Hugo Schotman

PlayLouder Music Service Provider (MSP)

PlayLouder MSP is an Internet Service Provider in the UK (about to launch) that allows and encourages peer-to-peer filesharing. Especially sharing music files!
The cool thing is, that it is actually legal and supported by major music labels.

Here is how they pulled it off: PlayLouder will monitor all traffic between their subscribers. They analyze it and try to recognize the content of the files. Each time a song from one of their partners/ artists/ labels is shared, the rights owner of that song gets a bit of money.

From the FAQ:
How are royalties calculated and ultimately paid to the music rights holders?
PH: "A set proportion of the revenues of the MSP will be set aside as a pool to be split between the various music rights owners. Of this pool a percentage is paid to the record companies and a percentage to the music publishers (via the collection agency MCPS-PRS). The proportion paid to an individual record company will be calculated on a pro rata basis according to the usage within the MSP network of that record company's music."

Cringely: Must see TV... ehh... PBS program

Robert Cringely is creating a series of interviews with people known for their accomplishments in IT/ internet like Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Joy and Tim O'reilly.
The latest interview is with Dave Winer who only talked about podcasting for a few seconds even though he played a big role in its conception.

Check it out.

Logic Express update 7.1.1: problems with M-audio FireWire 1814 fixed?

After a quick test with the Logic Express update 7.1.1 it seems that it won't crash anymore when used with M-audio 1814.
The description of the update says that 'Realtime sample rate conversion' is an area that this update addresses. I suspect that that was causing the problem since the M-audio control panel shows a sample rate of 48000 Hz and Logic Express was set to record at 44100 Hz.

FirstTuesday forum: The road to convergence

Yesterday, FirstTuesday Zürich held a forum called 'The road to convergence'.
I recorded most of it and the keynote speeches will be podcast. (Or should I say podcasted?) Maybe the forum discussion will be made into a podcast as well if it is coherent enough to listen to as a standalone program. (Meaning that it makes sense to listen to without having the context of the conference itself.)

The podcasts will be submitted to ITConversations. Don't expect them to appear right away because the audio preparation/ cleanup will take a while and the ITConversations volunteers have a long queue of programs to work through at the moment. (It's conference season.)

M-Audio Firewire 1814 + Logic Express = crash ! One solution...

Logic Express seems to be the only program that crashes when I try to use it with my recently bought M-Audio Firewire 1814. Whenever I choose the Firewire 1814 in Logic Express it will crash not only the application but the whole computer (which happens very rarely with Mac OS X). From the reading crash log I think that the problem lies with the driver (kernel extension) from m-audio.

While waiting for an updated driver, I am using a similar solution as the 'isolating Skype' solution.

In this case, I created an 8 channel Soundflower device called 'LogicXpress8'. For instructions, see: How to add or change a Soundflower device.
Next I configured LogicExpress to use the new 'LogicXpress8' device.
Audio Hijack Pro is then used to Hijack the actual inputs from the FireWire 1814 and route them to the corresponding channels on the 'LogicXpress8' device.

The new Hijack sessions:


The naming scheme is basically: FW (firewire device input) 34 (channels 3 and 4) - SF (Soundflower device output) 34 (channels 3 and 4).

The Hijack sessions' input settings:


You need to specify the input/ output channels for these sessions.

How to select specific channels for an audio device in Audio Hijack Pro:


A 90 minute test recording session with 8 inputs went flawlessly!

Perhaps the version 7.1 (paid and non-download!!) upgrade of Logic Express will fix the issue. However, I think the m-audio driver is flawed.

One year of podcasting...

Last year I wrote: "In 1 year, Podcasting will:

- Deliver standard radio shows.
- Deliver (short) messages to groups of friends, colleagues, family, members of a club, etc.
- Distribute syndicated radio program items to 'real' radio stations.
- Deliver video clips.
- Deliver status updates."
Read more...

Common people, get working!

;)

Podcastcon UK 2005: success!

Podcastcon UK 2005 was great! I'm really glad I went at the last moment.

I met a lot of nice people: Blugg, Doctoe, Nicole Simon, Milverton Wallace, Neville Hobson to name but a few.
There was a good vibe. Almost like the good old dot-com times ;) The people who were there are mostly the early movers who are truly motivated.

The content of the presentations was valuable. It focussed on non-technical stuff. I think some sharp questions from the audience and heated debates clearly showed that some issues are not quite settled yet. Just as there was huge resistance to anything commercial in the early days of the internet there is a good amount of that with podcasting now.

I want it all!
I want to be able to listen to content that everybody in the world listens to just like I enjoy watching TV series that are popular around the world, like Friends and Sex and the City. I also want to listen to local content. Both commercial and non-commercial. Then I want to listen to content that very few people are interested in across the world. And I want to hear different kinds of music.

There is a place for all sorts of content in podcasts. The creators of all kinds of podcasts, commercial and non-commercial, can learn a lot from each other. Especially now. Some of that happened during Podcastcon and I'm sure links were made so that more will happen.

Links
- Some Flickr impressions.
- A 'live' podcast from the conference. (See show # 240.)
- Podcast Paul's post conference podcast. (No permalink to the show yet.)
- For immediate release post conference podcast.
- Google Podcastcon blog search results

Isolating Skype audio for recording on the Mac with extra Soundflower channels

Recently I tried to use Skype again in a podcasting studio setup that I have described a while ago. It seems that through a couple of upgrades of Skype it has stopped working. The current version of Skype just doesn't seem to want to work with Soundflower (16 ch) as either input or output device anymore.

After a long time searching for causes, circumstances and solutions I came up with the following: Give Skype its own input and output Soundflower devices and use them to 'isolate' Skype as it where.
I created 2 extra soundflower devices with only two channels. I called them 'Skype input' and 'Skype output'.

This is how the settings screen should look afterwards:


A description of how to add Soundflower devices can be found in this post.

To integrate the Skype sound in the recording setup you send the sound that your guest on the other end of the Skype call should hear to the 'Skype input' device and you mix the signal coming out of the 'Skype output' device into your recording.

In the previously mentioned setup, that would result in 2 extra Audio Hijack Pro sessions:


(Sorry, I swapped SF16 and SF2 if you look at the previous setup description. May fix that later.)

Disclaimer: It seems to work but I haven't done exhaustive tests yet...

Off to Podcastcon UK

I'm off to Podcastcon UK.
Looking forward to meeting lots of people :)

Podcasting license & Pricing announced by Dutch collection agency

Rik Lambers at CoCo reports that "The Dutch collection organisation for composers, lyricists and music publishers, BUMA/STEMRA has come up with licensing rates for podcasting."

The contracts have not been written yet, but the rules are defined as of now.

What I would like to know is: what is the jurisdiction of such contracts? The location where the podcast (and thus the music) is being played can be anywhere in the world. The hosting does not have to be in The Netherlands either. What counts? Where the show was recorded?

Will Podcasters just be able to shop for the Country with the lowest/ most favorable licensing?

Original article (In Dutch).

iTunes Podcast playlists: 'Podcast' track property is read-only

Podcast tracks in iTunes 4.9 do not seem to be easily manageable in regular playlists or smart playlists. The AppleScript dictionary for iTunes has been extended with a track property that tells iTunes that a track is a podcast. In that case it handles the track differently. (Just as it already has 'Tracks' (URLs) for internet radio stations.) I wanted to see if I could change a track from podcast to normal by changing this property. Then I read this post on Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes that says it's a read-only property:

New Track Property, Podcast: "New in iTunes 4.9, a new track property called podcast. As you may imagine, this is a read-only boolean that will be true for a podcast track, and false if otherwise."

Maybe it is still possible to write a script that traverses the list of podcasts, copies their actual file location and adds the track again as a regular track?

Who volunteers?

(I'll be at a conference for a week.)

Rocketboom extra: How to subscribe to a podcast with iTunes

Rocketboom has an excellent video guide to working with podcasts in iTunes.

Layout temporarily fixed

I changed the layout of this blog because I noticed that it broke for individual archive pages.

Creating Podcasts with Quicktime 7 Pro

Apple: Creating Podcasts with Quicktime 7 Pro

As predicted.

Drag a PDF into iTunes...

It works.
It won't do anything but just show up at first but if you double click it, it opens in Preview.

eBooks?

(Pressing play doesn't work.)

iTunes is dead, long live iXxx

iTunes and iPhoto are two applications that catalog and organize... eh, well.. files?
You can put pictures into iTunes and you can put audio/ video into iPhoto.

iTunes is supposed to be used for organizing music and podcasts, listen to radio streams, buy music and other media content, burn CD's/ DVD's / ..., synchronize calendar and address data with (portable) devices and more.

This is getting confusing. Especially considering the overlap with iPhoto, mail, iSync and other applications.

If you consider that the latest version of iTunes seems like a 'patched' or unfinished product and the discovery that iTunes supports different kinds of enclosures I predict that there may not come an iTunes version 5!

I think it is time for a new application or set of applications that clean up the experience of organizing your digital life's data.
Apple has already started to consolidate the synchronizing functionality into iTunes. Maybe this was in part done to give PC users some of the capabilities that Mac Os X users have had with iSync but more importantly, iTunes is definitely not just about 'Tunes' anymore!

Perhaps a new application will be created that ties it all together. iOrganize, iLife, iManage... one can speculate.

iTunes is broken

I like iTunes. However, version 4.9 is broken in some ways. I am already looking forward to the next generation application.

What happened is that features were crammed into the existing user interface that made the overall usability suffer.
Here are some examples of thing that are broken in iTunes 4.9.

The status display

Picture 1 - play status

iTunes' status display shows information of the currently playing item among other things. The problem is that it is used for too many different kinds of information. Especially now since iTunes can be doing a lot of things at the same time.

For example:
You are playing something. You see the progress of 'play' in the status display. (See picture 1.) You can navigate through the item by clicking in the timeline. You can change the information that is being displayed by clicking on 'Remaining time:'.

Now iTunes starts updating its podcasting subscriptions.

Picture 2 - updating subscriptions

The result is that you can not see the progress of what's playing anymore. Updating subscriptions can take quite a while and it can't be interrupted.

'iPod Update is complete.' sticks

Picture 3 - iPod update is complete

'iPod update is complete' appears after each update of the iPod. That can happen quite often. (Suppose for example that you have set iTunes to automatically update music, podcasts, calendars and contacts.) By clicking the icon in the status display it switches back to displaying progress but you have to do this manually, every time!
It would be nicer if the 'iPod update is complete' would disappear after a few seconds or if it were displayed somewhere else. (Maybe the developers of iTunes can take a look at Apple's Mail application.)

Cancel!
The user should be able to undo an action or cancel while in progress. When iTunes starts updating your podcast subscriptions it can't be stopped.
At work I have to connect to the internet through a proxy server. The proxy was temporarily not available. Then iTunes started updating subscriptions. For each individual subscription it asked for my proxy username and password. There was no way to cancel the update process. I had to either press cancel more than 100 times or kill the application. After restarting iTunes you have to find where you left and hope it doesn't happen again...

I like more than one podcast
One podcast. Stop.
After. Playing. One. Podcast. You. Have. To. Select. The. Next. One. And. Press. Play. Again. This. Is. Especially. Annoying. On. An. iPod. While. Walking. Through. Town. Or. When. Driving. Imagine. Wanting. To. Listen. To. Several. Short. Podcasts. In. A. Row.

About.com article on where to put your RSS files

About.com has an article called "How to Upload the .MP3 File, RSS File, and Validate It".
It covers a question that many beginning podcasters are struggling with: where do I put the files? (RSS and other files)

This particular article is part of series that covers creating and publishing podcasts called "How to Create Your Own Podcast - A Step-by-Step Tutorial".

Summary of the topics covered:
1. How to record your audio and save it to an .mp3 file.
2. How to create an RSS file which holds the “directions” for sending your file when a user’s program like iPodder requests it.
3. How to write the “directions” that are inside the RSS file.
4. How to upload the RSS “feed” and your .mp3 file.
5. How to validate that the file is written correctly and will send the file correctly.

The PDF Enclosure in iTunes

This is what Feedburner did with a PDF file in my weblog feed:

<enclosure url="http://www.hugoschotman.com/studiosetup/ZLVoIPStudio-SysDiag.pdf" length="23210" type="application/pdf" />

The original tag that caused this enclosure to be created:

<a href="http://www.hugoschotman.com/studiosetup/ZLVoIPStudio-SysDiag.pdf">

The result of the enclosure looks like this in iTunes:


(See also my earlier post.)

Test 2

This is a test link...