Mr. Jobs is well known for his great presentations which are often used as references. I have several Apple Keynotes videos. For my friend, I decided to choose the one that introduced MacBook Air – the one that never fails to deliver the wow effect to the non-techie audience. It’s a part of January 2008 Macworld Keynote.

First step: The Cutting

To get only a specific part of the Keynote, I clipped the 1+ hour video into about 20 minutes using Quicktime X (which comes with Snow Leopard).

I opened the movie using Quicktime X and chose Trim from the Edit menu (Command + T).

Then I chose the start and end of my clip by moving both edges of the trimming bar to the desired position.

To increase the precision, I moved the edges little by little using the left and right arrow buttons.

Then I clicked “Save As” from the File menu (Command + Shift + S)

To know more about Quicktime X, also check out our article on using it to do quick screencasting.

Second Step: The Conversion

In the computer world, the name Handbrake is identical with video converting. This open source application is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. In late November 2009, Handbrake just released its latest version: 0.94 with several new features and changes.

To me, the most notable change is the speed. This is because the latest Handbrake is already supporting 64-bit while the old ones are still in 32-bit. This allows the 64-bit build to utilize the real power of Intel Core 2 Duo, even if your Mac is still under Leopard.

Please note that this speed-up applies only to the Mac and Linux versions. Windows users are still stuck with the old 32-bit for some more time.

To convert the video file, I selected the clipped presentation video file by clicking “Source” and browsed to the location. To speed up the process, you could use the search feature.

I, and I’m sure many other users also, don’t know (and don’t want to know) the exact settings of video files which will play along well with the iPod. Handbrake understands this and give its users several pre-configured presets available from the side window.

Just choose iPod from the options and everything will be adjusted accordingly.

If you know what you are doing, you can add more presets to the list by clicking the Plus (+) button on the lower part of the side window.

You could also do several conversions one after another by putting the configured video file to the queue and clicking “Source” to add others.

And after everything is set, click the start button and make yourself a cup of coffee.

In my 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook, Handbrake needed a little more than 8 minutes (probably faster because Handbrake’s seconds ticked faster than the menubar’s clock) to convert 140.3MB of .mov file to 113.3MB of iPod compatible mp4.

After the conversion was done, I opened the file using iTunes. It will be synchronized with my iPod the next time I plug it in. I also passed a copy to my friend.

A Little Experiment

I was curious. I felt that the 64-bit build is faster. But is it really faster? I wanted to compare both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds head to head. Fortunately, I still keep an older version of Handbrake. For the sake of comparison, I reinstalled version 0.93 (the 32-bit build) and did the exact same conversion of the same movie file on the same machine.

On a smaller size movie file, the difference is not really notable. But with larger files, the 64-bit build is clearly faster.

These are the comparisons I did using one and a half hours of .avi movie:

32-bit – about 20 minutes (because the ETA counter moved up and down)

64-bit – about 15 minutes or less (because the ETA counter moved down faster than the real clock)

Aside from the speed, there are more features hidden underneath this new version. You can refer to the official site for more information and if you haven’t upgraded your version of Handbrake, now is the perfect time to do it.

Don’t forget to check out our older article about using Handbrake to convert a DVD for the iPod.

Trying to create a screencast has been one of my to-do-later items. I never get around to do it since there were always things that get in the way. But with the arrival of this QuickTime X, I thought now might be the perfect time to try and offer readers a QuickTime X review.

Screencasting made easy

Honestly, I was expecting a series of difficult steps to take to produce a good screencast. I couldn’t be more wrong. Screencasting using QuickTime X is as easy as pressing the record button.

• The first thing to do is to activate “Screen Recording” mode by going to “File –> New Screen Recording” menu or by using Command + Control + N shortcut keys combination.

• Then a small screen recording window will appear with the “Record” button in the middle. By clicking the small arrow button at the bottom right corner of the window, you can access a few settings that you can meddle with: the microphone to use, the quality of the movie and the location to save the screen recording.

If you have a decent external microphone, plug it in and choose “Line In” in the microphone setting to have better sound quality. Otherwise choose “Internal Microphone” to use your computer’s built-in microphone. If you don’t want to put any sound in the screencast, choose none.

• Click the “Record” button. A confirmation window will pop up. Click the “Start Recording” button.

• The screen recording window will disappear and everything that happens on the screen will be recorded (with your voice as the narrator in the background).

A little tip here: close or minimize other open windows during the screen recording so the screencast will not be distracted by the mess. You can also try to do the screencasting in an empty virtual desktop by switching Spaces (“Control + Arrow Buttons” or “Control + Number Buttons“). Another trick to have a clean background for screencasts is by opening an empty text document (or a picture) and enlarge it to fill the whole screen.

• You can stop the recording by clicking the stop button in the menubar or by pressing the key combination of “Command + Control + Esc“.

Your movie will automatically be saved in the location that you’ve set before, and will be opened for you to be evaluated (and trimmed if necessary).

Please note that the screen recording process using QuickTime X will record the whole screen. This setting will result in a movie as big as your screen with a very large filesize. And if you convert the movie into a smaller size, the text will be unreadable. It would be very nice if there’s the option to record only a portion of the screen.

Trimming the screencast

QuickTime X also gives users the ability to trim the movie. This way users can shorten the long screencast and keep only the important part.

To enable trimming mode, click on the share button (second from the right on the play bar) and choose “trim” from the option window.

The play bar will change into an iMovie-like scene bar. You can slide the left and right edges to the position that you want before clicking the Trim button. Everything inside the block will be kept and everything outside will be trimmed out.

However, users can’t trim out portions of the movie clip in several places like the previous Pro version of QuickTime. Again, it would be nice to have that feature added to QuickTime X.

Sharing the screencast

For a short wrap up to this quick screencasting thing, let’s look at the sharing option.

QuickTime X makes it easy for users to upload the movie to YouTube by clicking the “Share –> YouTube” menu.

A YouTube login window will appear. Fill in your user name and password and click “Sign In“.

Provide some additional information about the movie, click “Next” and your movie will be on its way to the virtual world.

In general, I think QuickTime X is a decent screencasting tool for common users. It still lack several necessary features to make it a good one, but it has a lot of potential to grow and the future looks promising.

For the time being, users who need another free alternative to screencasting tool with more bells and whistles can try Jing. Don’t forget to check other articles about screencasting tools.

In comes a great site called CodecGuide.com with two great alternatives for these two aggravating applications.

QuickTime Alternative

QuickTime Alternative is a slim and trim version of the popular QuickTime. It only contains the essential portions of the program crucial to playing QuickTime content that might be embedded into web pages you visit. I mean, who wants to load that QuickTime package only for it to add itself to the startup every time you boot up and trying to check in with Apple’s servers?

From the site:

Advantages of QuickTime Alternative are:

• Quick and easy install
• Ability to make an unattended installation
• No background processes
• No unwanted stuff and other nonsense
• Smaller size

There is also another variation of the QuickTime Alternative known as QT Lite. The only real difference is that the QT Lite version does not contain the Media Player Classic.

OS: Windows XP/2003/Vista

RealPlayer Alternative

The “Real Alternative” allows you the ability to play RealMedia without requiring you to install the dreaded RealPlayer. Even though RealNetworks really doesn’t have a foothold on the internet media war that they used to, this is a perfect solution to that one site you visit that still streams audio/video in RealPlayer format.

All the “Real” file formats are supported including the ability to view streaming content.

Formats:

• .ra
• .rm
• .rmvb
• .ram
• .rpm
• .rv
• .rp
• .rt
• .rnx
• .smi
• .smil

From the site:

Some advantages compared to RealPlayer:

• Quick and easy install
• It’s easy to make an unattended installation
• Proper uninstallation
• No background processes
• Use a player of your own choice
• Low on resources
• No advertising, no registration forms, nothing annoying

As with the Quicktime Alternative above, the RealPlayer Alternative includes a Lite version without the Media Player Classic.

OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

(1) NeoOffice

Get right back to work! It’s an open source set of office applications (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) for Mac OS X. It also supports editing of Microsoft Office 2007 files so you don’t need to quiver in fear when your colleague hands .docx files over to you.

(2) Perian and Flip4Mac

Perian is known as the ‘Swiss-army knife for Quicktime’ because once installed, Quicktime can be used to play nearly every format of video there is, except WMV. So that is why I paired this entry up. Together with Flip4Mac, Quicktime is all geared up and good to go.

VLC Player is also an option if you don’t like using Quicktime. With VLC, you can set playlists, boost the volume until 200%, zoom in and change the aspect ratio of the video, so generally it’s more powerful. However, I feel that VLC takes slightly longer to load, that’s why I choose Quicktime for everyday use.

(3) UnRarX

I can’t even begin to describe how much I love this app. Similar to Stuffit Expander, UnRarX is a .rar decompression utility. I prefer it to Stuffit Expander because I find it easier to use, it handles segmented .rar archives, and it even manages to decode archives which failed with Stuffit Expander!

(4) Adium

Feeling the shakes? Withdrawn from instant messaging? Adium is an IM app that is connects to almost all popular IM protocols (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, Gadu-Gadu etc.). It’s so customizable that you can make it match your favorite wallpaper, if you need to. Check out some screenshots here.

(5) Gmail Notifier

Normally, I use Apple Mail with IMAP to get my mail directly onto my Mac. But for those who don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up an IMAP account, Gmail Notifier is quick and easy to use.

(6) Image Shackle

Want to change your profile picture on Facebook? Darn, that photo is just too large! I use Image Shackle to instantly resize my images. It’s a dashboard widget, so wherever the photo is, just click-and-hold it, press F12 and drop it into Image Shackle, set the size of the output photo and click Shackle! Easy, isn’t it?

Image Shackle only resizes a photo at a time to any default size you set. And it doesn’t do cropping, so you can’t use it for heavy-duty image processing.

(7) Transmission

A lightweight yet functional BitTorrent client that’s open source, so it will also run on Linux and BSD systems. This is an alternative to the famous Azureus, for those who don’t like the bloated-ness of Java. On the surface, Transmission seems to be simple but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll notice that it has some pretty cool features like speed restriction at certain times of the day and Peer Exchange (similar to Azureus’s DHT).

(8) Skype

Need I say more? The most popular VoIP application out there.

(9) ZIP Quick Look plugin

Leopard’s Quick Look feature is really useful when you want to preview photos, videos or even Word and PowerPoint documents. But .zip files still need to be unzipped before you can tell what is really inside. This plugin allows you to view the contents without having to unzip anything. It comes in handy after you’ve downloaded .zip files from dodgy sites and would like to check out what they contain before releasing them into your system.

(10) MenuMeters

This is normally the first application I install. It’s a set of monitoring tools and reads system information like CPU load, memory usage and network activity and it sits subtly on the menu bar. If you’re a control freak like me, then you’d want to know if a process is taking up 100% of your CPU resources.

All these applications are free and available for Mac OS X Leopard. I hope you found this list useful. If there are any other applications I may have missed or better than the ones here, let me know in the comments.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time med student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.