ooVoo, an innovator in the way people communicate online, today announced the launch of a Mac version of its high quality video chat solution. The ooVoo Mac release is one of the most advanced and feature rich video communication programs available to Mac users and allows people to connect with both Mac and PC users anywhere in the world for free. The ooVoo software can be downloaded from http://www.ooVoo.com today.
ooVoo, a recent winner of the CNET Webware 100 Award, is changing the way friends, family and co-workers communicate online in a more meaningful way. Mac users will now be able to connect face-to-face with up to six people at once regardless of whether they are Mac or PC users. ooVoo Mac’s easy-to-use features include the ability to send and receive video messages, exchange files and text chat messages as well as import contacts from other programs.
Is it really that clear? I’d love to find out.
Plus, according to its website, it offers free calls to any landline or mobile phone in the U.S.
Update: Mac users cannot avail of the free phone call feature, which is anyway only available until middle of May. I wonder why they are singling out Mac users?
I found this video from Yuga. Nice parody, but lame in humor.
The thought that crossed my mind as I watched the video was this: Is that Lenovo’s best selling point?
Right now I am traveling out of the country, lugging around my Macbook Pro. Inside is my USB cable to connect my digicam, a portable disk, my iPod and its USB cable. If I had a Macbook Air, I would still be carrying this stuff. And, guess what, if I had a Lenovo, I would still be carrying this stuff.
Probably the big difference between a Lenovo and the Macbook Air highlighted in the parody is the optical drive, which I rarely use except to rip DVDs.
I have ripped several region 1 DVDs and the time has come to rip a couple of local region 3 DVDs. And whatever I do, I can’t seem to bypass the region code checking.
Mac the Ripper pops the following messages:
VLC gives me the following error message:
Handbrake can’t open the file.
I’ve also been giving Fairmount a try, which claims that it will replace the original DVD on the desktop by a decrypted disc image of this DVD. It still doesn’t work.
There is also a program somewhere called Region X, but according to the Macworld forums, it is no longer supported and has some problems with Leopard.
Looks like if I truly want to rip Region 3 DVDs, I have to purchase a new DVD drive.
I am booked for a 5-day stay in London and now in the midst of preparing for a long 18-hour plane ride. I have several podcasts loaded, an audible book ready, and am now in the process of ripping a few DVDs to watch on the place and in the hotel. The question is: which DVDs should I rip?
As I write this, Mac The Ripper is ripping “The Shawshank Redepmtion” onto my external drive. I am also thinking of ripping “Apocalypse Now Redux,” a DVD that I bought a long time ago in Singapore but never got to watch (I did see the original though). Maybe I’ll also rip the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
That’s the beauty of Mac The Ripper. Aside from backing up the DVDs, I can watch several movies while on a trip without adding to my luggage load.
I had been spending some time trying to figure out how to get encode a movie and embed the subtitles so that I could watch it with my iPod. I had tried VLC but I couldn’t get it to work.
Then I found Submerge. The software name basically does what it says—it merges the subtitle file with the main feature. Now, together with Mac The Ripper and Handbrake, Submerge has become part of my essential tools for exporting video into my iPod.
Using Submerge is easy. First, click on File -> Open and pick the movie you want to “submerge.”
Click on Choose and pick the file containing the subtitles.
Click Render and wait for a few seconds.
Here is the result with the default settings.
You can even change how the subtitles appear. Since I am going to watch this through my iPod Touch, the subtitles have to be prominent enough to read. I can alter the default settings—for example, I altered the size to Large and the Attributes to Bold. I removed the Plate since I found it distracting.
Click on the Render button and after a few more seconds, you can check out how the subtitles will look.
Saving the movie will create a .mov file which you can watch using Quicktime.
The most painful part of the process is when the file is exported to the iPod. The process took me 2.5 hours and it made me wish I bought Elgato’s turbo H.264 encoder.
One last thing. I had problems getting the software activated. I already received the serial number but, for some strange reason, the software was rejecting the code. I immediately sent an email to the developer (Bitfield), and I was surprised to get a reply within a few minutes! We traded a few emails to further isolate the problem and all was resolved before dinner time! I got great support for a software that only costs 9 dollars (less than PHP 40).
I have always wanted to backup my DVD collection. I have a lot of fringe and unorthodox DVDs. And no, I don’t mean porn movies. A number of my DVDs cannot be found in typical video shops. One of my main worries is that they could get damaged and thus rendered unwatchable.
Fortunately there is a software called Mac The Ripper, which allows me to copy the DVD onto my hard drive, removing the region controls and all sorts of copy protections. Best of all, the software is free. Take note, however, that I am not in anyway espousing DVD piracy. I just want to backup my special DVDs, and maybe even view it on my iPod Touch.
MTR was a breeze to use. All I did was pop in a DVD, launch MTR, and it was able to detect the DVD. The default settings were good enough so all I had to do was press “GO” and after about an hour I had the DVD backed up onto my hard drive.
As you may know, some DVDs have a lot of “extra features.” Some have trailers at the beginning of the disk. All these “extra features” add up to extra gigabytes. I recently ripped a copy of “300″ and the size was about 6.2 GB. This may not be an issue if you plan to watch the DVD off the hard drive, but if you want to burn the movie onto a DVD-R disk for playback on a DVD player, you will encounter some problems because a typical DVD-R disk only has a capacity of 4.67GB. Fortunately, MTR has the capability to rip only the main feature. I still haven’t tried to copy the content back to a DVD-R though—MTR recommends Roxio Toast to achieve this.
With work and other extra-curricular hobbies (like biking, squash, photography), I have been looking for more ways to use my idle time for my leisure time. My time spent driving to and from work, time often extended by traffic, has already been used by listening to audio books from Audible. But there are times that I lounge around in a coffee shop, whether it is after lunch or during early mornings before work. I will soon be enrolling in a gym where I would probably spend some time on a stationary bike or on a treadmill.
So enter Handbrake and my iPod Touch. One reason why I bought the iPod Touch was to keep updated on my religiously-watched TV shows. Now I plan to use the iPod Touch to watch movies that I want to watch but can’t find the time to watch.
If you are eager to try, you will need to consider two things. First, the settings can get quite technical. You could get besieged by such terms like framerate, bitrate, and anamorphic. If you really want to understand the innards of Handbrake, then head on over to their wiki site. If all you want is to rip a DVD to watch on your iPod Touch, then you can read this.
I tweaked the Handbrake settings for my iPod Touch, mainly turning on the 2-pass encoding as well as boosting the average bitrate to 2500 kbps. Here is a screenshot of my settings:
Second, ripping and encoding a DVD for the iPod will take some time. I have a 2Ghz Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro with 1GB of memory, and the process took almost as long as the DVD itself!
And after taking a snack and having a nap, I was ready to watch my newly ripped DVD.
There are a couple of TV shows that I diligently follow—”Boston Legal” and “The Office” among them. My work schedule tends to be erratic though and sometimes I arrive late at night and am too tired to watch the next cycle in Star World.
So to remedy the situation, I bought Elgato’s EyeTv Hybrid, which allows me to view TV shows and capture it into my Mac. Once captured, I can export the recording to any video-capable iPod! Now if I have some idle time, I could catch up on those TV shows.
The EyeTV Hybrid comes with the standard composite and S-video cables, a TV aerial antennae, even a remote control.
