What Steve Jobs Meant to Me...

Though I never met the man, Steve Jobs to me represented opportunity.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

When in 1991, after floundering in the field I had chosen to pursue,
and a failed marriage, I decided to take a step back and try and
figure out what it was I wanted to do with my life.

I knew that I wanted to make money, sure...I wanted to make
a decent living that used all of my talents and not just
a physical labor job. I wanted to be excited about what I did
everyday, and to not dread going into work and hating myself,
or my employer, as I was currently doing.

I decided at the end of 1991 to go back into Commercial Art,
as I had been good at it in High School, and had loved the
creative end of it. I enrolled in my local Technical College,
and as I soon found out, things were moving in the art field
toward being created on the Computer. And that computer was
the Macintosh.

I graduated Technical College with my degree, and went to work
for a company that had just started moving their art production
over to Computer Production, and again that computer was the Macintosh.

I found myself becoming a much needed cog in the wheel there, as I was
one of the first new hires that not only knew the platform, but
could help the company grow as they moved more and more into
Computer Generated Art Production.

Four years later, I had left art totally behind, and moved into a
position at the same company as a Systems Administrator in the
IT department. My specialty: the Macintosh.

Seven Years later, four OS revisions, and countless releases of
Macintosh machines later, I left the company in good hands,
and used my skills I had acquired to move into a higher paying
position elsewhere.

I also took my knowledge gained on using Apple's Software offerings,
such as Final Cut Pro, iWeb and iMovie to create freelance work for myself,
to grow as a creative, and even further enrich my earning potential.

And all of this would not have happened without Steve Jobs.

Steve's vision of how people would use computers, how they
would change the way we got things done, how we could come
to view it as more than a tool and as a valid part of our lives,
created opportunities for people like myself, to be able to
escape from the cycles of dead end jobs, from dead end existences
of just collecting a paycheck and not contributing to society.

I may have never met the man personally, but I'm proud to have been
enriched and blessed by the fruits of his vision, by the labor of love he
created that made not only computers an integral part of of our lives,
but how he was able to bring so many who had been without a clear
vision for themselves and their futures, like myself, a moment of clarity.

Rest in Peace Steve.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Troublesome MKV files Work Around

So yesterday's blog posting was on
MKV (Mastroka) Video files, and
using my friend emmgunn's MKV Tools
to create a usable format (.avi or .mp4)
file that used less system resources,
so that you could easily edit in
MpegStreamclip, (avi) or just drag
and drop to your iPod or Apple Tv.
(.mp4)

But this assumes that the video can be
transcoded, and isn't using a properitary
codec ( audio or video) that would prevent it
from being transcoded into a useable format.

Let's say for the sake of this post you have an
.mkv file, that for audio has standard AAC
audio, but for the video has a weird variant of
.h264 for the Video portion of the file.

You try to process it with MKV Tools, but
it is having a hard time trying to process the
video, transcoding it to XVID. You already
tried to open it Quicktime Pro Player, and
it opens, but scrubbing through to
edit it causes nothing but spinning beachballs,
and the same is true for MpegStreamclip.

To add insult to injury, it is only 30mins in length,
and MKV Tools is taking at least twice that in
just getting to 50% of the file transcoded!

Well, there is another option you can try to get
something useable at this point.

First, let's stop everything and start simply.
First let's see if we can play it without
it stuttering or giving any beachaballs.
For that, we'll use VLC Player.

So we open VLC Player, and we try and open our
troublesome MKV file. Success it opens,
and we can play it start to finish.
We also notice while in VLC, it has English
subtitles turned on, and they display
while playing. Perfect!

So we know we can view our video intact using VLC.
Armed with that, we know we can capture it.
So for that we'll use my favorite app,
iShowU.

Launch iShowU, and set it to a capture window
as large as Normal size in VLC. For instance,
if the normal playing window of the file is
640 x 480 pixels, we'll set it to that in
iShowU.

Next, we set iShowU to capture system audio,
and to capture the video as a DV Stream file
to our disc destination ( the Desktop is fine).
Set it to not follow the mouse cursor,
and click record.

Play the video again in VLC, and let it play
for the entire length of 30 minutes.

When it is done, stop VLC, and stop recording in
iShowU. A few minutes later, iShowU will have
a complete version of the mkv file,
subtitles hard encoded, as a DV Stream file.

This file is now ready for you to use in MpegStreamclip,
or iMovie, FCE, and FCP, and to edit to your
heart's content.

But let's say for a moment, that back when we
tried to play it in Quicktime Pro Player, that
it actually did not give us beachballs, and that
we could scrub through without much hassle.

You could then try something much easier:
Try exporting from Quicktime Pro Player
as a DV Stream file, and let it make the attempt.
The file should be intact audio and video wise,
but may or may not embed the subtitles
if they are present.

So I would recommend first the option of "capturing"
the playback of the .mkv through iShowU to
get the fast, most usable file (with hard coded
subtitles if present) into your NLE.

But if you have time, you can try the Quicktime Pro Player
option, which may take up to double the amount of
runtime of the file ( 1 hour for a 30min file) and
may or may not embed the subtitles.

Hump Day Wednesday-Mac Girls

How do you like the new Wednesday Logo Girl above?
(courtesy of www.fototrix.com)
I think she's a keeper.....

No new Mac Centric ( or non Mac Centric,
for that matter) videos today,
so to help you get over the hump,
of the work week, here are a few
Mac Related Girls with iPods,
which will be filling in for our
regular feature today.

Hopefully by next week I'll get off
my can and round up a few funny videos
for you to peep out.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Learn to Calculate Bitrate

Since this has come up alot in the last few weeks,
I've decided to devote this Tech Tip Tuesday
(and by default, as I didn't post a Mac App Monday
yesterday) on a helpful app that is being highly
recommended by yours truly of late,
the BitRate Calculator by Maury McCown.

More often than not, people have a few of their favorite videos
from the internet (where they get them I shall not name)
and they want to get them onto DVD.
However, they may be limited in having one or two apps
that can do this task (usually iMovie and iDVD or if
they are savvy, Toast Titanium).

The question always asked of me is:
"How do I get (x number of) videos onto a DVD?"
And the answer is pretty simple,
because a standard blank DVD
is limited to 4 hours of video ( in VHS like quality)
or 2 hours of video ( in Really good quality).

You have to add up the total amount of RUNTIME,
the total length of of all your videos in relation
to the amount of time it would take to watch them
all in one sitting, and then figure out how to get the encoding
to meet your needs.

In the following example, I using a recently posted
question over at the Mac Forums at Videohelp.com,
which I answered to demonstrate:

"You [the person asking the question] have 7 avi files,
each at about 1 hour long.
Let say for argument's sake they clock right in at say 50mins.
You need to get these onto [a standard] DVD.

iDVD only knows to encode to fill up a DVD at 2hours encoding
(worst quality) or fill it up at Best Resolution ( Highest Quality).
Toast, on the other hand works off of runtime in default.
so If you drag and drop two episodes on to the window and click
to encode, then congrats, it will do its job and put those two
onto disc using default settings.

To use Toast to get more onto a disc, you have to first figure out
how to adjust Toast to do what you want. I will use Toast 10 as
an example, but this works in any version from 7 on up.

First, get the Bitrate Calculator.
Next, figure out quality vs quantity. In other words, how
much quality can you afford to lose to get your video onto a disc?
for me, with each episode at about 1 hour, I shoot for 4 episodes
per disc.

so using the Bitrate calc, I figure out the following :




4hrs00mins15seconds, with a defualt audio of 192kbps, gives you
a set encoding rate of 2.3mbps low end.

Launch Toast.
With Toast Open, select the Video Tab, select the DVD Tab.
At lower left, where the "Options" window resides, click "More."
When the "More" window comes up, select the "Encoding" Tab,
and enter in your information by doing the following:




You set the encoding to Custom, you set the slider
to closest to 2.3mbps,
( in this case 2.5mbps) and set the high end to 5.0mbps.
Set the audio to 192kbps.

Click Ok, and then drag and drop your files
into the main window.
Click burn to author and burn to DVD.
Repeat as necessary. "

With the option of a BitRate Calculator, you
can be flexible in figuring out what you
want your video quality to be.

For the best quality while squeezing
the most videos onto a disc,
a better option than Toast,
would be to use a Mpeg-2 Encoder
that does (VBR) Variable Bit Rate Encoding.
Such as Apple's Compressor or
DVD Studio Pro, which uses Compressor
to build it's DVDs. Sorenson also makes
a VBR encoder as well.

Happy 25th Anniversary Macintosh!

Today, January 24th, marks the
25th Anniversary of the Macintosh:



Above, Steve Jobs demos the Macintosh at Macworld.
Below, the first Macinitosh Computer Ad:



These take me back, I remember the Apple Macintosh
commercial when it first aired in my childhood.
I was just entering my first computer classes in
high school, and remember wishing we had one
in my Gifted and Talented class, as we were stuck
with Commodore 64s at the time.

Enjoy and Happy Anniversary Apple!

Staying Relevant When Your Product Isn’t

Today Roxio, makers of the long stalwart app for the Mac,
Toast Titanium, announced a new version that would incorporate
Blu-Ray Authoring Capabilities; Streaming Video Capture
(think burning your favorite Youtube clips to a Highlight DVD);
A new interface that includes an NLE that looks like an older
version of iMovie; the ability to capture Streaming Audio
to burn to CDS; and four new “Pro “ version apps for Soundtracks,
Photo Editing, Sound Conversion / Cleanup, and creating HD Photo SlideShows.

What’s really telling about this upgrade is that Roxio felt it
was necessary to add more items that...well, somewhat relate
to burning CDs and DVDs, but aren’t much comparison to
tools that already exist on the Mac, all in an effort to keep their
product relevant to today’s marketplace.

What would have simply been wrong with offering a Burning
Application for the Macintosh, that:
*Has all the latest current drivers for every model of DVD
& CD drive ever made?
*Has A Templates Customizer that enables you to author
decent looking Menus for your DVDs and Slideshows?
*Can handle input of any file type, audio or video, without
having to buy third party add-ons or plugins?
Integrates well with EXISTING Products, and doesn’t
try to compete with them?

To me, that would be what Roxio needs to focus and deliver on,
and with that it would stay relevant for Mac users.

A New Year Is Upon Us!

The New Year has arrived, and with it renewed hope in all things.
With scant days away from MacWorld 2009, as well as the
beginning first Quarter for many businesses including Apple,
and a new President Elect coming into office shortly,
Mac users have much to be excited for and thankful for!

What is the one thing your are hopeful for or excited about
coming in 2009? Tell me in the comments below.

Spotlight Thursday

Showcasing another Urban Mac User and how they use Macs to get the job done.
As we know, Mac Computers are often central to Music and Video Production,
ESPECIALLY Music Production.
Ask any aspiring rap artist how important Logic and ProTools are to their
creativity, and sit back and prepared to be bombarded to death ad nausea.

Musician T-Pain talks about how Macs and Garageband help in his creativity
for writing new songs, over at Apple.com’s Mac Pro Creative website.
And any aspiring musician, rapper, or singer, can get behind how easy
Garageband and a Mac can make ideas in their head become reality.
Take that HP!

Random T-Pain Song Goodness:

Hump Day Wednesday

As we all try and make through the middle of the week, some random Mac
related mac goodness for you to keep you going
to the goal that is the weekend. Enjoy fam!