Posted on by mwhybark

ividly

I spent a big chunk of today finally exploring the integration features in iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. I’m working from a mixed base of assets representing the two most recent camping trips we went on (to Mount Baker in June and to the Olympic Peninsula this month).

As it happens, long-time MacWorld editor Jim Heid saw a prior entry on the topic of helping my Mom learn to use her new Mac, and kindly offered to send a copy of his book, The Macintosh iLife. We corresponded, and he sent a copy, inscribed to her.

I hadn’t ever really even attempted to use the apps as they were designed to be used (with the exception of iTunes), and before I sent the book on, I wanted to work through a demo project involving all the integration features with the book at my side, so I would be familiar enough with it to refer Mom to a chapter as needed. It’s been helpful, although my questions have been a bit more specific and technically oriented than the book is designed for.

For example, I did find a passing reference to the fact that iDVD only supports slideshows composed of up to 99 individual picture files, as I searched for reasons a folder of images was not generating the anticipated button upon drag-and-drop.

So, beyond the passing help the book’s provided, here are the issues I’m having that I think are failings in the suite of apps, speed not being considered (I’m using them on a G4/400 at the very low end of supported machines, and the speed is quite intolerable, something I cope with by time-slicing with household chores such as laundry and dishes).

The best feature that the suite provides is the ability to marry sets of images to selected songs from your music library. Unfortunately, each of the image-oriented apps – iDVD, iMovie, and iPhoto – provides this feature with a slightly different implementation, and thus far I have not found a good way to seamlessly combine the various implementations. iMovie, for instance, will render your stills into a sliding, cross-fading quicktime montage using the well-known Ken Burns Effect. Unfortunately, the various transitions available in iPhoto, for example, are unavailable (at least at first) in iMovie, and in particular in the attempt to create a Ken Burns extravaganza. Furthermore, selecting and previewing a song and transition sequence in iPhoto is easy, easy, easy. Duplicating that in iDVD, or iMovie, is not quite so straightforward.

(UPDATE: Yes it is. in iDVD, dragging an iPhoto album from the iDVD Photos selection pane will also bring iPhoto slideshow effects into the iDVD slideshow.)

iPhoto offers an ‘iDVD’ button, presumably to allow you to send your iPhoto slideshow to iDVD. I say presumably because each time I used it, iDVD would launch and then crash. If it launched, would it add the sideshow to an existing project, or close the current project, replacing it with the new slideshow? I can’t say.

iDVD disappointed me in ways that are similar to and reflective of QuickTime Pro, rejecting native mpeg files for drag-and-drop inclusion in menu-item playback. I’ll be experimenting with optimal ways to incorporate the variant mpeg formats generated by our cameras into iDVD, probably routing through iMovie.

As I noted about a month ago, Apple’s applications treat video and photos as truly disjunct, something which made sense prior to the prevalence of dual-media recording devices. This is something that Apple must change to retain the leading-edge cachet regained with Jobs’ return.

Posted on by mwhybark

Rerun

[I posted this on MeFi yesterday, and it’s just chock fulla linky goodness, so I’m posting it here to keep it handy.]

Head Back to Mono in 32k at the rineke.net records archive, where a rather consistent curator has digitized a goody chunk of his record collection. It’s posted in more-or-less every iteration imaginable. Observe the linked scans (1 mb page, careful!) of the covers (also in multiple resolutions up to full-size). Note the records themselves, in sleeve or out, depending. Most especially, savor the clean, low-res mono mp3s that cry out to be played through the dashboard speakers of a 1967 Dodge Dart.

[Chris Dent is particularly directed here.]

Bonus Big Beat Bonanza: The site’s author is also behind the similarly detailed archive of shows by ex-WFMU dj The Hound, from 1987 through 1995, heavy on the rare regional sides beloved of certain of my pals down New Orleans way.

Last, but not least, rineke.net hosts the adventures of a platoon of Tux clones, sealing my geek admiration for the overseer of the site. There’s more, of course. My propeller beanie’s off to you, sir, and long may you wave, or particle, as is your choice and preference.

Posted on by mwhybark

Cringely, cogent as always

I, Cringely for August 12 concerns our country’s current unsupportable, unjustifiable rate of imprisonment, a suicide, and a government commissioned study that may have predicted dire results indeed if mandatory sentencing were to be adopted.

Serendipitously, we learn today that the latest trend in dealing with our spiraling inmate population is charge them rent. That’s lovely. A reliable labor and revenue source!

Posted on by mwhybark

Hitting the books

Well, yesterday’s filmic experiment was a dud, apparently due to my ignorant choice of media to export the file to. Once, I swear, I had all this stuff down, but it’s been a few years since I needed to whack off a movie clip for download and browser display. I guess I expected iMovie to just take care of that at the media level, but I clearly should have known better. Microsoft and Apple infighting and Apple crippleware strikes yet again!

Just a few moments of Googling would have revealed this page of useful brush-ups on iMovie export formats, which clearly implies that mp4 is not the way to go. It also notes that plain old mpg movies are not supported by iMovie’s export.

Smack! Bad Apple!

The page also notes that none of the default Windows media video formats are supported by iMovie, not a big surprise. To be evenhanded, we’ll turn away from the burning cheek of Cupertino and deliver a satisfying, meaty blow to the unshaven, pale cheek of Redmond.

Smack! Bad Microsoft!

I am sure there are some hoopty-hoops I can jump through here to convert the file outside of iMovie. I actually have both piles of shareware movie-file converters and manipulators and Apple’s prosumer video editing software, Final Cut Express, so I can get thar fum hyar. But I’m trying to think within the box, so to speak.

Pre-iMovie, registering your QuickTime install and coughing up $30 unlocked a raft of video manipulation features that were present by default in any open movie window – some cool, useful stuff, such as resizing, rescaling and cropping, or even rotating the orientation of the video. Either I don’t have a registered copy of QTPro any more, or these features have been disabled. Googling fails to reveal a flurry of squawking users, so it’s probably the latter. Unless it’s just because I was hoping to use these features with MPEGs.

Oh, nooo, it’s not like I would ever want to use these editing features on movie files created by our cameras. Sensibly enough, the manufacturers have selected the MPEG format as the most broadly-supported video-file interchange format. Oh, wait.

That bit up there about never needing to use these features on MPEGs? Strike that. Invert it. Verrrry good. All together now:

Smack! Bad Apple!

At any rate, sorry for the bad asset.

Here is a .mov format file of the film from yesterday. 1 minute, 1.x mb. Sorry QT phobics! Maybe next time. The MPEG-4 is still available, and it looks much better.

Posted on by mwhybark

Microfilm

lake_crescent

(1 minute. 6 mb 1.8 mb, 320 x 240 mpeg, no audio. Control-click to download, looks like I have Apache set to not stream mpegs or something.)

As I mentioned, Viv and I (and Spencer) were out of town this weekend. We were on the Olympic peninsula, in an ill-advised attempt to visit the Hoh river valley on the rainiest day of the summer. We failed.

Instead, we gave up fighting the rain in Port Angeles, and eventually moseyed over to stay at the Crescent Lake campground, Fairholm, on the far east end of the lake. (Cabins and a lodge are also available – oh man, I bet a winter stay here would be something.) On the north side of the lake is a flat, wide trail, a converted railroad after which the trail is named, the Cedar.

Partway along the trail is a large railroad tunnel, filled with ties and collapsing within.

At 1 am, Spencer and I walked down to the lake and watched cloud formations over it move around. The moon rose over a high shoulder of the steeply forested surrounding hills, and I saw a bright green meteor flash in, arcing from west to east.

Sadly, we did not get much hiking done, due to extreme dawdlesomness, but on the way back we drove up to Hurricane Ridge for the obligatory best picnic table in the northwest, where we were accosted by the usual menacing array of deer, chipmunks, and mid-size birds. Our meal was closely supervised by two regally nonchalant adult ravens, each the size of a small black pony. The deer and assorted other wild hooligans have been my acquaintances in that spot for years; the ravens were something quite new.

Crescent Lake is currently in the local news, on and off, for diving recovery projects. Years ago, the lake was also the site of a celebrated, grisly murder mystery that began with the recovery of the saponified body that became known as The Lady of the Lake, a tale I sadly neglected to learn before camping. Next time, I get to tell the ghost story to end all campfire ghost stories.

I do have loads more pictures. In fact, an overwhelming amount; in addition to Viv’s new camera I brought both the old Kodak and the tiny, Lomo-esque Veo, which I think I am getting the hang of. It has a truly irritating interface and settings are totally transient, so you can’t assign a default mode for it to boot into, but the lens produces shading and hazing that are clearly in the Lomo tradition (not to assert that the Veo has any of the magic of the eastern European wonder, mind you).

The film above was iMovied from bits of 10 to 30 second silent mpegs captured with the camera. Amazingly, I filled the card up with stills and clips on one AAA battery.

Posted on by mwhybark

My, what big feet you have

BFRO Geographical Database of Bigfoot Sightings & Reports.

Yes! Washington maintains a clear if not commanding lead over soi-disant sasquatch homeland Kullyfornya. But number three in this horse ape-like creature race is… Ohio, with an astonishing one-sixty.

A surprising number of states also show recent updates, if not recent sightings. Indiana even has updates from this year.

I must not forget to mention the time I saw a bigfoot in Anacortes.