Apple VisualHub User Manual

VisualHub Users GuideBy Tyler Loch, Fearless Leader, Techspansion LLCRelease 1.22, 2/26/07

AVC EncodingAVC, also known as H.264, is a newer, more advanced video compression type. Videos compressed with AVC will look better than its default M

Chapter 4:DV"...and it's indestructible! [WHAM] [WHAM] [WHAM] ...aww...I broke some of the shielding..."- Apple Spokesperson on FireWir

What Is It?A nearly-lossless format geared towards non-linear video editing.What Plays It?MiniDV camcorders, iMovie, Final Cut Pro.More InformationDV

After ConversionIf you want to add your completed videos to an iMovie project,1. Make sure iMovie is closed.2. Locate your iMovie project file. Control

Chapter 5:DVD"I go on Kazaa every week [...] a lot of it was pornography, some of it was music, but a lot of it was films."- Jack Valenti, Ma

What Is It?A specialized set of MPEG-2 settings and authoring utilities that are geared towards creating discs that will play back on standalone DVD v

one DVD. The final result of this conversion is a disc image file named “VisualHubDVD.iso” that can be tested before being burned at your leisure on any

Chapter 6:AVI“Please spell DivX ;-) correctly ! Capital ‘D’ lower-case ‘iv’ capital ‘X’ and do not forget the eye-blinking smiley ‘;-)’ !”-Gej17

What Is It?A legacy Windows video container resurrected by the DivX project. VisualHub creates DivX-compatible MPEG-4 AVI files.What Plays It?Windows,

Chapter 7:MP4"In this world of 'my codec is better than yours' -- this codec is better."- Frank Casanova, 200419

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What Is It?A modern container format, used with MPEG-4 and H.264 video.What Plays It?QuickTime, VLC, some portable players.More InformationThe MP4 con

Chapter 8:WMV"I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."- Steve Ballmer, April 200621

What Is It?A Microsoft-created video container format.What Plays It?Windows Media Player on Windows, Flip4Mac and Popwire WMV decoders on Mac, VLC, Xb

Chapter 9:MPEG”The basic scheme is to predict motion from frame to frame in the temporal direction, and then to use DCT's (discrete cosine transf

What Is It?A legacy format supported by virtually all computers.What Plays It?Some standalone devices, some DVD players, every computer after 1996.Mor

MPEG ProfilesThere are hundreds of devices that use MPEG video to some extent, all with their own specific settings needs. VisualHub has presets for som

Chapter 10:Flash"People are all the time asking me, "Mike, how do you do those stupid voices for your dumb animal characters?", and I s

What Is It?A Macromedia and Sorenson-created video format commonly found in Macromedia Flash .swf files. Used by Google Video and YouTubeWhat Plays It?

Chapter 11:Advanced"We knock them into little pockets with sticks. ...and we got higher numbers too!"- The Tick, on The Infinity Ball28

Warning: Certain settings used in the Advanced drawer may create video files incompatible with some devices.29Option ExplanationCrop (Left,Right,Top,B

Table of ContentsChapter 1: Crash Course 4Chapter 2: iTunes 6Chapter 3: PSP 8Chapter 4: DV 11Chapter 5: DVD 14Chapter 6: AVI 17Chapter 7: MP4 1

Chapter 12:Xgrid“The Xgrid Console has an intuitive Aqua interface that makes it easy to execute UNIX commands.”- Xgrid Technology Preview PR. January

What is it and what does it do?Xgrid is Apple’s clustering technology built into Mac OS X.Xgrid can speed up a batch conversion by dealing out a video

Panther Agents: You will need to download the Xgrid Agent for Panther from Apple’s website:http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/xgridagentformacosx1

Chapter 13:Tidbits"But the most important rule, the rule you can never forget, no matter how much he cries or how much he begs...never, never fee

Video StitchingVideo Stitching = Combining all the files in the video list into one massive file big enough to tell your grandkids about.Stiching is ava

Chapter 14:Troubleshooting"Son, you tried your hardest and failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try."- Homer J. Simpson35

Hey, my video’s out of sync. What gives?Sometimes, a video file will get out of sync during conversion. It’s usually more noticeable near the end of th

Chapter 15:Appendix"...But what I'd really like to do is drive a flaming bus through a wall of TVs with a stick of dynamite strapped to my he

(vermiform appendix)38

Appendix A:Cheat Codes"The arcade version of Gradius is really difficult, right? I never played it that much, and there was no way I could finish t

Chapter 1:Crash Course"This readout tells you where you're going, this one tells you where you are, this one tells you where you were."

What in the world is a “cheat code”? How do I rescue the princess?A “cheat code” in this sense is a very advanced setting for people who want to go ab

Appendix B:Supported Codecs/Formats“Note, the names of encoders and decoders dont always match, so there are several cases where the above table shows

Extra InformationWhat follows are charts of supported video/audio codecs and container formats for import into VisualHub. Supported output formats are

Appendix C:Credits and Other Info43

Creditsffmpeg©2006 ffmpeg Contributors.ffmpeg is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard.http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.netFAAC, FAAD©2004 AudioCoding - http://www.

IntroductionVisualHub was created to allow people to convert video to many popular formats with ease. Most people will figure it out right away with no

Chapter 2:iTunes"You know, our next big step is we want it to make toast. I want to brown my bagels when I’m listening to my music. And we’re toy

What Is It?A specialized set of MPEG-4 settings that play on modern iPods, and on the Apple TV.What Plays It?Fifth-Generation (5G) iPods. aka "iP

Chapter 3:PSP"This is the design that we came up with. There may be people that complain about its usability, but that's something which use

What Is It?A specialized set of MPEG-4 settings that will play on the PSP.What Plays It?PSP, or PlayStation Portable, released in spring 2005.More Inf