The Designspace

Mac OS X: Complete your Mac video format toolkit

Add MPEG StreamClip and Perian to your system to import, play and convert video in more formats. There are some video formats that Quicktime and Quicktime based applications have a hard time interpreting. For instance, certain Sony video cameras produce files in multiplexed (muxed) mpeg format. If you use Quicktime player, iMovie or Final Cut, the video will probably play...

Audio, but no video on GoToMeeting WMV videos (G2M3 format)

The other day I came across a Windows Media file that would not play correctly on any player on Mac or PC. The audio track played fine, but there was no video - it was black. Nor would any encoding software convert the file to Flash Video, which is what was really needed. Looking in Quicktime's Movie Inspector I could at...

Can't export more than 30 seconds of Windows Media from Quicktime

In the last year or so, I got used to being able to export to just about any format from Quicktime Pro using Quicktime Conversions. When I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I installed Flip4Mac's Snow Leopard-compatible beta build and tried to export to Windows Media. The speed with which the progress bar was moving was truly awe-inspiring, but it would...

Flip4Mac WMV player constantly "importing" in background

On upgrading to Snow Leopard, a little window with a progress bar started appearing: "Flip4Mac importing". No reference to what was being imported or why. This has apparently been fixed in Flip4Mac WMV 2.3.0.11-Beta. It's not available from the main download site on Microsoft.com. You have to get it here: [LINK] References: Flip4Mac WMV 2.3.0.11-BETA download and documentation Flip4Mac forum...

Set duration in Windows Media

A quick way to create shorter clips out of longer ones without video editing: set the Starttime and Duration parameters in the ASX file. Example ASX file: the title of the video/s ...

Microsoft's Silverlight

After years of institutionalized incompatibility in their browser software, office software, and video software, Microsoft has come out with with Silverlight, their Rich Internet application platform and supposed Flash Killer. Flash is universally accepted because it is universally compatible. The same cannot be said of Silverlight at this time. It has only been out for a year or so, and...

How to turn on captions in Windows Media Player 11

When you open Windows Media 11, chances are, it will look like this: To view captions or subtitles when they are available, you must turn on the "Subtitles" setting. Right click the title bar and select "Show Classic Menus."...

A brief complaint about Microsoft Windows Media Player!

A colleague at work needed to know how to turn on captions in Windows Media Player. I started to write her a note explaining it, but needed to check exactly how to get to the setting since I knew how to do it in older versions but not 11. This turned out to be just another opportunity to experience Microsoft's...