Mac Holiday

Mac Holiday
The best after-holiday guide to practical hardware and Mac tchotchkes
Now that the holiday sugar n' booze overdose is starting to wear off, perhaps it's time to consider putting some of the gift cards you received to practical use. Here are some suggested products that likely went unnoticed while shopping in the bygone month, small must-haves for any Mac professional.
For More Mac Holiday Info Click On The Blue Links Below

Do you have a Mac?What Is Your Computer Holiday Wishlist?

Name at least 5 things you want for Christmas.
Ok! For those of you who are detail oriented: What WAS your Mac Holiday wishlist?

I got my iMac earlier in the year. Christmas was yesterday in NZ. - we are a day ahead of the US.

More RAM would be good though.

Your collection of DVDs, home movies, and Mac-recorded TV shows is also perfect fodder. With the right software, you can quickly convert these movies into iPod-compatible files and take them with you on your morning commute or your next holiday.

Although music continues to be the primary focus of iTunes Music Store, it's not the only thing you'll find there. In addition to offering audiobooks and podcasts (both audio and video), iTunes also gives you access to animated shorts, music videos, and more. If you have a video-capable iPod, you can even take your video on the road catching up with the latest episode of your favourite TV show while at the gym, or learning new photo-editing tricks while on the bus to work.

But the addition of video brings new challenges. For example, you can't just drag home movies onto your video iPod and expect them to play. You must first convert them into the right format. And the videos you download from the iTunes Music Store come with their own limitations. Here's what you need to know to download, organise, convert, and play video files in iTunes and on your iPod.

Finding Videos

To pursue what's available on iTunes, go to the Music Store and select 'Music Video', 'Movie Trailers', or 'Pixar' from the Inside The Music Store column. Video downloads will set you back £1.89 GBP, although when TV shows become available you'll be able to buy a Multi Pass that enables you to buy entire seasons at a discount.

You can also find free videos on the iTunes Music Store, in the form of video podcasts. To access them, click on the 'Podcasts' item on the Music Store home page, and then click on the 'Video Podcasts' button in the centre of the Podcasts page.

As with audio podcasts, you can add video podcasts to your library simply by clicking on the 'Subscribe' button. If you want to download just one episode of a podcast, click on the podcast's title and then click on the 'Get Episode' button next to the item you're interested in.

Managing video purchases

Downloaded videos will appear alongside your music tracks and podcasts in the iTunes library. You can distinguish them from other files with the help of the small grey video icon that appears after the title. To see all your videos in one place, click on the 'Videos' item in the 'Source' list.

The downside of video

Video download times aren't particularly speedy and you will need a broadband connection to get the content. Then you can expect to spend about three minutes downloading a four-minute music video. Downloading a one-hour TV show (about 44 minutes without commercials) could take as long as 40 minutes, depending on your hardware.

Video files also take up a lot of drive space than music files. If your Mac's hard drive is tight on space, you might want to consider relocating your iTunes library to an external hard drive.

Rip your DVDs

Because of the way they are encoded and encrypted, DVDs require a little work to rip, but the right software makes it a painless process. Before you begin, decide whether you'll mainly be viewing the converted files on your iPod or sometimes connecting the iPod to a television and watching them on a larger screen. Your decision will determine which software and settings you need to use for the conversion process.

If your goal is simply to rip DVD content so you can watch it on your iPod, the simplest way is with Tyler Loch's free HandBrake Lite 1.1 (http://handbrake.m0k.org/).

1. To rip a DVD, pop the disc into your DVD drive and launch HandBrake Lite. Click on the 'Open' button, and HandBrake will scan the disc for the needed video data. If you see the message "no valid title found", HandBrake can't read the disc; sometimes this happens with recent DVDs that have special copy protection. In this case, you'll need to download and run MacTheRipper, which is more adept at bypassing DVD copy protection (its website tends to move around, so check Version Tracker if you need it). Once you've used Mac DVD Folder/Image, and then navigate to the 'VIDEO_TS' folder of the disc you've extracted.

2. Once it has scanned the disc, HandBrake Lite presents you with a list of 'Titles': discreet elements such as a film, a TV show episode, a bonus interview, a making-of documentary and so on. Pick the title you want to convert. If it's a movie, it'll be the title with the longest duration. If you're ripping a DVD of a TV show, you'll notice several titles of similar length. To figure out which episode is which, check the DVD case for the order.

3. With the file selected, go to the right side of HandBrake Lite's window, specify where you want to save the file, and then give the file a name. Click on 'Rip', and then take a walk. The process can take a while, depending on the length of the video and the speed of your Mac.

Daniel Dwase is the webmaster of http://www.best-ipod-online.com Find out more about iPods and Podcasting.

Many thanks for reading our Mac Holiday article

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