to. The three shareable files that Audacity supports is .wav, .mp3 and .ogg. Wave files are really large and I doubt you'll ever have much use for an .ogg file. Exporting as an .mp3 is best. To do this go to File -> Export As MP3. A typical "Save As" box will appear, asking you what you'd like to name your file (with the project file name coming up as a default) and where you'd like to save it. When you click save, another box will open that asks for information on what kind of meta data you want saved with your podfic. Everyone has their own style, below is an example. Just fill this out or leave it blank as you'd like then hit ok, and the exporting will start.
6. Upload your audio file(s)
Upload your finished audio files to a hosting service, ideally to a service that offers a lot of storage for free, and won't delete it after some years. When I set up the podfic library, I noticed that for most older pofics (10 years and up), Dropbox links were usually dead, while Mediafire links still worked. From personal experience, I recommend you use either Google Drive or Mediafire.
Once you've uploaded a file, get a shareable link for it, and make sure to choose the setting that "everyone with the link can view" or that the link is "public".
7. Post and advertise your podfic
AO3
While there are several multi-fandom podfic archives or sites dedicated to podfic, I found none of them easy to use or navigate, and quite frankly the results of your hard work just won't be found there! I therefore recommend that you post your podfic on ao3.org. If you've never posted a work on AO3, follow these steps:
open an account. Most people prefer to have a dedicated podfic account that separate from the one you use to read. Opening a new AO3 account is (currently?) by invitation only, but pro tip: You can send yourself an invite from your reading account! (Dashboard >> Invitations). If you run into problems, message me and I'll send you an invite.
2. Go to Dashboard >> Post New and fill in the form. For inspiration, you can look at the format I use for my podfic posts.
I recommend using the same tags as the original work. To me, it feels a little disrespectful to change the tags, almost like "I know better" than the author. Be sure to add the tags #Podfic, #Podfic & Podficced Works, and #Podfic Length:x Hours though
I feel that it's a nice gesture to dedicate a podfic to the author of the fanfic. In the "New Post" form, you can do that under "Gift this work to"
Make sure to check the box before "This work is a remix, a translation, a podfic, or was inspired by another work" and fill in the data for the fanfic. This way, your podfic will appear as a link on the fic page, and you'll get more visitors.
Social Media
Posting to social media makes the largest difference in the amount of attention (= listeners) your podfic will have. In your post, include
the title of the work
the name of the author (tag them if you can! they'll share it and that's your best promo!)
the length of the podfic
a 1-sentence summary (optional)
the link to your AO3 page
It really helps your post to be noticed on Twitter or Tumblr, and is essential on Instagram, to have a graphic to go with your podfic. You can make one yourself, or ask a friend for help. Below is an example for how I advertised a podfic on Twitter.
Well... you've made it! You read all the way through this, congratulations! Now all that's left for me to do is wish you happy podficcing :)
If there's any questions I left unanswered, please don't hesitate to message me!