The fact that this can be done, in total, from storyboard (if they had chosen to) all the way to upload to YouTube, on a $299 device, the iPhone 4, that also happens to make phone calls, is astounding. When Apple makes this all possible on an iPhone Touch and the iPad, they will rock the education market! Be sure to watch it in full screen.
I haven't posted much to my blog lately because I have been intensely busy, mostly with traveling, writing, and physical therapy. And I have made some minuscule effort to avoid the computer as typing at the keyboard seems to train wreck my bad shoulder!
Recently, well, over the past several days, I used my Navigon application on the new iPhone as I traveled. This application is awesome on its own. On the iPhone 4, the app looks beyond gorgeous and functions with a level of smooth precision I had not noticed before. I love it!
I use the app with the TomTom car kit. I didn't give a second thought to using the car kit with my new phone, just assuming it would work fine. Wrong! The iPhone 4 is not as thick as the iPhone 3Gs, and this fact caused some connection issues. Apparently the car kit needs the extra thickness to snap the phone firmly into the connector. I even noticed a "rocking lever" that seems to need pressure to deliver electricity to the iPhone 4, which is not thick enough to press the lever.
The iPhone 4 appears to snap into the car kit fine. But it does not get an electrical charge from the connector. After some wiggling/pressing, each time I used it, I managed to get the phone to seat itself enough to get the charge. Having electricity is essential as running a GPS app on the phone would otherwise very quickly deplete the battery.
I also noticed some wonderful updates to the Navigon application since last I used it. I downloaded the panoramic 3D map information which adds more realistic display information. And, for those who are not familiar with the Navigon app, I totally love how it implements highway signage information as you approach the signage. It looks so realistic, just as the signs actually look when you arrive at them. This feature takes so much guesswork out of navigating complex junctions.
The applications functions fantastically well in the background with the new multitasking iOS4. And I also completely love the intuitive interface and GUI design.
On my recent trip to the Atlanta metropolitan area, I confess to finding the speed limit warning a bit annoying. You can set the interval to 5, 10, 15, etc. miles per hour over the speed limit. The application knows the speed limits and will say "Warning" while displaying an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle at the bottom corner of the speed limit sign indicating the actual speed limit. In the top center I have the app showing my current, realtime speed. This is invaluable information when traveling in unfamiliar areas. But I knew the speed limits in the Atlanta area, had the interval set to 5mph, and the traffic was, as the traffic tends to do in Atlanta, speeding maniacally down the intestates. So I heard "Warning!" every minute or so as I drove. With my shoulder, I couldn't reach to adjust the interval while driving.
I'll have to update my TomTom car kit when they make one designed for the new iPhone 4. But, I highly recommend the Navigon GPS application!
Several years ago I discovered Todd Dominey's SlideShow Pro (SSP), which I use to present my photos here at tt.us. (Check them out at timtyson.us/photos.) Over the years SSP has evolved into a really slick, powerful, wonderful tool for managing both photo and video distribution. As my knowledge and understanding of the various SSP products has grown, I would place this product in my list of Tim's All Time Favorite Digital Tools! It rocks!
In fact, since SSP had an export plugin for Lightroom, it was the deciding factor in my ditching Apple's Aperture and switching all of my photo management over to Lightroom--well, that and the horrendous performance issues Aperture 2 had. (Now, I understand that a third party export plugin is available for Aperture. But I haven't tried it.)
But SSP is Flash-based. This now poses problems because Steve Jobs is having a spat with Adobe, and most people don't foresee Apple mobile products ever making use of Flash. Sad, but there's nothing I can do about that.
Rather than focusing on the technology issues or the dispute, SSP is focusing on their customers' primary need: finding excellent ways to share their work. So they have announced a new component to their fabtabulous SlideShowPro Director: a photo and video player that is built with HTML5, CSS3, and javascript instead of Flash! This will allow content to display on the iPod Touch, iPhones, and the iPad!
Here is an overview of the new SlideshowPro Mobile. I so love SSP!!
Mac users: Do you have the latest versions of iTunes (9.2), iBooks, and the operating systems for your iPhone and iPod Touch (iOS 4) and your iPad (iOS 3)? If you do, you can do this...
You can easily place a PDF file of anything you can make a PDF file from (web page, documents, images, etc.) on you portable device.
If you make an alias of the iTunes application icon and place it in your ~/Library/PDF Services folder (where ~ = your user account), you can choose to print any document or webpage as a PDF directly to your portable device the next time you sync.
[Simply select the print command and click on the PDF button on the bottom left and then choose iTunes from the drop down list. When you go to sync your portable device, be certain that, in iTunes, with your device selected, the "Books" tab is selected and you have checked "Sync Books." Then simply sync your device. Poof! The PDF file(s) appear in iBooks on your device.]
I've tried this, and it actually works! Nifty.
Other little scripts are available to do similar things with various twists. Check out this link at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes.
Well, my iPhone 4 is supposed to arrive tomorrow! I can't wait.
I downloaded iOS 4 for my existing phone and iPod Touch to get accustomed to the new operating system. So far, the thing I like the most is Folders! My application icons are all grouped in a way that makes sense to me. Instead of having an insane number of panes through which I had to slide, I now only have 3! This is a vast improvement. Now, of course, I want more. I've become such a visual person; I'd like to choose the icons for my Folders. :o)
I also understand that a user can opt out of the iAd system, so Apple doesn't collect info about your interests, by visiting http://oo.apple.com ith any device running iOS 4 or later. You should get a message, "You have successfully opted out.” if the process is working; otherwise, “Opt out not successful.” will appear.
This is as much to help me remember this as it is to share the info with all humanoids on in interwebs...
This is the post production process I used when creating the Malaga Cove time lapse shorts. After importing the footage from the camera into the computer:
Well, Wordpress 3.0 has been available for download as a beta product until today. It went alpha. So I downloaded it having heard good things about its stability and usability. I'm especially interested in exploring the merging of MU into the base installation.
My upgrade was not without issues though: immediately after the upgrade the Wordpress version of my site was dead and the Admin login area was as well. What to do?! After a quick hustle or at wordpress.org's forums, I went in and disabled my plugins folder by using my FTP client to rename it and create an empty plugins folder.
Poof!
Everything worked again. I added plugins one by one until I found the offending one: Lifestream. When I have a bit more time, I'll check for an upgraded version of the plugin.
[P.S. It occurs to me that many of my readers at this rendition of my site may be completely unaware of the fact that I have been running a parallel site, testing it for compatibility and such. This has been going on now for some time. If you want to check out the Wordpress version of timtyson.us, just click here.
I've found a couple apps for the Mac and/or the iPhone that are curious.
Xslimmer
This app removes the extra PowerPC code that makes your applications work on both the PowerPC chip and the Intel chip. After the application is slimmed down, it will only work on the Intel chip. Hello, I gave my last old PowerPC Mac away a year ago. I only need my software applications to run on Intel machines.
Frankly, however, this scares the beans out of me! So I tried it on just one application. That application still seems to work just fine. Even if it didn't I could restore the application since I chose to have it backup the original before it slimmed it. (I don't know if that means it just made a copy of the code it removed and can add it back or if it backed up the entire application.) But I confess to still being afraid to purchase the little $14.95 app and use it to slim down all of my apps.
The application will also remove unwanted languages from the code of the application to slim the application down even further. I only need English.
Amazingly, if I were to slim down all of my applications, I would recover almost 3 gigabytes of disk space! Maybe over time I'll try one app at a time until I get my courage up.
Air Video
I've heard about this app for the iPhone and the iPad before. Today I bought it. It allows you to stream video content from any of your computers on the network to your iPhone or iPad. I read excellent reviews of the application.
It was incredibly easy to set up. It is amazingly easy to use. Astoundingly, it will convert file formats on the fly! In other words, I can watch an avi file from my laptop on my iPad in realtime without having to wait for it first to be converted into a format that plays on the iPad.
My only regret with Air Video: that I hadn't purchased it sooner. An amazing little gem!
Software Updates
I admit that I use technology more than the average person. Maybe I need to change that, because I am sick to death of sitting down to work at one of my computers only to be greeted with a bunch of software updates — which I always feel compelled to do immediately and be done with. Then, 5 minutes later I launch an application I need to use only to find that there is a new version available for download. Three minutes later I'm ready to get to work.
Only now, the new version has a damned bug in it and will not do what the old version did just fine. It crashes. I relaunch to try it again. The crash reporter comes up. I fill it out. I get so fed up trouble shooting software that I pay to own. Obviously these software companies do not test their work!!! Then the software crash reporter has to gather my system information. Well damn —that takes a good 5 minutes. And of course it will take a day or two (or week or month) for the support team to respond and then weeks before a software update is issued — oh god!!!! another software update. Hell!!!!! A half hour passes and I haven't accomplished anything! This pisses me off in a HUGE, HUGE way.
AT&T Has New Data Plans
AT&T is trying to get the message out that the new plans will save most users money unless you are a "data hog!" Well, let me tell AT&T something. I am a data hog. And I pay damned good money to be one too! Get off your greedy, stingy ass and stop trying to blame your customers, who pay for your service, for the fact that your service is crap! Instead, --novel idea here-- invest some of your profits in upgrading your network!
And AT&T wants you to believe that the new rates will save 95% of their customers money. Yeah, right!!! This year. Just wait boys and girls. How long before they raise the rates and make even more money off their already over-priced, crappy network?!!
I bought an iPad without 3G, because I refuse to give AT&T another penny of my money. I loathe this company! I use my MiFi from Verizon for my network access when I'm out of range of one of my WiFi networks. Screw you, AT&T. Verizon has a pervasive 3G network that works!
BP MUST Go Out of Business
I have never in all of my life seen a company CEO that is as arrogant, self-serving, calloused, and evil-hearted as the CEO of BP! He is tired of the oil spill and "just wants his life back?!" What a #$%@ing bastard!
What about the 11 people that were killed by what appears to be company negligence*? What about the entire ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico? Watching the poor birds violently gasping trying to catch just one more breath to stay alive before their inevitable death is too heartbreaking. What we can't see are all of the different kinds of sea life that have been poisoned to death in the water by BP's oil, toxic chemicals, greed and negligence! And they are spending $7,500 a day to purchase search terms from Google to get their spin out as the top search results about this horrific environmental catastrophe.
These poor creatures have no idea what is happening to them as their flesh is burning, their eyesight is taken, and they painfully struggle to survive the impossible.
As far as I am concerned Tony Hayward and his company can rot in hell!
Photos Source: Caught in the Oil: boston.com
*See the 60 Minutes exposé
Well, after reports several weeks back that Apple had laid off a significant number of people from the Final Cut Pro team, I have been worries that Apple will either sell or even possibly eliminate Final Cut Pro. Now rumors are flying.
The first rumor indicates Apple will redesign FCP with an emphasis on making it more prosumer friendly and perhaps far less dedicated to professional video work. The FCP has been placed under the lead developer, Randy Ubillos, the man who, in my humble opinion, destroyed iMovie with his iMovie '08 release's new user interface and a sudden lack of features found in the earlier versions. Apple has now advertised for a senior visual interface designer for pro apps. Obviously something is afoot.
Amidst all the flurry of worry, Apple released a non-statement:
Final Cut Pro is the first choice for professional video editors, and we've never been more excited about its future," Apple spokesman Bill Evans told CNET. "The next version of Final Cut is going to be awesome, and our pro customers are going to love it."
I was peeved about Apple's last FCP release. So few substantive features were added. Now we live with the threat of a whole new interface design, and, if iMovie is any advanced warning, a loss of important features. Jeeze!
Even I have been growing increasingly wary of Apple becoming another loathsome, all-about-money, screw-the-customer corporation as it has experienced explosive growth and success in the past 10 years. I've posted about some of these concerns before. People seem to be increasingly sharing that concern.
It's appropriate that the Apple logo on the iPad is black. The Cupertino, California, company's image is taking on some awfully sinister tones lately.
For a company that made its name fighting for the little guy, it's a surprising reversal. In the past, Apple touted itself as the computer company for nonconformists who "Think Different." Now the company is making moves that make it look like the Big Brother it once mocked.
First Apple tightened its iron grip on the already-stringent iPhone developer policy, requiring apps to be made with Apple-approved languages, which disturbed some coders and even children.
A short while later, Apple rejected some high-profile apps based on their editorial content, raising journalists' questions about press freedoms in the App Store.
Then, police kicked down a Gizmodo editor's door to investigate a lost iPhone prototype that Apple had reported as stolen. Even Ellen DeGeneres and Jon Stewart have mocked Apple's heavy-handed moves.
Plenty of us love our shiny iPads, iPods, iPhones and MacBooks — state-of-the-art gadgets with undeniable allure. But it's tough to imagine customers will stay loyal to a company whose image and actions are increasingly nefarious. We want to like the corporation we give money to, don't we?
Here are five things Apple should do to redeem its fast-fading public image."
[Source: 5 Things Apple Must Do to Look Less Evil - ABC News.]
Here's the video of Ellen DeGeneres after getting a call from Apple.
My favorite ftp client for many years has been Panic's Transmit. However, over time Transmit 3 developed some really hideous issues. I threatened a divorce (and meant it!). Well, Panic released Transmit 4 this week.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!
As with any first generation product, the iPad is not without its issues. One issue that I find immensely frustrating: the lack of keyboard shortcuts. I use them. I use them a lot! (Admittedly, most users probably don't.)
To have to take my hand off of Apple's iPad hardware keyboard to reach up and touch something is distracting to the workflow. I could cut a little bit of slack for third party developers, but none at all for Apple. When I want to reply to an email, I want to use [command] + R. When I want to send the email, I want to use [command] + D.
In this WordPress app, using the [tab] key to jump from one field to another crashes the application.
Clearly, lots of work needs to be done on this platform.
This time lapse, from yesterday, is better than my first because I used manual focus! :)
It's also more interesting because you can see the stars moving through the sky as well as the fog come rolling in off of the ocean during the night. You can even see the moving fog outside during the day! (Look closely. You can see it.) Because this is a time lapse, the fog appears to be moving very rapidly. The truth is, it was going down the street faster than you could comfortably walk!
The downside of the fog: during the day this caused variance in the brightness of the individual shots in the time lapse. I experimented with removing that with a filter that averaged exposure values over time. It worked amazingly well but dulled the fog's motion outside the window. So, I decided to leave it as shot.
You can view full screen by clicking on the full screen icon in the timeline. (It only appears, in the bottom right, when you mouse over the movie.)
Notes to myself on workflow:
This will only be remarkable to me: a proof of concept—use the Canon EOS 5dMkII DSLR to create a filmic look.
I shot this using a 70 - 200mm f2.8L in native 24fps, ISO 100, f2.8, 1/50th, using the Vari-ND to stop the exposure down, shooting at full 1920x1080 HD resolution using the superflat profile. The short little clip was then imported onto my hard drive via ShotPut Pro from my FireWire 800 card reader. I used MPEG Streamclip to transcode the H.264 file using Apple's ProRes 422LT codec and then dropped it into FCP. (I know firsthand that FCP doesn't play well with H.264 files!)
(Unfortunately I had not yet downloaded Canon's free EOS Movie E1 import plugin for FCP which was released today. I'm eager to try it. Interesting post here about that workflow.)
I then did a little color grading in FCP, added titles and a short music clip, and simply exported the file using ProRes 422LT at full size. Then, using MPEG Streamclip to prepare it for the web, I exported the 1920x1080 (137.4MB) file to 720x405 while converting it to an mp4, using the H.264 codec, at 100% quality, with multipass and better downscaling. The exported file is only 5.4MB! Maybe one day I'll compare which delivers a faster QuickTime conversion export: FCP or MPEG Streamclip. (Everyone says it's the latter.)
I'm posting the finished product here. It's very short! The only thing special: it's a first for me, and it worked straight away!
Ok, this post will bore my mother. She will skip it.
You may find reading this post easier over at my developing WordPress blog as it uses color-coded and indented syntax structure that highlights the area of code under consideration and allows you to easily copy and paste the code from the page.
But I need to write this so I can remember what I've done when I transition my work blog over to WordPress. This post is about getting my favorite lightbox utility to work in WordPress and customizing it's appearance.
The lightbox is, of course, mediaboxAdv by John Einselen over at iaaian7. mediaboxAdv opens a significant number of file formats, including video and HTML "windows", in a lightbox popup on top of the dimmed web page window.
The successful implementation of mediaboxAdv via the Mootools framework in WordPress is provided by Cheon Nii, at CheonNii's blog. Cheon adapted the mediaboxAdv javascript into the Lightbox M plugin. (Fortunately Cheon uses enough English to make his download understandable for me. I couldn't figure out his native language to translate it.) WordPress has huge issues running Mootools as other plugins frequently seem to use javascript frameworks that conflict with Mootools. Cheon's plugin seems to get around this successfully and can be configured to only implement the javascript code on the pages that require it.
The totally cool customization solution comes from Enric, at Sonic Bite Desarrollo y Diseño Web. I used Google translate to translate it to English. He describes how to include a logo-styled image overlay in a corner on top of the lightbox popup. Great for branding. Nice touch.
The Process
new Element("div", {id: "roroland"}).injectInside(center);
image = new Element("div", {id: "mbImage"}).injectInside(center);
bottom = new Element("div", {id: "mbBottom"}).injectInside(center).adopt(
new Element("a", {id: "mbCloseLink", href: "#"}).addEvent("click", close),
nextLink = new Element("a", {id: "mbNextLink", href: "#"}).addEvent("click", next),
prevLink = new Element("a", {id: "mbPrevLink", href: "#"}).addEvent("click", previous),
title = new Element("div", {id: "mbTitle"}),
number = new Element("div", {id: "mbNumber"}),
caption = new Element("div", {id: "mbCaption"})
);/* custom div containing logo */
#roroland {
position: absolute;
z-index: 9999;
width:100px;
height: 113px ;
top:-30px;
left:-40px;
background-image: url(../images/logo.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}#mbCenter {
position: absolute;
z-index: 9999;
left: 50%;
overflow: hidden;
background-color: #000;
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
-moz-box-shadow: 0px 10px 40px rgba(0,0,0,0.70);
-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 10px 40px rgba(0,0,0,0.70);
} #mbCenter {
position: absolute;
z-index: 9999;
left: 50%;
/* overflow: hidden; THIS IS COMMENTED OUT TO DISPLAY THE LOGO WHICH PARTIALLY APPEARS OUTSIDE THE MEDIABAXADVACED LIGHTBOX */
background-color: #000;
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
-moz-box-shadow: 0px 10px 40px rgba(0,0,0,0.70);
-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 10px 40px rgba(0,0,0,0.70);
} $lightbox_files = Array(
'css/mediaboxAdvBlack.css',
'css/mediaboxAdvWhite.css',
'images/50.gif',
'images/80.png',
'images/BlackClose.gif',
'images/BlackLoading.gif',
'images/BlackNext.gif',
'images/BlackPrevious.gif',
'images/MinimalClose.png',
'images/MinimalLoading.gif',
'images/MinimalNext.png',
'images/MinimalPrevious.png',
'images/WhiteClose.gif',
'images/WhiteLoading.gif',
'images/WhiteNext.gif',
'images/WhitePrevious.gif',
'js/mediaboxAdv-1.2.0.js',
'js/mootools-1.2.4-core-yc.js',
'swf/NonverBlaster.swf',
'swf/player.swf',
'lightbox.php'
); $lightbox_files = Array(
'css/mediaboxAdvBlack.css',
'css/mediaboxAdvWhite.css',
'images/50.gif',
'images/80.png',
'images/BlackClose.gif',
'images/BlackLoading.gif',
'images/BlackNext.gif',
'images/BlackPrevious.gif',
'images/MinimalClose.png',
'images/MinimalLoading.gif',
'images/MinimalNext.png',
'images/MinimalPrevious.png',
'images/WhiteClose.gif',
'images/WhiteLoading.gif',
'images/WhiteNext.gif',
'images/WhitePrevious.gif',
'images/logo.png',
'js/mediaboxAdv-1.2.0.js',
'js/mootools-1.2.4-core-yc.js',
'swf/NonverBlaster.swf',
'swf/player.swf',
'lightbox.php'
); Now, quite frankly, I don't like my logo image at all at the moment. I'll tweak that later. Just figuring all of this out to get it to work was challenging enough for one day.
Configuring WordPress for Implementation
Again, unless you are into such things, you will not have made it to the end of this post. But it has taken me weeks to sort through all of the weird variables and plugins that are out there for WordPress in my undying effort to figure out how to get the mediaboxAdv plugin to work—a must for my transition from MovableType to WordPress.
Now that I better understand WordPress and the whole media toolset it offers, along with so many other features, I am really getting into WordPress!! And a special thanks to John Einselen, Cheon Nii, and Enric for freely and kindly sharing their expertise with the web community. I could never have done any of this without their brains! You guys are Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!
Philip Bloom mentioned, in his master class yesterday, a file utility I had not heard of before, one that seems brilliant to me: ShotPut Pro. This program will copy your media files from their source (camera card) to up to 3 locations simultaneously. Brilliant!
I think that always having an untouched copy of your original media files and a working copy of them is always a bright idea. This practice not only gives you the option of having an emergency backup of your files in case of drive failure or theft, but provides you with some measure of future-proofing your media files for later use—perhaps in projects using CODECs we don't even have today.
I also use BackBlaze to automatically and continuously sync all of my data off site. The three important parts of that last sentence are: off site, continuously, and above all: automatically! BackBlaze is a steal of a deal at only $50 per machine per year for unlimited storage! I just do my work using my machines, and BackBlaze is always keeping my offsite backup up to date.
If you were doing professional projects, where setting up the shoot required a significant investment or was time sensitive (can't be easily repeated, for example), using locally redundant copies of the original media and off site backups is essential!
I just stumbled onto this new program, TuneUp, from TuneUpMedia.com. It's an iTunes plugin that has a number of really cool features:
Today Apple sold its 10,000,000,000th (that's billionth) song at the iTunes Store—all in less than 7 years. The music industry can gripe all it wants, but Apple has made them a lot of money they would otherwise have lost to file sharing!
Today's Business Insider has this headline: Blockbuster Collapses: Shutting Down 500 Stores In Desperate Bid To Save $200 Million. I'm actually shocked they survived as long as they did. They ended last year almost $1,000,000,000 in debt.
By closing 500 of their weakest stores, they hope to reduce operating expenses by $200 million. They are also exploring other ways to increase liquidity and find new emerging distribution channels.
Let me offer them a touch of advice. Liquidate now and save everyone the misery to come.
You may have heard that I don’t do iPhone or iPad development at this time. That said, it’d be silly to not keep track of what Apple is up to with the platform they care for most." ...[Source: Install Beta Developer Tools In Sparse Disk Images.] The realization: Apple's core business has changed. And I don't like it! A couple of years ago, Apple Inc. changed its name from Apple Computer. I thought that was exciting. Now I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm very concerned. Apple is no longer a computer company, and it's starting to really show. Apple obviously cares more about its mobile platform/OS than they do their laptop/desktop platform and OS. I am not happy about that. Sure, I love my iPhone. I doubt I will buy an iPad. I prefer to work on machines with some significant horsepower and significant screen real estate. And the iPad doesn't even have a camera?! Forget it! I wouldn't care about the huge emphasis on the mobile platform if...
Those who know me well know that I'm never just sitting around doing nothing. So, I've received several comments from friends and relatives about having very little activity on my blog for the past week or two. What's up?!
How many times have I cursed the Caps Lock key. I've wished I could pluck if from my keyboard more than once.
Well... turns out, you can with a simple keyboard preference change!
Go to System Preferences and select Keyboard. In this window, click on Modifier Keys...
Now click next to "Caps Lock" and select "No Action". Easy!
Something else just dawned on me about today's announced iPad: all that went unannounced. In fact, I'm concerned.
Where is iLife '10? One of the presenters mentioned that iLife had been rewritten from the ground up. OMG!
The last time Apple's software team re-wrote something from the ground up, they gutted it: iMovie!
What features will we lose? Will desktop machines even get an iLife '10?
Any plans for a new model iPhone this summer as seems customary?
I'm hopeful more news will trickle out from the mothership soon.
And I'm sorry, the word "magical" just doesn't work for me.
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Image via CrunchBase
Here's a great shortcut for downloading YouTube videos when using the Safari browser.
Image via CrunchBase
I love stumbling upon a cool technology trick.
Working out compression settings for video distribution is part art, part science, and a whole lot of witchcraft. Compression is just often difficult and can be very frustrating.
Well, tonight I learned that if you take a movie file that has already been compressed (select one, of course, that looks really good because it was well compressed) and drop it into the "Custom" folder under the "Settings" tab in Compressor 3.5 (part of Final Cut Pro Studio), Compressor will think about that file for a second (depending on the speed of your machine) and then create a custom preset of the compression settings used to create that finished project! And the description tag becomes the name of the movie project you dropped into Compressor.
Sweet!
Compressor reads the metadata from the file and figures out how the file was compressed and then returns those settings as a preset you can use for your own project compression. Now, even with good compression settings, if you have poor quality source video, you will get poor results. But the problem is often the opposite way around: you have a great project and can't get the compression output to serve a good finished product.
And here's another little tidbit: if you take a Compressor Droplet (a little preset "stand alone application"), right click on it, select "show package contents," open the "Settings" folder and drop the .setting file onto the "Custom" folder under the "Settings" tab in Compressor 3.5, Compressor will again create a custom preset of the compression settings used in the droplet.
Why would you ever want to do the later? You can't get to the setting details of a droplet any other way. So if you want to tweak them but don't have the original settings saved as a preset in Compressor, this lets you get to those settings as well as save the settings as a preset in Compressor if you choose. It's just one of those things you will never need until you do--and then you will be pulling your hair out trying to figure out how to do this. :o)
Thanks to Brian Gary and the helpful folks at rippletraining, just a few miles from my home, for these two helpful tips.
I use John Einselen's MediaboxAdvanced, from iaian7, on my site for the media shadowboxes. I love it!
I've had two issues that needed attention. This is a "note to self" on how I fixed them in case I do site upgrades that might break the fixes, and I can't quickly find the resources to these solutions.
Problem 1: Volume Inadequate on NonverBlaster Player (Solution Works)
I was having the same problem today and I tried making some changes in mediaboxAdv-1.1.7.js and it worked for me. I hope this works for you as well.In the JS file, you can find the settings for NonverBlaster as below (seach for "FLV, MP4")
------------------------------
// FLV, MP4
} else if (URL.match(/\.flv|\.mp4/i) || mediaType == 'video') {
mediaType = 'obj';
mediaWidth = mediaWidth || options.defaultWidth;
mediaHeight = mediaHeight || options.defaultHeight;
if (options.useNB) {
preload = new Swiff(''+options.NBpath+'?mediaURL='+URL
+'&allowSmoothing=true&autoPlay='+options.autoplay
+'&buffer=6&showTimecode='+options.showTimecode+'&loop='+options.NBloop
+'&controlColor='+options.controlColor
+'&controlBackColor='+options.controlBackColor
+'&scaleIfFullScreen=true&showScalingButton=true&crop=false', {
id: 'MediaboxSWF', ...
------------------------------
You can set the default volume by adding [&defaultVolume=100] right
after [crop=false].
like this.
------------------------------
... &showScalingButton=true&crop=false&defaultVolume=100', {
id: 'MediaboxSWF', ...
------------------------------
[Source: NonverBlaster default volume too low - mediaboxAdvanced | Google Groups.]
What doesn't solve the problem: uncommenting the global media options volume parameter in line 93 or adding a defaultVolume parameter to the NonverBlaster section of code at line 110.
Problem 2: MP4s and FLVs Not Playing
From your server, open up the mediaboxAdvanced javascript file in a text or code editor, and update the options to reflect your desired settings. Make sure you update the file path to the JW media player with the correct path to your server."
[Source: iaian7 » code » webcode » mediaboxadvanced.]
What he inadvertently left out: also be certain to update the file path to the NonverBlaster.swf file too!
This tutorial needs a slightly faster pace, but Helen does a great job answering some questions I've grappled with in frustration concerning changing the crop orientation while using a fixed aspect ratio in Lightroom. I could never figure it out. It's so easy when you know the magic trick!
Go ahead, check out the new footer at the bottom of my blog. I've completely redone it. What do you think?
Special thanks to the Creative Pony for letting novice users like myself use some cool code! She calls it Sliding Tabs. It is similar to cover view in iTunes that many readers here are probably familiar with.
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I invite you to explore Larry Lessig's Change Congress initiative.
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