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It is not often that I get to play games, and even more seldom that I write about them, but Splitter is a game that has many of the elements I like:

• It takes no time to learn
• You can play it for just a few minutes (perfect while waiting for a render)
• You have to think about solutions
• There are many solutions to each puzzle
• No killing necessary
• You can restart each lever without penalty
• And it involves real life physics

Another game I can recommend is Buggles Connect over at the Casual Collective. Here you can play against other online players. It is quite fun trying to guess what the other player(s) might do and adjust your own strategy accordingly.

You place your markers in an empty spot and try to grab as many little Buggles as you can. Whoever has caught most of them at the end of 10 rounds, wins.

Enjoy.

Before Graeme Nattress started at RED he was very well known for making exceptional plug-ins for Final Cut Pro. To celebrate his interview in the Digital Producer Magazine, Graeme currently makes his Bleach Bypass filter available for free. You can read the whole article to find the link, or click here. Installations instructions are on page two of the interview.

On a current job the client wants the videofiles on an external harddisk in FAT32. One of the problems with FAT32 is of course that it doesn’t allow for file sizes of 4GB or bigger, which translates to roughly 20min of DV material, and less on better codecs.

One way would of course be to use Final Cut, iMovie or QT Pro to mark each 15 minute segment, and export that to the external harddisk. This means a lot of button pushing, when there are hours of material to be transferred.

Doing a longer search on Macupdate did not come up with any easy solutions. So here is a step by step guide for non-geeks. Those who know their way around UNIX will probably know of a quicker solution…

Solution

1. Fire up OSX’s Terminal (Go to programmes > Utilities > Terminal, or just do a search from Spotlight)
2. Enter this command (copy & paste works; this will make the Finder restart and then display also hidden files): defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
3. Download the manual install version of QTCoffee – look for the .dmg file, or the “manual install package”.
4. Open the disk image file (double click on the just downloaded file.)
5. Open the QTCoffee folder.
6. Open the bin folder
7. Open a new finder window (pressing Command-N or from the file menu)
8. Open your system disk
9. Open the bin folder
10. From the other finder window, drag the file “splitmovie” to the newest window
11. In the Terminal enter defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder This restarts the Finders and hides the system files again.

Now you are done with the installation part. Now, if you want to split a video file, simply enter the following code into the Terminal: splitmovie /volumes/sourcedisk/original.mov -duration 10:00 -self-contained -o /volumes/targetdisk/split.mov Sourcedisk is the name of the disk that contains your source footage, target is the name of the targetdisk and duration is the length of each segment (in this case 10:00 minutes). Afterwards you can drag and drop the split files from the finder.

If you need to split AVI files, you can have a look at Explicit.

I always find it tedious to keep all my software updated. AppUpdate is a free widget that scans your harddisk for programes, and then checks the versions number against a list on Apple’s software directory, MacUpdate and Version Tracker. Once it is finished — and this goes surprizingly fast — you are presented with a simple list that shows all available updates, with links to the respective download pages. All for a very affordable 0 Euro/Dollar/Yuan.

Further soft

Georg Kaindl, the programmes, also makes a little widget for the iPhone/iPod Touch that quickly checks the TV schedule of Austrian TV channel ORF, for whom I have worked a couple of times. Another iPhone App makes for quick getting-around in Vienna (which is a phantastic town, with more than enough historic places).

It is easy to lose track as to which version of Final Cut should go with the plethora of Quicktime and Mac OS versions. But help is at hand.

Jon Chapell at the Digital Rebellion has put together a nice recommendation of which Final Cut Studio/Final Cut Pro versions go best with which QT and Mac OS versions:

Final Cut Pro Version	Mac OS Version	QuickTime Version
6.0.3	10.4.11 / 10.5.2	7.4.5
6.0.2	10.4.11 / 10.5.1	7.3.1
5.1.4	10.4.9	7.1.6
5.0.4	10.4.9	7.1.6
4.5	10.3.9	6.5
3.0.4	10.2.8 Update 2	6.2
3.0	10.2.8 Update 2	5.0.6
2.0.2	9.2.2	5.0.1
1.2.5	9.2.2	4.1.3
1.2.1	8.6	4.1.1
1.0.1	8.6	4.0.3
1.0	8.6	4b16

2 weeks ago I ordered a MacBook Air for my lovely wife. The estimated time before shipping was quoted as “1 – 2 weeks”. Having ordered from Apple before, I knew that the first figure can be safely ignored.

So yesterday, exactly 2 weeks after ordering it, the MacBook Air was shipped. But the surprise came when I checked the tracking number — the estimated arrival time is in 2 weeks!

MacBook Ground

What sort of transport mode is Apple using? By foot? Mule carriage? Do they ship it from China to the US, to the Netherlands, to Ireland and only then to Norway? In any case, such shipping time is plainly unacceptable. I’ve ordered from the other side of the globe and got it delivered 4 days later.

I know that in the US, shopping with Mac is a pleasure. But why does it have to be such a pain here in Norway?

Just came across a one-page site by Jan E. Schotsman which offers a couple of video tools for the Mac, and at zero cost.

Fix your video

The JES Deinterlacer does a fine de-interlacing job, but despite its name, it does more. It lets you slow down the frame rate, interpolating the in-between frames. Click here for a comparison between iMovie and the JES Deinterlacer. Feature list:

• Deinterlace movies (half height/normal height/double frame rate/blend,adaptive/simple).
• Change field dominance (for PAL films with fake interlace).
• Reinterlace from one or two movies.
• Standards conversion (PAL<->NTSC or custom).
• Inverse telecine.
• Trim, shift, simple color correction, noise reduction.
• Change encoding (RGB gamma, video range/full range).
• Fix jagged edges.
• Pitch preserving sound track for half speed.
• Change movie speed, reverse movie.
• Interlaced in/out, progressive in/out.
• Includes utility to view and edit image description extensions and movie and track geometry

Clean up your video

If you have noisy video, the JES Video Cleaner may be the quick tool for you. It also allows for removal of logos. I imagine this must be great for cleaning up consumer camcorder footage with a burned in date.

• General noise reduction (adaptive)
• Remove logo
• Average two movies
• Remove cross-luma
• Remove periodic brightness variation

Vintage computing

If you still run OS9, he has a helper program that allows for transfers > 2GB.

And if you have an old Power Mac, he offers a program for uncompressed capture of SD video.

Finally, Jan has a little app to fix the blue cast on a monitor under Mac OS 10.4.

When you are filming interviews, it helps a great deal in editing to have the interview written down on paper. For the Mac there is a lovely tool called Transcriva. It takes up the feel of iChat and uses the same approach for transcription. It also notes down the times – a great timesaver. $19.99 well spent.

When I was a kid, I loved making flipbooks. They could have between 2 and 100 pictures. Flipbook.info is a great site that has many videos of antique flipbooks.

I was delighted to find out that there is software to print out your films, and make a thumb-able movie. For the Mac there is the free DYI flipbooks, and if you are on Windows, you can start your search here.

A US sandwich chain is taking the concept further and made a human flipbook:And a fun how-did-they-make-it film:

Gems from the Web:

• Checking the back focus – A brief explanation alongside a printable siemens star for easy back focus calibration.
• ISO 12233 Test Chart – Resolution test chart for HD
• Video Resolution Test Patterns – Nice collection of downloadable test patterns for video cameras
• bartek:bargiel : iGTD – Freeware organizer for the Mac
• MacUser: Want to download YouTube videos? Kiss them – Simple way of downloading YouTube videos that are worth keeping
• MacUser: 10.4.9 brings new phone sync compatability – …but my p990i – the so-called top-of-the-line phone from Sony Ericsson – still does not sync.