Ten Great Mac Multimedia Programs
Most of Connected Internet’s readers are PC users. PC users don’t have too much of a problem finding an application for a specific task. Usually a quick Google will turn up a solution to a pressing problem. The only drawback to Windows’ prevalence is that there is an exponentially greater amount of commercial software, so PC users may have to dig a little to find a freeware solution to the task at hand.
Mac users enjoy a healthy commercial software community, but also free software is quite prevalent. Maybe it’s the unix influence, you know, free software and all that. I’m not complaining. As a Mac user I have a choice between a commercial solution, scouring the vast freeware available, or falling back to a unix solution when all else fails.
Following are ten applications for working with video, graphics and audio files that I have found to be indispensable. I see enough posts of the variety “What Mac app should I use for…” on various Mac web forums that I hope someone will find these recommendations useful.
1. VLC Media Player I don’t care if you’re a Mac user, a Windows user, or a unix adherent. This app should be on everyone’s hard drive. VLC is available for Mac, Windows, Linux, BeOS and Syllable, and the source code will compile on *BSD, QNX and Solaris. Forget about Windows Media Player, Quicktime, or whatever application you are using to view video files, VLC does it all. I can’t think of a video or audio format that VLC doesn’t support, and it generally behaves nicer than the common solutions during use.
2. ffmpegx An encoding utility that is pretty all-encompassing, like a VLC Media Player for the back end. Download a pesky .mkv or .mp4 movie that your Pioneer divx enabled DVD player in the living room won’t play? ffmpegx is just the thing to convert it to a format that will fit the bill. Need something to convert movies for your iPod? Look no further. I can’t tell you how often I use this app. $15 is a suggested donation, and I’m guessing that before long using ffmpegx you will feel compelled to pay for it. It’s that good.
3. Explicit Got a big avi you need to chop in two to fit on two cds? Look no further. No other bells and whistles, just a simple tool for splitting avi files, but you’ll be glad you have it when want to split or edit an avi.
4. Max Max will extract audio in pretty much any format you want and convert from just about any audio codec to another. Especially useful for converting ogg and flac files to mp3 so that iTunes and your iPod can make use of them.
5. Mac the Ripper is a useful DVD ripping utility. In addition to making legal backups of your DVD library, Mac will remove regional information, allowing users of unmodified DVD players to watch import DVDs on the player. Useful for that import concert DVD they didn’t release in your region, among other things.
6. DVD Imager A simple tool that will convert video_ts directories into burnable disc images. Not necessary that often, but extremely useful when you are looking at a directory you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do anything with. By the way, VLC will play those directories if that is all you are after.
7. Toast 10 Titanium I won’t blame you for saying that $99 is way too much for a cd/dvd burning suite when there is a perfectly fine disk utility built into the os. If you can afford Toast, you’ll never need another disc burning solution. Better than anything on Windows by a factor of 20,000.
8. DVDRemaster Got a dual layer dvd image you need to shrink because, like me, you only have a single layer DVD burner? Look no further. DVDRemaster will shrink those fat 7 gig images down to a svelte 4.2 gigs for us dual layer impaired types. Single layer lamers unite!
9. Toyviewer A simple image viewer and converter, but it does it all. Photoshop is great, but it takes as long to start up as it takes my operating system to boot. Sometimes you just need to turn a png into a jpg. Why wait for Photoshop for four seconds worth of work? Besides, Toyviewer creates smaller files without having to dink around with Photoshop’s myriad settings. I’ve been using Toyviewer since the NeXT days, and it’s still my favorite lightweight image manipulator.
10. Submerge Got a foreign film avi with a subtitle file? That’s great if you’re watching it on the computer, but it doesn’t do you any good if you were planning on burning that movie and watching it on your divx-capable DVD player in the living room. The answer? Submerge will create a quicktime movie complete with subs from your video file and accompanying subtitle file. All you need to do is convert it back to divx or xvid with ffmegx. A lot of work? Yeah, but if you just have to see that foreign film with subs it beats nothing at all.
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Tags: application, avi, Code, codec, convert, converter, divx, download, dvds, ipod, itunes, Mac, mac user, mac web, Media Player, mp3, mp4, pc, quicktime, video, vlc media player, xvid
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