I was trying to play a music video in iTunes and it started playing only the sound from it. I looked around for a few seconds trying to find the video window, and I restarted the video a few times to see if it would open.
Finally I realized that I had my AirPort Express selected as an additional set of speakers. I unchecked the AirPort Express and, sure enough, the video started playing.
I don't know if anyone out there wants to know how to stop the video from playing in music videos, but perhaps this might someday help someone who is wondering why only the music part of their music videos is playing.
[crarko adds: The evolution of AirPlay will probably change this.]
This hint offers a low tech solution to an all too common problem. The forums are filled with exasperated people who have lost months of notes they created in Mail after a crash, update or simple mistake.
Perhaps Apple is assuming we all have a Time Machine drive hooked up. Whatever the reason, they have not seen fit to provide a straightforward way to backup Mail.app Notes.
There are two easy solutions, and while they will not update or sync in any way, at least you can recover your notes if you inadvertently lose them all.
If you have just a few notes, the first and simplest is method to make a text clipping.
Select all of the text in your note.
Click and drag the selected text onto the desktop or your backup folder.
That's it! Your note appears in the folder as a text clipping. It opens in the Finder and can be dragged back into a Note just as easily.
The second involves digging around in the Finder to find where the note files are stored. I found my Mobile Me notes in:
~/Library/Mail/Mac-*username*/Notes.imapmbox
Substitute your own account's shortname for *username*. I then copied the Notes.imapmbox file into my backup folder.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. I do have a Time Machine drive hooked up so sometimes it's too easy to forget those who don't.]
In this hint, I describe the process I use to sync my Sony PRS-350 eReader with iTunes and the iBookstore. NOTE: this does not circumvent any DRM for iBookstore purchases. For simplicity, this hint assumes that books/PDFs import to the device are DRM-free, or otherwise viewable on your device.
First, some facts:
Sony eReaders, the Kindle, and many other eReaders are mounted to OSX as a regular external volume. The user can drag and drop compatible files and they will appear in the reader's library when ejected.
If the user has not opted to manually mange their files, iTunes stores imported eBooks in the ~/Music/iTunes/Books/ Directory.
The Unix tool rsync can synchronize two directories.
The Unix tool diskutil can mount and eject external volumes.
Many third party tools, such as Hazel can perform script actions when an external volume is mounted/ejected.
I make use of these four facts in this way:
I plug in my eReader.
Hazel recognizes the volume, begins rsync between iTunes and the eReader's book directory.
When rsync completes, diskutil ejects the reader (so I can remove it safely).
Lastly, a Growl alert is sent indicating sync completion.
Here are the scripts. Each of these will require some customization for your particular reader:
To Eject (in the case of the Sony PRS-350, there are two partitions mounted that need to be ejected):
diskutil unmount `disktool -l | grep 'READER' | sed 's/.*\(disk[0-9s]*\).*/\1/'`
diskutil unmount `disktool -l | grep 'SETTING' | sed 's/.*\(disk[0-9s]*\).*/\1/'`
For Hazel:
Add a the /Volumes directory for a 'Folder with name YOUR EREADER VOLUME NAME.'
For the action, add a shell script containing the scripts above. Click here to see a screenshot of the full Hazel rule.
I also have a Hazel rule that imports to iTunes all *.epub files (and other reader files) that appear in the downloads directory. This action also includes a script to re-mount the eReader upon a new import. Simply change the diskutil script above to read 'mount' instead of 'unmount.'
I call this a pseudo-sync because iTunes does not behave well when third party scripts delete its library files. The current script will only delete files on the device. Thus, if you delete a book on your device but not on iTunes, it will re-appear on your device on your next sync. All book management should be completed in iTunes. Also, I should note that to access the iBookstore, you'll need an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.
iTunes can play 'bit-perfect' music losslessly, but only if you do several things. The internal volume control must be set to the max, all digital signal processing, including equalizers, must be turned off, and the sample rate of the track you want to play must be set properly in Audio MIDI Setup before you open iTunes, which means if there is a sample mismatch, you either have to close iTunes, reset Audio MIDI Setup to the desired value, and then restart iTunes.
For example, if you have a CD, you can rip it to Apple Lossless files. These have a bit-depth of 16 bits and a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz. If you purchase and down-load higher-definition music, perhaps 24-bit, 96kHz sampled lossless FLAC files, you can convert them to Apple Lossless without degrading the content (XLD is one such free software option). Now let's say you want to play the two sets of tracks sequentially. If you start iTunes playing the ripped CD and Audio MIDI Setup is set to 44.1 kHz sampling, the ripped CD can be played without degrading the content, but when iTunes reaches the 96kHz music, CoreAudio will down-sample it to 44.1 kHz, thus negating any benefit of having the higher sampling frequency.
Obviously, stopping iTunes, manually changing Audio MIDI Setup, and restarting iTunes quickly becomes a drag, so I came up with a hack that lets you avoid this problem. It involves using iTunes as a music browser that then hands over the task of playing the music to a more specialized player application that deals with the above-mentioned complications seamlessly and automatically. There is commercial software you can pay nearly a thousand dollars for to do this. The following hack enables you to do this at no cost.
Two of my favorite smart playlists are titled 'Last 50 Added' and 'Rated 5 Stars.' Which, as they sound, are smart playlists of the most recent tracks I've added to iTunes and my top rated music, respectively. The 'Rated 5 Stars' playlist is handy to see what recently added music warranted another listen.
I've been using them for a few years without problem, then with the release of iTunes 9 (if I recall correctly) they appeared to stop working. The smart playlists and songs were syncing to my iPhone just fine, but not the most recent 50, nor the most recent rated 5 stars. It appeared to be a random selection and I could not figure out what was going on!
Lo and behold, it wasn't anything to do with the new release of iTunes. What had happened is that while viewing my smart playlists in iTunes I had changed the sort order from 'Date Added' to a different column!
When syncing playlists to your iOS device (whether they are 'smart' or not), the order in which you have the playlist sorted by in iTunes will determine how they are displayed on the iOS device. So if you set up a playlist and have it sorted by a column such as 'Plays', 'Tracks', etc that is how they will appear on the iOS device. It can be quite confusing especially when using smart playlists to determine the criteria for the sort order.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. Although I tend to manage my media manually rather than auto-syncing.]
Audiobooks and certain 'enhanced' Podcasts contain images display as a slideshow synced to the audio but these are not displayed by default when playing the file in iTunes, and when it does show the artwork, it typically only shows the low resolution preview. This hint describes how to see the full resolution images.
I publish my class lectures as enhanced audio Podcasts using ProfCast. These have the full resolution Keynote slides embedded as images in the audio file, but many of my viewers don't realize these are available because iTunes by default only plays the audio and doesn't show the images.
To see the images you need to first make sure the file has downloaded and is playing from your computer (not streaming from the iTunes store as a preview of the selected file), then click on the 'Show Album Artwork' button (a box with an up triangle in the bottom left corner of iTunes). This shows a thumbnail of the image associated with the current location in the audio file. Click on the thumbnail to get a pop-up window with the full resolution image.
Any audiobooks or files with the .mpa or .mpb extension have the capability to have such artwork available.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described.]
I work for a very Large Teleconferencing firm that shall remain nameless, none the less I receive a lot of calls in my line of work at the technical support level. One of the most frequent Mac OSX related issues with callers is 'why cant I host/or have trouble joining a Microsoft Office Live Meeting?'
Our answer for this has been short and sweet. Use a PC. The advent of a very nice piece of software that came my way was Parallels 6.0.1. After getting Windows 7 installed and running on my trial version I decided to try Hosting from my Own Live Meeting account was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that I could host my meetings virtually from my MacBook.
Here is a walk through of what I did to be able to host/login to my meeting and use the host features while still having access to my Mac as well.
The first thing was first I needed to install the virtualization software that I would be installing Windows on. I chose Parallels for it's ease of use and well quite frankly I like the simplicity of it vs. VMware.
Once installed I then loaded Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit. I will add a suggestion here. Most web conferencing software does not play nicely with 64bit systems, so run 32bit whenever possible. I also ran through the series of updates for Windows and made sure I met three key requirements. That I had the most current version of Flash Player installed in my new Virtual Machine as well as the most current version of Java. (I actually prefer Java 6 version 18-20 as these are all tested and proven to work with most of the web conferencing options out there.)
Next step was to log into my Conferencing hub/Live Meeting management microsite and install the Microsoft Live Meeting application. Once inside the meeting center with the application installed. I was simply a matter of starting with the 'meet now' feature and hosting a instant meeting. (One side note, Microsoft offers some Mac users the ability to click on the link in Live Meeting invitation and to join as a participant, but not to host.) This configuration of running inside the virtual machine offers the user the ability to host and participate as the Live Meeting service see's the user joining from a Windows Machine not a Virtual one and not a Mac.
I did manage to test my sharing of IE and a word document successfully. I also partnered with a co-worker and had him log into the meeting and he could in fact see everything I was sharing or showing.
[crarko adds: There are still some things that require the use of a VM, and this appears to be one of them. It sounds like Office Communicator in Office for Mac 2011 is a first step to improving this but still uses the web version of Live Meeting as a client, and does not let you host a meeting; hence the utility of this hint.]
Unlike every other application, the default behavior when clicking the maximize button in iTunes switches the window to miniplayer view. This can be frustrating when you're actually trying to maximize the window view.
Unlike every other application, the default behavior when clicking the maximize button in iTunes switches the window to miniplayer view. This can be frustrating when you're actually trying to maximize the window view.
The window menu reveals the shortcut of Command+Control+Z to switch between minimized and maximized views (listed as 'Zoom' in the menu), but I've found Option+clicking the green maximize button has the same function.
[crarko adds: This behavior seems to change with each major revision to iTunes, and we've run similar hints for earlier versions. This hint talks about how to do this with iTunes 9, and the Option+click trick is mentioned in the comments there. A comment to this hint actually suggests the Command+Control+Z shortcut to use for this. I wonder if Apple got the idea from here. :)]
This hint requires that you have the Apple Developer Tools installed in order to use the Property List editor.
In the Finder navigate to the /Applications folder and right click on iTunes and select 'Show Package Contents.' Once Contents is open the path is Contents/Resources/English.lproj/TextStyles.plist. Right click on TextStyles.plist and open it with the Property List Editor.
In the plist locate 9003 and click the arrow next to it.
You will see three lines of settings on the 'font' row. I changed the font to LucidaGrange-Bold and on the 'size' line I changed the size from 13 to 18. Note that you need root-level permissions to save the changes.
I now have iTunes with a bold and larger font just the way I like it. I'm a musician and use iTunes to make my band's set lists. I just take a screen capture of the list and print it in Preview.
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one, but did look at the plist to see that the 9003 is the correct place. As always, editing the .plist file may break code signing and potentially cause problems updating. Make a backup copy of the unmodified version (via Time Machine or other means) before doing this. There may be a way to do this change with a 'defaults write' command, and if someone has that command please put it in the comments.]
Having recently needed to convert a large pile of .ods and .xlsx to .xls for uniformity, I created the following AppleScript. To make it, I tried using Automator to record actions, but couldn't edit the list of actions recorded to make it generic, rather than specific to the document that was on top.
However, I found that if you select a number of recorded actions from inside the 'recorded actions' box in Automator and drag them into the empty space below the command, it will generate an AppleScript of those actions.
I was also having problems with the action timing out during the switch and open save dialog. I fixed this by deleting the on error event, so that the command would continue to try until the timeout elapsed. That seemed to work.
Here's the script:
on run {}
-- Click "NeoOffice" in the Dock.
set timeoutSeconds to 0.3
set uiScript to "click UI Element \"NeoOffice\" of list 1 of application process \"Dock\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
-- Press ⇧⌘S
delay 0.2
set timeoutSeconds to 1
set uiScript to "keystroke \"s\" using {shift down, command down}"
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
-- Make a selection from the popupbutton.
delay 0.2
set timeoutSeconds to 1
set uiScript to "click pop up button 1 of group 1 of window \"Save\" of application process \"NeoOffice\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
-- Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls)
delay 0.2
set timeoutSeconds to 0.2
set uiScript to "click menu item \"Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls)\" of menu 1 of pop up button 1 of group 1 of window \"Save\" of application process \"NeoOffice\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
-- Click the "Save" button.
delay 0.2
set timeoutSeconds to 0.2
set uiScript to "click UI Element \"Save\" of window \"Save\" of application process \"NeoOffice\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
-- Press ⌘W
delay 0.2
set timeoutSeconds to 0.2
set uiScript to "keystroke \"w\" using command down"
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
end run
on doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
set endDate to (current date) + timeoutSeconds
repeat
try
run script "tell application \"System Events\"
" & uiScript & "
end tell"
exit repeat
on error errorMessage
if ((current date) > endDate) then
end if
end try
end repeat
end doWithTimeout
