[chowda]

I have been working on a project, called CastCluster, to use with my Apple TV. It currently can turn individual videos, user videos, and user favorites from YouTube into Apple TV friendly podcasts feeds... they update when YouTube does. It can also add Google Videos or files/dirs from your local disk to that same podcast feed...

the google project is here: castcluster - Google Code

and the blog is here: CastCluster

It has been downloaded a few times, but I haven't heard from anyone... so for all I know, it only works for me... but it's been a great source of fresh and FREE content for me.

feedback and support requests welcome.

[Visnaut]

Sounds like a cool idea!

This is similar to an idea I had once to create a php script that would generate photocasts of a given folder of images, for usage on a home media server.

[chowda]

Thanks, Visnaut... I haven't looked at the photocast stuff, but once I'm happy with the video content, I'll be working on music and photo features, I think.

Watched a couple hours worth of Google Video and Youtube content last night on my apple TV... it was awesome.

[mdc]

Nice idea. I'll try this out tonight. The only problem that I can see is that YouTube and Google Video quality is awful on my PowerBook, scaled toe 55" is horrendous. So I'm not too sure how often I'll use this.

[chowda]

Originally Posted by mdc 

Nice idea. I'll try this out tonight. The only problem that I can see is that YouTube and Google Video quality is awful on my PowerBook, scaled toe 55" is horrendous. So I'm not too sure how often I'll use this.

I watched a couple hour long documentaries from Google Video last night and it looked as good or better than my crappy local cable provider's SD channels. It's certainly not HD content... but it is content...

mostly I use it to snag **** I know I want to watch eventually but don't have time to watch right now... like Richard Dawkins' God Delusion.. I grabbed that a few days ago and now it's been pulled from GV, but I still have it on my Apple TV, ready for my watching pleasure.

I was surprised at the relative quality of even the converted youtube videos... but for me it's less about quality and more about convenience... I use my bookmarklet to quickly tag videos, then I can just forget about them as CastCluster and iTunes handle the fetching and conversion for me.

Anyway... enough pitching... please do try it out, and let me know if you have any problems.

[chowda]

I've done quite a few updates to this project... it's now much easier to run, and I've added a video tutorial:


CastCluster