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VLC is my video player of choice for its spectacular feature set. It plays just about every format under the sun, whether it’s audio or video. There are so many features in VLC that is easy to over look some useful features. Most people know that VLC can play back subtitles, delay or advance audio, and convert files but did you know that VLC can rip DVDs too?
In this tutorial, I’ll how you how to rip a DVD using only VLC.
You’ve probably had a few PowerPoint photo slideshows in your email already. They seem to be a popular topic for messages coming from friends and relatives with too much spare time on their hands. But have you ever tried creating one? It’s easier than you think, and it might actually be a good way to share pictures – just don’t abuse the slideshows with cute kitty images!
1. Open up PowerPoint, click the Insert tab and then the Photo Album button. Select New Photo Album to open the Photo Album settings menu.
2. In this new window, click the File/Disk button to select the photos you want to use in your slideshow. Remember you can select multiple files simultaneously by holding the Ctrl key while selecting them with your mouse.
Continue reading “How to: Create a photo slideshow in PowerPoint”
MP3 is by far the most common format for audio files. However, there are times when you need to convert MP3 into another format on your Mac. There are also people who enjoy listening to different audio file formats, but iTunes doesn’t have a lot of options for converting other than MP3 or AAC.
If you need to format a MP3 to a different format, you should also be aware that there is a possibility of quality loss because of the compression on MP3 files. So while you are getting a new format, it might sound worse than the original file.
These apps are some options to convert MP3 to different formats.
ffmpegX is probably the fastest and flexible video and audio encoder for Mac. It can convert just about anything and also includes a rather basic but useful media player so you can preview your converted audio.
If you delve into the settings you’ll see you can perform all sorts of advanced functions like joining, fixing or authoring audio as well as set bitrate.
HandBrake is another hugely popular video and audio converter and includes a very handy bitrate calculator so that you can control the quality of your converted MP3s.
It’s mainly used for video conversions but it’s just as suitable for audio including MP3. The only drawback you might find is that it can be a bit slow.
Switch has the advantage of being dedicated to audio conversions and allows you to quickly batch convert audio tracks. It has a huge number of output formats including MP3, WMA and AAC.
You can also set the bitrate and there’s also a handy “error protection” feature which ensures conversions are error free.
All2MP3 is dedicated specifically to MP3 conversions and uses AppleScript to perform fast and efficient conversions. It’s easy to use thanks to a simple drag and drop interface and all you have to do is click on the All2MP3 button to start converting.
The program converts conversion from MP3 to MPC, APE, WV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, AIFF, and WAV.
Kigo Video Converter is designed mainly for video conversion but is also suitable for MP3 needs. It’s especially designed with the needs of iPods, iPhones, Archos and other major portable audio devices in mind.
The pre-defined settings for each device are one of the stand-out features of Kigo Video Converter because it saves so much hassle setting bitrates.
Remember that you can improve quality by converting into a different format. In most cases the quality will suffer. But if quality isn’t a big concern, then any of these apps will work.
Most of us enjoy our favorite music on mobile phones and MP3 players. But every now and then I still need CDs to listen to music – for example, when I’m in my car. Ands this is when ImgBurn comes in handy: a free, easy CD and DVD burning tool that lets you perform all sort of disk burning related tasks. Here’s a short tutorial on how to use ImgBurn to create custom audio CD:
1. Open ImgBurn, go to Mode and select Write.
2. On the next window, click the icon with a CD and a musical note, so that ImgBurn knows you’re creating an audio CD.
3. Click on the top right button to browse files in your hard drive and add them to the recording queue for the CUE file. Continue reading “How to: Burn an audio CD with ImgBurn”
