Contents
Part I. Get AVCHD footage off HD camcorder to Mac
Part II. Play AVCHD video on Mac
Part III. Editing AVCHD footage on Mac
Part IV. Convert AVCHD video on Mac

Part I. Get AVCHD footage off HD camcorder to Mac
To play AVCHD video files on your Mac, first you need get them off HD Camcorder to your Mac desktop or laptop. It’s easy with iMovie:
1. Connect camcorder to your Mac computer with cable (USB/Wifi).
2. Select mode of camcorder such as PC/Computer mode.
3. iMovie will automatic open Import window.
4. If DVD Player automatic open , just quit DVD Player first.
5. So Now, you can review your video or select “Import All”(make sure your switch is set to “Automatic”).
6. If you select “Manual”, you can import some clip to iMovie.
7. If you import from Tape based device (DV/HDV), iMovie will automatic revise tape & import all.
8. iMovie automatic create thumbnail video after complete import.

iMovie will automatically detect when you have a FireWire camcorder connected. If you see the message No Camera Attached, make sure your camera is turned on and properly plugged in to your computer via a FireWire cable and that your camcorder is set to VCR, VTR, or Play mode.

Part II. Play AVCHD video on Mac
Each of the AVCHD camcorders ships with software designed to playback the files on your computer, such as Sony’s Picture Motion Browser, Panasonic’s AVCHD camcorders. While the bundled applications work, but they all run for PC. How to play these AVCHD M2TS / TS / MTS files on Mac for FREE? Here are some alternatives.

VLC Media Player is a totally free program that you should already have on your Mac that plays oodles of different video and audio formats, far more than QuickTime and DVD player. Simply run this application, choose FILE>OPEN FILE, select you VIDEO_TS folder, and that is OK!

Mplayer for Mac is another free AVCHD media player, it’s binary distribution of MPlayer (The Movie Player for Linux) and comes with native GUI in Mac OS X. After installation you can simply (by Drag Drop) play almost all 3ivx, DivX 3, 4, 5 and other codecs files in the window or full screen mode. Rendering of very nice antialiased text-based subtitles is also supported.

Part III. Edit AVCHD footage on Mac
AVCHD camcorders had been out since mid 2006 the first fully capable software for editing the footage only became available with the recent release of Sony’s Vegas 9 editing software for Windows. Ok, so which software you can use to edit AVCHD on Mac, including Snow Leopard?

If your budget allows, make iMovie for your AVCHD video editing, but there are two core requirements. First, you need to make sure you have iMovie ’09 or newer software. The other limiting factor to using iMovie is hardware. You need a Mac with an Intel-based Core Duo processor or better to edit AVCHD in iMovie ’09. Power PC G5 Macs or older will not work for editing high definition AVCHD with iMovie.

Final Cut Pro is the premium choice for any Mac video editing. The Final Cut Pro 7 is the most up-to-date support for AVCHD available, with 6.0.1 being the first version of FCP with AVCHD support. Making sure you have Final Cut Pro 7 installed is your best bet to making sure you have a great editing experience with AVCHD and FCP.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 is another choice. Although it has now returned to the Mac platform neither the Mac nor Windows versions supports the AVCHD format, there were quite a few rumours indicated AVCHD smooth playback and video editing totally depends on your systems performance. Most Laptops will work just fine with AVCHD editing but don’t have as smooth a playback as a highend desktop.

So which is best, iMovie, FCP, Adobe Premiere? Well, I personally prefer Final Cut Pro to iMovie for editing AVCHD on a Mac. It makes editing easier and helps bring out your more creativity!

Part IV. Convert AVCHD video on Mac
While AVCHD camcorders save HD video in M2TS and MTS formats, they cause problems down the road – for example you will find that YouTube™ doesn’t support the file format of the AVCHD video you want to upload, and most portable players as well. There are some 3rd programs available, but if you’re looking for easiest solution to handle the job on Mac(including Snow Leopard), with better output quality, AVCHD HD Video Converter from iFunia comes as a good choice. It walks three easy steps to finish the conversion.

The first step is run iFunia HD Video Converter program and add your AVCHD(M2TS, MTS) video files by clicking ‘Add’ button or drag-n-drop. Besides, a good consideration is to edit movies down before conversion, crop into the picture to remove unwanted portions and even apply global effects and watermark. In my evaluation, the editing process worked in real time, happily getting the instant comparison of original preview and output preview – unlike other AVCHD video converters with no comparison.

Now that you have finish the source setup, the next step is to select an output profile and set specific folder. It accepts most popular formats as output, including AVI, WMV, HD AVI, HD WMV, FLV, MP4, and of course, QuickTime video. There are various format/bit rate/screen resolution encoding options in the Setting window. Remember that the output file size mostly depends on the Bitrate you set. Larger Bitrate, larger file size. But the easiest way to get good results is to just let iFunia HD Video Converter will set the quality details for you.

Finally, it’s time to start the conversion. If your movie is large, a better way to tick “Shutdown when done” checkbox before conversion, then let iFunia HD Video Converter do its thing!

Well, AVCHD camcorder is becoming more and more popular. I hope these essenstials help you to gain a better understanding of AVCHD and the entertainment they bring to your digital life.

1. BlogDesk, a free stand-alone application, lets you comfortably write and effortlessly publish new entries to your blog. It features an ImageWizard that lets you crop, resize and rotate images. It also has a Technorati Tags Generator that lets you easily define and insert tags instead of retyping them over and over again.
2. Qumana is a free, easy-to-use stand-alone desktop blog editor, enabling you to write, edit and post to one or more blogs. You can use Qumana even when you are offline. Save your blog posts to your hard drive and upload whenever you like. Great for bloggers on the move.
3. TinyMCE Advanced adds 16 plugins to TinyMCE: Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Full Screen, IESpell, Layer, Media, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras. Its free and packs quite a punch when it comes to adding extra functions to the editor.
4. WP Super Edit is a free WordPress plugin designed to give some control over the visual / WYSIWYG editor and add some functionality without modifying the WordPress source code.
5. Monsters Editor for WP Super Edit brings the magic of Fckeditor back to TinyMCE. So if you prefer TinyMCE as its concision, but used to Fckeditor’s powerful functions, then MsE is your good choice. Please do note that this is a free addon plugin to WP Super Edit described above.
6. Windows Live Writer is a free desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts. It includes a lot of features such as WYSIWYG Authoring, Photo Publishing, Map Publishing and a Writer SDK. The Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).
7. FCKEditor is a free, full featured web based WYSIWYG html editor, it’s lightweight and is compatible with most internet browsers which include: IE 5.5+ (Windows), Firefox 1.0+, Mozilla 1.3+ and Netscape 7+. Its strong points are the excellent interface and built-in File and Upload Managers.
8. Mudbomb’s free WYSIWYG Plugin for WordPress gives you a lot of control over your images, letting you choose the thumbnail size, the compression quality, et al. It also supports emoticons and features dictionary support.
9. BlogJet is a Windows blog client for managing multiple blogs that supports file attachments among other regular features such as an Image Manager, Youtube and Flickr support. There are both free and paid versions of BlogJet available.
10. ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured free blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.
11. RocketPost is a paid WYSIWYG editor that lets you edit and upload multiple posts at the same time. It features built-in photo editing, instant photo albums, automatic linking to related posts, quote tracking, quick linking, drop caps, pull quotes and a running word count.
12. Advanced TinyMCE Editor is a free plugin that turns your existing WordPress editor into a WYSIWYG powerhouse.

If none of the above editors are to your liking, there’s one software that you are sure to be familiar with – Microsoft Word. Yes, unknown to many, Microsoft Word 2007 has native support for publishing posts to blogs running on WordPress, TypePad, Blogger and Live Spaces. Sahas explains how to setup your blog in Microsoft Word 2007 here.

I have searched for days on forums downloaded trials from Photoshop even tried reinstalling the whole Os a couple of times but not success it was not installing. After two days of effort and trial & hit here is the solution and I hope it will save your frustration.

How to install Adobe Photoshop CS4  or Creative Suit CS4 on Snow Leopard?

Its very simple in the end of the day. Here it is:

1. While in your admin account on your new Snow Leopard create a new user account. Make sure the user is created as administrator and has no password assigned to their account.

2. Now restart your machines and login to the new user account.

3. Copy the CS4 DVD contents on your desktop you can also create an ISO if you want.

4. Start the installation from there and that is it. The installation wont give any errors and will continue.

In some cases if it still doesn’t continue see if you have any folder under the Library folder on your hard drive with ADOBE title. Delete that folder and restart. Then try to install.

Sometimes if  this does not work try creating a new user and make sure you do no give any password to the account and then follow the steps above.

That is folks hope this works for you it surely did for me and the only reason I could figure out was that the new user means new profile so no conflicts but dont know the password reason.

If you have comments on this please do share below.

1. Document the intranet strategy

Develop and document an intranet strategy, based on a consideration of the requirements and balance of information/content, technology and governance. This strategy has to be aligned with the overall strategy of the organisation.

2. Use personas and tasks/scenarios to identify user requirements

Personas are virtual cvs that summarise the main characteristics of employees undertaking specific roles, and the tasks that these roles require. Focusing on perhaps six key user scenarios can make a significant difference to the quality and acceptance of the intranet.

3. Understand and support content contribution
Information quality in an intranet is essential. Invariably intranet content contribution is not included in job descriptions or valued by managers, and as a result gets low priority.

4. Enhance the intranet in a series of small, manageable, steps
An intranet should be continuously enhanced to reflect changing requirements, rather than wait for the opportunity and resources to carry out a major revision.

5. Manage metadata
Content authors may not have the skills and expertise needed to add metadata. Metadata is not just about ‘keywords’. The effort involved in developing metadata schemes and taxonomies is always underestimated.

6. Provide effective search functionality
Users have to trust the search functionality so that they feel totally confident that either they have found all relevant information, or that information is not on the intranet.

7. Provide access to the business environment
Make sure that the intranet provides access to information from external sources, such as business and market information. It is easy to be so focused on the provision of internal information that access to external information is overlooked

8. Undertake regular usability testing
Usability testing should be carried out at all stages of the life of an intranet, and there should be a range of feedback channels to ensure that the content and the information architecture continue to meet the expectations of contributors, users and stakeholders.

9. Support collaborative working
Intranet websites on their own are not good collaborative applications. There could be significant benefit in implementing wikis and blogs, discussion forums and surveys.

10. Set up a suitable governance structure
The governance structure should reflect this enterprise value of the intranet. There should be clear communication channels to the staff and also back to the intranet team so that changes in business requirements can be identified at the earliest opportunity.

11. KPIs and measurement of success
Both long term and short term goals and well thought KPIs have to be defined right from the beginning.

The basics

WordPress themes are the standard layout system that define your blog’s appearance. It consists of template files, functions, template tags and images. To install a WordPress theme, you just need to upload it and activate it in your WordPress admin.

WordPress page structure

Most of the time, a WordPress page is composed of the header, the sidebar, the content and the footer. These structural elements usually are separated files that you can include in your template files. There can be more structure elements, such as other sidebars, advertising space or whatever you can think of.

Template files

The above chart shows what files are used depending on the page you are using. You can use only the index.php with a stylesheet, but you would be missing customization options that make your theme more user-friendly.

The Loop

In WordPress, the loop is a set of functions used to display your posts and everything related to the posts (title, tags, author, categories,…). To customize the loop, WordPress has some well documented pages that you’ll find here or here. For a more advanced loop use like multiple loops on the front page, some blogs offer very extensive tutorials about it.

Template Tags

Template tags are small PHP snippets that are used to display info on the blog. For example, <?php bloginfo(’url’) ?> will display the base url of your blog. WordPress has a very good documentation about template tags and lists the tags available. When using WordPress plugins, you’ll sometimes get plugin specific template tags.

Functions

The functions.php file is a special one, it will not display a specific page but contains all functions used for your template. For example, you will need it to create widget zones or to create a theme customization page in WordPress’ admin.

Thanks to Design Reviver for such a nice contribution.

• preview (.gif, 1255×882px)
• download the pdf (5 pages, 123 Kb)

I suggest you read how to Widget-Enable WordPress Themes in 3 Easy Steps before reading further as examples will be quoted in the same context.

Edit Functions.php for Multiple Dynamic Sidebars

The functions.php code which helped to widgetize your wordpress theme and support a single dynamic sidebar, now needs to be edited (using any text editor like Notepad) to support multiple sidebars. You remember we had modified the default function.php from

<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar();
?>

to the new code below to support our customized template with h4 subtitles and non-default unordered lists in the sidebar. REMEMBER you need to edit functions.php to match your wordpress theme or it will not work.

<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array(
'before_widget' => '',
'after_widget' => '',
'before_title' => '<h4>',
'after_title' => '</h4>',
));
?>

To support multiple sidebars, I simply need to specify that multiple sidebars be used and name them as I like. In our case I use Sidebar1, Sidebar2 etc and as many as you like. The code now looks like this -

<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'sidebar1',
'before_widget' => '',
'after_widget' => '',
'before_title' => '<h4>',
'after_title' => '</h4>',
));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'sidebar2',
'before_widget' => '',
'after_widget' => '',
'before_title' => '<h4>',
'after_title' => '</h4>',
));
?>

I personally have extended this capacity to 6 dynamic sidebars on this blog. Here is how it looks like on top of admin panel.

Now you can drag and drop widgets of your choice to different sidebars and customize the options. Remember to Save Changes or else all customization is lost.

Add Dynamic Sidebars to WordPress Template

Now you need to place the code in the wordpress theme template where you want the relevant wordpress widgets to work. Instead of the previous code, you can place the different dynamic sidebars in different areas of the template.

Sidebar1 code goes like this
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
|| !dynamic_sidebar('sidebar1') ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Sidebar2 code goes like this
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
|| !dynamic_sidebar('sidebar2') ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Save the template and watch your widgets go live. You can add lots of dynamic sidebars with various widget combinations and have truly unique web design concept.

Courtesy of  http://www.quickonlinetips.com.

Definition and Usage

The <div> tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document.

The <div> tag is often used to group block-elements to format them with styles.

Browser Support

The <div> tag is supported in all major browsers.

How do I make a basic div block?

This is the code for a basic div:

<div id=layer1 style=”position:absolute; top:20; left:20; width:300; height:300; z-index:1; padding:5px; border: #000000 2px solid; background-color:#000000; background-image:url(yourfilename.gif); layer-background-image:url(yourfilename.gif);”>

Content goes here (images, text)

</div>

In the above code, there are a few variables that need to be defined:

• id: This is just the number of your div. It helps you sort out easily which div element is which when you have many layers. It’s also useful for identifying layers so that you can have different style attributes in your style sheet for each div element.
• Top: This is the number in pixels that your div element will be positioned horizontally from the top of the page. If you give “top” a number value of “20,” your div element will be 20 pixels down from the very top of your page.
• Left: This is the number in pixels that your div element will be positioned vertically from the left of your page. If you give “left” a number value of “20,” your div element will be 20 pixels left from the very left side of your page.
• Width: This is the width of your div element in pixels.
• Height: This is the height of your div element in pixels.
• Z-index: This is the order in which your div elements are stacked, or overlapped. The number 1 would be the first layer, and the layer closest to the background of your site. The number 2 would be stacked on top of number 1, etc. You can remove this tag if you are using layers that you do not want to overlap.
• Padding: This is the margin of your div element in pixels. For instance, if you have text in your div element, you’ll need margins so that the text doesn’t go from one end of the div element to the other. This tag acts just like the cellpadding tag for tables.
• Border: This is the border of your div element in pixels. If you don’t want a border, remove this variable. You can have a border that is solid, dottted, dashed, double, groove, ridge, inset, or outset.
• Background-image: This is the background image of your div element for IE.
• Layer-background-image:This is the background image of your div element for Netscape.

How do I change the div scrollbar color?

(IE only) You can use this method to change the color of your individual div element scrollbars. Using a style sheet makes your scrollbars all the same color. If you want a different color for a particular div, you can use this method, substitute your own 6 digit color number where you see bold text:

<div style=”position:absolute; left:100px; top:100px; width:100px; height:100px; background-color:#ffffff; overflow:auto; scrollbar-face-color : #000000; scrollbar-highlight-color : #000000; scrollbar-3dlight-color : #000000; scrollbar-shadow-color : #000000; scrollbar-darkshadow-color : #000000; scrollbar-track-color : #000000; scrollbar-arrow-color : #000000;”>

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