Übercaster 1.0

Reviewed by Wayne Lefevre

Introduction

Übercaster has recently just come out of beta. Version 1.0 was finally released just after we went to press for the April issue, and so far it’s been a very smooth, and for the most part, bug free release. For those who have never heard of Übercaster before, it is podcasting producing software, pure and simple. In the words on their website, “Leave your garage and feel at home. Übercaster has been made with podcaster's needs in mind. With its versatile options you may record your show the way you're used to and profit from Übercaster's advanced cut and release tools. But you may also take advantage of Übercaster's ground breaking live audio recording. Auto ducking, effects, chapters for enhanced podcasts, ID3 tags, album cover art, mp3/AAC/AIFF encoding - you name it. It's all there. Seamlessly integrated.”

Getting Started

Installation was simple with a normal drag and drop into the Applications folder. It comes with an easy to read PDF for the installation of the other folder it comes with, an Extras Folder. The Extras folder containes the PleasantConnect installer package that installs Übercaster’s drivers for recording Skype, iChat and Gizmo. It also gives you the option to install Smart Crash Reports from Unsanity, and sample AppleScripts.

Using the Software

I’ve been using Übercaster for several months, and was impressed with it the first time I used it. It’s really like no other podcasting software out there, no matter what the cost.

First things first. I would suggest, since it is different than other podcasting software, to visit Übercaster website and watch at least the first, if not all, the available screencasts. Even if you wind up not using the application, they are well done and will teach you a lot about the product, and it will very quickly get you up to speed on the new type of workflow.

Speaking of a new type of workflow, there are four main sections of Übercaster. The first part is the preparation layer. You are basically presented with a blank slate, with nothing but a microphone panel. On this layer you can organize your whole podcast. In the mic panel, you select which microphone you would like to use, enter a custom title, color and keyboard shortcut. Switching to the Audio button you control your mics gain, pan, and channel. Here is where you also can select to monitor your output. By switching to Effects, you can select to Enhance the mic. Though the enhancement the mic goes through is pretty much shrouded in mystery, it can be controlled with a slider and obviously has to do with compression, gain, gating, reverb maybe and other bits of magic. You can also apply any number of standard AU plug in options.

For your podcast you might have some intro music, an interview, some comments and some outro music. It now becomes as simple as dragging and dropping each clip onto your blank “palette.” Each audio clip becomes it’s own selectable panel, each with it’s own gain control, hot key and assignable effects. The effects are especially cool because you have the ability to “switch” them on and off, literally on the fly. You can control the start, end, and duration as well as if it loops or not. By selecting each panel, you can add whether it auto ducks, and if it’s the master or slave. The auto ducking is genius, it actually lets you select the amount of gain you want the music to decrease. It doesn’t sound like much, but after using GarageBand, I’ve always had to go back in and adjust the volume because I never thought GarageBand decreased the volume enough. In the preferences, you can now input the percentage of decrease, and it works like a dream. I’m personally fond of 70% with a medium sensitivity and low gap tolerance. Now that you have everything set up, turn the select knob to Record.

There’s not much difference in the look between Prepare and Record. You have all your audio panels set up, there is a button for Record, Stop, Play and Pause. The Record button highlights when you start recording. You’ve got your standard dB meters with clipping lights, a master gain control, and a small recording monitor not made but for the simplest of editing. If you belong to the school of recording that uses very little, if any, post production, than this is definitely your product. Clicking on the mic panel, selecting the hot key, or, if you have the “stealth” option on so you don’t hear any mouse clicks during your cast by hovering the cursor over the mic selection for a few seconds, will start a 3-2-1-Record countdown and your off. If you want to play other clips you select them in the same way. If you want your voice to have a deep reverb in the middle of a sentence, you can just assign that effect to a virtual switch on your microphone panel, then just switch it on and off at the appropriate times. When a clip is almost completed, the panel will start flashing to give you time to get ready for the next segment.

The next step on our dial is Cut. When selected, it starts looking like other podcasting software does. All your tracks are laid out on the top part of the edit window. Each selectable track has four buttons on it for soloing, muting, editing the volume track, and effects, to display and edit switch able effects. The lower half of your edit window you can edit 4 separate sets. There is a Track Edit, where you select one track, edit the name, AU effects, etc. Pretty much a large version of the top. The Source view shows all source material of a selected track in the cut view. The source material will always be shown in full length in source view. You can select in and out points by dragging markers in this view. The next view is Media View, that looks similar to the Source view. The main difference is which audio material is showed: While the Track source view shows the source material of a selected track in the cut view, the Media view shows all used and unused audio material in the whole document. The last view to select is Chapters. Here is where you can take care of all the enhanced podcasts pictures, chapter titles, URLs and the like. One of the biggest features that I really like is the sound graphical line lays on top of your track, so if you change the volume with the volume line, you can move your track around, and the volume adjustments follow!

The last button on our big silver selector dial is Release, and here Übercaster shines. First it’s where you place all your normal meta data, cover art, titles, etc. The big difference is the ability to create many slots. A slot is your podcast, the name you assign to it, it’s destination and encoding. You can even have it upload directly to an ftp server. This information can all stay the same podcast after podcast. Say, you want an mp3 version to go to your .Mac account, an enhanced AAC version to go to your podcasting server, and an AIFF version to be stored on your backup drive. After creating a separate slot for each of the encoded versions, all you need to do is press Release, and Übercaster will do the rest. It will mixdown your podcast, encode all three versions and upload each respective version to the .Mac account, the ftp server, and save the third on your hard disk. All with one press of a button.

Conclusion

As you can probably tell by now, I am a big fan of Übercaster. There has been some talk in the community that its $79 price tag is too high. I think that the price is fair, especially if you podcast on a regular basis. The time saved alone is worth the cost. This argument is one of the poorest I’ve seen yet, for there is always freeware that does what another program does for monetary compensation for the developer. If you try the program out and don’t want to pay the $79, by all means, go back to using Audacity for free. I personally think that Übercaster is worth the money. It’s a polished, professional application that only does podcasting, and does it extremely well.

There is a timed try–out version that gives you the opportunity to record one full length podcast, and some 5 minute versions that puts a wonderful sounding jingle at the end. Really, the jingle is top notch and sounds great. Once your past the very shallow learning curve, you’ll wonder how you ever podcasted with the archaic software that is out now.