Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

video

What alternatives to iMovie can you recommend?

We tried to download Final Cut Pro on our Mac Book but were unsuccessful. Is there a way to do it? Or can you recommend another video editing program for her Mac Book that would be an upgrade from iMovie?
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Can you tell me of some good alternatives to iMovie?

Final Cut is available only through the Mac App Store. You can find the App store in the applications folder on your Mac. It is possible that the version of the operating system you have installed on your computer may be older than what Final Cut currently requires. The Mac App Store will tell you if this is the case prior to purchasing.

If you'd rather go with a different option, Adobe Premier Elements is a good alternative and is less expensive. There's also a free trial available.

Davinci Resolve has a free version as well that's worth checking out.

How to open 2 VLC windows at the same time on a Mac.

I want to run 2 instances of VLC. How do I do it?
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Use apple script editor and save the following command as a script:


on run
do shell script "open -n /Applications/VLC.app"
tell application "VLC" to activate
end run

on open theFiles
repeat with theFile in theFiles
do shell script "open -na /Applications/VLC.app " & quote & (POSIX path of theFile) & quote
end repeat
tell application "VLC" to activate
end open

Saving YouTube Videos to your HD.

What’s an easy way to rip videos off of youtube?
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While I won’t go into the legal questions of doing this, try one of these sites:

http://keepvid.com
http://www.clipconverter.cc

Just enter the web address of the youtube video and the website should do the rest.

You could also enable Developer Mode in Safari and use the activity viewer to see the video file cached then pull it that way as well but the aforementioned method is easier.

Bad video on MBP

Hey I forgot to ask you if I can block emails while I am out of town ...you know I am out of the office until Dec.31st??
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Depending on the email service, there are different ways to do this. I believe you have a gmail account as your main account so you’ll want to go to www.gmail.com and log in to your email account. Next, click the gear in the top right area and choose “settings”.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 6.15.48 PM
Now scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see “Vacation Responder”. From there you can select a date range and what you’d like to say in your auto response. Lastly, save changes at the very bottom.

For iCloud email (@mac.com, @me.com, or @icloud.com) the procedure is similar. You would log in to www.icloud.com and adjust the settings from the web page.

You do not set up auto respond to happen locally on your computer. You use the email’s webmail web page. That way it will work whether your computer is on and running or not. Have a safe trip!

Saving DVD's using handbrake

Scotty,
When I clicked on my mail icon on my MacBook Air, the following message popped up:

You can't use this version of Mail with this version of Mac OS X

You have Mail version 4.5 (1084/1084). It can't be used on Mac OS X Version 10.6.5 (Build  10h574).

This is the first time this message has appeared. What doe I need to do to resolve this matter?
Thanks,
___________


Interesting. First thing I would do would be to delete the icon in the dock then go to the applications folder and re drag the mail icon into the dock. You may want to also “get info” on the mail application in the applications folder to see if you really don’t have the version needed. If that doesn’t work, you can try using the Snow Leopard disk (using the remote disc sharing feature) and choose to do an optional install and select the mail application to install. If you have trouble making that happen then you could always try to pull a copy of mail from another mac that’s running the same version of the OS using a flash drive. I just can’t remember if the mail application will be as simple as copying from another drive. If you need assistance, just let me know.

Extracting video from the web

I have lost the app for yahoo messenger also our printer is not working. Told you /

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Finding the yahoo messenger app shoule be an easy fix. You may want to add it to the dock in the future (although it can sometimes be easy for people to accidently remove items from the dock.). Here’s a similar question and answer on how to add items to your dock and where to find applications like yahoo messenger.

As far as the printer goes, that is a small bit more detailed. But try the following:

1. check to make sure the printer is connected to the airport express in husband’s office
2. go to system prefs then print and fax preferences.
3. hit the minus button in the bottom left hand area of the window.
4. Now hit the plus button and your printer should show up in the list.
5. select that printer and hit “add”. The correct drivers should install automatically and you should be good to go.

Saving video from Youtube with Safari

Scotty - thanks and what was the name of the Free Racing App you should me on IPad?

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Real Racing HD by a company called Firemint.  it's available on the iphone as well but the iPad version costs $9.99

appshopper.com is a pretty good source to keep up with what’s new in the iTunes store.

Why won't .mov files play on my iPhone?

Scotty,

How can I get rid of Norton Utilities once and for all?

________

Norton provides an uninstaller found here: download the uninstaller

Elgato video and iPhoto fuzzy issues

Why won't my desktop icons show the preview of what the picture looks like. They are jpg files but only have the standard default image.

_________


No problem. In the old days there was a way to "rebuild" your desktop on a Mac if your icons got confused. Now days you have a preference you can check to make the preview come to life. In the finder under "View", select to show view options then check to show preview in icon.

Handbrake to iTunes?

Hi Scotty,

Can this be possible???  I thought it would take a looooooooooong time for us to "fill up"?  Is there something I should change, a setting perhaps?  Let me know your thoughts please.  Appreciate it.  Hope all is well with you.




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This is completely normal. This is exactly what time machine is designed to do. It fills your drive up then takes off the oldest versions of the data but keeps several copies of the most recent versions of the same data. I would check to "not show" the warning again and move on with life. The drive will now be constantly added to as room is made for the same data.

To save time machine space...if you wanted to eliminate your virtual machine files (if using VMware or Parallels) you could choose not to include those large files in Time Machine backup. Time Machine doesn't really look inside windows to back anything up however it does clone the virtual machine image onto the backup drive and these files are often 20 to 30 or more gigs. You know this first hand as we had to increase that space from before. Each time you make a change to your virtual machine (which is every time you open windows) Time Machine recopies that entire 10 plus gig file back over to the backup drive. That's probably why you are eating up drive space so quickly. If you're using Bootcamp (can't remember) to go into windows then Time Machine has no effect on that partitioned drive. Overall, I recommend that windows users (on mac hardware) use a seperate backup system dedicated to windows.

Can't watch a video


Scotty

Besides RapidWeaver, do you know any other web dev software that might be worth looking at?
There are many ways to build pages on the wen depending on your comfort level. Besides Rapidweaver and iWeb (which you’ve already tried) here are a few more to consider:

Freeway: more powerful than Rapidweaver with a little more under the hood.


is similar to Rapidweaver.
Sandvox
Dreamweaver: the standard of web page creation. Very difficult learning curve for novices.

Templates from web hosting services like
Godaddy or Squarespace: While these are more designed for blogging, you could take a look at some of the tools they use to create pages.

Blogging services like
Wordpress are popular but more for active web content creation but any of these suggestions could be used to create a static page much like what you’re going for.


This image is a theme.plist hack