software

Converting High Definition Movies to Watch on Mac/PC

NOTE: I have since written a newer article that makes it MUCH easier to do just about everything, making use of MakeMKV. The new article: Ripping Movies from Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and DVD, Getting them onto Apple TV, iPad, iPhone, etc. &mdash I am leaving this article up for historical purposes, though, as there is some good information in here still...

This article will help you to convert HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies to QuickTime compatible files so you can watch them in high definition in iTunes, Front Row, or QuickTime Player. The guide will also help you to be able to convert the videos into other formats so you can preserve the surround sound and the highest picture quality.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Logos

Converting the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray

1. Copy FEATURE_1.EVO and FEATURE_2.EVO to hard drive by decrypting them using AnyDVD, DVDFab HD Decrypter, or some other decrypter. Some DVDs use different naming schemes, but the files you need are the two largest 'EVO' files.

NOTE: I have only been able to work on HD-DVDs, so Some of the steps here don't work (or only partially work) with Blu-Ray, but I hope you can find some inspiration for getting your blu-ray files to work with Quicktime, if you so desire. Google can help you find how to get the blu-ray files ready for demuxing/conversion. Soon I will get myself an external Blu-Ray drive and start tinkering around with Blu-Ray movies... but for now I'm happy simply working on HD-DVD.

NOTE 2: I simply used the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, as I found one cheap locally (through Craigslist), and it works via USB 2.0. It's also quite compact! If you do so with Windows XP, you'll need to load a driver to enable support for the UDF 2.5 file format HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs use.

Upgrade to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Initial Impressions

This morning, before heading into work, I ran by the Apple Store to pick up a few copies of Snow Leopard. For most of the morning, I alternated Macs while upgrading one of them, and this post will provide some initial reactions / thoughts on running Snow Leopard.

The upgrade went smoothly—took about 1 hour on my new Macbook Pro 13.3", and about 1.5 hours on an older Core Duo Macbook Pro. No real hiccups, but I have to say I was disappointed that Apple didn't make a new 'Welcome' video. It's the same one as they had for 10.5 :-(

On the first startup, the Setup Assistant displayed the welcome video, then simply said "Thanks for installing 10.6" (I did the upgrade install instead of a Clean install, FYI), and I went about my normal routine. The screen gamma was changed to OSX's new default, 2.2, which is a bit more contrasty... but I simply recalibrated with my Spyder color calibrator and colors were back to my preference.

Exchange Support

Apple's built-in support for Microsoft Exchange is the main reason I went as soon as possible to pick up my copy of Snow Leopard. Immediately after installing, I started playing around with the settings. The biggest question I had was how to set up multiple personal calendars (through MobileMe) concurrently with multiple Exchange calendars (a task impossible to accomplish on the iPhone).

Mail Exchange Server 2007 Setup Options Pane

Review: Tweetie for Mac

Jeff's Rating: 5/5

tl;dr: Tweetie has had a great following for some time on the iPhone, so it was a logical jump for atebits to transfer some of the goodness of Tweetie to all the desktop Mac Twitter users.

A little late to the game? Sure. Worth the wait? Definitely.

atebits today released Tweetie—a full-featured and fast Twitter client—for the Mac. Tweetie has had a great following for some time on the iPhone, so it was a logical jump for atebits to transfer some of the goodness of Tweetie to all the desktop Mac Twitter users.

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