Stilgherrian » cam twist

Episode 28 on time, but chaotic

Stilgherrian — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:41:27 +0000

Stilgherrian Live episode 28, the Totally Natural Edition, is now online for your viewing pleasure.

The audio problems which had plagued us recently were gone, and we started on time. The talk flowed smoothly through the first part of the program, and it was maybe 15 minutes before we hit our first technical glitch. I must find a way to present images in Cam Twist that allows me to preview the picture that’s about to go to air!

For the second week running, the US Federal Reserve (pictured) was the clear winner of “Cnut of the Week”, beating nominees John McCain, Sydney Anglican archibishop Dr Peter Jensen and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

I failed to make contact with Nathanael Boehm to talk about the big day of geekery in Sydney, including the Web Directions South conference — I wasn’t watching my Twitter messages during the program — but First Dog on the Moon phoned in again and that filled an awkward gap when I completely forgot about “Stilgherrian’s Street View”. That’s a shame, because that would have triggered more of a rant. About clueless taxi drivers.

The after-show chat included some interesting thoughts about the nature of the program, and they’ll be reflected next week. Stay tuned.

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Links for 10 May 2008 through 12 May 2008

del.icio.us — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:43:02 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 10 May 2008 through 12 May 2008, generated almost-automatically:

How To Stream A Conference In 2 Minutes- Easy! | Ustream: Tutorial on how to live stream a conference. Focuses on conferences where there are already professional videographers providing a switched feed.
Streaming Video: Creating a Professional uStream Show | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing: More tutorial material on using Cam Twist and Ustream.
Chris Pirillo Live - 06/06/2007 04:44 | Ustream: Chris explains how he uses Cam Twist and other software to create the variations on his live video feed.
Using Skype With Audio Hijack Pro: It's actually a tutorial for Mac owners on how to get our Skype calls into your Ustream live programs using Audio Hijack Pro.
Unibrain Fire-i digital camera: Apple's old Firewire-based iSight cameras were so good that they don't hit the second-hand market often and when they do they're not cheap. Here's an alternative.
Platypus venom linked to pain relief | University of Sydney: New research released today in the scientific research journal Nature reveals links between platypus venom and its potential benefits for advancing pain relief and antibiotic medication.
How to Record a Podcast | MacDevCenter.com: This O'Reilly article by Glenn Fleishmann explains how to use Soundflower and Audio Hijack Pro to remove unwanted audio monitoring delays when recoding from Skype. Somewhere in here is the solution for my similar problem with Cam Twist / Ustream.

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Well that was a strange little disaster!

Stilgherrian — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:08:59 +0000

The “live recording” of Stilgherrian Live Alpha Episode 1 didn’t exactly go according to plan. You can see the resulting video now, but I’ll write up some notes during the day.

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Stilgherrian Live Alpha: a program brief

Stilgherrian — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:28:02 +0000

Decided! The first episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha will be “recorded live” on the Internet this Thursday 8 May at 9.30pm Sydney time. Oh shit! That’s tomorrow!

I won’t repeat what I’ve already written about my plans [1, 2]. This post presents a Program Brief — so I can clarify my thinking as much as anything else — and gathers a few recent thoughts. I’m intending to make the entire process transparent in the immodest hope that someone might find it useful.

Aims

Continue my process of moving from doing hands-on technical work to media production, executive production and consulting.
Build upon the “Stilgherrian as a blogger” brand to establish the core personal media global microbrand of “Stilgherrian as a presenter”, around which I can gather other projects.
Establish a regular audience who can become the core of my 1000 True Fans.
Develop and document production workflows so that we can produce similar programs quickly and cheaply.
Experiment with and settle upon a suite of hardware, software and services which works for me in this context.

See, there is method to my madness!

Program Brief

Title: Stilgherrian Live Alpha. Stilgherrian Live is the primary name, and will continue to be used for my personal live programs. The Alpha emphasises that this is pilot material. It will be dropped as soon as we’re happy that we’re moving to a beta product, i.e. all of the components have been individually tested. This may or may not take more than the initial 8 episodes.

In a nutshell: The world from the perspective of a Sydney-based geek. The program will naturally reflect my worldview and interests. However talking to people who have different worldviews will help clarify my own and, with luck, create interesting dialog.

Target Audience: Anyone who’s curious about the world they live in, with a geeky slant. Eventually I’d like to present a general talk show. However I currently work on geek stuff, and the potential audience is primarily geeks. Since I want to build a strong audience initially I need to take that into account.

Format: 8 x 30-minute video programs. The exact format is still to be decided, but I’ve identified some possible elements which I’ll talk about later.

Schedule: Thursdays 9.30pm from 8 May 2008. Live streaming will begin before the program start time for technical tests, and to give the “true fans” a behind-the-scenes view. Recording will start at 9.30pm sharp. Streaming will continue after the live program recording ends so that we can discuss technical issues.

This schedule may change. Tuesday nights probably offer a better audience, and I may need to work around other commitments. Plus there’s our Eurovision thing on Sunday 25 May.

Technical Plan

Live Broadcast & Recording: This is the set-up I’ll be using for the first episode — pretty much what I have lying around. I may upgrade various elements as I go along.

Camera: Logitech Webcam Pro 4000 USB. It’s pretty crappy, sure, but my aim in the first episode is to assemble a broadcast chain, now win an award for cinematography. It will be replaced by the built-in iSight when I get my new Macbook Pro.
Microphone: Logitech ClearChat Pro headset.
Video Mix: CamTwist.
Audio Mix: Audio Hijack Pro?
Video Monitoring: On-screen.
Audio Monitoring: Logitech ClearChat Pro headset.
AV streaming: Ustream.tv.
Primary Recording: Ustream.tv.
Backup Recording: Snapz Pro X?

Podcasting: The program will be podcast as soon as possible after broadcast.

Ustream: Automatic after recording.
YouTube: Automatic cross-post from Ustream.
Stilgherrian.com: Download after broadcast, do a top & tail edit, and post using podPress.
iTunes: Automatic cross-post from podPress.

Talkback

Yes, I will be taking calls. Initially this will be via Ustream’s system, so you’ll need a Ustream account. However I plan to take voice calls via Skype — which in turn will allow be to use SkypeIn to take calls from any phone line.

So, how does all that sound?

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Creating podcasts on a Mac, Part 1

Stilgherrian — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:27:24 +0000

Podcasting is now far, far easier and cheaper even than I’d imagined — even for complex productions. I’ve been experimenting. Here’s a very quick summary of what I’ve learned so far about doing this on a Mac, my platform of choice.

Now if your podcast is just you talking then you can take a much simpler approach. Read no further.

However this investigation was inspired by the “live recording” of the 2 Web Crew. Having an audience contributing comments and questions via text chat created an interesting dynamic — similar to talkback radio but less formal. I wanted to explore further.

The technical challenge is combining all of the audio elements before the audio or video stream is piped up to Ustream or wherever. There’s probably quite a few ways to do this, but my starting-point was The UStream Tool Kit — which also covers Windows.

For an audio podcast, you can use either Ambrosia Software’s WireTap Studio or Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro to prepare the original sound. You can use a microphone for one voice or something like Skype or (yes, I am paying attention, Simon Rumble) Google Talk to record online conversations with others. Both tools can mix in audio from any running application — sound effects and music from iTunes, for example — and both can stream the audio to uStream or Justin.tv or wherever.

Once your program is recorded, you can use any number of audio editing tools to clean it up and remix it before uploading it as a “permanent” podcast. Audacity is a free open source multi-channel audio editor for Windows, OS X and Linux.

For a video podcast, you can of course record vision on any digital video camera or webcam and edit it in any video editing application. However an amazing free tool called Cam Twist turns your Mac into a complete live video mixing desk.

Cam Twist has camera switching and fades, text overlays, special effects, drop in pre-recorded movies and more. There’s even things which are possible only on a computer, like automatically turning a Flickr photo set into a slideshow, or running a text crawler across the bottom of the screen which is pulled in from an RSS feed. Again, you can use Ustream or Justin.tv to involve a live audience, and even route it through Skype to involve remote participants.

Cam Twist doesn’t do audio mixing, but you could run one of the audio tools in parallel, or have a second Mac doing the audio mix, or route the signal to an external audio mixer and then bring it back in. which approach you take depends on the complexity of your mixing needs.

The video in Cam Twist is standard “video chat” 320 x 240 pixels. However as computers become more powerful and bandwidth increases, Cam Twist or its successors will surely handle broadcast-quality material.

The final step is publishing the podcast and its associated RSS feeds. The simplest method is probably to use WordPress as your blogging platform, and add the podPress plug-in to deal with everything else.

podPress uploads and inserts your media file (audio or video) into the blog post with a player for formats including MP3, RM, OGG, MP4, MOV, QT, FLV, ASF, WMV and AVI. It automatically generates feeds for RSS2, iTunes and ATOM and BitTorrent RSS, and automatically submits the new episode to podcast directories including iTunes, Yahoo! Podcasts, Podcast Alley, Podcast Ready and Blubrry.

OK, that quick overview skipped a lot of important details. However each tool has comprehensive tutorials, and my main aim is to record my thinking as I develop my own podcast toolkit.

Tonight I’ll produce a test video podcast as a proof-of-concept exercise. Stay tuned. Details posted later today.

I’m not expecting too many problems. When I was with ABC Radio and elsewhere, I produced some fairly complex outside broadcasts. One involved tying together a program from Port Adelaide where one presenter was up in a lighthouse and the other was 300m away on a wharf without line of sight, and we had to incorporate live crosses to a cricket match at Adelaide Oval, a rowing race in Launceston, Tasmania, and of course the news on the hour. Oh, and did I mention we took talkback calls and had a live band? This is a doddle.