james huff

Apr 27 2009

Zip It, Don’t Stuff It

zip Zip It, Dont Stuff It



By: James Huff


Face it, Aladdin is losing ground. With 10.3, Apple has finally included core support for one of the most popular archive formats ever (ok, so they’ve always had core support, they’ve just implemented it into the Finder)! In case you haven’t heard, the file extension is .zip .



How do you do this? Well, assuming you have 10.3, just right-click (control-click for you one-button mice people) on the file, and select “Create Archive of File Name”. Congrats, you now have a .zip file that will work on all version of Mac OS, and Windows.



Ok, so you don’t have 10.3, but you do have 10.2 or 10.1, then have a look at Mac OSX Encoding Plethora. It’s basically a collection of Apple Scripts that will encode (and decode) your file in a variety of formats.



Well, I hope this week’s tip will help you in your file transfer…err….file sharing…errr…..file swapping….jeez, all of these are ‘bad words’ now, aren’t they? Well, I hope that this tip will help you in some legal way. Until next week, this is James, signing off….



Update: Jennifer Watson of Aladdin Systems would like to add:

“Yes, folks can choose to use Apple’s Zip format, however, you’ll still find for better compression and many more features and choices of compression in StuffIt, so it is still a better choice for power users and those sending/posting and accessing files frequently. Also, StuffIt does allow compression in to the zip format too. There are always those that don’t pay for shareware, so this is another alternative for them. We’re always looking at ways to speed up and we’ll continue to do so. And, yes, I do think choice is good, that’s why we offer both StuffIt and Zip…and a plethora of access types. ”



While I feel that Stuffit is better compression, and offers a variety of formats, I still preffer Zip. It’s fast, 100% cross-platform (resource forks are never cross-platfom), and easy to use (in 10.3). We’re all entitled to our own opinions.

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Apr 27 2009

Create a Quick and Simple DVD

Brought to you by: James Huff

Toast2t Create a Quick and Simple DVD Toast1t Create a Quick and Simple DVD



Stuck without a Superdrive? Tired of dealing with iMovie/iDVD and its mandatory .dv file format? Need to get your DVD done quickly? Then you’ve come to the right place. Today, I’ll show you how to make a quick and simple DVD using ANY DVD burner and ANY Quicktime-supported file format.



Not too long ago, I stumbled across the incredible short film, Batman: Dead End. Unfortunately, the full-screen version is a muxed MPEG-2 file. I was so amazed by the film that I wanted to share it with my friends. It was off to my favorite combination of iMovie/iDVD. Yes, since I have the MPEG-2 Playback Component, I could view the file in Quicktime Player, but Quicktime can’t change MPEG-2 tracks to DV without losing the soundtrack. I succeeded in demuxing the file using Gumby, but ran into the same export troubles.



That’s when I decided to use my newly acquired copy of Toast 6 Titanium. I was a amazed at how simple it was, but so versatile. I hit the Video tab, selected DVD, my preferred video quality, and dragged the muxed MPEG-2 file into the window (I added the making of video (normal .mov, Sorenson 3) just for fun). See Image 1.



By clicking the Edit button, I was able to scroll through the video and choose what I wanted for a button picture and change the title of the file. After that, I hit the big red button. Encoding took about 30 minutes, and burning took about 5. The menu that Toast created was simple, but effective. See Image 2. The menu functions as a simple way to select between the movie files that you chose to burn. Toast automatically sets your scenes at every 2 minutes, but there is no graphical scene selection.



All in all, the DVD performed to expectations. A further look shows that you can change the time interval between scenes and “Add Original Photos” (I’m not sure what that does quite yet, since the whole point was to create a quick and simple DVD).



Thank you for reading, and I wish you luck in creating your quick and simple DVDs.



Note: If you are planning to burn onto a 4x DVD-R, make sure that you have the most current firmware release for your burner. Failing to do so will damage your drive and media.



Bonus Tip: The DVD screen shot ( Image 2 ) was taken by playing the DVD through VLC Media Player.


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Apr 27 2009

Access A Variety Of Media Formats

Brought to you by: James Huff

VLC Access A Variety Of Media Formats


This week’s PUM is short and simple. It can be summed up in a single sentence. Download VLC Media Player! If you’re frustrated with QuickTime’s narrow file format support, or Windows Media Player’s inability to work correctly, you’ll want VLC Media Player. VLC is a free player that supports a variety of formats including DivX, DVD, VCD, MPEG (1, 2, and 4), WMV (1 and 2), mp3, ogg, and many more. Unfortunately, Windows Media Series 9 files are not supported at this time.



If you’re still in 10.2 or 10.1 and don’t have the luxury or Apple’s most recent DVD player, then VLC is your key to hearing your DVDs in 5.1 digital surround (Apple’s DVD Player pre-10.3 only supports 2 channels).



VLC also makes it easy to take screen shots of your DVDs. The DVD screen shot in the previous PUM was taken while playing the DVD through VLC.



VLC is in constant competition with MPlayer and typically the most recent version of VLC will support more formats than the current version of MPlayer and visa versa. However, in my opinion, VLC’s controller has more features than MPayer’s and is easier to use/understand. VLC also has the nice feature of letting you know why it can’t play a file, rather than either crashing or simply not playing the file (as in MPlayer’s case).



VLC Media Player is a great player to have sitting around on your hard drive. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.



Update: Intel Indeo Video 3.2 (IV32) was very widely used as video compression and still is today. Unfortunately, for those of us in OS X, there is no way for us to view these files. Thankfully, if you still have a full OS 9 system, there’s a work-around. You’ll have to download and install Intel Indeo Video 3.2 in Macintosh HD/System Folder/Extensions and restart. Then you can view the file in OS 9′s QuickTime Player. If you have QuickTime Pro in OS 9, you can export the file at the highest possible settings (Uncompressed audio and video will provide you with the highest quality) and make sure to double check the fps with the movie file and what you’re setting the compressor to use (you don’t want to have 1.5 minutes of audio with 30 seconds of video). From there, you can play the file and do all your final compressing in OS X. Good luck!

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