The idea behind Podcast Studio is a good one. Combine all the tools for both creating and listening to podcasts in one package, and allow users to unleash themselves on the world.

The problem is that in practice, things don't quite work out that way.

There are two main parts to the program – Podcast Manager and Podcast Director.

Podcast Manager controls subscriptions to podcasts and copies them to an MP3 player. This bit works reasonably well, although there are some rough edges – some of the dialogue boxes had buttons labelled in German rather than English (Podcast Studio's maker X-oom is German), for instance.

The process of subscribing to a podcast is simple. If you have the address for an RSS feed – the web address that tells the software where to find the podcast – copy it into Podcast Manager and it will detect all the other details, then automatically subscribe.

There's a directory of podcasts included with the software, although this only worked some of the time.

Podcast Director is designed to help make a podcast. It's not bad at the job, although it's not quite as easy as might first appear.

It includes a wizard that explains the whole process, but users will still need to set up their own FTP server to host the podcast. The program contains a link to an FTP hosting company, but its options are paid-for and the site is all in German.

That said, Podcast Studio includes several useful tools for dealing with audio files and ripping tracks from CDs if you wish to use music. The Director works quite well and makes the process easier than it might be.

However, it might be too tricky still for users below intermediate level in terms of web site creation.

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Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 
Not podcast-specific, but it includes many of the tools required for the job as well as much more besides 
5/5
£60