Buffistechnology 3: "Press Some Buttons, See What Happens."
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Look into Avid Express, too. (Or Avid Xpress DV, or Liquid, or whatever the current prosumer version is.)
It's not as prettily integrated with OSX as FCP is, but just about everything good about FCP was lifted from Avid in the first place -- it's been the industry standard since before Apple even got into the game.
If I go into Dashboard, I can see GarageBand is eating a lot of CPU -- but I don't have it open. It's not at the bottom, and I can't see if it I try Force Quit. I should really just give up and reboot, but I don't want to.
I don't mind iMovie. I agree that FCE/FCP is significantly better, but if you're just making silly little home movie clips, iMovie is fine. It is NOT fine for, say, vidding. Even though I only tried that for like 30 seconds once before I realized I would never, ever be willing to take the time to get good at it.
Today's discoveries - TVShows (brings up a list of TV shows internationally, select subscribe, it downloads them via torrents as the episodes appear online). And I've discovered that whilst Quicktime on Windows was absolute crap, it's quite good on OSX.
the beauty of quicktime in osx is that it's integrated into the operating system frame so it runs beautifully. I've been using it more on this old powerbook than vlc, because vlc sticks. I like mplayer too, for diversity.
thanks for the tip on streamclip, jessica! what a find.
I can't get Quicktime to run all the things VLC does. It's very pretty, but I don't even try anymore, because of the pain of rejection.
I only use VLC when I find something Quicktime won't play -- I just really dislike the interface.
Most of the stuff I torrent didn't play in Quicktime, but it took me stupidly long to switch the default program.
I wish I could type in the time and scoot right there, and I wish it just having a file open wouldn't disable the screen's going dim. Even if it doesn't have focus. Other than that, I don't ask much other than "play anything."
Almost everything I torrent plays in qt, and if it doesn't there's usually something wrong with the avi. Stuff like mkv, flv, that stuff I can't play in there and play in vlc or mplayer. But given the memory limits of my powerbook, it's a better player generally than the other guy.
I use Synergy whenever iTunes is open. Growl and Little Snitch are also indispensible to the way I use my computer.
I don't use Synergy, because I find setting global hotkeys with Quicksilver is by far my favorite way to control iTunes.
Growl is awesome.