Blog R.I.P., Mac Support Site Lives On

I have decided, after much deliberation and thought, to discontinue this Mac Support Site Blog, and only continue my actual Mac Support Website. This is due to time constraints, etc.

I will leave all the information that's currently on this blog on the Internet for some amount of time, and I will update my Mac Support Website from time to time, but I will no longer be maintaining this blog. It was good while it lasted, but nothing lasts forever! Farewell!

P.S. You can also check out some other cool sites I will continue to maintain at LifeisaPrayer.com.

New Mac Help Articles - Startup Sound and Right-Clicking

Lately I've received a few questions in my email concerning right-clicking on Macs and disabling the startup 'Chime' or 'Bong' sound, so I've finally found some time to post them on my Mac Support website.

Here are the links:

How to Right-Click on a Mac
How to Mute or Turn Down the Startup Sound

Choosing a Drive to Burn to in iDVD 5

From my latest Mac Help Article, Choosing a Drive to Burn to in iDVD 5:

With the release of iDVD 5.0 (in the iLife '05 suite of Apple's apps), Apple finally enabled disk image burning and burning to external drives. Unfortunately, you cannot currently choose which drive you'd like to burn your DVD to if you have more than one DVD-burning optical drive. According to a reader of this website, the Hack/Easter Egg I explained here fulfills this role!

If you would like to choose which drive to burn to on a multi-burner Mac with iDVD 5.0, please read the following directions. iDVD will remember your drive selection, so you need not follow these procedures every time you'd like to do a new burn (unless, of course, you need to switch drives).

For the rest of the page (including step-by-step instructions), click here.

Show and Hide Drive Icons on Mac OS X Desktop

I was recently asked via email:

"I have a quick Mac question. Is it possible to hide the hard drive icon from the desktop? In both OS9 and OSX. If you can, how can the administrator access it or restore it?

This is, in fact, very easy to do. When you are in the Finder (click on the Finder icon in the Dock to be sure), click the "Finder" menu and select "Preferences...". Once the preferences window shows up, click on the "General" button at the top. You can control what you see on your Desktop by checking or unchecking the items under "Show these items on the Desktop:".

You can choose to view or hide Hard Drive icons, CDs, DVDs and iPods, and Connected Servers.

This may be useful for you if you like a perfectly clean Desktop or if you would rather not have a user see the hard drive or other media connected to your Mac (maybe, say, your child or a friend who is using your computer). There are also many other useful options you can choose in the Finder Preferences, including how long it takes to open spring-loaded folders, what view windows open in by default, Finder window sidebar options, and more.

Search Mac Help for "Finder Preferences" for more information.

Use Your Old PowerBook or iBook's Trackpad for Scrolling

In addition to SideTrack and uControl, you can now install a replacement mouse driver on a pre-2005 G4 PowerBook or iBook and scroll using the trackpad the same way you would with a new PowerBook G4:

From Apple.com:
"Scrolling through web pages or large documents on a trackpad can challenge even the most nimble fingers. That’s why every PowerBook G4 features a new trackpad with scrolling capability. Just drag two fingers over the trackpad to scroll vertically and horizontally or pan around any active window. Change this feature to suit your needs: Customize your trackpad settings or turn off scrolling completely via System Preferences."

If you go to this website (iScroll2), you will find a downloadable installer that enables this new scrolling functionality on older iBooks and PowerBooks, as long as you have a new kind of trackpad (use this utility to check if you have a supported trackpad). To install the trackpad driver, go to this website and follow the directions for downloading and installing the driver found on the page. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now and it works great for me! I love being able to scroll horizontally using the trackpad like I can with my Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0 while I'm at my desk. Kudos to the author of that web page!

What Do "Syndicate this Site" and "RSS" Mean?

I'm not sure if many blog readers have noticed, but there is a link on the sidebar of this blog, and many other blogs throughout the blogosphere, that says 'Feed (RSS)', 'Syndicate this site (XML)' or something similar. What exactly does this mean?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" - for allowing people to view, via a 'newsreader' updates of information (usually news or updated blog information, for our purposes). For more history and information concerning RSS, read XML.com's article, "What is RSS?"

So, what does this mean for you and I? This means you don't have to visit a blog or news website to find out if it has updated news or a new blog entry; you can simply open up your newsreader program (list of a few at end of this entry), and it will tell you if there are new blog entries! Some websites even give you some or all of the blog entry or news article, so you can see if you're interested in reading the whole entry by going to the site.

NewsFire Logo

Here are some RSS newsreaders:

For Windows PCs:
Feedreader - Free
RssReader - Free

For Macintosh:
NewsFire - Free (What I use)
NetNewsWire Lite - Free

Use iDVD to Burn to an External Drive

Well, here goes for my first 'Mac-related blog topic':

I have written an article about a 'hack' or 'easter egg' that allows a person using iDVD to burn his or her work to a non-Apple SuperDrive or external FireWire drive (as long as Finder Disc Burning works), to burn to DLT Tape drives, or to 'burn' to a disk image. But, I've never given the reasons why someone would want to do such a thing. Well, here they are:

1. If you are having trouble burning to your internal SuperDrive or to an external drive, burning to a Disk Image will solve almost any burning problems; I have yet to see a disk image burn get stuck on Stage 4 or have an error during the disk image creation.
2. If you would like to test your DVDs before burning them to a semi-expensive DVD-R disc, burn a disc image.
3. If you want to burn more than one DVD, but don't like how long it takes using iDVD, or would like to burn the same DVD from time to time, but not have to re-render it in iDVD for every burn, you can use a created disk image to burn an image (using either Disk Utility in OS 10.3 or Disk Copy in OS 10.2 or earlier) multiple times.
4. You might like to archive your work so you can come back and quickly burn a DVD a long time from the original burn, and so you can burn a disk image for that purpose (plus, the disk image is whatever size your finished project is on DVD, usually less than 4.7 GB!).

I always burn a disk image instead of burning directly to DVDs, for the four reasons mentioned above, and because I have an external FireWire case that I swap my hard drive and disc burner in and out of, preventing my from ever burning straight to a DVD. I hope this helps!

Email: Video from FCX Won't Play in iDVD

I was recently emailed a question concerning a Final Cut Express video unable to be played via exporting it and copying it into iDVD.

Emailed Question

A four-minute movie plays perfectly in Final Cut Express 2.0. Exports to Quicktime 6.5.2 I drag it to iDVD. It won't preview (or play when burned).

Before this started happening, I was getting perfect audio but no video in iDVD preview. I tried this with two different movies. Same problem with both. They both play beautifully in Final Cut Express. I have been on several Final Cut discussion pages for info but have decided this must be an iDVD problem.

My Answer

How did you export the video? Did you click "File>Export>QuickTime Movie..."? If you did, did you make sure the 'Include' menu had "Audio and Video" selected, and the 'Markers' Menu had "Chapter Markers" or "None" selected?

If you do all of the above and still have a problem in iDVD, there are a couple more things you should try in Final Cut Express:

Instead of choosing "File>Export>QuickTime Movie...", try Exporting via 'Using QuickTime Conversion...". For the 'Format', choose 'QuickTime Movie', click 'Settings...', and set the following options:

In the window that pops up,

1. Click on 'Settings...' in the Video section (and make sure the 'Video' checkbox is checked, and choose "DV/DVCPRO - NTSC" from the video codec menu, "Best" from the Quality menu, and make sure the 'Frames Per Second' field is blank. Then click "OK".
2. Click on 'Settings...' in the Audio section (and make sure the 'Audio' checkbox is checked, and choose "None" in the 'Compressor' menu, '44.100 kHz' in the 'Rate' menu, "16 bit" in the Size section, and "Stereo" in the 'Use' section. Then click "OK".

Finally, click "OK" in the dialog box, choose a name and location for your file, and Export it. Drag this file into iDVD and see if it works.