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User Reviews
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So where can I find out what the max. version is, that will work with 10.4.10? |
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Some issues here: It doesn't allow disk editing or viewing, it only allows this with files... Still useful though. A block editor would be real nice for those of us that get into that low-level stuff. The program attempts to check for updates, but doesn't check for an actual internet connection, so when I launched this, it froze up for about 4 minutes trying to work with something that wasn't there. It also displays a Network volume (inconsistently, I might add) even when there is no Network connection. For yucks I attempted to read one of the files it showed, and it permanent locked-up the program (cmd-opt-esc required). If there is no network, this should avoid accessing system files that will cause issues if it isn't really present. The program does two things annoying on install... it forces you to install in Applications only, and it doesn't set the proper permissions. Typically one would put this in "Applications/Utilities" and unless it hooks into the system in some bizarre way, should be an app that can be placed anywhere. And having to manually change the permissions so you can delete read-me files that are in a non-native language, is silly. This looks nice (better than several other hex editors), though could have a slightly better assembled look. Hope to see it updated to address these issues. It beats the "bang-it-with-sledge" hex editor I'm using now. |
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It's too bad this doesn't work below 10.5, as there is no way I'm upgrading until there is a stable alternative to classic and a few other things in 10.5. Hopefully the developer can re-code slightly for earlier systems. |
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Very simple and useful! One problem, however. For some reason the program assumes half the menu items are Japanese and nothing I can do can alter that (though I can figure out what is what, it is pretty annoying). It also manages to convince some other apps' menus to be in Kanji... (but this goes away when J> quits). Pretty odd behavior. As far as specific ratings for Features/Graphics & Sound, as there's only one real feature and no real rateable G&S, I didn't give it 5 simply because there's no real things to rate. It seems pretty stable except for the language issue. And you can't beat the price. Though probably worth a couple of bucks, put this together with an interface/PPane that will allow you to assign Keypresses, menu selections, and mouse movements to the gamepads/devices, and this could easily be worth $20-25. (mainly because I have tested many such interfaces and most are far from stable, or are horribly unusable (keypress assignments only). |
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At $150 you can buy a better programming environment, or get lessons on how to code with Xcode and Interface Builder. After all, this is just a tiny library. It might be perfect, but the price isn't. |
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Actually, I would prefer a utility that would find album artwork (without an iTunes store account) and store it so that iTunes (and an iPod) could find it, without embedding it in the music files. Well, unless they put out an iPod Touch with a massive hard drive, that is. I gave up a year ago on these utilities since they did one of two things (in ALL cases), could not find the artwork because it wasn't "good ol' American popular music" or it automatically and without permission stuck the album images into the songs. 4 out of 10 songs even got pulled down wrong on one app. If this could do everything at once from my CD Info.cidb file, and get it all correct, I'd go for it... But no track namer has been more than 25% correct, so I have my doubts with other search-find apps. |
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Actually Ritsuka was half right. I wrote that at the end of a large work session and screwed up. I misused the word codec instead of container, and if Ritsuka had actually read the whole thing, he or she would have realized that. I made a mistake that had the same meaning and importance as a typo. I stand by my views on Matroska, THE CONTAINER. And re-assert the fact that using this only partially alleviates all the "F-U"s that Window-centric selfish users dump onto the non-windows (and old windows) community. I applaud those that are willing to code this for non-windows machines, and hope the quirks involved with this lousy experimental container can at least be ironed out well enough, so we can at least trans-code out of it. |
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If it includes Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu, Modern, WW, and many of the tournament functions (RPGA, etc), this would be an excellent tool. I'll try this out and give it a review, but I have yet to find a program (including those for windows) that come close to the Filemaker 5.5 set I created for tournament generation years ago. I could never share that because it's so full of non-standard methods, it would be a nightmare for anybody else to use. However, it does one thing I've never seen anywhere else, full and complete user created forms... just add a new layout and spend some time moving fields around and adding art. |
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Where tf are the asian voices or better yet, an asian version of macintalk? Been waiting for that since before OSX even existed! (for laughs), somebody needs to make a George Clooney, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, or even a Marilyn Monroe voice... I'd lmao, and then permanently make them my default voices. |
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Wow! What a unique vision for a simple concept. Does wonders for RPG'rs who have to use handfuls of dice for specific reasons. For complex RPG dice sets this is the only program to look for, currently on the Mac (still looking for a super simple small-footprint program that handles the opposite end of the spectrum). A few simple changes will make this a 5! A few simple feature additions will make it a SOLID 5. And being free, you can't really beat this anyway. Here are a few suggestions for a minor upgrade: 1. If possible, find an easier way to set-up the hands/sets. Though impressive and functional, I was jumping around and clicking everywhere to set up sets. Dragging and dropping the dice images onto the "set" might be a more intuitive option (but maybe about as busy, though). 2. Color code the dice/die representations (at the top and in the set representation. 3. Add a D30, and possibly a custom "value" so a die (or dice) in a hand can be odd numbers, like 7, 21, 365, 400, or 1000, etc. Along with this, adding a sum to a die (+/- a certain value) can also be helpful... Die results that start at zero, negative to positive ranges, a true percentile representative (0-100), etc. Though not of much use in D20 systems, this was a constant need in a lot of older SF and miniature games. 4. For design and readability only... the totals (sums) should be just to the left of the "die" markers. It's tough to instanly see what is connected to what, if you have to scan across a possibly near-empty set. 5. This might be difficult, but many games have methods of skewing dice rolls by elininating one or more of the high or low rolls. If a hand can be "auto-sorted" (without moving the "dropped" switch) this can be done automatically using the "dropped die" feature. As it stands right now, the dropped function on a die follows it in the sort. 6. And, this is purely my own taste, but I hate the metal interface and actually find it difficult to "stare" at. If this is true of other users, you might want to allow changing the interface, or even desining one uniquely your own. Once again, excellent job! |
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Dead server... no active links. |
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Came upon this looking for a Web Crawler for making downloads easier from scanlation sites. However, this is apparently only a pr0n downloader. So of all the categories you can subscribe to, only 2 are relevant to my interests, and apparently nothing actually downloads in those categories. Though I have nothing against pr0n, this does seem to be rather lacking to do anything much other than downloading a few images/movies. What is really missing more than anything, is an explanation of what types of things it "subscribes" to, and where it is getting it from. Specifically, what services and sites, and whether it can be expanded to embrace other media. Because it crashed twice on looking up "categories" for subscription, it actually took me 20 minutes to find out what this program really did. An update and stable sources would make this very "useful" to many people out there, especially if the subscriptions flag "new" images for review on updates. If it worked for manga, I'd slap down $20 in a second. BTW, from the categories, my guess is if you're straight and female, there's not much to interest you. |
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It looks pretty, but that is apparently just a mask over some pretty bad implementation and rather suprisingly stupid decisions. 1. I don't know about most collectors, but all the ones I know aren't American Snobbish. You like movies, you get them from all over the world, same with music... you don't just stay with American punk, you mix it with the good stuff from the UK, Australia, Germany... wherever. If you need to search more than one source, you do that... you don't limit it to only one, when you can query a couple sites in a row. 2. Put a FREAKING VOLUME CONTROL ON THE VOICE!!!!!!! My volume is high for about 20 apps for voice notification of dozens of processes, but this one when it shouts "LOOKUP FAILED" nearly blows me right out of my panties. And it worked better than coffee at waking up co-workers when I tested it at work. 3. 20 items: 5 from Japan, 15 from the US, all current, all popular, and all listed on their respective amazon site, and looked up concurrently with the "Delicious" system. I found them all, Delicious did not find a single one. 4. The shelves are cute, but annoying and pointless when each Collection will have over 1000 items in each (which I'm not going to do, since this clearly isn't working quite right). "Neato" features that lose their appeal in less than an hour, should probably be removed. Creating a virtual version of the operators' shelves would be more helpful, allowing one to locate exactly where the item should be (so spine out displays may also be more appropriate). 5. The iSight barcode reader is also a neat idea, but it typically took me 15 or more seconds to get each one to read in properly, and all the while the video display window is jumping, flashing and stalling. Is this tied to the agonizing slowness of the interface? 6. It might just be me, but I find the entry method panel to be horribly clunky and extremely un-mac-like. Somehow, everytime I tried to add another title, or do something else with this, I kept getting further disappointed. I've been using Basic, Appleworks (Apple ][ version),and then Filemaker to keep all my book, music and video databases since the mid 80's, entering everything by hand. Having total control and not relying on other peoples erroneous, lazy, and narcissistic entries in other databases (hear that CDDB?) has made me tired of, but happy with my functional and efficient, but ugly databases. And my databases evolve instantly. Guess I'll keep with it until somebody actually makes something that combines functions of this, and iTunes, with a bit more style and efficiency. Oh, and this got a high stability rating, only because I couldn't do anything to make it destabilize. Since it actually won't retrieve any info, I'm not going to play with it long enough to find things like memory leaks. I'd also like to know what all the other websites this is contacting, besides the amazon ones, because on a few attempts, it contacted more than six different servers... and only one was Amazon. |
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stumbled across this again while searching for browser extensions (wtf?). Just wondering why this is still here. It worked horribly two years ago, and the developers site is long since dead (no server at url). |
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Wow, try to see if you can find a drawing program and a couple of others so that you can leave Classic behind when moving up to Tiger. JUST NOT POSSIBLE. I've tried several of the drawing programs I found here, and though this looks beautiful, it has much to be desired... 1. It crashes constantly when editing text objects. You have only 2 saves before the program self-destructs. (so don't save for long periods of time... ack!). And the text selection and key-combo manipulations are atrocious. And manipulating tabs is a total nightmare. 2. No help, local or on-line. It ONLY goes to a web-based manual, and that's broken, it just doesn't work. 3. Tried multilayer selection... unless there's a secret key comination, it's not possible, had to shift objects on multiple layers, one. layer. at. a. time. 4. Needs several obvious functions, though it has an abundance of features, a few basic things need to be addressed. (like showing the currently used color in an object, in the palette, so you don't have to remember the color codes, and then take stabs at which color it is). 5. Not internally consistent with a lot of the properties buttons in the toolbar, sometimes changing the x-width would change the object boundaries, other times it would scale the x-width, and it's completely random when it does this. 6. It doesn't keep oringal object dimensions accessible after scaling things, so if you mess up, you can never return the object (like text objects and bitmaps) to their original size or ppi/type-size, unless it's still in the undo queue. 7. and speaking of which, the undo function is inconsistent as well. Odd things end up being undoable, that don't need to, like changing layers, but other things that should be are not. Single pixel key-nudging is kept on a pixel by pixel basis, which means you kill your undo queue in no time, if you are trying to move an object into perfect posistion. 8. Many features are implemented cryptically. Common sense (and HiG) doesn't always dictate what you need to do when working with this program. After all this, I bailed, and since it hasn't been updated or corrected since 2005, I'm guessing the company has completely given up on it (as mentioned in an earlier review). I just find it so difficult to believe that nobody has a drawing program that works better than ClarisDraw under Classic. So I guess, unless work requires me to move up to Tiger, I'm staying comfortably at 10.4.10. |
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I don't understand paying for a service like this, when it is not only available free from tvguide.com, but public TV stations all across the country provide a free version that is actually broadcast over the air, as well. I can't see network and local TV stations *not* wanting their information in the viewers' hands. If someone could create a widget or unobtrusive program that would cull one of these *free* sources to populate a database and provide useful searching, it would be wonderful... and I'm assuming the public service will never suddenly become a fee based system. |
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Downloaded and tested this a couple of weeks ago. Seemed to work perfectly. However, I found something today that I really wanted to get and view (without loss of video and stuttering) and it just wouldn't work. It recognized the video, but when I clicked the button to save it, nothing happened (the dialogue box disappeared, but no file was saved or even opened). Further attempts to save it came up with a dialogue stating that it had already been saved, and did I want to resave, cancel, or reload the page. Save didn't do anything, and reloading did reload the page, but did not allow me to save the video once it finally was quied up again. This literally turned into a "one-trick pony" and is now completely useless. |
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I hate to rag on somebody who obviously speaks another language and is poor in english... But the description is so vague and uninformative, I have no idea what this program does and what it's goal is... couldn't even figure it out from the website... but it's cute. |
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I have a number of players (other than QTP which was f'd up on two recent system upgrades) that do better and faster with no plug-ins required. However if you can implement WORKABLE matroska, you'd have me in an instant. But, I am assuming since that would require rewriting the codec package in base code, and it isn't QT compatible, this would never happen? |
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If this actually worked (a large amount of it does not operate as stated), this would be a perfect alternative to launching the appropriate player and opening the "info' window. However... You need DRAG :& DROP!!! It took over 50 seconds to track down and determine which file to open using a browse window (I have more than 100,000 video files used for video processing and they are in hundreds of folders and the files are very similarly named). With drag and drop, this would have taken LESS than a second. There is no need for an "Get Info" button. Once the target is located, there is only one thing to do, supply the info, or state that there was an error. The first couple files I tested were matroska, the first two wouldn't even access, even though VLC plays and gives info on them. Going on to more matroska files, I got many to display but with erroneous info... An audio freq of "jpn"; I never got a single audio bitrate, a framesize of "jpn 40x38"?!?. on a HD file?. It seems to work better with standard .avi files, but with some non-standard A/V pairings, I started getting odd results again. It's free and I couldn't get it to crash, but a large number of things just didn't work or work right. A few more major bug fixes and info implementation, and I think this would be a permanent fixture on my dock (of which a drag and drop implementation would surely be needed). Keep working on it! |
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Excellent if you are forced to deal with matroska files. However, I have to point out that due to idiots creating matroska files willy-nilly and not really knowing what they are doing, that this set of tools, as-is, does not work at all on a very large quantity of these home-brew files. Output from files tend to have erroneous values (like fps, size, codectype, sampling rate, etc.) which makes further processing impossible for most, and extremely difficult for those that know what they are doing. Since matroska (.mkv) typically only works correctly on fast, newer Windows (XP, Vista), why anybody would deliberately alienate all Mac, Linux, Unix, and non-modern Windows (and others), just blows my mind. And I have to say, even on my friends' blazing fast Windows Vista machine (which is now an XP machine ^_^) matroska was still horrendously buggy. Seriously, if you are a Mac user or developer, stay away from this codec and all files associated with it. Because, until it is rewritten in base machine code for each specific platform, it's nothing but a piece of garbage. Personally, I wish someone would finish work on the next-gen of HD codecs that are fast, so that a standard could be developed to work on every platform, including hardware based disc players. (And matroska would immediately die a well deserved and overly-late death.) |
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What the hell is the point of this? There are at least 6 programs that do this directly, already.... for FREE! And there are about a thousand ways to do it using two free tools (which gets you past almost all tough issues with syncing and skipping frames, etc. This is a worse idea than Popcorn... Now, if this thing could FLAWLESSLY transcode any matroska file, into mpeg4 or avi, and burn subtitle streams, that would be worth slappin' down some hard earned cash (sorry, there is NO program or toolset that will do this for the Mac... especially if the x264 codec is involved. I've converted a few recently but they all took several days total and unless more than 4 steps (on video) were involved, it never worked... anybody seen horizontal video smearing? Dragging audio, super-fast video, tiny subtitles?) |
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First, I'm sorry to bash what could eventually be a very wonderful program, especially for people whose recorders have died, only own a computer for TV viewing, want foreign programming, or require a big monitor due to bad eyesight. However it needs severe improvement. 1. It is constantly going to "ruby" to talk to places on the internet... over and over and over again, even when you kill the program (if you state once a day for checking, it really should check only once a day). Constantly giving access to something most users know nothing about is going to really bother those who get paranoid (and even those that don't). 2. Speaking of which... the uninstall for this is atrocious. It works, but would be extremely confusing, especially to people who haven't ever seen the terminal before... and by Apple's own marketing, that should be nearly all users. And it's a royal pain if you have to track down where you stuck the zip file... This should be executed from within the app itself. 3. Where is this thing getting it's list? 8 of my 10 favorite programs aren't even on it (and I manage to never miss a torrent by manually finding it. Adding several more sites or better sites to this would be quite necessary (selecting and deselecting these sources would be good too). Also, the info is so old it's laughable. Just for an example, try "Dr. Who." The list only gives "2005" and "Confidential" as options. You won't get seasons 2-4 with this! And where the heck is "Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!?" ^_^ 4. One favorite series' is on the list, but when "subscribed to" I get a permanent "wait clock." I let it run for 20 minutes.... nothing. 5. The interface is staggeringly unfriendly for set up. You should be able to select everything as a group (click on-click off, or checkbox), or select one at a time and move (with a button or drag) to a subscribe list. It shouldn't be, "attempt to subscribe to one, and then have the horrendously long list zip back to the top, losing your place." It's nice to have the subs at the top, but that's old school or Windows thinking, it's not Mac-like at all. 6. I don't know about anybody else, but for most Mac users that don't have a superfast dual-core, playing most matroska files is impossible (and some x264 encodes don't work under mac matroska players in any form), and there is no way to select for media type (like one of the other recent commenters wanting iPod specific material). Filters for .avi, .mkv, .ogg, mp4, .flv, .wmv, .rm, etc., are more important to many people than the quality selection. Which also begs for a MB-Size filter as well. 7. I, personally, like to retrieve stuff from Asia (the location, not the band) dramas, a few game shows, and some anime, however NONE of that stuff is anywhere in this mess (for some people the reason for bittorrent is to get stuff they CAN'T see on TV in the "home country." So hooking into things like J-Addicts, Animesuki, sars, TV-Nihon and a few others might really impress a lot of people, not to mention expanding their horizons. Same goes for material from Europe. So seriously, better interface, efficient use of the "calling" routine, and a much better choice for sources, will kick this up to something nearly everyone may use with ease, and make it indispensable for others. And used properly with Azureus, would actually allow people to go on vacation while their computer downloads, seeds to ratio, and then quits torrents, in the proper spirit of P2P sharing. If all this was implemented, I would definitely be willing to pay at least $10 for it... it would save that much in time in the first two weeks. Good luck and I hope to see improvements. It's a nice start, even though I found it less efficient to implement than to actually get the stuff manually. |
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Since there is nothing specified about this product other than, pretty much, what is here on MacUpdate, I have to ask... Why would I pay such a steep price for something which by it's own, rather meager, description uses internet based translators? Mac users not only have a built-in widget to do this (poorly I must say), but there are at least 8 services including Babelfish, Google and others that do this for free, just by going to their well-known webpages. Does it have a multiple-engine compilation of the software ported to G3/G4/G5 or DualCore processors, so it can be done anywhere your Mac is, connection or not? Otherwise I'd find the very steep price darn laughable. Now, if it's a whole new translation technology that's staggeringly accurate, that would be worth paying for... and I'd buy it in an instant (but that's not in the description). |
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Just a comment to the developer based on their reply below. My main computer will never be connected to the internet, yet I manage to have more than 100GB worth of programs (not documents) on it. Many things were downloaded, tested and scanned at a library/university computer. Things that insist on attempting to make unpermitted external contact are deleted rather rapidly, as all calls to the internet (or any communication route, including USB and FW) are instantly notified to the user. Anybody who really wants a secure computer will operate this way, as it really is the only foolproof method. That's why a second computer is used for internet operation, and anything created on the main computer is moved with a portable drive whose drive contents are wiped before re-attachment to the main computer. Thinking everybody with a computer absolutely has to have an internet connectionat all times is at best selfish, and a bit presumptuous. |
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This review is being written after more than a year of using this... Of the dozens of video softwares I use on at least a weekly basis, none of them actually have a function to change the fourcc code on the fly (When I get CS3, maybe, this might change). This is actually a bad thing, since a couple of the programs I use set the fourcc incorrectly, some using improper case, one always setting the code to divx no matter what the real output is. So, I have used this on thousands of self-created and transcoding projects. It has never crashed, and it has never malfunctioned. True, it does only one thing, and it does it fast and well. However, the application itslef could use just a few additions that would make it easier to use. These would be: 1. Drag and drop a file or group of files (or even a folder) into the window to select. 2. Drag and dropping would automatically set the fourcc to the windows' settings or possibly a preset. 3. "Open using..." would allow the selection and change of multiple files, instead of just one. These miinor changes would perfect this simple little program. |
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Definitely needs work. Though not really necessary, some localization would put polish on this. Implement Drag-and-Drop!! It's annoying as hell to search for a file via browse, when the window and file is right in front of you. Fix up the "help" and about menus, as well as others. The author left the default "NewApplication" as the title throughout the menusystem. It is nice not to have to go to the Terminal to do basic matroska extraction and exploring, but this was a rather lazy attempt. Fix all the minor stuff, and even though it's a one-trick-pony, it will still be worth having, if idiots keep insisting on making stupid matroska video files. On first use, it saved me about 5 minutes of mucking about with one matroska file in the Terminal. Repetitive use will save hours. Maybe somebody will eventually create a one-step Matroska to MPEG4 or XVID avi file converter that actually works, and nobody will ever have to deal with this crap ever again ^_^ |
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After bringing this "home" to try on my mac, I was very disappointed. Right at the start it states that it plays matroska and has a better method of displaying subtitles. Funny, "out of the box" it couldn't play ANY matroska file. It kept trying to send me to web pages (and without an internet connection on that mac, that's not possible) for plug-ins. If it has to search for a plug-in to even play a matroska file, that it CANNOT play a matroska file and should not state that it can. It should say, "after hunting for dozens of plug-ins it might be able to play matroska files." Even playing basic quicktime supported stuff it had problems, like continuously showing the beachball and preventing any interaction. Found out this was due to it's literally unending attempts to phone-home for something (again no internet connection, and even so, it shouldn't be trying to infinitely call home for anything -- is this installed spyware or improperly implemented logging/registration and update checks?). Even after finding and loading a couple EXTRA codecs (including Perian a known conflict problem generator) it still couldn't play matroska. Of the five files I provided, the audio in all was choppy, the best video I got played only 1 single frame on average every 20 seconds. And the subtitles are worse than VLCs by all regards, they were soft and transparent, very difficult to read even on a still image. VLC works better and faster, and though I couldn't actually get Chroma to crash (like VLC does), locking itself from interaction with a 1-2 minute beachball display is actually worse than a crash, which can be recovered with an instant re-launch. The ONLY reason I would ever use this is if they can actually write an efficient matroska code set for it, so that I can actually watch matroska files (needed for many newer fansubs). Otherwise I'll stay with VLC, which, while not able to efficiently work with matroska, actually works faster than this. Heck for basic Xvid, VLC works without skipping frames while my computer is doing many other things concurrently, like video compression, downloading, burning DVDs, AND compiling code. Chroma couldn't even play the matroska files, when that was it's ONLY ltask. (QT Player, I gave up on 2 system updates back, when opening many videos took up to 5-10 minutes, they played fine after, but taking that long to open, somebody at Apple should have been fired.) |
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Actually, I applaud you for doing something that kind of "sneaks in" the information in a more friendly manner. Unfortunately, such a crude scale, even on a 1-10 is useless to anything I would do. I actually created an Apple II (remember back to 64K mem, 140K disc?) disc based database of my Vinyl and used a 0-100 scale. When I transferred to macs and CDs, my database followed, but instead of a handful of fields, it has more than 400, most scripted to auto enter material, and handles full Kanji entry for asian music. Am I ever glad OSX brough Unicode to most apps. However, I am not going to enter any ratings via iTunes until I have easy access to fields like "rating" and keeping fields, like "Catalog Number" "Record Label" "Full Release Date" "Copyright Date" "Series Title" "episode title" "True Compilation" -- not multi-artist, "Limited Edition" "First Pressing" "CD ID" "Lyrics" and a few other fields that are for true collectors and archivists, instead of just a bunch of lazy musci pirates. I don't enter much material, other than basic titling into Itunes (which tags the lossless files I create). Mainly because, until iTunes has true multi-libraries, everytime I have to do something after importing, I have to delete the entire previous library in order to efficiently work with a new acquisition. So, though an excellent player and importer, iTunes still is primarily catering to students and music pirates. Thanks for your impressive work though, a first step in what will hopefully be a great external update to a program. |
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That's really odd, 3 years ago, SoundJam and iTunes (old prog, new prog) did that flawlessly. Itunes was totally free. Don't know why you purchased this piece of crap, or even find the need to defend it. If it worked for you, that's a miracle, and good luck for you. However, I do cross platform professional work, testing for such work, and used to do assembly level programming. In fact, and in my opinion, as well, this program is poorly implemented and programmed, and if the programmer wishes to rebuild it from the ground up, and give credit where credit is due, I will gladly re-review it, and maybe if it does those odd and hard to do conversions (WMA9, WV, APE, etc) I will give it a good review and possibly even buy it for my own use... But at the moment, HELL NO! IT DOESN'T WARRANT IT. |
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I guess there are a couple of WMA types that might bring up that issue. Since I avoid those and have codecs installed into QT for most of the others, and one or two (ape) with console tools, I've never had to deal. Cool. Thanks. |
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My solution took me about 4 hours to track down the very last file iTunes 7.5 had left, and then, suddenly I was able to load 7.1.1. Couldn't track down a higher pre- version. This cleared up all my problems instantly. iTunes 7.1.1 is rock steady... and apparently no other mods were needed. System and Quicktime needed no downgrades... Only iTunes. Back to reviewing J-Rock albums. Sweet. Thanks Guys! ^_^ |
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This used to be one of the most stable programs on my computer, never having a crash, freeze, or missed byte in an encode. However they screwed the pooch on this one. This update has a number of pointless things (what is this something like 13 updates in the last 6 months?), and they still haven't put in options like killing the annoying MANDATORY iPod Sync and pestering message about saving notes everytime it's launched. How about a feature to grab and store album covers outside the music files in a cache? And can't we have a contextual menu for encoding, instead of having to go into preferences every freakin' time just to change one minor aspect of the "import." And, of course, NOW, It freezes, locks-up, and goes permanent BEACH BALL everytime I try to play a CD through it, it hasn't made it past 2 tracks. Then, trying to remove it and put an older version back on is next to impossible. Killed the "helper" so I could delete the program, but something in the computer refuses to let the old install work, only giving me the option from the installer of "There is nothing to install." This is pretty screwed up, Apple. The rating here is for this version only... a program that constantly locks up, even if free, isn't worth the price. When working, iTunes is pretty much the best multifeature media player/encoder out there, but Apple's track record recently with stability has been severely lacking. |
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Total crap. I finally decide to take the plunge for the new version because the ratio of horrible things happening after upgrading to people has come down to an acceptable level, and I have time to deal with potential issues, and the thing doesn't get past the splash screen and drawing the vuze window. The mainwindow process crashes, and even though it continues to load dozens of things in the background, the program is unusable, leaving only "Azureus" and the apple menu alive, and only "quit" and "about" are available as usable menu items. The main window is black, with a blue and white block labeled VuzeBeta, and nothing else. The window is not resizable or usable (i.e., no cursor entry into the white box, which is probably a text box). Only a cryptic message pops up, but is not copyable and disappears quickly. What a freakin' waste of time. Too bad 2503 was the last stable version, because it was taken down, and this destroyed it. Time to search through my old backups. No matter how many times they say Vuze doesn't affect things, that the same old Azureus is buried in there, it's a total load... The part of the program that fails is smack dab in the middle of the Vuze coding, and because that fails, the BitTorrent portion of the program cannot even be initiated. Shame. |
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The color (or lack thereof) of this actually makes it very difficult to see things quickly (and hit control items easily). On top of that, it doesn't change anything I would want or need to alter. Sorry, but I'd have to say, nice try, but go on to another scheme. For people who are interested in skinning iTunes, check out the full size capture first, and contemplate carefully if you really want to get stuck with this variation... It seems like you might have to completely re-install iTunes if you want to revert. |
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This is one of the few programs I didn't test drive from macupdate or versiontracker. I actually convinced a mac salesperson to let me try this on one of the G5s in-store. After all, they had a full setup with scanner, digital photography, and a HDTV -- everything. Installation was initially scary, as it looked more like i had accidentally installed a bootleg with virus. But after being assured they didn't care (the unit was protected), we installed and input the password. Seemed simple enough. Had a few basic issues, like reinstalling the TWAIN driver from the scanner's site. The the problems came. Whoever designed the menu system and the language (words) used, seriously need to go back to school and to learn about precise terminology. It was very confusing, and took us both quite a lot of time to figure out what was meant by certain terms. And on top of that the "search" function in the "help" file doesn't search, it provides an "index." Which is pretty useless if you're tyring to find an explanation for some terms, or trying to find out why something isn't working the way it should be under a Mac interface. After all that, I scanned 5 pages from a paperback I had on me... very simple document. It managed to outline the text, but in weird shapes, when a simple rectangle would definitely do (there is no option to force this, so it goes about making weird "polygons"). Attempting to "reshape" the polygons had the whole giant shape misaligning everywhere, it crawled about like some form of amoeba. Definitely bad. We eventually let it just do it's thing, and clicked analyze. (You can "redraw" the analysis boundaries, but it requires a lot of mouse-hopping to get to make a simple rectangle, which is contrary to the simplicity the automation is supposed to provide). A very simple font was used (Goudy Old Style), with a few exceptions (like diagonal hyphens), the text should have been simplicity itself to recognize. Nope, the self-learning process couldn't seem to recognize double and single quotes properly, and even after being forced to learn several of them, it started turning them into uppercase "H"s. Not only that, it kept changing double lowercase "o"s into double zeroes. It couldn't recognize periods, colons and semicolons, and when there was noise between lines, instead of ignoring that, it dwelled on it making weird guesses. The worst was when it started splitting double quotes into singles before we finished the five pages (and it did this with a couple of other characters, like a "u". There's no way to tell the program it's totally screwed up, so you have to either "delete" the supposed character, or stick something in under "don't learn". Either way, you have to go back later and correct it in the output.... if you can get that far. In the middle of the fourth page, the program crashed. It lost all the settings and the "learning." We tried it twice more, once with TWAIN, and then with pre-scanned pages. Crashed each time, before we finished, but in different places. Finally tried just a single page. It managed to get through that, but with a large number of errors, which meant we had to go back and "proofread" it. I could have hand typed the page three times by the time we got through the proofing. On top of that, we found that there is no way to keep paragraph formatting (as opposed to single lines with a hard-CR at the end), and maintain things like line ending hyphens... it removes them whether or not they are used normally or as a line/word split. I was kind of hoping this might be my answer to a program that could OCR Kanji, but with this performance, there's no way I would attempt it. Besides, the version in the store was apparently from 2005 even though it was brand new there. An 11.5 version is out but I don't see it here. However, if you go to their site, you think you'll get a test download, but it does nothing but take your e-mail addy and then send you to more advertising. There's no tech specs on the asian upgrade, and attempts to find any, just send you back to the "test" version page, which only has "video" clips. The salesman (cute guy, BTW, not a total waste of time) let me take the software home to test with a deposit. It performed even worse on my G4. The company claims it is the best Mac OCR program... Of course it is, it's apparently the only one with a GUI frontend that I can find. What really blows my mind is that since Omnipage on the Mac died a while back, pattern recognition has gotten much more sophisticated, but I don't see it here, at all. One would think that the program would be able to take a font file and read it's metrics and splines in order to train itself, making it a whiz to use, if you have the typeface. No, it's still working on making rough guesses (and bad ones at that). This program also requires you to have a TWAIN interface... It doesn't have any real scanner interface of it's own, so if you have an old scanner (read OS9 or earlier) you can't use it, TWAIN doesn't work across the "Classic" barrier. This program performed horribly, in all taking more than 5 times on average to do the work, than it would require me, or even an average secretary to type the work by hand. Kind of pointless and a waste of time and money. I'm hoping I can find a used copy of OmniPage Pro X... it worked better when I was using it on my old Mac IIfx. Though that won't solve my issue in trying to find a kanji OCR program. I took the software back, and I hope the sales-guy tells the store to return the stock. I am so glad I didn't buy this stuff on-line, I'd be out $400, and may not have even gotten actual software, based on my and other's experience with the company. (This is why I love MacUpdate) Maybe by version 20, this might be working well enough to seriously use. Errrr. Maybe not, just checked the date on this "update", Oct 31 2005... Happy Halloween... guess I found the monster. |
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I don't know about other people, but Jomic, and Comical are very slow on my system... and FFView hasn't worked for years, and gets worse on my system every update (displaying black pages, scrambled or only partial pages, and doing so inconsistently, poorly functioning control interface, frequent crashes...). This was the best of every comic viewer in their current stages, and this worked the fastest. It still has a few things to iron out, including a more flexible control interface (if it could work like FFView's control system is supposed to work...). Personally, if I get a 300GB drive for documents to capture, store, and create to, this would be an excellent addition for that purpose when it comes-of-age. |
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"Stealing kiddies," huh? Most of the people that "bought" this complained outright about how poor it is. If you can't steal it, then how can they complain about functions that don't work properly? If there was ever a review that looked like the developer in disguise, it's the review two below mine. Baka! Now I'll add my comments, because though I didn't "steal" this, somebody at the University paid for it to use on their iBook, and asked what they were doing wrong. (I tried this over 2 years ago and avoided it like the plague, it was so bad). I quickly found that the program was still "flaky" like another poster said. Heck, for a large amount of it's conversions, it doesn't even have bitrate selections for those that REQUIRE it. One test I tried in the few things while "bug-testing" this, was to convert a 48K 160kbs MP3 (bgm music for a DVD project) to AC3. It converted it, but it was awful, sounding worse than a 16kbps mp3. Many things it couldn't even accomplish, that it should have. And for the "steal" audience, it never once came up with the "full version" comment, like I remember the trial version doing, all those years ago. Needless to say, I told him to use the DVD Studio Pro package in the Media Lab, where one of the programs will do all the conversions he needed -- and he didn't have to "steal" that package either, since it was on a school license! As for the other reviewer that wrote about temporary files, I believe those are there as scratchpad files, as a mid-point format from one type to another, or the data-stream before a header or set of tags is attached... and someone pointed out before, that this was an artifact of the console commands that were used in the construction of this program. Were those "STOLEN" by the developer? |
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Just wondering what good the free version is, when you can do this with iTunes and/or Quicktime for free? |
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Quiz/Poll Response: I have not star rated a single song in iTunes. I used a decimal scale before Macs even existed, (1-5 stars is useless), and since the field is actually a decimal field, I don't intend to rate them until I have easy access to that field (simple decimal display would be easier and more efficient! Bad Apple! This should be a preference, along with keeping art outside of the song files... and contextual menus should be used to select type of Conversion/Import. ^_^ |
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Samples show good results, however.... I tossed 4 projects which I am currently working on at it, and the process, in all the different set-ups I gave it, failed miserably. Completely unacceptable results. On top of that, the interface is gawd-awful. I gave it a 1x2 and 2x2 photographic and a 1x3 and 2x2 multipage scan. The 2x2 photo of a steppe-villatge was hilarious, as it put 3 of the shots exactly on top of each other and fish-eyed them, and put the lower-right image immediately to the right of the stack. Awful. The 2x2 multipage scan turned into something resembling a doily (or mirrored cylinder art), arranged 1x4. And the very simple 2 image photo with 1/3 overlap, it couldn't even put together, just saying it couldn't find a panorama. This has got a very long way to go for anything I could actually use. In the time it took to fail with the two shot photo, I could have stitched it in photoshop, with only the central distortion requiring a correction. I could use a tool to do this with my hundreds of multi-page scans that I deal with on many projects, but it actually has to work... And my scans don't have typical lens, focus, and dof distortions... These should be easy to deal with. (And how about a switch turning OFF all features that require JFIF information, as not everybody just plugs their camera in and drops the photos immediately into a stitcher.) Some people might get results with this, and other reviews seems to support this, but I'm certainly not getting good results, and I believe that allowing the user to pre-set-up relative positions, sizes, and co-incidence points would give the program a better chance to select proper stiitch points. |
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Wait... before I can even start with this, it requires the latest version of the OSX system? It takes us nearly 2 weeks to recover after every Apple system update, and I have to do it just to test a program that probably hasn't upgraded anything that really needs upgrading? Is the first bug update going to require 10.5?? And then the next version require you to have a Macintosh G6?? I've heard things about interface components changing (lines, font positioning, field boundaries and thicknesses altered). It did this in a previous version, but I never upgraded to it... Still using 5.5. The WHOLE package requires a system update, yet none of the basic controls use the OSX standard (aqua) interface (pull-downs, scroll-buttons, drop-downs, just regular buttons)? What the hell is up with these people? I can suffer with the antique interface, but an upgrade should have some features useable by at leat 90% of it's user base -- you know, features that have actually been requested and would be easy to implement... not just for the developers and web-professionals (which I am, but have never used any part of Filemaker for). I seriously need a cross-platform database, but unfortunately, this is the only program. Thankfully version 5.5 still works for everything required, but simple things in Access still haven't been implemented in Filemaker. So, I guess my databases and information continues to stay workable, but in the "stone age." No improvements or short-cuts for my users. Every time this program is "updated," I am seriously disappointed, and pissed off. |
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A few things I'd like to point out. Unlike version 1.0, which I couldn't get to work at all --- all files ended up unchanged in the "BAD" folder, this version seems to do fairly well. Definitely better than SmallImage, which actually added large amounts of space to files. However, there are some flaws with this, definitely minor, though. First, it counts every single file in the demo mode, so all those invisible files get counted, leaving me with a test bed of only 5 real files. Picky, but hey, it should be ignoring anything that it cannot process, including invisible and text files (which it sends to the "BAD" folder). Second, the method of requiring an input and output directory is distinctly un-mac-like and very counterintuitive, in general, with today's computers. Drag and dropping a group of files or a folder onto the application or dock icon (or app window), should be the preferred method, with either the output going to a specific directory, or being tagged with "clean" or something similar in the same directory. Third, the routines cannot handle long or even two-byte text in directories. I'm not certain if this problem follows to two-byte text in files, but it does make me wonder what would happen if I tossed it a directory of Japanese files. Also, for $30, It would have to deal with ALL graphic file-types, TIFF, GIF, BMP, and anything else that can have metadata stuffed into it. And I would also like it to automatically remove all this data while I work with photoshop (which often sticks up to 40K worth of garbage into a file, even when you have the settings set to not do this). $30 otherwise is incredibly steep, even if you are removing this data from thousands of files at a time... A thing I can't test for since I can only get five files at a time. Suggestion: for $5 more, you can buy another GREAT Lemke product, GraphicConverter, and just resave these graphic files without metadata. Actually, maybe this function can be built into graphic converter..., maybe? |
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Errr... Why are all the files I processed with this, MUCH bigger afterwards? I definitely had it set to remove all 3 types of metadata, and left the quality checkbox OFF. If this worked right, it should have removed between 16K and 24K from the files, but instead nearly 60K was added to most of them. And when reviewing both the "cleaned" and non-cleaned images, the quality was listed the same, and the cleaned files showed no meta-data. What's up with this?!? |
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I tried this out on a university computer... for about 2 minutes. The interface was horrifying and confusing. I don't know what the developer was thinking, unless this is the way they plan to distribute licensed paid materials (even if so, this is the wrong way to do that). This was so bad I just shut off the computer (this restores the computer to pristine status). There is no way I will put this on my home computer. Now, what should have happened for the new version was enhancing segments of code to be faster and more compact (i.e., translating java to machine), and modifying the interface so it is more system-like for the computers it is meant to run on. And now, after seeing all the other problems and horror stories, my paranoia is so high, I don't think I want to ever upgrade from 2.5... ever! I've left 2.5 running for over 2 months at a time, without any problems, and after lots of tweeking, I get better results from it than almost anybody using anything else from the same ISP. Why bother moving to this new horror show? |
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It would have been 2 on features, but the parser option (unlike filling in 3 fields) was done well. However, none of the die buttons worked on my Mac. Now, to get picky: The interface is too big. Single results should be in a text box. The paper tape should probably be like the one in calculator.app, separate, resizable, and with a clear button. Otherwise, it is what it should be: simple, clean, and efficient. Playability and Graphics/Sound are not applicable fields. If there's a mod out there reading this, you need to have a NA response to your category ratings! |
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Tested this new version, but had to quickly bail on it. It still does a few things it shouldn't: 1. opens on a blank disc insert when another version is already open (not a consistent thing). 2. It changed the "launch" option on blank-disc insert, without permission. 3. No way to have it stop burning unwanted/unneeded files... Usually I don't need desktop db files, DS store files, and anything else system related on a DVD disc. The Mac doesn't even require these on DATA DISCS in UDF format, let alone on DVD-Video where these extra files cause problems on many older, and a few newer, players. If it doesn't show on the burn list, it shouldn't be on the actual disc itself. 4. Bloatware alert in a major way for the multimedia handling, it was bad enough from 6 to 7, it's even worse from 7 to 8. I'll never use any of this stuff, since there are free tools that'll do this stuff better and faster (at least in most cases). I didn't test it long enough to determine if there is a memory leak, since between the problems above and the new GIGANTIC interface, I just kept version 7. The new interface is actually unforgiveable. What do people without large cinema displays do to run this program?!? So much for intuitiveness.. two more steps, it'll be like a bad PC interface. Also, with version 7, I can keep 8 other programs running (and fully tasked) while operating it... Filemaker, ffmpegx, azureus, safari, excel, photoshop, golive, and word, all without experiencing any problems or errors... Definitely can't do that with version 8. I may have to update when I get a Blu-Ray burner, but until then, I'll suffer with version 7. BTW, Toast is still the best burning software for Mac, but between the interface and bloat, it just took a major hit... from itself. |
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I'd love to review/check this out, but it's another dead .mac website. I've yet to come across ANY software linked to .mac that was actually accessable, and that covers at least 70 different programs. |
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Not very useful unless you have to do this all the time, AND you have one of the services required. It's easier to use one of the dozen or so file host services, and I guarantee that their servers are FASTER and less likely to stop working due to a dozen or so .mac "features" or "limitations." What somebody needs to do is make something that does fast file transfers (point-to-point) from Mac/PC to Mac/PC that doesn't require an expensive service or any silly servers inbetween to store the stupid file first. Otherwise, you might as well just get an inexpensive website (unless you're transferring something like porn which is banned on almost all sites-hosts). That said, there are free apps that do the same thing as this does, so if you do require this form of transferring... |
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A great trash addition would be to "hack" the empty trash dialog box so that it will display these missing bits of info, and to have marked checkboxs for those drives you want to empty the trash from. There are a few networked drives I have that I do not want empty the trash on, while they are connected, and this would be a very useful addition. Just a thought... |
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All I get are adverts and a web-host trying to sell me site space, from the download link... |
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Sorry, Wavpack unpacking does not work. This is a repeatable bug. No matter the .wv input, no matter what output file type or settings. Result is always the same -- horribly buzzy and hashed sound. The output is barely recognizable. Waveform output shows the main reason -- at very rapid frequency, the waveform zeros out, then returns. Hope this gets ironed out soon... It's a nice little app. |
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I just want to convert a 320MB MPG4/AAC file from a camcorder with self created subtitles, to an MPEG4 or XVID AVI file, reducing the file to half the size (about 170MB). The program allows me to do all the proper selections (except some refuse to let me set the subtitles to position 92% -- which is mandatory, subtitles aren't subtitles when they appear centered at the 2/3 mark from the top). The preview looks perfect, but in all 4 video out selections, the progress box, in about 1-2 seconds, rings, and says it is complete, with a zero size file as output. I even tried audio passthrough to hopefully reduce conflicts -- no luck. Everytime I've ever tried this program, this is the result. If for some reason, it can't go from one type to another, it should tell you, and offer suggestions, not output "completed". What's up with this... I do like the tools UI revamp, but the program seriously needs more of this kind of UI redo. And I don't know if it works in the tools, since I tried to mux another video MP4 and AAC, and it keeps failing... but both files are playable through QT, VLC, MPlayer, and practically everything else I have. In the end, I had to recode with QTpro, which took a couple of hours, instead of the hopeful quick job through ffmpegx. |
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This is one of those "less is more" programs, where it does just one primary thing, and is useful in doing such. Like one person commented, copying and pasting from open windows doesn't provide a pasteable list (things are in odd order and multi-level lists are useless). This keeps things sorted and allows numbering, and the ability to list just folders, just files, or both from within a single folder. All it needs now are three final things (IMHO): 1. a very small help file in the about or help menus, just to give a brief explanation of how things work -- only about 6 sentences would cover it. 2. The ability to add recursive folder listings to the list, represented by either a tab or a specified number of spaces for each level. 3. Drag-and-drop of the specified folder into the window, for selection. (It's hard to give a program that only does one basic thing, 5 stars for features, but add the recursive feature, drag&drop, and maybe the ability to log file sizes, and I'd have no choice but to give it fives across the board. Thanks! |
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Has Roxio corrected the problem with V7 where no matter what method you use, it sticks invisible Mac files on DVD video discs (and data discs). I use version 6 and if you burn from "DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS" all you burn is what you place there. But from my friend's iBook and Version 7, it places invisible Desktop files on the base directory (which do not show up in the main window until the burn starts). This causes some earlier DVD players to choke! And since I have to burn on an external drive using output from Sizzle and a few other minor tools, this means I cannot use version 7 (so why upgrade?). Roxio was most unhelpful with my friend, and insisted it was not a problem with the software (even after two re-installs). Personally, I won't put this on my Mac, because if it kills 6 in any way, I might lose my (proper) home burning ability. |
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Wow, what a jackass. I give constructive criticism, and actually specify the problems, and you can only repetitively claim I'm stupid. Did you even read the specifics... BTW, I write software manuals and used to debug vertical-market software. Fine, if you don't think it's valid commentary, because you won't add or modify the program beyond it's limited range (many programs are fine doing this), but I though for a FILE SPLITTER, this was valid. Especially for $20. I get better value from the PC file splitters, and if I have to, I can take my portable drive to work and do it there. However: on 10.4.7 on G4-AGP 1.2Ghz "Too much disk access:" The program takes longer to split/copy than the finder's copy (and the system's split), AND it prevents access to other programs while it is working... Do you know what disk interleaving is? How about head travel speed...? I mentioned it in the original review. "Can't be, it's simple math. You probably just don't understand the way that file sizes are reported by the OS." No, I understnad it completely, including MBs, MiBs, and conversions between KB, MB, GB, TB, PB both base 10 and 16. The file discussed was truncated -- So either your program, the system, or the drive screwed up. I mentioned this so you could see if there was a conflict, or problem -- -but you obviously don't care. AND I'm not going to debug your program for you. "bugs in the .bat file: Response: Don't know what to tell you." Well that's why I'm telling you. This was consistent on multiple installs, and over 20 tests. If you were polite, I'd have helped you narrow down what might be a conflict. AND IT STILL INSISTED ON ADDING .mpg as an file extension to a disk image file. That's a bug no matter what you call me. Splitting is "UnMac like" -- It's still true, even though you refused to understand. A small change in interface will correct it, and enhance the users experience. Did you even read the MHIGs? "And now we get to the root of the issue. The app is worth $20 and more. It is infinately easier than learning the command line and far more elegant." Actually learning the command line is very easy... Just for this, I looked up how to do it online -- I found about 6 websites in google that explain it well enough, that anyhbody could do it. That costs you nothing, and took less than 2 minutes to locate and read. If you want to stick with only USENET uses fine. But the two readers I used did this by themselves, without human intervention, and had more bells and whistles. These were Mac apps, and free. So, if they did this embedded in a reader, I think my opinion of $20 being too high is quite valid. You have much to learn about customer service and what constructive criticism is. I still stand by my review, even though you are horribly rude and insulting. |
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Though PS is pretty much a necessity in some of the newer work I'm doing (mainly because it has no real competition), I find I still have to use Graphic Converter at college. Why? Because I am doing a lot of stuff for web-work. So, even though the program is set not to add anything to the saved images, why does a .png image (or even .gif and .bmp images) that should be represented by about 300 bytes, end up as 44K on the Mac? No one in the classroom has been able to stop this. So, if you want web ready graphics, I guess you need another program. BTW, the same images fed through Graphic Converter, do come out the proper size, i.e., 4K. Pretty f'd up, if you ask me. |
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This is one of four tools that I find avsolutely necessary for web-design. I have only started in the last couple of months, but ever since TextEdit started interpreting code instead of allowing editing of HTML/XHTML, I've had to use another editor. And I'm glad I did. However, I currently am using the 8.5 version at college, and we have to have the serial number taped on the monitor and stuck as a folder name on the desktop, because, everytime you open a second document (after a session the serial wasn't entered at startup), it closes everything and tells you that the program has expired. You then have to enter the serial number again, wherein the program works fine until it is later quit. This is pretty damn annoying and hardly inspires me to purchase a working copy of my own. Is this fixed in the October update? |
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First, there aren't many features. Basically it is supposed to be the splitting and joining of files. Other than that there's not much. On the PC side, I have access to over 20 FREE utilities that do what this does better (but at home I'm stuck only on a Mac). Second. Since this basically only does two things, it is pretty easy to use, except that splitting is very un-mac like. At first I didn't understand why I kept getting a file dialog everytime I highlited the file I wanted to split and then clicked split -- Well, you can't drag and drop for splits, and therefore cannot do more than one split job at a time ( I though the big window would allow multiple split jobs). Third, I wished to use a file splitter to take huge DV files and put them on multiple DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs. However, this cannot make splits bigger than 2.2GB (which just coincidentally is too big to put 2 on a single DVD). To be of any real use in today's market where CDRs and DVDRs are the common media, this really needs to be corrected. I had to calculate that 2240MB is just big enough to fit two segments per DVD. A part of a selection drop down should at least have common split sizes -- this is present on every PC version I've ever used. Four, this has several major bugs, two of which are immediately visible in the .bat file this makes to be compatible with PC/Win double-clicking. On a file that was a Toast disk image (not videos), this appended ".mpg" to the joined file name, and only had commands to join the first three parts of the file, the fourth part (.004), was not in the batch file at all. Though I am not going to test it, When this file was first split, it had 3 2.2GB segments and one 384.7MB segment. When I reduced it so two segs could fit on a single DVD-R, I got 3 2.19GB sements and one 384.7MB segment. Errrrr..... Shouldn't the smaller segment have grown significantly in size, not stayed the same? Though it's a matter of paranoia only, the program also pretty much locks out all other actions while it is spitting, and is very tough on the hard disc, even when spitting from one HD to another (most file copies are quicker and less harsh on the HD -- could this be a timing/interleave problem?). A slightly less harsh split routine (even though it would take longer) would be preferable, especially if the drive being accessed is also doing something else... This has a very long way to go before it becomes worth $20. It's much easier to learn the Terminal commands under OSX and use them, than to play roulette with this program. (Though I would prefer using a GUI to the terminal window -- The terminal hasn't fouled anything up, that I've given it). |
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