Free and simple video trimming on OSX

It's been a long since I have need to edit and trim videos.  Tools these days are more powerful, easier to use, and sometimes they are just right there coming with your operating system.

In fact, I knew that I could do some simply trimming on QuickTime Player, and then use iMovie to combine these parts together.  So last night I spent time to do exactly that, and found the process simple to use.  Sure I wish I could get higher precision on selecting the starting point and the ending point, but I can always first get a rough cut to get 1 minute from an hour video, and then further trim that 1 minute to the exact starting point and endpoint point.

Another challenge of video editing is to find a simple but high quality way to convert video to a format that Quicktime native support first.  I tried 2 approaches:

• Use Air Video HD by first select the video on iPad, choose Convert, and set quality, thus having the conversion batch job created in the server queue.  It took about 40 minutes to convert an hour mkv file.
• Use Handbreak .

While so many people online praised Handbreak, I found Air Video HD much easier to use (since I used it to watch videos streamed from my desktop computer to my iPad already).  I found the quality great enough for my purpose.

Bad bluetooth headset causing Apple Pencil pressure sensitive feature failed

Something was not right when I was using my Apple Pencil with ProCreate app on iPad Pro.  After a few trial, I realize the problem: when my legacy single side Bluetooth headset is in use, the pressure sensitive capability on Apple Pencil will stop working.  Eventually, I have to switch to a Sony SHS-50 stereo bluetooth headset.

My Apple Pencil pouch attachment for iPad Pro case

Ever since I brought an iPad Pro, I drew a lot.  The ability to draw anywhere I want with all my draw sync to a cloud storage is pretty amazing.  Since I want to minimize the time it takes from pulling my iPad zero from my backpack to starting to draw, I brought a case that is covers the whole iPad pro from a store in the basement of Hong Kong Golden shopping center.

But then in order to draw, I need Apple Pencil.  Up until now, there is no Apple Pencil case.  So I have to find a safe spot in my backpack to make sure that it's safely stored with enough padding.  That means every time I need to draw outdoor, I need to go to the process of digging out my Pencil even after I already yanked out the iPad Pro.  Furthermore , when I carry my iPad Pro around, I have to explicitly carry the pencil in order to draw.  If I forgot to do so, which always happen because that's still one more item to carry after all, I want to able to use Pencil until I go back to my backpack and dig out the Pencil.  Thus, I am very much convinced that some pocket or case or pouch needs to be attached to the iPad Pro, so that every time I use my iPad Pro, Pencil is always there.

I started out with elementary school student mindset to solve the problem : tapes, and lot of tapes.

As you can see, this doesn't work well.  The weight of the pencil will eventually break the tapes, and i may eventually lost my Pencil because it will drop thru the not-so-strongly-sealed bottom set of tapes.

Besides, this is a style/fashion disaster.  Project Runway judges will faint if they see this.

So I looked for a Plan B.

After a reunion dinner with my friends, I walked on the street of MongKok (in Hong Kong) checked all sort of stores trying to find something that is strong, light, compact and durable enough to host Apple Pencil.  After an hour and more, I found none.  I started to wonder if was hunting for a product that doesn't exist.

Before I gave up by approaching MongKok MTR station, I walked pass the famous/notorious street hawker street 女人街.  I thought, maybe I would find something here.  And it turned out, I DID.

I found a street hawker who were selling fancy Chinese style chopstick with a pouch.  

"That's it", I though, and I brought this set just for the pouch.

But then even if I can use this pouch to store Apple Pencil, we are still talking about carrying 2 separate items around. The logical next step is to find a way to attach this pouch to my iPad Pro case.  Since I live with my mom during this work-ation period in Hong Kong, I asked my mom for some sewing needle, elastic string and so on so that I could sew the pouch to the edge of the iPad pro case.  I am not great at sewing, but at least I did sewed stuff like ballet shoes before.

However, mom was excited and insisted on doing the sewing work for me.  And here's the result after a night of work.

Because it's attached by this purple thread, it's possible to take the pouch off, although I won't do it until the day I get a new case.  The button at the top secures the Pencil so that if won't fall off even when I turn the iPad pro upside down.

So there you go: my Apple Pencil pouch.

Problem with iPad Pro right now

Let's state it out upfront: as a digital sketchbook, IPad Pro is my dream come true.  I've been asking for a device that is light weight enough to allow me to casually leave it in my backpack.  I want, or should I say, need, a device that enables me to sketch whenever and wherever I like.  I want a device that allows me to draw fluently without struggling with latency, parallax , bad drawing surface, poor battery life and terrible sketching software.  With iPad Pro and ProCreate, all these problem were solved.  Now when I sketch a bad drawing, I can only blame myself instead of blaming the device I use.

So there.  Even with all the flaws And problems iPad Pro failed to archive and solve, I will still enough enjoy and keep using iPad Pro daily.  That said, as a short temp perfectionist, I can't help but aware of all kinds of flaws IPad Pro is currently having now. I believe that eventually these problems will be fixed by either Apple or third party, but for those who are trying to decide whether to put down that high price to pick up a IPad Pro right now, I want you to have all the information that the fan boys or casual reviewers fail to provide you.

First of all, iPad pro really suck at multitasking.  You may ask, didn't you just use multitasking to sketch a soccer player using both ProCreate and Photo apps at the same time?  The thing is, it's doable if you happens to find apps that support multitasking.  But there are tons of times I wanted to do something in one app, and then needed to find something from another app, only to find out that the another app doesn't support multitasking.  The truth is that only a small amount of apps support multitasking right now.  The number of supported apps will definitely increase, but in the meantime I am living in a compromise world.

And then, there's this Apple pencil without an eraser.  

There are so many times when I instinctively flipped my pencil around and tried to erase, only to have my brain yelled at me (probably in Bill Bader's Fear voice), "stop stop stop ! It's not there!"  Maybe eventually my muscle memory will eventually learn not to do it.  But all the training I got from kindergarten by using real pencil to all the Tablet PC and Wacom Cintiq taught me will be very hard to get rid of.  Apple needs to release a Apple pencil with an eraser.  They probably will eventually, with a US$149 price tag.

My another complain is that there's too much waste of space here and there on the screen.

 

I find the space on the home screen didn't get fully utilized.  All that screen space with only 26 app icon spaces?  And then I found that most apps scaled up a bit too much for my taste.  Sure my eye tight is terrible so I really should appreciate the big big fonts, but if Apple tries to position iPad Pro as a productivity, business or even a laptop replacement, then Apple needs to understand productive people's mindset.  And for us productive people, we want to get as much done, see as much information on one glance as possible.  And right now it's like having a conference room sized room to host only a few contractors in it.

And my final complain, as for now, is lack of a good case with reasonable price.  Sure, Apple historically charge a premium on their, forgive me for saying the p word, plastic case.  But US$59 for a front Smart Cover and then US$79 for the back cover is just too much for my taste.  And at least in Hong Kong, we really have third part case option here.  So right now I have to live with using a generic pouch to protect my iPad Pro when I bring it outside.  

But I hate it.  This is not my usual optimal usage pattern when I use my iPad Air 2.  I want to simply yank out my iPad, flip the Smart Cover, and start being productive.  I have a very strong feeling that I will eventually give in by buying the covers.  But imagine all the prospected consumer who refused to give in and thus skipped this product.  But again, good third party options will be here In a month.  And  I can only blame myself being impatient.

So that's all for now.  Even with all my complain, I still enjoy my iPad pro very much, especially when I can read my favorite magazine in a full printed magazine size is just amazing.

Btw, this blog is composed entirely on an iPad Air 2.  I still love the all around perfect form factor of iPad Air 2.  I am sure that next year Apple will release a iPad Air with Apple Pencil support, and I will buy it because it will be the perfect leave-it-in-my-backpack-and-forget-about-it digital sketchbook.  Damn you Apple, damn you!

So I reset my iPad 3

Ever since I brought and started using iPad Air 2, I stopped using my iPad 3 as a daily used tablet.  Instead I only used it when I am taking shower (my iPad 3 with a protective case is prefect for hanging on the towel holder) as a podcast player.  As time went by, I found this iPad 3 getting slower and slower everyday, and eventually I got to a point that is too slow to be useful. And I thought, it's time to reset the machine.

Before I reset the machine, I needed to back up everything in it.  After all, I had some setting and some save game that I definitely want to preserve.  So I hooked up my iPad 3 to iTunes and started backup.  But then I was prompted that I needed to authorize to iTunes before I could back up all my apps and files.  In fact, I was prompted twice as I have apps from my US iTunes account and my HK iTunes account.  So once all the authorization was done, I went ahead and did the backup to my computer.

Something seemed unsettling, and I kept thinking like there's something missing.  Eventually I found out that iTunes DID NOT prompt me for authorizing my Japanese iTunes account.  So I checked my iTunes and found out that it didn't show my Japanese Puzzle and Dragon game.  I was horrified, because without that, the data of that game wouldn't be backed up.  So I explicitly authorized with my Japanese iTunes account, and then tried backup again.  This time I saw my Japanese apps being backed up.

With everything successfully backed up, I started  my reset process on my iPad 3, and then hooked up my iPad 3 to my computer with iTunes running when the iPad3 asked whether I wanted to restore my iPad form a backup.  That process took sometime, but since it didn't involved much human intervention, so I was OK with that.

You would thought that that's all, and it's time enjoy the cleaner (and thus faster) iPad 3.  But nope.

That's because most of apps I use on that iPad 3 are games, And it turns out that in addition to basic app download, almost all of those apps require some additional data download.  So  now I am in process of turning on each app, and then kick off the downloading process of each app one by one.

So as of now, I still can't tell you if my iPad 3 is running faster then before the reset.  Time will tell.  :-I

Goodreader USB, which do you suddenly fail on me?

I use GoodReader USB (first the original version, and then the 2.30 which supports GoodReader 4) to copy files to GoodReader app on my iPad 3 and iPad Air 2.  But today, when I launched GoodReader USB on my Windows 8.1 desktop, I got this error saying "Fatal Error: iTunes Not Installed".  I was like, errr!?  Cause the whole thing was still working yesterday.

And no matter what I did, I couldn't get the problem resolved.  I tried installed older version of iTunes but I wasn't able to complete the installation.  I tried reboot and problem still exist.

Eventually I give up, and simply use GoodReader's SMB feature to load the file.  It's slower, but at least it works consistently.

Hopefully someday I will have time to finish a solution.

Boot Mac OSX 10.10 from an external USB harddisk that was prepared by another machine.

Short answer: yes, doable!  I can boot Mac OSX 10.10 from an external USB harddisk that was prepared by another machine.

I have a MacMini 2009 edition in the office and a MacMini 2012 Server at home, and I have a USB 3.0 portable hard disk.  My goal was trying to have portable OSX 10.10 environment that I can use both at home in the office.

So I spent sometime to set up the portable harddisk (which I explained everything in my last blog), and then I use my office MacMini 2009 to setup OSX 10.10 in the MacJournal Extended partition.  And then I install all sorts of software in it.  At night I plugged this harddisk to my home MacMini 2012 Server, boot up the MacMini 2012 with an Windows 8.1 on it (bootcamp), and tried to use the System Tray BootCamp applet change the bootup partition.  However it kept rebooting to Windows 8.1.

Eventually I hold the ALT key during bootup and force it to boot from the OSX on USB 3.0 portable harddisk.  It worked.  I then set the startup partition to the OSX 10.10 on the hard disk.  I didn't have time to try it out (by reboot) afterward, which I will probably do later today.  But at least I know there's a way to boot from an OSX partition that had been prepared by another machine.

BTW, I was NOT able to use SyncToy to sync a huge amount of file between a network location to a OSX drive directory on Windows 8.1.  I will try syncing to a exFAT partition and see if I get better result.