Archive for the 'Video' Category

Organizing digital videos isn’t easy. The vast majority of music files have been in MP3 format since the digital music explosion, but videos are a different story: MP4, H.264, DiVx, Xvid, WMV, M4V, MOV, AVI containers. When you download a movie, you never really know what to expect, and neither does iTunes, which only plays a limited number of video file types. So users who download movie files are forced to use QuickTime or third-party software to convert them to another format, which is always a lengthy process. Fortunately, though, there is an alternative:

These days there are so many Screencasts for Mac. There are also a ton of tools to do Screencasts for Mac. Today I am going to be talking about a very popular one called Screenflick. A while back, our own Daniel Greg did a review of Screencast. Since then, they have changed the name to Screenflick, and added many new features.

Last November Shinywhitebox released Stomp. Stomp is a very useful application that allows you to re-encode videos, crop them, add effects and even more. Shinywhitebox is a software company from New Zealand that has already created two apps: iShowU, a screen recording tool, and Chatter, a screensharing tool. Today they released the 1.6 version of Stomp; let’s see in more detail what this application is capable of.

Stomp has two main features : re-encoding and effects.

The first feature allows you to re-encode a video in a different format. The application includes a lot of different presets from Apple TV to YouTube, but you can also choose your own settings for both video and audio, and even create your own presets.

As a contributor to MacApper I’m able to interact with quality software and relay my findings to you, the reader. Every once in a while you come across software that is something special; software that makes you stop and say, “Man, I can do some crazy stuff with this!” iStopMotion2 by Boinx Software is that type of software, allowing users at every skill level to use their Mac for things other than checking email, syncing with iTunes, or shill bidding on eBay. Read the review and check out how to enter for a chance to win one of three licenses of iStopMotion2 Home.

A few weeks ago, a teaser page went up for an application called Misu. The tagline reads “Mi iPod es Su iPod,” which literally translates into English as “My iPod is your iPod.” This new app is being developed by Ollie Wagner of Specere and Geoff Pado of Elgebar Studios.

If you have seen the teaser page and have been wondering what this app is all about, today is your lucky day. I have had a chance to play around with the beta, and the developers have sent us a short video demoing the premise behind Misu.

A couple weeks ago, I reviewed ScreenFlow, a brand new application that makes creating screencasts simple and easy. Thanks to the awesome guys over at Vara Software for giving us a licenses of ScreenFlow to give away.
We had an overwhelming response and we want to thank everyone that participated in the giveaway. I wanted to note that many of the features requested for future versions of ScreenFlow are already in the initial release. ScreenFlow already has iChat integration, as well as the ability to record both your video and screen at the same time.

If Front Row just isn’t cutting it, there might be a better option. The Xbox Media Center on OS X (OSXBMC) is a port of the popular XBMC — for turning a Microsoft Xbox game system into a powerful media center — and like the Mac’s built-in media center application, OSXBMC can display videos, music and photos.

The TV shows aren’t going to be back until later this spring, so what are we supposed to do during this WGA strike-created television drought? Miro is an app that is designed to “turn your computer into an Internet TV.” Now it might not give you access to your favorite shows from FOX, ABC, and NBC, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a great selection of video to watch, much of it in HD. The app can manage your video files, but its main purpose is to gather video from the many sources it hooks you up to.

Most of us probably rip DVDs from time to time. iTunes can be a very powerful metadata tagger, but for some of us, it is just not powerful enough.

Yes, iTunes has many information fields that you can fill out, but there is still much more information that it does not let you add. For these, there is Lostify.

Lostify is a simple Metadata tagger for M4Vs (videos) and M4As (audio files), the perfect companion for Handbrake. It lets you fill out MCAA rating, Actors, Directors and every other piece of Metadata that iTunes can handle. The best part is that it is free!

It’s not often that you find an app that totally changes the way you do a task. As a video blogger for MacApper, I use screen recording software all the time, and never has it been easy to create a beautiful and professional screencast.

Not until ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow from Vara Software takes screencasting software to the next level. With a beautiful and simple interface, ScreenFlow uses all of Leopard’s Core Animation features to the max, providing an environment for you to capture, edit, and output your screencasts with ease.

With many different video codecs and formats available today, it is hard to find a device that supports not just them all, but even a reasonable subset of the most popular.

When Apple released the 5G iPod with Video in Oct 2005, the push to take your video content on the road began and new tools started to surface to convert many of the different codecs over to iPod format.

Apple announced iTunes 7.6 during Tuesday’s keynote. The biggest addition is support for iTunes movie rentals, a feature long rumored and a potential Netflix Watch Now/Blockbuster/Vudu killer.

Aesthetically, iTunes 7.6 looks almost identical to 7.5, but the real biggies are what it adds support for. Read along to find out what’s going on under the hood.

It’s been a long time and Elgato managed to keep it under wraps until the weekend, but EyeTV 3 is out and it looks like an excellent update. Included are some long requested features and a much needed graphical overhaul. With all the new features, it looks like EyeTV will remain the best way to watch TV on the Mac.

So, without any further ado, here are they key features of EyeTV 3:

New Interface - EyeTV’s interface now includes CoverFlow. It works exactly the same as iTunes, so if you can use iTunes you can use EyeTV.

One device that nearly every Mac audiophile has (or should have) is Apple’s elegant Airport Express. Using AirTunes over your Airport Express streaming audio to a stereo is a piece of cake. The problem is that streaming audio can only be done from iTunes and video is a no-go.

The solution? Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba.

Have you ever wanted to easily access your Mac’s media on your PS3? Well now you can. Just a couple days back Nullriver Software, the people behind the hugely popular Connect360, released Medialink. Medialink is an easy to use app that allows you to access your videos, movies, and music on your Mac via your PS3.

Similar to Connect360, Medialink lives in System Preferences. When you open Medialink you can choose exactly what sources you want for sourcing media, like your iTunes library or iPhoto library. Then once you have picked your sources you simply click start and you’re up and away. On the Playstation 3 XMB (XrossMediaBar) you can access all of your selected sources by going under the appropriate sections (Photos, Videos, Music) and selecting the Nullriver Medialink server.