Mac Editors, Sound Off! What would you like to see?

[SQ]

Haven't read any of the stickies, haven't edited any AMVs on a mac (just things I've produced myself or at school), so I'm speaking out of my ass here.

But I think it'd be cool if there were some applicable AppleScripts. If they don't exist already.
Mostly for encoding video, but also possibly prepping video for import to your favorite editing program.

I'm not sure how do-able that would be, and it's certainly not a guide or anything, but it still would be nice to have if possible.

[Kionon]

Not sure how that would be relevant given the need to use AviSynth for prepping on Intels. On PPC? Sure, except in another year or two even the quad G5s will be doorstops. Pretty doorstops, but doorstops.

[SQ]

Then ignore me. As stated previously, I was talking out my ass. =D

[Kionon]

I'm running OS X 10.4. 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo and 1GB 667MHz Ram.
It's a pretty old refurb, I just got it to finally get a mac, not with the intent of doing anything really productive on it (Good thing too, because it runs Photoshop like shit).

Want to feel like you just bought a brand new Mac?

1) 7200rpm drive. I suggest 500gb from Seagate.
2) Max out that ram to 2GB
3) Install Snow Leopard

It will fly in comparison. In Macs, the biggest speed gain is hard drive. SSD > 15000rpm > 10000rpm > 7200rpm > 5400rpm. You have a 5400rpm. Doubling ram WILL make a difference as well in huge programs like Adobe suite sections. On Intel Snow Leo is faster and smaller than Tiger or Leo. A lot of what bogged down Tiger and Leo were PPC artifacts that are unneeded in the Intel only Snow Leo. MacBooks have largely been unchanged from 2006 to 2009 ( they recently got a facelift). The only differences between my MacBook and yours is that mine can support 6GB of ramm instead of 2GB and it has a faster processor. That is pretty much it.

[Qyot27]

For MPEG-2, HCenc (latest version, and the one I tested with) runs without problems in Wine*, gives excellent quality, is aimed at DVD compliancy, and it's free. I rarely use TMPGEnc these days because HCenc does pretty much everything I need it to do. My own profiles for HC024 can be downloaded here (copy the profiles to C:\Program Files\HC024 for ease of use): http://www.mediafire.com/?nttyug25zny

*even on Snow Leopard, which I can test under now.

On the other hand, it does divide the workflow - you need to encode audio and mux the file in separate steps, although it can be batch scripted, like so:

#!/bin/sh
wine wavi input.avs - | wine aften -b 192 - output.ac3
wine hcenc_024 -i input.avs -o output.m2v -ini "C:\Program Files\HC024\16-9_NTSCfilm-6000.ini"
wine mplex -f8 -V output.m2v output.ac3 -o final-output.mpg

For all I know there are OS X builds of aften and MJPEGTools mplex, though. You may even be able to grab them through MacPorts too.

HCenc's GUI interface does run just as well in Wine, so the only other steps would be making sure you have a frontend to aften (like EncWavtoAC3, but I didn't test it) and a frontend to mplex (like this one: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jplex-gui/files/ - didn't test this one either; you may need to put mplex.exe in Wine's C:\Windows folder or in jplex's main directory, though...needs Java, so the Windows version of the Java JRE is probably required). To use HCgui with the profiles I provided, load the profile first, then load the AviSynth script and define the output .m2v file.



Concerning Wine itself, though, thisismyinter no longer has downloads of it. I also would not recommend WineBottler (although the panel menu is nice, wish they had that in the regular version) because of syntax differences and general wonkiness. I followed the tutorial on http://davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/ to install it via MacPorts, and I've had no problems with it since - although the process took a while to complete on a 3 or 4 year old iMac. But it works exactly the same way it does on Linux. After installing it this way, I would first run wine regedit so that it can generate the configuration directory, and then suggest adding the drive_c folder (/Users/Name/.wine/drive_c) to the Sidebar in Finder so you can quickly navigate to it. If you get errors concerning permissions when trying to use wine to open a program, then the following will fix it:

sudo chown -R Name:Name /Users/Name/.wine

(where all those 'Name's are the actual username, of course)

Secondary Wine note: To edit Wine's PATH environment variable, open regedit again, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>System>CurrentControlSet>Control>Session Manager>Environment, double-click on the PATH entry and add the directories to it, separating them with semi-colons. This way there's no worries about wine hcenc_024 actually working if you put the HC024 folder in C:\Program Files instead of putting the .exe in C:\Windows. I do wish that Wine's configuration dialog had an option to do this without digging into the registry, but I think the diagram below is clear enough.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (a.k.a HKLM)
+-System
| +-CurrentControlSet
| | +-Control
| | | +-Session Manager
| | | | +-Environment
| | | | | +->PATH
| | | | | | [Path environment variable for searching programs.
| | | | | | Default: c:\windows\system32;c:\windows;C:\Program Files\HC024;C:\Program Files\mplayer]

[Kionon]

Qyot27, could you provide screenshots? I understand this, and could do it myself eventually, but given you already have everything running, adding screenshots to the above would make it easier for me to translate the above in plain English. Remember, half of the people using Macs that post in the Mac forum are first computer users. While the other half may be video professionals, everyone can benefit from my ability to simplify giant walls of text like the one above. To a new Mac editor, that looks like gibberish.

[Qyot27]

Ok, screenshots of just HCenc/HCgui, regedit, and so on, or laying the Terminal stuff out too? I can probably manage to get them tomorrow, as the iMac isn't in a common room.

[Kionon]

Just get everything together. The more the better.

[Qyot27]

I've got the screenshots done. Do you want them cropped, and in PNG or JPEG?

[Kionon]

I'd like access to the whole screenshots, png format. I can decide what to highlight and crop for a contest distribution addendum. Thanks, Qyot27.