Windows 2 Apples

In a previous podcast, I admitted to shifting most of our video projects to the Mac so that we could use iMovie 09 video cropping to produce videos with the look and feel of recordings made with two or three cameras rather than one. When I realize I was becoming dependent upon my Mac, I began anew to look for Windows based video editors with a similar feature.

I have tried many Windows based editors over the years and finally settled on using Pinnacle Studio 12. Pinnacle is far from an ideal or even truly acceptable solution. It seems to take forever to produce output once edited and regardless of output settings the final product is almost always inferior to that produced on our Macintosh. Happily, I have discovered PowerDirector version 8 published by CyberLink. A major enhancement offered by version 8 over previous releases is the ability to crop videos much as I do when using iMovie 09.

PowerDirector 8 has the added advantage of a true multi-track timeline and intuitive user interface interface. A common trait shared by most PC-based video editors are interfaces that look like they were designed by geeks with no interest in aesthetics. PowerDirector screens and Windows appear as rich, glossy black displays with large buttons and responsive controls. As Apple users know, aesthetics are important. CyberLink has produced an application demonstrating Windows applications can be gorgeous as well as utilitarian.

The reason I downloaded the software and began experimenting with it was because of the crop mode available when accessing what CyberLink refers to as Power Tools. As in iMovie 09, I can crop an area of the screen to zoom in and gradually pan from one area to another. The Apple software uses the Ken Burns effect to smoothly segue from focal point to focal point. PowerDirector uses a more flexible but less intuitive trajectory assignment and keyframe referencing scheme to shift focus from one part of the screen to another. Although offering greater flexibility it requires a considerably more involved learning curve.

An immediately noticeable advantage is how quickly finished productions are rendered. I suspect, if I had been photographed as I watched the first time it produced a video my mouth would have been noticeably open. Not only does the application produce the finished video much faster than my iMovie on Mac and my other Windows video editors but the quality and resolution is excellent.

Other features that make Director stand out from the crowd are: the ability to enhance and upscale video resolution using process they call TrueTheater, a particle effects designer application which makes it possible to modify and create custom special effects. If you feel magnanimous, you can easily share your custom special effects and menus with other users through the CyberLink on-site social network. PowerDirector allows sophisticated edits using up to nine picture in picture (PiP) tracks. Dual monitor support is built-in as is optimization for Intel Core i7 technologies which purportedly enables wickedly fast rendering. Additionally, you have access to thousands of free additional effects created by CyberLlink and other users, turnkey uploading of your finished projects to Facebook or YouTube in HD quality and with the Ultimate version, the ability to produce and burn HD videos to Blu-Ray discs.

Although the provided menu and titling templates are less impressive than those bundled with iMovie 09, PowerDirector 8 supports a more granular approach to modifying and creating custom effects. And keep in mind the almost overwhelming and growing selection of free effects and add-ons produced by other PowerDirector users.

The Deluxe version sells for $70. The Ultimate version with Blu-Ray support can be had for $100 US. You can download and test drive a free limited version. Both iMovie 09 and powerDirector ship with built-in help screens and online tutorial videos. Unfortunately, as is often the case with Windows applications, PowerDirector online video tutorials are poorly organized and not even close to the quality of those offered by Apple. Apple sets the bar for on-line multimedia documentation. I admit, it does sting a bit more when video tutorials designed to support a video editing application feel so amateurish. For once, it would be nice to see a Windows application offering tutorials at least as well designed and executed as those provided by Apple.

Even though iMovie 09 is touted as being particularly well designed for those wanting to quickly splice together videos clips, I actually found PowerDirector far better suited to completing short video projects. It was a chore to create a simple DVD compilation of one of my favorite video podcasts, Old Jews Telling Jokes, using iMovie 09 and a relative piece of cake using PowerDirector 8. If I go back to using iMovie 09, it would be to complete fairly long and complex projects. Using the clunky concept of events as opposed to traditional folders to organize and categorize assets still feels uncomfortable and then there is the inevitable re-learning if I’ve not used the application recently. The use of traditional folders and timelines by PowerDirector 8 make it so much easier to import and organize video clips, photos and music and hen to stitch them together as a finished project.

As you might expect, all is not wine and roses. PowerDirector has a tendency to crash. The saving grace is … I was almost always able to recover interrupted work with minimal loss. I wouldn’t say that it crashes anywhere near as much as did the record holder of crashing … MacSpeech Dictate 1.3 but enough for me to make myself save my work every fifteen minutes or so. I hope this observation doesn’t keep listeners from trying PowerDirector 8 if they feel it meets their needs. The last project I edited was completed without a single crash and I am very pleased with the finished product. Thanks to PowerDirector 8, video edit projects have been shifted back to our Vista PC.

If you visit the MindFitnessFoundation.org website you can view examples of videos edited using both iMovie 09 and cyber link PowerDirector 8. Episodes four and five were produced using iMovie 09 and episode six using PowerDirector 8.

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The last few weeks have been jammed with news and announcements about both Apple and Microsoft. Apple released an update to its OS, began shipping new and improved iPods, pushed out release 9 of iTunes, and enjoyed an impressive jump in stock price.

Microsoft along with Amazon, voiced concerns over Google’s plan to scan and distribute books in electronic form, began an aggressive to push its revamped MSN, a.k.a., Live search engine now renamed Bing, continued with improved advertising campaigns promoting Windows based PCS as a cost effective alternative to Macs, released a hand full of advertisements hyping the new Zune HD, delivered the Zune HD on schedule, pushed out version 4 of Zune Market place software (now supporting browser streamed music) , all the while continuing to show lack luster stock gains.

Of all this news, perhaps the continued steady rise in Apple stock is the most telling. The stock price certainly reflects the continued dominance of Apple in US smart phone and portable media player markets, as well as its ability to wow consumers and produce innovative, quality products, while Microsoft struggles to find itself and lick self-inflected wounds. Perhaps, the best way to contrast Apple and Microsoft cultures is to watch presentations by Jobs and Ballmer. The difference will smack you between the eyes and you will experience a gut level appreciation of why Apple steams ahead and Microsoft seems to be slogging though a Louisiana swamp.

Microsoft appears to be stuck in a never-ending struggle to find itself. Live search has become Bing and Zune now seems to be Microsoft’s branding for all things fun and entertaining. Call me jaded if you wish, but I simply cannot believe Microsoft when they profess to have seen the light and now have a plan to “make it so.” I would not be surprised to see Microsoft re-brand Zune before the battery in my second generation Zune 80 dies nor would I be surprised to see the Zune Market place go the way of Plays 4 Sure and Encarta.

I am wondering, if my perception of Microsoft being unable to focus and simply stay the course is one of the reasons Apple is doing so damn well!

All this said, I am looking forward to the official release of Windows 7 and have been drooling over the grow crop of well executed All in One PCs. The Lenovo IdeaCentre PCs are beautifully packaged, competitively priced and getting good reviews. When I started this podcast, I confessed to a fascination with and lusting for the “All In One” form factor and I now see I am not alone. Today, the question is not when can I get my hands on an All in One equal to the Mac in performance and quality, but which one would I choose.

Snow Leopard demonstrated the charmed life Apple fan boys and girls live. As one would expect when releasing an OS with major changes in its underpinnings, some pain will follow. In the case of Snow Leopard, many applications broke or misfired. Software vendors, including Apple, were unprepared for all the compatibility issues that arose and the lost time in retooling and updating. The miseries continue, but you will see little in the press nor will many Apple fans be willing to concede any similarity between problems traceable to Apple OS releases and the issues experienced by Windows users when shifting to Vista.

Factor in the exponentially higher number of Windows applications, hardware configurations and a reasonable person should be able to credit Microsoft with a job well done and see Apple is not the always the personification of perfection foisted upon us by the Apple propaganda machine and besotted media. But for fear of losing one’s life, I don’t recommend you hold your breath for this realization to surface or be widely acknowledged by the “news media.”

Recently, I had another near death experience with my main work horse Vista machine and stroked my beard a long time as I looked at the seemingly frozen HP boot screen and pondered an office with two Macs … one running the Mac OS and the other Windows 7 in boot camp. Fortunately, the anticipation of my PCs death was greatly exaggerated and it is now running as smooth as silk. Turns out, the 5 – 6 minute delay in booting was traced to the OS’s repeated attempts to revive the USB card reader in my sleeping HP Photo Smart printer.

I spent at least 12 hours trouble shooting and running my ever-faithful SpinRite disk maintenance and recovery software before I simply unplugged the HP and released my PC from its painful struggle find the unresponsive USB port. This is the kind of frustration that leads everyone one to curse the day they allowed a computer to occupy desk space. And, this is the kind of problem most often seen in Windows machines. Apple seems to have always done a better job of implementing USB and FireWire technologies.

All was not wasted. I learned two important lessons:

Always Google or, if you prefer, Bing the symptoms before pulling hairs and second, assume the fix to be simple rather than complex. Perhaps I should add a third corollary, if possible take a break before diving into fix. Cool heads will prevail and retain more hair.

I am sure you have noticed this podcast is not hosted by Sam but rather by Alex … the voice behind the amazing Apple text to speech technology shipped with Leopard. The Apple implementation is truly a groundbreaking advance in this arena and leaves me hopeful Apple will apply the same resources to producing a quality Speech to Text product for Apple users.

I often wonder why there seems to be so little interest in developing speech to text technologies beyond those designed to provide assistance to persons with disabilities. If you price the cost of professional voice over talent, you will quickly see an opportunity to develop text to speech technologies at least on par with the many amazing visual animation products found in the consumer market. Please drop me a line addressed to hello@inetsunch.com if you have leads on this kind of software or show comments and suggestions in general.

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Skype to the rescue!

For the first time I had the opportunity to recommend a longtime Windows user shift to an Apple. My friend had been using Windows computers for many, many years primarily because Windows was required to work with the various specialized interfaces he was marketing. When I quizzed him about his needs he said he primarily needed his computer to safely surf the Internet as he researched, for writing and occasionally recording audio podcasts.

Given his history of problems with Trojans and viruses and limited requirements, I suggested it was time he considered shifting to the Apple platform. He decided to drive to an Apple store approximately an hour and a half away from him to make his purchase. A few days later when he called to ask for help in setting up his e-mail client and for instructions on how to shut down his Apple I was dismayed to find that after making the hour and a half drive to the Apple store plunking down cash for a shiny new iMac and extended one year support contract that the store personnel did nothing, absolutely nothing to help him shift from Windows to apples.

They didn’t even show him how to start or correctly shut down his machine. He had been simply pressing the power button to turn the machine off. They’d told him that he would have to bring his Macintosh back to the store so that they could install iWorks as promised in their advertising or to receive any hands-on support from their “geniuses”. For several days he endured something close to a nightmare as he tried to use Apple Mail. I’m sure he spent at least five hours on the phone with Apple tech support and three with me before we had his accounts working correctly with Apple Mail. I can’t help but feel that 45 minutes of tutoring in the store the day he purchased his machine could have saved Apple at least four hours of telephone support.

As I was working with him to configure his Apple Mail client the top-tier IT support from Apple called 45 minutes later than the scheduled appointment time. I had almost completed the configuration by that time using Skype to voice and cut-and-paste account settings. I have been a long time user and fan of Skype and realize that this was the first application he should install if we were going to work out the kinks of shifting him from Windows 2 Apples.

When he described the Skype screens, I realize the version he was using was different from what was displayed on both my PC and Mac. I went to the Skype website and discovered a new update was available that had not been automatically flagged when I launched Skype on either platforms. I downloaded and installed the latest version of Skype on both systems and was very pleasantly surprised to find Skype now allows you to share your desktop during a Skype conversation. This proved to be extremely helpful as I helped my friend not only configure his Mac Mail client but to take a few moments to give him a short tour of the Apple Leopard user interface and way of doing things.

Skype does not allow remote control but being able to see what he was pointing to and clicking on proved invaluable. One of the major problems when trying to provide online tech support is communicating efficiently about what one is or should be doing. I was impressed with the responsiveness of Skype desktop display and the excellent integration with voice, video, text and file transfer.

I assume that when my friend worked with Apple online tech support they would use the remote desktop option to assist him but they said they were not allowed to take control of customers machines because of legal issues. This is certainly not been his experience when working with tech support issues on his Windows machines. Several times in the recent past he has received online support in which remote-access played a pivotal part.

The last time I talked to him he was feeling much more comfortable with his Mac and his decision to make the switch. He enjoys the operating system and hardware but has less warm and fuzzy feelings towards Apple sales staff and support. Apple sales let my friend down and could have saved their online tech support hours of frustration for both themselves and my friend if the store personnel had simply taken 30-45 minutes to review a few of the obvious differences between working with Macs versus PCs.

Thumbs down for Apple store staff and thumbs up for Skype!

Dictated using MacSpeech Dictate, recorded using MixCraft 4 and hosted using Podbean.

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Episode 36 Safari and IE8 Issues and Notes on Using iMovie 09

Here I am finding myself exclaiming “wow” one more time. This time because Safari has become sluggish and prone to crashing on both my Apple and Vista machines. I am not alone. A growing number of bloggers are making similar observations. The public release of Safari 4.0 appears to be less stable and more sluggish than the beta release. As one pundit noted, Safari is confirmation that “it does not always work”.

To be fair to Apple, I have noticed an improvement in performance and fewer crashes after downloading several large updates on my Mac and Vista tower computers. However, it has been the cause of several catastrophic crashes on my net-book requiring I completely reboot to recover. I still find myself using Safari particularly when I am working on my Mac. I like the convex favorites wall, finding it much easier to locate frequently used sites than on any other browser other than Opera.

When working on my Vista machine, I tend to use Explorer 8 but have noticed one very disturbing quirk. When I am accessing sites that incorporate drop lists, IE 8 and only IE 8 will not expand the width of the items list allowing me to view the full text of the items in the list. This is particularly disorienting when I am reviewing statistics for this podcast hosted by Podbean. Podbean has a handy built-in podcast stats feature enabling me to review the numbers on all podcasts posted or a single selected podcast.

For example: If I want to see how many have downloaded or subscribed to Windows 2 Apple’s episode 33, I select that episode from a drop dow list but only see Windows 2 Apples with the actual number of the episode truncated. I have lost count of the number of times I have forgotten this limitation and inadvertently tried to access my statistics while using IE 8 only to have to shut it down and start Firefox or Safari.

I suspect this quirk is traceable to Microsoft’s effort to make the software strictly compliant with CSS standards, however, it has proved to be a major annoyance and has almost shifted me away from using IE 8. If you’re asking why I continue to use it when I have so many other browsers to choose from, its because I also use a product called Link Scanner now shipped with the free as well as paid versions of AVG antivirus software. I use the paid “professional” version to scan links before clicking on them. Supposedly, the software is able to determine whether or not a scanned site is associated with a nasty payload or malware. Unfortunately, the Link Scanner plugin appears only to be compatible with Windows Internet Explore browsers.

I suspect that those listening to this podcast are aware Microsoft will be releasing Windows 7 in October of this year. We have ordered one copy for our Sony Tower Entertainment PC at the introductory price of $49.95. I as do many other bloggers and podcasters feel that the significantly higher official prices for Windows 7 upgrades will dampen interest and unnecessarily restrict sales. The suggested list of $99.95 for the home premium upgrade is particularly unfortunate in todays economic climate. I would much prefer to see Microsoft offer upgrades at lower price points and recover costs through volume. I am convinced Microsoft would profit monetarily and add to the momentum of recent upticks in positive consumer ratings if the retail price of the Windows 7 Home premium upgrade was kept at the special intro price of $49.95 and the Ultimate upgrade $119.95. Microsoft may end up squandering much of the goodwill it seems to have garnered in recent reviews by adhering to the higher pricing structure.

One of the reasons I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to leopard was so that I could take advantage of iLife09 and in particular the revamped iMovie 09. I have experimented with iMovie 08 and as many including rabid Apple enthusiasts felt that it was unnecessarily limited in features and particularly unintuitive for a Apple product. Initially, we relied on the free Windows Movie Maker to produce short clips and video podcasts and Pinnacle Studio 12 for more demanding projects.

I have experimented with many movie editing applications including Adobe Premier Elements, and Corel Video Studio. Although, Pinnacle Studio 12 remains the preferred editor on our main Vista machine, it is far from our concept of an easy to use and efficient application. It offers many features and options to those seeking to produce relatively complex video projects but it is sluggish and the video quality often is inferior to that we can produce using Mac-based iMovie editors. I’m still perplexed as to why the output quality can be so different even when we are using compression options to supposedly identical to those used on our Apple.

We recently put iMovie 09 through its paces when editing the video episode of an Infinite Potential’s Video podcast produced for the Mindfitness Foundation. Many have commented that iMovie 08 and iMovie 09 feel strangely unintuitive. It always seems to take an inordinate amount of time to relearn the software if not used frequently. That is usually the case for me and I suspect it has to do with the fact that Apple still does not offer the anticipated timeline edit option taken for granted on other video editing applications including the venerable iMovie HD.

Once I get past the refresh iMovie 09 learning curve, I am usually able to quickly produce relatively short videos. The Mindfitness project proved to be far more demanding than previous projects but we chose to use iMovie 09 because of the enhanced resolution we are accustomed to getting when editing on our Mac, and because iMovie 09 simulates pan and zoom with a much more efficient video cropping option. The ability to crop and use the point-to-point smooth Ken Burns effect to gradually shift focus from one subject to another is much more intuitive and precise when trying to simulate a two camera effect using footage shot with one camera focused on two or more people.

I continue to miss the timeline but the more I use iMovie 09 the more enamored I am with it. We are gradually shifting the majority of our video editing over to the Mac. A future Windows2Apples podcast will focus on a more detailed review of Movie 09 features. If you are interested in viewing the final edited show you may find it on the MindfitnessFoundation.org website under the video podcast tab.

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In this episode, we examine our use of both Apple and Windows machines to produce an audio book and share our recent success in “rejuvenating” the hard drive in our HP tower using Steve Gibson’s SpinRite disk maintenance and recovery application.

In podcast episode 33, I mentioned one of the reasons we had taken time out from the Windows 2 Apples podcast was because we were developing audio books for clients. One of our authors, Lauren Kim Roche, is an established New Zealand writer with two best-selling books to her credit. Our work with Lauren in converting and distributing her books as audio books is an excellent example of how Apple and Microsoft computers may be used together to complete a complex project.

My collaboration with Lauren started one evening in a flurry of e-mails typed on my Mac. I had read her two autobiographical books Bent Not Broken and Life On The Line on successive trips to New Zealand in 2001 and 2002. I was convinced after hearing a BBC radio interview of Lauren she would do an excellent job of reading her books and converting them to audible format. When our agreement was finalized, Lauren was using a Vista laptop and I was encouraging her to download MixCraft 4 and purchase a USB microphone.

To my surprise the next e-mail from Lauren announced she had purchased a shiny new 24 inch Mac and had begun experimenting with GarageBand. With the addition of an external Logitech USB microphone Lauren was ready to begin dictating her first book Bent Not Broken. We spent the next week experimenting with different physical placements of the computer, microphone and GarageBand filters. She uploaded test files to her Mac account and I logged in using my Vista machine to download.

To improve the quality of the recordings Lauren cleverly created her own pop screen by leaning a piece of soft foam against the microphone. When she told me she had been using foam to cover the head of the microphone I assume she had wrapped it around the microphone but was impressed when I saw that she had simply laid it against the microphone creating a very effective screen.

I originally experimented with using GarageBand to edit her raw recordings but found it frustrating. GarageBand is a good tool for creating podcasts and recording multitrack music but because of the halfhearted implementation of the right mouse key and sluggish response to track edits, I turned to the PC and MixCraft 4. MixCraft is a far better tool for editing long voice recordings.

The quality of the microphone as well as the acoustics of the room yielded less than optimal sound. Initially, I attempted to use GarageBand filters to enhance audio but could never produce a file that took advantage of Lauren’s lovely voice and again turned to MixCraft 4. The MixCraft equalizer was easy to tweak and proved up to the challenge. We ended up with an excellent series of recordings that rival audio books produced by a large publishing houses. Lauren’s reading is compelling and equal to to professional voice over artists. You may listen to a sample of her recordings by visiting LaurenKimRoche.com.

Once the audio recordings were edited they were tagged using iTunes, uploaded to our web hosting server using FileZilla, the XML feed for paid podcast distribution created using the Mac only Feeder 1.5 and Lauren’s site created using the Mac only RapidWeaver.

This project made use of tools and features specific to each platform … resulting in a whole truly greater than the sum of its parts.

A few months ago our HP Pavilion Elite desktop computer began stalling when power was applied. It appeared to access the hard drive briefly and then just sat there stubbornly refusing to budge. Even though I had complete system, application and data backup on our HP MediaSmart server, I was over come with the sinking feeling I was on the verge of catastrophic hardware failure which would cost many days to recover from. Several years ago, I had purchased a copy of SpinRite, a hard drive maintenance and recovery program produced by Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation.

Steve is cohost of Leo Laporte’s podcast Security Now. Shortly after purchasing SpinRite, I had an opportunity to use it in resurrecting the hard drive of one of my laptops. Since then, I have used it to rejuvenate another laptop that seem to have a mind of its own as to when it would actually power up and display the Windows welcome screen. My HP desktop was beginning to remind me of the earlier laptop issues and I pulled out my trusty copy of SpinRite, inserted it in the CD drive and powered up the HP. Approximately 12 hours later, I returned to view the screen announcing maintenance had been completed and no errors where found.

I removed the CD, shut down the HP and restarted with fingers crossed. Happily, it booted without error and has been booting ever since without pause. I see now that GRC is asking $89 US for version 6 of SpinRite, as Leo often reminds us, it’s not a trivial investment but an investment that will continue to pay off and more than earn its keep over time. Because SpinRite is a DOS based application, Apple drives may be recovered only if the drive is removed and attached to a PC capable of booting from the Free DOS based SpinRite CD or disk. Fingers crossed, and hoping I will never have to take that step.

The show notes for this episode had been dictated using MacSpeech Dictate, audio recorded using MixCraft 4, MP3 file tagged using JetAudio and transferred to our server using FileZilla, and podcast feed updated using Feeder 1.5.

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