Digital Audio and Video Tips

Sony Digital Media Converter vs. Sony Digital Walkman

If you're seeking a way to transfer old 8mm movies to your Mac for editing in iMovie, Sony has two potential solutions. The Digital Media Converter will convert any media that has composite or S-Video connectors to a file on your hard drive. If you don't have massive amounts of storage (digital video files are very large), you might want to use the Digital Walkman instead, which will convert the media onto DV tapes. Once it is on tape, iMovie and Final Cut Pro can control the Walkman for importation of selected clips.

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Sharing iTunes Playlists in OS 9.1 & X

If you are using iTunes in 9.1 AND in X, this is an easy way to share the same music library and keep all your playlists:

From OS X, throw away the iTunes folder in your X documents folder . Then find the iTunes folder in your 9.1 documents folder, make an alias of that folder and place it in your OS X documents folder ... make sure it is called iTunes.

So simple ... so effective!

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Using iTunes Windows

Did you know iTunes has multiple windows views? Try this:

Select your main library, and click on the browse button. You will see a three-pane window which allows you to view your library by Artist or by Album. Clicking on an item in either window will show the pertinent songs in the lower portion.

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iDVD 1.0

If you're thinking about buying a new 733 MHz G4 PowerMac with a SuperDrive, just to get iDVD, you might want to hold off for a while. iDVD 1.0, currently shipping with models configured with a DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive, is fun and fairly easy to use, but the bug reports are mounting rapidly. Rated with 2.5 mice (out of a possible 5) by MacWorld Magazine, iDVD is a good start ... but still has a way to go before justifying the $3,000 price tag for that new G4.

Although iDVD 1.0 produces an acceptable product, problems mentioned by MacWorld included repeated crashes, slideshow editing limitations, and only partial compatibility with Apple's own DVD player. When the article's author played his DVD on his Panasonic TV player, it ran better, but some titles were cut off.

The general consensus is "it's coming along, but it ain't here yet."

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Why Does iTunes Sometimes Skip?

Why does iTunes skip occasionally, while the old Apple CD Audio Player seems impervious to skips?

The answer may be simply that Apple CD Audio is a hardware solution for playing CDs, while iTunes is pure software. As such, it's more dependent on the attention of the processor, and when other software is usurping system resources, iTunes is more likely to stutter. Faster processors tend to minimize this effect.

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