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July 31, 2009 Meeting

DAVE MORROW

This month is dedicated to the remembrance the passing of Dave Morrow. Dave was a foundation member of AMUG in 1998, and was Treasurer until 2007.

APPLEBYTE ONLINE

The Christchurch-based Apple User Group of Canterbury (AUGC) monthly magazine Applebyte in PDF format. To download the August issue, click on this link:
    http://www.appleusers.co.nz/pdfs/AUGCApplebyte200907s.pdf (3MB)

The public archive of all issues of Applebyte since 2006 is available at
    http://www.appleusers.co.nz/archive.php

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
 Several computing queries and suggested solutions included:

Trouble Viewing Text
I have a friend with a Mac and he said he is having trouble when he goes to view it has all text that he can’t read
  • What you want to read is there you will just have to scroll down as may be on page 52 you will find the text that you want to read under it and above will be all what appears as random text.


iCal
Shared Calendars
  • Find shared calendars when you are on line:

    For example do you want to know the South Australian Public School Holidays. You can down load it and it will fill in the dates for you.



Today button
  • This will get you back to the current month and today’s date will be highlighted. Quick way to get back if you are months ahead in the calendar.


To Do Item
  • Command K will bring up a new To Do Item.




NeoOffice
Similarities with MS Excel
  • The meeting spent some time looking at the similarities between Excel and NeoOffice.

    We found that all that Excel can do you can do in NeoOffice but how to go about it differs.



Address Book
New Fields
  • To add more fields to your address book...





SESSIONS

1PASSWORD
1Password is an extension to internet programmes such as Firefox and Safari

“The only thing you will ever need to remember is your master password. From then onwards iPassword will remember all passwords and fill in forms.”

This is a password manager programme, that brings both Security and Convenience. It offers Web Form Filling and Automatic Strong Password Generation. All your confidential information, including passwords, identities, and credit cards, is kept in one secure place.

Click Here to download 1Password Password Manager and Form Filler 2.9.21 11Mb freeware version or purchase the full version.

The club has a MP4 video of about 16MB large which we can send you if you are interested.

Tinker Tool System
 A maintenance programme better than disk utility.
TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system.

The tool makes sure that preference changes can only affect the current user. The program will never change any component of the operating system, so the integrity of your system is not put at risk, and there will be no negative effect on system updates.

All preference settings changed by TinkerTool can be reset to Apple's defaults, or to the state that existed before using the tool. No dangerous background processes are used for TinkerTool's operation.

You can download TinkerTool free of charge Here .



RIPPING A DVD/backing up your DVD collection

This must only be used to produce a backup of DVD's that you own and keep for yourself!
Aoraki Mac Users Group is not responsible for and does not recommend illegal copying of DVD's!

VLC media Player
 “Simple and versatile multi-format media player”
VLC media player is a multimedia player supporting most audio and video formats (H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, mp3, MPEG-4, aac, ...) from files, physical media (DVDs, VCD, Audio-CD), TV capture cards and many network streaming protocols.

It can also convert files, transcode and act as a streaming server over unicast or multicast and IPv4 or IPv6. It doesn't need any external codec, program or codec pack to work.

If you want to play video or music files and not worry about format, VLC is the best application for the job. With a plethora of media formats out there, VLC is a catch-all player that will handle anything.

For video, VLC Media Player is the best application you will find. It's minimal interface is great for viewing, it's got excellent tools for effects, and doing things like adding subtitles is easy.

You can download VLC free of charge Here .

HandBrake
HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

A movie can take a hour and half but when finished your DVD movie can be converted to say a MP4 so can be played on a ipod for example. It will also be smaller in size (memory that is, so takes up less room on your ipod or computer.

You can download HandBrake free of charge Here .

iSquint
 iSquint is an iPod video conversion app for Mac OS X.
You can also use a tool like iSquint to convert any video you have to play on your iPod.

One web site said “You can choose to optimize for TV or iPod. One of the most handy features is actually being able to add your converted videos to iTunes, making converting and transferring to your iPod a linear process. Most users will probably use the slider to set image quality, however brasher users will dig in the advanced features, which allow you to crop your video, set frame rate, width and height.” Another web site said: “iSquint is an iPod video conversion app. It's up to 5 times faster than Apple's method, works well with AVIs and MPEGs, and it's infinitely free-er. It's also rather easy.
  • On a moderate Mac iSquint can convert most video files to iPod-screen-sized videos in realtime.
  • Give it your file, choose "TV screen" or "iPod screen" size, set your quality, and away you go.
Depending on a few factors, a 20 minute video will take up anywhere from 50-150MB of disk space. It's many times faster than QuickTime Pro, works with almost all popular video formats, and it's infinitely free-er.

Note: The program has been discontinued, which means that while you can down load it. No development work is being done on it.

You can download iSquint free of charge Here .

SimpleMovieX
 The lightweight video editor for Mac users
One web site says “With features set roughly similar to QuickTime Pro, SimpleMovieX extends editing capabilities to other popular video formats AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. The main advantage of native editing is speed and quality, since no re-encoding is required to save edited movies. Powerful editing operations like splitting a movie into clips.”

Another site said “SimpleMovieX is a lightweight video editor, with no learning curve, and that addresses 99% of simple editing tasks. Whether you are a video aficionado, or a seasoned professional, you will get your job done and discover that there's still room for delight and excitement!

"You can record TV programs, then remove all the commercials in one shot. "

With SimpleMovieX, to search the commercials inside the movie is easy. The accurate timeline will do a good job marking the segments to remove. Saving takes only a few minutes thanks to native support of most popular formats.

In this example, we just have to find the beginning and the end of the TV program that we want to keep, and trim the rest.

    Steps
  1. Find commercials
    Easily find a sequence inside a long movie with Thumbnail view and Audio Waveform.
  2. Cut them
    This is the easiest part of the work. Once you have selected the area to remove, just push the scissors button.
  3. Save
    Most popular file formats mov, mpeg, avi and iPod mp4, are natively supported, so you can edit and save them in a breeze without loss of quality. More
  4. No fourth step ;)

"I have tons of DVDs with music concerts, and I want to split them into songs, then put them in iTunes."

SimpleMovieX is a perfect match for this kind of job. Thumbnail search and Audio Waveform will help you find quickly the transitions between songs. Putting Chapter markers along the movie will allow SimpleMovieX to cut unwanted footage (like presentation or applauses) and then to split into song files.

    Steps
  1. Find songs
    If you don't have time to listen all the concert, you can still find songs by visualizing the audio waveform. Transitions between songs have a charasteristic shape that you cannot miss.
  2. Add Chapter marks
    You add a Chapter marks at the beginning and at the end of each song. It can also be done on the fly during playback with Command /.
  3. Split
    Using Chapter marks, SimpleMovieX can remove in one shot all the dead space between songs and split into individual files.
  4. Export to iTunes
    Depending on how you want them, you can drag the files to your iTunes library or use Batch Converter to change the format first.

You can download SimpleMovieX free of charge Here .


REMINDER

Next AMUG Evening Meeting :  Last Friday of the Month at 7:30pm.   All welcome!

Regards to all....  

Tony Climo  
Secretary, Aoraki Macintosh Users Group  
E-mail   tonyclimo@orcon.net.nz  
Phone   03 693 9215