Part IV: Extreme iPodding

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11.4. DVD Movies

If your Mac has a DVD drive (or a combo drive or SuperDrive), you're in for a treat. Your Mac can play rented or purchased movies on DVD as though it were born to do so.

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Internet Radio and Podcasts

Audio CDs and MP3 files aren't the only sources of musical and spoken sound you can listen to as you work. iTunes also lets you tune in to hundreds of Internet-based radio stations , which may turn out to be the most convenient music source of all. They're free, they play 24 hours a day, and their music collections make yours look like a drop in the bucket. And starting with iTunes 4.9, you can also download and listen to podcasts, which are like homemade (sometimes very homemade) , Internet-distributed personal radio shows.

For radio, click Radio in the left-side Source list. In the main list, if you're connected to the Internet, you'll see categories like Blues, Classic Rock, Classical, and so on, as shown here. Click the flippy triangle to see a list of Internet radio stations in that category.

When you see one that looks interesting, double-click it. (The higher the number in the Bit Rate column, the better the sound quality. Note, though, that 128 Kbps is generally too rich for dial-up modems, and may sputter or fail to connect.) Wait a moment for your Mac to connect to the appropriate Internet site, and then let the music begin!

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to capture Internet broadcasts or save them onto your hard drive. You can, however, drag the name of one into the Source list, or your Library, or even a playlist, to make it easier to access later on.

If you discover other Internet radio stations that sound interesting, choose Advanced Open Stream, type in the stations Web address (URL), and press Return.

To grab a podcast, click Music Store in the Source list. In the master category list at the left side of the music-store "page," click Podcasts. Now iTunes lets you browse a vast list of available podcasts. When you click one that looks promising , you'll see that you can either listen to it on the spot, orand here's the real funclick Subscribe.

Once you do that, a new icon called Podcasts appears in your Source list; click it to find the latest episodes of the podcasts you've subscribed to. Sync those babies to your iPod, and you've got interesting materialor, at least fresh materialto listen to every day of the week.


Watching movies on your Mac screen couldn't be simpler: Just insert the DVD. The Mac detects that it's a video DVD (as opposed to, say, one that's just filled with files) and, unless you've fiddled with your preference settings, opens the DVD Player program (Figure 11-9).

Figure 11-9. Top: DVDs on your screen! Use your mouse to click the buttons , if you like; that's a lot more direct than having to use the arrow keys on a remote control.
Bottom: You can orient this controller either horizontally or vertically on your screen by choosing Controls Use Vertical Controller. You can also do without this remote control altogether, since all of its buttons have keyboard equivalents.


If DVD Player doesn't start up automatically when you insert a DVD movie, you can open it yourself. It's sitting there in your Applications folder. (Then fix the problem, using the CDs & DVDs panel of System Preferences.)

11.4.1. Playing a Movie

If DVD Player starts out playing your movie in a window, your first act should be to choose Video Enter Full Screen ( -0). At this point, the movie screen fills your entire monitoreven the menu bar disappears. (To make it reappear, move your cursor near the top of the screen.)

At this point, you're ready to play the movie. By far the easiest way is to just press the Space baronce to start, again to pause, again to start again.

You can also use the "remote control," which is deconstructed in Figure 11-9. Or just use the keyboard:

  • Press Shift- -right arrow to fast-forward; press that combination repeatedly to cycle from twice to 4, 8, 16, or 32 times normal speed. Similarly, press Shift- -left arrow to scan backwards . Click Play (or press the Space bar) to resume normal playback.

  • You can make the movie louder or quieter by repeatedly tapping -up or -down arrow. That's a good keystroke to remember when you've hidden the remote control itself.

Or, if you prefer a clip 'n' save cheat sheet of all the keystrokes, here it is:

Table 11-3.

Function

Keystroke

Play, Pause

Space bar

Fast-forward

Shift- -right arrow

Rewind

Shift- -left arrow

Louder

-up arrow

Quieter

-down arrow

Mute/Unmute

Option- -down arrow

Next/previous "chapter"

right arrow, left arrow

Main menu

-~ (upper left of your keyboard)

Full-screen mode

-0

Half, normal, maximum size

-1, -2, -3

Eject

-E

Show/hide remote control

Option- -C

Show/hide info /navigation panel

Shift- -N

Add a bookmark

-= (equal sign)



Tip: Isn't that cool how DVD Player automatically displays the subtitles for the dialog (if subtitles exist on the DVD) when you hit the Mute key?

11.4.2. Language Fun

Most Hollywood DVDs have been programmed with onscreen subtitles to help those with hearing impairments and people sitting in noisy bars. Click the Subtitle button (Figure 11-9) to turn on the subtitles, again to hide them. (You can specify the language you wantEnglish subtitles, Spanish subtitles, or whatever the DVD offersby clicking the same button repeatedly. Or choose DVD Player Preferences, click the Disc Setup icon, and choose a language from the Subtitle pop-up menu.)

Meanwhile, each time you click the Audio button on the remote, the movie's soundtrack switches to a different language (if, in fact, alternate soundtrack languages have been provided). You'll see the name of each language appear briefly in the remote's "display." (You can also use the Audio button as a pop-up menu to choose the language you want directly.)


Tip: For real fun, turn on English subtitles but switch the soundtrack to a foreign language. No matter how trashy the movie you're watching, you'll gain much more respect from your friends and family when you tell them that you're watching a foreign film.

11.4.3. Bookmarks and Video Clips

The two new big-ticket features in the Tiger version of DVD Player are fairly small, as tickets go. Both are designed to help you flag and return to favorite moments or scenes in a DVD movie.

  • Bookmarks . Each time you find a spot you'll want to find again later (during playback or when paused ), hit -= (equal sign), or choose Controls New Bookmark. DVD Player invites you to name the bookmark. You can also accept its proposal of 1:23:15 (or whatever the hours:minutes:seconds count happens to be).

    Once you click OK, you can use the Go Bookmarks submenu to jump from one bookmark to another.


    default bookmark. That means, "Next time you insert this disc, play back from here instead of where I stopped ."

    Figure 11-10. When you choose Controls New Video Clip, this dialog box appears. Find the starting point of the favorite scene and then click the upper Set button. Now play or navigate to the end of the scene, and click the lower Set button. When you click Add, youre invited to name the scene. From now on, you can play the scene by choosing from the Go Video Clips submenu.


  • Video Clips . A video clip is exactly the same as a bookmark, except that you're supposed to designate a starting point and an ending point. (Don't get excited; a video clip isn't a standalone file that's saved on your computer, and you can't send it or share it. It only works within DVD Player.)

    Figure 11-10 shows how you create and use a video clip.

11.4.4. The Big Picture

Now, watching a movie while sitting in front of your iMac or Power Mac is not exactly the great American movie-watching dream. But if your Mac has an S-video jack (many PowerBook and iBook models do), you can connect the Mac to your TV for a much more comfortable movie-watching experience.

Just be sure to connect the cable directly to the TV. If you connect it to your VCR instead, you'll probably get a horrible, murky, color -shifting picturethe result of the built-in copy-protection circuitry of every VCR.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Region Changing

The first time I tried to play a DVD, I got this weird message about initializing the region code. What's up with that?

Hollywood generally releases a movie in each part of the world at different times. A movie may come out on video in the U.S. when it's just hitting screens in Europe. We certainly can't have people watching a DVD before the movie studio says it's OK! That's why many discs are region-locked, so that they play back only on players in certain geographical regions .

As a DVD player in disguise, your Mac is just doing its duty. You can change its region (you'll be offered the chance to do so when you insert a region-locked DVD from another region), but only five timesand then it's frozen forever in the fifth version, or at least until you erase your hard drive and start over.

The dialog box shows you which region your DVD is designed for: 1 for the U.S. and Canada; 2 for Japan, Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East; 3 for Southeast and East Asia; 4 for Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean; 5 for Eastern Europe, Africa, and North Korea; 6 for China; and 8 for airplanes, cruise ships, and so on. Any DVD that you burn yourself is assigned region , meaning that it will play anywhere .

(There's no Region 7. Maybe it's reserved for the empty spot in movie executives' hearts.)


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Mac OS X. The Missing Manual
Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)
ISBN: 0596153287
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 506
Authors: David Pogue

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