It happened to me every time but did not happen to others all of the time.

What finally appears to be be the problem is easily avoided, if you don’t use the AppleTV preset.

Large File Size

All of my files were created with the AppleTV preset in HandBrake. Most of the shows that I will be watching will be either on my iMac (which can play AppleTV files) or my AppleTV, so it made sense.

However, the AppleTV preset in HandBrake 0.9.3 adds a new feature called “Large File Size”. What is “Large File Size”? This is what the command-line version of HandBrake (HandBrakeCLI) says:

-4, --large-file        Use 64-bit mp4 files that can hold more than
                        4 GB. Note: Breaks iPod, PS3 compatibility.

There isn’t a whole lot of information about this option in the HandBrake documentation, but if you hover over the option in HandBrake you will see a tooltip:

The take-away point here is whenever you see “Large File Size” think “64-bit” not necessarily “4GB”.

The nomenclature here is confusing. If you use this option, you will not necessarily get a 4GB or large file (an average episode of the West Wing (about 42-44 minutes without commercials) is 400-650MB. However, these are still “64-bit” files, and that seems to cause the problem with AtomicParsley.

This option “may be going away” according to some discussion on the HandBrake support forums.

My recommendation is that you do not use this option unless you know that you need it (i.e. you are ripping a very long movie). I do not know what happens if you try to make an AppleTV compatible file of a movie and it needs to grow larger than 4GB, but it seems unlikely to be something that we run into often.

Make Your Own Preset

One of the nice things about the GUI version of HandBrake is how easy it is to customize a preset.

Step 1: Choose the AppleTV preset in HandBrake (click “Toggle Presets” if it isn’t visible already)

This will get you most of the way there.

Step 2: UNcheck the “Large File Size” box

1. All three ought to be unchecked:

1. Then go back to the Sidebar and click the +

1. Give it a name, something clear and obvious:

1. After saving, make it the default (if you wish)

Using those settings should help you avoid the AtomicParsley bug I have been struggling with.

Will there be a new iPhone? We don’t know.

When is iPhone 3.0 available? We don’t know.

Here’s what I hope will be in there.

1) Copy and Paste - Yeah, we keep saying it, but if it isn’t there by now, this is going to be a serious shortcoming. It’s been almost 2 years now. This is well beyond “Duh”. I only hope it isn’t a big part of the announcement because there are more important/bigger things to talk about.

2) Unified INBOX - I’ve got 5 email accounts on there, and having to tap tap tap tap tap tap tap to get from one to the other is absurd.

3) Auto-Brightness That Works. If you go to Preferences > Settings > Brightness there’s an On/Off switch for auto-brightness.

Right now it does…something. But it doesn’t do what I want it to do, which is:

a) Detect when I am somewhere bright and crank up to 100%.

b) Detect when I am in a dark room and crank down to about 10%

This doesn’t seem like brain rockets, but as someone who uses his iPhone at the dark, it would be really nice if this worked

4) “Live” Turn By Turn GPS - I tried to use my iPhone as a GPS one day when I didn’t have my regular GPS. By which I mean I went the wrong way. I came to an intersection and had to turn left or right and wasn’t sure which way to go and couldn’t reach over to manually update my iPhone Google Maps “fake GPS”.

Sure it will be a battery suck, which is why I have a car adapter for my iPhone. Give me real GPS!

5) Email Full Size Pictures - whether it is to my family, Flickr, or MobileMe, I want to be able to get pictures off my iPhone without them being downsized.

6) Let Me Remove Built-in Apps - There’s never been a better time to remove the “Stocks” app from your iPhone. And I prefer Wunderground’s iPhone Interface to the built-in weather app because it doesn’t suck. They don’t actually have to be “Deleted” as long as they “Do Not Appear”

7) Stop asking me for my iTunes password to download free apps and/or updates to apps I have already paid for - Make passwords meaningful by only asking for them when I really need them. What is the purpose of asking me for my password for free apps/updates? Are you afraid someone has gotten ahold of my iPhone and is improving it without my consent?

8) Drag and drop files to/from the iPhone - I know there are scads of apps that will do this for me. I’ve bought several of them. But what I want is something built-in. Bonus points if I can do it over WiFi/Bluetooth (HA HA HA…No, seriously, that will never happen, but it would be cool.)

9) Bluetooth keyboard - I’ve got a MacBook, and I’ve got an eeePC running OS X, but there would still be times I would use an iPhone plus keyboard. By basic rule of thumb is this: if my Treo 650 could do it, my iPhone should be able to do it.

10) Background apps and/or notifications manager - I want music players besides iTunes to be able to keep playing after I push the “Home” button. I want IM apps to be able to poll in the background. A sub-set of this wish is for PUSH/IDLE IMAP support for any server, not just Yahoo. Because a) does that actually work for anyone? It never has for me; and b) Yahoo? Really? You gave Yahoo an exclusive feature on the iPhone? Why?

We were told that background apps are a bad idea, but Apple was willing to give us a notifications manager which would be released back in September.

Except it wasn’t.

And that was 6 months ago.

I fully expect that we will hear something about this tomorrow. I hope it is fixed and I hope it is deployed soon.

So there are my 10 things. I didn’t set out to make them 10, but 10 came to me, and then I stopped. Most of these aren’t new features, they are improvements to existing features.

I have no idea if any of these will happen (I expect #1 to happen and #10 to be “addressed”) the rest of them are wishes more than predictions.

Unless I’m right, obviously.

But how do you get that if you want to convert them into an AppleTV compatible format?

The answer is easy. And complicated.

In it’s simplest form, the answer is this:

1. Open HandBrake, select the “Source” you want to use. (In this case I’m using one of the DVDs from the West Wing series.)

2. Click on the “Audio & Subtitles” tab (shown in blue below).

3. Click “Track 1” and look at the drop-down options:

1. The West Wing DVDs are marked as having “Director’s Commentary” but other DVDs I’ve seen have no such clear indicator. You might simply have to look for a second track marked ‘English’

2. [Optional] I recommend setting the “Subtitles” to “English” (and leave “Forced Subtitles Only” unchecked) in case you want to be able to follow along with the movie/show. Most often the commentary track will drown out the regular audio. If it is a movie/show that you know well enough to not need the original script, well then I suppose you can leave it off.

Note: Subtitles are an all-or-nothing proposition. Neither QuickTime nor VLC has any way to turn them on/off. You either embed them into the video file when you rip from DVD, or you don’t.

There is supposed to be support for turning subtitles/captioning on/off, but so far there is no way to do it, at least as far as I am aware.

“Well that sounds easy enough…”

Like most other things, there is a catch.

Did you notice that there are dropdown boxes for more than one track?

Did you wonder what those other tracks are used for?

If you use the instructions I gave you above, you will be left with an output file which will default to giving you the director’s commentary and an alternate audio track which has the original audio in it.

So what’s the problem?

Well, for Mac users, the problem is that Apple doesn’t do a great job supporting alternate tracks.

For example, in my testing, VLC let me switch between the commentary track and regular track.

Go to the “Audio” menu then go to the “Audio Track” sub-menu and choose there.

Works great.

Quicktime

Quicktime, on the other hand… Well…. not so much.

There’s a similar menu option.

Confusingly, you’ll need to choose the “View” menu option, then “Languages” (“View Languages”? and you’ll see something like this:

Unfortunately for me, it has never once worked for me.

Neither will it work in FrontRow. There is nowhere to change the audio.

Supposedly AppleTV 2.2 supports alternate audio but HandBrake users report some problems with it and I have not tested it myself.

iTunes does support alternate audio, and rather well, either from the menu Controls : Audio & Subtitles as shown here:

It’s not actually showing it as “Director’s Commentary” but you get the idea.

You can also do it from the pop-up menu which appears when you move the mouse over a playing video. Simple click on the little “Talk Bubble” (it looks like a Q with a very small “foot”) and a pop-up menu will appear to choose the audio:

As far as I know there are no options for controlling audio from the iPhone.

“So what should I do?”

My opinion? Rip it twice.

Rip it once “normally” and a second time do as I have shown above.

You tell HandBrake to add the same item to its queue twice with different settings (just be sure to rename the output file).

When you add the metadata, put the word “Commentary” in it somewhere where it will be easily identified (i.e. in the Episode Title. For example, this episode of the West Wing is called “Twenty Five”. When I apply metadata to it, I will call it “Twenty Five [with commentary and subtitles]” which will make it easy to spot later on.

Given that subtitles are an on-or-off encoding option and not something you can switch on/off from a menu item, it seems like another good reason to make a second copy.

Yes, this means that it will take twice as long, but if you leave it running overnight, both of them ought to be finished by morning (assuming you have a fairly recent computer).

N.B. Sometimes Commentary Tracks Are On Different ‘Titles’

I have heard that there are some DVDs where the commentary track is a completely separate “Title” in HandBrake.

By “Title” I mean where HandBrake shows “2 - 00h42m13s” here:

For example, if you were ripping a movie which was 02h21m15s long, you might see two Titles which were about that same length.

If that is the case, one of those might be the commentary track, or it might be a “dummy” Title put in when the DVD was mastered to try to confuse those who try to convert DVDs to other formats.

Sadly, given the Movie Studios ongoing attempts to prevent you from doing things like make iPhone/AppleTV compatible versions of the DVDs that you own, it can be very difficult to know what you are getting on some DVDs.

If you are not sure what to do, I highly recommend ripping only one “Chapter”.

Again, look at the image above. See the dropdowns for Chapters 1 through 7? If you want to test what is happening, tell HandBrake to rip Chapter 1 through Chapter 1 and open the resultant file to check the results. It will take a lot less time and might save you a bit of frustration.

I hope that helps.

It does one (major) thing: It duplicates your hard drive to another hard drive.

mount-or-unmount-for-superduper.sh is a shell script which automates the process of mounting and un-mounting a hard drive to use with SuperDuper.

“What? Why? I don’t get it.”

Imagine this: you have a desktop Mac (or a laptop Mac that you keep the external drive plugged into all the time, I suppose).

You want to automate your backups because you know that you won’t really run them if they aren’t automated, because you’re lazy.

Nothing personal, everyone is lazy when it comes to backups. That’s why almost no one has them, even if they know they should.

SuperDuper is super easy (I promise I’ll stop with the super super bit) and works great, and even has a scheduler so you can set it to backup your machine at 3 a.m. or whenever you won’t be using it.

The only problem is that the drive has to be mounted (obviously) to do that, and having it mounted all the time can be annoying:

1. Spotlight finds 2x the number of actual results: once for your main hard drive, once for your backup. [This is enough of an annoyance that there really needs to be no #2, but…]

2. Having the drive mounted means that it will spin up and down all day long as it goes to ‘sleep’ and then thinks that it may be needed. If you’re only using it for SuperDuper, why not only have it spin up once per day?

3. Installers will often check to see if maybe you want to install on a different hard drive than the main one. Having unmounted the drive means that you don’t have to worry about the Installer checking it.

4. Imagine something horribly unexpected happens and you delete a bunch of files by accident. Do you want that list of “Files I May Have Accidentally Deleted” to include your backups? If not, having the backup drive unmounted prevents accidental deletions too.

How does it work?

The script is very simple. All you have to do is edit one line.

# Where Finder shows the drive when it is mounted
DRIVE_NAME_SHORT="iMac_Backup"

(Note that this must not include the /Volumes/ part of the path, but JUST the part which appears when the drive appears on the desktop or in Finder.)

I would encourage you not to get ‘creative’ with the name: Use letters only, no spaces or other punctuation except _ or - if you must

Names are important

Make sure to save the file with a name that begins with either ‘mount-’ or ‘unmount-‘

I recommend this that you:

1. Download mount-or-unmount-for-superduper.sh

2. Save it to ~/bin/ or somewhere else in your $PATH.

3. Rename it:

   mv mount-or-unmount-for-superduper.sh mount-drive-for-superduper.sh

4. Link it (so that any changes in one will be reflected in the other)

   ln mount-drive-for-superduper.sh unmount-drive-for-superduper.sh

5. Launch SuperDuper, click the ‘Options’ button and then the ‘Advanced’

• Add the ‘mount-drive-for-superduper.sh’ to ‘Before Copy: Run shell script before copy starts’

• Add the ‘unmount-drive-for-superduper.sh’ to ‘After Copy: Run shell script after copy completes’

You ought to have a window that looks something like this:

Click ‘OK’ and it should look like this:

And then click ‘Schedule’ to tell SuperDuper when to run.

Feedback?

I welcome feedback on the script, especially if anything is unclear or you can see an easier way to do something.

Please leave a valid email address in comments. No one else but me will ever see it.

AtomicParsley is a very cool little program that will allow you to apply metadata to video files on the commandline.

However, it appears that you only get one shot at applying metadata with it, or else the file will be left without video.

Here is what I mean and how to re-create this (apparent) bug:

How To Recreate

1. Create an .m4v using HandBrake. Let’s call it “File1.m4v” for clarity.

2. Apply some tags to File1.m4v using AtomicParsley which will create a new file, let’s call that File2.m4v.

3. Apply some different tags to File2.m4v using AtomicParsley which will create a new file, let’s call that File3.m4v

Warning

AtomicParsley is used in several other GUI programs such as Lostify. If you use AtomicParsley as on File1.m4v and then use Lostify on File2.m4vm the resulting file will lose its video as well.

The same thing will happen if you use Lostify on File1.m4v and then on File2.m4v.

Note

a. This has been how the bug has bitten me. It may affect other formats created in other ways, but I am trying to be as specific as I can in the hopes of getting others to confirm this bug (or not confirm it).

b. This has happened to me on both my iMac and my MacBook, both of which are running 10.5.6.

I do not know if this bug shows up in the GUI programs, but it seems likely that it would, so be careful using those as well.

Result

For me, the result is that File3.m4v always loses its video.

QuickTime and iTunes show the video with a black screen.

VLC doesn’t show any video at all.

How to Work-Around

The key to avoiding this bug? Don’t apply tags with AtomicParsley (or programs that use it) more than once. Which is to say, you’d better keep your “File1.m4v” around until you are absolutely sure that you have all the tags that you want to apply.

Q: “What Do I Do If I Did Not Keep my File1.m4v?”

You can still edit the tags using iTunes. At least that worked for me in (limited) testing.

Final Notes

1. There may be something that I am doing (or not doing) which is causing this, meaning that it is not a bug in AtomicParsley. But I am skeptical.

2. I posted on the SourceForge forum for AtomicParsley and it was suggested that I try the “-4” flag to AtomicParsley. That flag had no noticeable effect. It appears that someone else may be running into the same problem.

3. I also posted about being unable to compile from source on the same forum.

4. It appears that the existence of AtomicParsley has meant that no other commandline programs for tagging video files has been created.

Sadly, AtomicParsley has not been updated since 2006-09-16 and will not even compile on my Mac OS X 10.5.6 machine:

$ ./build 
Compiling AP_commons.cpp ...
Compiling AtomicParsley_genres.cpp ...
Compiling AP_iconv.cpp ...
Compiling AP_NSFile_utils.mm ...
Compiling AP_NSImage.mm ...
AP_NSImage.mm: In function ‘bool ResizeGivenImage(const char*, PicPrefs, char*)’:
AP_NSImage.mm:204: error: ‘_NSBitmapImageFileType’ was not declared in this scope
AP_NSImage.mm:204: error: expected `;' before ‘filetype’
AP_NSImage.mm:208: error: ‘filetype’ was not declared in this scope
AP_NSImage.mm:212: error: ‘filetype’ was not declared in this scope
AP_NSImage.mm:216: error: ‘filetype’ was not declared in this scope
Compiling AtomicParsley.cpp ...
Compiling AP_AtomExtracts.cpp ...
Compiling APar_sha1.cpp ...
Compiling APar_uuid.cpp ...
Compiling main.cpp ...
Linking AtomicParsley...
i686-apple-darwin9-g++-4.0.1: obj_files/AP_NSImage.o: No such file or directory
strip: can't open file: AtomicParsley (No such file or directory)
[1]    38645 exit 1     ./build

However it is not clear to me that it would even matter if I could compile my own version.

All I am saying is that if you were in the market to develop a program for tagging video files on the commandline, don’t assume that the existence of AtomicParsley means that the market is full. Obviously, if you could build on the code which already exists, that would be excellent. AtomicParsley was released under a GNU license. Sadly, I am no programmer, so I can’t do much by the way of improving it.

Update: 2009-03-15

@schuetzdj suggested that the “Large File” flag may have something to do with it. That would make sense as all my files were done with the AppleTV preset which turns on Large File support, even though these files are less than 4GB in size.

To test this theory, I converted a file (MPEG sequence, v2, program multiplex) using HandBrake and the “AppleTV” preset twice: the first time I did it as the default, with “Large File Size” enabled; the second time I did used the AppleTV preset but turned off the “Large File Size” (LFS).

Then I used a shell script which I wrote which converts a file twice using AtomicParsley.

The results? The LFS file does not show video at all after processing with AtomicParsley. The Non-LFS file shows video even after two conversions with AtomicParsley.

Tentative conclusion: **AtomicParsley cannot handle the “Large File Size” flag that HandBrake sets, even if the file is less than 4GB **

If you would like to attempt to duplicate this bug, here is what I ask you to do:

1) Take a file from any source, and convert it twice: a) for AppleTV + LFS and b) for AppleTV without LFS.

2) Run the script above on both files.

3) Let me know which of the files show video, and which do not (either QuickTime Player or VLC)

The script was written for Mac OS X but ought to work on any Unix system where ‘AtomicParsley’ is installed.

Please leave comments below if you have results you would like to share.

When I tried to launch the file (THEWIRE_S1_D4-1.m4v) in Quicktime, I received the error:

The movie could not be opened.
An invalid sample description was found in the movie.

Ok…. Thanks?

VLC would play the audio but it was so badly muffled you couldn’t hear anything.

All the rest of the audio on all the other episodes from the same DVD were fine. It was just that one.

I re-ripped it directly from the DVD, and still had the problem.

Since it was an audio problem, I decided to look at HandBrake’s audio settings. Normally I never touch HandBrake except to use the presets. But, desperate times and all that.

Here are the default settings for this particular episode:

I’m sure there are nice people out there who speak this language, but to me it’s complete nonsense.

However, I am quite adept at doing comparisons so I looked at the default settings for another file from the same DVD, one that worked. And this is what I saw:

Ok, now I’m looking at two things I don’t understand, but I see that in the 2nd one “Track 1” is listed as “5.1 ch” and in the first one it’s listed as “3.0 ch”.

Sure enough, all the working episodes have “5.1 ch” but the one not-working one was “3.0 ch”.

What does that mean? I have no frakking clue.

There was one other option for English audio, so I chose it:

I re-ripped the episode with those settings, and it worked in VLC, QuickTime, and it copied to the AppleTV.

Why is one episode on the DVD mastered with different audio than all of the others? I haven’t a clue. But now you know how to work around it.

How ironic is it that a show about audio surveillance would end up with audio problems on the DVD?

Oh, just shut up.

While I love the series, the DVD set itself is a giant pain.

The DVDs themselves are printed with nothing on them except a number (1-45)

That number tells you nothing about what episodes are on that DVD, or even what season. (When you put the DVDs into their little “briefcases” it will be clear what season they are from, but that’s hardly helpful when just looking at a single DVD.)

So I made my own, and decided to post it here in the hopes that others might find it useful.

Note: After the DVD number is something like “WEST_WING_S1_D7” - that is how the DVD will appear if you load it into a computer. It should also be the folder name which would be created if you ripped the DVD to your hard drive unless you used an app which tried to give you a “pretty name” which may or may not be accurate.

Warning: if you use RipIt I suggest that you do not have it automatically fetch names for these DVDs, as it gave me some confusing names. The names below are the “canonical” names.

Help!

I realized only too late (after I had ripped them already) that this list would be greatly improved if it included the “Handbrake names”. For example, “WEST_WING_S6_D4-2.m4v” is episode s06e12: “365 Days”.

Adding that info to this list could make it easier to come up with a script which would go through all the output files, rename them, and add the necessary metadata to them. It would also make it easier to process VIDEO_TS folders using HandBrakeCLI if someone wanted to do that.

It’s too late for me to track down all that info, but if anyone else is getting ready to rip them and wants to keep a list, I’d gladly add the info here.

Or if you want to make your own list, I’d gladly link to it.

DVD #1: WEST_WING_S1_D1

• s01e01: Pilot [Commentary]
• s01e02: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
• s01e03: A Proportional Response
• s01e04: Five Votes Down

DVD #2: WEST_WING_S1_D2

• s01e05: The Crackpots and These Women
• s01e06: Mr. Willis of Ohio
• s01e07: The State Dinner
• s01e08: Enemies
• No Special Features

DVD #3: WEST_WING_S1_D3

• s01e09: The Short List
• s01e10: In Excelsis Deo [Commentary]
• s01e11: Lord John Marbury
• s01e12: He Shall, from Time to Time…

DVD #4: WEST_WING_S1_D4

• s01e13: Take Out the Trash Day
• s01e14: Take This Sabbath Day [Commentary]
• s01e15: Celestial Navigation [Commentary]
• s01e16: 20 Hours in L.A.

DVD #5: WEST_WING_S1_D5

• s01e17: The White House Pro-Am
• s01e18: Six Meetings Before Lunch
• s01e19: Let Bartlet Be Bartlet
• No Special Features

DVD #6: WEST_WING_S1_D6

• s01e20: Mandatory Minimums
• s01e21: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
• s01e22: What Kind of Day Has It Been? [Commentary]

DVD #7: WEST_WING_S1_D7

• The Primaries
• The Inauguration
• Capital Beat
• Sheet Music
• Deleted Scenes
• Gag Order
• The West Wing Suite
• Off the Record

DVD #8: WEST_WING_S2_D1

• s02e01: In the Shadow of Two Gunmen: Part 1 [Commentary]
• s02e02: In the Shadow of Two Gunmen: Part 2 [Commentary]
• s02e03: The Midterms
• s02e04: In This White House

DVD #9: WEST_WING_S2_D2

• s02e05: And It’s Surely to Their Credit
• s02e06: The Lame Duck Congress
• s02e07: The Portland Trip
• s02e08: Shibboleth
• No Special Features

DVD #10: WEST_WING_S2_D3

• s02e09: Galileo
• s02e10: Noel [Commentary]
• s02e11: The Leadership Breakfast
• s02e12: The Drop In

DVD #11: WEST_WING_S2_D4

• s02e13: Bartlet’s Third State of the Union
• s02e14: The War at Home
• s02e15: Ellie
• s02e16: Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail
• No Special Features

DVD #12: WEST_WING_S2_D5

• s02e17: The Stackhouse Filibuster
• s02e18: 17 People
• s02e19: Bad Moon Rising
• No Special Features

DVD #13: WEST_WING_S2_D6

• s02e20: The Fall’s Gonna Kill You
• s02e21: 18th and Potomac [Commentary]
• s02e22: Two Cathedrals

DVD #14: WEST_WING_S2_D7

• Featurette on Constructing Two Cathedrals
• Access Granted
• Gag Order
• Deleted Scenes

DVD #15: WEST_WING_S3_D1

• s03e01: Isaac and Ishmael
• s03e02: Manchester: Part 1
• s03e03: Manchester: Part 2 [Commentary]
• s03e04: Ways and Means

DVD #16: WEST_WING_S3_D2

• s03e05: On the Day Before
• s03e06: War Crimes
• s03e07: Gone Quiet
• s03e08: The Indians in the Lobby
• No Special Features

DVD #17: WEST_WING_S3_D3

• s03e09: The Women of Qumar
• s03e10: Bartlet for America [Commentary]
• s03e11: H.Con-172
• s03e12: 100,000 Airplanes

DVD #18: WEST_WING_S3_D4

• s03e13: The Two Bartlets
• s03e14: Night Five
• s03e15: Hartsfield’s Landing
• s03e16: Dead Irish Writers
• No Special Features

DVD #19: WEST_WING_S3_D5

• s03e17: The U.S. Poet Laureate
• s03e18: Stirred
• s03e19: Enemies Foreign and Domestic
• No Special Features

DVD #20: WEST_WING_S3_D6

• s03e20: The Black Vera Wang
• s03e21: We Killed Yamamoto
• s03e22: Posse Comitatus [Commentary]

DVD #21: WEST_WING_S3_D7

• A Property Master’s Story
• The Chief of Stuff
• Documentary Special
• Deleted Scenes

DVD #22: WEST_WING_S4_D1

• s04e01: 20 Hours in America: Part 1
• s04e02: 20 Hours in America: Part 2 (**)
• s04e03: College Kids
• s04e04: The Red Mass
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #23: WESTWING_Season4_NA_D2

• s04e05: Debate Camp
• s04e06: Game On [Commentary]
• s04e07: Election Night
• s04e08: Process Stories

DVD #24: WEST_WING_S4_D3

• s04e09: Swiss Diplomacy
• s04e10: Arctic Radar
• s04e11: Holy Night
• s04e12: Guns Not Butter
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #25: WEST_WING_S4_D4

• s04e13: The Long Goodbye
• s04e14: Inauguration: Part 1
• s04e15: Inauguration Day: Part 2: Over There
• s04e16: California 47th
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #26: WEST_WING_S4_D5

• s04e17: Red Haven’s on Fire
• s04e18: Privateers
• s04e19: Angel Maintenance
• s04e20: Evidence of Things Not Seen
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #27: WEST_WING_S4_D6

• s04e21: Life on Mars
• s04e22: Commencement [Commentary]
• s04e23: Twenty Five [Commentary]

DVD #28: WEST_WING_S5_NA_D1

• s05e01: 7A WF 83429 [Commentary]
• s05e02: The Dogs of War [Commentary]
• s05e03: Jefferson Lives
• s05e04: Han

DVD #29: WEST_WING_S5_D2

• s05e05: Constituency of One
• s05e06: Disaster Relief
• s05e07: Separation of Powers
• s05e08: Shutdown
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #30: WEST_WING_S5_D3

• s05e09: Abu el Banat
• s05e10: The Stormy Present
• s05e11: The Benign Prerogative
• s05e12: Slow News Day
• Political Missteps from “Slow News Day” (s05e12) with introduction by Alex Graves

DVD #31: WEST_WING_S5_D4

• s05e13: The Warfare of Genghis Khan
• s05e14: An Khe
• s05e15: Full Disclosure
• s05e16: Eppur Si Muove
• Political Missteps from “Eppur Si Muove” (s05e16)

DVD #32: WEST_WING_S5_D5

• s05e17: The Supremes [Commentary]
• s05e18: Access
• s05e19: Talking Points
• s05e20: No Exit

DVD #33: WEST_WING_S5_D6

• s05e21: Gaza
• s05e22: Memorial Day
• In POTUS We Trust
• “Gaza” Anatomy of an Episode
• Political Missteps from “Memorial Day” (s05e22)

DVD #34: WEST_WING_S6_D1

• s06e01: N.S.F. Thurmont
• s06e02: The Birnam Wood
• s06e03: Third Day Story
• s06e04: Liftoff
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #35: WEST_WING_S6_D2

• s06e05: The Hubbert Peak
• s06e06: The Dover Test
• s06e07: A Change Is Gonna Come
• s06e08: In the Room
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #36: WEST_WING_S6_D3

• s06e09: Impact Winter
• s06e10: Faith-Based Initiative
• s06e11: Opposition Research
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #37: WEST_WING_S6_D4

• s06e12: 365 Days
• s06e13: King Corn [Commentary]
• s06e14: The Wake Up Call
• s06e15: Freedonia

DVD #38: WEST_WING_S6_D5

• s06e16: Drought Conditions
• s06e17: A Good Day
• s06e18: La Palabra
• s06e19: Ninety Miles Away
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #39: WEST_WING_S6_D6

• s06e20: In God We Trust [Commentary]
• s06e21: Things Fall Apart
• s06e22: 2162 Votes [Commentary]
• CJ Cregg: From Press Secretary to Chief of Staff

DVD #40: WEST_WING_S7_D1

• s07e01: The Ticket
• s07e02: The Mommy Problem
• s07e03: Message of the Week
• s07e04: Mr. Frost
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #41: WEST_WING_S7_D2

• s07e05: Here Today
• s07e06: The Al Smith Dinner
• s07e07: The Debate
• “The Debate” Live from the Director’s Chair

DVD #42: WEST_WING_S7_D3

• s07e08: Undecideds
• s07e09: The Wedding
• s07e10: Running Mates
• s07e11: Internal Displacement
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #43: WEST_WING_S7_D4

• s07e12: Duck and Cover
• s07e13: The Cold
• s07e14: Two Weeks Out
• s07e15: Welcome to Wherever You Are
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #44: WEST_WING_S7_D5

• s07e16: Election Day
• s07e17: Election Day: Pt. 2
• s07e18: Requiem
• s07e19: Transition
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #45: WEST_WING_S7_D6

• s07e20: The Last Hurrah
• s07e21: Institutional Memory
• s07e22: Tomorrow
• Countdown to West Wing Live

Notes:

1. “No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)” means that the DVD has a “Special Features” item on the root menu, but it just says “See other discs”.***

2. On the DVD, s04e01 and s04e02 have been combined into one episode.

I’ve also created this in a printable format (US-Letter, landscape, unrestricted PDF).

• Address Book
• iCal
• Keychain
• Safari Settings
• Stickies [of which I have zero]

I run a daily full system backup of my iMac using SuperDuper and wouldn’t dream of being without it.

But given Mobile Me’s penchant for sucking when it comes to syncing, I run Backup.app not only on my iMac, but also on my MacBook.

The Annoyance

The problem with Backup.app has always been that it is annoying.

It pops up and bounces in the dock for 2 minutes before it actually backs up anything.

What do I want? I want it to backup my files and leave me alone.

I can solve this on my iMac by having the backup run at 3 a.m. when I am (hopefully!) not using the computer, but the MacBook is usually asleep at that time, so I have it run at 11 a.m.

Given that you have to manually schedule these backups, I’m not sure why Apple thinks that you need to confirm it every.single.time but it does.

The Fix

The simplest solution would be to change the preferences, but oh look there aren’t any. Backup.app doesn’t even have a preferences panel at all. So there goes that.

I finally got fed up enough that I asked Twitter if anyone knew of a solution and @jkestr suggested that I take a look at “defaults read com.apple.backup” in Terminal.

(For the non-Terminal aware, this is a way of looking at an application’s preferences, even if it doesn’t tell you about them. And I really should have thought of it myself.)

I was hoping to find something like “MakeBackupAppBounceAnnoyingly” which I could set to FALSE, but alas, no such luck.

But I found something almost as good:

"Backup Timer" = 120;

Aha! 120 seconds is how long Backup waits (and bounces) before running

I tried:

defaults write com.apple.backup "Backup Timer" 0

thinking that would make Backup just run but all that happened was the app launched but the backup did not actually execute. I tried again with:

defaults write com.apple.backup "Backup Timer" 1

which does work and which limits Backup to just one bounce.

Realizing I wasn’t going to do much better than this, I decided to run Dockless and set Backup.app to not show up in the Dock at all. The two of these combined makes Backup as innocuous as possible.

n.b. I assume everyone else already knows this: but you can set Backup.app to backup to a local drive instead of iDisk. The iMac backs up to Drobo, my MacBook backs up to iDisk.

Why? Well, read the above link, but basically it allows me to play MPEG-2 files in Quicktime.

What can I say, I’m a simple man. Yes, you can play MPEG-2 files using VLC. This isn’t intended to convince you of why you might want the MPEG-2 com.

It’s also not going to tell you how to get it if you haven’t paid for it (sorry, if that’s what you were looking for).

The purpose is to be able to figure out to re-download it after you’ve paid for it. (If you want to buy it, it’s $20 at the Apple Store.)

Because I keep forgetting.

1. Goto http://store.apple.com/

2. Click on the “Account” link shown here, top right corner:

(That was how the store was designed as of 2009-01-30. It may have changed since. Basically you want to find a way to log in once you are at the Apple Store website.)

1. Look for a download link “Downloadable software purchases” such as this:

(You’ll be prompted to login.)

4) You’ll see a line like this (the date will indicate when you purchased it)

QT 6 MPEG-2 Playback - Mac OS X     D2187Z/A    3 August 2004       Download

The word “Download” will be a clickable link.

That’s it.

Simple. Once you know what the steps are.

As Dr. Cupper used to say, “Everything is easy when you know what you are doing.”

2) I used this post to install OS X directly to a hard drive.

3) I copied some of the files from eeeboot.org onto the hard drive

4) I removed the stock hard drive from the Eee and put the OS X hard drive from step #2 into it.

5) I booted up the Eee with exactly zero expectations that this would actually work.

6) The machine showed the Bios flash screen, and left me with a blank screen and a blinking cursor.

So, yeah. Not so much.

7) Disabled Onboard LAN as suggested here which was the only BIOS setting that I had which wasn’t as recommended. Rebooted. No joy.

I’m wondering if I’m going to need to upgrade my BIOS firmware:

ASUS EEE PC ACPI BIOS Revision 1206
Core Version 1206
Build Date 10/17/08
EC Firmware Version: EPCB-017

8) Burned EEEboot.1.09.iso to a CD. Then realized I have no external CD-ROM drives in the house. My external DVD drive went into my Ubuntu machine, which is at the office. Which means the CD-ROM that I took from that machine is probably also, at the office.

9) I put the original Windows XP hard drive into an external, bus powered, USB case and attached it to the Eee. I set the BIOS to boot from the external hard drive, and Windows would boot but immediately blue-screened and rebooted again. Too bad, that could have been handy. Not sure if that is a Windows limitation, but seems possible. I may try installing EEEBuntu on an external drive, but not until I have OS X running, or I’ve given up.

UPDATE: 2009-01-31

I gave up trying to do this without a DVD drive, and followed the instructions listed above.

And it worked perfectly.

Except for the Wifi.

I tried all the new drivers and the RALink and finally just opened up the case and unscrewed the WiFi card that came with it and found out it is not an RALink card. It’s an “Azureware AW-GE780 PCI-E” which has no OS X drivers.

So I need to get a different card. I’ll probably try to get an Airport card so it will work with OS X and XP (Boot Camp drivers, baby!)

Here is the key to getting this to work: Go slowly.

I’m going to say that again because it bears repeating: Go Slowly. Read carefully. The instructions linked from http://eeeboot.org/ worked fine, but there is a lot of information packed in there. Some things work better if you do them in the proper order. Some will work out of order. But save yourself time and frustration by doing it in the order shown there.

For some reason my Audio was not working at first. The author suggested that I try reinstalling the audio kext file. Once I did that (and rebooted) it worked fine.

Tip: set the auto login for the eee pc at first. You’re going to be rebooting a lot while you are setting this up. Do it, don’t skip any, but go ahead and make it a little easier for yourself.

Update: 2009-02-08

I purchased a MacBook compatible Airport card from JuneTrading for $40 but if I had to do it over again I would buy it from eBay. There is a guy on eBay who consistently seems to have this card and sells it for $25-$30 via the “Buy It Now” option. I didn’t order from him because he ships from Hong Kong (well, that, and I loathe eBay). Well, guess what, so does JuneTrading. [n.b. JuneTrading and EzDealWorld seem to be the same company].

I unscrewed the back of the eee PC, and removed the old WiFi card. The only trick here is the two little wires connecting the WiFi card. They come off by pulling straight up (be gentle but firm) and be sure to re-attach them to the new card in the same way.

WARNING: Be very careful to tuck the PCI-E wires back underneath the plastic edge before putting the cover back on so they don’t get caught under the plastic or cover the screw hole.

Unfortunately, that card did not work. It would only see my “G” network, not my “N” network. So I returned it, or will, when the replacement I ordered from Applecoreonline arrives.

Yuck, eBay and PayPal. On the other hand, it was “buy it now” and he’s not in China or Hong Kong, so hopefully I’ll get it sooner. I paid about $36 including shipping. There was a “Make A Deal” button and I considered it (after all, the folks in Hong Kong/China are selling the same thing for about $10 less) but decided I was more interested in getting it, and fast, than haggling.

[Update 2009-02-12: the new card arrived, popped it in, and voilà! Wireless-N, baby!]

What’s Next?

I wish the internal Ethernet worked, but so far no one seems to have gotten that to work. Apple sells a [USB Ethernet adaptor](http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB442Z/A] which apparently works, but I don’t really want one of those.

A) it’s $30 and
b) It’s a dongle.

So I guess I’ll live without it. The pain is that since the eee PC doesn’t have a DVD drive, if I want to watch movies on it, I have to copy them over WiFi, and even at “N” speeds, you can’t beat wired ethernet.

Bluetooth – The 1000HA doesn’t come with built-in Bluetooth. You can add it, but according to the instructions this involves 10+ screws, and buying the proper part which may or may not come with the wires you need. There are a few options, but really, I’m not sure that the whole thing is worth it. Why? Well, I plugged in a D-Link DBT-120 which is a known-to-be-Mac-compatible Bluetooth adapter and it “Just Worked.” The problem is: it’s a dongle. It sticks out about an inch, which means that it could break off (taking my USB port with it) and it won’t fit in the little silicone pouch/sleeve that came with the computer unless I disconnect it, meaning that I will probably lose it.

This looks a lot better. That’s the dongle that comes with a Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks which is also Mac compatible. If I could just buy the dongle, I would, but if I have to buy the zuper cool mouse that goes with it, so be it. (Cost: $50)

RAM — It comes with 1GB of RAM, and it works pretty well. But come on. For $28 I can get 2GB of RAM (and installation should be darned easy) and OS X will be much happier. No-brainer.

Final Tally: * for a working Mac compatible eee PC: $380 including replacement Airport card * add $35-$50 for Bluetooth (on the low end you’re going to have to find the parts and install them. On the high end, you’re getting a super cool mouse and a tiny dongle.) * add $30 to upgrade to 2GB of RAM (which you don’t, strictly speaking, need but which will make it much nicer overall)

(I ended up selling my Apple Mighty Mouse which I had never really used all that much for about the same price as the new Logitech mouse, so that cost was about net-zero.)

Final Point on Price: I already had the Family Pack of Leopard, which gives me 5 legal licenses. Since Leopard is installed only on my MacBook, Powerbook, and iMac, I still had a license left over.

This machine may eventually replace the Powerbook, which I have already had to pay someone to replace the hard drive (because I can’t access it myself without taking the whole thing apart), and another $160 to replace where the AC adapter plugs in (which they didn’t fix properly). Bluetooth on the Powerbook is also flaky, as is the DVD drive. This is a machine which has been gently used (with the exception of an unfortunate “bump” that broke off part of the AC adapter inside the Powerbook) and sold for close to $3,000 (including Applecare, which covered a previous hard drive replacement a few years ago) about 4 years ago.

Do I feel badly about installing OS X on “unapproved” hardware? No I do not.

One Last Tip

Apple’s “Remote Disc” is a feature they added when they introduced the MacBook Air, which doesn’t have a built-in optical drive.

Guess what else doesn’t have a built-in optical drive?

But you can enable the “Remote Disc” feature using these commands in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

tip via MacOSXHints via macrumors.com

You may have to restart Finder and/or your computer to make this work.

The limitation is that you can’t use this for accessing anything except data (no watching DVD movies over your network!) but that’s not a bad deal at all.

That’s All For Now

Again, my huge thanks to Gregory Cohen for putting these initial instructions together and for the help/direction he gave on Twitter (He’s @iiyoyoguy on Twitter if you want to follow him there).