mac

Getting files to and from a PowerBook 3400c with hfsutils

PowerBook 3400c booting Mac OS 8.6

There are about a dozen ways to get files to and from an older Mac like my PowerBook 3400c, but right now (at least until I figure out a good way to get my NAS -> an AppleTalk server -> 3400c working), my preferred method is via a CF card—I pop the CF card into a CF-to-PCMCIA adapter, then insert that into one of my PowerBook 3400's PC card slots, and bingo: removable flash storage on a 1990s laptop!

I still have a few CF cards kicking around (I used them with my old Nikon D700 camera), and you can buy a 4GB SanDisk Ultra CF card new from Amazon still—albeit for the price of $35... Sometimes the smaller/older cards work better with old Macs, and most of the files I deal with are well under a few MB anyways.

Resizing macOS app windows for 16:9 screen capture

I frequently need to capture a window of some Mac app for a recording (usually for my YouTube channel), and I've used a little AppleScript I wrote years ago for the purpose.

Somehow, that script (which I saved as a 'one shot' App (.app extension) that just runs then quits) got deleted off my Script Editor folder in my iCloud Drive, so I had to re-create it.

Luckily, the syntax for this operation is dead simple:

tell application "Safari"
    set bounds of front window to {0, 50, 1280, 770}
end tell

You can adjust the {X, Y, width, height} parameters accordingly—note that the width and height seem to be additive to the X/Y. So I use 770 instead of 720 for the height (720 + 50).

In Script Editor, save the file as a .app, with the option to keep it running unchecked. Now, whenever you want a window sized perfectly for capture, just press Command + Spacebar, then type in the name of the Script/App you saved, and hit enter. The top-most window in Safari will scale to exactly 720p resolution.

Transcribing recorded audio and video to text using Whisper AI on a Mac

Late last year, OpenAI announced Whisper, a new speech-to-text language model that is extremely accurate in translating many spoken languages into text. The whisper repository contains instructions for installation and use.

tl;dr:

# Install whisper and its dependencies.
pip3 install git+https://github.com/openai/whisper.git 

# (When needed) Update whisper.
pip3 install --upgrade --no-deps --force-reinstall git+https://github.com/openai/whisper.git

# Make sure ffmpeg is installed.
brew install ffmpeg

# Translate speech into text.
whisper my_audio_file.mp3 --language English

One thing I do quite regularly for my YouTube channel is extract the audio track, convert it to text using an online tool (I used to use Welder until they were bought out by Veed), and then hand-edit the file to fix references to product names, people, etc.

Batch transcode a folder of videos with Handbrake's CLI

I've used Handbrake for years, to transcode practically any video file—including ripped DVDs and Blu-Rays—so I can watch the videos on practically any device. It's especially helpful for .mkv files, which can have a hodgepodge of video formats inside, and are notoriously difficult to play back, especially on older or more locked down playback devices.

But Handbrake's achilles heel, as a GUI-first application, is in a lack of easy batch operation. You can queue videos up one at a time, which is nice, but more recently, as I've ripped more TV seasons onto my NAS, I've wanted to transcode 5, 10, or 20 files at a time.

Enter HandBrakeCLI. Assuming you're on a Mac and installed Handbrake already (e.g. with brew install --cask handbrake), download HandBrakeCLI, mount the downloaded disk image, and copy the executable into a system path:

sudo cp /Volumes/HandBrakeCLI-1.5.1/HandBrakeCLI /usr/local/bin/

Then you can use it to loop over an entire directory—even recursively—and transcode all the video files within.

Two Macs in my Rack: Mac Studio rackmount review

No stranger to rack-mounting Macs that were never meant for the task, I reached out to MyElectronics to see if they had a rackmount solution for the Mac Studio when I bought mine in March.

They said they were already working on a Mac Studio Rack Mount system, and they'd gladly send me one to review, since they knew how much I loved rackmounting my M1 Mac mini and all the Raspberry Pis I run in my homelab.

MyElectronics Mac Studio rackmount with M1 Mac mini

How to transcribe audio to text using Dictation on a Mac

You can use the Dictation feature built into your Mac to transcribe audio files, and in my experience, it's been about 98-99% accurate, so it saves a lot of time if you want to index your audio files, or you need a transcript for some other purpose.

These instructions were last updated for macOS Monterey 12.4.

First, open up System Preferences, go to Keyboard, then the 'Dictation' tab:

Apple Dictation System Preferences

Turn on Dictation, and when prompted, accept the terms for Apple's Dictation service. Also take note of the 'Shortcut' (e.g. 'press dictation key' or 'press control twice'. You'll use that to activate dictation later.

How I rip DVDs and Blu-Rays into my Mac (2022 Edition)

It's been more than a decade since I wrote Ripping Movies from Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and DVD, Getting them onto Apple TV, iPad, iPhone, etc.. Heck, back then I didn't write everything as a 'blog post'—that was labeled as an 'article' :P

In a surprising twist of fate, we went from a somewhat more centralized online media situation back then (basically, Netflix) to a hellscape of dozens of streaming services today. And in many cases, older movies can only be found as used and/or pirated DVDs on eBay!

Thus, I'm writing a fresh guide to how I rip DVDs and Blu-Ray discs into my Mac, then transcode them with Handbrake. Heck, some people who are deeper into the r/datahoarder rabbit hole even have dedicated transcoding servers so they can generate optimal archival copies in 4K, 1080p, etc. akin to how YouTube and other online platforms set up their files!

But for me, the basic process goes:

Using a reverse-NFS mount to access Docker container's data from macOS

For years, Mac users have dealt with slow filesystem performance for Docker volumes when using Docker for Mac. This is because the virtualized filesystem, which used osxfs for a while and will soon be upgraded to use VirtioFS.

But if you need to do large operations on huge codebases inside a shared directory, even using NFS to share from the Mac into Docker is a lot slower than running a native Docker volume or just using files inside the container's own filesystem.

macOS Disk Utility APFS Case Insensitive filesystem

Installing the Asahi Linux Alpha on my M1 Mac mini

After upgrading my main workstation to a Mac Studio, I decided to break tradition.

Usually, I sell off my old workstation to offset the cost of the new one. But just last week, Asahi Linux announced their first alpha release.

Asahi Linux MacBook Pro

If you haven't heard of Asahi, it's a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux that aims to bring a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon Macs (all the current M1 Macs, and any new Apple Silicon Macs that come in the future).

Mac Studio is 4x more efficient than my new AMD PC

Last month, I built an all-AMD PC to try out Linux Gaming with Steam and Proton, and so I'd have a faster native Linux build machine for my various compilation tasks.

This month, Apple introduced the Mac Studio, and as a now full-time video producer, it was a no-brainer for me to upgrade from an M1 Mac mini.

Mac Studio M1 Max Hero

My Mac Studio arrived Friday, and over the weekend, I spent some time benchmarking it against not only my M1 mini, but also my new AMD Ryzen 5 5600x PC build.

My Mac Studio's specs: