Week of Favorite Apps: Day Two: BitRate Calcbitrate, calculator,

Another of my favorite apps that seem to no longer be available:
BitRate Calc. With this app, you can calculate the average
encoding bitrate needed to squeeze your video onto a DVD.
You can select from Standard DVD or Dual Layer DVD,
and you can set the audio bitrate and video runtime
(length). Then, push the "Calculate" button and
presto, it does the math for you and figures out
what your target encoding rate is, so you can set it in
Compressor ( through Final Cut) or DVD Studio Pro.

You can for now get it here, come Friday it will move
to a permanent spot on my UMU Free Stuff page.

Sharing Larry

If you have never seen a video tutorial by the great Larry Jordan,
who manages the great Final Cut blog of his, larryjordan.biz,
well now here's your chance!




This is one of his short tutorials on getting up to speed faster
in Final Cut Pro. It's been a great help to me,
so I'd thought  I'd share with all of you.

Random Questions Answered

Here are some random questions that I have recently answered, that
may help you out in your endeavors:

1. "I have a movie on IMOVIE and I want to export it to something I can upload
as a torrent but I have a million different choices to export.
What is the best way to do this?"

You would first save it out as a Quicktime file from iMovie.
Then use an app that supports DIVX/XVID encoding, such as
ffmpegx or VisualHub.
using ffmpegx as an option, Select the quicktime .mov,
and drag and drop it into the encode window, and
select the XVID mencoder preset.




Here the mov file from iMovie pulls the default setting,
targeting a file size of 700MB with 128kbps Mp3 audio,
just fine for most torrent networks.

(if using VisualHub, simply drag and drop the Quicktime .mov
file into the AVI tab, and select the Standard Tab. This will
make an .avi file that will be encoded in the Mpeg-4 spec,
NOT DIVX/XVID, but will still be in the acceptable size of 700mb.)

2. "I have some AVI. divx video files that I want to edit on my MAC, in Final Cut Pro.
What format should I convert them to, to avoid constant rendering of the video
and audio in Final Cut?"

Go and get the latest version of MpegStreamclip.
Open the .avi files in MpegStreamclip.
Once opened in MpegStreamclip, export the files as DV Stream files
for ingestion into Final Cut Pro, thus avoiding the constant need for
rendering the Video while in use in the timeline.
The flattened vanilla DV Stream file is well liked by Apple's NLE apps
(iMovie, Final Cut Express, and Final Cut Pro), and will not cause the
dreaded "Red Must Render" notices in the apps.

Monday Mac App Toolbox: MKVTools

MKV, or Mastroka Video, is a pain for Mac users.
Although the adoption of it has merit :
open-source, ability to contain within it
HD (High Definition) Video and Audio, as well
as subtitles, it is often a piece of work to get it
into a usuable format if you want to use part of it
in an Final Cut Pro or iMovie sequence.
Tried and true converters such as MpegStreamclip
and Quicktime Player often choke
( even with Perian installed on the system),
usually on trying to decode everything that is in the container,
instead of just focusing on what is needed.

Rather than go through the hassle of trying to use MKV as it is,
I find that I'd rather get the video into a format that I use,
and then go from there. To facilitate that, I often turn to
MKVTools.

MKVTools is developed by my good friend
emmgunn, enables you to drag and drop a MKV file onto it,
and from there, you are presented with options to flatten the
file down by embedding subtitles, and even
transcoding the file into another format,
such as XVID for video and mp3 for audio.

This is what I tend to do, by transcoding it to another file,
I get it into a more compatible format like XVID
and the audio into mp3, which makes it less labor
intensive to decode and enable playback in
Quicktime and MpegStreamclip ( but not VLC,
which handles mkvs much easier for playback, but not editing).

Once it is in an .avi container ( or .mp4),
I can then open this file in MpegStreamclip,
and scrub through it pretty easily, getting the
pieces I want here or there, and exporting them
from there to DV stream, for ingestion into iMovie,
FCE or FCP.

Or if I happen to have a file that I'd rather just be able to watch
at my leisure, I'll keep the .avi ( or .mp4) file that is generated
by MKVTools, and watch that on my HTMac, or encode it
for direct watching on my iPod ( or an Apple TV).

It is the #1 tool I turn to for getting mkv files into easier
to handle formats.
But what if you have an .mkv that is stubborn and chokes
MKVTools ability to transcode it into something useful?

Tune in to tomorrow's Tech Tip Tuesday, where I'll talk about
two ways to get around heavy problem mkv's to get something
useful for your video productions.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Recording What Plays on my Mac to a DVD

Occasionally, you get a video file, either via your own
creation through say iMovie or FCP, or you acquire it from
the web, and you want it to end up on DVD, so instead
of watching it on your computer, you can watch it
on DVD, and have it also preserved for posterity.

I do this on a semi regular basis with stuff that will
play on my Mac, say in either Safari or Firefox,
but for some reason hoses when trying to convert
through Quicktime or VisualHub to DVD.
I use a DVD-R Recorder ( non Hard Drive based)
to record the content to a Blank DVD-R.

To accomplish what I'm about to describe to do,
You'll need two things:

1. An Apple DVI to Video adapter, or this one if you have a mini dvi jack, and if your DVD Recorder
accepts video via S-Video, an S-video Cable like
this one here at Radio Shack.

2. A Y Plug ( Stereo mini 1/8in on one side, that goes "Y" to two RCA stero
(R/W) plugs, to hook into your Mac's Headphone port.
Again, Radio Shack carries what you need.


Now For the playback.

1. With Video adapter in, set your Mac to Mirror Desktop out to the input
ports of the DVD Recorder.
With a TV or a Monitor hooked to the DVD Recorder's Video Out,
make sure video signal is recieved. If not, set video inputs
on DVD Recorder until you get the Mac's Desktop displayed.
This may take setting the Video Input on the DVD Recorder
to accept S-Video input, if it naturally doesn't do so, or
setting the input, rear or front, to accept Video in.
Check with your recorder's manual for settings.

2. Hook up "Y" stereo cable to mac headphone out to
the DVD Recorder's audio Inputs.

3. Play the Video on your Mac.
If the file is say Flash Video, if you have downloaded it from
the website, you should be able to play it back in either
Quicktime Player or MpegStreamclip, with the Perian
Quicktime component.
You can then play it back Full Screen on your
Mac, and thus get Full Screen out to the DVD Recorder ( make sure
to hide the dock first, and turn off any screen savers, and apps
that might bounce in the dock like System Updates, Entourage, Mail,
etc.) I mostly use MpegStreamclip for this, as it allows for Full Screen
Playback Natively. Quicktime Player would have to be upgraded
to the PRO version to enable this feature.

if you are getting good playback, and you are getting good sound
(Keep the System sound up at 70% or higher)
then after one run through to make sure everything
goes out ok, you'll be ready to record directly to the DVD Recorder.
Insert a Blank DVD-R, (I prefer Tayio Uden blanks), and
record.

If you cannot download the video file,Say it is a video streaming file
embedded in a browser, you could try and record the stream
by playing it back in QT Pro or MpegStreamclip, but buffering issues
will cause you to have some skips and stutters as it fills the buffer.
Just be aware of that and know that will be your trade off
if you can't download it to the Mac and have to play it streaming.