The avconvert command is a new addition in OS X Lion that allows administrators to quickly and easily convert video from one format to another using presets for video conversion. The presets are mostly common Apple formats tuned to specific devices. In its simplest form, avconvert uses a preset, a source and then an output to convert the source to the output using the preset to define the format to use for conversion. A useful preset is the 640×480 one. To convert this using this idea: /usr/bin/avconvert --preset Preset640x480 --source /Convert/test.mov --output Converted/test.mov While some of the presets are pretty self explanatory, I haven’t gone through them all to see…
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Deleting a Podcast in Podcast Producer
In an earlier post I looked at querying feeds and removing objects from Podcast Producer in a somewhat broad manner. To delete a single podcast (not a feed), you need to first find the ID for the podcast, then delete the corresponding podcast bundle (pdb). Removing assets is one of the only processes with regards to Podcast Producer that isn’t intuitive, and it’s just waiting for someone to wrap these steps into a nice pretty GUI… To find the ID of the podcast, first let’s query the sql database for the title: sqlite3 /Volumes/pcp/PodcastProducer/Server/db.sqlite3 'SELECT * FROM episodes' | grep "TITLE" Note the date and the ID (the big long…
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Stupid Podcast Producer Tricks
The document handler in Podcast Producer has been exposed to the command line in the form of a tool called document2images (located in the /usr/libexec/podcastproducer directory), which takes a pdf and converts it into a set of tiff files. In its most basic iteration the documents2images tool simply inputs a document and then outputs a couple of tiff files per page of that document. 15 pages will typically net you 30 tiffs and an xml output (not that you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again very easily). When you use document2images you will need to specify the pdf using the –document option, the xml file to output using the…
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Podcast Producer Error Codes
When you are using Podcast Producer, whether you are looking in your log files on a server in Server Admin or whether you are looking in Console on a client, if there are any problems submitting jobs you should find a numeric reference code. The meaning can be cryptic, although I’ll try a little bit here: -500 = Camera agent went offline -501 = Podcast Producer agent timed out -502 = Agent failed to communicate -600 = Tunnel protocol mismatch -601 = Tunnel could not connect -602 = Tunnel timed out -603 = Tunnel failed 1 = Internal camera agent is failing 3 = Capture failed to run 4 =…
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pcastaction verbs
pcastaction comes with a number of verbs, each specific to a type of automation that can be used in Podcast Producer. These include: unpack – extract a folder archive before running the automation shell – run a command or shell script preflight – run a script before the automation postflight – run a script after an automation encode – input a standard video file and then output a video file using a different codec annotate – annotate a files metadata qceffect – run a custom Quartz Composer composition against a file watermark – insert a watermark into an indicated video file title – provide a title for the resultant file…
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Podcast Producer Command Line
At the end of the day, Podcast Producer is a fairly straight forward solution. You have a nice little GUI application that users can use to publish Audio, Video, Screencasts or files to an rss feed. Using that rss feed you can then integrate that data with a number of other solutions, including those I’ve discussed over the last few days. You can also use Podcast Producer to remotely fire up bound cameras and begin Podcast Producer workflows, which means you don’t even need to be at a conference, in a shareholders meeting or in a classroom to capture video from cameras. But the real power and flexibility to Podcast…