Tag Archive: import

May 13

Gmail Beta: First Impressions

Categories:

Gmail Tips, Gmail Tips - The Complete Collection

by Jim

May 13, 2004

The other day, I received an “invitation” to beta test Google’s new “Gmail” email service. After having tried and used literally dozens of web-based email services over the years, I decided to see what the buzz was all about, so I followed the Invitation instructions, and within a couple minutes, I had a new Google Gmail account. After working with this account for several days, I have discovered some things that I like about it as well as some things that I don’t. Read on for the lowdown…

First off, please note that this article is based on the pre-release beta of Gmail, so presumably, the public release will have additions, changes, and improvements. Also, I am using Internet Explorer to test this. Gmail supports most of the popular browsers, and even a few obscure ones, so if you use an alternate browser, be aware that your mileage may vary.

Webmail

While Web-based email is nothing new, Gmail introduces some new and unique concepts. Managing email has become very easy while at the same time having powerful tools to find and review information. I have used quite a number of email clients and web-based email accounts over the years. I have tried email accounts at Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Onebox, ZipLip, FastMail, AOL, WebBox, and literally dozens more. Some are good, some are better, and some are plain junk. All the while, I have kept a “vanity” email account with NetIdentity (who uses “SecurePath” technology), and though I do pay for their account, their web-based email interface is very simplistic and the space is limited. So I continually look for “better” solutions.

But why use Webmail when I have a good client in Outlook? To me, a personal web-based email account is essential because I do not always have access to my home PC. Sure clients like Outlook are great, but if you can’t access your PC, you simply can’t easily access your email. Gmail on one hand is just another free email service, it really has the potential to become the next “killer app”, because it has some innovations not found elsewhere. Gmail does, however, need some polishing in a number of areas before it’s really “ready for primetime”.

I’m going to first walk you through some of the “features” that make up Gmail. Some are typical, and some are unique. Then I’ll detail some suggestions that, in my opinion, would make the service significantly better.

Advertising

Let’s start off with the “tough” issue first: Advertising. This is probably the single most controversial aspect of Gmail. Opponents have said that Google’s approach to inserting ads based on message content is a huge privacy breach. So much so that some legislators have proposed legislation to prevent Gmail from implementing this at all. OK, people, sit back and listen very closely as I step up onto my soapbox and explain “the truth”…

Gmail does not “read” your email. Gmail does not breach your privacy. Gmail does not care about your message content. All Gmail is doing is running your message through a “processor” that looks for ad-related keywords so that it can display unobtrusive targeted ads. Gmail’s process of scanning your messages is technically no more intrusive than EVERY service like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and EVERY email service that offers virus scanning and spam protection. ALL of these services “scan” every word, every character, every phrase in your emails to determine if there is a virus present or if the message might be spam. Gmail’s processing simply differs in that instead of matching message text against virus or spam pattens, it is matching against ad-related keyword lists. This is done at the session-level, so no data is retained.

Google has been extremely open and forthcoming about its privacy policy and process. The real issue is that for the first time, the general public is finally beginning to understand a concept that has been used and upon which they have been depending for years. Could this process be abused? Yes, it could, but so could ANY message scanning process. It really comes down to if you have faith in the integrity of the company. Google has a proven track record, and they would be committing corporate suicide if they were to breach that record. Yes, it could happen, but if you are really that paranoid about Gmail’s processes, I suggest you not open a Gmail acocunt and look elsewhere.

Another important point about Gmail’s ads is that they are VERY unobtrusive. They are much like the “Sponsored ads” you see on the right of a Google Search results screen. In fact, they don’t even show up on every email message that you read, and so far, that’s the only place you see the ads: when reading messages. They don’t appear in any other screen. Gmail’s ads are FAR less annoying than the flashy lights and huge billboards that services like Yahoo Mail and Hotmail use. And, given that the ads are intended to be targeted based on message content, you shouldn’t see inapropriate or unrelated ads.

OK, I’ll step down off of my soapbox now. Let’s move on to the details of Gmail…

Logging In

Logging in is typical of webmail services. The login screen is clean and simply requires you to enter your username and password. Here is what the Login screen looks like:

Inbox

Once you successfully login, you are presented with your Inbox. Once again, it is pretty typical looking:

Messages are listed in a typical way, displaying the sender, subject, the first few words of the message body, and the date. Personally, I would like to see the message size included, but I can live without it. The checkbox lets you select individual messages on which to perform specific actions. The “star” lets you “flag” particular messages (more on this later.)

On the left are links that let you compose a message, and select different standard message groups (like Inbox, Sent mail, etc.) Again, it’s one of the quick ways to find a specific message. Under the message groups is the “Labels” selector which I’ll explain later.

Finally, there are links to all the other functions which I’ll describe below.

Reading Messages

When you click on a message in the Inbox, the message opens for you to read or taks action. Here is what the message screen looks like:

Note a couple things: First, no external graphics are displayed. By default, Gmail disables displaying externally referenced graphics. The reason is that many spam messages contain externally referenced graphics. When they are displayed, the email sender can use this to track that you opened the message thus validating your email address for future spam. Clicking on the “Display External Images” link will display the images if you want. Here’s an example of the above message with external images turned on:

You can reply to or forward a message by simply clicking on the appropriate link. This is standard functionality with one glaring problem: If the original email is HTML or Rich Text formatted, Gmail will strip out ALL formatting including links, fonts, and images. ie: you can only reply in plain text. To me, this is a HUGE problem because it means that a nice, formatted message gets “altered”. My complaint is that if this is supposed to be marketed to the masses, they have grown to expect to be able to simply forward on what they received and expect it to arrive at its destination intact. I don’t think this is an unreasonable request. In Gmail’s defense, their support emails do say that they are planning on adding an HTML editor, so presumably, this may be resolved, but as of this beta, it isn’t. Note that this is NOT exclusive to Gmail. Some other Webmail services do the same thing, but it’s rare.

Starring a message

When you “star” a message, you can later click on the “Starred” link on the left of the Inbox screen and Gmail will display all messages that have been “starred”. Your specific reason for “starring” a message is purely personal. It simply gives you yet another way to “group” messages.

Composing a Message

Composing a new email in Gmail is simple. At beta, it is a simple, plain text editor. Gmail support says they are planning on adding an HTML editor.

Here is what the Compose Messagescreen looks like:

You enter the email address, the subject, and the message body and click “Send”. Pretty normal stuff. One nice feature is that if you have contacts set up, as you type the contact’s name, a quick menu of contacts containing the letters you typed comes up. You can select one of the addresses quickly and simply. Very nice. There’s also an integrated spelling checker. You can also attach files.

Contacts

Here is what the Contacts screen looks like:

Underwhelming, isn’t it? Simply put, it’s a contact list and nothing more. You maintain names, addresses, and a short note for the name. No phone entries, no addresses, bo birthdays, just names and email addresses. Streamlined to say the least. At present, there is no facility to import or export the contacts list, but Gmail support says that they are planning on adding it.

Some may view this as a weakness, bu don’t forget that this isn’t a corporate groupware product, this is a free webmail service.

Archiving

One of the first concepts that you have to get used to with Gmail is that of “Archiving”. The overall power of Gmail is in its message management, searching and archival capabilities. In order to really leverage this, you need to get past the “I have to delete everything because I don’t have enough storage space” mindset. With 1GB of storage, the average email user will have enough storage space to hold several years worth of emails. Yes, there will always be emails that you simply don’t want to keep. Don’t fret, despite some speculation, you can always delete any message you want. You aren’t required to retain every email you ever received or sent.

OK, so what’s Archiving? Archiving a message simply tells Gmail to remove the message from your Inbox screen and keep it in your “All Mail” screen. Simple enough, but what does this mean? When you receive an email, it first goes into your inbox. You can read it, reply to it, forward it, etc. You can apply a label to it (more on labels later), you can trash it, or you can report it as Spam. Pretty typical functions. All emails will remain in your inbox until you specifically “Archive” them. Archiving simply removes the message from your inbox screen.

But what happens to it? Don’t worry, all messages are always accessible through the “All Mail” screen. Archiving simply cleans up your inbox. Once a message has been archived, should you ever want to, you can easily move it back to the inbox, but there really isn’t a need for that.

Labels

The next concept that you have to wrap your mind around is that of the “Label”. A Label is a way of classifying an email. It’s similar to “folders” but it goes much farther: You can optionally assign a user-definable Label to any email. Then, when you click on a specific label in the label list on the left of the screen, Gmail displays only those emails under that label. Sounds a lot like folders, right?

The power of Labels shows in being able to assign multiple labels to an email. When you organize emails in folders, an email can reside in only one folder at a time. Say you have one folder called “Family” and another called “Jokes”. Your brother sends you a joke email, so where do you put it–the Family folder or the Jokes folder? Gmail’s Labels let you assign multiple labels to each email, so you could label your brother’s joke email with both “Family” AND “Jokes” labels. Now, when you click the “Family” label in the label list, you see your brother’s email along with all the other emails from family members. Likewise, when you click on the “Jokes” label, you also see your brother’s joke email along with all of your other joke emails. At first, this may not seem too exciting, but after a while, you will see how this could be very powerful, especially with large numbers of accumulated emails.

Here is an example of the Labels screen:

I actually like labels, and I know I’ll miss it in my other email account screens.

Searching

Searching is one of Gmail’s unique features and strengths. Every email you have sent or received (that you have not sent to Trash) is searchable from the Search screen. Here is what the Search screen looks like:

As you can see, you can search on text in various fields. The fields aren’t exclusive either–you can enter search text int multiple fields to narrow down the searches. In its current iteration, it seems pretty solid and useful. In fact, now that I’ve had a taste of Gmail’s searching capabilities, I sorely miss it on my other email accounts. This should become standard fare on every webmail service.

The only thing I don’t like about Gmail’s implementation is that it doesn’t provide for partial word searches. For example, if I want to find the email that had the City “Spokane” in it, but I don’t know how to spell Spokane, I’m out of luck. I cannot enter “Spo” or “Spo*” or “*kane”. Not a big issue, but some will complain.

Filters

Filtering is another useful feature. Filters are similar to Outlook’s Rules. First you set up certain criteria similar to the Search function:

Then, you assign an action:

It’s not fancy, but it is very useful to auto-label and archive certain emails. I read somewhere that you are limited to 20 filters. This may prove problematic for some.

Suggestions

Now that I have shown you what Gmail can do, here is a list of some suggestions that I feel will significantly improve the service. I forwarded this list to Gmail’s “Feedback” page, so hopefully, they will consider some of them.

  1. Fix the “Forward” function to forward the message UNALTERED. This may seem like an odd suggestion, but currently, if a message is in HTML or Rich Text format, Gmail strips all formatting, links, and images resulting in a simple, plain text message. Messages need to be retained as-is for a number of reasons. Maybe, this could be an option, but by default, ALL messages should be handled unaltered.
  2. Add “Report as Spam” button to same line as the “Archive”, “More Actions”, “Refresh” line. Yes, I could click on the “More Actions” dropdown and select it from the list, but I would rather have an easy-to-find button.
  3. Replace the “Compose Email” and “Refresh” links with buttons for consistency. Just a cosmetic thing. If you are going to utilize buttons for some functions, be consistent across the interface.
  4. Add an “Import ” function to bring emails into Gmail. Say that I have a lot of emails residing on another email account that I would like to have “transferred” to Gmail. Yes, I could “Forward” them all, but then they would appear to be “From” me. Instead, I would like to be able to “export” the emails from my current acount in .eml format, and then “import” them into Gmail seamlessly. Gmail should recognize them as “new” emails and apply all defined Filters.
  5. Add an “Export” function to be able to copy emails out of Gmail providing users the ability to have “offline” storage and access. Yes, I could “Forward’ them to another account, but it would be nice to have an online function that saved them all to .eml files and Zipped them all up for easy download.
  6. Integrate the Search funciton into the above suggested Export function to allow selective exporting.
  7. Add an “External Email” function to be able to pull in emails from other POP and IMAP accounts instead of having to forward those accounts to Gmail.
  8. Allow for partial word searches.
  9. Add “Import” and “Export” functions to Contacts. Managing hundreds of Contacts, requires this.
  10. Add capability to “Label” Contacts (defined separately from the Message “labels”.) Currently, contacts are simply a list. Being able to apply labels to Contacts would let us better view and manage them. Then, we could select just a Contact label for emailing and it should sent to all contacts with that label–kind of like a mailing list.
  11. Have “Filters” optionally apply to ALL emails instead of just those selected or just new emails. Once we have hundreds or thousands of emails, being able to globally process emails may become essential.
  12. Add an “Advanced Settings” option to allow “power users” to “tweak” more options such as edit box dimensions, screen colors, etc.
  13. On the Settings screen, the entry “Maximum page size: Show XX conversations per page” has values of 25, 50, and 100. Add “20″ to the list. This is large enough to show a good number of conversations, but small enough to prevent the user from having to grab the mouse to scroll down the page on a typical 1024×768 Windows XP screen.
  14. Integrate Gmail notification into the Google Toolbar that would display the number of new messages in my Gmail Inbox. Clicking the button would then either launch the Gmail login screen, or if I could set my username and/or password in Toolbar “Settings”, take me directly to my Gmail Inbox.
  15. Provide an HTML editor to compose messages.
  16. Allow Labels to be “nested” or “grouped” to allow for more granular labeling.
  17. Optionally show a Size column in the Inbox listing and while reading a message. This should be togglable through Settings.

Final Thoughts

Gmail is at the same time unique and simple. It has some excellent features that are truely innovative, but at the same time, there isn’t a lot of “depth” to many of the features. Unlike many popular webmail services, there is no caledering, no email list management, no extended contact information, and there are some pending functionality issues, but as a beta, it certainly has some teeth to it. Gmail’s interface is very fast, primarily because it is NOT cluttered with the marketing glitz and images that clutter so many other webmail services.

If Gmail was generally available in its current state, I wouldn’t recommend it for primetime, particularly for the “forwarding problam”. But given that this is beta, Google seems to be responsive, and Google has always provided solid tools, I’ll venture a guess that the final release will be an excellent service.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-beta-first-impressions

Aug 12

Tip #21-WonderSilk Skins Installation and Startup

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

August 12, 2003

Using WonderSilk Skins requires a specific, but simple process of Download, Install, Assign, Activate, and use. The following steps will walk you through the process.

1. Download and install the two main WonderSilk components onto your PDA:
WonderSilk.prc, the Silk Plug-in
Kinumaru_E.prc, the skin manager app.

These can be found in the WonderSilk distribution found either here at the official (Japanese) WonderSilk site or here where I keep a backup on my site. (Note: my site may not have the latest version, so always check the official site first!)

2. Download and unzip a skin file.
Some WonderSilk Skins can be found here at the official (Japanese) WonderSilk site, the “files” section of ClieSource, or my site WonderSilkSkins.com. There may be other sources, so ask around.

3. Install the skin file
If the skin file is a .prc or .pdb file, you can install it as you would install any normal PalmOS app or database by using the standard Palm Install tool.

If the skin file is a .wsb file, you must copy the .wsb file from your PC into the /PALM/PROGRAMS/wondersilk directory of your Memory Stick using the MSImport program. Next, you must import the .wsb skin file using the Kinumaru application. Open Kinumaru, open the menu, select “Skin Import…”, check the checkbox of any skins you want to import, and then tap the Import button. This will create a .pdb file in internal memory on your PDA.

4. Assign the skin
In the Kinumaru screen, highlight any skin that you either installed or imported and tap the “Assign” button. This will make the selected skin the one “assigned” to WonderSilk.

5. Activate the skin
Now the fun part. You have imported or loaded a skin and assigned it, so you now want to actually use it. Tap on the Silk Plug-in manager icon. This is the icon fourth from the left next to the Find icon. By default, “StandardInput” us highlighted. Select WonderSilk and tap OK.

Your Virtual Graffiti area now displays the WonderSilk Skin that you assigned.

To get back to the standard Virtual Graffiti, just tap the Silk Plug-in manager icon and select StandardInput.

For information on specific WonderSilk usage, please refer the included documentation, check out the ClieSource Forums, or see my article “Tip #18-WonderSilk Skins: Those Elusive Buttons” at JimsTips.com.

As always, all my information is free, but if you like what you see and would like to help support JimsTips.com, please click on the “Donate” button. Your financial support, no matter how large or small, helps keep this site alive and kicking.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-21-wondersilk-skins-installation-and-startup

Aug 11

ReplayTV Tip #1-ReplayTV to DVD HOWTO

Categories:

ReplayTV Tips

by Jim

August 11, 2003

If you own a ReplayTV 5000 series PVR, learn how to archive your shows to DVD. Follow these steps to transfer shows from your ReplayTV box to your PC, edit out unwanted content, and burn the "final cut" to DVD for viewing on any standalone DVD player!

ReplayTV to DVD HOWTO:

A step-by-step Guide to Archiving ReplayTV 5000 Shows to DVD

By Jim Barr

Introduction

This is a step-by-step "HOWTO" guide describing how to archive to DVD a show that was recorded on a ReplayTV 5000 series PVR. It was compiled from my trial-and-error experience along with the excellent tips and help from a number of other dedicated ReplayTV users.

The PVR I am using is a ReplayTV model 5040, but these instructions should work on any network-connected ReplayTV 5000 series model. These steps will probably also work with any network-connected 4000 series box, but I do not have one, so I cannot test this.

By the end of this article, you should hopefully understand the concepts required to record a show, transfer it to a PC, edit out any unwanted content, save the "final cut" to a file, and burn that file to a DVD for playback on any standalone DVD player. For more specific details, please refer to the credits at the end for more resources and information.

One other note before we get started: I do recommend specific software tools in this process. There are other tools available that cost more or less, and there are other "procedures" for handling ReplayTV files, but the steps I detail below are proven to work well, work quickly, and they produce excellent results for not a lot of money. If you want to investigate other processes or tools, by all means, browse and search through the ReplayTV section of the AVS Forum. There you will find a wealth of diverse information.

Step 1 – The Stuff You Need

Before we can get into the specific steps, you first need some specific components and tools to do the job. I’m not going to cover specifics such as how to set up your ReplayTV box or how to configure a home network. Those topics are way beyond the scope of this article. Here is a list of required hardware and software components:

Hardware:

  1. Windows-based PC running Windows 2000 or Windows XP (Home or Pro). I use Windows XP Pro with great success. You may have luck with Windows 98 systems, but Windows 2000 and XP systems are far more stable and the NTFS file system easily handles the large video file sizes. The faster the processor the better. Some have reported success with 500MHz machines, but I recommend as fast as you can afford. And, like speed, lots of Memory and lots Hard Disk space are essential. Remember, we are dealing with very large video files, so don’t skimp on your PC. And, if you ever want to "go beyond" just archiving ReplayTV files to DVD and do more extensive video editing and rendering, again, the faster the better.
  2. Local Area Network (LAN). A home network is essential because you need to be able to connect your ReplayTV box to your PC. Like everything else, the faster the better. The ReplayTV box has a 10/100 Ethernet adapter. While a wireless LAN will work if properly configured, a wired connection will give you the fastest transfer speeds. Expect transfer speeds to range between about 3/4 real time to 3 times real time or more depending on your connection. In other words, if you want to transfer a 1 hour show, depending on your LAN configuration, you could transfer the show in as fast as 45 minutes or as long as several hours. Remember, we’re moving a lot of data here–an hour long program is about 2GB in size.
  3. ReplayTV box. The ReplayTV 4000 and 5000 series models are the only models that are networkable. Prior models are not. This HOWTO should work with 4000 series boxes, but I have only tested it on my model 5040.
  4. DVD Burner. Buy an internal or buy an external–the choice is yours. I chose an external FireWire Sony DVD burner because it burns almost every format, the firmware is easily upgradable, I had a free FireWire port, and at the time, the price wasn’t too bad. A DVD burner can also typically serve as a CD-R/RW burner, so you if you simply replace your internal CD-ROM with an internal DVD burner, your overall PC footprint won’t change.

Software:

  1. ReplayTV to PC Transfer Software. In order to process your recordings, you have to move them from your ReplayTV box to your PC. There are several options, but two stand out above the rest: WinReplayPC and DVArchive. I’ll explain these in more detail later, but suffice it to say, these are the best, most reliable, and most effective ways to transfer your recordings. And, they’re free!
  2. "Womble" MPEG-2 Video Editing software. This will set you back about $100.00, but it’s the only consistently reliable MPEG-2 editor that easily and effectively handles ReplayTV MPEG-2 files. (I’ll explain this in more detail later.) There are some freeware editors, but my experience is that Womble simply works, and works reliably.
  3. Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 (DMF2). This is a very feature-rich consumer-grade DVD authoring application. It’s inexpensive (about $50.00) and has no problem handling Womble-saved ReplayTV MPEG-2 files. I have tried a number of other DVD authoring apps, and I found that DMF2 will go from MPEG-2 file to completed DVD with very minimal effort and no errors. You can also burn directly to DVD, only create the VIDEO_TS file set, or both.
  4. (Optional) Nero Burning ROM. Nero is a rock-solid, top-notch burning suite that handles VIDEO_TS file sets excellently. If you don’t want to burn directly from DMF2, Nero is your answer. There are other great DVD burning options on the market, but I chose Nero because it simply works well.

That’s it! OK, it is a lot to assemble, a lot to learn, and a lot to coordinate, but once set up, the steps to go from ReplayTV to DVD flow very nicely.

One side note: I decided to build my system up from scratch to be a video editing system. I am running Windows XP Pro on a Cybertron PC purchased from Tiger Direct (I purchased it without an OS and installed WinXP Pro myself.) It has a Pentium 4 processor running at 3.06GHz with 512MB RAM, an NVIDIA graphics card, an internal CD-RW drive, two internal 80GB hard drives, two external FireWire 80GB drives, and en external FireWire Sony DVD Burner. Your options obviously are many, and for ReplayTV to DVD work, you definitely don’t need a high-end system, but I have other video projects that I am working on, so I went with the best that I could afford at the time.

Now that you have gathered, assembled, and learned to use all the required components, let’s continue with archiving a ReplayTV recording to a DVD:

Step 2 – Record a Show

The next step is to record your show. While this may be obvious, it’s not WHAT you record, but HOW it’s recorded. Make sure to record your show at Medium Quality. A Medium Quality recording on a ReplayTV 5000 series PVR is surprisingly good looking. While opinions vary greatly on this, and while a show recorded at Medium Quality is admittedly not quite as good as one recorded at High Quality, a Medium Quality recording has four specific attributes that make it ideal for burning to DVD:

  1. The audio and video are already DVD-compliant so given the proper authoring tools, there is no re-rendering required. This significantly speeds up the process. Medium Quality recordings are MPEG-2 files recorded at a resolution of 720×480 (D1) with a bitrate of 7Mbps VBR. Audio is recorded at a bitrate of 192 kbps with a sampling rate of 48000 Hz.
  2. Because a Medium Quality Recording’s bitrate is lower than that of a High Quality recording, the file size is small enough to allow you fit close to three hours of content on a single DVD without re-rendering. This is more than enough space for most programs. This will allow for most full-length movies and up to six 1/2 hour "network" shows with commercials edited out.
  3. Related to this, because the file sizes are smaller, transfer times from the ReplayTV box to your PC are much shorter.
  4. Unlike earlier ReplayTV models, The 5000 series records all audio at the same quality at all video recording qualities. For example, if you are recording a concert, your video quality at Medium Quality may not be as high as it could be at High Quality, but the audio will always be the best it can be.

Many prefer High Quality, but for me, Medium Quality is an excellent compromise of picture quality and file size, and it requires very minimal "pre-processing" in the ReplayTV-to-DVD process.

One very important goal in this entire ReplayTV-to-DVD process is to eliminate any video re-rendering steps. Simply put, re-rendering just takes forever, and it can sometimes affect the quality of the final product. Eliminating the re-rendering step significantly reduces the overall end-to-end process from many hours to just minutes. Further, how you see it on your ReplayTV box is how it will look when played on your DVD player because the original picture quality is retained.

You can set the recording quality to Medium Quality selectivly on a recording-by-recording basis or you can go into the ReplayTV’s Setup Menu and set Medium Quality as your system default. In any case, you can always change the recording quality for each recording as desired. Also, and this may seem obvious, but once a show is recorded, you cannot change its recording quality, so prior planning can save you lots of time later.

Step 3 – Transfer the Show from your ReplayTV box to your PC

Once your show is recorded, you next have to copy the show from your ReplayTV box to your PC. Because the 4000 and 5000 series boxes are networkable, transferring the show is quite easy given the proper tools. As I stated above, there are several apps out there to transfer shows from your ReplayTV box to your PC, but I recommend one of the following two: DVArchive and WinReplayPC. Both are excellent for transferring shows to your PC. Your decision really hinges on your ultimate intent.


WinReplayPC is designed to do one thing–transfer programs–and it does it well. Its interface is clean and very easy to figure out, and setup is a snap.

If you have multiple ReplayTV 5000 boxes, you can select from which box to transfer. You can also "queue up" multiple shows for transfer. WinReplayPC runs on most flavors of Windows and can be found here.


DVArchive transfers shows, but that’s just the beginning. DVArchive literally turns your PC into a "ReplayTV server" allowing you to stream shows back and forth among multiple ReplayTV boxes on your home network. To other ReplayTV boxes, DVArchive looks like just another ReplayTV box, so standard show streaming is available. DVArchive is a bit more complex to set up, but the resulting setup is stellar. The end result, like WinReplayPC, is that you can easily transfer shows to your PC. DVArchive is written in Java and can be run under many OS’s including Windows, Linux, and MacOS (I think) and requires you to install a Java runtime. DVArchive can be found here

Both program authors are very responsive, and know more than I ever will about the ReplayTV boxes. These programs are very stable, well engineered, fun to work with, and best of all, free. But don’t let the price fool you. These programs are better and more professional than many commercial apps.

Regardless of which program you choose, the goal is to get a show copied from your ReplayTV box to your PC. The actual functionality of each is beyond the scope of this article, so I’ll just say that each program connects to the ReplayTV box over your home network, presents you with a listing of what shows have been recorded on the ReplayTV box, and lets you choose which shows to transfer. You can choose to transfer single or multiple shows. The end result is that after a while (it could be minutes or hours depending on your network setup and the length and quality of the show) a copy of the recording will reside as a .MPG file on your PC.

Note: DVArchive is also an excellent program for streaming video BACK to a ReplayTV box once it has been transferred to your PC. Just be aware that if you change any of the MPEG files that you have transferred, you cannot typically stream them back to a ReplayTV box. In other words, if you transfer your favorite episode of Friends and cut out the commercials, don’t expect to simply stream the cut version back to your ReplayTV box. There are improving methods to do this, but they are beyond the scope of this article. Check out the ReplayTV section of the AVS Forum for info on this.

Quick tip: Transfer your shows when the ReplayTV box is not being used or not scheduled to record anything. Also, turn off the ReplayTV box during the transfer. While these steps aren’t necessary, they can significantly improve the transfer speed and reduce the chances for "lockups" or "freezes". You can use your ReplayTV box while it is transferring, but it is more prone to freezes, and you will definitely notice significant delays in system response.

Step 4 – Edit the show and create a "Final cut" file using Womble

OK, you transferred a show from your ReplayTV box to your PC. The file you transferred is a DVD-compliant MPEG-2 file, but unfortunately, the file most likely has two problems: technical and cosmetic.

  • Technically, ReplayTV’s MPEG encoding, though DVD-compliant at Medium Quality, often introduces errors that can wreak havoc on most DVD authoring programs (including DMF2.) Typically, the file contains PTS (Presentation Time Stamps) errors, and sometimes GOP (Group Of Pictures) errors. So, the .MPG file needs to be "cleaned up" somehow so your authoring program can import it. These errors are notorious for throwing your audio and video out of sync.
  • Cosmetically, some changes will need to be made: If it’s a movie, it probably has leading and trailing content that you could care less about. If it’s a network show, it probably has commercials or other content which you probably want to eliminate. (Unless, of course, it’s the Super Bowl, and then you want to remove all that erroneous football stuff and keep just the commercials!)

Enter Womble.

Womble, or MPEG2VCR, is an MPEG-2 file editor that lets you easily edit .MPG files with frame-accurate precision. With this app, you can copy out selected parts or clips of a of a video and re-paste them back into a new file to create your desired "final cut". A very important "side effect" of editing a ReplayTV recording with Womble is that when you finally save the file, Womble automatically "cleans up" any PTS or GOP errors so that the resulting file can be easily imported into most DVD Authoring tools. Here are the steps required to edit a ReplayTV file recorded at Medium Quality into a "final cut" file:

Edit the Video


The method I use to edit a file is a "copy" and "reverse-paste" method to select clips and build my final cut file. There are two methods for removing content: "Cutting" and "Copying". Intuitively, you might think that you would simply mark-in the beginning of the section you want to remove and mark out the end of the section you want to remove and then just click on "Cut". While this does work, for some reason, it’s not always reliable. Specifically, the resulting final cut sometimes has out-of-sync video and audio. The best method, as detailed in many posts on the ReplayTV section of the AVS Forum and at Rich’s site, is to mark-in and mark-out the first section that you want to save and click on "Copy". This copies the saved section to Womble’s clipboard. Mark-in and mark-out the next section that you want to save, click on "Copy", and continue until you have copied all the sections you want to save to the clipboard.

You now have a clipboard with all your saved clips. Close the original file.

Note: At this point, Womble hasn’t actually "saved" anything or altered any files. It has just "remembered" the mark-in and mark-out points that you defined for each clip.

Build Your Final Cut


Now, you have to assemble the clips into your final cut. Here’s where my method diverges from the other methods: Drag the last copied clip to the workspace. (Yes, that was the last copied clip. I’ll explain why in a moment.) This opens a new video edit window with the "scrubber" positioned at the beginning of the last clip. next, drag the next-to-last clip onto the open edit window. A "Transition" dialog will open letting you choose what kind of transition you want between clips. For now, just click on "OK" to accept the default–you can play with these later. The clip you just dragged will be inserted before the last clip. Your pointer should now be positioned at the beginning of the clip you just dragged. Continue dragging and dropping the clips in reverse order until you finish with the first clip.

Save Your Work


You now have your final cut, so let’s save it. Make sure that the mark-in pointer is at the beginning of the file and the mark-out pointer is positioned at the end. Click on the "Save" icon, choose a filename, and click the "Save" button. Be sure not to change any of the default settings, especially, the Video settings, because if you do, Womble will re-render the video. Remember what I said about re-rendering? After several minutes a new video window will open allowing you to play your final cut. I recommend that at this point, you scrub through the video, especially near the end, to verify two things: 1. that the clips are in the proper order, and 2. that the video and audio are in sync. If you notice any problems, just go back and repeat the process.

An Explanation

OK, now to explain the reason why I paste the clips in reverse order: Specifically, I have had problems with "extra" frames being inserted when you start with the first clip. Pasting clips in "normal" order also takes more steps. For example, after I paste the first clip, I am positioned at the beginning of that clip, so I must manually move the scrubber to the end of the first clip and then paste in the second clip. I am now positioned at the beginning of the second clip, so I must then move to the end of the second clip. The problem that I encounter is that for some reason, the last frame of the first clip seems to be duplicated at the end of the second clip, so when you are positioned at the end of the video, you have to step one frame forward to be at the "actual" end of the next clip. Pasting successive clips requires you to move to the end, and step forward until you are at the actual end of the pasted clip. When you finally save the final cut, you have to ensure that the mark-in pointer is at the beginning and the mark-out pointer is at the actual end of the last clip to avoid saving the duplicated frames. Sound confusing? Well, it is. Give it a try and see for yourself.

So, pasting in reverse order saves you steps and the video ends up being "cleaner". The process is now: paste last clip, paste next-to-last clip, etc. continuing to the first clip. It’s simple and effective

About Womble’s GOP Fixer

You may have read about Womble’s PTS/GOP Fixer utility. If not, read up on it. It can be very useful. When recordings are made at High Quality, you MUST run them through the GOP Fixer utility to fix the GOP errors. In contrast, my experience has shown that Medium Quality recordings do not have any GOP errors, so this step is unnecessary. They DO have PTS errors, but I’ll get to that. Further, when I run files through the GOP fixer, I find that the video and audio almost always end up being out of sync. Lengthy discussions on the AVS Forum have shown that this really is a Windows system problem, not a Womble problem, and it varies from system to system. So far, there seems to be very little information as to what is the "magic recipe" for a "clean" system, but the fact remains that even after clean installs of Windows, some have reported great success and others have not. Because the Medium Quality recordings rarely have GOP errors, there is absolutely no need to run the file through the GOP Fixer utility. In fact, as I stated above, when you "save" your final cut file, Womble automatically fixes any PTS errors! Again, if this seems confusing, it is. You are probably better off just following these steps!

Handling Long Video Clips

Here’s an important tip for long video clips over 1 hour (like movies): Typically, when editing movies, you just want to remove the leading and trailing stuff. There are no commercials, just one long video that is the movie. Some systems (as related to the problem described above) save the file successfully, but the file still ends up having out-of-sync audio and video. Your best bet to correct this is to edit your long movie using the same process detailed above to copy out "chunks" of the movie that are, say, 30 minutes in length. Then, paste these chunks back together as detailed above, and save the file. Womble will save a clean file with the audio and video in perfect sync. It turns out that the out-of-sync problem is a "progressive" one–it gets worse and worse the longer the clip is. The problem does exist with shorter (under 1 hour) clips, but the out-of-sync condition is so small that it really isn’t perceptible. Over a longer movie, the out-of-sync is more noticeable, especially near the end–so much so that it can be very distracting and annoying. Again, like the problem detailed above, some systems do not have this problem, but for those that do, copying and pasting "chunks" is a great workaround that yields excellent results.

As I stated above There are some free MPEG-2 editors apps available, and though they do work to varying degrees, Womble is hands-down, the best solution.

Step 5 – Author and burn the DVD using Ulead Movie Factory 2

You have transferred the show, edited it to your liking, now the final step is to author and burn the video to a DVD. For this, I recommend the Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 (DMF2) program. There are other solutions, but DMF2 is inexpensive, it imports ReplayTV .MPG files very well, menu creation is a snap, the final results are excellent, and all disks I have burned with DMF2 have played successfully on my PC and on RCA, Sony, and Panasonic standalone DVD players. Again, speed and reliability are the keys in this process.

A Digression

Why is speed so important? Let’s face it: Time is money. OK, maybe that’s a bit strong, but do you really want to be spending hours and hours and hours just to be able to save a 22 minute network show? Maybe you do, but my point behind these steps is that by streamlining and speeding up the process of converting a "raw" ReplayTV file to a watchable DVD now takes me minutes as opposed to hours. End-to-end, (not counting the recording, transfer, or burn times, because these are fairly constant) the process is now under 30 minutes for just about every show I have processed. This is down from well over six to ten hours before I followed these steps. OK, back to our regularly scheduled program…

Authoring the DVD


First, open DMF2 and start a new project. Select "Add Video" and browse to and select your final cut .MPG file. If you have more than one file to include on the DVD (like multiple episodes of a sitcom), continue adding the video in the order you want it played.

First Play


Depending on your preference, you can set one of the videos as the "First Play" video or not. If you set a video as "First Play", when you insert the DVD, it will automatically play that video. If you don’t, when you insert the DVD, it automatically goes to the menu. This is purely your preference, but my recommendation is whatever you choose, keep it consistent. If you are burning multiple short shows, (say 1/2 hour or 1 hour programs where you have cut out commercials) each video will show up as a separate menu item. One long show (like a movie) will display only one menu item.

Define Chapters


If you choose, you can set up "chapters" for each video, but that’s your preference. DMF2 lets you define chapters at any point you want. You simply move through the video and stop where you want the chapter to be marked, and then click on Insert Chapter. Simple as that. If you are burning a movie, I recommend that you definitely create chapters, otherwise if you want to view a part well into the movie, you will waste tons of time fast-forwarding. Obviously, creating "actual" chapters such as at scene or act changes is very time-consuming and tedious, so I just use DMF2′s "Auto Chapter" creation function and let it automatically create chapters every 10 or 15 minutes. That way, if you need to stop viewing the DVD part way through, you can just use the Chapters to skip forward in blocks of 10 or 15 minutes. While this step is not necessary, but it’s something that I prefer to do.

Preview and Burn


Once you have created your chapters and menus, preview the session and then select "Share" from the top menu bar. From here, select the "Create Disk" choice. At this point, you have two relevant choices: Just create a folder containing the video files or burn a disk. The first option saves your files into a standard VIDEO_TS folder, which you can burn using Nero or some such. The second option will let DMF2 do the burning. While your mileage may vary, I have had excellent success just letting DMF2 do the burning.

==> Insert concluding information here.<==

Resources

ReplayTV to DVD step-by-step checklist:

  • Acquire, assemble, and learn to use the required hardware and software components
  • Record a show at Medium Quality
  • Transfer the show to your PC
  • Create a "Final Cut" .MPG file using Womble:
    • Edit the .mpg file using the "Copy/Paste" method
    • Save the final cut file
  • Author and burn the DVD in Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2
    • Import the final cut .MPG file
    • Create any chapters
    • Define your menus
    • Preview the DVD to verify
    • Create the DVD files
    • Optionally, let Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 burn the disk
    • Optionally, burn the DVD using Nero or your favorite burning tool.
  • Test the DVD on your PC
  • Test your DVD in a Standalone player
  • Enjoy your archived show!

Credits

While I take credit for compiling this information into one place, I definitely can’t take all the credit. The kind folks at the ReplayTV section of the AVS Forum have been invaluable. They are too numerous to name, but if you spend some time there, you will learn to whom I am referring.

I also want to thank…

  • "djdementia", "Slack", and "Patrick" for helping proof this article
  • "Gerry" for writing DVArchive, the ReplayTV server application
  • "Rich" for writing WinReplayPC, the ReplayTV to PC transfer application
  • Womble for creating MPEG2VCR, an MPEG-2 editor that will handle the idiosyncrasies of ReplayTV MEPG files
  • Ulead for developing Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2, a simple, yet effective consumer-grade DVD authoring application
  • Sony for creating the DRX500ULX multi-format external DVD burner that writes in every DVD format, and whose firmware has been continually user-upgradable (Burned at 2x when I bought it, now burns at 4x!)
And finally, the two most important credits go to:

  • My wife for putting up with my never-ending "techno mania"
  • ReplayTV for bringing us the ReplayTV technology that gives users the ability to manage TV programming the way they want to.


I’m Jim Barr, and I frequent the AVS Forum as "jbarr" and my web sites are jim.barr.net and JimsTips.com. I have been using and promoting ReplayTV boxes since early 1999, and ReplayTV has changed the way my wife and I watch TV!


Obligatory Disclaimer:

The information supplied in this article in particular and on JimsTips.com in general is not intended to promote or encourage the illegal copying of copyrighted materials. It is provided solely for educational purposes to assist viewers to archive TV programming as allowable under current "Fair Use" copyright laws. Use of applications like WinReplayPC and DVArchive are not officially supported by ReplayTV, so use them at your own risk. Use of this information is entirely at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any damage, data loss, loss of profit, or any other damage or loss, monetary or otherwise, resulting from these instructions.


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As always, all information on JimsTips.com is free. If you find any of this useful and would like to help support JimsTips.com, please consider contributing any amount by clicking on the "Donate" button on the left of this page. Your contributions help to defray hosting and bandwidth costs. Also, a hearty "Thank you!" to those of you who have donated to help helped keep JimsTips.com up and running!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/replaytv-tips/replaytv-tip-1-replaytv-to-dvd-howto

Apr 16

Tip #19-Convert Movies to your hard drive

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

April 16, 2003

This may be an obvious one, but it had eluded me until recently. Did you know that you can convert movies to a format that the Clie Movie Player can play using the Image Converter program without converting directly to your Memory Stick?

The other night, I decided to try converting some video into a format that the Clie Movie Player could play. (For more information on ripping DVDs, and converting files using Image Converter, please do a search at the ClieSource.com forums.) I followed some instructions and ripped a DVD using the DVDx program. The resulting file was a VCD-compliant MPEG file that was 780MB in size.

The next step was to use the Sony Image Converter program included on the CD that came with my NX. This program converts the MPEG file into a highly compressed QuickTime format that the Clie Movie Player can play.

The problem with this was that I had no way of knowing if this will fit onto my 128MB Memory Stick once converted using the Image Converter program. Every time I did a convert, I typically selected the drive letter assigned to my Clie after initiating an MSImport. But in this case, I didn’t know if the file is going to fit, and it was going to take a long time to convert the 1 1/2 hour movie.

So, all you have to do is just select a different drive number of a hard drive that has enough free space. The kicker is that when you do this, a dialog box pops up stating that the selected drive is not a Memory Stick drive. In the past, I blindly assumed that the conversion HAD to go directly to the Memory Stick, so I always cancelled out. This time, instead, I clicked on OK to continue, and Image Converter automatically created the proper directory structure on my hard drive and built the converted file onto my hard drive! At that point, it was a simple matter of checking the file size in Windows Explorer. (In this case, the file was about 79MB in size, so yes, it would fit on my Memory Stick.) I could also play the file in QuickTime if I chose, and it was a simple matter of transfering the file to my Clie using MSImport. In addition, having the movie on my hard drive lets me archive it so that I can keep a library of movies if I want and load them onto my Clie using MSImport as needed.

The point is that sometimes, the included programs have non-obvious functionality. Is this in the manual? Probably, but who reads those things anyway?!?

As always, all my information is free, but if you like what you see and would like to help support JimsTips.com, please click on the “Donate” button. Your financial support, no matter how large or small, helps keep this site alive and kicking.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-19-convert-movies-to-your-hard-drive

Apr 07

Tip #16-Take it with you!

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

April 7, 2003

My name is Jim Barr and I am a Mobile Information Addict. OK. There. I said it. I am a Mobile Information Junkie, and I’m not ashamed, in fact, I’m excited about it!

The Sony Clie NX70V has given me the ability to have all sorts of information with me at all times. From Dictionaries, to clipped Web Sites, to pictures of family & friends, to multiple translations of the Bible, to maps of my surroundings, my Clie provides the information I need and the information I want. There are a many tools out there to enable carrying mobile information, but I am going to focus on one: HandStory.

HandStory (found at HandStory.com) is an information tool that lets you manage and view various types of information. It manages “Memos”, “DOC” files (the most common Palm ebook format), “eBook” (a handStory proprietary format), Web Clips, and images. Organizing and viewing are done through one simple interface.

HandStory includes two main components: a Desktop component and a Palm component. The Desltop component is where all the fun begins. Copy any text or image to your Windows Clipboard, and then click on the HandStory icon that sits in your System Tray. Up pops a dialog box that lets you name the file, determine where to install it (RAM or Memory Stick), categorize it, and in the case of Images, determine the color depth and size of the image. Clicking “OK” quickly converts the copied text or image into a HandStory file that gets queued up to install the next time you HotSync.

Further, HandStory integrates with Internet Explorer adding “Save to Palm” and “Clip to Palm” to IE’s right-click context menu. “Save to Palm” lets you instantly save pictures or selected text. “Clip to Palm” renders the HTML page you are currently viewing (with graphics, if you choose) to a format that is readable on the Clie. I have been told that there are other offline viewers for the Palm that do a better job of rendering the pages (for example, handStory doesn’t do tables) but for most things, HandStory works well.

To me, the important thing isn’t so much how HandStory works, but that it works. Web Surfing no longer is limited to sitting at a PC. If I see something of interest that I would like to look at later, I just Clip it using HandStory, HotSync, and take it with me. This makes standing in line or waiting at a long train crossing much more interesting. And it’s not limited to Web information. Just about any text or graphic image (.jpg, .bmp, .gif, etc.) can be instantly converted to a format that is fully portable.

To use an annoying TV cliche, “But wait…there’s more!” HandStory offers a “Web Clipping” service similar to AvantGo and the HandStory Desktop component can automatically update Web clips for you daily. For example, I have mine set up to provide the latest weather, news, movie listings, etc. daily. I always have fresh, interesting content to take with me. And you can also create your own web clips to auto-update. Admittedly, not all sites work. Sites that use java or other “funky” programming may not render. HandStory (like almost all other Palm-based offline readers) work best with sites that don’t bombard you with eye-candy. Just about any site that works with AvantGo, Plucker, or iSilo should work just fine with HandStory.

For more discussions on HandStory, check out the forums at ClieSource.com and do a search for “HandStory” or “Web Clip”

The tools are at hand, so why not take it with you?!

Note: I am not affiliated with HandStory other than being a very happy and satisfied customer.

As always, all my information is free, but if you like what you see and would like to help support JimsTips.com, please click on the “Donate” button. Your financial support, no matter how large or small, helps keep this site alive and kicking.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-16-take-it-with-you

Apr 07

Tip #14-Try an Alternate Picture Viewer

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

April 7, 2003

The included Clie Viewer program, while good intentioned, suffers from lethargy. Take more than a handful of pictures with your Clie Camera, and you sit and wait, and wait, and wait for the Clie Viewer to generate thumbnail images. It doesn’t cache these thumbnail images, so the next time you want to view images, you have to wait, and wait, and…

An alternative is to purchase one of the several third-party Imager Viewer apps. One such app is AcidImage from RedMercury.com These third-party viewers add functionality and speed not available to the native Clie Viewer.

For example, AcidImage adds a “file manager” function that lets you choose to view pictures stored anywhere on yout Memory Stick. This is very handy because you can organize your pictures into folders either on-board using a program like ClieFiles or “externally” using MSImport and opening a Windows Explorer window to manage the files on the memory Stick. You can select one, selected, or all photos to view. You can view the thumbnails in various sizes or view a text list of the photos. Very flexible.

Another nice feature is the ability to view “other” image types imported to the Memory Stick using MSImport. The Clie’s camera takes pictures in .jpg format, but AcidImage can display .gif and .bmp, and several other graphic file types. This is especially useful if you want to carry graphical information with you. You are no longer limited to viewing just Photos taken with your Clie, but you can carry with you and view images from just about any source.

For example, say you are Web Surfing and go to MapQuest.com to find a map of a specific place. Once it displays on your PC, just right-click on the image, and (in Internet Explorer) select “Save Picture As…” and save the picture to your PC. Then, use MSImport to load the picture onto your Memory Stick. Viewing the image in AcidImage lets you Zoom, Pan, and Rotate the image quickly.

There’s also a slideshow function that cycles through your images.

Admittedly, one nice thing about the Clie Viewer is that you can use it as a “launching point” to view Photos, Movies, listen to Voice Recordings, etc. but these functions can be easily done by launching the associated apps separatly. This integration is something I would gladly give up to have an image viewer that is quick and simple to use.

A Third-Party image viewer can open the door to many other uses for your Clie!

Note: I am not affiliated in any way with Red Mercury other than being a happy customer.

As always, all my information is free, but if you like what you see and would like to help support JimsTips.com, please click on the “Donate” button. Your financial support, no matter how large or small, helps keep this site alive and kicking.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-14-try-an-alternate-picture-viewer

Dec 26

Tip #10-Renaming Apps in LauncherX

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

December 26, 2002

Want to be more “functional” with LanucherX? Why not rename your apps to something more meaningful!

One way to make launcherX’s “Launcher Experience” more functional is to use LauncherX’s “Rename” Gadget to rename application filenames to something more meaningful. Note that we are NOT actually renaming the app itself, but we are renaming LauncherX’s name for the app. This is very important because it does not disrupt the underlying integrity of the app, it just changes how you, the user, see the app labeled.

Here’s a real-world example: TomeRaider is a nice DOC reader that also reads other specialized formats. One of those specialized documents is the “IMDB – Detail” file. This cool file found at Memoware weighs in at over 15MB, and contains over 30,000 US Movie listings. Anyway, I use HandStory for all of my DOC reading, but I use “TomeRaider” EXCLUSIVLY to acces the “IMDB Detail” file. I don’t use it for anything else, just for that. So, because “TomeRaider” is not really descriptive of its function, I renamed it in LauncherX to “IMDB Lookup”. Now, when my wife or I want to access the IMDB database, there is no confusion as to what app to launch.

Another example is the Clie Remote Control program called “CLIE RMC”. At first glance, I say, “What the heck does that mean?” Why not rename it to “Clie IR Remote”? Makes more sense, and again, there is no confusion to its function.

Here are some more examples of some application filenames I have installed, and the names to which I renamed them in LauncherX. Some are for clarity, and some are for consistency:

“DateBK5″ becomes “Date Book”
“Address” becomes “Addresses”
“CLIE RMC” becomes “CLIE IR Remote”
“ProWord” becomes “Dictionary”
“TomeRaider” becomes “IMDB Lookup”
“TimePlace” becomes “Global Time”
“MyBible” becomes “The Bible”
“Movie Rec” becomes “Movie Recorder”
“Prefs” becomes “Preferences”
etc.

Obviously, not all apps need renaming, and not all apps are so “functionally specific”. My goal was to rename several apps so that they are more “meaningful” and “consistent”.

If you find that you end up with an “elipsis” (…) at the end of a filename, that means that it’s too long to display. There are several ways to fix this: 1. Shorten the name through the Rename Gadget, 2. Go into the tab’s settings, select the “Advanced” page, and change the tab’s font to something smaller. Personally, I have changed ALL fonts in LauncherX to “Small Bold” and find it to be very readable and it looks sharp!, and 3. Go into the tab’s preferences and tweak the tab;s “view” (ie: Icon view vs list view, number of icon columns, etc.)

Oh, and if you can’t remember the original app’s name, just drag the app’s icon the the “Information” gadget and a dialog box will pop up with the app’s actual name. Please note that unfortunatly, this doesn’t always work, so if you REALLY need the ACTUAL name of the app, just exit LauncherX and view the actual filename in the Clie launcher. Simple as that.

LauncherX is VERY customizable, so poke around at the settings and have fun!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-10-renaming-apps-in-launcherx

Nov 26

Tip #9-Exporting MP3 from MusicMatch

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

November 26, 2002

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.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-9-exporting-mp3-from-musicmatch

Nov 22

Tip #8-Digital Camera Adjustments

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

November 22, 2002

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.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-8-digital-camera-adjustments

Nov 11

Tip #3-View NX Movies on Your PC

Categories:

PalmOS PDA Tips

by Jim

November 11, 2002

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.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/palmos-pda-tips/tip-3-view-nx-movies-on-your-pc

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