Podcast Maker Subchapters
Podcast Maker was recently featured as an alternative podcasting tool in the second episode of the MacBreak Weekly podcast. Alex Lindsay gave a positive review of Podcast Maker saying things like, “I found it to be 2 to 3 times faster to put [an enhanced podcast] together in Podcast Maker than in GarageBand”
One thing he wished he knew though was how to put subchapters into his enhanced podcasts. A subchapter is a chapter that has just a link or an image but no title. With subchapters you can have loads of images and links without every one of them taking a spot in the chapters list in iTunes.
Well, to add a subchapter in Podcast Maker all you have to do is make a chapter with a blank title. It will then show the title of the parent chapter in grayed out text as you can see in the following screenshot:

As you can see in the screenshot, the subchapters have markers that are shorter too.


September 8th, 2006 at 5:29 am
Nice. You should email Alex Lindsay about that… and let him know.
September 8th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Yup, I did already :)
September 13th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
I know it’s common knowledge, but Podcast Maker is really just too cool.
I had no idea until today that I could drop a PDF file into PM to use as chapters (yeah, it’s probably in the manual but I haven’t read that yet) — that’s going to save me a ton of time!
You know what would be cool (for me, anyway) is if a person could output an enhanced podcast as a Quicktime movie. That way it could be available for people who don’t use iTunes or iPods, could be put into a web page for viewing on a site, etc. (And as long as I’m wishing, to be ultimately cool, export as SWF would be the absolute best.)
You know, just something to work on when you have nothing else to do. =;)
Thanks!
Jay Jennings
September 21st, 2006 at 8:17 am
Why didn’t I think of that…………………..
Just open your .m4a file in quicktime then export it in any video format you want.
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:43 pm
“You know what would be cool (for me, anyway) is if a person could output an enhanced podcast as a Quicktime movie.”
That’s an awesome, awesome idea Jay!
I love Podcast Maker as well and it has made updating our Podcast not only easy but also fun. We have, mp3 audio, video, PDF files and Enhanced audio content on our podcast and i would LOVE to convert and post the enhanced audio as a Quicktime movie option!
Peace,
A.H. Sellars
October 8th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
What would really be useful is to be able to import short animations or video as chapter style graphics / frames and or automatically set frame times in tenth’s of seconds 000:000
November 7th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Just a little FYI.
iTunes has moved the location of the chapter navigation for enhanced podcasts to a menu item called “Chapters” The Chapters menu item is not visible until you start to play a chaptered file.
-Seth Taylor
February 18th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
How many subchapters can I have under 1 chapter?
How many chapters can I have in 1 enhanced podcast?
Are there any limits?
February 20th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
There is no documented limit on number of subchapters or chapters in an enhanced Podcast but please do consider the file size of your episode.