CastCluster

Bug Fix Release

2007-11-25T20:34:00.000-05:00

I finally fixed the app to work with the changes YouTube recently made in their url scheme.

the new zip is available here. If you're using webstart everything should work... you may need to re-trust the certificate as I have moved to a new computer and forgot to move my old cert. so I had to resign all the jar files... if you care :)

Another Bug Fix Release

2007-06-15T15:26:00.000-04:00

No new features... Frankly, this software works great for me, I use it every day and it does exactly what I need. I'm happy to look into new features if any are requested. But given how well it works for me, I'm not overly motivated to spend oodles of time on features no one (including me) is actively looking for.

Anyway, this minor release fixes a bug related to a change Youtube made in their URLs which was preventing the download of FLVs. It also _finally_ fixes a windows bug that was keeping the directory provider from working correctly.

stir and enjoy.

New Release - minor enhancements and bug fixes.

2007-05-14T13:04:00.000-04:00

This release addresses some bugs and compatibility issues. There are also some cosmetic changes like expand/collapse for playlist contents, which should make managing multiple lists much easier.

here are some bullet points:

- new config page layout.. much easier now, i think.
- allow for fetching and conversion of FLV google video.
- can now get google video searches as sources.
- expand/collapse for playlist items.
- now supports MP3s in local dirs
- dir provider now has a "rec" type which will recurse the dir looking for videos.

borrrring... I'm slowly creating some playlist sharing features in the background.. but I'd love to hear your ideas for new features..

New Release: revver and mpeg4 and digg, oh my!

2007-04-19T21:48:00.000-04:00

In the last week, I've had some great feedback! These guys all helped in some way on this release: groovis, josh, larsrasmusson, carlos, staffan, khwaja, km, and anyone else I missed (hopefully I didn't miss anyone).

NOTE: If you have previously used the CastCluster bookmarklet, please delete it and re-add it as you did the first time, the old one is now incompatible with this release.

Anyway... here's the guts of this release:

- You can now grab revver.com videos by video id, and by user name.
- you can now digg, gmail and del.icio.us any page from inside the cast cluster overlay.
- host, port and context path are all configurable.
- new icon that jumps the user to the source video's web page.
- a bunch of minor UI improvements.
- we're now using MPEG4 instead of H264 for better video iPod compatibility.
- added about page.
- several character encoding changes to make life easier for all our non-american friends!
- several fixes for annoying bugs.
- see a more complete list of bullet items here.

If you watched the first tutorial video there have been some changes... Hopefully these screen shots will help new users and old:

Difference between old and new versions..

using CastCluster to digg a url.

using CastCluster to del.icio.us a url.

using CastCluster to gmail a url:

To start CastCluster, use the Web Start launch link on the right =>

I don't really think anything is broken... but if it is... I really want to know about it... jump in and drop me a line in the google group.

I'll make a new video sometime between now and the apocalypse.

Finally, I'd like to add, that a month after initial release, CastCluster has had well over 3000 unique visitors and over 1000 downloads, most of that in the last week. I'm trilled. Thanks!!

Work around for known issue

2007-04-16T19:01:00.000-04:00

Some folks have reported seeing an exception like this:

net.chowda.castcluster.util.CorruptFeedException: com.sun.syndication.io.FeedException: Invalid rss_2.0 feed, missing channel description

This happens to first time users... The workaround is to close CastCluster and start it again, and everything should work fine.. The real fix is in version control and will be in the next release, sometime this week.

CastCluster: Cosmetics and Usability + Video Introduction/Tutorial

2007-04-14T17:11:00.000-04:00

A new release of CastCluster (look in the "about" sidebar for the link to launch with Web Start):

- you can now see more descriptive information about the stuff in your playlists.
- you are no longer required to have your own Youtube developer ID

I made a screencast to show you how I use CastCluster:

(I'm embedding the revver version because it seems like it's a little higher quality than youtube or google)

watch on google video
watch on revver
watch on youtube - (slowest upload process of the three, by far)

Bookmark keys - Firefox extension for assigning keyboard shortcuts to your bookmark tool bar items (including bookmarklets!).

CastCluster: Getting Better All The Time Edition

2007-04-08T18:28:00.000-04:00

I've now figured out how to launch this thing via Java Web Start... If you have Java, you probably have Web Start... click this image to try it out:

Everything else should work basically the same... If you access CastCluster via Web Start, you should get all updates as I release them, so that will be nice... I'm keeping the old download release format around, so if you prefer that, just dowload the binary from the Google Project page as usual.

You still need to have ffmpeg installed.. but it's pretty darn easy.

CastCluster release: Video Quality Edition

2007-04-05T01:51:00.000-04:00

I have tightened the dependency on FFmpeg for all video conversion actions. The configuration now requires a path to the ffmpeg binary but no command line options. What this means to you: CastCluster will now try to maintain the audio and video bit rates of the source material instead of relying on default FFmpeg behavior. All guides and documentation have been updated. If you already have CastCluster installed (?!?!), you will need to go to the config screen and change your FFmpeg config, just remove the command line options and you'll be good to go.

I also tested this thing on windows and was able to get it working... I added a link to the ffmpeg binary I used on the ffmpeg wiki page.

There was also a slight look and feel update... some bug fixes.. and some minor feature additions. Here's a screenshot of me using the bookmarklet to add a Youtube video to a playlist.

CastCluster Release: Now 100% Tomcat Free

2007-04-02T20:48:00.000-04:00

The latest release (available on the google project page) is now a stand-alone application with an embedded web server. I have updated the installation instructions.

Anyway... now it should be pretty easy for people not familiar with Java and webapp deployment to get CastCluster up and running.

This release also has a couple bug fixes.

CastCluster now with infinity% more Google Video.

2007-03-26T21:20:00.000-04:00

I added support for Google Video. No conversion required... MPEG4 directly from the horse.

new release available on the google project page: CastCluster

An interesting note about Google Video... if you use this URL:

http://video.google.com/videofeed?docid=<docid>

and replace <docid> with the docid (looks like: 656193898147576910) for the video you care about... the response is an RSS feed for that single video. This feed contains pointers to flv, avi and mpeg4 formated video... not to mention the swf, thumbnail and descriptions (with and without embedded player).

I may expand on this simple functionality to include getting videos by users and other criteria (no RSS feeds for this stuff) at a later date.. Then I may add the functionality to Drest.

My Apple TV Arrived - New CastCluster Release

2007-03-24T02:37:00.000-04:00

My Apple TV finally showed up, so I started actually trying to move some youtube video through CastCluster and onto my TV... Right away, iTunes complained about pushing my converted videos... wtf? they're quicktime and play fine in iTunes... just the wrong flavor of quicktime, I guess... so I dig deeper... The specs for Apple TV list basically two acceptable formats... H.264 (with AAC audio) and MPEG-4 (with AAC audio).

After several hours of research and screwing around with various shinny bobbles for conversion of flash video, I land back on ffmpeg with x264 and FAAC support compiled in. And as luck would have it ffmpegx is a GUI for ffmpeg on OSX that happens to include the binary for ffmpeg with all required libs compiled in!

The result of all this, is a simplified set of requirements for installing CastCluster (eliminated the need for the flv2mpeg4 utility), youtube videos that make it all the way to my TV that don't look half bad, and a new release of CastCluster (see featured download on google project page).

Locally, I also have eliminated the need for a web container as I have embedded Jetty running... now that's a slick little container! So in the next few days I think there will be another release that can be deployed without Tomcat or some other container.

If you get this thing running (or not) under linux or windows, please let me know... as long as you can get a working binary of ffmpeg, it should work, but I'm really curious.

CastCluster Bookmarklet - Take One

2007-03-18T13:06:00.000-04:00

after reading this article, I wrote a bookmarklet for CastCluster that injects an overlay into your current page. Here's a before and after on YouTube:

it also works for other web pages that have RSS feeds as link elements. here it is on mobuzztv.com:

http://code.google.com/p/castcluster/

alert("CastCluster");

2007-03-17T23:37:00.000-04:00

http://code.google.com/p/castcluster/