Interrupt19 » Music, Photography, and Video

Time to Replace your Earbuds?

David Balogh — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:00:23 +0000

Photo courtesy of Baddog_

Apple’s earbuds are decent headphones but they don’t last forever. For example, after a few months of exercising with them, I’ve noticed mine showing wear and tear. That’s not the only reason you may want something else.

Perhaps you find the earbud design either uncomfortable, lacking in sound quality or just want something different.

Since you can plug anything with an 1/8″ jack into your iPod / iPhone, let’s look at what else is out there.

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Quick Ways to Tag Audio Files for your MP3 Player

David Balogh — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:00:18 +0000

Photo courtesy of iTunes

How does your MP3 player, iTunes and iPod know what song it’s playing, who wrote it and where did that tiny picture of the album cover come from?

Audio files like MP3s and AACs carry all sorts of meta data inside them, called tags. Common tags are the song’s name, artist, album title, year, track number and genre. Another common tag is an embedded picture, usually the album cover. iTunes and other MP3 players read these tags to organize their music libraries in an understandable way.

If you’ve ever had to manually tag audio files, you know how much of a pain it can be. Here are three quick and easy ways to easily tag your audio files for your iPod or whatever MP3 player you own.

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Your iPhone – A Portable, Professional Music Making Device

David Balogh — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:00:53 +0000

Photo courtesy of Altemark

About a decade ago, making music with computers became affordable for those without a ton of money. A decade before that, major label albums were done on very expensive, yet hardly sophisticated systems. Now, your iPhone actually rivals those systems in terms of computer specs (processor, memory, etc).

All you need now to produce professional quality music, other than the expertise, is the right software. With the iPhone, you can work on the go, use it as a musical scratchpad, field recorder, or even an instrument. Here is some of the iPhone’s best:

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Convert your FLAC, Ogg and Shorten files for iPod Use

David Balogh — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:00:13 +0000

Photo courtesy of Re-ality

In your digital media journey you’ve probably encountered music files called FLAC, Ogg Vorbis or Shorten. Getting them to play on your Mac is pretty easy but playing them on an iPod or other MP3 player isn’t an easy task for the average person.

Instead of doing things the hard way – messing around with unsupported and warranty breaking alternate firmware, go the easy way and convert your FLACs, Oggs, and Shortens to MP3 and get on with your life.

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Getting the best pictures from your iPhone’s Camera

David Balogh — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Erik Pitti

Despite being inside a phone, the iPhone’s camera is surprisingly decent and can produce some interesting photos. That said, there’s probably a large portion of iPhone owners taking under/over exposed, flash-bleached, visually boring shots of their relatives and landmarks.

Don’t let that iPhone camera go to waste! In order to get the best pictures from your iPhone’s camera, read the following tips:

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Your iPhone, The Musical Instrument

David Balogh — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:00:30 +0000

Photo courtesy of Cogdogblog

More than a media player and much more than just a phone, the iPhone and iPod Touch is handy for many different interests. Music Developers out there already had the idea of using an iPhone as an instrument for a while now and there’s a lot they’ve come up with.

You may not know this, but there’s actually a ton of apps out there for music making purposes.

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Moving iTunes From One Mac / PC to Another

David Balogh — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:00:10 +0000

Photo courtesy of OS X

Our music collections outlast both our Macs and our iPods. As we upgrade or they break, at some point we’ll have to migrate our iTunes library from one Mac to another.

You may think that moving your iTunes Library from one Mac to another (or from a PC to a Mac) is tricky but actually it’s an easy process. To ensure everything goes well, you’ll want to follow each step carefully.

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Change your Audio / Video Formats with QuickTime

David Balogh — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:00:06 +0000

Photo courtesy of Calu777

OS X is full of little features that are understated, yet extremely useful. Most of them are within less famous applications like Preview, Quicktime Player or Calculator. Sometimes you don’t find out about them until you stumble across them while working on something else.

I inadvertently found another one of these features the other day inside Quicktime Player…

Like it or not, there’s a zillion different file formats for Music, Movies, Text documents and Pictures. Sometimes you come across one that’s not standard like .MP3, .WAV/.AIFF, .JPG/.GIF, etc. In the past, you’d have to find a utility to convert the files from one format to another. You’d also have to hope that it was a Freeware or Open Source application. Luckily QuickTime Player will sort out your Audio / Video conversions needs, for free.

Before you begin:

On my Mac, I see the option for converting “Movie to Ogg”. I also know that Ogg Vorbis isn’t supported by QuickTime by default. This leads me to think that I can do all these cool conversions because I have some special plugins installed.

The first thing you should do, if you haven’t already is:

Download and install Perian and if you want to work with Ogg files, XiphQT.

Changing Audio / Video Formats within QuickTime Player:

- Open the file you wish to convert.

- In the Menu Bar, Click “File” and Choose “Export…”.

- The Save As: box will appear.

- At the Bottom, next to “Export:”, pick the format you’d like to convert to.

- If you need, clicking “Options” will allow you to tweak advanced settings.

- Click “Save” and you’re done.

Missing Formats:

Some common formats are missing with this trick, such as .MP3 and .AAC. To easily convert them in OS X, use iTunes. So, to convert an Ogg file to .mp3, for use in an iPod or other player, use iTunes to do the conversion.

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iTunes Home Sharing – What is it?

David Balogh — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:00:57 +0000

Photo courtesy of Apple

iTunes 9 brought us a new feature along with the store’s redesign – Home Sharing. Like many new features in Apple’s software, it’s either “What’s this for?” or “I must have it!”.

So, let’s take a look at Home Sharing and see: What exactly is it?, Why would you use it?, and finally What if it doesn’t work?

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Easily Convert Videos For Your iPod

David Balogh — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:00:11 +0000

Photo courtesy of Handbrake

Watching video on your iPod is a great way to spend a long airplane, bus, or train ride. Sometimes you can be lucky and your video will just work but with DVDs and downloaded content, you’re going to need to convert it first.

Getting video set up for iPods is actually easier than you may think. Here’s what you do:

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What’s new about QuickTime X?

David Balogh — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:00:27 +0000

Photo courtesy of Apple

Now that it’s official – Snow Leopard is coming out Friday August 28th, and we’ve already discussed whether you should upgrade or not. Let’s explore one of OS X’s core applications that’s getting a complete overhaul for 10.6. I’m talking about the new QuickTime X, Apple’s other audio / video player and now much, much more.

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Access your iTunes Library from Anywhere with PulpTunes

David Balogh — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:00:42 +0000

Photo courtesy of PulpTunes

Streaming radio got you down? Have a huge library and iTunes and want the world to hear it? Wouldn’t it be great if you could listen to your music from your iTunes library from any anywhere? You can and it’s really easy.

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Tame Your Multiple Gadgets with doubleTwist

David Balogh — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:00:32 +0000

Photo courtesy of doubleTwist

With the ever increasing pile of iPods, PSPs, Blackberries, mobile phones, mp3 players and other gadgets, managing them becomes unruly. They all seem to have their own software, their own way of doing things and laugh at the thought of interoperability. OS X support? You’re lucky if the device will even work with your Mac. So, how to tame the mess of different devices? Using doubleTwist, I’ll show you how to handle multiple devices without breaking a sweat.

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The Easiest Way to Broadcast Streaming Video with QuickTime Broadcaster

David Balogh — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:18 +0000

Photo courtesy of OS X

Want to broadcast videos to anyone, local or distant? You can easily do this with the magic of QuickTime Broadcaster. Broadcast lectures to far away students, live video feeds of a family barbecue to relatives across the world, or use it to broadcast in-house video to local terminals. Whatever you need to broadcast, QuickTime Broadcaster makes it easy. Let me show you how to set it up.

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Eight GarageBand Tips for Better Recordings

David Balogh — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:00:46 +0000

Photo courtesy of Eelke Dekker

Garageband is free and powerful. While it may not have some of the really fancy features that professional level applications like Cubase, Logic, ProTools or Digital Performer have, Garageband is enough that you can produce quality recordings with it. Here are eight tips to improve the quality of your Garageband recordings and make it more than just a loop pasting program.

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