August 30, 2007
Miro (formally known as Democracy Player) is an Open Source video platform for Mac OS X. What does that mean? It means you can search for videos on popular sites site such as YouTube and save them in your personal library. You can also add channels to your Miro. There are different topics that channels are split into such as Technology or Movies to name a few. Some people have compared Miro to iTunes. Here is one way you can use Miro to share your videos with others. You can get Miro at this link: http://www.getmiro.com/
1. Click on Video Search in the top left column of Miro. You can also use the drop down (that looks similar to the search engine bar in Firefox) located at the bottom left of Miro.
2. Choose a video site you would like to search on for a video. Type in keywords of the video topic you are searching for (ex. YouTube: education).
3. Double click on the video’s icon to watch the video. To find out more details about the video, click on details button in the right hand side of the video text box.
4. Use the controllers at the bottom of Miro to play, stop, and pause the video.
5. If you like the video, you can keep it by clicking on KEEP. If you keep the video, it will put it in your Library.
6. To share this video with others, click on the SHARE button. You have the option of Emailing it to a friend, Post to Video Bomb (need to sign up for but its free-Video bomb is your own personal Miro channel to share w/ friends, staff, or students), Post on del.icio.us (social bookmarking), Post to digg, and Post to Reddit.
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Mac OS, Open Source, Visual | 
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Posted by Angel
August 24, 2007
Are you looking to download online videos from places like YouTube but you don’t use Firefox or the extensions? Here is a web based and free service that can get the job no matter what browser you prefer. It encodes video in the following formats:
Windows (.wmv)
Mobile (.3gp)
Mac (.mov)
Audio Only (.mp3)
iPod/PSP/iPhone (.mp4)
Flash (.flv)
1. Go to http://vconvert.net/
2. Type in (or copy and paste) the online video link in the URL text box. (example, YouTube).
3. Check the check box next to the format you prefer to save the online video as.
4. Click on the Download and Convert button.
5. Click the Download button. Click the Back button to start over. Download time make take a few minutes depending on length of clip.
6.Enjoy!
-Angel Brady
No Comments » | Inst. Technology, Tutorials | Permalink
Posted by Angel
August 14, 2007
Handbrake is a very good DVD-to-MPEG 4 converter. It is also free and Open Source. You can simply copy and compress your DVD and different DVD chapters to your hard-drive. You can change formats of encoder and audio encoder. You can edit
width/height, video’s size and quality, audio’s birate and sample rate.
E.g.: You want rip part 2, chapter 3, 320*240px, MPEG 4, mp3, quality 50%, 96kpbs.
1. Open your Handbrake (Handbrake is an open source. You can download it easily from here: http://handbrake.m0k.org/).
2. Click Browse tab in the Read DVD window to select you DVD source.
3. In the Source menu chose part 2 and chapter 3.
4. In the Destination menu chose the place which you want to put on your computer, encoder MEPG4, audio encoder MP3 and width/height 320*240px.
5. Click Video Settings; change Constant Quality to 50%.
6. Click Audio Settings, change Bitrate to 96kpbs.
7. Click Encode Video.
8. Handbrake will start to rip and encode the video. This may take a few minutes depending on size of file and length of video. You will have a MEPG 4 copy of this DVD.
-Min Robin Lu
1 Comment | Inst. Technology, Media, Tutorials | Permalink
Posted by Angel
