The Apple developers working on Podcast Producer have done an amazing job in making the setup extremely easy in Podcast Producer 2. Where you had to configure all the different services in Podcast Producer 1 yourself, you can be up and running with Podcast Producer 2 with just a few clicks.
Lets start with a clean server install, you will need to have a fixed IP address and a DNS hostname. This is important, you will need a fully qualified domain name for your server with a reverse record. If you don't have this in your network already, you will need to set this up on your Podcast Producer server. I cannot stress this enough: If DNS is not perfect, you WILL run into trouble.
I am assuming that you have an IP address and a hostname supplied by an existing DNS server i.e. 192.168.1.10 / podcast.mycompany.com
Go through the installation and basic setup steps of your newly installed OS X Server. Don't select any services to configure from the wizard, not even Open Directory. Just give it the IP (+network info) and hostname, thats all. Once you have the server running, install any update that might be waiting for you. This is the best time to bring your system completely up to date, you can't mess things up yet.
Before we start configuring the server, we are going to check if the DNS records are working like they should. In Terminal.app type the following:
>hostname (this should return http://podcast.mycompany.com)>host podcast.mycompany.com (this should return 192.168.1.10)and
>host 192.168.1.10 (this should return podcast.mycompany.com)Of course you will be using your own IP and domain name for this. If these results don't match, stop here! Do not go any further, because you will run into trouble later. Fix your DNS settings and make sure everything is ok before you continue. As an alternative to these commands, you could also use the built-in changeip tool to perform these checks:
sudo changeip -checkhostnameOnce you are sure that the DNS results are OK, you can continue. Now comes the fun and easy part, setting up Podcast Producer. Thats right! No setting up Open Directory or Xgrid madness, just straight to the fun bits. Open up Server Admin and go to the Server > Settings > Services Tab. Select 'Podcast Producer' and hit 'Save'. Now the Podcast Producer service is in the services list and you can select it there. Select the 'Overview' tab and click the button 'Configure Podcast Producer'.
Going through these steps in the wizard will setup an Open Directory service, Xgrid, NSF and Podcast Producer.
Open Directory
If no Open Directory server is configured, the Podcast Producer setup wizard will automatically configure one. It will use the information it gets from DNS about its hostname (see, I told you this was important) to setup Open Directory and Kerberos. It will add a user to the directory that will be used for xgrid. All tasks performed by Podcast Producer in Xgrid will be run with the rights of this user. Kerberos is also setup as part of this step and it is used to authenticate the Xgrid clients. Without Kerberos, Podcast Producer will start, but jobs will fail.
Xgrid
The server is configured as an Xgrid controller AND agent. This way you will have an Xgrid cluster with at least one agent in it. The wizard also configures an NFS share and adds an automount record to the directory info. This used to be a bit of a pain on Leopard Server, but know it happens automagically.
Podcast Producer
Finally Podcast Producer is set up, with as default path for the Shared Filesystem /Library/PodcastProducer/Shared. The Xgrid and xgriduser info is configured and the service is started. Now you have a running Podcast Producer server
Your first recording
You can now use Podcast Capture on any Snow Leopard system to make or submit a recording. Lets first make a user on the server that you will use for submitting podcasts. Open Workgroup Manager and make sure that you are connected to the LDAP directory
Add a new user and fill in the shortname, Full Name and password. For good measure, also fill in the user's email address in the Info tab.
To make a recording, open Podcast Capture on a computer that has an iSight or camera attached and is connected to the same network as the server. You can find Podcast Capture in /Applications/Utilities. Any iSight, DV-camera or UVC-compatible USB camera will do. Alternatively, any camera that has it's own Quicktime plugin (like the Epiphan *2USB framegrabbers) should also work. Give Podcast Producer the server address and the credentials of the user you just added to the directory. You can now make your recording. When you are creating test recordings (to test a workflow for example) it is important to make sure the recordings are at least 10 seconds long. The default workflows use an intro and if your movie is too short the transitions between the intro and main content will fail.
Binding a camera
A bound camera can be controlled (start/pauze/stop) from another computer using Podcast Capture, the command-line tool pcast or the Podcast Producer web interface. Binding a camera sets up a trust between the client computer and the Podcast Producer server. You will need admin credentials for the client computer and the server to be able to bind it to the server.
Open Podcast Capture and go to Preferences > Audio/Video. Select the 'Start Sharing...' button and give your local credentials, after that fill in a camera name and server address/credentials and select 'Start Sharing'. Now the client computer is bound to the server and you can select it as a camera in Podcast Capture or the Podcast Producer web interface. Podcast Capture does not have to be running on the remote camera computer.
Monitoring Xgrid jobs
In the /Applications/Server folder on your server you will find the application Xgrid Admin. You can use this application to monitor the state of your Xgrid cluster and jobs. Once you have authenticated with Directory Administrator credentials select your Xgrid (there should be only one) and you will be able to see a list of xgrid agents connected to the xgrid. By default Xgrid Admin only reports half the amount of processors available then are in the system. This is to regulate the amount of tasks that are run simultaneously on each system. So don't be alarmed that Xgrid Admin shows only two available processors in a 4 core machine, this is by design.
The status of the Xgrid agents are indicated by colors:
Colorless = controller or agent is offline
Green = agent is working
Yellow = agent is available but not running
Red = agent is unavailable
Under the tab 'jobs' you will be able to see a list of all jobs in the queue. All jobs that are running or failed will stay in this list, the jobs that succeeded will disappear from the list after a short time.
The status of the Xgrid jobs are also color coded:
Colorless = job is pending
Gray = job is submitting
Green = job is running
Red =job is failed or canceled
Blue = job is complete
Double-clicking on a job in the list reveals a list of tasks that have been submitted to the grid as part of that job. When you are troubleshooting a failed job, this will show you which task of the job failed. You can get more detailed information about a failed job from the logs. Podcast Producer 2 writes out a special log when a job failed in /Library/Logs/pcastserverd/DiagnosticReports/. In the log file Podcast Producer writes all sdout and stderr returned by the tasks that ran as part of the job. This will hopefully give you a good idea as to why the job failed.