Ever wonder how to take those files on your computer and easily create a DVD? This screencast will be just that, demonstrating how to easily take video files you have stored and make a DVD using Intervideo's WinDVD Creator.

WinDVD Creator is a very simplistic application that will allow you to simply drag and drop files into the interface to create your DVD complete with an index Menu and Chapter Menu.

This is the first of a series of 3 I'll do on the topic. WinDVD Creator is for the beginner who doesn't wish to create dazzling DVDs, just something simple. The next will be a rather hefty step up to Adobe's Premier Elements. And finally I'll round the series off with my favorite authoring application: Final Cut Express.

I do apologize about the multiple downloads. Unfortunately there's an error with application I'm using not being able to render the tutorial and open it in Quicktime for any files over 15 mins. I'm told it is a bug that will be fixed with the next release. SO until then, I'll try my best to limit the tutorials to 10-15 minutes. But this series will have to be done in multiples as I won't be able to scratch the surface of Premier Elements or Final Cut Express in 10 mins.

I hope you enjoy.
Mike

The second half of the first video (Making DVDs with intervideo. Sorry about the dual posts, but for iTunes to pull both videos I had to use seperate posts.

The audio quality of the past two screencasts are simply horrible. I've pulled the Opera tutorials and am in the midst of re-comressing it. I'll do the same to the Making a DVD tutorial this evening.

I had selected the wrong audio compressor during the initial compression so it went haywire.

So, please download the latest versions which will be available as of tomorrow morning--as the audio sounds much much better. I will update this post to reflect when they've been updated.

Update: I have sorted the audio problem as well as the file not rendering problem and re-encoded them. Unfortunately anything over 15 mins will have to be split into two downloads until the bug in the software is fixed.

The first half is uploaded and will be made live at 3pm PST, the second should be made available at the same time though I'm not going to say for certian as it seems anytime I do something else goes wrong.

Sorry about the temporary inconvenience.
Mike

Quickly learn the interface of the popular web browser Opera.

Opera's gone free, ad-free, no payment required, and I'm excited. As of today there's been 1.6 million downloads since it's press release that it's now a free browser.

In this, Part 1, we'll go into the interface and give you a glimpse into what makes Opera. For a complete list of the series go here: http://mfarley.us/?p=61. In honor of my fellow countrymen who's suffered through the nightmare of Katrina and those subjected to Rita, I thought it fitting to use for the music the true spirit of New Orleans and the south. So, playing during this tutorial is my favorite jazz musician, Louis Armstrong, playing three of my favorite songs: 'Mack the Knife', 'When it's Sleepytime Down South', and 'What did I do to be so Black and Blue'.

God be with them.

I can foresee already I’m going to get a few emails as to why people cannot see my screencasts. I capture the video first in lossless AVI video format—each min is about a GB worth of space—not very user friendly. I could compress it in any number of formats but nothing can touch the TRUE mp4 compression of the H.264 codec. I go from a GB/minute to a MB/minute with no loss in video quality. This is nearly unheard of until now.

The H.264 is used by Apple to show off their High Definition movie trailers. And since now iTunes 5, which is the premier platform people use to subscribe to podcasts, ships with the final release of Quicktime 7 it’s a perfect match which I and 90% of the others using video on iTunes take advantage of.

So you will need, at the very least, the latest version of Quicktime to run these videos. But if you don’t have iTunes I suggest you download it instead as not only will it install Quicktime for you but it will make your podcast subscriptions so much easier. Now you’ll never have to go to their site and manually download the podcasts again. iTunes will update and download the latest podcast for you.

But even if you choose not to download and subscribe through iTunes I have enabled an easy direct download link on each podcast. You will however, need Quicktime 7 for any video.

Why choose NTFS? Consider these points...File Compression, File Encryption, and Disk Quotas.

In this screencast, which is the second portion or continuation of the podcast I did earlier, I'll demonstrate these 3 topics as well has discuss what they do and what to keep in mind when using them.

A great web tool that will calculate how much wattage you will need out of your power supply depending on all the variabled within your machine.

This is an unofficial screencast off the subject really but I thought some of you may benefit from it.

A quick 7 minute screencast showing you how to subscribe to your favorite podcasts in iTunes.

There are two methods...the first using a simple RSS feed and copy and pasting it into iTunes and the second method is subscribing to podcasts via the iTMS(iTunes Music Store). I cover both methods in this screencast.

Wondering what file format to use? Know the basics and make an informed decision.

Brief synopsis:

• Microsoft recommends using NTFS unless there's a specific reason not to.
• Added features with NTFS:
• "Supposed" Increased Performance
• Disk Quotas
• File Compression
• File Encryption

Using the Master Password within Firefox will help make your passwords much more secure.

Being diligent you of course want to make sure you don't use the same password from site to site. You want to mix it up. The problem there is I can never really remember which password I used with which site. So, of course you can use the built-in 'saved passwords' in Firefox--but they aren't encrypted by default. Check this screencast out and see how to set your Master Password for safer browsing.

Just wanted to create this preliminary introduction as to what you'll find here.