DV video to MP3 audio

A couple days ago, I taped an interview using my Panasonic DVX 100 (DV) camera.

I chose the camera rather than an audio recorder because I wanted to have both video and audio of the interview.

Here's what I did to convert the audio track of the interview to an MP3 that I could turn into a podcast. (This is a little cryptic. More details later.)

PS: This procedure is for a mac.

PPS: There's gotta be a simpler way to do this... but this is what I had to do to go from DV audio track to good quality MP3 file.

1. Record the interview using DVX 100 and good microphones.
2. Capture the movie onto a mac using iMovieHD.
3. Use the iMovie HD Export function to export the audio track.
4. Find the movie's 'package' on the Mac hard disk.
5. Cntl-click the package to open it and view the contents. Voila! There's my audio file.
6. Copy the exported audio file (aiff, 512K) and paste the copy in my Documents folder.
7. Download and install the free audio editor 'Audacity'. Good for audio editing.
8. Open Audacity, and then open the Audacity preferences control panel.
9. Change the Audacity recording quality preference to 48,000 hz.
(48,000 is what the DVX 100, and many DV cameras use to record audio. The default for Audacity and many other audio editing programs is CD quality, or 44,100 hz. If the preference is not set to 48,000 in Audacity, it will not process the file properly.)
10. Import the aiff audio file into Audacity.
11. Edit the file using Audacity. Take out ums, ah's, repeated words and off-topic discussions.
12. Save the edited file.
13. Export the edited file as a WAV file.
14. Download and installed the format converter program SWITCH (great program, BTW).
15. Convert the WAV (512 MB) file to MP3 (21 MB) using SWITCH.

Note: I later used the LAME encoder in step 13 to export the file directly from Audacity as an MP3. I still like Switch, however, and plan to keep it.