New 30GB iPod Photo

MacInTouch Home Page

This is the iPod photo Apple ought to have released last year:

A 'slim' 30GB iPod Photo debuts at $349 with the chunkier 60GB version priced at $449, both said to be available 'immediately.' The Photo models include a USB 2.0 cable, but FireWire and audio/video cables are optional, as is the $39 dock. An optional iPod Camera Connector accessory is due in 'late March' at $29: "By simply connecting the iPod Camera Connector and a digital camera, customers can easily transfer digital images to their iPod photo, providing tremendous storage space so they can take more pictures. Imported photos are immediately viewable on iPod photo's crisp color screen, and can also be brought back to iPhoto on the Mac or various photo applications on the PC."

It was always nuts that the iPhoto photo couldn't act as a native repository (image bank) for digital images. These still aren't enough features for me to pass my 3G iPod on and get a new one, but it's a start. (I'm waiting for the ability to send sound streams to a car stereo via bluetooth.)

Digital Cameras and Color Profiles

Macintouch - Digital Cameras

This discussion confirms my conclusion on color profiles -- unless you really know what you're doing, use sRGB for everything. It's not only that the subject is quite complex, it's also that implementations of color profile technologies are very buggy and incomplete.

Microsoft has a free tool for screen video capture - Windows Media Encoder

At several points in my work career I'd have liked to record a screen video. SnagIt does a fairly poor job with video, and the higher end Camtasia solution costs a few hundred bucks. I didn't know of a real alternative, until I read Jon Udell's article from early 2004 wherein he mentions a free Microsoft utility: Windows Media Encoder 9. Jon writes:

The results were stunning. I set up a new session, pointed it at Outlook's main window, and began encoding.. Along the way I pointed with the cursor to items of interest, opened and closed dialog boxes, and drove the Outlook interface as I normally do. The resulting six-minute video had the same format as my Outlook window, which happened to be about 750-by-620. The file came in at just under 3MB. I FTP'd it to my Website and, because I'd chosen the progressive-download option, playback was immediate. It was also perfectly readable and audible. Elapsed time from the moment I thought of trying this to the end of playback: about 25 minutes. Next time it'll take 10. Why don't more people do this? Because it wasn’t this easy before. Now, it is.

More recently Jon writes of this as a part of "screencasting". I gave it a try. I wasn't surprised to discover that it was a bit bleeding edge -- Jon Udell basically defines the cutting edge. I can confirm, however, that it works. Next time I'll be able to do it in 20 minutes, and eventually it should be pretty easy. Sadly I don't know of an OS X equivalent, though if there were one it would be far more elegant.

The encoder is used for capturing screen video. There's little documentation, but you'll see the "wizard" when you start up. If you use a dual monitor hi-res display try capturing from a "defined window" and try dropping your screen res and colors. Using the wizard I got it to work, when I played with my own settings I got worthless error message with hex identifiers. Video can be saved locally and played in Windows Media Player -- but I had to manually locate and identify the codec update. (The automatic installation failed.) You can also drag and drop the video file into the XP Movie Maker application where you can add a voice track, edit it, combine clips, and save them externally.

I had one annoying and persistent bug. When I was capturing screen video double clicking didn't work. I suspect that dropping the frame rate or extending my click interval would take care of this problem but I just used the click-enter alternative. Also if you have two displays I think it croaks unless you tell it to record from a defined area (I selected an area on one of my displays).

It's not really ready for widespread use, but I think I'll get good use from this 2002 utility.

Using a print server with OS X

macosxhints - Improve print quality when using a Hawking Print Server

I think the trick her is bypassing the printer model setup and the source for the PPD file. I might try this.

Lexar's digital photography site

Lexar | Pro Photo

They make memory cards.

Improve iPhoto5 performance by setting thumbnail size

macosxhints - Improve iPhoto5 performance by setting thumbnail size

iPhoto 5.01 has several performance issues. Adjusting thumbnail and photo display sizes seems to help some people. I was surprised, however, to read that one of these might work in iPhoto 4 (requires plist editing):

There was another hint which mentioned keyboard shortcuts to change the size of the thumbnail view.

If you press 0,1,2 you will see different sizes of thumbnails.

0 - Minimum size
1 - Maximum Size
2 - 'Natural' thumbnail size

So pressing 2 should give you the same size as this tip without having to edit a .plist. This definitely speeds up iPhoto and worked well in iPhoto 4 (but had to be done by editing the plist).

OS X Audio MIDI Setup Utility has extra sound control options

macosxhints - A workaround for no sound in non-Apple applications: "I've had sound problems before which affected both Apple and non-Apple programs. To fix them, I opened up the Audio MIDI Setup Utility, which is an Apple-provided program in my main Utilities folder. It has all sorts of settings which might help people. It's like a more detailed version of the Sound control panel in System Preferences. My particular problem was loss of stereo sound, so I had to select 2ch-16bit from a drop-down (and equalize the volume of the two stereo channels)."

Merging iPhoto Libraries: more problems

John's Digital Photography Page: Merging iPhoto Libraries

I really don't understand what's going on with Product Management for iPhoto. There are people satisified with iPhoto, I think they fall into a large category of software users that simply have pretty low expectations. They don't really expect software to work very well, and as long as they don't lose too many photos too often they can live with that.

Here's some more problems related to keywords and iPhoto that I learned of from KF - someone who knows a great deal about iPhoto keywords. I shall have to add them to the page I link to here:

...There is badness if libraries do not have identical keywords lists.

------
- create a new library Library 1
- add a photograph Photograph 1 to Library 1, and assign it keyword "a"
- create a new library Library 2
- add a photograph Photograph 2 to Library 1, and assign it keyword "b"
- merge Library 2 into Library 1 with the disk image technique

Result: Photograph 2 has keyword "a". It should have keyword "b".
------

I believe this is explainable. iPhoto is storing keywords by ID number instead of name, and IDs are assigned to new keywords sequentially...

Burning a disk from within iPhoto is worse. I'm not sure what happens there, but it's strange. Here's a test case I sent to Apple:

-----
- create a new library
- add two photographs to the library
- create two new keywords using the 'Add' button
- assign the first keyword to the first photograph and the second keyword to second photograph
- drag the second keyword above the first in the preferences
- burn disc

Result: On reading the library from the disc, the first photograph has the second keyword and the second photograph has no keyword.

OmniOutliner Extras - sample documents, AppleScript

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Extras

When I purchased OO Pro I was surprised I didn't get any sample documents. This is one heck of a powerful application and some examples would help. I requested they provide some, I think I got an acknowledgement.

Now they've added a site for both scripts and sample documents. Yay!

OS X screen capture: Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4

I've been doing image capture the OS X way, using Grab.app.

I just learned that ancient Classic methods still works, and it still creates a PICT image. Not much understands PICT any more, but Omni Outliner Pro still does.

So hit Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4. Highlight the area to image. The PICT is now in the clipboard. Paste it into OO Pro.

Visit the world, from your couch

NASA just keeps giving and giving and giving... | MetaFilter

Free Windows-only software to browse the world via images. We don't have rocket packs, but otherwise this is starting to feel like science fiction.

Google's Keyhole may do more but it's not free and used to be picky about hardware. (Also Windows only.)

Too much map and imaging stuff is Windows only. One of my favorite pieces of software, Microsoft Trips and Streets, is (surprise) also Windows only.

Two Macintouch software updates of interest (to me)

MacInTouch: "Amadeus II 3.8 is a disk-based sound editor and processor, with visual waveform editing, live recording, sampling, analysis, sound repair/denoising tools, a parametric equalizer designed for restoring old vinyl recordings, and other features. This release includes the latest version of the FLAC encoding engine and fixes a number of bugs from Version 3.8. Amadeus II is $30 for Mac OS X 10.2 and up and Mac OS 9.

OmniOutliner 3.0.1 updates the Omni Group's outliner and organizer with stability and performance improvements, enhanced importing and exporting, and minor interface and usability changes. OmniOutliner 3 is $39.95 ($69.95 Professional) for Mac OS X 10.2 and up."

New Canon Digital Rebel: light sensitivity yes!

Canon EOS 350D / Digital Rebel XT: Digital Photography Review

This camera is just out.

The EOS 350D Digital features a newly developed, second generation, extremely low noise APS-C size 8.0 Megapixel CMOS sensor – the fourth new CMOS sensor from Canon in just twelve months. It is powered by the same DIGIC II image processor found in Canon’s professional series D-SLR cameras, and features 3 frame per second, 14 frame burst operation, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface, simultaneous RAW and Large JPEG writing and 0.2 second start up time. The camera is more than 10% lighter and 25% smaller by volume than the EOS 300D.

Here's the key feature

The low noise of the second generation CMOS sensor delivers clean images from ISO 100 through to ISO 1600.

ISO 1600. That means indoor pictures without flash given a reasonable lens.

No vibration damping though. I'm told another vendor (Konica/Minolta?) has a patent lock on sensor based anti-vibration support. Nikon and Canon do vibration damping in the lens, which means prohibitively expensive lenses.

Colorsync support with Safari

MacInTouch Home Page: "[John Fieber] Safari and Omniweb support embedded ICC profiles. ColorSync is always enabled in Safari, and is a preferences option in Omniweb and Internet Explorer.

  A caveat about Safari ColorSync support is that it assumes Generic RGB for untagged images, not sRGB. I, and a lot of other folks on Apple's colorsync list, find this rather distressing since, for better or worse, sRGB is the standard for web graphics in the absence of explicit tags. I haven't checked what Omniweb and IE assume for untagged images.
  ICC Profiles in Images is a page to test colorsync support.
  ColorSync in Mozilla addresses the Mozilla family of browsers.

[Christer Olsson] There's actually no way to turn ColorSync off in Mac OS X 10.3. Safari (and Mail and Preview) is using ColorSync to match tagged images. More details can be found in the following document: Color_Management_in_Mac_OS_X.pdf"

Video out from Mac Mini analog VGA is underpowered?

Mac Mini (Part 7) - Macintouch: "About the 'dim-VGA-signal' symptom with the Mac Mini: Merman computer-magazine C't' has measured the analogue signal coming out of the Mac Mini. They wrote that the signal- level stays below 530mV and this clearly is out of the VESA- specs. Signal-strength is too low. Some monitors can handle the weak signal well, some don't. Better go with DVI."