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Dear Aunt TUAW: Apple TV and oddball video formats
Hey Auntie TUAW, I just ordered my new Apple TV, and have a ton of footage in MKV, AVI, etc. which probably won't work with iTunes, let alone my Apple TV. What can I do to batch convert and import all my movies to iTunes, which will work with Apple TV and be as high-rez as possible? With all my love, Ari
Did you catch that? Event livestream is Mac and iOS only
Most of you noticed something a bit... oddly specific about Apple's streaming announcement for the 9/1 event: Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple's industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com. What's missing from this picture? About nine-tenths of the Internet; specifically, anyone using a Windows PC. As pointed out on ReadWriteWeb, there is no QuickTime X for Windows yet and no client supporting HTTP Live Streaming. I'm not sure why RWW's Adrianne Jeffries is convinced that it's up to Microsoft to implement QuickTime X (hint: it's not), but Apple's engineering team is still working to flesh out the new QuickTime stack on the Mac -- no surprise that the Windows version is lagging behind. Yes, HTTP live streaming is an open standard, but that doesn't help much without a working implementation (as Adobe's John Nack is pointing out). Having a fallback stream of plain old RTSP wouldn't just be a nice gesture for the rest of the world -- it'd also be welcomed by the millions of PowerPC Mac users who won't be able to watch the stream, either. Yep, that requirement specifies Safari on Mac OS X 10.6 -- no Intel, no joy. Of course, even if you can't tune in for the video goodness, you can still come here for our lively and informative liveblog. Update: MacRumors points to this test stream and also suggests that VLC may be able to watch the stream, at least in fits and starts.
Mac 101: Using Home Sharing in iTunes 9
Home Sharing is one of the fantastic new features in iTunes 9, and one that slipped between the cracks in our coverage in the days after the software was released. Sang Tang showed us how to use FireWire to speed up transfers over your network, but this is a basic overview of how Home Sharing works and how you can use it to easily share media files to different computers in your household. This video was made using the new screen recording option in QuickTime X, which proved to be extremely easy and useful.
A pawful of quick Snow Leopard tips
As all of us are starting to get familiar with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, we're starting to find little features that aren't immediately visible and are pretty cool! My first surprise came when one application asked me to make sure that my date and time settings were correct. I dutifully popped into System Preferences, clicked on the Date & Time preferences pane, clicked on the Time Zone tab, and noticed a couple of things that were different: First, the time zone I'm in (Mountain) was highlighted and as I moved my cursor left and right, a "ghost" appeared for whatever time zone I was currently over (see arrow above). That in itself wasn't anything great, but the check box at the top -- Set time zone automatically using current location (see oval above) -- was intriguing so I clicked on it. The map went to shades of gray, and then Snow Leopard used the SkyHook Wireless's Wi-Fi positioning service to figure out where I was.
Snow Leopard shipping August 28th for $29, order now
Well, it's not September, but we're not going to hold an early launch of its performance-focused Snow Leopard OS against Apple. The Apple store has come back online bearing an order page for OS X version 10.6 in Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Pro... oh wait, it's just $29 as an upgrade from 10.5. August 28th, that's when, now go 'n get it.While you wait for that order to ship, Apple wants you to know that Snow Leopard's Finder is more responsive, Mail loads messages twice as fast, Time Machine will complete initial backups 80 percent faster, and a 64-bit version of Safari 4 is 50 percent faster than its predecessors. There's even QuickTime X with a redesigned player that lets users view, record, trim and share video. Of course, this release also includes Grand Central Dispatch, a new way for devs to take advantage of multi-core processors as well as OpenCL support to accelerate apps with the help of that idling graphics processor. Oh, and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange too. All in all, a worthy update, especially for the price.P.S. Requires Intel-based Mac.
QuickTime X leaps forward in Snow Leopard
Seems like only yesterday that QuickTime was at version 7. Oh wait, that was yesterday. Among the many announcements surrounding Snow Leopard we saw a little more of QuickTime X, Apple's next-generation version of the venerable media player/technology/doohickey. While the interface has been totally overhauled, the changes are more than skin deep.QuickTime X is a significant update. For consumers, there won't be a Pro version. Any version will allow simple editing, video/audio capture, and allow you to "publish your media to MobileMe or YouTube -- without worrying about codec formats or resolutions." We're not sure if you'll be able to save as a QuickTime movie or source file as before, but the removal of some previous limits will make QuickTime the snappy iMovie substitute it could be. Plus, QuickTime X will allow you to use any web server to stream live video over HTTP. Can't wait to see what people do with that.In addition to the visible changes, QuickTime X looks like a fundamental rewrite of the application and its underpinnings. Support for Core Audio, Core Video and Core Animation could mean some really interesting things for the future of media playback (not that we weren't promised as much a few years ago, of course). All of this comes wrapped up in Snow Leopard, and takes full advantage of the speed-tuning tech therein.
