Mac updates
Sep. 13th, 2009 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrpeck for pointing out that the just-released 10.6.1 OS patch fixes my printer problem. Yay! This patch rewrote my network settings (resulting in no Internet), so if you get it, be careful. In order to fix it I had to set a manually-configured IP address on our home network; I hope machines getting addresses via DHCP don't bump into me.
I have a few Windows-only applications, and earlier this summer a friend ofralphmelton's pointed me to CrossOver, which is a less-expensive way than Parallels to run such applications. Their list of supported apps runs largely to games and Microsoft products, but you can try your luck with unsupported apps. So I downloaded the free 30-day evaluation copy.
Trope Trainer works, which removes my need to move the printer back and forth between the Windows machine and the Mac. (I use it to print out nice large copies of torah portions that I'm learning.) The UI is a little garbled, but I can manage. I also succeeded in installing and running Tag & Renamer, the tool I was using on Windows to tag newly-minted MP3s. (I hadn't found anything comparable on the Mac, other than working directly in iTunes.)
The big failure for me, alas, is WavePad, the program I have been using to edit WAV files as part of the music-digitizing project. There exists a Mac version of this program, but it sucks mightily -- among things, the keyboard shortcuts are mostly absent, and the program is just too hard on my wrist if I have to do everything with a mouse. It's also the only Mac program so far that I have had to shoot down by process kill because it locked up badly. Repeatedly. So the Mac version of WavePad just doesn't cut it.
I also have Logic Express on my Mac, which I understand I could use to do this, but I'm finding no joy in the documentation, Google, or just exploring the UI there. I bought what seems to be a pretty good tutorial and am working through it, but that's going to take a while. Editing WAV files isn't Logic Express's core feature, so it's not a focus of any of the documentation. But I'm told I can do it, and maybe someday I will. But I want to be back to editing WAV files sooner than that.
I tried Audacity, which was also very mouse-intensive and slow for me. Basic, essential functionality seemed not to be there, which presumably means I'm using it wrong. I'd like some reason to believe that this really is the best candidate before I spend much more time on it. I tried running the DAK package under CrossOver (no Mac version); it installs fine but fails at runtime with a cryptic error code. I've even tried running WavePad on the PC over VNC; you can probably predict the results of that. I don't have a spare LCD monitor, nor really the desk real-estate to support it, a keyboard, and a mouse, so continuing to do this on the PC doesn't seem promising.
Anyone have other suggestions? This sure feels like it ought to be a solved problem; what clues am I missing? 95% of my editing is: load WAV file representing an entire side of a tape or album, split into tracks, smooth out the edges, and convert to MP3. (For cassettes in particular it's important to fade in/out because of the tape hiss.) I decide where to cut by listening while watching the wave pattern; at the magic moment I stop the playback and cut from the cursor position. (This is what Audacity doesn't do for me; the edit cursor and playback cursor are different! I'm willing to go to a menu for the commands to fade in/out or to do any other adjustments (like volume), but I don't want to have to do everything via mouse, most especially routine playback. It's slow and it hurts too much.
mrpeck for pointing out that the just-released 10.6.1 OS patch fixes my printer problem. Yay! This patch rewrote my network settings (resulting in no Internet), so if you get it, be careful. In order to fix it I had to set a manually-configured IP address on our home network; I hope machines getting addresses via DHCP don't bump into me.I have a few Windows-only applications, and earlier this summer a friend of
ralphmelton's pointed me to CrossOver, which is a less-expensive way than Parallels to run such applications. Their list of supported apps runs largely to games and Microsoft products, but you can try your luck with unsupported apps. So I downloaded the free 30-day evaluation copy.Trope Trainer works, which removes my need to move the printer back and forth between the Windows machine and the Mac. (I use it to print out nice large copies of torah portions that I'm learning.) The UI is a little garbled, but I can manage. I also succeeded in installing and running Tag & Renamer, the tool I was using on Windows to tag newly-minted MP3s. (I hadn't found anything comparable on the Mac, other than working directly in iTunes.)
The big failure for me, alas, is WavePad, the program I have been using to edit WAV files as part of the music-digitizing project. There exists a Mac version of this program, but it sucks mightily -- among things, the keyboard shortcuts are mostly absent, and the program is just too hard on my wrist if I have to do everything with a mouse. It's also the only Mac program so far that I have had to shoot down by process kill because it locked up badly. Repeatedly. So the Mac version of WavePad just doesn't cut it.
I also have Logic Express on my Mac, which I understand I could use to do this, but I'm finding no joy in the documentation, Google, or just exploring the UI there. I bought what seems to be a pretty good tutorial and am working through it, but that's going to take a while. Editing WAV files isn't Logic Express's core feature, so it's not a focus of any of the documentation. But I'm told I can do it, and maybe someday I will. But I want to be back to editing WAV files sooner than that.
I tried Audacity, which was also very mouse-intensive and slow for me. Basic, essential functionality seemed not to be there, which presumably means I'm using it wrong. I'd like some reason to believe that this really is the best candidate before I spend much more time on it. I tried running the DAK package under CrossOver (no Mac version); it installs fine but fails at runtime with a cryptic error code. I've even tried running WavePad on the PC over VNC; you can probably predict the results of that. I don't have a spare LCD monitor, nor really the desk real-estate to support it, a keyboard, and a mouse, so continuing to do this on the PC doesn't seem promising.
Anyone have other suggestions? This sure feels like it ought to be a solved problem; what clues am I missing? 95% of my editing is: load WAV file representing an entire side of a tape or album, split into tracks, smooth out the edges, and convert to MP3. (For cassettes in particular it's important to fade in/out because of the tape hiss.) I decide where to cut by listening while watching the wave pattern; at the magic moment I stop the playback and cut from the cursor position. (This is what Audacity doesn't do for me; the edit cursor and playback cursor are different! I'm willing to go to a menu for the commands to fade in/out or to do any other adjustments (like volume), but I don't want to have to do everything via mouse, most especially routine playback. It's slow and it hurts too much.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-14 01:48 am (UTC)I hate apps like that. Even worse are ones that take standard keys and change them. The database client software we have at work uses ^X for cut, ^V for paste, and.. ^C for commit. Morons.
If you can find an AppleScriptable app that might a way to go? I haven't delved into AppleScript much (because the apps that I wanted to control had zero support) but it might be something to look into.