How To Use Your Mac To Make A Pro TV Podcast

The Mac is a perfect platform for quality video and audio production on a budget. Add a decent HD video camera to your Mac and iMovie and you can create quality video.

Even better video can be created on a Mac with Final Cut Express or Studio. Or, depending on your view of value, use BoinxTV to create superb quality video Podcasts faster than Final Cut or iMovie.

BoinxTV is so good that nearly any Mac user can create a professional level video Podcast in minutes, complete with special effects, multiple video layers, chroma key, and much more.

At a very basic level, creating decent video Podcasts on a Mac is easy, right? Point your video camera at yourself, turn it on, talk about something you like for 15 minutes or so, turn off the camera, store the video in iMovie, add some titles and special effects.

The resulting video is, well, decent, though the quality will depend greatly on camera, lens, audio, and skill level of the producer.

Or, for $199 to $1,299, Mac users can add all the production capability you could dream of with Final Cut Express or Final Cut Studio, the former an incredibly competent linear video editor with special effects, the latter a superbly crafted suite of audio and video production tools.

There are issues at both ends. Modern video production is complex, even for Podcasts. Final Cut’s learning curve can be step for those not experienced in video production.

As good as iMovie is at a base level, creating a professional looking video Podcast can be an exercise in frustration, more so since Apple dumbed down iMovie.

So, what if you want to create a classy, professional video Podcast—complete with multiple video sources, interview screens, on screen text, scrolling credits, video painting, and other effects, but don’t have the money for Final Cut Studio, and don’t have the year needed to master the basics of Final Cut Express?

Enter BoinxTV. We’ve long been fans of the Boinx Fotomagico slide show producer. It takes your digital photos and creates video slide shows of priceless and professional quality, all with point and click simplicity.

BoinxTV does the same kind of thing for video production—high quality, professional effects, live production capability—a veritable television production studio on your Mac. Without the expense or learning curve associated with Final Cut.

Whatever your video production needs, short of video production for a television show or movie, BoinxTV fits. Educators will love the ability to create complex video productions on the fly. As in live.

Video Podcasts can be created in not much more time than it takes to create the video—as in live production, switching from one video source to another while the camera records the basic action.

Most of the special effects we see in television news can be dropped into BoinxTV’s video layers in seconds—lower third, chroma key, crawlers, talking head interviews.

The interface to BoinxTV is tantalizingly simple and intuitive, yet hides the complexity with piles video layers one on the other to create a finished, polished video production, recorded live if need be.

Add text, change colors, change sizes, add other graphic elements in different layers. Control the layers in drag and drop fashion, each with specific controls.

OS X comes with some powerful video capabilities built in. One of them is Quartz Composer, an environment which allows Mac software developers to create complex animations. BoinxTV uses all those Mac audio and video tools.

Apple’s Core Video filters can be applied, live in real time, to any video source.

To shorten the video production process, BoinxTV comes with a bunch of video production templates. Sports. TV. News. Product videos. Those create the starting point for video production.

What about output? Everything you record in BoinxTV gets recorded to disk as a QuickTime movie file, perfect for broadcast or Podcast, DVD or CD, or even a webcast.

BoinxTV is one of the slickest video production tools I’ve ever seen on a Mac, but it comes with a few issues. Yes, it’s easy to use and creating some very complex, layered video productions doesn’t take much time.

However, BoinxTV is priced at $499, which is considerably more than Apple’s highly capable Final Cut Express at $199. However, BoinxTV has an ad supported model for $199, which parks a Boinx ad on each video.

You also need a late model Intel Mac, preferably one with a more high powered video card such as an iMac, MacPro, MacBook Pro, though the newer aluminum MacBook models can handle some video production.

For high end production with multiple cameras, chroma key greenscreens, and larger, 30fps video, a Mac Pro is recommended.

Other than the price of entry, I’m impressed. I don’t get too gee whiz with Mac applications these days, but BoinxTV falls into that category; more so if you understand the complexity of video production and what you get for what you pay.

Literally, any decently powered new Mac can become a production studio capable of recording live video productions, just like the evening TV news. Sweet.

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