For all your DVD ripping needs, HandBrake is there. HandBrake allows you to take any commercial, copyrighted DVD and rip/convert it for playback on your Apple TV, iPod, and a list of other products.

Ripping is a simple process. Once you have HandBrake open, pop in your movie. If you already have a DVD inserted, Handbrake will automatically locate it for you. Choose which device you would like the movie to be played back on and click start. The time it takes for the movie to rip depends on which setting you chose (the higher the quality, the longer it takes), and how fast your computer is.

We found that on an Intel Mac, it takes around the same time to rip a movie as the length of the actual movie. The quality of your DVD rips are great. A 43 minute TV show ripped on iPod Low Rez looks amazing when connected to a Hi Def TV. Handbrake includes things like chapter marks, allows you to rip extras/special features and lets you tweak the settings of the video to your hearts content.

HandBrake is available for Mac/PC here.

But it's always handy to know about third party software out there that can help things along for certain tasks.

Some of the titles on this list are free gratis, some of them are reasonably priced shareware. The one thing they all have in common, is that none of them have anything to do with Microsoft and therefore work brilliantly; stable applications you'll use every day.

Adobe Lightroom

Lightroom is one of those applications you just have to use to see how powerful it really is.

On the surface it's a glorified thumbnail browser, much like Graphic Converter or Adobe Bridge, which ships with Photoshop CS3. But dig deeper and you'll find a whole new way to perform a number of tasks which Photoshop and its open source free alternative GIMP simply aren't designed to do.

Lightroom's main twist on the thumbnail browser, as we from the computer based photo organising world will know it, is the way in which Lightroom is actually copying the look and feel of doing things the old school way, with a light table and a magnifying loupe, from the days of chemical processing and 35mm film.

The biggest benefit to adopting this approach is being able to perform a wide range of editing tasks, such as colour correction cropping and straightening of images, all in a full screen, top down interface.

Cropping, for example, when used correctly, can turn an ordinary shot into something the viewer is more drawn into. By laying on top of the full screen image proportionally spaced lines in a geometrically balanced grid, Lightroom makes it simple for you to always ensure the subject of your photograph is in a part of the canvas which you want the viewers eye to focus on.

There's also a full array of keyword and meta tagging, which Lightroom embeds into the image using XML, so that third party applications can read everything from the exposure settings and lens type used, to the location the image was shot, who's and what is featured in it, who took it and what the copyright status of the image is for redistribution and fair use.

Then there's Lightroom's cornucopia of settings for getting the most from RAW files, where information on things like White Balance can be adjusted to effectively shoot the image again with completely different exposure settings, but without the inconvenience of having to travel all the way back to the location where the photo was taken or, in the case of a studio assignment, the added cost of re-hiring crew and talent.

All of this takes place in a full screen interface, with as little interference from the float-over tool bars as possible; something Adobe's flagship Photoshop application could learn a lot from.

There's also a full complement of export settings for print and web, which includes a smart and easy to use web gallery template creator, which has a few cool Flash elements included, to easily create a pro looking portfolio.

In short: It's a virtual dark room for the digital photographer.
Costs: £190 ($373) from bestpricedbrands.co.uk

Audio Hijack Pro

Rogue Amoeba make some great high quality applications with the prosumer Mac user in mind. Audio Hijack Pro is the solution you've been looking for if you need to capture and process system audio.

Simply put, it enables you to record the sound of any currently running application and pass it through a virtual mixing desk, complete with auxiliary sends to all of Mac OS X built-in effects and filters, as well as any third party plug-ins you might have installed in the components folder, such as those which bundle with Audio & MIDI music sequencing software.

It's not just professional studio sound engineers who will find AHP extremely useful, though. Hobbyist podcasters always need to get audio from a variety of sometimes obscure sources into their Mac. Recording their own voice on one Microphone input, another from Skype and perhaps a third from an audio player, for things like sound effects, jingles or other pre-recorded media.

Without something to manage the whole thing, this can often involve having to kludge together multiple sound capture cards on USB hubs & route everything through external hardware mixers, which as well as degrading the audio fidelity, by leaving the digital domain, it's also far from being an easy set-up to carry around with your laptop for field recording.

By literally hijacking the sound output of any application, like Skype for over-the-net phone-in contributions to a podcast, for example, AHP's simple user interface clearly lays out the record path from input source to output file type; recording on-the-fly to all the usual audio file formats.

You can also automatically split a recording into multiple chunks based upon total record time or file size in megabytes, which is extremely handy if you're recording a long piece intended for release in shorter 'episodes' or you want to send the recording to an e-mail box which only accepts small file attachments.

It's also a huge help to anyone who needs to send large files to a Microsoft Windows application, because the FAT32 file system has a maximum file size limit of just 2 gigabytes.

Splitting can also be done arbitrarily by hitting the key on the top toolbar, which is also a great short cut for marking song in / out points from a radio broadcast of a live music concert or in a teleconference meeting where various different people begin to speak, so each of their 'tracks' can be later placed on a separate output strip in an audio sequencer for individual adjustment of stereo pan, output levels and other effects, such as compression and limiting.

In short: It records any sound your Mac can make.
Costs: £16 ($32) from rogueamoeba.com

Folder Splitter

We've all done it and it's usually the downloads folder which suffers from it the most. The crime? Stuffing a billion files into one folder to such a degree that it takes the computer a month and a day to list everything in it, which makes finding anything completely impossible.

I've forced myself to not do it so much with important files, like holiday snaps and music, but I still have a few folders full of old documents and LOLCATS which Folder Splitter is just itching to munch its way through.

Simply put, it organises a folder full of files into separate directories. You can also reverse the process by 'UnSplitting'.

You can sort the splitting options by maximum size, number of files and choose to move or copy.

I use this most of all to make 4.6GB sized folders for archiving of movies and other downloads I want to back-up to 4.7GB write-able DVD.

In short: No more messy folder excuses.
Cost: £0 ($0) FREE, from qtsync.com

HandBrake

Many people buy a Mac Mini simply to use it as a media centre, by hooking it up to their HD TV and using OS X's built in 'Front Row' application to navigate the hard drive's contents with the provided Apple remote control.

The only problem with this is that, while the Mac Mini's form factor makes it easy to hide behind the screen, access to the DVD drive needs to be maintained so that discs can be inserted and ejected.

To get around this many people choose to expand the Mac's hard drive, or install an external USB or FireWire drive and 'rip' their DVD collection to disk, so there's no danger of damaging the physical hard copy of the original disc.

HandBrake is, quite simply, THE best DVD ripping software out there and it's completely free!

You can use the pre-set menu to choose what format you want to convert your DVD into, for easy transfer to any portable media player. You can also rip the raw data off the disc and transcode it into DV or another high quality file type, for up-conversion to HD, using smoothing plug-ins for Final Cut Pro or AVID.

HandBrake is also aware of other third party compression and codec software you might have installed, such as DivX pro and XviD or Apple's own H.264 variants for pro applications.

It is illegal to share files made from 'ripped' DVDs with other people, but it is not illegal to make copies if it is for your own personal use only.

HandBrake also reads DVD chapters and can write the markers back to a chapter aware file, like Quicktime - so you don't have to visually 'skip' from the beginning of the program you want to watch, to the section you're interested in. This is useful for playback on the iPod or any number of in-car media players which HandBrake also supports.

With home theatre users specifically in mind, HandBrake also includes pre-sets for ripping to AppleTV format. The AppleTV is quickly becoming the most popular home media centre set-top-box, thanks to a recent software update which enables it to buy movies directly from iTunes and stream them to an attached HD TV, without the need to browse the web store on a Mac or PC.

In short: Rip your DVD library to file back-ups.
Cost: £0 ($0) Free, from handbrake.fr

Font Explorer X

When Apple began shipping their first computers, back in the late 1970s, the only interaction their small group of IT enthusiast customers had with the operating system itself, was through a green text on black background command prompt terminal.

While a small team of the first Apple employees were assembling these machines by hand, in Steve Jobs garage, across the other side of town in Menlo Park, the huge photocopier and image processing company Xerox, was developing a system called Alto, which it was the vision of it's developers would one day be a common place device in offices around the world.

Alto had an A4 portrait orientated screen, a mouse pointer, a kind of Ethernet network connection to other Alto systems and, most importantly of all, Alto had a Graphic User Interface with the windows and toolbars cliché we take for granted today.

Unfortunately, partly because it cost so much to make and buy and partly because Xerox bosses simply didn't understand what it was for, Alto didn't get off the ground.

Before it was eventually canned, however, Steve Jobs' Apple had began to enjoy some considerable degree of success in home electronics, a market which had never previously existed for computers of any kind beyond the simple desk calculator.

This follow up to Apple Computer's early wooden machines for hobbyists, the Apple II, afforded Jobs a tour of the Xerox research facility, where the GUI, mouse pointer and proportionally spaced fonts of the 'What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG, pronounced Wizzy Wig) interface to the Alto, gave him a 'Eureka' moment and sowed the seeds of what would later become the Apple Macintosh.

What, you might ask, has any of this got to do with a great little Freeware application called Font Explorer X? Well, simply put, the Mac has always had Fonts at its heart. The killer application of the original Mac, which saved Apple as a company (when the Mac's bigger, more expensive sister, Lisa had almost bankrupted them in Jobs' pursuit of what he'd seen at Xerox) was word processing and WYSIWYG desktop publishing; the ability to see on paper exactly what you can see on the screen.

Linotype, much like Adobe and other print and design companies at the time, who had made their name on type libraries and printer modules which reproduced graphics for large commercial print shops, which cost thousands of pounds to licence and years of work to develop, began to see desktop publishing as a unique advantage to bring beautiful print and proportionally spaced fonts to the masses, and the Mac was just the platform on which to do it.

The explosion between then and now, in the sheer volume of fonts and type libraries which grace our screens with their detailed serifs and elegant design communication, do have one annoying side effect, however; the time which it takes for even the snappiest of computers to load them all up.

Font Explorer X does away with a lot of the load time a bulkier font folder normally incurs by only loading the fonts you're going to use. It can also process requests from certain applications, like Photoshop, to install particular fonts on demand.

So if you've disabled a particular family of fonts, but you then try to open a project which requires them, Font Explorer X will move the font family you need back into the system fonts folder, without having to re-launch the application which requires them.

It can also sift through your entire fonts library and filter out damaged files which can severely cripple a machine with even large amounts of RAM.

It displays the selected font in a bar in which you can test out different characters, or search for certain kinds of special keys.

It really does bring home the power of an operating system Apple have always designed around the needs of printers, graphic designers and artists who need to know that what they see on the screen is capable of being reproduced in print.

Anyone who knows the importance of occasionally booting from the System Installer DVD and performing a Repair Disk Permissions (analogous to Window's defrag, but not the same thing) should also know the importance of maintaining a well organised and regularly maintained fonts folder. Once you've used Font Explorer X to do this, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

In short: The perfect compliment to OS X's built-in 'Font Book' and world famous, low Level typeface management.
Cost: £0 ($0) Free, from linotype.com

Pixelmator

Functional though it may be; the generic, by-word for all kinds of image manipulation though it's name has become accepted in the common language, there's no denying that Photoshop is one hell of an expensive application to buy out-right, if all you're looking to do is apply the odd filter here and there or crop a couple of pixels out of a frame and re-touch a bit of red eye camera flash, from your kid's birthday party snaps.

Pixelmator is a quick loading, nice looking, full screen application which uses the GPU to apply Mac OS X's built-in Core Graphics to your image without taking up CPU cycles. Consequently many of the jobs which have traditionally been thought of as rather slow and difficult to figure out 'Photoshop only' tasks, like Gaussian Blurring and other complex filters to improve light balance and colour noise, can be applied lightning fast in an interface almost too cool looking for it's own good.

Pixelmator's website gives a great quick-glance at all of the amazing applications features, so I won't spend any extra time echoing all of them here, except to add that the simple fact that this application takes but milliseconds to launch, even when dragging and dropping really large uncompressed files into it, as well as sporting a stunning feature set for an application in this price range, has me using it every single day.

There's a myriad of filters and effects which it's hard to believe aren't already included in image editors costing three and four times as much, such as page curling and random pattern generators, all of which are controlled by an impossibly cool input method of dragging input lines into and out of the filter box, rather like patching some kind of physical hardware controller, the likes of which you might find in a mad scientists laboratory.

In short: Incredibly good fun and fast.
Cost: £29 ($59) from pixelmator.com

iShowU

Sometimes it's easier to show than tell. IShowU captures everything on your screen and records commentary audio from both the built in microphone and the system sound of Mac OS X, so any applications which play audio are also recorded.

There's a number of capture quality settings, including 1080p HD. The real advantage IShowU has over some of the other titles which do a similar task, is that there is no wait time for your clip to output, once you click to finish recording. The quicktime file of your screen-cast is ready immediately.

IShowU makes a number of high quality tutorial and demo podcasts possible, including Bert Monroy's exceptional Pixel Perfect and Alex Lindsay MacBreak Studio.

In Short: Incredibly stable and useful for all kinds of screen capturing.
Cost: £10 ($20) from shinywhitebox.com

Renamer4Mac

This used to be a free application, but I see from the latest version the author is wanting $40, for a bundle with another application.

I'll mention it anyway because if you can find a copy of the old (free) version this is one of the most useful tools you can own if, like me, you're always loosing track of where your photographs are on your hard drive, because you put them all in one folder with their default auto-generated file names, straight off removable memory media.

Renamer4Mac, by dragging and dropping a list of files on it, can remove characters from the beginning and end of a string, insert sequential alpha numeric characters, add the date and include the old file name, without overwriting the file extension (or with if you choose to), so you never need have folders full of esoterically named files, ever again.

Cost: $40 (£20) with a free trial from renamer4mac.com

Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ

I mean this in no small way. Quicksilver is the most essential Mac OS X application ever made.

It is way beyond the scope of this article to list every feature of this incredible application, except to say that it is beyond me as to why Apple didn't introduce their own version of it, into OS X, a long time ago.

If you're going to be simplistic about it, it's a program launcher - and you can use it as nothing more than such if that's all you're looking for.

Merlin Mann insists, and I'm prone to agree with him, that it is so much more than that - in terms of streamlining your working day for a happier more productive life - it really is that powerful.

Simply Put: You will use it constantly from the moment you install it, while your Windows friends scratch in vain to find anything even half as useful, stable and fast. It is the very definition of easy to use.
Cost: £0 ($0) Free download from MacUpdate.com

Transmit

I'm old enough to remember, back in the days of dial-up internet, when uploading a few changes to a web page was something you scheduled your tea and coffee making around; it took so long.

These days, with cable broadband, you're free to make changes to a site on the fly, without worrying about uploading megabytes of files you might never use in the final design, while trying out different ideas.

Transmit makes the process of doing that as easy as dragging and dropping between any two windows on the desktop. The interface is designed to act and feel like any other Finder pane, complete with super-handy "Open With" menus for all the files you keep on your FTP server, for ease of editing in the application associated with it.

For example, I can directly open a JPEG graphic file in Photoshop, edit it and simply by saving the file, Trasmit will upload the changes to the FTP server - immediately making them available on the web page I am editing, so I can try them out in a variety of browsers.

This might not sound like an Earth shattering feat of modern engineering, but the Mac OS X like style with which this rock solid and reasonably priced application carries it out, is so smooth, you'll soon find yourself recommending it to friends and installing it on all your Macs.

The killer feature of Transmit, to my mind however, is droplets. You can bookmark any location on any server as a droplet icon - which when you drag and drop files onto it, immediately upload to that location via FTP.

For example, I want to upload a gallery of images to a site I already know has the Gallery open source image management software installed on it. I don't need to open an FTP program, drag and drop the files, edit the HTML, update all the links to that gallery, try it in different browsers and essentially spend an hour doing something which should only take seconds.

With droplets, I drag the files I want to add to a specific location onto the icon, Transmit begins uploading them and when it's done, all I have to do is update the Gallery cache and it finds the images I've uploaded automatically.

Simply Put: It behaves as if your FTP servers are any other location on your Mac.
Cost: £15 ($29.95) from panic.com

Backup your file
Before you use Muxo, make sure to back up your MP4 file. Muxo is not very fault tolerant and there have been bugs reported that indicate files were unusable after using Muxo.

Integration in Handbrake
One feature request is to integrate Muxo functionality directly into Handbrake. What users do not know is that actually this was already submitted to the Handbrake team, but for some reason or the other it was not integrated into the release version.

Documentation
Well there is basically no documentation for Muxo except for this small "How To" on the user forum. This is not so unusual with small products that are released as Freeware or Shareware.

Future of Muxo
Development of Muxo has seemed to slow down. This prompts speculation that maybe a major update of Muxo is on its way. I could imagine support for file conversions or a new user interface design. There is however the possibility that Muxo may simply not be developed any further. This would be a shame. In such an event, it would be great to see Muxo source code as an Open Source project. Such requests were made on the user forums as well.

_____________________________________________________________

Originally posted on: http://myDezigns.wordpress.com

Now I used this on my High Fidelity dvd as a trial run and it was not without it's cons. It took HOURS for it to do it's magic, there was a bit of a screen blip at the beginning (and I haven't had a chance to watch it all the way through to see how it goes) AND it doesn't seem to have an option to change the screen size. Hmmm...

Now I'm sure a more seasoned dvd converter would know how to tweak Handbrake to work faster and allow for larger screen sizes, so I'm not calling it shite yet.

This seems like something I should've figured out how to do years ago but am just getting around to it. If anyone knows of an easier way, or the tricks to this program, let us know.

So we've almost completely rid ourselves of our CD collection, converting hundreds of the CDs we owned into digital files for space saving purposes. And now we're doing the same with our DVD collection (though we plan to keep some of the Criterions)...

Weighing in at about 1.6-2 GB in file size once we converted the DVDs via Handbrake, we're using the spacious 1 TB external drive to store our Apple TV compatible files (which we then watch via HD projector). It's a fairly easy process anyone can do.

Want to do the same? What you'll need are:

• Ample storage space: 1 terabyte used to be a figure of science fiction proportions. Now you can get an external 1 TB drive for $239 or cheaper. We're big fans of the Seagate FreeAgent Pro because of their sharp looking design (TRON meets Drakkar Noir), 32MB cache buffer, 7200 rpm operation and its quiet performance. Oh, and they're finally now Mac compatible (the included software) and come with a 5 year warranty. If you're one to worry, get two drives and keep your collection in duplicate.

• Conversion software: Roxio Crunch, Handbrake, MactheRipper, Mediacoder, etc.

• A fast PC/Mac machine: the faster the better. We often stare envious at the benchmarks posted by Handbrake users with newer Intel multi-core machines here. So far, it's been a slow going transition since our once pokey PowerPC G5 is very slow at converting the files (we leave it working overnight, with fingers crossed there is no crash window in the morning greeting us). We're trying to do one a day, hopefully finishing our collection sometime by the end of summer.

View Original Article

Hoy les voy hablar HandBake que es otro programa que también permite crear DVDs y además que es open source y multiplataforma.

Soporta entradas:

• cualquier fuente DVD como: VIDEO_TS folder, imágen o un DVD real;
• PAL o NTSC;
• AC-3, DTS, pistas de audio LPCM o MPEG.

Soporta salidas:

• formatos de archivos: MP4, MKV, AVI o OGM;
• Video: MPEG-4 or H.264;
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis o AC-3;

Es un potente y robusto programa que te permitirá safisfacer todas las necesidades a la hora de quemar un disco y lo podrás usar en las plataformas más populares.

Sitio: handbrake.fr

Descarga: HandBrake

Vía: www.hongkiat.com

As soon as I saw the screen on the iPod Touch, I instantly knew its destiny as a video destination for me. Roughly half the space of my iPod is taken up by videos. They’re great for long rides or when I get stuck waiting somewhere unexpectedly. Before I launch into my tutorial, I will mention that I have found episodic content to be a better pairing with the iPod than movies. Converting videos for your iPod is quite simple due to a free tool named Handbrake which works for Macs as well as Windows. I will also mention that the iTunes store has many TV shows and movies which you can download, and they will all work with your iPod without hassle. This guide is for other videos you legally (or not so legally) obtain which you’d like to add to your iPod.

If the video you want to put on your iPod is on a DVD, you first need to get the file onto your computer (skip to next paragraph if the file is already on your computer). Commercial DVDs are encrypted, and breaking the encryption is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the USA, and not something I recommend you do for the obvious legal and ethical reasons. With that said, there is an extremely easy to use Windows program called DVDFab HD Decryptor which will allow you to copy a DVD to your hard drive. If you need help with DVDFab HD Decryptor, there is a guide here. If you are using Mac OS X, Handbrake can handle the decryption for you.

Once the windows users have the files on their computer (obviously needing to be more complicated than their Mac counterpart) open up Handbrake. In the source box, browse to the file or folder with the video and select it. Handbrake can handle a wide variety of input formats. Next, under source, click on the Titles drop down and manually select the video you want to convert. If you leave it set on automatic, there is a chance Handbrake will choose the wrong title. Next, under Destination, click browse, and select where you want to save the new video stream, and type in a file name. Under “Save as,” select m4v. Now here’s the critical part, on the right side under presets, click “iPhone/iPod Touch” or another iPod option depending on what you have. Under output settings, the encoder should be set as H.264 and the Audio Encoder as AAC. Make sure “Insert iPod Atom” is selected. That’s it! Now all you have to do is click start and give your computer some time to crunch away. There are a million tweaks you can make with Handbrake, including using a queue to convert many files at once, so feel free to explore once you get comfortable.

When Handbrake is finished creating the file, open up iTunes, go to File, Add File to iTunes, and select the file you just created ending in .m4v. The video should now show up under movies in iTunes. Now plug in your iPod. Once iTunes has loaded it, select your iPod from within iTunes. Go to the movies tab under your iPod’s properties within iTunes, and tell iTunes to either sink all your videos, or just the one you created. Voila! Next time you sync your iPod, you should have your video on your shiny device to take with you anywhere.

-Jewbin

i've found two fantastic blogs today that i just feel compelled to share. both different, yet both very appealing reads. one thing that i see similar between them is that both authors just have this indescribable feel to their writing. it just feels so human, i wish i could write at the level they do.

• http://thenightblog.wordpress.com/
• http://apricot-tea.com/

one thing that i've always looked for is a really interesting blog written by guy my age, unfortunately i haven't found one. i feel like there are a lot of girls in high school writing blogs, but not many boys. it's probably something with the whole macho complex stage i seemed to skip. it's also pretty frustrating that whenever i search for gay on the wordpress blog search i end up with cheep amateur porn :-\.

so one thing i realized today is that i've been in the same school district for ten. TEN years! my class actually isn't that big, roughly about 240 students. there are still people that i'm fascinated by, that i've never met, but really want to. plus other people in other grades. i think i need to stop limiting myself by the rules others have set out (the invisible web of lies and rumors that separates us all from one another). there are a bunch of people i would really love to get to know.

there's this one girl i was friendly with as a tot in elementary school, but lost touch with. now some people don't like her, but i find her fascinating. she's so nice, i'm so glad i've started to get to know her a bit more this year. she's not at all who i thought she was, or expected her to be. i love when that happens, when you realize that you've assigned certain things to someone, and they prove you wrong. i think we all do it sometimes, where we dismiss a person. i'm really trying to change how i approach meeting people, i think it makes all the difference going into something with an open mind.

anyways lets talk about what's in my dock!

the software that lives in my dock (i'll post later a list of other installed programs)

• finder - the finder in leopard is amazing, fast, cute effective 'nuff said.
• dashboard - it launches me into widget world!
• safari - the savanna navigator that seems to never keep me on track, that i love anyways
• firefox 3 beta 5 - my standards complient browser friend, i can't wait until firefox 3 is released! :)
• mail - i always said that i would never use a desktop mail client: i evidently lied. i use the to-do a lot too.
• adium - with my custom yoda icon and design (i made part of the theme) adium keeps me connected in my style
• joost - alas an old friend. i watched many a episodes of jericho on joost.
• handbrake - sans ugly pineapple icon handbrake helps me copy dvd's into movie files for iPod or MacBook :)
• songbird - an interesting concept: itunes like music management built on firefox code, works like a browser, intergrates well with everything, and pretty. i'll switch when itunes annoys me too much...
• itunes - a bloated, un-featured whore.
• veoh player - plays/downloads videos from veoh for me. also pretty.
• vlc - god of media players, plays anything. i mean anything.
• pixelmator - a fantastic image editor
• photobooth - good times with my mac :)
• burn - a free cd burning program, data and music (for when i'm not on speaking terms with itunes).
• audacity - a free cross-platform audio editor that i adore.
• imovie oh eight - love/hate relationship
• pages - best full featured word processor ever. kicks word butt!
• textedit - my text scratch pad for everything, notes copy paste etc
• bean - a text editor that goes full screen. i write my blog here now, and copy into the box in wp :)

it's only wednesday and i must make it to friday. i hope to be back soon! a special shout out to cindy, who is a wonderful friend flying 1,845 miles this summer to visit old friends. cindy, i love you, and you can't get here fast enough!

peace ~ dave

I have a client that recorded to DVD rather than tape. Can I edit these files in Final Cut Studio? Is there a third party app that will let me convert these files?

Last year I spent more nights in hotels then I did at home. Reward points aside, living out a of suitcase can get tedious and dispiriting. Chin up, with just a couple of free opens source downloads (we love open source) you can easily convert your entire video library into formats that play friendly on most device including your laptop, iPhone, video iPod and many more, making all those nights a bit better. Handbrake is our favorite DVD to MPEG-4 converter available for MAC, Linux and Windows users. Fully documented with a friendly interface you will enjoying your movie on the go in no time. Just make sure you have a decryption engine to break that pesky DRM code.

HandBrake can convert video from a number of sources, including a DVD and a DVD image, and audio too, including MPEG audio tracks. It can convert to a digital file in a variety of formats, including MPEG-4, AVI, OGM for video, or AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis for audio.

You can select individual DVD chapters, get subtitles, and have plenty of control over your recording, including selecting the bit rate, maximum file size for video, and bit rate and sample rate for audio.

I was impressed that my MacBook Air was ripping video slightly faster than the G5. It's Apple's slowest machine, at 1.6GHz. I started to think that a Mac Mini would give me modest improvements on that, and because I appeared to have some hardware issues on the G5 with USB ports going offline, system lock-ups, etc., I decided to replace it now with a Mac Mini rather than wait for the next update to the line.

Given that I have plenty of external storage and an external DVD drive, I decided to save a little money and bought the entry-level 1.83GHz model, with 80Gb hard drive and combo optical. This is the slowest desktop Apple currently produces, so I wasn't expecting it to be much better than the G5. It turns out that with most operations (opening windows, navigating through iTunes, etc.) it isn't much different. I was starting to get a little buyer's remorse when I ripped a TV episode to test it.

I had to check very carefully that it had produced a playable file of the entire episode because it ripped it about 5 times as fast as the G5! I was astonished at the difference, so impressed in fact that I considered buying another one just to rip video. It turns out that the MacBook Air was turning off one of its cores under the load of ripping, thus accounting for the lacklustre performance compared to the only slightly faster Mini.

Of course it comes five years of development time after the G5, so that dampens the surprise a little, but I think this proves that the Mac Mini is a pretty good performer despite its position in the product hierarchy, and you should consider it.

Los artículos que hablan de cosas mejores suelen tener la desventaja de que tratan sobre experiencias personales y las experiencias personales son distintas en cada persona, de éste modo lo que para mi es lo mejor no tiene porque serlo para nadie más, si bien hay una gran cantidad de software que es considerado mejor por una mayoría siempre hay gente a la que no le gusta o simplemente no le funciona y nunca lo considerarán mejor que otro del mismo tipo que les realice la labor. Visto esto daremos un repasillo leve a estas cinco herramientas.

DVD Shrink: para Windows, para mi sin duda el mejor copiador de DVD's, es un programa bastante completo y de muy fácil uso, la mayor pega es que un programa prohibido y está un poco desfasado.

DVD Decrypter: también para Windows, éste es sin duda (para mi gusto, claro) el mejor ripeador, en el Shrink he puesto copiador porque hace algo más que ripear el DVD, el Decrypter es más un ripeador puro y duro, extrae el contenido al disco duro y es raro que no pueda con un DVD, por desgracia es otro programa prohibido.

DVD Fab HD Decrypter: otro programa para Windows de fácil uso, es más parecido al DVD Shrink que al DVD Decrypter, no lo he testeado a fondo pero lo poco que lo he usado no le he encontrado pega alguna, el programa cumple y eso es suficiente para mi.

MacTheRipper: para Mac OS ... nada que comentar sobre este programa porque no he usado nunca la cosa esa de la manzana y tampoco tengo referencias.

HandBrake: dejo para el final la que quizás sea la opción más interesante. HandBrake es un programa multiplataforma, funciona bajo Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS X y Linux; además está bajo licencia GPL y como es lógico se puede acceder al código fuente. También es más como el Shrink, se puede ripear o convertir directamente pero incluye bastante más opciones como exportar a MP4 (iPod, PSP, etc), MKV, OGG, AVI, extracción de audio en AAC, MP3, Vorbis o AC3 y del vídeo en MPEG-4 o H.264 además de las opciones de capítulos o una calculadora de bitrate (esencial para calcular el tamaño final del archivo).

Es un programa con bastante buena pinta que probaré en cuanto pueda para sacar mis propias conclusiones, de momento habrá que conformarse con el Wiki (en inglés).

Artículo en LifeHacker.

Para finalizar y como últimamente uso bastante más Ubuntu que Windows dejar otra opción para linuxeros, dvd::rip .. breve guía de uso.

Shall we?

Preparation
Not really anything to prepare.

Software
Handbrake

Download and install Handbrake. Nothing groundbreaking here. It's lightweight and easy on the eyes. After it's installed, run it.

1. Click Browse and select the folder that contains the 'AUDIO_TS' and 'VIDEO_TS' folders of your DVD rip.
2. Select the Title. (Hint: look at the length of each one listed if there is more than one)
3. Click Browse and select a destination folder for the file-to-be. Make sure to select 'AVI' in the bottom drop-down of that Browse dialog window.
4. Pull down the Encoder menu and select XviD.
5. Pull down the Audio Encoder menu and select MP3.
6. Pull down the Crop Select Option menu and select No Crop. (I don't trust 'Automatic' here)
7. Under Size, type '320' in the Width field. Height will be filled in automatically.

Click on the Video tab and follow the next screen shot.

8. Under Advanced Encoding Settings, populate the check box if you want to enable 2-Pass Encoding. Personally, I don't feel it's necessary but to each his own.
9. Under Quality in the Avg. Bitrate field, put in anything between 300 and 700. You can go lower or higher, but again to each his own. Zen supports up to a combined audio/video bitrate of 1.0 Mbps so use your best judgment.
10. Under Framerate, select what corresponds with your DVD rip. Generally, movies are 23.976 and most TV shows and television-based material is 29.97.

Click on the Audio & Subtitles tab and follow the last screen shot below.

11. Under Audio Tracks, pull down the Track 1 menu and choose your preferred audio stream. Note: If there's more than one, look for English (AC3) (Dolby Surround) and select it if available. If you don't see that option, no biggie.
12. Pull down the Track 1 Mix menu and select Stereo.
13. Under Audio Quality, choose your preferred Bitrate and Sample Rate with the pull-down menus.

Click Start in the upper-left corner and go have a beer. You've earned it.

Of course, I would prefer that the up and down buttons would change volume because my stereo remote is huge. I know why it doesn't, though: it would require a variable line-out and volume is supposed to handled by the amp.

Update: I should have mentioned that if you've encoded your video with chapters using Handbrake, this tip will allow you to see the chapter titles, in addition to the times. It's a small feature that DVD can't match.

Handbrake is a video converter of DVD Video (MPEG-2) to MPEG-4, playable in Quicktime or VLC if you wish. Just pop in a DVD into your harddrive, and Handbrake will let you convert it into a .mp4 file and allowing you to tweak all aspect of the encoding process such as framerate, screen size, and quality.

It doesn't get much easier than this. I was making my first  without instructions in 2 minutes. Handbrake also includes presets optimized for various devices such as the PSP and Apple TV.

For conversion of a two hour movie it took my Macbook about 30 minutes. Times will vary depending on your settings and needs.

Get Handbrake here

Converting AVI, MPG etc.
I couldn’t find a freeware program that I liked, so I finally settled on WinAvi. It has several profiles to convert video for iPods, PSP and also 3gp and MP4 formats. I found that using the MP4 profile with audio set to 96, video bitrate set at 512 and for video size I chose original video size this produced a decent quality video that plays just as well on both devices. It also has batch encoding and its fast, a 45 minute TV episode was done in about 8 minutes.

Ripping and Encoding DVD
This time I found a freeware solution using Handbrake. Handbrake wont work on copy protected DVD’s so first they have to be ripped to your hard drive using something like DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor, both freeware. With Handbrake I used the iPod Touch profile but changed the encoder from H.264 to Mpeg4, video bit rate set to 512 and audio to 96. With handbrake you can just specify the width of the output video and it will adjust the height accordingly so as to maintain the original aspect ration.

I’m very pleased with the end result of both programs, they both produce a video that looks great on the Touch and N95 8GB. I don’t plug either device into a TV to watch movies though I did test it with the N95, the quality was acceptable on a 28” though If I watched on a TV more often I’d use a higher video bit rate, I used 512 because it keeps the file size down and produces a decent on device video quality.

Firefox - Safari is good but it's just not compatible with enough of the sites I use i.e. wordpress.com

Flip4Mac - the best windows media plugin, lets you watch video on sites to lazy to encode video for formats other than windows. The coolest thing is you just install it and everything else is automatic.

Fire - fantastic IM client that works with everything (MSN, AOL, YAHOO and .MAC). Sadly there will be no future versions of Fire as this open source project has come to an end but whilst we're all still on OS X this remains a great IM client.

Missing Sync - This delightful software allows you to sync your windows mobile 6 handheld - or any number of other handhelds - to your mac (including itunes) anyway. Ace!

OpenOffice - Is a good cheap (free - if memory serves) alternative to buying Office for Mac (hideously expensive).

Handbrake - A good dvd ripper is essential in the UK if you want to take full advantage of your video ipod (particularly the touch)*. Handbrake comes with all the settings pre-configured for ipod formats and - once you've figured out how to use it - works really well.

Cyberduck - A great FTP client for Mac.

*One of the few lame features of Apple is their inability to sort out movie distribution for the UK via itunes.

ανννιααααανννν.... (ή βουμβουουουουουμμμ!!)

και ανιααααααΑΑΑΑΑΑν (εσκασε το τουρμπο), ιιιιιιιιιιιιιιιιιι (τα λιαστιχααα), ωχ ωχ ωχ ωχ ωχ , "Οχι, γαμωττηπουτ@ν$!$%^$@#^%$!......

Next week, θα τις παρω με κάτι άλλο.. (τις στροφες)

αουτς

over and out

Hello there and good morning. I've been up since 8.20am, had to bring Melanie and her friend Verena over to Mel's guest family at nine. I had some trouble with my handbrake on my car, a bit frozen. Now i parked it without to put the handbrake on, but put the second gear on, a little tip my dad gave me when it gets colder after a wetter period. My dad is the ultimate DIY (do it yourself / tee se itse) man, he knows how to fix everything. But what still seizes to amaze me is that he don't get computers, everything else he can fix. Don't know why i wrote this, just thought of him when i did this handbrake trick. I will pick up Mel and Verena later and take them to Mel's finnish lessons and then i pick them back and bring 'em here. Tomorrow we're having Endrive rehearsals again. Getting our set together for the great shindig taking place at S-Osis (you can never promote too much) later this month, the 22nd to be more precise. Now i will go on with my day, see you soon again. Take care!

peace love and understanding,
-pooki

some old skool DI pictures, thought i'd share - from 2003 i believe these are, taken by Elina.V

So what's changed from the last version, released back in October last year? Well, first-off the application is Leopard-only which may well irk some readers (debate away in the comments, folks). Throw in improved queueing, Sparkle updating for keeping Handbrake up-to-date, iPhone Anamorphic video, 'multi-track audio on Apple devices' and Elgato .eyetv file support. Of course, there's many, many, more enhancements that we're not mentioning, and the changelist shows there's plenty of new goodness in this release.

All for the very excellent price of free, the new version is available from the Handbrake site for Mac, WIndows and Linux citizens.

*It goes without saying that you should only use Handbrake for DVDs which you are licensed to do so. SouthBeach tech & TUAW does not condone piracy.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

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