Hanmatsu's Guide to Mac Audio and Video

Optimizing your Singnet Broadband 10 Mbps

hanmatsu — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 16:31:19 +0000

Benchmarks for download speeds from USA (look at TCP Session Bars)
http://www.ida.gov.sg/Publications/20061206112129.aspx

Suggestions (Only work for Singnet 10 Mbps, Windows XP and Modems on Ethernet connections not USB)

Download Dr TCP
http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp

Change Settings (please copy down your original settings):
1. MTU to 1492
2. Tcp Receive Window to 577896
3. Click Save and Restart computer
4. Test your connection for five times at http://connect03.sap.com/bandwidth/initialmeter.php
and get its average.
5. +/- your Tcp Receive Window number by multiples of 2904 and try until you get a maximum speed. You can use MS Excel to compare your data.

Convert Youtube Videos into iPod Videos (.mp4)

hanmatsu — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:22:08 +0000

Try http://vixy.net/flv_converter for the time being. Select the option for mp4 (mpeg4 + AAC).

Convert DVD into High Quality Video with small file size

hanmatsu — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 14:03:27 +0000

The freeware solution on the Mac is Handbrake.

I always recommend H.264 encoding with AAC despite the slow conversion process because at the end of the day, you get fantastic video and audio quality at a small file size. Directly scale down your video for your video ipod.

Convert Realplayer Audio (RAM/RM) to iTunes AAC

hanmatsu — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:09:25 +0000

It is also a two step process, first from Realplayer to MP2 and then MP2 to AAC.

1. Download the free ffmpegX from
http://ffmpegx.com/download.html

2. Also download the mencoder and mplayer binaries and the mpeg2enc binaries as instructed.

3. Download a stable built of “reallib” from
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mplayerosx/reallib.zip?download

As stated at the ffmpegX download page, make sure that the zip file is unzipped and named as “reallib”, then copy it into /Library/Application Support/ffmpegX/
*Don’t bother to look for the latest reallib built from the Helix website because they had apparently discontinued Mac OS X support. I had tried to search for it for ages to no avail.

4. Remove any file extension of the realplayer file that you want to convert. Having .RAM or .RM for your filename will crash ffmpegX. Open or drag the realplayer file into ffmpegX source format area. Choose Quick Preset of Audio file to MP2. Go to the Audio Pane and change Audio bitrate to 384, Sampling to 48000. (The reason why I use MP2 audio rather than mp3 because quality of 384k MP2 is higher than 320k MP3)

5. Click convert and wait patiently for the conversion to complete. If convertion fails, ensure your file extension is deleted, and/or filenames do not contain any non-alphanumeric characters.

6. Convert the mp2 file into AAC in iTunes. I recommend using AAC 192 with VBR.

Convert WMA to iTunes AAC

hanmatsu — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:06:50 +0000

It is a two step process, first we will use Audion to convert WMA into AIFF. Finally iTunes is used to convert the AIFF into AAC. There are many other ways but this method will retain a relatively high audio quality, yet have a reasonable file size at the end of the day. (There are no solutions for protected WMA)

1. Download the free Audion from
http://www.panic.com/audion/download.html

2. Follow the onscreen instructions, enter the given serial number, etc. After installation, open Audion and its preference and go to the Encoder Tab and select your prefered output file folder.

3. Under Tools>Consoles>Encoders, select AIFF and deselect the rest. Go to the Decoders Tab and enable WMA.

4. Go to Tools>Encode Item, select your WMA file and click open. The AIFF will be in your output folder after convertion.

Alternatively, you can use NCH Switch to convert WMA into aiff. I do not recommend converting to MP3 (via Switch) because AAC is a better format.

5. Use iTunes to convert the aiff file into AAC. I recommend 192 VBR.

Extract / Rip audio from youtube videos (.flv)

hanmatsu — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 20:37:10 +0000

Three step process.

1. Download the youtube video from either
http://www.youtubex.com/ or
http://keepvid.com/
http://kej.tw/flvretriever/

2. In ffmpegx, change your target format into quick preset of Movie Audio to MP2, and change the bit rate to 384 and Sample rate to 48000. (The reason why I choose to convert to MP2 first is because I want to get high quality AAC at the end of the day.)

3. In iTunes, convert the MP2 file into AAC 192 VBR Mono since youtube videos are already in mono audio.