So the first question you might ask yourself is: "Why would I want to use the podcast feature?"  Actually, the first question you might be asking is "What the hell is a podcast?"  Both good questions.  In brief, a podcast is a series of either a video or audio files that are updated regularly using and RSS feed.  Before you ask yourself, an RSS feed is simply a text file that keeps track of all the files available for a particular podcast.  The RSS feed contains links to new videos and/or audio files as they become available.  The RSS feed will also contain "meta" information like show descriptions as well.

Unless you've been living under a rock over the last year, you'll have noticed that everything out there now has an RSS feed.  Every blog, website, forum has an RSS feed that allows its users/subscribers to track of any new information posted without having to actually visit the site.  There are lots of RSS readers or aggregators available that will keep track of all your RSS feeds.  Rather than visit a dozen websites you frequent everyday, you can just glance at the RSS feeds in your aggregator to see if there's anything new.

Ok, so what does this have to do with iPodifier?  Well, TV shows are well suited to RSS feeds.  iPodifier can create an RSS feed for every TV show you manage in iPodifier.  While there are lots of tools you can use to keep track of this RSS feed, iTunes provides a podcast interface that allows you to monitor RSS feeds.  You can use the iTunes directory to find audio or video podcasts.  When you select a podcast you are interested in the iTunes directory, iTunes will find the RSS feed for that show and automatically monitor the feed and watch for any new content to appear.  Once it sees that a new audio or video is available, it will download the file and add it to your iPod.  Instead of finding podcasts using the iTunes library, you can manually add an RSS feed.  You just need to give iTunes the URL of the RSS feed you want it to monitor.  Ok, now you're probably putting two and two togther.  If iPodifier can create an RSS feed for your TV shows and iTunes can monitor the RSS feed, then you can add the RSS feed produced by iPodifier into iTunes.

Now, iPodifier already adds TV shows and movies to iTunes, but it does it in another way.  Apple provided programmers with hooks into iTunes so that external applications could interact with it.  This is called the COM interface.  iPodifier uses this COM interface to manipulate the iTunes library.  But the only problem with the COM interface is that it only works if the program that wants to interface with iTunes is running on the same computer as iTunes.  So, if you have a video server that runs your DVR app, you can't run iPodifier on this if you have iTunes installed on another computer.  Also, if you have other family members with their own computers and their own iPods, you would have to run iPodifier on each computer if they wanted to get TV shows on their iPod.  What would be better if you could run iPodifier on one computer, maybe your server, and use the podcast feature to generate RSS feeds for each TV show.  Your family members could then just subscribe to the RSS feeds for shows that they are interested in.

For you ubergeeks out there who have your own web server, the podcast feature also allows you to create RSS feeds that you can have access to wherever you are.  Say you are travelling and want to get the latest Colbert Report?  Just download it using the RSS feed.

Setting up the podcast feature in iPodifier is relatively trivial (more later).  But, in order to be a host for RSS feeds (even for just a home network), you need to have a web server running.  Windows XP comes with a web server built in, but is not installed and setup by default.  I won't go into how to setup the Windows XP IIS server, but here's a how-to description here.  Once you've got your web server running come back here and learn how to setup iPodifier.

I will assume from this point on that you are using the IIS server that comes with Windows XP.  If you're not using it, you're probably smart enough to figure out how to do the following on your web server.

You need to setup a virtual web directory that points to your iPod video directory.  This is the directory you specified in iPodifier to hold all your iPod video.  For me, this directory is c:\iPodVideo.  The easiest way to add this directory as a virtual web directory is to open file explorer, find that directory, right click on it and select Properties from the pop-up menu.  If you properly installed the IIS web server, you will see a tab labeled "Web Sharing."  Click on this tab, and you should see something like what is shown to the right.  As shown, click on "Share this folder."  When asked for an alias, use something like "iPodVideo," and make sure access permisions are set for Read.  That's all you need to do for the web server side.

To setup iPodifier to create RSS feeds, start iPodifier and click on the "Transcoding options" button (in the Transcoding queue panel).  In the Podcast feed options section, enter the name of the PC your webserver is running on.  This could be an IP address, or the network name for the PC.  Then, enter the alias you gave for your iPod video directory (i.e. "/iPodVideo).  Don't forget to include the "/" before the alias.  Now, close the Transcoding options form and double click on a show in the iPod video management panel that you want to create an RSS feed for. This will bring up the Show info dialog box.  Check the "Create podcast..." check box.  The RSS feed URL should be now shown in the box below.  Select the URL and copy it to the clipboard (i.e. select it, right click and select copy) so you can add it to iTunes.  Start iTunes and from the menu bar along the top, click on Advanced->Subscribe to Podcast.  Paste the URL you copied from iPodifier into the box and hit OK.  Now, go to the Podcasts section of iTunes and see if it is correctly checking the feed and downloading the shows.

That's it!  If these instructions were unclear or you are not having sucess, post a message and I'll try to help out.