Playing Audio Files in your Blogger Blog

An intern dropped by the other day and asked if she could play an audio file in her blog. She had posted some French poems for her students to memorize, but she wanted them to hear the poems spoken by a native French speaker.

Blogger doesn't allow the uploading of audio files. However, it DOES allow uploading of movie files, and that's the solution that is presented here.

If you have trouble viewing any of the images, click once on them to see an enlarged version.

Step One: Record your audio in iMovie 6 (other versions may vary slightly)

1. Start up iMovie and create a new project.
2. Put a photo in the canvas area. It doesn't matter which photo since it will not be seen.
3. Click the Media tab.
   
4. Click the Audio tab.
   
5. Say a few words into your laptop microphone to make sure its picking up sound. You should see a green sound meter activating. Click the red Record button to record your audio, then click it again to stop recording.
   
6. Save your iMovie project.
7. From the Share... menu, choose QuickTime.
   
8. Select CD-ROM.
   
9. Give your movie a name and save it to your desktop. This is the file that you'll upload to your blog.
   

Step Two: Upload your video to Blogger

1. Enable podcasting by turning on enclosure links in Blogger. Go to your blog's Dashboard, go to Settings > Formatting and set the "Show Link fields" option to "Yes."
   
2. Go to your blog and create a new post. Don't forget to give it a descriptive title.
3. Click the Edit HTML tab.
   
4. Click the Add Video button at the end of the new post toolbar.
   
5. Browse for your saved video, give it a title (should be descriptive of the content), agree to the terms, and click the Upload Video button.
   
6. Wait until the video file is uploaded and processed. This can take 5 minutes or more.
7. When the video file has been processed, click on the Edit HTML tab (see #2, above). You should see something like this:
   
8. Select the number "266" (highlighted in blue, above) and change it to 28.
9. Click the Publish Post button and view your blog. You'll see a video player like this:
   
10. Click the Play button to listen to your audio file.

You can also add text to your video file or add an audio file to an existing post.

Finally, here is an example from Judy Armance-Sidwell. Click the Play button to hear it.