Apple OSX - how to tar files

tar is included in the default install of OSX.

You can use it to bundle up files:

$ tar -cvf archive.tar *.gz

will add all files (its clever enough not to try to tar itself!) with a .gz suffix into the file archive.tar

$ tar -cvf archive.tar *

will add all files in the current directory apart from archive.tar into the file archive.tar

Apple Mac OSX and the QuickTime MPEG-2 addon

Like many people I've bought the QuickTime MPEG-2 addon. But when I installed it on my new Mac Mini (which replaces the old Mac), although it seems to install OK, when you try to open an MPEG2 file in quicktime or the very excellent MPEG StreamClip, its obvious that the plug-in hasn't taken.

The answer turned out to be to return to the Apple Store and re-download the installer.

Would've been nice if Apple has notified me that a new version is available!

Apple Mac OSX, Elgato EyeTV and Quicktime Streaming Server

Now that I've got the new Mac Mini, an Elgato Diversity seemed a good addition. The v2.x EyeTV software has a 'WiFi' feature, which is actually the software doing a simultaneous transcode to MPEG4 in .mov format. You can then go to a web page and access your recordings. Its intended for wireless iPods such as the iPod Touch.

The problem is that it doesn't stream. I have a partial solution, which is to use the free Apple Darwin Quicktime Streaming Server, which you can get from Apple. Install it and configure, and then you can stream.

If you want to get to your streams you'll need to do a couple of things:

1 - Open you firewall to TCP and UDP on 554 in order that RTSP works from the Internet

2 - You need to export from EyeTV as either .mp4 or .3gp.

Make sure you select 'options' and on the 'streaming' tab click the box to enable streaming. The h.264 option gives you better quality at lower bit rate. The documentation suggests you can make a .mov stream, but I was unable to make this work

If you know what your broadband's upstream capacity is, make sure you stay below it. Anything below about 400 kbps should be safe.

What I need to do next is to find a way to auto-generate a web page to link to the stream files.

Saving Quicktime Streamed Movies

When you view a streamed quicktime movie, you get a .qtch file, which with current version of quicktime (v7.4) you cannot open.

What you can do is find the base URL, and use eg wget to download the .m4v or the .mov.

When the movie is open press apple-I.

It shows a window with source data. Note the url. Using wget fetch the movie

$ wget path.to.movie.com/x/y/z/movie.m4v.

OSX does not have wget by default, so follow these instructions to get it.

Apple Mac OSX - locate command fails

On my new MacMini I needed to use the 'locate' command but I got

'locate: `/var/db/locate.database': No such file or directory'.

To fix this is to manually run the weekly CRON job:

$ sudo periodic weekly

or, you can run

$ sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

and then locate should work OK.

Update: On a Leopard machine you will get a warning if you run the latter command:

">>> WARNING
>>> Executing updatedb as root. This WILL reveal all filenames
>>> on your machine to all login users, which is a security risk."

If you are the sole user of the machine, this will be OK. If you are not, consider your options. On OSX pre-Leopard you don't get this warning of course.

Nokia N73 - downloading photos into iPhoto

Nokia have some rather handy software to download photos from your N series phone diectly into iPhoto. I use this with my N73

The menu icon is a bit boring though.

Update - version 1.2.1 now available http://www.macupdate.com/download.php/25129/NokiaMultimediaTransfer-1.2.1.zip

Apple Mac OSX - Customizing the Menu Bar Icons

In Apple Mac OSX you can customize the menu bar icons.

Navigate to /system/library/core services/menu extras/battery.menu for example, and then ctrl-click or right click, and select 'show package contents'.

In the new window that opens, go into contents/resources. You find lots of tif files that you can customize: If in doubt backup the existing ones first of course .



Update: In 10.5 Leopard the icons are stored as PDFs, so this method won't work. I'm looking for a new way.