Making an episode

The preview sheet appears every time you drop a file. It shows what Podcaster found in the file and the choices for the episode. Nothing is made until you click Make the podcast (Make it in the browser), and the line above the button says what it will cost.

You can press it while the document is still going up or still being read. The choices are kept and the episode is made the moment the document is ready, at the price on the sheet or less. The price is an estimate (shown as "≈") until the whole document has been measured, and a document that turns out longer and therefore dearer than the estimate is not made: the sheet comes back with the new price beside the button for you to press again.

On the Mac you can drop several files at once. Each gets its own preview sheet, one after another: when you make or cancel one, the next file's sheet opens, and the corner of the sheet says which file you are on, as "2 of 3". The browser takes one file at a time.

Files that work

PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), EPUB, and plain text or Markdown. A PDF without a text layer (a scan, a photographed chapter) is read by OCR, in English, Dutch or German; that takes longer, a few seconds per page. In a Word file, text deleted with track changes on is left out, and so are the codes behind fields such as a table of contents: what is read is what the page shows. Files up to 200 MB.

What the episode is called

The episode is called what the reading is called, as you would cite it: author, year and title. Chen et al. (2016) Decision Making Under the Gambler's Fallacy, not Gamblers Fallacy. That one line is the name in your library, the name on the cover, the name on the study notes, the name of the file you download, and what the hosts say at the top and the bottom of the episode.

Podcaster reads the first page and takes all three from the document itself, whatever the file is called. A publisher's download arrives as 1 s2.0 S0304387809000637 main.pdf and a scan as IMG_4821.pdf, and even a file you named carefully carries the reference in whatever shape you used and cut off wherever your folder listing cut it off. The title page has it printed properly.

One author is named; more than one becomes the first and et al. Whatever the document does not carry is left out rather than filled in: no empty brackets and no invented year. A reading with no title page at all, such as lecture notes or a text file, keeps its file name.

The title is on the preview sheet before anything is made, so you see the name before you pay for it. Said out loud it is read the way you would say it: "Chen and others, 2016, Decision Making Under the Gambler's Fallacy".

Chapters

For a PDF with an outline, a Word file with headings, a PowerPoint or an EPUB, the sheet lists the chapters it found with their page ranges. Untick what you do not want; the episode then covers only the ticked chapters, in order. For a plain PDF without an outline, Podcaster looks for chapter headings on the pages; when it finds none, the whole file is one reading.

Only part of it

A chapter is often more than you have been set to read. Tick Only part of it and give a first and last page, and the episode covers exactly those pages. The numbers are the ones printed in the document, and the whole document's page count is shown beside them.

A page range and the chapter ticks are two ways of saying what to read, and only one of them applies. While a range is on the panel is about pages: the pages you gave are at the top, the chapter list below them is headed Chapters, not used for this reading and has no ticks, and one episode per chapter is gone, because a series of one episode per chapter makes no sense inside part of one. The chapters are still listed, because they are how you find the pages you want. Read whole chapters instead puts the ticks back and the chapters decide again.

Part of a document is charged as part of one. The estimate above the button follows the pages you choose, so eight pages of a four hundred page book costs what eight pages cost.

One episode per chapter

Turn on One episode per chapter to make a series: one episode for each ticked chapter, each with a length that fits its page count, all sharing one cover and grouped together in the library with a position badge (2 / 5). It is off until you turn it on. It suits a book or a long report, and the sheet says so when even the longest single episode would be short for the number of pages.

The first few times, one step at a time

A new account is walked through the preview a step at a time: how much of the document, what you want from it, how long, study material with it or not, and then everything you chose on one screen before the button. The steps open on what you want from it while the document is still being read. Once it is read, a document with two or more chapters, or fifteen pages or more, moves to how much of it; for a shorter one that step is skipped. Once you have made a few, the sheet is one page and you check it rather than answer it, because most of the answers are the same reading after reading and Podcaster keeps them.

The exception is which chapters or pages, which is different for every document and is never carried over. Show me everything on one page from now on ends the steps, and Take me through it step by step on the one-page sheet brings them back.

What do you want from this?

The one thing the sheet asks. Four cards, and they make four different episodes:

Get the gist. What the reading is about and what matters in it: the question it addresses, the main argument, and the three to five things you should be able to say afterwards. Two co-hosts, and the shortest of the four.

Explain it to me. Every concept and term, one at a time, built from the simplest up: what each one means in plain words, an example, and where students usually get it wrong. A host and a guest, so somebody is there to ask the question you would ask.

Go deep. The argument step by step: premises, evidence, reasoning, conclusion, and whether each step holds, with the strongest objections and how the authors answer them. Assumes you have read it once. A host and a guest, and the longest of the four.

Exam practice. A question an examiner would ask, a pause to answer it, then the answer as it would score, and the mistake people make. Ends with a rapid-fire round of the ten most likely questions. Two co-hosts.

The hosts say which kind of episode it is in the first few seconds, so you can hear that you got what you asked for.

The card also decides who is in the room and how much it assumes you already know, because those are what those episodes are rather than separate questions. There is no choice of voices or format beside it. It moves the length too: Get the gist a step shorter than the pages suggest, Go deep a step longer.

Length

The sheet says how long the episode will be and where that came from: "About 12 minutes, from 39 pages". It counted the pages when it read the document, so it does not have to ask. Shorter and Longer move it a step either way, and Advanced opens Exact length, the four lengths by name, for when you want an explicit hand on it. For a series the length is set per chapter.

Study material

Study material, Yes or No: the study notes and the practice questions with the episode, or the episode on its own. See Study material.

Language

The episode's language is a setting under Account, in the Episodes panel (Settings in the Mac app), not on the sheet: it is the language you study in, it does not follow the language of the file, and what is set there is what you get. The sheet says which language it will be in, above the button, so you never find out by playing it. Podcaster speaks about eighty languages; English, Dutch and German have hand-tuned hosts.

While it is being made

The panel shows the stage: reading, writing, recording, editing, publishing. You can close the panel, drop more files (each opens its own preview sheet, with the episode being made carrying on underneath), or cancel from the panel. A finished episode arrives with a notification; a failed one says what went wrong and offers to try again.

A preview that is not made into an episode within a day expires, its document is deleted, and the app says so as it does for a failed reading; drop the document in again to make it.

In the browser, the sheet counts both halves of the wait, the sending and the reading, and says how long it has been. A document that stops on its way up is sent again twice, and if it still does not get through, the sheet says the sending stopped and offers Try again on the same file, so you do not have to go and find it. Cancelling a document while it is still being sent, or dropping another one in its place, stops the sending and cancels that reading. The page keeps following an episode when the connection drops or the page has been open a long time, and a reading the server cannot find is taken off the page with a line that says so. If you are signed out while the page is open, it takes you to the sign-in page.