Podcastle What is it?

With the advent of ChatGPT, and finding it lacking except for specific uses,  I’ve been messing around with various artificial intelligence (AI) systems.  One of those is Podcastle. Podcastle bills itself a “The One-Stop Shop for Broadcast Storytelling.”  Its features cover the gammet for audio and video manipulation, all necessary to produce a decent podcast whether audio or video. Further, the system has great utility for preparation of audiobooks and educators will find it useful as well.  The system  offers the following online tools:

• Transcription
  • Audio to Text
  • Voice to Text
  • MP3 to Text
  • Audio Translator
  • Podcast Transcriptions
  • Filler Word Detection (words like “um”, “uh”, “like”, etc.)

•  Recording
  • Podcast Recording (multi-track recording)
  • Audiobook Recording Studio
  • MP3 Audio Cutter
  • Podcast Studio
  • Podcast Maker
  • Remove Interview Recording
  • Voice Over Recording
  • Voice Over Studio
  • Voice Recorder
  • Video Recording Software
  • Video Podcast
  • Online Video Recorder
  • MP3 to WAV Converter

•  Resources
  • Remove Background Noise
  • How to Start a Podcast
  • Podcast Promotion
  • Create a Podcast
  • Converter
  • Auto-leveling
  • Start Podcasting

Beyond this,  the sytem features a tool  that will let you digitize your own voice (for a fee) so you can convert text to your voice rather than a pre-packaged voice. There is an iOS app that lets you do a lot of these things on the road.

 A Simple Example

I’d like to get into all of this but for now here’s a simple example of a text to voice conversion done by Podcastle.  

After setting up an account (free with limits or up to $30 per month for all functions with fewer limits), I pasted the following paragraph into the system: 

“After setting up blogs for many clients, we finally got around to creating one for Global Creations’ CEO, Jerry. This blog is an esoteric combination of posts related to technical website development issues and various random topics. For the most part the information here documents things we have tried. We use this information so as not to reinvent the wheel if the same issue arises again. We figured if we solved a problem, perhaps others will be looking for solutions to the same problem. Look around and see what you can find.”

Here is the audio result:

While not perfectly natural,  the intonation, clarity and other voice attributes are far and a away better than the robotic voices that have been generated in the past. These voices could actually be used in a voiceover on a video or for whatever uses your creativity can generate.

Getting Started

First, use the Chrome browser as some parts for the system don’t work on other browsers.

1. Go to https://podcastle.ai/
2. Click “Get Started”
3. Set up your account login, and respond with the code sent to your email, then proceed
4. You can step through the slide show that asks what you want to do.  I chose “Skip for Now” at the top right.
5. You can then choose a paid plan or click the fine print at the bottom to “Continue with the Basic plan”
6. Your control panel will appear.  There will be nothing under the “Projects” or “Recordings” Tabs
7. Click “Create” (red button)
8. From there you can choose what you want to try.  I clicked the  “Convert Text to Speeech” box to get the above example.
9. You can drop in a text file, but I just copied the above text from this blog and pasted it into the “Text Editor” field at the top right
10. You can choose one of twenty voices, including Santa Claus, from the drop down arrow to the left of the pasted in text.
11. Click the “Generate Button” and wait while the system creates your audio file. A progress bar will show you how it’s going.
12. When done, Click the “Export” button at the top right (NOT the one next to the “Generate” button on the bottom right)
13. Choose the audio file format you want – I used MP3
14. Choose the quality you want – I used 160 kbps as that’s the best available on a free account
15. Click the “Export file” button and a box showing progress will appear.
16. Click the red “Download” button and put the file wherever you want it.
17. Use your audio for whatever purpose you wish.

Notice that the control panel shows the project you have been working on at the top left as “Project 1.”  There is a drop down arrow to the right that lets you duplicate the project or change its name.  Click the left arrowm to the left of the project name, takes you back to the control panel where you will see your new project.  When you put your cursor over it, you will see three menu dots appear.  Click on it to Edit, Duplicate, Share or Delete your project.

 Conclusion

Podcastle seems to be a pretty robust system for helping with various audio and video needs.  It is pretty self-explanatory, so the learning curve is not steep.  In fact if you go through the above 17 steps you will be able to produce your first product immediately and will be set up to explore further.