If you want to extend the video files that QuickTime can support on OS X a great little component to install is Perian.
Perian also known as ‘The Swiss-Army knife for QuickTime’ is open source and supports a wide range of formats, as stated on their site:
File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT
The Perian control panel can be accessed from the ‘Other’ section of your system preferences.
Enjoy!
In OS X there is a very easy method that can be used in order to show and hide hidden files.
First open a terminal from your Applications->Utilities folder:
Once you have a terminal opened enter the following command to show all files:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
If you want to hide the system files again simply change the ‘True’ parameter to ‘False’ when entering the command into the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
This may require you to log out and log in again to see the results.
In OS X if you ever need to burn a variety of disks and don’t have a large budget, a nifty and free tool that can be added to your software arsenal is Burn.
Burn is a simple and yet full featured disk burning package that offers burning data, music, video and disk images.
The Burn menu makes utilising these options as easy as a single click.
Sub menus can also be used in order to narrow down exactly what format of disk you require.
For the more advanced users there are also an array of features including being able to use custom ffmpeg files, allowing overburining, selecting audio codecs along with the video and audio bitrates.
Burn has many the features of high end alternatives, so if you are looking for a free lightweight and easy to use disk burning utility I would highly recommend checking it out.
Some pictures of the new Magic Mouse I picked up this evening from the Apple Store in Victoria Square.
Windows users utilise the famous ctrl + alt + del command to allow them to quickly lock their screen and leave background applications running. On the Mac using OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, I will show you how this can be as easy as a single mouse click.
First enter the system preferences:
Next click on the security options icon:
Then under the general tab select ‘Require password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins’:
Once you have done this go back into the system preferences menu and click on the option for ‘Desktop & Screen Saver’:
From here select the button on the bottom left side of the screen called ‘Hot Corners…’:
Hot corners enables you to set the screen saver to activate by clicking on a corner of the screen, you can select any or multiple corners by picking the option ‘Start Screen Saver’ from the relevant drop down menu:
Now when you click on your selected corner(s) your screen saver will start, you will then be prompted for your password when you next use the machine and all your background applications will still be running.