Yes I can still play piano and sing.. but is it really music? :)

I hadn't played around with Garage Band (or any musical stuff) on the Mac for quite some time. It's all I can do as of late to sit down and play a few songs on the grand piano downstairs.

The other night after a back and forth on Facebook with Gretchen (high school friends, neighbors back in Rose Hill KS) the subject of that old standard "Perfect Country and Western" song came up.. yeah the one by David Allan Coe? In a fit of desperation.. after I got the song stuck in my head, I plugged in the mic to the Tascam US122 interface and layed down this quick vocal Sometimes singing makes it go away for me :)

Now that your ears have recovered that horrible beating.. prepare yourself for what is to come!

A week or so ago, I noticed that one of my followers on Twitter.. (yes I can say that snoopdogg is one of my followers ;-) was doing an online remix contest.

In the past, Trent Reznor of NIN (nine inch) has done these. The *really* cool thing about what Trent does, is that he makes the original digital datasets available in several different forms. These are the raw tracks in Apple Logic, Garage Band, or Avid's ProTools. You pull the whole shebang down and fire up the application and it's as if you were sitting in the recording studio as the console engineer! Pretty neat learning tool, even if you dont produce anything useful. It is also really cool to see what other people come up with. Sometimes the best part is just hearing the other ideas that people/artists have when given the same starting point.


Snoop had released a track on his new disc called 'That Tree' and he posted the individual audio tracks for download.

I'm such the music nerd from my band and keyboard/synth days that I pulled down the .zip file a few weeks ago, figuring that I'd just have the tracks to play around with.. not really time to edit anything useful.

After hooking up the condensor mic and the Tascam XLR/Midi interface to the Mac, I got fired up to dive back into at least Garage Band. It was a newer version that I'd not ran since I installed iLife 08 several months back.

Garage Band (although lots of pro musicians like to poo poo it) is really an amazing program for what it does, and for how easy it is to use. I wish *any* musical instrument mfg. Yamaha, Roland, and the like, would come up with as intuitive of an interface. That is really why I play my keyboards so little these days. I have to scour the manual of my Yamaha Motif ES88 to remember how to do even the simplest thing. The UI's on most synths leave a *lot* to be desired!

Well I missed the memo on the key signature of the song *and* the beats per minute (tempo) so I just took a guess at it.. besides it's RAP.. how hard is that to pitch bend/time shift etc? We'll.. I was slightly off, not too bad I suppose for a few hours of messing around.

See if I improved the original or not? Frankly I dont really like this song that much, and I tried to at least add some intro music/tracks with organ, and a bit of old school funk and I cut several minutes out of it.. just goes on too long IMHO

Check it out.. you can click on the original and my version on the embed. below :)

-tim

ps: That DAC song is still in my head.. and I keep thinking of a twisted.. 'skapunk' reggae version (with appropriate lyrics ;-) look out.. it just might happen!?



I give you the 'ThathonemasterTreeMix' Peace out G's!

---

Must resist...

The urge to buy some of that new Apple hardware. Check this photo out from Appleinsider.com The new LED 24" display parked next to a new MacBook Pro. Niiiice. Makes this orig. 20" Cinema Display and Dual 2.7Ghz G5 PPC system I'm typing this on seem.. uh, well, ancient? :-)

Anonymizing Proxy for OS X « Dress To Survive

Anonymizing Proxy for OS X

Apple - QuickTime - Technologies - MPEG-4

Apple - QuickTime - Technologies - MPEG-4

Still trying to sort out the different encoding settings to get my content over to the Apple TV. The baseline Quicktime export to Apple TV settings kind of suck IMHO, and they're not broken out/documented anywhere so you can tweak and or set them up on your own

Export To AppleTV specs - MacNN Forums

Export To AppleTV specs - MacNN Forums

Ok, I just tried the "Export to AppleTV" command in QuickTime Pro 7.1.5 and here are the specs of the resulting file:

.m4v extension

H.264 video codec, 640 x 480 (that was my source file), 24fps ( my source was 24fps)
AAC audio codec, 44.1kHz stereo

Overall file bitrate is 2.2Mbps

So we're at the low low end of DVD quality on the bit rate. I had no option to adjust any settings, so I have to wonder if MPEGStreamclip or Handbrake may offer an update soon to allow us to tinker with settings when we convert files.

Overall, good effort by Apple on the preset, but it would be nice to adjust the settings to get more bits for video, and par the audio down to something like 32kHz AAC at 96 or 128kbps.

I haven't tried HD video yet, I will tomorrow to see what it spits out.




Ok, I ran an HD test this morning on the Export to AppleTV command in QuickTime Pro.

My source file was a 19 second DVCPRO HD file, 720p, 23.98fps. DVCPRO HD stores files at a resolution of 960x720, and when you play them back, QuickTime Player shapes it at 1248x702 to get the aspect ratio correct.

I ran the exporter, and what I got was a .m4v file. Video was using H.264, at a size of 1248x702, at 23.98fps. Data rate on the video track is 4.85Mbps. Audio was AAC, 44kHz stereo, at 128kbps. That puts the whole file at 4.9Mbps, just under the maximum AppleTV spec data rate of 5Mbps (according to the Apple website)

So it appears that the basic QuickTime exporter does a great job of maximizing available data bandwidth for HD content, when it is given a high quality source such as DVCPRO HD. The resulting video was a bit soft, but most of the detail was there, and I think it would look good on an HD set through the AppleTV.

To update you on the SD test that I did, the video data rate is 2.15Mbps, and the audio was at 128kbps. Not bad, but just at the bottom end of DVD quality. It would be better if the exporter would give standard definition video a higher datarate, such as at least 3.5Mbps, so we could get DVD quality bitrates out of it.

HD results are promising. I'm fairly impressed there.

Let's hope that third parties tie into this exporter, and allow us to up the datarate on video so we can get some better results out of standard definition content.

Overall, I'm fairly impressed.

I was using a G4 MacMini for the exports. I would definitely get an Intel Mini or iMac for all exports. You will have much better export times.

AppleTV Hacker: Mike's Hands on Report: Step By Step How To Rip DVDs for AppleTV with MediaFork

AppleTV Hacker: Using an AppleTV with MediaFork

Apple TVUpdate:

I got around to dumping some video, photos and screeshots of my latest toy. This definitely 'sucks less' than the Aiport Express! (old iTunes streaming solution that didnt work well)





I'm running a wrt54gl linksys router "g" and network speed for streaming is not an issue.

Initially, hooked the box up with no net connectivity as a freak March thunderstorm took out the VDSL router. It must do a lot of talking back and forth to the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) as there were lots of initial delays, and network waits, only to come back reporting the obvious.

At $100 these would sell like crazy.. at $299 it might be a bit steep for what it does. The biggest disappointment is the size of the internal drive. 40Gb is not much, heck an iPod is larger these days! Also, the remote could really use a scroll wheel. Getting through a long playlist is painful, the clicker will wear out in short order I'm thinking! No power switch either, to shut down you have to yank the cord. WTF? seems a bit atypical for an Apple design. Guess you're never supposed to turn it off!?

There is also some confusion about 'syncing' versus 'streaming'. For folks with a really large collection of music in iTunes, you want to stream the music, and only sync photos/video.

There also is no way to override the default prefs. of syncing priority. Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts, Photos. In that order only, so if you fill up the HD you'll get only a portion of, or none of your Photos sent over. Not sure why they did not implement the iPhotos 'photocast' capability into the device.

Apple TV & iTunes - Flickr photoset

Unit runs really hot, so you need adequate space around it.

The HDMI connection, (cable not included) worked perfectly when paired to a 37" SCEPTRE LCD HDTV (the one from Costco last winter? 2005/2006)

iPhoto content/slideshows look stunning, early iTMS video downloads show pixelation. .mp4 rips from DVD using handbrake are okay, although you may want to step up to 2 pass H.264 encoding for files that you want to keep around a while!

One video (an .mp4 file) did lock it up.. ironically enough, it was Steve Jobs stanford commencment address from a few years back. Completely locked the unit up.. had to pull the power cord to reset.. DOH! :-)

Overall though, once the internet connection to the outside world was restored, the thing works prettly flawlessly, and is a great way to get the content from the upstairs office computer (a dual G5 2.7Ghz PPC PowerMac) to the famliy room downstairs!

Enable SSH & AFP on your Apple TV | Apple TV Hacks

Enable SSH & AFP on your Apple TV | Apple TV Hacks

How-to: Upgrade the drive in your Apple TV - Engadget

How-to: Upgrade the drive in your Apple TV - Engadget

Mac OS X Tips

Mac OS X Tips

AppleInsider | Apple's next-generation iMacs to add a touch of grace

AppleInsider | Apple's next-generation iMacs to add a touch of grace: "
With the burden of a major architectural transition to Intel chips weighing on its shoulders, Apple in 2006 elected to reuse the the iMac G5 design for its first Intel-based iMac offerings. At the time, the objective was to push an Intel version of its top-selling desktop into market as quickly as possible and get the ball rolling on the next chapter in Apple computing.

As part of an industry-wide shift away from desktops and towards high-powered portables, Apple's industrial design prowess in 2006 was largely reserved for its notebook lines, which saw cutting-edge design revisions replace aging form factors at both the consumer and professional ends. In turn, those designs and compelling Intel-based underpinnings helped the firm sell nearly 3 million MacBook and MacBook Pros during the 2006 fiscal year, boosting its share of the U.S. notebook market to over 10 percent."

Looks like my Apple TV will be shipping in less than a week!
Popped in to check the order status and saw this update:

Status: Not yet shipped

Product / Part No.                Unit Price  Qty
-------------------------------------------------
APPLE TV-USA   MA711LL/A          $299.00       1   
        
Ships by: Mar 20       
Delivers by: Mar 21

The X Lab

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Third-Party Updates

getting ethereal working on mac os x

Apple Calendar of Events

Upcoming Apple Seminars & Events for the Arizona Listserve

Sorted by City, Date & Time

======================================================================

Mesa Jan 21, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Discover iLife '05: Music, Movies, Photos, and more.
For General Audiences

Discover why iLife '05 is the solution for your digital life.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41194&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Jan 22, 2006 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Intro to Final Cut Express HD
For General Audiences

Create professional-quality video with Final Cut Express HD. It comes
with all the high-quality compositing, titling and effects capabilities
you need.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41196&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Jan 24, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Getting Started with Your Mac
For General Audiences

Get started using the Mac the quick and easy way by attending this free
workshop! Windows users welcome.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41187&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Jan 28, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Getting Started with Your Mac
For General Audiences

Get started using the Mac the quick and easy way by attending this free
workshop! Windows users welcome.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41190&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Jan 29, 2006 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Why Macintosh? An Introduction for PC Users
For General Audiences

Attend this free seminar designed for PC users considering a move to
Macintosh.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41193&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Feb 4, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Discover iLife '05: Music, Movies, Photos, and more.
For General Audiences

Discover why iLife '05 is the solution for your digital life.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41195&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Feb 11, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Getting Started with Your Mac
For General Audiences

Get started using the Mac the quick and easy way by attending this free
workshop! Windows users welcome.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41191&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Feb 12, 2006 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
iMovie/iDVD Basics
For General Audiences

>From camera to DVD with iMovie and iDVD

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41197&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mesa Feb 25, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
CompUSA #227 Mesa
Getting Started with Your Mac
For General Audiences

Get started using the Mac the quick and easy way by attending this free
workshop! Windows users welcome.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41192&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Phoenix (Scottsdale) Feb 4, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Macmedia
Mac OS X "Tiger" Unleashed at Your Local Apple Specialist
For General Audiences

Attend our free introductory seminar to learn more about the amazing
innovations in Mac OS X "Tiger".

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41373&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Phoenix (Scottsdale) Feb 11, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Macmedia
Make the most of iTunes and iPod!
For General Audiences

Learn how make the most of iTunes and iPod.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41376&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Phoenix (Scottsdale) Feb 18, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Macmedia
Mac OS X "Tiger" Unleashed at Your Local Apple Specialist
For General Audiences

Attend our free introductory seminar to learn more about the amazing
innovations in Mac OS X "Tiger".

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41374&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Phoenix (Scottsdale) Mar 4, 2006 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Macmedia
Mac OS X "Tiger" Unleashed at Your Local Apple Specialist
For General Audiences

Attend our free introductory seminar to learn more about the amazing
innovations in Mac OS X "Tiger".

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=41375&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scottsdale Jan 21, 2006 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Re-Mac Computers - Scottsdale
iCAN Seminar - iPhoto, iMovie,iTunes, iDVD and .Mac
For General Audiences

See how easy it is to use iLife to enhance photos, make playlists, edit
movies, create DVD's- make a home page, and access your email from any
machine with .Mac

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=40929&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scottsdale Jan 28, 2006 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
Re-Mac Computers - Scottsdale
iPod Workshop
For General Audiences

Re-Mac Computers presents the iPod workshop, iPod and iTunes Tips and
Tricks.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=40934&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scottsdale Feb 4, 2006 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Re-Mac Computers - Scottsdale
iCAN Seminar - iPhoto, iMovie,iTunes, iDVD and .Mac
For General Audiences

See how easy it is to use iLife to enhance photos, make playlists, edit
movies, create DVD's- make a home page, and access your email from any
machine with .Mac

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=40930&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scottsdale Feb 18, 2006 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Re-Mac Computers - Scottsdale
iCAN Seminar - iPhoto, iMovie,iTunes, iDVD and .Mac
For General Audiences

See how easy it is to use iLife to enhance photos, make playlists, edit
movies, create DVD's- make a home page, and access your email from any
machine with .Mac

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=40931&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scottsdale Mar 4, 2006 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Re-Mac Computers - Scottsdale
iCAN Seminar - iPhoto, iMovie,iTunes, iDVD and .Mac
For General Audiences

See how easy it is to use iLife to enhance photos, make playlists, edit
movies, create DVD's- make a home page, and access your email from any
machine with .Mac

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=40932&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scottsdale Mar 11, 2006 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
Re-Mac Computers - Scottsdale
iPod Workshop
For General Audiences

Re-Mac Computers presents the iPod workshop, iPod and iTunes Tips and
Tricks.

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=40935&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Scottsdale Mar 18, 2006 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Re-Mac Computers - Scottsdale
iCAN Seminar - iPhoto, iMovie,iTunes, iDVD and .Mac
For General Audiences

See how easy it is to use iLife to enhance photos, make playlists, edit
movies, create DVD's- make a home page, and access your email from any
machine with .Mac

For more details:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=40933&s=300

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Windows Media® Components for QuickTime

Apple.com through the Years

HD Video

macosxhints - Disable iTunes 6.0.2's MiniStore