Podcast Producer

[fluidedge]

Anybody use it?

I've was shown it by Larry Jordan at the Broadcast Live expo in London this week and it looks like it could be a great tool for us. Anyone have any experience with it?

what hardware setup do you run it on?

[x19]

I've used Podcast producer to a limited extent, and so far been very happy with it. Right now I'm using it for audio recording Board of Education meetings which typically run about 6 hours. Once I submit the recording it uploads it to our iCal/Wiki server (intranet) which then streams it from an internal blog. The process of encoding the audio takes about 30 minutes for the 6 hours of audio. Works great, and the sound quality is as good as Logic Express.

We could easily add pieces to the workflow for uploading to the iTunes Podcast directory and we are considering moving in that direction.

Hardware:
Intel Dual Core Xserve 2.66 - 4GBs RAM
Mac OS X 10.5.1

[fluidedge]

yeh i was wondering about hardware, we don't have an xserve (or the money for one!) so i was wondering if we could get something like an old G4 quicksilver or something like a G5 Powermac and use that? Something cheap!

We don't need lightning speed encoding, just a good way of managing podcasting.

I wonder whether something like "Podcast maker" by lemonzdream would be more suitable for our needs.

At the moment, making podcasts in soundtrack/garageband and just uploading them to our web host is ok as we've got the time to take each podcast slowly, but as we get into making more and more, we need a better workflow, i guess. I've heard good things about 'podcast maker'.

[rbennett5]

We're currently using it at a university to record student activities and it works brilliantly so far. The students are much happier with it over the old VHS way. Using the podcast producer web interface, the students control starting, pausing, and stopping the recording.

It took a few hours to get up and running but it wasn't difficult. We're only doing audio+video and haven't tried audio only. The encoding is very slow, usually taking about twice the length of the video (1hr video takes 2 hours to encode) but we are running server on a core1 mini so we can't expect much.

Equipment: Leopard server running on a 1.6ghz mac mini (core1, not core2) and a Canon GL2 (with built in mic) connected to another mac mini, the two are connected over 100mb ethernet. The server also hosts the blog site for watching the videos.

[fluidedge]

Originally Posted by rbennett5

We're currently using it at a university to record student activities and it works brilliantly so far. The students are much happier with it over the old VHS way. Using the podcast producer web interface, the students control starting, pausing, and stopping the recording.

It took a few hours to get up and running but it wasn't difficult. We're only doing audio+video and haven't tried audio only. The encoding is very slow, usually taking about twice the length of the video (1hr video takes 2 hours to encode) but we are running server on a core1 mini so we can't expect much.

Equipment: Leopard server running on a 1.6ghz mac mini (core1, not core2) and a Canon GL2 (with built in mic) connected to another mac mini, the two are connected over 100mb ethernet. The server also hosts the blog site for watching the videos.

thats a really nice application and a great example of the way podcasting is changing things!

i hadnt thought about a mac mini - one of those running leopard server would be perfect i think

[rbennett5]

I forgot to mention. Our system is sort of portable. The camera is on a tripod on top of a cart with wheels and the mini is on the middle shelf. The camera and mini are plugged into a power strip and I set the mini to restart under power loss. Then just instruct the students to just unplug it when they are done. It's been a couple of weeks and a few dozen hard restarts for the mini but so far it's had no problems being able to restart, reconnect itself to the server, and transfer video. I would have to deep freeze XP to be able to survive that many hard shutdowns.

[maccanada]

Originally Posted by fluidedge

yeh i was wondering about hardware, we don't have an xserve (or the money for one!) so i was wondering if we could get something like an old G4 quicksilver or something like a G5 Powermac and use that? Something cheap!

Sorry - Podcast Producer requires an Intel box - I guess you could conceivably run it on a Mac Mini, but you're not going to be at all happy with it. Really. Not happy at all. An old MacPro would do a pretty decent job, and since they've been revved you might be able to get one for a good price.

~Ian

[MacsRgr8]

I've got Podcast Producer Server running on my Xserve G4 (Dual 1.0, 2 GB RAM), and have tested with my Power Mac G5 Quad as Podcast Capture "agent".

No problems..... the rendering takes some time though...

[maccanada]

According to Apple, the supported hardware is as follows:

Podcast Producer requirements

Podcast Capture: Requires a Mac running Mac OS X v10.5 or Mac OS X Server v10.5

Podcast Producer: A Mac with an Intel processor running Mac OS X Server v.10.5, 1GB of RAM plus 512MB of RAM per core and a Quartz Extreme-enabled video chipset. For optimal performance, an Xsan clustered file services is recommended.

Taken from: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/specs.html

~Ian

[x19]

Originally Posted by maccanada

According to Apple, the supported hardware is as follows:

Podcast Producer requirements

Podcast Capture: Requires a Mac running Mac OS X v10.5 or Mac OS X Server v10.5

Podcast Producer: A Mac with an Intel processor running Mac OS X Server v.10.5, 1GB of RAM plus 512MB of RAM per core and a Quartz Extreme-enabled video chipset. For optimal performance, an Xsan clustered file services is recommended.

Taken from: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/specs.html

~Ian

I wonder if those are the requirements to do Video Podcasts. MacsRgr, are you doing video or just audio?

[maccanada]

Those are definitely the video requirements - I don't think there are any for just audio. If the machine can run Leopard server, you can pass an audio only podcast through Podcast Producer.

Video with the built-in workflows uses H.264 which is incredibly processor intensive, hence the processor, RAM and Quartz Extreme enabled video card requirements.

~Ian

[MacsRgr8]

I see, but it does work on a PPC!:

[MacsRgr8]

Originally Posted by x19

I wonder if those are the requirements to do Video Podcasts. MacsRgr, are you doing video or just audio?

Video.

iSight and Screen recording on Quad, submitted to Xserve.
Trust me, it does take ages..... but it gets there.

[MacsRgr8]

Making one now...

[maccanada]

I guess we'll just take those specs as a recommendation rather than a requirement to run, then :-)

~Ian

[MacsRgr8]

BTW.... my little Xserve still is busy doing that 15 second Screen Recording

The real recommendation is "ya need horsepower". 4 Cores @ 2.0 GHz or better..... Quad G5 is ok.

[MacsRgr8]

Yay!!! It's done!
(So, it took about 20 mins... ahum... )

[fluidedge]

can i ask about the "podcast maker" software - does anyone use it?

[art68]

Can somebody point me out to a good guideline for installing and configuring podcast producer on a single Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 computer?

I´m realy not familiar with Kerberos and have not found where to start the service...

We have 4.5 GB DDR SDRAM, do you think that hardware would be enough?

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by art68

Can somebody point me out to a good guideline for installing and configuring podcast producer on a single Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 computer?

I´m realy not familiar with Kerberos and have not found where to start the service...

We have 4.5 GB DDR SDRAM, do you think that hardware would be enough?

you need to try the videos on lynda.org by sean colins.

i just got podcast producer working today! i tried before and never could get it working correctly, but now it works! tmac.podzone.net and then go to 'producers' and then blog if you want to check it out. so far i've only done short tests though

[art68]

Do you mean lynda.com?

I got a Not found message from your producers link...

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by art68

Do you mean lynda.com?

I got a Not found message from your producers link...

yeah, sorry. but the lynda videos is what got me thru the setup today. i'm not sure what's going on with my site, i just got it working outside my internal network tonight, so it might be better tomorrow.

EDIT: i think i fixed the site now, so it should work