User Profile for chrisyboyg

Cinematize 2 Pro 2.03 (Mac OS X)

The best I have found for DVD to DV  

I have a forthcoming project where I need to convert DVD-Video to DV, edit it, and convert it back to DVD-Video. There seems to be three programs that can handle the initial conversion: Cinematize Pro, DVDxDV Pro and MPEG Streamclip (HandBrake only outputs to MPEG-4 and H.264). I found DVDxDV Pro to have too simplistic an interface and a lack of encoding options. I also had problems with interlacing in the DV output that I could not fix and the quality suffered greatly as a result. MPEG Streamclip provided many more options, but the DV output seemed to be cropped slightly even though this wasn't set. It's quality was also noticeably worse when compared to the original DVD. I'm not sure if these problems were linked but no combination of settings seemed to fix them. However it is free and is definitely worth a try. Finally I tried the Cinematize Pro demo. This has a comprehensive set of options for video and audio output, as well as subtitles, in a well laid out interface. The quality of the DV it produced was extremely high, almost indistinguishable from the original DVD, and had no other problems. It also has an excellently written manual. The only thing I would really like to see is single frame stepping when setting in/out points. Out of the three programs I would definitely say that Cinematize Pro has the best combination of ease of use, flexibility and certainly quality of results, and I hope to purchase it soon. [alert admin]

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Thursday, May 08 2008 @ 07:21 PM PDT

Cinematize 2 Pro 2.03 (Mac OS X)

The best I have found for DVD to DV  

I have a forthcoming project where I need to convert DVD-Video to DV, edit it, and convert it back to DVD-Video. There seems to be three programs that can handle the initial conversion: Cinematize Pro, DVDxDV Pro and MPEG Streamclip (HandBrake only outputs to MPEG-4 and H.264). I found DVDxDV Pro to have too simplistic an interface and a lack of encoding options. I also had problems with interlacing in the DV output that I could not fix and the quality suffered greatly as a result. MPEG Streamclip provided many more options, but the DV output seemed to be cropped slightly even though this wasn't set. It's quality was also noticeably worse when compared to the original DVD. I'm not sure if these problems were linked but no combination of settings seemed to fix them. However it is free and is definitely worth a try. Finally I tried the Cinematize Pro demo. This has a comprehensive set of options for video and audio output, as well as subtitles, in a well laid out interface. The quality of the DV it produced was extremely high, almost indistinguishable from the original DVD, and had no other problems. It also has an excellently written manual. The only thing I would really like to see is single frame stepping when setting in/out points. Out of the three programs I would definitely say that Cinematize Pro has the best combination of ease of use, flexibility and certainly quality of results, and I hope to purchase it soon. [alert admin]

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Thursday, May 08 2008 @ 07:21 PM PDT

Springy 1.4.1 (Mac OS X)

My favourite Mac archive utility  

When I made the move from Windows to Mac I wanted a compression utility similar to what I previously used, WinRAR. A stable, efficient program with a GUI that allowed you to view files inside an archive before extracting, as well as extract/add/delete individual files, and at least ZIP and RAR file support. The obvious choice was StuffIt, but this was too bloated, buggy and... Windows like ;) for my taste. So I tried every other comparable program I could find (BetterZip, Springy, iArchiver, iShrink). Considering the features mentioned above the choice was between BetterZip and Springy (similar programs in a lot of ways, I advise you to try both). What really sold me on Springy was something I hadn't thought of; its contextual menu integrated into Finder that allows you to do pretty much everything you need to by just right-clicking on an archive, even viewing the files it contains. That said there are a couple of features I would like to see. While Springy can read RAR archives, it cannot create them, something BetterZip can do. Indeed this feature has been requested before (try searching on the Springy website forum). What it basically comes down to is the current state of licensing for the RAR format meaning the only solution is very inelegant/inefficient. Still, Zip files are perfectly adequate and of course RAR files can still be read/extracted. The other point is more simple; I really would like to be able to order the files inside an archive by the different columns in list mode! When you want to find the most recently updated files this can be very useful. While not perfect, this is the best archiving utility I have found on the Mac, it does everything I want it to do and is very stable. The dev has always been very helpful and responsive whenever I have made feature requests or found bugs. [alert admin]

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Wednesday, April 23 2008 @ 05:00 AM PDT

Intel macs?  

Office 2004 is PPC only, but it runs fine on Intel Macs under Rosetta so this patch is good for Intel's.

Original feedback item : Read More

Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 10:20 AM PDT