iDentify file list

So let’s say you have a bunch of movies or TV shows converted for your Apple TV / iPhone / iPad / iPod. It syncs and plays great on your devices–but something is missing! Its the metadata (aka tags).

When you buy media from the iTunes store it comes with epidsode info or a film description, posters, cast info, air dates and more that make it easy to find what you’re looking for or pick something good to watch. Media ripped from discs (or obtained by other means) simply doesn’t come with those goodies.

Enter iDentify

But we can add that metadata after the fact. All you need is a piece of software called iDentify 2, and it will do all [at least most] of the magic for you. It works very well and once all is said and done it looks just like iTunes store content.

To use simply drag all the files you want to tag into iDentify. Let it scan them, check at least a few to make sure it got the right show or film (hint: click edit tags to view) and click “Process Files”. Then import your freshly tagged media to iTunes, and stream or sync to your heart’s desire. That’s it!

iDentify "Edit Tags" page

For the app to work, your files have to be named logically (eg: house.s05e03.mp4, lost.s04e16.m4v). Once and a while iDentify will mess up. If you’re tagging a batch of TV episodes and it can’t find any data, you can select all the files in the app, click “Edit Tags” and manually enter the “Show Name”. Then “Rescan Items” and 9 times out of 10 it’ll work. If you have trouble with movies, first try adding the release year in the filename or the iDentify directly. If that fails find the film on IMDB and paste its code (last number of the film’s URL at IMBD) into the “Edit Tags” page and “Rescan Items”.

Also certain files will crash the app rarely for no apparent reason. Just file an error report when you reopen iDentify (it asks you on launch). The developer is extremely responsive and helpful. If you like the app you might consider making a donation to the developer or registering your copy (this will gets your more features like file renaming).

So we convert. I’ve found a relatively painless workflow that will allow you to convert your media from just about anything (AVI and MKV included) to Apple friendly formats, and tag it with metadata so you can enjoy film description, movie posters, episode information and more on your Apple TV (just as if you bought it on iTunes).

Conversion

The first, and most time consuming step, is to run all your media through conversion software. I’m using two pieces of software. Video Monkey and Handbrake.

The benefit of Video Monkey is that it has a queue interface, so you can drag a selection of videos into the app, choose your options, hit start and grab a coffee.

Handbrake is a little smarter than Video Monkey and it allows you to preserve 5.1 audio tracks if your vidoes have them. It also has a queue, but its cumbersome and you have to add each file individually.

If you’re using Video Monkey:

1. Drag in your videos
2. Select the Apple TV preset
3. Check “Limit output params to input” (doesn’t work with MKV’s)
4. Default quality is good enough for me, but adjust to your fancy
5. Hit Start (it could take minutes or hours depending on your machine)

If you’re using Handbrake:

1. Use the Source window to choose one file (or drag the file from the Finder into the Source window)
2. Select the Apple TV preset from the presets pain on the right (might have to “Toggle Presets”)
3. Handbrake automatically limits output parameters to input, and this does work with MKV’s
4. Default quality is good enough for me, but adjust to your liking
5. Hit Start (it could take minutes or hours depending on your machine)
6. To add another file to the queue, click Source from the toolbar and repeat the process, clicking “Add to Queue” instead of Start at step 5

I recommend trying it with one file first to make sure quality is what you expected.

My next post covers tagging your converted media so it displays nicely in iTunes/Apple TV.

The app is put together by Mira Software, who provide frequent updates and, in my experience, excellent support. It works with a great number of devices and there is an updated list of compatible phones. These are my favourite capabilities:

• Readings texts on my Mac’s large screen
• Receiving instant notification of new messages
• Typing messages on a full size keyboard and sending them through my cell
• Mass archival, moving or deleting of texts
• All over Bluetooth (as the name implies) so there aren’t any messy cables

The applications provides a seamless SMS experience. When you receive a text your Mac’s screen flashes white, and the message appears in an iChat-like window. You can then type your response and send without having to touch your phone. Messages in the chat windows are threaded so you have one open with each of the contacts you’re chatting with.

BPE also has a number of calling features. I don’t really use them since Skype is available on my computer, but they are impressive nonetheless.

When you receive a call the screen flashes and displays a window that contains the phone number of the caller. If the caller is in your address book, it will also show their name and display picture. Even better, the app will fade out and pause iTunes if music is playing, and then resume playing when the call ends. You can also initiate calls with a dial pad on the screen or by clicking “Call So-and-So” straight from your address book. The integration is nearly flawless.

Issues and Solutions

I use BPE with my KRZR K1m on the Telus network in Canada. This setup has worked very well for me, although I’ve had a few issues. Sending texts on my phone is not possible when “Hands-Free” (the protocol that lets you make calls through your Mac’s speakers and microphone) is enabled. I’ve solved this problem by choosing “Suspend Hands-Free” from the BPE menu. Alternatively you can set an option that only opens Hands-Free when in a call, which was successful in my limited testing. You should know that the Caller-ID and iTunes features work regardless of these settings.

MMS messages also seem to mess with BPE, so they should deleted or moved before you use the app (at least on some phones). I don’t imagine these issues will affect every phone, mine is quite old, but this is what I have learned through trial and error and in conversations with the support team.

Conclusion

Its definitely a great app, but before you buy you should test to see wether your phone is fully compatible. Fortunately Mira Software provides a trial period, and if you’re still not sure you can even request a trial extension. Given the complexity of the app, its a bargain at $24.95 USD. I would recommend it to any Mac user that spends a lot of time tied to their computer and phone.

If you have any questions about app I’d be glad to answer them in the comments.

Something in has changed in Snow Leopard that causes problems on some Gmail and Google Apps accounts. I’m not completely sure whats going on behind the scenes, but a problem has arisen where Gmail complains the “Account exceeded bandwidth limits.” This means that too much data has travelled between Mail.app on your Mac and Gmail, and Google automatically cuts your account off to maintain service for other users.

If you’ve already been blocked, don’t worry, you can still get your mail online. The block should be removed within a day. I also changed this setting that seems to have prevented me from getting blocked again. In the menubar, click Mail > Preferences > Accounts > select your account > Advanced and change the “Keep copies of messages for offline viewing” to “All messages, but omit attachments”.

Select "All messages, but omit attachments"

Please tell me if this solution works for you guys. I hope that either or Apple or Google comment on this issues because it does seem to be effecting a number of people.

Using the built-in zoom and screen sharing capabilities (or any VNC) together on OS X can be a real pain in the posterior. If you leave your screen zoomed it becomes virtually unusable via screen sharing or VNC. That’s because there is no way to effectively move the cursor (and therefore the screen position) or turn off zoom (since you can’t easily access System Preferences, and the keyboard shortcut isn’t applied to the remote machine).

As someone who uses zoom quite extensively, I often find myself trudging up flights of stairs to manually zoom out one computer so I can access it from another. Its pretty counter-intuitive. I would have though Apple to make zoom usable remotely, make it easy to shut off or just disable it when the Mac is being controlled remotely.

But no, there was no solution. So I found one myself. I put together a cute little AppleScript and packaged it up as an Application. It executes the keyboard command to zoom all the way out, re-enabling your Mac for remote use.

It can be used in a number of ways.

1. Put in your dock for a painful, yet possible, launch.
2. Executed via SSH in Terminal (I’ll explain in a follow up post)
3. Soon using a companion app on your local Mac (this will do the SSHing for you)

So here’s the app. It is an AppleScript that zooms out your screen. That’s it, it zooms right out and quits. As usual, released under the Creative Commons license (with no warranty).

I know this of limited utility even to a small group of people, but it was irritating enough to me I though I would share. Tell me if this turns out useful for you.

It started a few months ago when I got my new iMac. Long story short; it was a disaster, I got a new one, its a little off as well.. Anyways, it scratched my Leopard DVD. No problem though, I acquired a new image and tried to burn it to a double-layer DVD. Toast quit halfway through and seems to have toasted the DVD drive. The half-baked disc was stuck in my iMac and the drive isn’t recognized anymore. This pushed me to find a different way to install OS X, and I learned a lot in the process.

Booting from an External Hard Drive
Most people know you can boot almost any OS X capable Mac from a FireWire hard drive. All you have to do is restart the machine, and hold down the Option key until it shows you the list of bootable disks and click on it. Many people don’t know that all Intel Macs can also boot from USB hard drives. This means you can clone your internal HD to your external USB drive, and have a fully bootable backup whenever you need it. Its also possible to copy the OS X installation DVD to an external, boot from it and install (this method is faster than using the DVD). This takes us to the next possibility.

Booting from your iPod
I recently went on a house-call where an OS X reinstall was needed. Rather than carry around a bulky external HD, I stuck the OS X installation in a partition on my iPod video. Just like any other USB drive, its fully bootable (by Intel Macs) and be used to install OS X.

Leopard is Universally Bootable
But the system that needed a repair was PowerPC Mac mini. Uhoh. PPC Macs can boot from USB drives, right? Well that’s true, but if you install OS X 10.5 (Leopard) there’s a way to get around this problem. As long as you own or can borrow an Intel Mac you’ll be fine.

1. Start the PPC Mac in Target Disk Mode. (Turning into an expensive, shiny FireWire HD)
2. Plug the iPod or USB drive into the Intel Mac.
3. Boot the Intel Mac holding down the Option key, boot from the USB drive containing OS X Install. 
4. Choose the PPC’s HD as the destination (you made need to change to use the GUID boot record).
5. Install OS X as normal.

This fresh OS X Leopard install is universally bootable. That means it’ll run on either a PPC or Intel Mac. So after the install is complete and you restart the PPC computer, it’ll work just as if you installed it directly on that machine. This method is typically faster, and great if your PPC Mac doesn’t have a DVD drive (or doesn’t quite meet the requirements like my 800Mhz iMac G4). Its also worth noting that you can use Leopard recovery discs from one Mac to install OS X on the HD of another. Just follow the instructions as posted above, but the PPC Mac could also be another Intel Mac. For example, I used this method to reinstall Leopard on my MacBook and my iMac G4. I’m not sure about the licensing implications of this method. I own a Leopard family pack disc, its just scratched.

Want to sync to your address book, calendar, and bookmarks? Don’t want to pay $100 a year? Doh.

fruux is a lightweight and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your Address Book, Calendars, Tasks and Bookmarks between different Macs.

All you’ve got to do is download the .prefPane, double click to install, and make you’re account… That’s it. No credit card, no blown budget, no lost contacts, no MobileMess. If you’ve got a desktop and a notebook you can install it on both and start syncing right away. If you’ve got a lab full of Macs you can install on all of them too, because there are no silly limits on how you sync.

This isn’t to say that MobileMe is a bad product, and certainly not that this service is any better. Fruux is all about “Just Sync, No-frills!” so you won’t find disk space, website hosting, email, web-access, or any of the other neat features that MobileMe comes with. There’s really no comparison between the two though, if your looking for free syncing then use Fruux. If you want anything else (think iDisk, email, etc) then you need MobileMe.

Fruux's sync log in System Prefrences

Of course, if you’re crafty you can find free alternatives to those other services too. In conjunction with Dropbox, an IMAP GMail account and a free hosting account for your site you could be setup as well or better than a bona-fide MobileMe account at no cost. Thanks Fruux!!

UPDATE: Elgato’s Canadian EPG is now out of beta, and purchasers will receive one year of free access with purchase of an EyeTV tuner.

A couple months ago I ordered the Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus from the online Apple Store (free shipping FTW). Technically speaking its a TV tuner, but I bought it for its cassette digitizing abilities – more on that later. I thought that was the only use I’d get out of it too, since Elgato doesn’t offer a Electronic Program Guide (EPG/listings) for Canada. Until now. The past few weeks they’ve been rolling out a beta version of the EyeTV 3 software that includes support for a Canadian EPG.

You might be wondering exactly what an EPG is and why its necessary for watching TV on your Mac. Basically its a file that EyeTV downloads to display the local listings for your area. The truth is that it isn’t really required, but in a world where everyone has a cable box, built in schedules are a given convenience that I know I wouldn’t like to live without. So it goes without saying I was thrilled to read about this beta version.

I signed up and got my beta invitation very soon afterwards. It was a breeze to download, install and configure EyeTV for use here in Vancouver, BC. It seems that some other parts of Canada aren’t covered yet, but I’m sure that’s coming in subsequent releases. It seems that Elgato has partnered with TV Guide Canada to makes this happen. Also worth noting, us Canadians only get a year of free service. Come next October I’ll have to pony up $19.95 (USD no less) for a rewenal. That’s not fair, eh.

Functionally its been almost flawless. There was this weird problem where programs starting at 4:00PM would have a duration of 0:00, but I believe that’s been fixed. I’m with Shaw Cable and all the analogue channels come through fine. I also have the digital cable package and box, but my EyeTV doesn’t pick those channels up for some reason. It does see the digital music channels though, so I don’t know what’s going on there. The quality is fair, but you’d never mistake it for HD. I’ve included a few screenshots that you can click to enlarge. Audio comes through very nicely with steady treble and tight bass.

There’s something nice about being able to pause live TV, or replay something you missed. Start watching or recording with one click. Schedule recordings up to two weeks ahead of time, then have them converted and placed in iTunes for you. There’s lots of cool stuff, its the best TV experience I’ve had thus far. I honestly prefer downloading HD shows/movies from iTunes or similar outlets, but that can take time and you rarely see obscure programming you may want to watch. I and friends have made a number of TV appearances lately. All I had to do to record them was set the time, and when I got home they were ready to post on YouTube.

All of that, and I only bought this little device to convert my VHS and 8mm tapes to DVDs. By the way, it does that very well too. Its as simple as plugging in your device (VCR, camcorder, LaserDisc) with composite or SVideo and hitting record. Then you can export to iTunes (for your iPod, iPhone or AppleTV), Toast (CD DVD or Blue Ray) or via a number of other options.

The EyeTV 250 Plus is a nifty little creature that can finally call Canada home. Its ease of use and capabilities make it worth every cent, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to other Mac users in Canada. If you have any questions about it I’ll take them in the comments..

My goal is to sync or stream all of my digital media (music, TV shows, movies, pictures etc) to a large SDTV (standard definition television) in the family room.

 1) AppleTV

The AppleTV is an amazing little box. It’ll sync or stream nearly all of your media from any computer that can run iTunes. There’s also some nifty plugins to extend its functionality. On paper it looks perfect, but in practice it caries a number of limitations.

• Initial cost
• File type limitations (think DIVX etc)
• Limited configurability/tweaking
• No support for SDTVs

These limitations are somewhat superficial, I could solve most of them by hacking and having a bigger wallet. At this time, however, the AppleTV just isn’t a viable option.

2) Tiger + ATV4mac

Because I already have an unused Mac mini, this option removes the up front cost of running my media center. AT4mac is a really cool project that lets you run the Apple TV OS as an application on any intel Mac running Tiger. It requires OS X 10.4 because the Apple TV OS is based on the older version, and it turns out that installing Tiger on my mini was the most difficult step. I installed Perian to cover those missing formats and picked up an Apple DVI to Video converter to connect to the television. Audio went through a headphone to composite adapter directly into the receiver. The procedure to get ATV4mac up and running was quick and painless. Afterwards I was able to sync, stream and play with my media flawlessly. All the functions of the Apple TV were present and functional. 

The problem is, once again, that I’m using an SDTV (See update below). While the ATV4mac brings down the resolution, it still has a widescreen ratio. This means the right most 1/4 of the picture is cut off. By using this solution I avoided all the issues surrounding the Apple TV except for the problem related to my SDTV. 

3) Leopard + Front Row

Until an HDTV enters the equation, it looks like the Apple TV route isn’t the way to go. The next obvious solution is Front Row. I had problems with Front Row on Tiger crashing, so I reinstalled Leopard on the mini and chose some tools to make things work. 

I installed Perian again, and I also got a copy of Sofa Control. It lets you do almost anything you can do with your mouse and keyboard right from your Apple Remote. Then I installed Syncopation. This little app is idea for our project. It connects to iTunes libraries on the network and automatically merges them into to one. All the media can then be played in Front Row. Its pretty slick, but I’m disappointed that there isn’t a free alternative. I’d really like to sync remote iTunes libraries just like you can an Apple TV. You can’t buy or rent content directly from Front Row either, and there’s also the missing YouTube and Flickr access. This solution is less than perfect, but at least it works without cutting off the screen.  

In conclusion I have to say none of these solutions turned out to be all I hoped for. The good news I can watch video and play my music, even if the process to do those is convoluted. I hope that someone finds a better solution or that I get an HDTV, and I’ll update this story once one of those things happens.

Update: I found a solution (SwitchResX) to the ATV4mac / SDTV problem. I’ll provide a tutorial soon outlining how to get your intel Mac and old SDTV to work together.