RFA Ethanol Podcast

Mac Conversion Update

Chuck Zimmerman

AppleHello from South Florida. This has been my first trip with the Macbook Pro and I thought it would provide a good context for an update on my conversion experience. First of all, I thought that in a week or so with the new box I was pretty well prepared for this but it has been a challenge. When you’re on location doing “live” posting of images, video and audio you’ve got to be able to edit, upload and post fast. Almost as fast as say an Indy car at full throttle.

My biggest challenge has been audio editing. The built-in Garage Band software isn’t quite as intuitive as I thought and then there’s the file conversion factor. I start with an MP3 file and need to end with an MP3 file. To use Garage Band I have to convert the file to edit it, then convert it back to post it. I don’t like that. I’ve also found the conversion process a hassle since there are so many settings in each program to deal with. I was using iTunes to do the converting and found out that I have two different iTunes libraries on my hard drive. I have no idea why. So I downloaded the free audio editing software, Audacity. Then I found out it needs an extra MP3 plugin with I had trouble finding and installing. It took me 30 minutes to figure out how to download/install/use the software and this was done in a working newsroom with high performance race cars screaming by outside. I’ve also found some compatibility issues between the MP3 files created in Audacity and some other programs. So, I’m still working on this issue.

For image editing I’m using Photoshop Elements and that works great as I mentioned before. For video, I only shot one little video clip but editing it with iMovie HD was a snap. Very cool tool. It uploaded to YouTube and works just fine. The only thing was I was missing some kind of little plugin for Quicktime that took me about 45 minutes to find and download. My little Casio Exilim shoots .avi files and all I could get to start with was a white screen with audio until I found this little plugin through an online user forum. Works great now though.

So there you have it. I made it through my first road test with the Mac and survived. Now my last issue besides the audio editing thing is being able to use my Sprint broadband account with the Mac. I think I know the answer to it but I haven’t got it taken care of yet.

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