Capturing video on a Mac - EyeTV
This author likes EyeTV. Interesting reference on how the capturing and publishing was done. Focus on TV capture -- using Mac as a PVR.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Monday, September 13, 2004
MacTheRipper: backing up the kid's DVDs
MacTheRipper
Mac the Ripper removes Macrovision protection, so you can copy from DVD to tape. It will be good to have a way to backup the kid's DVDs, or to play on the VCR (rather than buy another DVD). All legal so long as its our use.
Update 1/2/06: the original site has been shut down, but one can download 2.6.6 via VersionTracker.
All you need on the mac is mac the ripper (decss for the mac) which is free and dragon burn--9.95 for a competitive upgrade.
The only other thing you might need is a compression program if the movie is more than the one-sided dvd capacity (single side capacity is 4.7GB, some movies come on DVDs that are double sided and can be up to 9.5GB -- but most consumer DVD drives won't burn double sided DVDs), but mac the ripper lets you extract only the movie and not the extras if you want.
Works good to back up the kids dvd's that they inevitably ruin.
Mac the Ripper removes Macrovision protection, so you can copy from DVD to tape. It will be good to have a way to backup the kid's DVDs, or to play on the VCR (rather than buy another DVD). All legal so long as its our use.
Update 1/2/06: the original site has been shut down, but one can download 2.6.6 via VersionTracker.
Formating a hard drive as FAT under OS X
FWFL_User_Guide.pdf (application/pdf Object)
I didn't think this could be done any more under 10.3, but I didn't choose the "Free Space" tab. I need to test this.
Your SmartDisk hard drive can be formatted and partitioned using Apple’s Disk Utility, located in your Utilities folder. Under Disk and Volumes Selected, select the appropriate drive, and click on the Partition tab. Under Volume Information, expand the Format field and choose Free Space. Click on the Erase tab, expand the Volume Format Field, and click MS-DOS File System. Click Erase and wait for the Erase to complete. Your drive is now ready to be connected to a Windows operating system.
I didn't think this could be done any more under 10.3, but I didn't choose the "Free Space" tab. I need to test this.
SmartDisk Drives: Firewire FireFly and CrossFire
SmartDisk - Capture, Share and Preserve Digital Content
I've heard of some good results with these. I need to figure out who makes their bridge chips. I did see this on their web page, it means they don't use the dreaded Oxford chipset:
I've heard of some good results with these. I need to figure out who makes their bridge chips. I did see this on their web page, it means they don't use the dreaded Oxford chipset:
We are aware of reports that using the newest release of Mac OS X, "Panther," can result in data loss when used with certain types of external FireWire hard drives, notably those built with certain type of chips.
None of SmartDisk's FireWire hard drives use these types of chips. Therefore your SmartDisk FireWire hard drive should not be affected by the problems reported with Panther. No hard drive firmware update is needed (or is available) for SmartDisk's hard drives.
OS X: failure to mount a CD, cannot eject CD
OSXFAQ - Technical News and Support for Mac OS X
I never had this problem -- until very recently. Some update has messed up drive mounting.
I wonder if this plays a role in the problems many have with mounting firewire drives.
This tip does work, but not if one uses fast user switching to switch to an already logged in user. It's only on initial login that the drive can be seen, and ejected or mounted!
Every once in a while a CD would not mount on the desktop but would be visable by disk utility. It would happen with original CD's, Data CD's, Music CD's and burned CD's.
I would try restarting etc... nothing would get it to show up! I tried restoring the permissions, nothing. Disk utility was not finding any problems either.
Finally out of desperation I decided to log in as a fake user and see if that user could see the disc... and it could!
I never had this problem -- until very recently. Some update has messed up drive mounting.
I wonder if this plays a role in the problems many have with mounting firewire drives.
This tip does work, but not if one uses fast user switching to switch to an already logged in user. It's only on initial login that the drive can be seen, and ejected or mounted!
macosxhints - Use Disk Utility to repair FAT32 formatted disks
macosxhints - Use Disk Utility to repair FAT32 formatted disks: "You can use Disk Utilty in Panther to repair MS-DOS (FAT32) formatted disks."
Apparently it can fix disks that data recovery systems have problems with. Weird.
Apparently it can fix disks that data recovery systems have problems with. Weird.
macosxhints - SMB mount failure workaround
macosxhints - SMB mount failure workaround
What I could do was create a folder in my home directory (let's call it XYZ) and then, in Terminal, use the following:
mount_smbfs -W DOMAIN //USER:PASSWORD@MOUNT/SHARE /Users/YOURUSERNAME/XYZ
Replace the words in CAPS with the appropriate ones for your circumstances. This essentially mounts the share and connects it to the named folder. Which when double-clicked on will browse that share.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Kanguru Slim FC-RW - Flash Card Burner, Portable DVD Player and CD Burner!
Kanguru Slim FC-RW - Flash Card Burner, Portable DVD Player and CD Burner!
A complement to a digital camera when traveling. Fringe benefit is use it to view DVDs in the hotel room. Main benefit though is burning CD without laptop, review pictures on hotel TV.
A complement to a digital camera when traveling. Fringe benefit is use it to view DVDs in the hotel room. Main benefit though is burning CD without laptop, review pictures on hotel TV.
Filehand: Another fulltext indexing solution, including PDF
Filehand Home Page
Interesing. I love Lookout, but I need something for the rest of my file system. I'll try it next week.
Interesing. I love Lookout, but I need something for the rest of my file system. I'll try it next week.
Snippets 1997 - before there were blogs
Snippets Explained (Version 2)
This is one of the oldest and least reconstructed pages on my personal web site. Google found it very quickly. It was first authored in Feb 1997 (my site began @ Jan/Feb 1995, initially at the University of Minnesota).
This site was about creating quick bits of information with a simple ontology to organize their publication. It was to be a cross between the fragment oriented PIMs of the 1980s and early 1990s and the web.
I didn't have the expertise to build the right solutions, and I had other priorities. I forgot about those "snippet" pages. Until I stated messing with del.icio.us. Ontology, fragments, keyworks ... then there are my blogs, esp. Quick Notes ...
Yeah, there's a resemblance.
Tinderbox, though, is closest to the snippets vision (though I don't use it; Quick Notes + Google is good).
Del.icio.us is interesting though. Gotta figure how to work it in to the mix...
This is one of the oldest and least reconstructed pages on my personal web site. Google found it very quickly. It was first authored in Feb 1997 (my site began @ Jan/Feb 1995, initially at the University of Minnesota).
This site was about creating quick bits of information with a simple ontology to organize their publication. It was to be a cross between the fragment oriented PIMs of the 1980s and early 1990s and the web.
I didn't have the expertise to build the right solutions, and I had other priorities. I forgot about those "snippet" pages. Until I stated messing with del.icio.us. Ontology, fragments, keyworks ... then there are my blogs, esp. Quick Notes ...
Yeah, there's a resemblance.
Tinderbox, though, is closest to the snippets vision (though I don't use it; Quick Notes + Google is good).
Del.icio.us is interesting though. Gotta figure how to work it in to the mix...
del.icio.us/jfaughnan
del.icio.us/jfaughnan
Here is my del.icio.us set of collaborative bookmarks, with appropriate recursion to this Quick Notes Blog. I like the way the tag list is growing. I use jfaughnan and jgfaughnan to tag my work.
See also my next post, on snippets.
Here is my del.icio.us set of collaborative bookmarks, with appropriate recursion to this Quick Notes Blog. I like the way the tag list is growing. I use jfaughnan and jgfaughnan to tag my work.
See also my next post, on snippets.
del.icio.us - very fashionable - collaborative bookmarks
del.icio.us
Collaborative bookmarks with an emergent ontology. Very fashionable. I signed up of course.
Collaborative bookmarks with an emergent ontology. Very fashionable. I signed up of course.
Making dish sponges last longer
Safety Tips for Your Kitchen
I can't vouch for disease prevention, but I am positive this makes the sponges last longer. We were going through sponges at a great pace -- due to their tendency to develop an ... errr ... odor (note to our few guests -- we use a dishwasher for your dishes). Zapping the sponge every few days now gives it a reasonable lifespan.
When exposed on the highest setting of an 800 watt microwave oven, a dry, cellulose
sponge was disinfected after 30 seconds. A wet sponge was disinfected after 60 seconds.
I can't vouch for disease prevention, but I am positive this makes the sponges last longer. We were going through sponges at a great pace -- due to their tendency to develop an ... errr ... odor (note to our few guests -- we use a dishwasher for your dishes). Zapping the sponge every few days now gives it a reasonable lifespan.
Why I won't be buying PC computer games
Big City Games - Official Site - FIM Speedway Grand Prix
The 7 yo and I are racing around the hardware store. He catches site of a pile of cheapo games, and at $5 a shot I weaken and grab this one.
Lesson #1: The cost of purchase is not related to the cost of ownership.
Go to blackboard and write 1000 times.
Without looking I assumed this was some discarded game from the 1990s. Something that old has a ghost of chance of running on the kids Win98 game machine or my the family Win2K box. (I don't let those stability destroying suckers onto my personal XP work machine.) Wrong. It's vintage 2003. Those "minimum requirements" are laughable.
I sort of got it running -- if one had extreme patience. A 20 minute install copied 350MB or so of data to my drive. The first time I tried it on the Win98 machine it promptly exceptioned with a "chrome ....dll error". I located a 1999 update to the old video card and it installed. Didn't show parts of the interface dialog boxes though -- probably some missing video functionality.
The next install was on a vintage 2000-2001 machine running Win2K. In theory it well exceeded the minimum specs -- after I updated DirectX from 5 to 9c. In practice the video didn't show (I suspect it needed a more recent version of Windows Media Player -- although that wasn't in the minimum requirement list). The game ran like molasses -- I suspect it really needs a fairly high end modern 3D graphics card (I'd set the display options to pretty minimal).
Finally I uninstalled and gave up.
Beyond RELEARNING lesson #1 for the THOUSANDTH time, this experience inspired a new conviction. NO MORE PC GAMES. I'm not willing to invest in the PC hardware to run them -- in particular I'm not willing to upgrade my hardware every 1-2 years.
I'll be educational software that's cross-platform (Mac/PC) IFF I know I can trust the recommended hardware specs. Otherwise I'll get a dedicated game box and keep the game stuff away from the PCs.
Minimum System Requirements
Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP
Pentium III 500 MHz or equivalent
128 MB RAM
500 MB Hard Disk Space
DirectX compatible Graphics Card with 16 MB RAM
DirectX Compatible Sound Card
DirectX 8.1 or Higher
4x CD-ROM
56k Modem for Internet play
The 7 yo and I are racing around the hardware store. He catches site of a pile of cheapo games, and at $5 a shot I weaken and grab this one.
Lesson #1: The cost of purchase is not related to the cost of ownership.
Go to blackboard and write 1000 times.
Without looking I assumed this was some discarded game from the 1990s. Something that old has a ghost of chance of running on the kids Win98 game machine or my the family Win2K box. (I don't let those stability destroying suckers onto my personal XP work machine.) Wrong. It's vintage 2003. Those "minimum requirements" are laughable.
I sort of got it running -- if one had extreme patience. A 20 minute install copied 350MB or so of data to my drive. The first time I tried it on the Win98 machine it promptly exceptioned with a "chrome ....dll error". I located a 1999 update to the old video card and it installed. Didn't show parts of the interface dialog boxes though -- probably some missing video functionality.
The next install was on a vintage 2000-2001 machine running Win2K. In theory it well exceeded the minimum specs -- after I updated DirectX from 5 to 9c. In practice the video didn't show (I suspect it needed a more recent version of Windows Media Player -- although that wasn't in the minimum requirement list). The game ran like molasses -- I suspect it really needs a fairly high end modern 3D graphics card (I'd set the display options to pretty minimal).
Finally I uninstalled and gave up.
Beyond RELEARNING lesson #1 for the THOUSANDTH time, this experience inspired a new conviction. NO MORE PC GAMES. I'm not willing to invest in the PC hardware to run them -- in particular I'm not willing to upgrade my hardware every 1-2 years.
I'll be educational software that's cross-platform (Mac/PC) IFF I know I can trust the recommended hardware specs. Otherwise I'll get a dedicated game box and keep the game stuff away from the PCs.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
iView MediaPro 2.6 - converts iPhoto libraries?
iView MediaPro Weblog » New Release: iView MediaPro 2.6 (Windows, Mac)
Here's what the manual says:
Sounds very interesting. It leaves iPhoto pictures in place to start with, so it's easy to experiment with. This is a big deal, until now iPhoto has been a one way street. Since iView MediaPro runs on Windows too, it's potentially a way to move iPhoto content to Windows.
Update: I imported a 900 image iPhoto Library. It took an hour or so, but it did a nice job. I think one loses image sequence from albums. Also many images which I'd rotated now were malrotated. I think this may be related to a bug with Image Capture -- it duplicates the EXIF orientation tag and creates conflicting values there.
This is indeed very interesting. I may allow me to have a single view into ALL of my iPhoto Libraries for example.
New 'Getting Started' dialog includes option to convert iPhoto libraries as well as links to online learning resources.
Here's what the manual says:
Mac: In the Getting Started dialog, check Import iPhoto Library. MediaPro will automatically find the iPhoto library for the active operating system user, launch iPhoto in the background and import all original photos into a new catalog. This feature only works with versions 2 and 4 of iPhoto.
The new catalog contains references to your photo files that are still inside the iPhoto library folders. If you wish to move these files out of the iPhoto library, you can select all the images in the catalog and select Transfer to Folder in the Action menu. Choose Move files, reset paths, delete orginals. This will move your original images to a folder of your choice, sets the paths to the new location and delete the images from your iPhoto library.
To free up additional hard drive space, you could delete all the proxy images (thumbnails) created by iPhoto. To do this, simply trash the iPhoto Library folder from the Pictures folder. Or you could leave them where they are and have media in both iPhoto and iView MediaPro.
The new MediaPro catalog will also containsyour iPhoto albums as MediaPro Catalog Sets (in the Organize Panel). Your catalog also contains any metadata (such as EXIF digital camera data, comments or keywords) that were assigned to your images in iPhoto. The chart above details how iPhoto annotations map to iView MediaPro annotation fields.
Sounds very interesting. It leaves iPhoto pictures in place to start with, so it's easy to experiment with. This is a big deal, until now iPhoto has been a one way street. Since iView MediaPro runs on Windows too, it's potentially a way to move iPhoto content to Windows.
Update: I imported a 900 image iPhoto Library. It took an hour or so, but it did a nice job. I think one loses image sequence from albums. Also many images which I'd rotated now were malrotated. I think this may be related to a bug with Image Capture -- it duplicates the EXIF orientation tag and creates conflicting values there.
This is indeed very interesting. I may allow me to have a single view into ALL of my iPhoto Libraries for example.
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