Intern Assignments

I just downloaded Audacity for the Mac. I've used it a couple times on a PC. When I lauch it for the first time, it says "Audacity First Run," and asks me to choose a language (with English being the only option). When I click OK, it just hangs, spinning the beachball and never fully launches.

I thought this might have something to do with my account settings, because I don't usually run as full admin. So I logged into the full admin account and launched Audacity and it eventually came up. So what's going on here? Is this normal? Do I have to have full permissions to use Audacity, or is it something else.

Change Log (This blog is being edited till completion):
a. 10 Sept, 2006 - Modified 3.1.4 to 3.1.8 (Error in Oddcast version)
b. Added solution2

Webcasting with Oddcast:
The installation of Oddcast 3.1.8 from oddsock.org proceeded fine, however I had some issues when streaming. I was able to resolve some issues, and am working on the rest.

Issues:
1. Could not find MP3 encoder
2. Could not record and save locally
3. Oddcast seems to be streaming audio from wave-out-mix even if I tell it to stream only from mic or line-in

Solutions:
1. The MP3 encoder was not visible because I did not select LAME encoder when installing Oddcast. By default it selects the Ogg Vorbis encoders but the LAME (for MP3), and AAC encoders have to be selected manually. I had to reinstall Oddcast with LAME selected, after which it worked fine.

My standard “rig” for webcasting is as follows: Hardware: iMac G4 desktop with 1Gb RAM, Logitech USB desktop Mic Software: Nicecast (for broadcasting and recording), Audacity and Garageband (editing), Skype (conference calls), iTunes (music broadcasting via Nicecast) The above rig is what I have found the most dependable to date. Even though my Mac has fairly good system specs, I find that it still tends to struggle when running Skype and Nicecast simultaneously. Using the web-based Skypecast facility definitely helps to reduce the load on system resources.

Yeah! Finally had my first success with Nicecast tonight. I was able to cast into Sandbox B. Seems so easy in hindsight. Cormier promises it gets easier. I believe him. :)

Brad Hicks talked me through my first webcast today. I was able to record 20 minutes of audio using Skype and Nicecast archiving set-up. We used Sandbox A. I also experimented with hijacking iTunes. I was happy with the recording though I will need to be careful that my audio is not recording at a higher level than incoming audio in the Skype source.

I find that Audacity uses a lot of system resources so I was happy to be able to record/archive the audio within Nicecast. I used AIFF as a lossless recording but would like to test AAC and MP3 at another stage.

Thanks go out again for to Brad for giving up some of his Sunday afternoon to talk me through the use of Nicecast.

Hey, guys, Today I listened to the EdTech Talk and had the chance to record it using Audacity, with my regular mic and no extra things, just adjusting the settings according to Jeff´s instructions. Cool!!! Everything went smoothly and I was happy to see that I could record it with no problems, although I had to give up my laptop and work on the other computer... Here are the screens of it. Later on I´ll try to play around with the audio. Thanks for all your help! Carla

The Digital Chalkies and I tried broadcasting on the Sanbox Channels. It worked pretty well!

Things that worked:

We did not use Audacity at this time

Whenever you open Nicecast, you need to check your settings. Often the default settings appear even after you have reset them

Settings:

Source: Choose Audio Device: Choose your Mic.
Info: Name: Put in the name of your Broadcast
Quality:
Preset: Custom
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Sample Rate: 44.100 Khz
Channels: Stereo
Cpu Usage/Quality: Least (up 2 notches)

Go to Window: Show Server
I used Sandbox B so the name I chose is SandBox B