Michael Chin
Downloads: 26
Posts: 49
Smile Score: +22 
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Member Since: 18 Aug 2010
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I am a Free member Visit Stats
Last Visit: 153 days ago
Member Since: 18 Aug 2010
Profile Views: 1,169
Michael Chin's Posts
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Copyright © 2012 MacUpdate LLC
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Mac DVDRipper Pro
Anyone have any experience with the product MacX DVD Ripper Pro (note the very slight change in title from this product Mac DVDRipper Pro - an added 'X' after Mac, and space between 'DVD' and 'Ripper'). The site is http://www.macxdvd.com/mac-dvd-ripper-pro/.
It is priced at $35.95, and appears to do be able to do everything that Mac DVDRipper Pro can do (rip) and also convert straight to MP4 as well as other formats, including specific settings for iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, etc. It also can compress long movies to fit on a 4.7GB disk. I don't believe Mac DVDRipper Pro can do this? And Mac DVDRipper Pro only converts to MP4, no other formats? Otherwise both seem very comparable. MacX DVD Ripper Pro also comes in an identical Windows version, so those needing both platforms who want to learn just one program I guess would like this product.
Just curious if anyone new of any feature in either product that the other doesn't have, or whether one performed better than the other.
+3
Parallels Desktop
Mcr reviewed on 21 Nov 2011
For those who haven't heard, Fusion 4.1 allows you to install client versions of Leopard and Snow Leopard (server version is still supported, but NOT required). And the speed is almost equal to native. Great for sandbox testing.
+2
Parallels Desktop
Mcr reviewed on 02 Sep 2011
One caveat, during install, Lion will complain if you have less than 2GB of memory allocated to the VM. However, once installed, I lowered the VM memory to 1GB and it runs fine.
Also, Parallels gives instructions for installing Lion either from a Lion recovery partition or from Lion installed on a USB key, the only 'official' formats. However, i had no problem installing by mounting the installer DMG. The web has plenty of hints on how to create a bootable DMG from the Lion downloaded install.
+2
ForkLift
Analogy: Regular Mac Finder was like using a plastic fork and knife. Forklift and Pathfinder are like Swiss Army knives. TotalFinder is like using a normal dinner setting of knife, fork and spoon. Good quality, but not black tie, you can use it every day, and every meal. The Visor "instant pop up' feature alone is great.
I use TotalFinder for most of regular file management and Forklift when I need the Swiss Army knife. Because TotalFinder integrates so seemlessly with the OS and launches so fast, it's preferable to Forklift for the 90% of the time you just need plain old file management.
Mactracker
The release notes for 6.0.1 says "Adds the ability to create a new "My Models" entry from an info window". How exactly do you do that? I've poked around and don't see a way. What I'm assuming this means is if I find the model I want under the Categories list directly on the left, there would be way once I select it add it to My Models without having to to first do File/New My Model and then search AGAIN for the model I already searched for in the Categories list.
Appreciate if someone has figured this out and could pass it on.
-1
Firefox
+1
sArchiver
+1
+22
Tested again with the latest 3.8. Some very interesting information I have to pass on. Started with a 6.5GB file (ISO disk image of Adobe Creative Master Collection). Using sArchiver, created a split archive in 2 GB size per chunk, using Store compression, in ZIP format, called test.zip. Three files were created test.zip.part.001, test.zip.part.002 and test.zip.part.003. Then tried to extract using The Unarchiver. Extracts to Test.zip. Then have to run Unarchiver again on test.zip to get the original .iso file back again. Extraction fails about 1/4 of the way through with error "Unable to write file". If I use sARchiver to extract, I do get an ISO file which matches the original in byte size, but a hash comparison to the original file does not equal, meaning they are not binary equivalent. If I use OS X built in archive utility to extract it fails like The Unarchiver, about 1/4 of the way through. I've tried Ez7z, BetterZip, same, either they fail to extract or they produce a file that doesn't match the original. Evening using 7Zip on Windows can not extract the original correctly. In other words, the error is not with the program used to extract, the error is in the archive created.
I've tried using ISO files of different sizes as the original file to archive, and this is when it gets interesting. Files that appear to be less than 4GB or so work and are created and extract fine, with matching Hash comparison between original and extracted file. Source files larger than 4GB, if I use sArchiver to create, using split volumes, no matter what program I use to extract, even sArchiver, it either fails during the extraction, or they produce a copy that does not match the original.
As programmers, most of us realize that 4GB is one of those 'magic' numbers in computer programming. It's the upper limit of a 32-bit number or register. So perhaps there is code that is using 32-bit integers, instead of 64? For example, I am using standard Mac formatted drives HFS+ Journaled which can handle files larger than 4GB, but some old Windows code before there was NTFS and only FAT32 drives cannot handle files +4GB, perhaps it's possible there is old Windows based code in some of the libraries you are using that can't handle +4GB . Could be just a coincidence, but why 4GB as the barrier? Why not 3GB or 5GB or 8GB?
Hope this helps!!!
Mactracker
Mcr reviewed on 16 Apr 2011
I see the export feature, but how to import the MyModel.txt file back in?
-2
+22
Add an item to MyModel seems very unobvious. after looking through the list of Macs,once I select one, you would think there would be an option to 'add this to MyModel'. I can't seem to drag it into the MyModel folder. that would be the obvious 'Mac' thing to do. Instead you have to say File/New MyModel, select Change, then apparently Search for your model, even if you already found it earlier in the list. Or am I missing something?
+1
+22
+22
The release notes for 6.0.1 says "Adds the ability to create a new "My Models" entry from an info window". How exactly do you do that? What I'm assuming you mean is what I mentioned back on April 16, namely, if I find a model under the Categories list directly, I want to be able to add it to My Models without having to to first do File/New My Model and then search again for the model I already searched for once in the Categories list.
+1
sArchiver
It is very difficult to select the 'Store' compression level. There is no marker for it in the bar control. YOu can only select 'Store' if you click just exactly on the narrow left border line of the left most marker. You really should add another marker on the far left for 'Store'.
+1
+22
-2
X Lossless Decoder
If you have already invested time in entering tag info and want to convert, it's not worth having to re-enter all the info. For that, I still use Audialhub, which is showing it's age, but still works for most things.
+22
I have left them at the defaults which is everything under the Metadata dialog is checked except for 'Edit tags before convert' and 'Keep the original timestamp'. It has never worked for me. I typically convert from MP3 to MP4. Typical example for me would be songs with complete tag info: artist, album, song, album art, etc. Convert to MP4, no info at all, period, blank.
What is even stranger is if I do check the "Edit tags before convert" option, when I select the MP3 file it opens a dialog to edit the fields, the fields are all blank, so it's not even reading them (which explains why they don't get transferred). I've tested this with MP3s using ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags. It's not isolated, I've tried song after song, album after album, from all sources (online, from friends, MP3s ripped myself in iTunes and Max).
If I'm doing something wrong, I welcome someone to tell me, I'd like to use the program , it's fast, but not fast enough to overcome having to re-enter tags.
+22
Thank you kindly for taking the time to verify and trying various combinations. I also don't seem to get tags either when AAC is the source. I had left comments for the developer previously on his home page but haven't received a reply. Since it appears the app has the engine internally to handle tags for some conversions, I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to handle regardless of what format to what format (assuming the format supports tags).
Reply to Daftlush:
There are actually very valid circumstances for transferring from lossy to lossy. I have thousands of audiobooks and spoken word files, from many sources. Sometimes these files come to me ripped in stereo at high bitrates, much higher than is necessary for spoken word. Once I listen to them, I want to archive them. Transcoding them down to 64bps or 32bps in mono saves A LOT of disk space, the difference between needing just one 2TB external drive versus multiple drives or RAID. The loss in audio quality is negligible and acceptable, since it's just spoken word, and I may not listen to it again for several years or never. My current audiobook/spoken word collection comes in just under 500GB and that's AFTER i've been transcoding much of it to smaller files.
Also, I sometimes I have music ripped at AAC 320bps previously, but find later I rarely listen too. I don't want to get rid of it, so I don't mind ripping that down to something smaller, like 128kbps, which for my ears is still acceptable, especially if it's an artist I'm not particularly crazy about.
Thanks everyone for your comments, now I know which source formats to avoid, or at least know what I'm getting into. Hopefully XLD will support it in the future.
sArchiver
I first reported this back in Sept 2010, it's still an issue in the latest. Worst, when trying to compress a large file into split volumes, after uncompressing, the resulting file is NOT equal to the original, i.e. it fails all Hash comparisons (MD5, SHA-1, etc).
Original message from Sept:
Yuriy,
I want to store into a multi part ZIP file a large source, for example disk.iso, which is 8 GB. I need to store this on a FAT32 drive to share between OS X and Windows, so files must be smaller than 4 GB.
I used sArchiver to create a ZIP file (store only, no compression) specifying 3GB chunks. sArchiver appears to first create disk.zip, which has a size of 8GB, and then divide it into smaller files and name them 001, 002, etc. Then delete the disk.zip file (the large one), leaving just the smaller chunks.
That's all fine. However, when I go to extract, sArchiver extracts to a file disk.zip. I then have have to run sArchiver a second time, to extract disk.zip back to the original disk.iso. In my opinion, when you extract, you should end up with the original you started with, and shouldn't require two separate operations to. This is how 7Zip on Windows handles multi part files. Using OS X archive utility to extract gives me the same result, so it seems what is being stored in the multi-part archive is the 8GB disk.zip, not disk.iso.
Same thing happens if I select 7z as well instead of Zip as the format.
+1
sArchiver
This is not a bug per se but it's not the behavior I expect. I want to store into a multi part ZIP file a large source, for example disk.iso, which is 8 GB. I need to store this on a FAT32 drive to share between OS X and Windows, so files must be smaller than 4 GB.
I used sArchiver to create a ZIP file (store only, no compression) specifying 3GB chunks. sArchiver appears to first create disk.zip, which has a size of 8GB, and then divide it into smaller files and name them 001, 002, etc. Then delete the disk.zip file (the large one), leaving just the smaller chunks.
That's all fine. However, when I go to extract, sArchiver extracts to a file disk.zip. I then have have to run sArchiver a second time, to extract disk.zip back to the original disk.iso. In my opinion, when you extract, you should end up with the original you started with, and shouldn't require two separate operations to. This is how 7Zip on Windows handles multi part files. Using OS X archive utility to extract gives me the same result, so it seems what is being stored in the multi-part archive is the 8GB disk.zip, not disk.iso.
Same thing happens if I select 7z as well instead of Zip as the format.
Thank you for your consideration.