I have been using Handbrake for quite sometime now but have recently increased my usage due to my acquisition of an Apple TV. The Apple TV is only capable of playing video files that are supported by iTunes. These supported video formats do not include AVI (well not without a Jailbreak and aTV Flash, but I will save that for another time) which is the current format of majority of my movies and TV shows. Due to this flaw in the Apple system I have been forced to convert all my unsupported videos to a format supported by iTunes. Enter Handbrake!
Handbrake is an open source video transcoder available for Windows, Mac and Linux and comes equipped with various conversion setting presets. Handbrake can convert a single video file, a queue of video files or a DVD video in a few simple steps:
- Select the source video file or DVD title/folder
- Select a destination for the converted file
- Select a conversion preset or configure the specific audio/video settings
- For a single file conversion click the Start button or click Add to Queue if you wish to convert multiple files. Click Start once you have added all videos to the queue
- The conversion process will start and notify you once all videos in the queue are complete
Note: For greater compatibility with iTunes, enable the ‘Use iPod/iTunes friendly (.m4v) file extension for MP4′ setting
Handbrake is by far the best free MP4 video transcoder that I have come across. Let me know your opinions or alternatives that you may use in the comments.
I was asked the other day by a staff member how he could open an Apple iWorks file for printing on his Windows 7 PC.
This process to do this is quite simple. The steps are as follows:
- Change the file extension of the Pages file from .pages to .zip
(You must first show file extensions in windows explorer)
- Open the newly renamed zip file and browse to the QuickLook folder.
- The QuickLook folder will contain a PDF file named Preview.pdf. This file is a PDF version of the original Apple iWork Pages document.
Done!
There are a number excellent computer control iPhone/iPod Touch apps out there that come in various forms and have a multitude of amazing features. But… these apps all come at a price. For the user who simply wants to control their mouse and keyboard from there iPhone/iPod Touch for FREE, there is TouchMouse.
TouchMouse from Logitech allows you to control your computers mouse and keyboard in three easy steps:
1. Download and install the Logitech TouchMouse Server computer application (www.logitech.com/touchmouse)
- The server app is available for Windows XP/Vista/7 and OS X
2. Download the TouchMouse iPhone/iPod Touch app from the App Store.
3. Open TouchMouse on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app will find any available computers on the same network that have the TouchMouse Server application installed.
Connect and enjoy!
The app has many options including; two finger scrolling, tracking and scrolling speeds and a nice settings for prohibiting your device to go into sleep mode.
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