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”.
- 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 macOS tricks
- 42 Astoundingly Useful Scripts and Automations for the Macintosh
- MacOS uses Perl, Python, AppleScript, and Automator and you can write scripts in all of these. Build a talking alarm. Roll dice. Preflight your social media comments. Play music and create ASCII art. Get your retro on and bring your Macintosh into the world of tomorrow with 42 Astoundingly Useful Scripts and Automations for the Macintosh!
- Save clipboard text to the current folder
- Use the Finder toolbar to save text on the current clipboard directly to a file in the folder that Finder window is displaying.
- Avoiding lockFocus when drawing images in Swift on macOS
- Apple’s recommendation is to avoid lockFocus if you’re not creating images directly for the screen. Here are some examples from my own Swift scripts. You can use this to draw text into an image, and to resize images.
- What app keeps stealing focus?
- I’ve been having a problem on Mac OS X with something stealing focus. Here’s how to at least find out what that something is.
- Enable AirPrint for all connected Mac printers
- I have an iPad and an old workhorse of a printer, an HP 1012 LaserJet, connected to my iMac. I almost never need to print from the iPad, but when I do, handyPrint works.
- 14 more pages with the topic macOS tricks, and other related pages
Remember: Trump reassures crowd after assassination attempt fails. (read more…)