Posts Tagged ‘software’

We love to talk up the dearly-departed VisualHub and its new, open source progeny Transcoder Redux around here. I’ve never seen a way to convert video from one format to another more quickly or easily–whenever you see a video clip anywhere on a Stratepedia-hosted site (or the handful of kucrl.org sites we handle), there’s a good chance VisualHub or Transcoder has touched it at some point.

One thing that’s not a problem for us, but may be a problem for you, is that these applications are Mac-only. Over the weekend I learned about a Windows program with similar features to VisualHub, called FormatFactory. I know absolutely nothing about this software other than that it exists and that it’s free. If you’re a Windows person and need to convert video, check out FormatFactory and let us know what you think by leaving a comment on this post.

A few weeks ago Amber waxed rhapsodic about VisualHub, our go-to choice for quick and easy video conversion on the Mac. In a classic case of really unfortunate timing, between the times she began and finished her post, the software’s developer shut hit doors, effectively discontinuing the product.

All is not lost, however: The developer released his source code to the general public, meaning if you know a little bit about how to compile code on a Mac you can get VisualHub’s open source successor, FilmRedux, up and running on your Mac. It’s actually not very difficult–there’s a nice write-up on the process on WikiHow–but it does require some software for programmers that, more likely than not, isn’t on your computer. The good news is that software’s free as well–it’s just the developer tools that are included on the Mac OS installer DVD (you can also download these tools from Apple’s developers site, but it’s a pretty hefty download).

I just noticed a link to another article on the subject, with links to compiled versions of both FilmRedux and PunyVid (iSquint’s successor). It says they’re for Mac users who don’t have Leopard (OS X 10.5), but you might give them a shot as well if this whole compiling code thing is more than you want to deal with.

Thanks to thriftmac for pointing out this new development.

So, you read Amber’s excellent introduction to RSS technology and would love to use it, but for whatever reason you and Google Reader aren’t clicking? That’s OK, I’m the same way. Luckily for us, Google Reader isn’t your only choice when it comes to RSS readers.

Lifehacker, and excellent blog about technology literacy (add it to your RSS feeds!) today has a write up on its readers’ choices for “best” RSS readers. Google Reader ranked at the top, but the article also shares a few other options, including NetNewsWire, a Mac-only reader that’s my personal favorite. So if you like the idea of RSS but are looking for an alternative to Google Reader, check out the article, try some of the options, and let us know what your favorite is via a comment below.