Convert video from Mac to PC to DVD, for free

LifeHacker has a nice roundup in Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters, via FreshDV. Unfortunately it's not always sufficient to point someone to a roundup, unless you're looking for revenge.

Even if you're intimidated by your boss and are afraid to determine ahead of time the nature of their capabilities, you still might find out anyway in a crunch when the boss plays Mara to your Buddha. I have a friend who was asked to develop a presentation (in Apple Keynote) and send a DVD overseas. Of course it would be easier to send a QuickTime file but the boss is the boss, and he's pretty certain he can play a DVD disc.

Our problem is now the busy boss wants to download a file but doesn't know if he has a DVD burner or the ability to encode MPEG-2 or burn DVD-Video. You can do all this with a Mac but the boss uses Windows, and in Windows there no guarantee that the DVD burner can burn DVD-Video.

Now is when you turn to Open Source and freeware to make sure the boss can reach his imagined goal -- and you start to appreciate the niceties built into your Apple and Adobe tools. Using a search engine to find solutions brings up a variety of pay utilities that are often worse than the free stuff. You'd do better looking through these websites that have already collected and organized utilities and "guides" to show you how to do video tasks with free tools: Afterdawn.com, Doom9.org, MBbass.org, Digital Digest, and Videohelp.com.

In this case, we're lucky to find solution #1 on LifeHacker, in Hack Attack: Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD. This article recommends DVD Flick and shows you how to use it too. This seems like a great Windows tool since you can import Windows Media or QuickTime files, convert between NTSC and PAL, transcode to MPEG (with FFMPEG), and burn a DVD or ISO image all in one step. An alternative is Avi2Dvd (freeware), but it has a distracting UI. I haven't fully tested either utility myself, but DVD Flick seemed to work fine.

Burning a DVD this way may be leaving too much to fate, or to a boss with delicate sensibilities. It would be even safer to deliver solution #2: a DVD image, which the boss can then burn to DVD or play it from his hard drive.

To burn an image on Windows, an easy to use tool is ImgBurn, which is really DVD Decrypter without CSS cracking. ImgBurn works great, but only rips & burns ISO images. If on the Mac you don't end up with an ISO but only generate a "VIDEO_TS" DVD folder (I'd check Visual Hub but the website is down), in Windows you can still use DVD Shrink (like Popcorn usually used to convert a 9 GB DVD to 5GB) to convert the DVD folder to an ISO image. Both ImgBurn and DVD Shrink have a clean UI and are very easy to use.

If there is a problem burning a DVD, you can turn to solution #3: the ISO file can be played from the a hard drive. This can be done in any number of utilities, but I'd recommend using the cross platform utility VLC Media Player, which can play just about any filetype around.

Of course all of this could be easier if somehow the boss could install QuickTime and play a QT file from his notebook PC. Of the course, then he'd have to know how to connect the laptop to a projector or TV.

Somewhat more difficult would be exporting to Windows Media, though the boss would still face transcoding and building a DVD. On a Mac, you can export to Windows Media with WMV Studio at $49. Even harder is using Microsoft free Windows Media Encoder on Windows, because it doesn't import QT files. The new Microsoft Expression Encoder (XP SP2/Vista) does import QT though and has an 180-day trial version.

Finally, there's intriguing but untried YouConvertIt.com, "the world's first and most complete conversion, file storage, units conversion website allowing internet users to convert audio video images and documents into an array of formats also sending or delivering file(s)."

MainConcept, acquired by DivX, releases MPEG Pro HD 3 plug-in

NewTeeVee explains:

"MainConcept is one of the important players in the H.264 codec business and counts Adobe, Corel, MobiTV, Sonic, Sony, and Panasonic as its customers. This is why it is particularly significant (albeit small in terms of dollars) deal. DivX (DIVX) makes a living by licensing its codec, now used in 40 percent of DVD players sold around the world, thanks to its 'ability to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.'"

Update: from The Genesis Project, "Main Concept, a company that Adobe has long worked with just announced and shipped their MPEG Pro HD 3 plugin for PC. This new package delivers a variety of new editing capabilities to Premiere Pro 2 and CS3 users including AVC-HD...In addition to AVC-HD, it supports a variety of Sony formats including XDCAM, XDCAM HD and now XDCAM EX." All for just $500.

Build a Hackintosh

Hobbyists might enjoy building a Hackintosh -- in the sense discussed here, a PC running Mac OS assisted by "OSx86" technologies that evolved from developer kits for transitioning from the G5 to MacIntel. It seems akin to cloning the BIOS of the original IBM, and not quite the same as running a virtual machine like VMware.

Lifehacker has a walkthrough on how to Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800, and UNEASYsilence does the same for the $300 ASUS subnotebook in Load OSX 10.5 Leopard on the eeePC.

I'm not sure why someone doing video would spend too much time on this, but I keep hearing about it because of the low cost of building a PC Frankenstein. You might remember that Victor Frankenstein shirked responsibility for his actions and rejected the creature out of fear; only after this neglect did the creature became a monster.

Trapcode Form released

Trapcode released another cool After Effects filter today. Form "is a grid-based 3D particle system with a twist. It can be used to create fluid, organic patterns, complex geometric structures and swirling strings. Using other layers as maps for various properties provides endless possibilities," as does controls for audio visualization and easy seamless loops. Form ships with 61 presets and built-in help.

Check out the fun demo movies and see how Form works at Form in action. There's 3 more Peder Norby tutorials at Red Giant).

Update: Form beta testers are already posting examples on Trapcoode People, and Harry Franks posted a coupla presets on AE Freemart.

Matt Silverman @ SF Cutters Dec 3

Matt Silverman of Phoenix Editorial is scheduled to appear at an SF Cutters "End of the Year Bash" on Monday Dec 3. This meeting is being hosted by Adobe Systems at the 601 Townsend building in San Francisco; other details are coming soon.

Matt's presentations are always interesting and show subtle details on how he uses AE with a gumbo of other tools. He'll be showing some very recent work done for HBO. You can check out some of his work on the Phoenix Editorial website in the "classic" and recent work sections.

FCP 6.0.2 update + FCExpress 4 good & cheap

The 6.0.2 update to Final Cut Pro seems significant. Apple adds in XDCAM EX, AVC-Intra and AVCHD variants, disk-based HDV, among other things.

Fixes to bugs in rendering and QuickTime gamma display also seem to be included, so the OS X 10.5 shakedown cruise starts. Here's the 6.0.2 Readme.

Update: Apple also released Final Cut Express 4, "a significant upgrade" -- and with a new lower lower price of US$199!

More on FCP... Terence Curren is reporting that the color shift in a Rountrip to Color and back seems fixed; HD4Indies has a rundown of what's new in Final Cut Studio; and The Editblog has good insights on features in FCP updated. Now more Avid-like.

Update 2: Some are having problems with the updated FCP/Leopard/QT (at least with P2 material). A thread on an Apple support forum says Kernel panics on P2 import with 6.0.2 update that could be related to QT 7.3. Obviously, it's best to clone your drive before updating, just in case.

Update 3: Little Frog in Hi-Def notes that FxPlugs can cause P2 import problems in the FCP update.

NewTeeVee Live updates

NewTeeVee and Last100 are both posting live updates from the first NewTeeVee Live conference in San Francisco. Didn't see any video yet -- except from Beet.tv -- but there's too much information so far.

Update: Mogulus, now in public beta, has all the video from the conference.