WebPod Studio review

Like X-oom Podcast Studio, WebPod Studio is a one-stop resource for creating and publishing podcasts. Unlike Podcast Studio, it supports video as well as audio podcasts, but it's equally hopeless at either task.

The software launches with irritating sound effects, a confusing description of podcasting and a Tip of the Day window that shows more tips when you click Close. The video-capture module insisted on capturing audio through the sound card input, even though we were using a DV camera as the video source. More bizarrely, it decided to convert video to WMV format "for playback on iPods" - iPods can't play WMVs. Still, with no proper video-editing tools available, you're better off producing the video content in a proper editing application anyway. Audio editing is similarly scant, so unless you're happy to record with a single microphone, you'll need to use other software to record your audio podcast.

The PodCast Composer module is where you import audio and video clips to appear in your podcast, and here you can trim the start and beginning of clips and even add transitions. However, the interface is truly awful. You type in the number of seconds by which you want to trim, then visit a different part of the software to see the results. The Finalise window is particularly baffling, with error messages appearing even when it had successfully created the necessary files. The opposite was true of the built-in FTP transfer module, which claimed to have transferred files successfully to our web server when it hadn't. Only then were we offered the opportunity to complete the tags for our podcast using the RSS Management module, which is even more perplexing than the other sections.

WebPod Studio is so bad that we wonder whether anyone has ever successfully created a podcast with it. We don't recommend you try.

Author: Ben Pitt