Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and video

Which video game classics did I miss the last three years?

wolfr — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:05:31 -0800

I intend to make this weekend a gaming weekend. I haven't played video games in a long time. At least not as seriously as I used to. Do you have any suggestions? I have a brand new iMac and an Xbox 360. I do not have a copy of Windows on my Mac yet but could theoretically use Boot Camp to install Windows XP on a partition of the hard drive. So don't feel limited to Mac only games svp.

In the past my favorite games have been Baldurs Gate II, Arcanum, Battlefield 1942, Deus Ex and Tony Hawk II.

I was addicted to World of a Warcraft for a while. I like stories and character progression. I like games with original themes (e.g. Psychonauts).

It seems like the only games I've played the last year or two years have been: Grand Theft Auto IV, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Skate, Soul Calibur IV. All on the Xbox. All of them very casually, although I did end up finishing all except Bioshock (which was good, but not relaxing, with all the dark rooms and scary things).

I am downloading the free 2 week trial of Eve Online right now, but I'd rather not get crazy about an MMORPG anymore. While my time in the World of Warcraft was wonderful, the whole game remains a slot machine with a nice interface.

No racing and sports please with the exception of snowboard/skateboard.

Who has suggestions for me?

What's the deal with Flash video on OSX? I can't click the play button!

Glum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:12:28 -0800

Why do Youtube (and other flash videos) become unresponsive on my Mac when they are embedded in other sites? [iMac and MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard (and previous OS), Firefox & Safari]

Often, when I come across an embedded YouTube clip (and sometimes videos from other services like Vimeo) on my RSS feed or in a website I am visiting I am unable to click on it successfully. Trying to access the controls (play, pause etc) becomes almost impossible. I have found that if I right click to pull up the Flash menu, but then deselect it, I do then get one chance to click on the Flash object (with it going white in the process).

These objects almost always work perectly if I click through to watch them in their original location.

My browsers have been doing this for several versions, over the last two versions of the OS and the last three versions of Flash, on both my Macs. I have the most recent versions of all software.

I've read that Flash is very unreliable on OSX - with memory leaks etc. - but this doesn't seem to be that (although, of course, I don't actually know what it is).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best video codec for embedding into PowerPoint?

limon — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:51:55 -0800

I'd like to embed video clips in a PowerPoint presentation. It would need to play correctly on both Windows and OS X. What codec is ideal? My first attempt won't play on Macs.

Best 27" iMac Arm?

fairmettle — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:21:50 -0800

What are the best options for a desk mounted VESA compatible articulating arm for the new 27" iMac? Up until recently, I had an old G5 iMac and although the included stand was an elegant design, I was never very satisfied with the limited range of motion it provided. So now that it has finally come time to purchase a new iMac, I would like to get a well built, stable articulated arm that provides a wide range of viewing positions.

I'm interested in hearing any ideas, experiences, and/or suggestions for a mounting arm that would provide convenient and safe positioning for the weight (20.5 lbs.) and width (27" diagonal) of my new machine.

Some examples that I have been looking at are the Ergotron MX and the iLift, and the Innovative 7500.

With the new iMac's large screen size and my particular room set-up, I would like an arm that is long enough to be viewable at my desk for work and from my bed which is right beside it for watching DVD's.

Out of the models I listed above, the 7500 has the greatest range of movement (27" horizontal and 18" vertical - here is a YouTube video showing it). In my research so far, it seems that if you want to find a longer arm you need to go up to the medical/dental type suppliers such as the ICW Elite (with a 42" reach or longer).

Please don't send me into my next iMac purchase unarmed - - any and all thoughts and suggestions would be most appreciated!

RAID and backup system for Mac Pro?

shinynewnick — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:08:11 -0800

Best RAID / Backup system for HD video on a Mac Pro? I was in the process of building myself a nice little external RAID enclosure with four 1 TB drives, when I started digging into the articles and realizing that RAID isn't backup.

Now I have these 4 1 TB drives, a couple of 500 GB drives, 1 TB internal, and 640 GB system drive for my Mac Pro. So I'm looking for the best way to set up these drives in my workflow for producing HD video.

Here are my basic needs:

1. Reliable Daily backups - Daily backups of all my work. I'm still thinking of using the RAID esata box as a RAID1 setup, to prevent downtime if a drive goes down.

2. Long term backups - When a project is finished, moving the data off the working drive and onto two separate hard drives for storage. I'll buy additional 500 GB drives for this purpose as needed.

3. Speed isn't crucial, as I'm not working in uncompressed HD.

Time Machine seems to be a great built in system, and I'd like to take advantage of that. I'm also signing up for Carbonite for online backup of as much information as I can.

Any thoughts on the workflow and the best way to automate the system would be greatly appreciated.

How to delay Mac sound output?

i_cola — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:53:45 -0800

I want to delay the sound output from my Mac Mini so I can get it to sync with video from a different source. I've got a radio commentary (available via Safari or iTunes on the MacMini) that is up to a minute ahead of the TV feed I'm watching on my laptop. I want to watch the TV feed with the radio commentary roughly in sync.

Is there a software solution out there that will allow me to adjustably delay the entire audio out from the MacMini?

Even better would be the ability to delay the audio from a particular application & I'd like the option to be able to sync both feeds on a single Mac.

One Image, One Audio Clip: One Movie?

furtive — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:59:06 -0800

How to make a video from an audio track for Youtube? I'm on a Mac, I'd like to make a video for Youtube that just shows an image for the duration of the video. iMovie is not playing along (limiting video to 4 seconds, wtf!)

How I can I make my videos created in Keynote look as good as videos as they do as slides?

4ster — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:32:19 -0800

When I make presentations in Keynote 08 and then export them to video, they look terrible. My pictures are all blurry, and my fonts are all jagged. How I can I make my videos created in Keynote look as good as videos as they do as slides?

What graphics card do I need?

drjimmy11 — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:35:18 -0800

What graphics card do I need? I am doing some fairly advanced video editing on my Intel Mac Pro tower (about 2 years old). i thought I had the setup I needed- quad core, 8gb RAM, eSATA external drives.

But I'm getting an error message, specifically calling out my graphics card as not being able to render certain effects with the "size and depth of video" I'm using. In addition, I would like to be able to use my Oleva flatscreen tv as an external monitor, and cannot currently do so due to lack of compatible outputs from the computer.

Is there a card i can buy that will solve both these problems? Also, do I replace the current card, or just add a new one in an empty slot? I know a fair bit about computers, but my ignorance of graphics cards is almost total.

thanks!

Frame Skipping Mac

thefamousmoe — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:43:48 -0800

Why is the video skipping on my Mac when hooked up to seconday display? I have a Mac with 2 gigs ram and 2ghz intel processor. When I play a video on it it works fine. But when I plug my tv to it through, hdmi -> minidvi, and audio cable to the tv. It runs fine for like 10 minutes then starts skipping really bad. If i unplug and plug the hdmi, or even audio cable back in then it works again for another 10 minutes. I dont understand, anyone have any ideas? Oh and when it skips in VLC player it gives me this message.

ffmpeg: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)

Please, help me post a video that's currently too large. I'm a Mac user.

Toto_tot — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:44:32 -0800

How do I get a too large video on line? A friend of mine passed away and I created a slide show tribute that I would love to post on-line. I created it with Photo to Movie and have it rendered as an MPEG-4 which is 140 ish Megs. It is also 11:30 Minutes. When I rendered it in Quicktime it was more that 2G.

I have the typical Mac software at my disposal.
I have a place to host it where it needs to be 100 Megs or less.
Is there a way for me to use iMovie or some such to dip the quality a bit? It will only play on people's home computers.

Alternatively, is there a different place to host it? Create a website maybe?
I can put some money into this...

Thanks SO much.

HD animated maps for video?

nitsuj — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:54:58 -0800

What's the easiest way to create HD-quality (1080x) animated maps for use with video? iMovie '09 has the nifty little map feature, but I use Final Cut Express and don't want to plunk down the extra cash for another editor. Is there a similar -- perhaps a bit more professional and detailed -- solution for creating animated maps for importing into Final Cut Express?

Ideally this would be a standalone program that creates the maps and outputs them into a format that is easily ingested by Final Cut Express.

(Other details: Final Cut Express 4, OSX.5.6, 2.4GHZ MBP + 4gb RAM)

Pimping Out a MacMini as Media Center, etc.

Gideon — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:17:34 -0800

I'm consolidating and trying to save some money in the coming years. To that end I've acquired an older Mac Mini and pulled out an old monitor. I've set it as a working media center, but I think I could do more and do it more efficiently. This Mac-Mini pretty much only has one job - dealing with media. I've a normal computer I use for everything else. Right now my setup is like this:
I have boxee for Netflix and Hulu (sometimes). For videos I might download I use a program that grabs the videos for me automatically an begins downloading them in Vuze. Cause I am security sensitive I use the IP Filter with Vuze.

After they are complete they are moved to a "completion folder" where Hazel (the program) moves them to the proper directory. This way I can watch stuff I download on Front Row or Boxee.

I also have Connect360 running so I can watch movies from my 360 in the other room.

I have screen sharing as well so I don't have to worry about needing a mouse and keyboard for the macmini.

-Still, having some troubles. I can't seem to slow down the file moving, so errors crop up in Vuze all the time.

-I'm wondering if there is a more efficient way to do this. Boxee has torrent downloading, but no ip-filtering.

-What else can I use this for? It seems I should be able to do something else with this thing but I'm not quite sure what. I don't need to share files or anything (mobileme allows for that). But what other things might I do?

iTunes, let me watch this TV show please!

fantine — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:02:08 -0800

How can I make iTunes play a large video file? I am trying to watch an HD video on iTunes. The file is 1.62 GB (aka huge) and my iBook G4 does not like it.

Basically, the audio runs ok but the screen glitches and freezes and does not "keep up" with the audio. The whole thing runs slowly.

I would download a poor-quality video just to watch but it was only available on iTunes in HD (bah). I have shut down all other programs running to make it run faster, to no avail. My RAM is limited but I can't help that.

What are good short-term solutions? Some way to degrade the file quality to shrink it? Some hidden process on my mac that I can shut down to speed things up?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Can anyone recommend Mac compatible external (USB or FW) video capture hardware?

$0up — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:35:25 -0800

I just ordered the updated Mac Mini, and I'm looking around for an external box that I can plug analog or DV sources into to capture video. The main purpose would be to capture a lot of old material on VHS and Hi8 tape that is getting well past expiration date. If it could tune into cable or over-the-air tv, that'd be great, but it's really just capturing/encoding video from external sources (RCA,S-Video,DV) that it needs to do well. I have one of these things for inputting analog/outputting digital audio, and it works great with its parent application. I'm hoping to find something similar in quality for video. My price point is $200-400. Does anyone have experience using something like this, that they'd care to recommend?

My video is fuzzy

megatherium — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:40:42 -0800

Mac and Acer monitor. Why do I occasionally see shadows? I bought a used MiniMac on eBay, and I connected it to an Acer flat-screen monitor. It works very well - most of the time. On occasion, however, it will start to show shadows of the letters behind text, and any graphics are somewhat blurred.

This is of course a VGA monitor. I bought a DVI to VGA adapter directly from Apple, thinking that the first one from Radio Shack maybe was not of very good quality.

Any ideas on what I can do about this?

Mac screen artifacts causing a headache

tanc — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:49:33 -0800

I'm getting some weird artifacts/corruptions appearing on my macbookpro screen. Any explanations? I've tried googling this, but as my description of what's happening is quite vague I haven't had any success...

It's been happening for a while. Here are two screenshots I took of different artifacts that are happening. 1 2

Generally the artifacting occurs within a specific window, although sometimes it occurs across windows.

I have an external monitor plugged in and it occurs on both my laptop screen and the external monitor.

I thought maybe it was due to how long I leave my computer on - it's often a week or two between reboots, but it's happening now and my uptime is less than 2 days...

It seems to start on video windows (quicktime) or tetris (Quinn) the most, but that may be due to those being my most common activities...

It doesn't happen constantly, but will come and go. At the moment it seems to be appearing for a few seconds and then going again, but sometimes it won't go unless I close a windows or somehow force a screen refresh. (I was typing this the screen became obscured by a large yellow block)

Any suggestions of how I can prevent it without the pain of a reboot/trip to an apple store?

Vanishing iMovie Audio

rosken — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:47:43 -0800

My video project is due in 2 days, and out of nowhere, a bunch of my audio files in iMovie have become corrupt (I think). Is there any way to fix this, short of re-recording them? I've been making a video collage of clips of Obama, McCain and Palin for a group project. Just now when I opened iMovie, though, lots of the dubbed voice clips (but not all) that worked yesterday seem to have gone quiet. The clips in question no longer show the standard audio output graph image, but instead have text saying "Voice 44" etc. I can't undo any changes in the project, and my only backup isn't useful as it was made before lots of the clips in question were recorded. Should I risk a restart? Is this hopeless?

I am using one of the old white macbooks with OSX 10.5.5 and iMovie HD 6.0.3

MacBook and Home Theater

cmoj — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:29:51 -0800

Any ideas about a wireless (or at least fairly elegant) MacBook Pro/1080p projector entertainment system setup? So, I've got a fairly new MacBook pro with a DMI-I hookup and all that. I run the audio through an old-fashioned stereo amplifier into old-fashioned floor speakers, and the video through a new-fangled 1080p projector. I also have a mostly adequate Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse.
How can I use this setup without ensnaring my laptop in a web of cables? Well, only four, but it still takes long enough to connect and disconnect that the point of having a laptop is diminished.

I'm looking for essentially this:
Bluetooth or equivalent audio that will go to RCA connectors... adapters are okay as long as I'm not losing too much quality.
Bluetooth or equivalent 1080p video (maybe the hard part).

Video to Images

rocco — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:50:18 -0800

I need to convert a Quicktime movie to one single JPEG image that contains every frame of the movie. So you'd see each frame as a tiny image and there'd be thousands of little images in this one JPEG. I've done this before, and I have the image, but I just cannot find it again! This would be for the mac. Thanks

What video editing software is best for me?

nitsuj — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:42:29 -0800

What video editing software is best for me? I've got a Macbook Pro (2.4 ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, OSX.5.5), and I'm looking to edit HD video (from this camera). I'm fairly new to the Mac, but on Windows I was very proficient in Adobe Premiere. I've never worked with HD.

Looking through the Apple site, I see a bunch of different versions of Final Cut (Pro, Express, Express HD, etc) and I'm not sure which, if any, would be good for me -- considering I'm a Premiere guy. Is there anything about Final Cut that would make me want to switch to it in my situation?

Also: Does my Mac have the specs to edit HD footage well?

I'm doing prosumer level work -- nothing too fancy.

Not Getting Famous on YouTube

tmcw — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:24:55 -0800

I have a song I composed / recorded / etc. I'd like to make simple video by cutting together fragments of public-domain films with this song. I have a MacBook. How to get to point B? iMovie is crashing on every import. iMovie seems to crash every time I open the "Import Movie" dialog. Not a sign of quality software.

I don't want to spend much/any money on this. I've tried writing a quick app in Processing.org to do this, but the movies I'm working with are 100-200MB mpg files, and that fills up Java's heap very, very quickly - I can't imagine throwing FFT analysis on top of that.

Are there are any open-source or cheap applications that allow fairly basic video editing capabilities like this? Anything possibly designed for VJs or very nonlinear editing like this will be? I'm a little miffed that there hasn't been an obvious, slick answer to this like there has been for 99% of my mac artsy-software needs.

Thanks for any help!

A good book for Final Cut Pro 5

philip-random — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:02:51 -0800

What's the best handbook for guiding my Final Cut Pro 5.1 learning curve? I've done a little non-linear editing in the past (Adobe Premiere) but am about to make a more committed leap into the land of Final Cut Pro. An editor friend suggested I pick up a good book to aid me in my learning curve.

Any suggestions? I'm not concerned with editing theory and the like, just the nuts and bolts of actually working with Final Cut Pro 5.1.

Capturing video from VGA...

stackhaus23 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:38:23 -0800

Capturing video from VGA to either HDMI/DVI input or Component Input? A colleague at work needs to capture some footage but the output is VGA (which I assume is analog). We have two inputs, one is a DVI/HDMI into his Mac, the other is component or maybe composite into a DV Tape Deck.

Am I correct in thinking the VGA will not be compatible with either of these? Are there any alternatives or cheap/easy methods to get this to work?

Thanks!

can front row be bookmarked?

luriete — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:16:35 -0800

Can Front Row be run in a window, or can videos being played in front row be bookmarked? I hate to have to try to skip back to where i was in a movie or tv show after doing something else...