Mac NTFS driver and exporting FLV files
Couple of Mac tips today.
Can't write to someone's NTFS (Windows) external drive on your Mac? Install the free NTFS-3G driver but don't accidentally get the commercial version. Er, you know, unless you want to.
When making your Quicktimes into Flash, use the FLV converter which is included with the all purpose, and wonderful ffmpeg. Also a guide for you to follow.
For a pretty picture, it's likely you'll need to use the "Video" tab to whack up the bitrate to around 900 kbit/s. I get about a 70MB file for 10mins with this setting at 640x352.
If you need to letterbox a 16:9 to 4:3 for a rubbish, old school player, add letterboxing in the "Filters" tab and for a 640 wide film, enter 64,64,0,0 in the letterbox fields. Job done.
0 comments
Stop Skype starting on Mac login + kill caps lock + VLC screengrab shortcut
Apologies for not coming up with some more amusing anecdotes in my first post after Christmas, but I'm having a writers block. I do however have a rather lovely iPod touch (called Treacle), which I am experimenting with, and hope to give some feedback on in the near future. Any recommendations for apps, for video editors or just general geeks, would be appreciated in the comments.
So, some Mac tips that I've discovered with this abundance of free time.
Tiny thing this, but it's not in the Skype preferences, and if Mac has the equivalent of a preferences menu of apps to start at login, I haven't found it.
Ctrl+click the Skype icon in the dock and uncheck the "Open at login".
Kill the Mac caps lock key
It just gets in the way, does anyone ever need it? Again, there is no hidden trick for fixing this, it's in the preferences.
However, if you're a sloppy typist like me, this simple remedy will make life minutely more pleasing. Which is always a good thing. System preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Modifier keys and make Caps lock Key "No Action"
Screengrabs from VLC on a Windows machine
Came across this one when reminded that a plain PrntScrn (sp?) then opened in Photoshop, does that odd thing where the VLC window won't get saved to the clipboard. I don't really understand technically why that happens, but anyway.
In VLC Preferences -> General video settings -> Video snapshot directory (put something sensible in here so you can find your snapshots when captured. You can also change the type of files saved.
You can also pull stills transparently whilst watching the video using a shortcut. The default Windows shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+S. On Mac it's Alt+Cmd+s, which didn't work for me (why not? reserved for a system function?) until I changed it in the preferences. Do this by: Preferences -> Interface -> Hotkeys settings, Check the “Advanced options” box and scroll down to “Take video snapshot” and change it to any key you fancy.
Labels: Mac tips, windows tips
2 comments
iPod Mini battery replacement
I'm a huge fan of re-using and recycling, and try and do my best to avoid wanton consumerism. I'm not always successful. However since my beloved ipod mini (2nd gen) had been suffering aged battery complex, and giving me a mere hour or so of playing time I decided to pop a new battery in myself. This has the added bonus of getting to see what's in that almost hermetically sealed case, and as every good geek knows, it's always fun to handle a little hardware once in a while.
Here are some pics of a naked, green ipod mini, during the operation, and afterwards. Thankfully, she made a full recovery. Click the image to see it large..
The batteries cost between about 4 and 10 quid on ebay, depending on the battery mAh (Milliamp Hour - how much charge it holds). Another great thing is that the batteries you can buy now are actually better and longer lasting than the ones that were included. I bought a 750mAh battery, the original is suspected to be about 450mAh.
You get two tiny screwdrivers in the kit with which to butcher your ipod open, and the process takes a few minutes.
My next project, when that tiny little hard drive begins to fail will be to convert my mini from the current microdrive into a solid state flash drive player. That shit is coooool.
Labels: Mac tips
1 comments
Seeking data housekeeping Nirvana...
Little plug here for Alsoft Disk Warrior. My not-very-old 500GB lacie eXtreme drive recently stopped mounting on my MacBookPro. If I fired up Disk Utility, it could see the drive but couldn't fix it's errors.
DiskWarrior however set to the task with with enthusiasm, and even gave me a delightfully detailed log as a PDF about what nasties it fixed. So much cheaper than a new Lacie!
Another top tip for Mac users, I am on a mission at the moment to sanitise my data; mp3s, video, work projects, photos, personal files and so on. Put them all in neat centralised places, no stray files, everything neat and tidy and easy to find!
Part of the solution was a new 120GB portable drive to consolidate and separate out my music collection. I have found two useful tools in this quest.
One is called The Godfather (Windows) and is a typically ugly programmer-designed bit of software that can re-tag and re-arrange your music. I only used it to grab all my files and put them sensibly in Artist/Album/ folders, although I suspect it could do so much more.
This has lead to what must be a universal conundrum How do you handle "various artist" albums in your music collection? Now, I am struggling here, so suggestions are welcome. I have moved my various albums into a folder called just that, thereby reducing the mass of top level artist folders, but, I still have a royal mess in my media player when viewing the artists list. How do I quickly avoid this? I don't care to see artists with one song in my collection... ideas please?
OK, last top Mac tip. I forgot that my new portable drive would be formatted as NTFS by default (which OS X doesn't want to write to..). Damn, but no matter, I found this NTFS-3g driver, which gives me full read/write/modify on the Windows formatted disk.
Labels: Mac tips
0 comments
How to download DRM-free video from BBC iPlayer
Updated 15th March: Below will no longer work for iPlayer downloads. :( With scripting - iPlayer behaviour can still be mimicked to get the goodies. Read the bottom of the comments for links to alternative methods.
Updated 9th March: Have corrected the bookmarklet which seemed to be getting cut short when you dragged it to your toolbar. Also tested with the Mac OS X and works for me using VLC as the player.
Yes it's true. The new version of iPlayer for the iPhone delivers mpeg4's without the "You have 4 more hours to watch this show", self-destructing DRM of the Windows Media version. They are 480x272 which is decent, and a 45 minute show comes in around 160MB.
You have to jump through a few hoops to download these, but once it's set up it's easy to download whenever you want, so bear with me.
- First you'll want to make your browser appear as if it's an iPhone. I'm working with Firefox, so sorry if this isn't your browser. Download one of the many handy Firefox plugins, The User Agent Switcher.
- After installation and browser restart, add a new User Agent and supply the following information (Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options > Options)
- Description: iPhone
- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
- App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
- App Version: Version/3.0
- Platform: Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3
- Now switch to having your browser masquerading as the iphone (Tools > User Agent Switcher -> iphone)
- Fire up an iPlayer page of choice.
- Find out the URL that links to the video by dragging this handy bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. iPlayerURL2
- Click the bookmarklet and the the URL you want should appear under the title of the video on the iPlayer page.
- Paste this into a new Firefox tab, the iPlayer site will respond and it will begin to download in your browser. This is a pain, so hit the stop button ("X" in a circle), and instead save the page (File > Save page as..)
- Bingo, your Downloads window should now pop open to show you the progress of the download, and the mpeg4 is yours forever to keep! You will want to download and play them in VLC which is by far the most accommodating of all the players, and is free.
Don't forget to reset your user agent back to default, otherwise you may find you're viewing iPhone mobile versions of web pages.
Also, not all the iPlayer content is yet available yet as the service was only launched Friday 7th March. I'm not sure if the BBC was meaning to release DRM free files, so this information may not be useful forever.
Thanks to PainInTheTech for the User Agent info, and Irregular Shed for his discovery of this iPlayer "feature".
Here's The Sky at Night playing in VLC on a Mac
Labels: Mac tips, tv, windows tips
32 comments
More than you ever wanted to know about my obsession with Wacom tablets
Hooray! I found an affordable Wacom on Ebay! This is culmination of many days research on the subject, and constant scanning, bidding, attempted sniping and losing on Ebay. I feel like my new knowledge about Mac OS X and the humble graphics tablet should not be kept to myself, so I'll relate to you my story.
If you didn't know, graphics tablets are great. Great for artists but also for video editors. Once you've started using them as an extra limb, there is simply no going back to a mouse. I was privileged to have worked in the last two places with firstly an A4 wide screen Intuos 3 (top of the range!) and secondly with a sprawling, impressive Intuos2 A3. The latter made artists gasp with awe on sight. I also firmly believe an over sized graphics tablet creates a shimmering aura of professionalism and creativity that makes producers more respectful and unquestioning of your work. Handy.
Now I am freelance and poor I have been reduced to a paltry logitech mouse. It makes an unpleasant scraping noise against my desk. So, I decided to get myself a tablet.
Any review is likely to award the Wacom series of tablets top marks, almost always eclipsing over lesser brands. Digital Arts magazine, always a gushing Wacom fan, shows their review with percentages on this page. So, it has to be a Wacom, which leaves roughly 3 types. 
The Intuos 3, the Porsche of graphics tablets, available in multiple sizes, and wide screen versions to map more accurately to today's displays. The Graphire, available in A5 and A6, respectable and slightly more reasonably priced, and the Volito, the one size "entry level" tablet.
So, a Volito? Here from Wacom's page is some introductory copy:
"Whether it's invitations, birthday cards or creative holiday photos - you can now add your personal touch on the PC".
No, No, No, No. I recoil in horror that I might be the kind of person to personalise birthday cards. Also, they may try and hide it in the description but it is an "entry level" product. Entry level? Is my life entry level? Is my work entry level? NO! All product developers must know that the bottom range in any line exists to make consumers seek the more expensive one, after all, who values themselves so little!
On to the Graphire, a well respected tablet although lacking the slick design of the Intuos. It also has an irritating child on the packaging which echos back to the blood-curdling Volito copy, and brings to mind editing something, probably Comic Sans titled, called "Sammy's first steps". Anyway, technically the Graphire differs from the Intuos a a few areas, one being is that it's pressure-sensitivity is 512 levels, instead of the Intous' 1024. There are more factors such as co-ordinate resolution but I am not a certified Wacom nerd yet. No really. The Wacom seems to inspire a certain dedicated following who could recite the technical specifications of all Wacoms since the Art Pad II (I'm thinking of the Wacom fan in an 8-mile style battle.. but anyway..). Considering my budget, and the fact that I am unlikely to require a graphics pen to accurately replicate the action and sensitivity of an antique brush made of Ox hair (they make brushes with that, you know? Also sable, which is an animal like a weasel..) I don't think I'll miss those extra 512 levels.
For budgetry concerns I also researched second hand, older Wacom tablets and consensus on the web is that older Intuos, or even graphire are almost as good as the lastest models. One concern is that you have to be careful of is the connectors. Apple and Wacom no longer support serial and ADB tablets (via USB conversion) on OS X. There a some open source software that enables the serial Wacoms here, but it looks a little risky. This is tough as those tablets are still very usable on older OS's and are very attractively priced on Ebay. Quite a few people get caught out. The benefit too, of USB is that they don't require an extra power supply.
Finally the size. A6 (the smallest) is rather small for lots of desk work, but I travel a lot and can compromise. A5 or A4 is what most regular users would want, and A3 is for showoffs.
Ebay tactics have involved searching the "All sellers" to bring up tablets available in Europe, which are overlooked in the standard ebay.co.uk search, checking for tablets wrongly, or sparsely identified, tablets in misplaced categories, and the standard search "find a seller who doesn't know how extortionately priced these things are". The last tactic was the winner, a DVD salesman who included a 20 pound "Buy it now" which I nabbed after the item had only been live a few hours. It's an A6 intuos 2, USB and including pen (some of the older ones were bundled with a mouse OR pen although both devices will work). If you find a tablet without a pen, ignoring that it might be damaged, be warned that the pens themselves can cost 70 UKP! So, don't fall for false economy. Hope this has been useful to someone, I am available for Wacom purchase consultation, at a very affordable rate.
0 comments
MacBook Pro setup notes
Loving my new MacBook Pro, the first mac I have ever had that was a) POWERFUL and b) Not my employer's. Some notes about Mac setup and my personal preferences.
- Go ctrl+click on desktop -> Show View options -> Show item info. This gives you size, and used info on drives shown on your desktop.
- Mac Mail and IMAP. You may have "Save sent messages on server" but if you don't highlight a folder from your imap ones and click menu bar Mailbox-> Use this folder for... -> Sent messages - they won't be saved. How Thunderbird does this without prompting, but mac Mail doesn't, bewilders me.
- Keyboard? In system preferences enable "place two fingers on track pad and click for secondary click". This is in addition to ctrl+clicking. Feels a bit odd for a while, but soon becomes natural, as does scrolling with two fingers. Also, you might want to have a timeout on the (lovely) light sensitive, backlit keyboard if, like me, you have your MBP playing you movies in maximum darkness. =)
- Want to tunnel SMTP from your mail server? I have a little sh script.
ssh -L 7000:mymailserver.net:25 me@mymailserver.net
which forwards port 25 to my local machine on port 7000 (just a nice high number). You can then tell Mail to use localhost port 7000 for sending mail. Nice. Ought to make this execute on boot but that is left to an exercise for the reader. - Want to play Eve online with your MBP? =) VMware fusion is not (yet) much good, Bootcamp (dual boot) is good and free, but even better is Crossover, a commercial application that allows Windows apps to run within your OS X session, and you don't need a copy of XP to install! They are lovely people and are actively working getting Eve (and other favourite games and apps) as nice as possible. They deserve your 60 USD.
- Essential apps? Quicktime Pro. It costs a little, but will only make you mad if you only use the free one. Transmission. Excellent light and simple bittorret client. Handbrake. Rip your DVDs to Mpeg4s. VLC. Play any video, or VIDEO_TS folder. Flip4Mac. Free plugin to QT that allows play of Windows media files (works for web embedded streams too). Firefox of course.
- Office? In defiance of M$ I have not opted to enable my free Office trial but instead have downloaded an alpha (warning! warning! May self destruct taking your data with it!) of OpenOffice that is the new native Aqua version. A bit buggy, but usable. You can always download the more stable X11 version if unsure. Don't forget you can change the file type association from MSOffice to OpenOffice by, in Finder, highlighting an office file -> File -> Get Info -> Open with -> OpenOffice (change all).
- Get open source packages such as wget in the same fashion as command line debian apt-get. Install fink.
- If you'll be developing on your mac get the latest Xcode from Apple (free registration required). This has gcc and other useful tools.
- Create a command line database for finding files in terminal.
sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
Labels: EVE online, Mac tips
0 comments