Dynamic Ad Insertion Issues Continue
If you’re outside the US, you’re no doubt familiar with podcast hosts saying “we’ll be right back…” and expecting an advert only for nothing to happen and the podcast to start right back up again. That’s dynamic ad insertion at “work”. See this thread from Marco:
In running a business, it’s still so easy to get distracted by how I compare to other podcast production / editing companies. I look at a portfolio and think “Why can’t I do that?” and then I remember to look at their /about/ page and see 30+ people listed. 😆
iOS 16’s ability to press and copy a person or thing from a photo is pretty magical. Even my new profile pic works pretty well. 😆
Re: public iOS 16 beta. If I’m not worried about my iPhone having bugs but am about macOS, can I install the iOS public beta to mess around with it even if I don’t install the macOS 13 public beta?
Instagram now allows you to stream with 3rd party apps (OBS, Ecamm, etc.) to Instagram Live. Details here.
It was just going to be nachos for supper. But then I remembered we had leftover pulled pork in the fridge so now it’s fancy nachos. 🤤
#StrangerThings is the only show in recent memory that makes me want to do that quick run up the stairs after turning all the lights out because something is chasing after me. 😆 😱
Happy “still have internet access but might have a tornado” hour is here. And one way or another, I’m going to see Thor: Love and Thunder tonight.
As a Christian kid of the late 80’s / early 90’s, I love reading the non-religious perspective on things like skateboarding in church parking lots. 😆
Podcasts + Music in App Experience
I’m so glad Apple decided to split apart Podcasts into it’s own app. Initially I was skeptical that it made sense - why not have podcasts in the same “store” as where everyone was already going for music or movies or TV? It’s all media.
Now 3 years later it really looks like it was the right choice, at least from a user experience perspective. Obviously I have no insider knowledge on usage stats from Spotify or Apple, but Rachel Smith’s experience sums up the sentiment I keep hearing from Spotify users:
In the blessed pre-Spotify Podcasts days, I was a huge Spotify fan. I was paying for a subscription as soon as it was available in my region. Now I curse Spotify whenever they take away podcast content I previously enjoyed: Brené Brown, basically all of Gimlet. I say “take away” because I refuse to use their shitty excuse for a podcast-app-shoved-in-a-music-player that has made my once-great-music-player experience worse! Damn you Spotify, I won’t do it.
Like I said, without actual user data it’s impossible for me to say “Spotify’s approach is economically worse than Apple’s”, and I don’t know what kind of testing Spotify is doing to determine if a separate app would generate more revenue, but it certainly feels like it’s a better experience over all.
This is my kind of gamification of fitness: You Can Walk the Oregon Trail With Apple Arcade App Update That Integrates With Health App
Lossless Audio or Video Editing
I’ve long been a fan of Rogue Amoeba’s Fission software for lossless audio editing. I use it if I forget to cut off the end of a podcast’s MP3 file, or cut out a piece of audio that I can make a clean cut of without worrying about the rest of the edit. Or to split large audio files into smaller ones.
When Fission saves it back to an MP3, it does it in a lossless way. (Rogue Amoeba has a support doc explaining how they do it if you’re curious.
Thanks to a client - Stephen Shaw over at CodePen Radio, I learned about Lossless Cut, an open source app for that:
…aims to be the ultimate cross platform FFmpeg GUI for extremely fast and lossless operations on video, audio, subtitle and other related media files.
To try it out, I pulled up a video of a recent Learn with Jason episode I had edited and added chapter markers to for YouTube. With a click of a button I could export all the chapter segments into individual video files which would make for really easy social media clips, or a library of videos on a specific topic that could be smashed together into a compilation video.
And it took less than 5 minutes to export all of them out of the original video. Slick!
Lossless Cut is free to use if you download it from the GitHub repo - look for the one labelled ‘LosslessCut-mac-x64.dmg’ - or you can buy it from the Mac App Store as well.
The differences between the GitHub download vs Mac App Store shouldn’t be a big deal for most people, and may actually be the more stable version of the app if you’re using it for critical work related editing.
They have exactly the same in-app features, except for a few platform limitations. Apple doesn’t allow opening VOB files with App Store apps. Apple App Store apps need to prompt for output directory. LosslessCut version in the App Stores is a few versions behind the GitHub version, because I want to be sure that the new versions work perfectly before releasing in the App Stores. GitHub version can contain new, untested features and may contain some bugs.