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This is the personal blog of John F. Morton. It's where I talk about the stuff that interests me. Primarily technology, marketing and pop culture. If you are looking for my portfolio of work, visit johnfmorton.com. Thanks for stopping by!
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Filtered by Category: Software
How to Download Flash Video and Play It Back on Your Mac. (And More.)
Have you downloaded a video from YouTube or some other video sharing site? If you haven’t, you might not know about KeepVid.com, a site that lets you give it a URL from YouTube and then download the .flv file and keep the video. (Hence, the name.) Another option to downloading videos to keep permanently is to install the Ook? Video Ook! or VideoDownloader for Firefox, add-ons which basically do the same thing. Both of those add-ons are free.
Ok, now you’ve got a .flv file, a Flash Video file. If it doesn’t have the file extension of “.flv,” you might need to manually change it to “.flv.” But how do you play it? That’s the point, right? If you double-click the file’s icon, I doubt you will see the video play back because QuickTime does not automatically know how to play this type of file. What do you need? You need Perian, a component that will give QuickTime the ability to play back .flv video. Once you install the free component, simply drag any .flv file to the QuickTime icon and it just plays. Nice. Even nicer, it gives you the ability to play many other formats as well, like .avi, 3ivX, DivX, Flash Screen Video, MS-MPEG4, Sorenson H.263, Truemotion VP6, and Xvid . What more could you ask from a free add on?
Maybe you also have some Windows Media files, with the extension .wmv, that you want to play? Check out Flip4Mac, another free component that gives QuickTime the ability to play those files. Whew! Now that’s a powerful little QuickTime you’ve got there.
How To • Software • Video • Macintosh • (1) Comments • Permalink
Can’t My Computer See I’m Working?
I get distracted when I’m working sometimes. I doubt I’m the only one who suffers from this though. Nearly every modern computer has multiple windows on the screen begging you to multitask. And then there’s the internet, the ultimate distraction. Maybe I got an email. Bling. There’s an instant message. I wonder if my favorite blog has been updated?
In order to give my brain a fair shake at actually writing coherent English, I’ve been cheating on my “fancy” computer with WriteRoom, a simple text editor for the Mac.
WriteRoom thankfully takes my computer back to a much simpler time. The look of it reminds me of my dad’s TRS-80. Check out the photo of my MacBook Pro running the software. If you click the image to enlarge it, you’ll see that I’ve got a perfect distraction-free desktop in order to work on this very blog post.
I’ve got it using the default set-up for the most part. I have changed the default width of the writing area to 800 pixels instead of 600 pixels. I’ve also had the line I’m working on have a slight tint so my eye can find it easier when I’m editing. If you’re not a fan of this color scheme though, try black type on a white background. It’ easy to set up.
Could you use a cleaner workspace? Check out WriteRoom for the Mac. There is also a PC piece of software that’s supposed to do the same thing called Dark Room, but I haven’t used it.