Software Spot

Most new computers come pre-installed with trial or subscription versions of software to keep you home computing and internet experience safe and clean from hackers, viruses, spyware and other malicious attacks. The problem is these applications are either very limited in functionality - tempting you to purchase the "Pro" version, expire after a limited trial period, or force you into an ongoing subscription to keep the software up to date. None of these options are necessary, there are plenty of alternative tools available that free for home and personal use, and are often (in my opinion) superior to their costly competitor. So save your $$$, uninstall that beast of a "Security Suite" that came with your computer and try out the applications listed below. In addition I've also listed a number of additional utilities and system tool replacements to keep your computer running safe, clean and health state. Anti Virus Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition I've be...

I have a new favorite video conversion tool for getting Media Center recordings onto my iPod. ATI Avivo Video Converter is supposedly available for the ATI X1000 series video cards, however I have an ATI X300 and the video converter works fine, and it seems around 4 times faster than Videora. I'm not sure if it works with non ATI cards. To convert files is very simple. Just launch the ATI Catalyst Control Center in Wizard mode and select the Avivo Video Converter option. Select the source file and set the Output Video Format to iPod Video (and I suggest setting the Output Quality to High ). A bonus for me is that Avivo handles the Media Center .dvr-ms files directly, so I no longer need to pre-convert the recordings with DVRMSToolBox.

There are so many websites and tools available for getting DVD's onto the iPod it's difficult to know where to start. I've been using Videora for converting files to toi play on the iPod, but the Videora does no not handle DVD's directly. After much trial and error I've settled on the following process for ripping my DVD movie collection. Step 1: RIP the DVD There are lots of tools available to copy (backup) your DVD library to your PC. My personal choice is RipIt4Me . I skip the step to re-burn a copy to a black DVD, I just store the raw DVD Rip on my External USB Hard Drive. Step 2: Convert RIP'ed DVD to iPod Again there is a wide choice of tools available. The best free application I've found for this is Handbrake . Originally for the Mac, the latest version is now available for Windows. As with all of the video conversion tools I've tried you have to set the various conversion options which can be a bit daunting. I've settled on two different pro...

It seems that almost every new electronic device is capable of playing movies these days. In addition to my recent iPod purchase which I've been filling up with movies and tv shows, I have a new Samsung D807 phone which can play video files, so I experimented a little with getting some of these videos onto the Samsung D807. The D807 comes with all the required software, but the process is not obvious, and the default settings don't work with this phone, the media converter defaults to using AAC audio encoding, however the D807 requires the AMR option to be selected. Here's the steps that work for me. 1. Add source video to Media Player 2. Select Convert 3. Select QCIF (QVGA doesn't work, SubQCIF is too small) 4. Convert to PC (doesn't give option to upload to card) 5. Use File Transfer to copy to Video folder on Card

I treated myself to an iPod Video a couple of weeks ago, and after loading up my music collection I decided to try and move some recorded TV shows from my Media Center PC onto the iPod. The iPod won't play the Media Center recording directly, so they need to be converted to the appropriate video format, which is typically H.264 encoded video and AAC encoded audio in an .mp4 container. After much searching around and trying a variety of video conversion tools I settled on the following fairly straightforward approach using a couple of freely available applications. The first tool is used to convert the media center files to a non-proprietary format, and then the second step is to re-encode the video in a format suitable for the iPod. Step 1 - Convert the Windows Media Center DVR-MS recording to MPEG-2 video format Download and install the latest 1.1.0.x version of DVRMSToolbox (the 1.2.0.x versions are for Windows Vista only). Launch the DVRMStoMPEGGUI tool Start > All Programs ...