Pasting Plain Text

September 18, 2009 by dmacnet

When I copy text on a computer, most often I want to paste it without the accompanying formatting. On both MacOS X and Windows, there is no built-in way to do this that works in all applications. After trying several approaches, I found freeware solutions that provide a hotkey for that missing function.

Mac (tested on 10.6 Snow Leopard):

  1. Download Spark and the Plain Clip Plug for Spark (I couldn’t get the regular Plain Clip application to do the paste part, so I had to use the special Spark plugin version).
  2. Open the Spark disk image and drag Spark to your Applications folder.
  3. Create the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Spark/PlugIns
  4. Open the Plain Clip Plug disk image and drag Plain Clip Plug.spact to the ~/Library/Application Support/Spark/PlugIns folder.
  5. Double-click Applications/Spark to run it.
  6. The first time Spark runs, it shows a screen including two checkboxes, to activate Spark at login and immediately. Leave them checked.
  7. File>New HotKey>Plain Clip
  8. Type a name for the hotkey (such as “Paste Plain Text”), check the Send Command-V keystroke box, and click on the Shortcut box and press Command-Option-v (or whatever key you want to be the shortcut).
  9. Click Create
  10. Now Command-Option-v pastes the clipboard as plain text.

Windows (tested on Windows XP and 7 RC):

  1. Download PureText
  2. Unzip PureText by right-clicking on the Zip file and selecting Extract All
  3. Create the folder C:\Program Files\PureText
  4. Copy PureText.exe to C:\Program Files\PureText
  5. Double-click C:\Program Files\PureText\PureText.exe to run it. It opens as an icon in the system tray.
  6. Right-click the PT icon in the system tray and select Options.
  7. Check the box Automatically run PureText each time I log on to Windows, uncheck Play a sound, and click OK.
  8. Now Windows-v pastes the clipboard as plain text.

Posted in mac, software | Comments Off

iDVD Tips

August 11, 2009 by dmacnet

For authoring a DVD of home movies, my preferred program is currently iDVD 7, which is part of iLife 08 and 09. It’s a pretty easy way to get attractive menus, but it does have some annoying limitations and bugs. Here are some tips for using it.

  • If possible, use Professional Quality (2-pass VBR) in the Project Info. If you have time to wait, you might as well get the highest quality encoding. For details on the iDVD encoding options, see What iDVD ‘08 Compression Options Really Mean and Review: iDVD ‘08 and iDVD 7.
  • Turn off the Apple watermark in Preferences.
  • Use a menu without fancy animation. The default menu in iDVD 7 can take longer to encode than the movies do.
  • Turn off the menu sound for each menu by turning the volume slider in the Inspector box down all the way. Menu sound is annoying.
  • Preview the DVD to make sure it looks the way you want.
  • If you mix 4:3 and 16:9 videos on one DVD, iDVD will probably mix up some of the aspect ratios. To fix the aspect ratios:
    1. Save as a VIDEO_TS folder in iDVD.
    2. Use myDVDEdit to check and fix the aspect ratio in each VTS (either 4:3 or 16:9 auto Pan&Scan and Letterbox).
    3. Burn the VIDEO_TS folder with Burn.
  • To include videos that are already encoded as DVD-compliant MPEG2 in an iDVD project (assuming they don’t need chapters):
    1. If the you have an MPG file or a VOB with no IFO, demux and remux as needed to make a VOB and IFO, using a program such as ffmpegX.
    2. Include a short dummy video in the iDVD project as a placeholder.
    3. Save as a VIDEO_TS folder in iDVD.
    4. Duplicate the VIDEO_TS folder in Finder.
    5. Open myDVDEdit on the VIDEO_TS folder to figure out which VTS number each placeholder video is.
    6. Replace each placeholder VOB and its IFO and BAK files with the real ones in the duplicate VIDEO_TS folder using the Finder (renumber their file names as necessary).
    7. Open both the unmodified and modified VIDEO_TS folders in myDVDEdit. myDVDEdit will probably report and fix some errors in the modified folder; that’s normal and good.
    8. Make new empty PGCs in the menus as needed to make the same number as in the iDVD-authored IFO.
    9. Use Select All with copy and paste to copy the iDVD menu navigation pre and post commands from the iDVD-authored placeholder menu PGCs to the replacement video.
    10. Play the VIDEO_TS folder with both VLC and Apple DVD Player. While playing the video you replaced, make sure the sound, seek bar, and Menu button work.
    11. Burn the VIDEO_TS folder with Burn.

Posted in mac, software, video | Comments Off

I Want Pro Tools for Video

July 17, 2009 by dmacnet

In almost every respect, working with digital video is less mature and less streamlined than working with digital audio. The user interfaces of editing software are no exception.

I’ve spent much of the past decade editing digital audio, and since 2002 my favorite program for that is Pro Tools by the Digidesign division of Avid.

In the past year, I’ve gotten more serious about video editing. After dabbling with Sony Vegas, Windows Movie Maker, and iMovie HD (among others) for a couple of years, I now mainly use Apple Final Cut Express.

I find working in video editing programs unnecessarily primitive and cumbersome compared to Pro Tools. Taking Final Cut Express/Pro as a typical and popular example that I’m familiar with, here is my list of deficiencies compared to the audio editing programs I’m used to. It’s in no particular order.

  1. I can’t name or add comments to tracks. I’m stuck with “V1″ and “A1″ to identify the tracks.
  2. No way to change the order of tracks. It’s unbelievable that this isn’t supported. I have to jump through hoops creating temporary tracks and selecting and moving the contents of other tracks in order to accomplish the effect of, say, inserting a track between two others or moving one track above another one.
  3. No plug-in inserts on tracks. I can’t put a plug-in on a whole track; I have to add it to each clip on the track. If I change a parameter, I have to change it in every similar clip instead of just once.
  4. No plug-in presets. I can’t build up a library of plug-in settings with meaningful names, which among other things would make changing plug-in settings on multiple clips less tedious.
  5. Files for each project are scattered in various directories, making it more difficult to archive or copy a project. Pro Tools encourages keeping all the files for a project under one folder. Final Cut discourages it by making the location of folders like Render Files a global setting instead of per-project. That’s one of the things that drove me away from Cakewalk for audio years ago. It’s too easy to wind up with files for a project getting written to the wrong hard drive and not know it until you reopen it and discover things are missing.
  6. No smart recalculating. Spreadsheets do it, but Final Cut doesn’t. If I add a keyframe anywhere in a clip (such as to do a fade-in or fade-out), the whole clip is invalidated and needs to be re-rendered, even if only a tiny part of it between two keyframes is obviously the only part affected, Final Cut makes me waste a lot of time re-rendering unchanged footage. My partial workaround for this flaw is to use the razor blade tool to split a clip into two near each area where I’m going to add keyframes.
  7. Audio waveform recalculation isn’t cached. Toggle waveform display with Command-Option-w (which isn’t listed as a keyboard shortcut on the Sequence>Settings menu, another bug), and Final Cut recalculates all the audio waveforms from scratch every time. It’s so slow at this that it’s often not practical to work with waveform display turned on.
  8. No easy way to temporarily disable a clip in a timeline. In Pro Tools, I can press Command-m to mute a region without changing it, to experiment with different mixes without losing editing work. In Final Cut, I have to create a copy of the whole sequence to experiment on.
  9. No master audio or aux or VCA tracks.
  10. Precise audio sync is difficult. Apple documents a workaround to do subframe audio slipping that involves shift-dragging and setting an in or out point, but it’s clumsy and usually doesn’t work when I try it. I normally resort to exporting the existing audio track into a wave file, importing it into Pro Tools, and aligning additional audio in Pro Tools and re-exporting it and importing that into Final Cut. Despite all the extra steps, it’s easier and more reliable than trying to sync audio in Final Cut.
  11. I can’t copy (or cut) and paste from one track on the timeline into another.
  12. Inability to move markers once they’re created. If because of an edit or a mistake, I find that a marker isn’t where I want it to be on the timeline, I have to delete it and create a new one.

I have no hope that any of these flaws will ever be fixed. I expect they’ll just keep wasting my time for the rest of my life. I wish there were a video editing program with as good an interface as Pro Tools! (Avid sure doesn’t make one–their video editing software is even more cumbersome than Apple’s, from my experience playing around with it.)

Posted in software, video | Comments Off

« Older Entries