The Alfred Computer Guy: Two very good questions
I received two very good questions for this edition – not via e-mail, but rather by people that stopped me on the sidewalk. One of these questions I was able to answer right away, but since it is a common question that may benefit a larger group of people, I’ll still post it here.
“How do I set up my external hard drive so it can be used by Mac and PC?”
The short answer is, you need to format the drive as a FAT file system. There are many different ways you can format a drive, depending on what platform it is being used on; NTFS, FAT, HFS, HFS+, etc. Each format has pros and cons to it which are worth investigating before choosing to use your drive for the first time. The main point to remember is that you cannot change your mind mid-stream on this decision; changing the format type of your drive wipes out any data you had on it. Both NTFS and FAT can be read by Macs and PC systems. The problem with NTFS is that the Mac cannot write to it, so although you can see the files and open them, they cannot be changed, deleted, or added to, whereas FAT does have this ability. The easiest and best way I’ve found to accomplish what you’re trying to do is by plugging the drive into the Mac first. Go to the Utilities folder (located in Applications) and run Disk Utility. Select your drive from the list and then click the Erase tab in the right hand side. In the “Format” drop down, choose “MS-DOS (FAT)” and then click Erase. Once the process is completed, you are good to go.
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The second question I got was a bit more difficult and required me to roll up my sleeves and do a fair bit of research.
“Our class was given the assignment of selecting clips from a DVD movie, cutting them, and placing them in a Powerpoint presentation. We really don’t have any idea where to start with this – how can we complete this project?”
There are four major components to this, each one requiring a different piece of software: ripping video out of a DVD movie, installing the proper codecs on your system to view and edit the file, editing the movie, and then the dreaded Powerpoint beast itself. There are many, many combinations of software you can use for this project, but I will go ahead and assume that it needs to be Windows-based as well as cheap. Well, I’ll do you one better than “cheap” – I’ll get you there for free. Legally, of course.
The first tool you will need is Handbrake, which can be acquired here:
Handbrake is an open-source media transcoder – basically, it will rip DVDs into an editable format. The use of this software is broad, but I trust it will only be used for the powers of good in the eyes of the MPAA, right? RIGHT? Right.
Pop in your DVD and select the disc from the “Source” dropdown. It will scan the disc and you may then choose particular chapters to extract. Make sure your format is set to “AVI File”. Click the “Video” tab and set the Video Codec to “MPEG-4 (XviD)”. Set your destination file and click Start. Once the encoding is finished, you should now have an AVI file of your movie selection. Now you need a way for the computer to read it – this requires an XviD codec which can be downloaded here: http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/
Install this and your system is ready to deal with your new file. Now begins the editing process. After some Googling and testing, I found a decent open source video editor called VirtualDub. http://www.virtualdub.org/
I must warn you right now that editing movie clips is not the easiest thing to dive into and a quick article is not going to be sufficient to bring you up to speed properly. Still, try the best you can, be creative, read the help files, and attempt to have some fun with it. One of the main things you’ll need to remember is that the video will need to be resized and tweaked, otherwise you’ll wind up with an absolutely insane file size when you’re done – much larger than the original DVD files you started with. Play with the video size, quality, and compression settings until you get something you like. The VirtualDub help files are quite detailed and should take you in the right direction.
After that, it’s a simple matter of dropping the file into your Powerpoint presentation. In Powerpoint 2007, create a new slide, choose Insert, and select Movie. Point to your file and select your display preferences for the slide. Make sure to try it on your system many times; I also recommend testing it on a generic lab computer as well, just to make certain the slide and the movie will play properly long before you are standing in front of the class.
Good luck!
Do you have any questions you would like to ask? Send me an e-mail at: stone@alfred.edu with the subject “Alfred Computer Guy.” Mac, PC, Linux, OS/2 Warp, NeXT… hit me with your best shot!
