The first in a new series of articles about Podcast Producer has been published. These are for the Apple Developer site, and I’m hoping that they will dig deeper into the workings and management of the system which is part of Leopard Server. The first article, Podcast Producer: Anatomy of a Workflow, looks at the main system within Podcast Producer for turning your podcasts into published works, the Workflow. From the intro:
Podcast Producer, an integrated part of Leopard Server, provides a complete publishing and management system for audio and video podcasts. Your users can submit raw material into the Podcast Producer system and have the files automatically processed into a suitable format so that the podcast can be published to iTunes and Leopard’s built-in blog services.Workflows are the cornerstone of the Podcast Producer system. Workflows define the process to convert the incoming raw material into the final content, including translating and recoding audio and video for different targets, and publishing and creating the environments, blog pages and other materials that make your podcast available to a variety of different targets. Because the workflow instructions are independent of the content, you can publish podcasts repeatedly using the same workflow to achieve consistently high quality results.Understanding the anatomy of a workflow, from the contents and definition of the workflow environment, through to the methods of interaction with other components in Leopard Server such as Xgrid, will help you plan new workflows and organize and structure your Podcast Producer environment more effectively.In this article, designed for Podcast Producer administrators, we will examine Podcast Producer from the perspective of a submitted job. By examining the contents and processing of a workflow, Podcast Producer administrators will learn about the significance of the different elements, and how they work together to help produce the final podcast or video cast.