Are you a MusicMatch Jukebox user? Do you want to easily transfer your MP3 files to your Sony Clie NX from within MusicMatch? Are you bummed because MusicMatch doesn’t list the Sony Clie NX series a supported device? Well, there is another way!

I’m using MusicMatch Jukebox Plus, the registered version, so I really don’t know if the free version supports this. It’s only $20 so I highly recommend registration.

Anyway, Here’s how you get your MP3’s onto your Memory Stick from within MusicMatch Jukebox:

-Assemble your play list normally
-Click on the “File” menu
-Select “Export Playlist Tracks”
-Select the “Copy as is” option
-Select the drive letter of your portable player (as mapped by the MSImport program)
-Navigate to the PALMPROGRAMSMSAUDIO directory
-Ensure that you have enough room on your Memory Stick. MusicMatch tells you estimated required space and space available.
-Click “Start”

Ths files will transfer directly to the Memory Stick.

Disconnect the connection by tapping on “Disconnect” in MSImport and you are ready to listen to your new MP3s!

Thanks to “Shannon” at MusicMatch support for the info. Once again, MusicMatch proves its quality in both product and support.

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Digital Camera Adjustments

The NX70V has a great little digital camera. It’s definatly not a pro-grade camera, but for quick-n-dirty snapshots, it’s wonderful. By default, it takes fairly decent pictures, but did you know that you can adjust some settings to compensate for varying conditions to improve the results?

Launch the Clie Camera app and click on the “tools” icon–it’s the round one on the left of the screen that looks like a two-ended open end wrench. This opens a preferences screen that allows you to tweak several options, two of which are important to determine what your final picture will look like: “Brightness” and “White Balance”. Adjusting either of these settings will be reflected in the small preview window in the Tools screen as will as in the standard preview window.

Let me start off by saying that I am definatly not a photographer. I can’t tell you what an “f stop” is nor do I really care, but I do know what I like. That said, your best bet is to experiment and just try all the settings for yourself. Remember, these are digital pictures, so take as many as you can! You can always delete them if you don’t like them! Now for the tool settings…

Brightness
“Brightness” is a sliding scale from “-2″ to “+2″ giving you 5 possible brightness level settings. Experimentation will tell you which is the best setting.

White Balance
This setting adjusts the White Balance of the picture based on one of 4 settings: “Auto”, “Indoor A”, Indoor B”, and “Outdoor”. The specific details of these settings are beyond the scope of this tip, so refer to the manual if you want more details. I can say that depending on your lighting conditions, these settings CAN affect the overall color and quality of the pictures you taks.

OK, so you have adjusted the settings, you have taken some pictures, you have transferred the pictures to your PC, and when you view them, you may or may not be totally happy with the results. Because of the nature of digital pictures and the data, you may have the opportunity to tweak the picture further. There are a ton of programs out there that can be used to tweak and enhance digital pictures. The Sony NX70V comes with Picture Studio which has “correction” functions that work pretty well. Try them out and get comfortable with them. They can certainly improve your photos!

Enhancement Example
While vacationing in the Napa Valley in California, I took a picture of the Culinary Institute of America. The picture was taken on a very cloudy, overcast day, and as you can see, it’s dark, very blue, and there isn’t a whole lot of detail. Click here to see it.

Now, to see what the same picture looks like after using Photoshop’s various level tools (the same could be accomplished with Picture Studio), click here. THe difference is stunning. You can pick out detail that was not in the original, and the colors look more true-to-life. The truth is that what I actually saw with my eyes was somewhere in between the two, but the point is that the NX70V camera captures a lot of information that can often be tweaked to enhance the results.

Bonus Tip:
Be aware that lower light conditions tend to yield lower quality pictures. They tend to be grainier, not as sharp, and the color isn’t as brilliant.

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Create new alarms! Did you know that you can use the included Voice Recorder app to create alarms?

Launch the Voice Recorder app and open record some audio. Next, select the menu option “Data > Convert to Alarm” Check the box in front of the recorded file to convert and tap the “Alarm” button.

Now, open the standard DateBook app, and open the menu “Options > Preferences”. Tap on the “Alarm Sound dropdown, and your recording is now in the list. Select it, and the sound you recorded will now ne your alarm!

This could have many cool and novel possibilities!

Note: I found that the converted alarms to not yet appear in the list in DateBK5. Pimlico Software is aware of this and is working to include this function in a future release. I will update this thread as I find our about updates.

Update: Here’s a work-around: Just record and convert the alarm normally in Voice Recorder. Next, go into the native Date Book app and select the new alarm. Finally, go back into DateBK5 and uncheck the “DateBK5 handles alarms” checkbox in the Alarm Preferences. You lose some of the DateBK5 alarm functionality, but you get the custom alarms!

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Managing documents in Documents To Go: the Memory Stick and RAM

I was having some problems with Documents To Go crashing after a restore from MSBackup. I think I found the problem and an explanation.

The specific problem I was having as I detailed in another thread was that after a complete restore using MSBackup, I could not access any of the document file stored on my Memory Stick through Documents To Go. It would crash and crash and crash.

Anyway, here’s the tip: I was manually moving documents back and forth between RAM and the Memory Stick using ClieFiles. While this seemed to work, I think that was the roor of the problem. It may not be obvious at first, but you specify where you want your documents to reside (Memory Stick or RAM) based on the Category within Documents To Go. From the list view, click on a document’s “i” icon (ie: bring up the documents’ details) and click on the category dropdown. Assuming you have a Memory Stick inserted, the bottom category is your Memory Stick. Just select that as the document’s category and it will be auto-moved from RAM to the Memory Stick. Conversely, if you change a document’s category from Memory Stick to one of the other RAM-resident categories, it will be auto-moved from the Memory Stick back to RAM. Very slick!

This can also be done through the Documents To Go Windows application by right-clicking on a selected document, selecting Item Details, and clicking on the category dropdown. Changes made here will be applied to the Clie on the next HotSync.

As always, this stuff may be somewhere in the documentation, but when I find ‘em, I post ‘em!

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Did you know that you can play your MP3’s in the background while running other apps? Well, you can!

Launch the Audio Player app, click the Menu button, and select Options > Preferences

Next, check the “Enable Background Play” option and ckick “OK”

When you launch another app, any playlist currently playing will continue to play! Just re-launch the Audio Player app to adjust the volume, stop the playing, or select another song.

Just be aware that MP3 playing will cause quicker battery drain as well as slowdown in some apps (like games.)

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Memory Sticks and backups…I purchased a 128MB Memory Stick along with my NX70V, and found a use for it that I never really considered before: Backups.

Sony includes a program called MSBackup, and it seamlessly and easily backs up all the contents of the NX70V’s RAM to a memory stick. I used to require FlashPro on my Palm Vx, but now that everything can be backed up to the memory stick, it is really no longer needed. I can rest much easier.

To test, I performed a backup to the Memory Stick (took under a minute), did a hard reset erasing all data, then, keeping fingers crossed) performed a restore selecting to overwrite everything…. Drum roll please!…Voila!…back exactly as it was prior to the hard reset! Very cool!

There is no “scheduleer” to automate backups, but it’s literally a couple button presses and you are done.

MSBackup will keep up to 5 prior backup sets (assuming you have the space) so you could conceivably “roll back” to any of the 5 saved sets. And because the NX70V only has 11MB of RAM, there is pleanty of room for all the other goodies (MP3’s, videos, etc.)!

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How do you view your recorded movies on your PC?

Use the MSImport program to copy your recorded movie files off of your Memory Stick. (See “Jim’s NX70V Tip #2″ for how to set this up.)

Bonus tip: You may not know this, but in order to record video, you must have a Memory Stick installed!

OK. The files are stored in the /MQ_ROOT/100MQV01 directory on the Memory Stick with cryptic names like “MOV00001.MQV”. Just use MSImport to copy the file to your PC (like your Desktop or some other folder.)

Next, rename the file extension from .MQV to .MOV The files are QuickTime-compatible files and will play very nicely using the QuickTime player.

But wait…there’s more!

What if you don’t have QuickTime? Though QuickTime is popular, not everyone has it installed, and Windows Media Player, by default, cannot decode the QuickTime format. One solution is to convert the file from a .MOV file to a .MPG MPEG-1 format using TMPGEnc, and the resulting file will be fully Windows Media Player compatible. The problem is that TMPGEnc doesn’t read QuickTime files by default, so you need a plugin. Based on some information found at VCDhelp, download the QTReader plugin for TMPGEnc Just unzip the file and stick it in your TMPGEnc directory and you can now select .MOV files from your Browse dialogs.

TMPGEnc has a TON of settings to tweak, so the scope of TMPGEnc goes far beyond this tip, so please go to VCDhelp for help with TMPGEnc.

Oh, and if you really want to go all the way, you can burn the resulting MPG file to a CD-R in VCD format using something like NERO and view your video on your TV using a VCD-compatible DVD player! It will probably look like crap, but it does work!!!

Happy viewing!

Update:

It looks like QuickTime version 6.x plays .MQV files, but Sony ships v5.x with the Clie.

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How do you copy files from your Memory Stick to your PC? Use the MSImport program! It’s included free with the NX70V and it can save your butt if you are away from your PC!

You must first install the Memory Stick Export program found on your Installation CD. Click on “Clie Utilities > Memory Stick Export” and follow the prompts. You may be asked to reboot–do it.

Now, when you put your NX in the cradle and execute the MSImport program on the Clie, your PC detects the Memory Stick as a removable hard drive and maps it to the next available drive letter. (I’m using Windows XP Pro, and this happens automatically.)

You just open up an Explorer window and navigate through the directory structure. You can copy, move, and delete files. You can add and delete directories. Pretty cool! Note: Be very careful when deleting! You could really screw things up if you don’t know what you are deleting!

It’s simple and fast!

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