On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 04:39:58PM -0700, Jason S wrote: > ffmpegX looks like it could be useful, I'll try it out. > > The iMovie software doesn't seem very useful. A pattern I've noticed at > least in the bundled software is that it's very easy to do a very narrow > range of things that Apple considers most common, and anything outside that > range is painful. For some examples of where I've run into trouble - In > iTunes, I can't import my CDs into mp3 format. It wants to use its own > proprietary format. That means I can't use the Mac to read new CDs if I > want to add the files to my library. iTunes will encode to MP3, it's in the preferences under immporting. AAC, which I assume you are referring to is not a proprietry format, it is an MPEG standard. It is the default on a new system but you can easily change that as I mentioned. > I have all my CDs ripped to mp3 in a directory on my file server. When I > try to play from there in iTunes, it quickly reads the whole file across the > network, re-encodes it, and stores a local copy in proprietary format. HD > space on the notebook is at a premium and I don't want to waste it > duplicating my music library. The whole reason for having the file server > is to prevent that from being needed. I also find the playlist management > features in iTunes to be very cryptic. I use sub-directories on the server > to manage the library, but iTunes thinks its smarter by dumping everything > into one list. There is an option in the iTunes preferences that indicates whether you want iTunes to organise your music for you. If this is not enabled it won't copy anything, it will just play it. iTunes puts everything into a Library. You then create playlists of files in that Library. The smart playlists add a degree of flexibility that can not be achived by a directory structure. Furtermore the Library can be accessed by song, artist, album, genre by clicking the Browse button. I think this would cover most common manual directory structures that people set up. > I have a lot of pictures from my digital camera stored on my PC and I don't > have good image management software, so iPhoto seems like a useful tool. > The problem is, there's no apparent way to import the images from files on > the HD, the network, CDs, etc. It only seems to accept pictures directly > from a digital camera. Even for future pictures, I don't want to import > directly to iPhoto since that seems to make it more difficult to maintain my > archive of raw images freshly dumped from the camera. The Import... item in the file menu will import files from disc, network, etc. in iPhoto. > I'm sure there are good ways to do both these things and everything else I'm > having problems with, but I just don't see it. Sounds like you need to do some more exploring of the menu items and preferences. > How can I change the file associations? For example to make avi files open > in VLC instead of QuickTime. Is there a way to set up hotkeys to launch > applications, like --M to launch mozilla? Change associations: Click on an AVI file in the Finder. Choose Get Info from the menu or type Command-I. I window will appear, click the triangle next to Open with: choose VLC and click Change All... Note: All of this assumes you are using Mac OS X 10.3. I have not followed the rest of this thread so applogies if I missed anything. If you want any more OS X help I'm happy to assist. -- Wesley Moore - wmoore@freeshell.org - http://wmoore.no-ip.info/ Free Email provided by: SDF Public Access UNIX System http://sdf.lonestar.org/ _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist