Aint that special

Do you have a bunch of bin files laying around your documents folder from your PC days of using Nero Express. You know, those arcane disk images that fly all over the net. They’re still out there. There is quite an endless supply on the old torrent-sphere. Well if you have a mac, you can open them right up and convert them to an MPEG-4 video file suitable for playing on your iPod or iPhone. It won’t even cost you anything. Here’s the deal:

Download VLC for the Mac

After it’s installed, right click on the “cue” file (it should have come with the “bin” file) and select open with VLC. Sure, VLC will play the video just the way it is, but we want it on our iPhone, so stop the video and go to the “File” menu of VLC. Select “Streaming/Exporting Wizard” (shortcut is shift-command-w). You should have a screen that looks like this:

Now select “Transcode/Save to file” and click next

Select “Existing playlist item” and then Next

Now we choose our video format to create. I like H.264 video and MPEG 4 Audio. Try experimenting and see what works best for you.

On the Encapsulation format, I just choose MPEG 4.

Now click next and watch the video get transcoded to the iPod/iPhone compatible format. Pretty slick if you ask me. VLC is definitely a must have piece of software.

Correction— Sorry about that, but after importing the video to iTunes, you will have to convert it for iPod (which is done by right clicking on the video in iTunes)

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, Mac, OSX, Tip, Trick, Video

If you’ve been following along with this blog, then you know I love Apple’s Aperture application. I upgraded from iPhoto shortly after I started using my first DSLR camera (the Nikon D80). Aperture is pretty straight forward to use. It’s elegant and intuiative, but there are many different workflow options when managing a large photo library. I started by reading through the Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 1.5 (Apple Pro Training) which is a wonderful reference. It has some gorgeous color images on every single page. Detailed descriptions of the various tools and nice step by step instructions. It is well worth the price for both beginning and intermediate amateur photographers. It even comes with a DVD that contains all the images for the lessons and examples shown throughout the book.

After working with this book for a couple of months I was really working more efficiently in Aperture and taking advantage of some very cool features. But I still felt like I was missing out on some features that the professionals over at Inside Aperture took for granted. After some Google searching I came across Aperture 1.5 Beyond the Basics and bought it off Amazon. It was kind of pricey but I knew Derrick Story and Scott Bourne would not do a bad job. I regularly listen to the iLifeZone podcast and it is usually chock full of good tips. I was not wrong. The DVD is essentially a stand alone application with a simple user interface. You can watch an entire chapter at once, or just a single lesson. The video quality is very high and professionally produced as well. The best feature is that the material is completely un-biased. It is not certified or sponsored by Apple in any way, so you get the truth about what works and what does not. Click on a topic in the list shown and a video pops open and starts playing. You are even given the option to run in windowed or full screen mode. This publisher really gets it.

The training DVD helped so much, that I went over to Lynda.com (the publisher) to check out some of their other training products. WOW!! They have a lot of great stuff. On-line training videos as well as “ship to your home” DVD training is available through the site. They already have an Adobe CS3 training package available.

Technorati Tags: Aperture, Apple, iPhoto, Mac, Nikon, Photography, Productivity, Review, Software, Tip

Is there really any reason to have so many different media formats? WMV, mpeg4, QT, FLV… the list goes on. While Quicktime handles many of the most popular formats, there are still plenty that it doesn’t and that really gets frustrating. Sure, I have VLC running on my Mac Pro, but it is far from a finished product. Why can’t Apple just finish the supported format list for Quicktime? I even upgraded to Quicktime Pro to get some extra formats (like Mpeg2).

Recently I found a plugin for Quicktime that allows it to handle many more formats. I was looking to play some flash FLV files and VLC was giving multiple errors. After downloading and installing the Perian plugin, my dream came true. Here is a list of the supported formats:

Divx, XviD, FLV, AVI, MS-MPEG4 v1, MS-MPEG4 v2, MS-MPEG4 v3, DivX 3.11 alpha, 3ivX, Sorenson H.263, Flash Screen Video, Truemotion VP6

These formats when they are inside an AVI: h.264, mpeg4, AAC, AC3 Audio, and VBR MP3.

Wow! And it plays FLV files better than VLC. It still makes me wonder what is up with WMV format. I really hate using Flip4Mac just to play WMV files. Why can’t Apple just license the format from MS and include it in QT? MS isn’t even making media software for the Mac anymore.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, OSX, Video, Software, Tip