Accepted format for podcasts?

[GNEP]

The people at a website I update want to push their boundaries a little and have a podcast of a debate put up. At the moment, with complete lack of knowledge of these things (I don't even own any form of portable music player!), I've just asked them to send me it in whatever format is the most lossless they can manage, and I'll do the conversions etc.

What's the accepted norm for these things? Just put a relatively low-bitrate mp3 file on the server and http link to it? It's a debate so I doubt doing things at 256 whatevers per second is a go-er. Do I need to add any forms of control and embedded player? Obviously easiest for me just to post the file up there.

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Gnep

[az]

64 kbps constant bitrate mp3 would be my uninformed choice.

[Fat Tone]

I use .wma files on a streaming media server quite a lot - works great because I have the choice of restricting access if I wish and the recordings can't be shared. Most people aren't so worried about that though with podcasts.

[GNEP]

OK I guess they won't be too worried about restricting it in any way.

So I suppose Az's suggestion would be the best.

[GNEP]

Apparently I am going to receive 2 CDs of the debate, one in WMA format, and one in AIFF. What would be the best program for converting one of these to low bitrate MP3?

Also found this article:

http://radio.about.com/od/podcastin1/a/aa030805a.htm

which tells me how to add RSS stuff I think, which presumably is useful or something...

[az]

LAME is the best free mp3 decoder, AFAIK. There are probably frontends for it.

Have a look here. I don't know how up-to-date the site is, but its german version has some easy to understand info on audio compression.

[Gurm]

Accepted format for podcasts?

----------------

Hi folks, I'm lamer #1.

*AND I'M LAMER #2*

Tonight we have a great podcast for you...

*WAY COOL!*

...

..

...

etc.