Video podcasting with the iMac’s built-in iSight
The new G5 iMac with built-in video would seem at first glance to be the perfect tool for podcasting and video podcasting. With GarageBand and iMovie bundled with all Macs, everything you need for creating a video podcast comes with the computer--except that it doesn’t. The new built-in iSight is a USB camera, not a FireWire camera, and iMovie only works with FireWire cameras. I expect that Apple will remedy that pretty quickly, but for now iMovie doesn’t work with the built-in iSight.
Quicktime Pro does work with the built-in iSight, because Quicktime Pro supports USB cameras. Quicktime Pro is inexpensive, but inexpensive still isn’t free, and it makes no sense to shell out cash to fix a problem that shouldn’t be a problem to begin with.
Enter Quicktime Broadcaster. Quicktime Broadcaster is a free download from Apple, designed for live broadcasts. But it can also save those live broadcasts to a Quicktime file. Note, though, that while Broadcaster looks to be a pretty easy way to do live broadcasts, it’s a bit tricky to get a good static file out of it. But it does work and it is free. It is a useful means of creating video while waiting for the next version of iMovie.
MacDevCentral has a good tutorial on how to set up Quicktime Broadcaster, titled Making Movies with the Apple iSight. MacDevCentral is talking about the old, external, FireWire iSight, but their instructions for using Quicktime Broadcaster do work with the new, internal, USB iSight. Scroll down to the section titled “Capturing Video with QuickTime Broadcaster”.
- January 10, 2006: iMovie 2006 supports built-in iSight
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As expected, the version of iMovie announced this morning as part of iLife 06 supports the built-in USB iSight on the iMacs. Most likely this is the same iSight present on the new Intel iMacs and Macbooks. This will make video podcasting using the iSight a whole lot easier.
- Quicktime Broadcaster
- “Combining the power of QuickTime with Apple’s ease of use, QuickTime Broadcaster allows just about anyone to produce a live broadcast event. From a backyard birthday party to a corporate keynote speech, QuickTime Broadcaster allows anyone with an Internet connection to ‘virtually’ attend.”
- Making Movies with the Apple iSight
- “A tutorial on how to make professional-looking QuickTime movies with just an Apple iSight and some very inexpensive software.”
- VODCaster
- “Vodcaster allows you to quickly drag-and-drop audio and video files, and create podcasts and vodcasts to share. Whether you want to put your Podcasts on your own webserver, add them to the iTunes Music Store Podcast Directory, or some other service, VODcaster allows you to enter in all the important information without having to know XML.”
- Quicktime Pro
- “QuickTime Pro is an upgrade to QuickTime that unlocks editing and creation features that enable you to” capture video and audio from a digital video camera, encode and convert to and from dozens of formats, and edit using simple cut, copy and paste functions. Most people won’t want it, because iMovie is all most people need. But it is inexpensive enough.
More Mac OS X tricks
- Command-line mail on OS X: re-alpine and Geektool
- If you do a lot of automated command-line scripts, you probably also generate a lot of mail to /var/mail. OS X only has the mail program built-in, and its GUI mail client hasn’t been able to add simple mail accounts since about OS X 10.2. Alpine can get you a better mail client, and Geektool can provide better notices.
- Stack windows on top of each other
- If you want to stack multiple windows directly on top of each other, it’s easy to do in any well-behaved application, such as Nisus Writer Pro, Safari, Mail, and even older applications like AppleWorks 6 and Microsoft Word X.
- Leopard setuid and passwd file changes
- Leopard Server introduced two major changes to two lesser-used features: setuid root script wrappers and BSD flat file authentication.
- Media duration in Python on Mac OS X
- It turns out to be very easy to get the duration of MP3 files, MPEGs, and other media files on the OS X command line.
- SilverService and Taskpaper
- SilverService is a great little app if you commonly need to repetitiously modify text. Any application that supports services will support running selected text through command-line scripts via SilverService.
- Seven more pages with the topic Mac OS X tricks, and other related pages