Category: Software

Windows Movie Maker 2 (which comes in an update to Windows XP) is really not a bad movie making program. I have heard surprisingly little about it, so for a long time, I didn’t even try clicking the icon to see what it did. Once I finally decided to give it a whirl, I was surprised at its usefulness.

The project I wanted to do was just to take a folder of still images and create a video slideshow with music in the background. It turns out there’s a Wizard built in to do just that. Basically I just had to open the wizard, select the folder, select the song, select a style and click “create movie.” That’s it… it was done. Windows Movie Maker automatically creates the slideshow to the length of the song and throws in some nice default transitions.

Once it’s done, you can either save it and have a decent movie done in about 15 minutes, or go in and add from the impressive selection of transitions and titling effects to customize the movie.

There are however, as with most Microsoft programs, some caveats. Windows Movie Maker won’t even run on my Dell laptop. I tried some troubleshooting (updating my video card drivers etc) but it just keeps crashing. It runs perfectly on my MUCH older P II 450 Gateway desktop–even with such an antiquated processor, it is able to render the transitions in realtime.

Creating a similar movie in Premier or another, more advanced video editing application such as Final Cut would have taken much longer to get the desired effect. Between tweaking the length of transitions and the time pictures are shown on the stage, creating a simple slideshow (even using the storyboarding features) can become a much more involved process. I haven’t compared it to iMovie yet, but I imagine it has similar features.

If you have Windows XP and want to make simple videos, I suggest checking out Windows Movie Maker. If it doesn’t crash on your machine, you might just find you really like it.

For an example of the type and quality of slideshow it produces, check out this movie I created today (11.6mb wmv format).

If you enjoy layout and design of any type, you’re bound to have wished for a quick way to preview text in several different fonts. Most graphics programs allow you to view only one at a time. Changing fonts over and over can be very tedious and often by the time you’ve gone through the list you can’t remember the ones you liked. Enter FontLister.

I’ve searched high and low and among both free and non-free software, FontLister is the best I’ve found. Even better is the fact that there’s an older version for free and the new version is non-limited shareware with a $5 registration fee.

Features include viewing both installed and non-installed fonts, installing fonts, viewing custom text and best of all, you can view many fonts as you want at a time. The user interface is great and it runs very, very fast. I highly recommend it. (Windows only).

For some reason, when you hold the mouse button down in OS X Panther (and Jaguar), the processor usage goes up to 100%. It doesn’t matter if you’re clicking nothing on the desktop or the most complex of widgets, holding down the mouse takes up all your processor power.

So what? Well, here’s one example of when it might affect you. If you’re listening to online radio (or an mp3 in iTunes) and reading a website or document that requires scrolling and you decide to hold the mouse button down on your scroll bar, often your internet radio will cut out or your mp3 will skip. Especially using Safari for whatever reason. I’m sure there are other instances where this could be problematic, especially when rendering video or 3d.

I’m on a 1.6gh G5, so it’s not that I’m using antiquated hardware. This is, as far as I can tell, a fault in OS X.

Tonight I’ve spent several hours trying to back domains up in Plesk and restore them on another Plesk install on another server. Let me just say that it is not trivial. I’m not sure how good Ensim, cPanel or other similar web server software is at the process but if you’re going to use Plesk and potentially could have to move domains, prepare yourself for an adventure. Note: this only applies to Plesk 6. Plesk 7 is out and I haven’t tested it to see if the process is any easier in the new version.

The Actionscript editor built into Flash is okay, but not great by any means. Today I went off in search of something better–much better.

For the Mac, I found JEdit which also works on the PC. With some minimal customizing, it works great. The toolbar is at the top of the screen like every other Mac app, which is great but still very uncommon for Java apps on OS X. It allows you to collapse functions to better view code and the default install has syntax highlighting for Actionscript. In addition there are numerous plugins available and it has an active development and support community.

For the PC there’s a dedicated Actionscript editor that has the Flash API and autocomplete for flash syntax built in, allows you to build and preview your file right from the interface, also lets you collapse functions and allows for retectangular selections. It’s called SEPY or SE|PY. It looks like there’s a Mac port on the way–there’s even a screenshot of it working under OS X on their site.

Maybe the title to my previous post (“Words of Warning”) should be the title to this one…. Last night I installed Zempt, a desktop application to publish to your weblog. It’s in beta status (0.3) but “Zempt is completely stable and should be suitable for most blog authors.” Well, it’s not suitable for me. It corrupted my database (unless it was just pure coincidence, in which case 2 other users on their forums suffered the same unfortunate coincidence). I spent the last hour recreating the entire weblog which is (hopefully) back to normal now. Fortunately I have saved versions and have not yet heavily customized the design.

The idea for the software is a great concept–it’s not unique, but it’s free which is nice. It allows you to spell check easily and publish quickly and easily without filling out a web form, but wait until they’ve ironed out some bugs before you try it on a live site.

Things are changing online. I have been known to say that all-Flash websites are all bad unless they are for movie trailers or cartoons, but I’m starting to change my opinion. At work, I have the opportunity to browse Flash sites quite a bit. I find a lot of inspiration and ideas on the Internet Tiny Awards and Favourite Website Awards sites which have links to the cream of the crop of Flash sites.

I think that within another year or two, 75% of all business-related sites will have at least some Flash on them (I’d be curious to see what the statistics are now.) The reason Flash is growing is because it has gone from being a tool for creating cool animations to a tool for creating fluid interfaces that are much more interactive and intuitive and less linear. The internet is becoming an interactive experience, and as of now, Flash is the only tool to make it that.

By far, my favorite feature of Apple’s OS X 10.3 Panther operating system is Expos?. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a feature that allows you to see all the windows of a your current application, all the windows you have open or your desktop by using a simple keyboard combination or a hot-corner on your desktop. It achieves this by quickly and smoothly making shrinking and rearranging your windows or sliding them off the screen to expose the desktop.

The main problem with Expos? isn’t so much a problem with Expos? as much as it is a problem with every other operating system–they don’t include this or any similar feature. When I leave OS X and move to Windows XP or Linux, using the taskbar or alt+tab to find a window seems slow and awkward now. In my profession as a multimedia specialist, I usually have at least 5 apps running and often more than double that number of windows open on my desktop.

So. in order to fill this gap, I’ve started searching for software (preferably free) that will achieve the same thing for Windows and/or Linux. So far, my search has not been all that fruitful.

Understanding the kernel has never been one of my strong points when it comes to Linux. I’ve seen articles on the new 2.6 kernel and how great it is, but for me, it’s never been clear exactly what is so great about it or if I should bother using it. Tonight I found a link to an article on OSnews that does a great job of explaining what’s new in the 2.6 kernel and gives some very clear data as to why it’s better than the 2.4. The article is on IBM’s site– read it here.

Mozilla has released Firefox (previously Firebird) for OS X, Windows and Linux. If you haven’t used it, you’re missing out. Among the reasons it’s better than Microsoft Internet Explorer (or any other browser) are:

. Automatic popup blocking
. Right click and “block images from this server–great for quickly removing banner ad servers
. Tabbed browsing
. Consistent over 3 different operating systems
. It’s fast–very fast
. Built in Google searching
. Better standards support, especially for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
. Open Source
. Extendable
. Less prone to viruses (at least so far)
. Bettter built in download manager

I really can’t think of a single reason to keep using Internet Explorer, and in fact, for quite some time now, I haven’t. Apple’s Safari browser is a little more of a competitor and has most of the same features as Firefox, but in my experience, Firefox renders pages better, and with the GUI enhancements that came with this release, I don’t think I’ll be using Safari much anymore either (not that I really ever did).