Is It a Hiss?

One of our CD ripping clients emailed me. He's upgraded to some high quality head phones and now notices a short hiss on certain tracks just before the music starts. Is this usual?

Our client is much younger than me and its a fact your hearing gets less precise as you get older so I'm not surprised that try as I might I can'r hear it on my music, either through headphones or decent speakers. So the best I could do is suggest a way round this if the hiss is becoming intrusive.

If you highlight the offending track, then right click (Get Info) then you to the tab Options, part way down you'll see a box for Start Time. The blank box shows minutes and seconds. If you put an entry here iTunes will miss out that part of the music file. The setting can be changed or removed safely - but you can use it to edit out anything at the beginning of the track that you don't want to hear.

An iTunes Alternative?

What do you think of iTunes now? For the first time in ages I've heard sensible people voicing disappointment with the latest version of Apple's iPod management application.

This version is so tipped towards buying from iTunes Music Store, particularly downloading movies, it's hard to remember this is really about managing your music library. Well, at least that's what I thought. If you think iTunes is fast becoming "bloatware", how about this - Doubletwist.

Not surprisingly you can download it from doubletwist.com.

Visually it's a stripped down version of iTunes. Rather than ITMS this one is oriented to Amazon's music service (MP3 downloads). Interestingly this version of iTunes supports many non-Apple devices including Blackberry and Android phones.

Oh yes, it's also free. Give it a try.

Playing Flash with RapidWeaver

My daughter looks after the websites for the organisation she works for. She's off on holiday in Australia. Hold that thought.

Her sites, along with www.podserve.co.uk and www.1scan.co.uk along with our in development service at www.freephotoscanning.com are all developed using the Mac html development platform RapidWeaver. We both love the product and have been impressed with how easy it is to build our sites. A couple of weeks ago, before she went on holiday, she was asked to add a Shockwave Flash movie to one of the sites.

Neither of us had ever done this before. The SWF movie had been made by a professional development house, and very swish it is too. They sent her the movie - an swf movie file - plus four little sub-movies in the form of four .flv files, nicely zipped up into folders along with some HTML code. RapidWeaver has a facility to make an HTML page, which is what was done, and the relevant HTML code was inserted. It didn't work.

So we hunted around and found a suggestion for code which was said to work, along with some suggestions to make it work. This is the code we found and used, with some mods:-

Hi this section of the page requires Flash Player to view it. You can download this from Adobe.

By changing the suggested HTML into the above (changing the url to point to the exact location of the swf file) we got the movie to start to play. But the whole movie simply wouldn't play. That Friday afternoon was a mix of pre-holiday rush plus frustration, we were out of our depth.

"Can you look at it while I'm away? she said. And I said, "OK".

I have spent two weeks, most evenings, getting nowhere. But today I cracked it. here's how it was solved in the hope that our experience will save you time.

First problem, RapidWeaver didn't do a great job locating the files we needed in the right directory on our ISP's servers. To overcome this I used Filezilla to FTP the swf file where it needed to be.

The movie developer had supplied us with a folder containing the flv files. the folder had to be located in the same directory as the main SWF file. Pay attention now, the folder was called movies. Using Filezilla I uploaded that folder to the same folder.

I misread the instructions and changed the value 'mymovie' to the name of our SWF file. Much fiddling later, that's wrong. leave it as 'mymovie'.

Then just ran into a wall, tried everything I could think of, wasted hours, got into a very bad mood. Finally thought to check with tech support at Supanames (they host our sites) just to make sure SWF is supported in our hosting plans. They confirmed that it is supported - and kindly pointed out where I was going wrong. Here it is.

SWF is sensitive to case in folder names. So the folder we were supplied with - remember it was videos - should have been Videos. Yes, that's it, best part of two weeks of frustration because 'v' should have been 'V'.

If you're having trouble getting shockwave flash to play in RapidWeaver, check the case of your Videos folder. Save yourself a lot of bother.

iTunes - Corrected - Freezing - Gone

We just love Apple, particularly their iPod and iTunes. Generally each new product marks a step forward. Generally, but not always.

At podServe, our CD ripping service, we rely heavily on iTunes. So a major new version, iTunes 9, seemed a big step forward. On closer inspection we've found a range of small changes that make the whole system much less intuitive. But the big problem we had is that it just keeps freezing, needing us to stop then start the program.

Thankfully we've just received the 9.01 iTunes update and I'm pleased to say (on the basis of the last 24 machine hours) the freeze problem has been solved.

Audiobooks - More Agony

You may recall the excitement a few months ago when a new version of iTunes gave us hope that the nightmare of audiobooks in iTunes was finally over. Sadly our hopes were premature. And I've got the searing email from an audiobook loving client to prove it.

I'll try to summarise where we are, and the problem we have. As far as Apple is concerned a book is a single entity, one that you start to listen to and continue with until the last page. In support of that iTunes now seems to work pretty well. You can make books bookmarkable, and they pop up in the Audiobooks zone. But ...

Most of the audiobboks clients send us are split into chapters. Clients want to access books by chapter just as you can dive into an album at any given track. If you buy downloads you'll find they're split up too. Take it from me, when you open an iPod with 50 or 60 audiobooks all split into chunks it's not a pretty sight. I'd go so far as to say it makes audiobooks on an iPod unworkable. Fine in iTunes, but for portable books you need to do something radical.

My thinking is that you take one of two courses. First, you join all the tracks together and force iTunes to make you 100 sections become a single chunk. That makes iPod navigation easy but if you just want to enjoy a favourite chapter that's going to be almost impossible. Second, you can leave the book in its various sections then just load that one book onto the iPod. This, I think, is less than ideal and still has problems but at least if you know what the best bits are called you can find them.

Overall Apple, sorry - still 2 out of 10 for audiobooks on iPods.

iAlbum Art - Suddenly No Cover Art

For many years we've used a great piece of software called iAlbum Art you can get it here - http://ialbumart.ipod-sync.com/index.htm. One of the aspects of the product that has impressed me is the quality of their support, and of course the ease of adding and embedding art in our music tracks.

Then on Monday - it didn't add art at all. Nothing, not a single image. Even the easy ones - The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Carpenters, even Oasis. So I tried a few things, eventually running it across Vista and XP, all with the same result. So I emailed support and very quickly got a reply. It seems Amazon has changed the way it handles album art enquiries so a new version of the program is needed. Looking at their site now it might even be that the new variant is there to be downloaded. Panic over.

But ....

It has just crossed my mind that there may be moves afoot to protect the copyright the labels guess they have in cover images. Could it be that Amazon are positioning themselves to make it impossible to download those little pictures in bulk? No, of course they're not. Or are they?

Error 48 / Error -48

Suddenly, after a period of normal working, our client’s iPod refuses to sync and reports Error -48. What is it? Why does it happen? How can you fix it?

I’m not aware of any official list of what various odd iPod / iTunes error messages actually mean. In this instance I think what your little device is trying to tell you is that it has found some corruption on the iPod hard drive. Looking at suggested fixes for the problem the hard drive seems to be the culprit.

In cases such as this my first suggestion would be to reset your iPod to factory settings. If you’ve never done this before it sounds drastic but really it’s straightforward. Just connect your iPod, then when iTunes recognises the unit from the main iPod management screen in iTunes select the option to restore to factory settings. This will take a few minutes and a couple of do-yo-really-want-to boxes and then the iPod will be wiped and a new operating system installed. Some more waiting and the flash memory will be refreshed and away you go. The final step should be an automatic re-sync of music, photos, contacts etc. It may take an hour but when done you should be back to a functioning iPod, problem solved.

Looking at other iPod users experiences (and these are mainly Windows rather than Apple Mac OS X) you can go a long way by using My Computer to locate the iPod and right clicking, then running the standard disc check facility. Many people have reported that this works for them and may be quicker than a full restore as it leaves the music etc on the iPod.

Personally the restore route is more attractive to me as it stays within the iPod / iTunes family, and that is developed by the people responsible for your portable music package.

What happens if the fault repeats? If this were my iPod and it was still within warranty I’d be inclined to lob the unit back to Apple. They’ll send you a new unit as a replacement and it might just be that your original iPod was the one bad apple in that days barrel.

Audiobooks _ even more

Earlier I've mentioned our ongoing problems with audiobooks. You'll recall issues fall into two categories, one actually recognising a track as being a book rather than music, the other being the chaotic nature of listings within the audiobook category.

I was impressed with the ease that tracks can be tagged as audiobooks in iTunes 8 and beyond, but one small glitch has been noticed since then. When you class an item as an audiobook it seems that this is placed within the iTunes local database files rather than embedded in the tracks (as was the case when converting from .m4a to .m4b). In practice if you only use your books on a single PC this is no problem, but if you transfer your audiobooks from one machine to another you will have to recategorise them all as audiobooks.

A step forwards? A step backwards? Take your pick.

Audiobooks - No Salvation Yet

Books on CD crop up from time to time, but its not massive for us as a music CD ripping business. It does have a part to play, indeed we have one client who has a massive audiobooks collection - nearly 300 CD equivalents. Ever since we first digitised this collection we've had a problem. To be blunt, audiobooks on iPods have been crap.

From the beginning the issues were evenly spread between iTunes and the iPod. Over the last few years Apple has made great progess on the iTunes side such that with iTunes 8 and beyond, I can't put my finger on any major faults. It seems that iTunes now handles audiobooks every bit as well as it handles music, well done Apple.

But when you sync your iPod, oh what a disappointment. Although bookmarking works better, the random nature of putting some tracks into audiobooks while leaving others in music, does appear fixed. But the basic issue remains - every single track of every audiobook is just tipped into a single pile and sorted alphabetically. the consequence of this is that every element of your talking book collection is jumbled. It isn't an over statement to say this renders audiobooks unworkable on the iPod.

So, what can be done? It doesn't seem to me that there is a good solution but until Apple fix the mess we have to do something. My first suggestion would be to manage your iPod such that there's only one book on your iPod at any time. Beyond that perhaps the only way is to rename every single track such that when they're loaded onto your iPod they fall into a sensible order.

The second route would be helped by merging the many various tracks into one single book (this is an iTunes feature). Just beware that if you do this you won't be able to jump to a favourite chapter although bookmarking will allow you to resume a book at the point where you left it.

Other than that, lobby Apple.

Glass Half Full?

A question I'm often asked at podServe is how much music should I put on my iPod? As in I'll sort through my CDs and decide which to put into my library. My answer is - all of it.

Today computers and iPods have such massive capacity that its quick, cheap and easy to have all your music in digital form. Having it all digital avoids the issue of whether deciding music contents on a CD by CD basis is the best way, if the CD you reject contains just one great track, think of what you're missing.

I just wish I'd taken my own advice. While ripping my collection I came across two CDs by Philip Glass, I know my wife loves his music but, well, I'd never got into it so I just skipped the CDs and pressed on with music I'm comfortable with. The easy choices. Well on Tuesday we went to Philip Glass's concert at the Barbican. I wasn't greatly looking forward to it but you can't deny Glass's position in modern classical music, and at around 70 there won't be many more chances for those of us outside America to hear him play his music.

From the first note I was held, right through to the dying last note. It was a brilliant concert, a great evening out and the music just wonderful. Finally I knew what I was missing. So there - do as I say, not as I do. Yesterday I dug out the CDs I'd previously skipped, put them into iTunes and I'm listening to them now.

iPod Camera?

Just because it can be done, doesn't mean that you have to do it. Well that was one of my Mum's homespun disciplinary lines, sometimes I think computer people should have been brought up better. Technically it can be done, but should you do it?

A phone built into your iPod? There's talk that the next release of Apple's iPod range will add this to one or more models in the line.

Frankly I can't see the point. I can hardly see the point of a camera in a mobile phone, for me listening to music, talking to people, taking photos all live in their own boxes. If I listen to music I'm not going to want to whip out my iPod to take a snap of the underground station I'm passing through.

But .... the iPod touch? Having a camera in that does make sense. I love Skype with its video chat function, particularly using the camera built into my MacBook. If the iPod touch enabled me to log onto a wifi network at home, in MacDonalds or Starbucks, and then get in touch with friends and family well, that does make sense.

Sony X Walkman

Years ago, long before podServe and any thoughts of ripping CDs, my kids loved portable music players. They were cassette tape based and everybody called them a walkman. We went through many units, some cheap some expensive, but they all snapped or collapsed in some way. Irrespective of how they met their end they were all called walkman and were replaced by another walkman even though I don't think a single machine was made by Sony.

Sony just owned the concept of portable music with their walkman brand. Along comes the Apple device and they had a mountain to climb, which they promptly did, so now a portable music player is known as an iPod. Maybe Apple have done a better job as most iPods I see on the Underground are actually made by Apple. Then this morning I opened my newspaper and there's two mentions of Sony. First, at corporate level, it seems they're not doing too well. Second, there's an advert from John Lewis for the new Sony X series Walkman. My mind went back to Sony's last revised foray into the portable music market with a device they dubbed the "iPod killer". How does this unit stack up?

Price- wise they're pitching this against the iPod Touch, and their 16Gb unit is on a par with Apple's 8Gb, same with Sony's 32Gb version. Both devices have a touchscreen, hang on - Sony's is 3 inches compared with Apple's 3.5 inch. That's a mistake, sorry Sony that simply hands buyers the first justification they need to invest in Apple. Nobody in their right mind opts for the smaller screen. If a device needs a screen bigger is better. Sony will warble about all sorts of things but nothing overcomes that extra half inch.

Buttons. iPods have a click wheel, the iPod touch has an indentation. Sony has a button with a label on it. Why? Maybe it's an on/off switch but to label it "Home"? What kind of imbecile do they think's going to buy this? You need to be told it's Home just once, everytime you see this again it's just patronising. At the top of the Sony there are more buttons - one switches on noise cancelling, the other is a volume rocker. Sorry Sony, this is just a sad reminder of all those tacky plastic cassette tape players whose failed buttons and switches consigned them to to dustbin. If you have a touchscreen that's the interface, stick to it.

The Sony has a hole. The hole says Reset. Oh dear, I would have to reset this thing? Of course I'd do that when it goes wrong. So thanks Sony for pointing that out. Apple don't have a Reset button, buyers will conclude their unit doesn't need to be reset.

The Sony is iTunes compatible, it says. I bet its not. I bet if I open iTunes and plug in this Sony iTunes will not synchronise my music library with it, not least because my music is in AAC format rather than MP3.

Anyway, enough of the gripes. Digital Noise Cancelling is what sets this apart from Apple. I've tried DNC headsets - Bose for example - and they're fabulous. Sony have something here. All these units are, as described, portable and they play music. it's a modern miracle that they port all your music, thousands of tracks, but pretty soon you decide you want better sound. Who'd opt for inferior? We rip at twice the iTunes compression setting which delivers a step function improvement, but building digital noise cancelling into the unit, now that's a step forward. You don't have to do anything else, just use this device to improve sounds at a stroke. But will it overcome the other factors?

Here's the choice. Save some money, play MP3s, and get digital noise cancelling. Get a button ridden buggy black thing with a small screen. With a Home button. Or get a sleek white and chrome, bigger screen, button-less unit instead? With Apple's implied cool chic? yes, me too - the noise cancelling headsets are available as an extra. Invest. Sony - sorry.

Sonos Solved by Support Superstar

It's a few years since the name Sonos crept into my business vocabulary. It is very much the home audio system of choice for our clients who want music all round the house. For most of our works its been an absolute dream, we convert our clients CDs, load the digital files into their iTunes library, Sonos picks up the tracks from there.

Happy iTunes, happy iPod, happy Sonos - everyone's happy.

From time to time though it does go wrong, so a couple of times I've had to reinstall the Sonos computer controller and reboot the music library. And in one notable case our client's system just stopped working. Anyway yesterday we were called in to sort out the pesky Sonos, once and for all. Three hours into the task and not getting very far I did more digging around the main Sonos website and found mention of support over internet chat. I crossed my fingers and hit the button. A few minutes later I was chatting to Gordon.

Gordon is my hero.

One of the things I found out is that Sonos has a diagnostic facility. Using the main controller facility you create a file which you send to Sonos. As the file is submitted you get a code number, I sent that to Gordon and in a few seconds he had some suggestions. With his help we got the malfunctioning hand controller back working, loaded the latest software in the main Mac, updated the software in four of the five Zone players. In a few moments of joy I blasted some Bach over the rooftops of London.

Along the way I learnt a few mini-lessons that I think will help me should we be faced with this knotty problem again. First, update the controller software running on your PC or Mac. Then use that to load music into the Sonos library and maybe link into internet radio stations. Make sure that works properly.

Second, tackle the nearest Sonos device first. This is the unit that has to be hard wired to your router. Its should be an easy matter to press the mute and volume up button which reboots the unit. Check with the Sonos desktop controller to make sure this unit has been found. I'd also suggest moving the Sonos off its default channel, I think I put this on 1 rather than 6.

Sonos runs its own network in which each Zone Player links to the next. It doesn't matter how well your home wireless network works, how good the signal is, Sonos ignores this and does its own thing. Sadly its own little world can be screwed by your home mobile phone, the baby alarm or a radio doorbell. Hence try to get it away from any likely source if interference. Having got the first Zone Player working move onto the next closest because that's daisy chaining the network around your house.

This is what we did, progressively updating each Zone Player software as we went. We also updated the software in the handheld Sonos controller. Having spent a couple of hours getting to this stage we hopped round the house in minutes setting the other three units. When we got to the last unit we could see where the problem was - simply no signal this far down the house. On previous visits we'd started here and tried to solve this unit's malfunction, obviously a hopeless task that was never destined to work.

We were left having to explain only one thing to the client. Why did it work originally and not later? Well, Zone Players are brick like units. They don't look great on display in a very well decorated house so my client had them tastefully put away in purpose built cupboards with nice, close fitting doors. Add soft furnishings, carpets, rugs - the signal that rattled round the empty house just gets soaked up in a furnished home. So the final part of the solution has to be installing a Sonos Bridge unit, this doesn't play music but it boosts the signal, I hope, enough to reach the far rooms of the home.

Thanks Sonos, I understand. And thanks Gordon, wherever in the world of Sonos you may be.

iTunes Movie Ripping? Again?

You buy (or more likely bought) a CD and now you want to listen to it on your iPod. iTunes does the conversion, with as little fuss and drama as you could wish for (generally).

Chances are your iPod will show movies, maybe you've downloaded a trailer from the Apple website or even converted one of your own home movies. A process which reminds you of the dark ages of computing.

If only you could just put your movie into iTunes and have it rip the film into the digital file you need. Now wouldn't that be great.

There have been suggestions in the past that this feature would be added to iTunes, it does seem to me and many other people that this is the "missing link" in the entertainment flow, all the more important now that Apple TV seems to be gaining ground. You can handle all sorts of entertainment products, but that DVD you bought, well .... you're on your own for that.

So I was interested to see a footnote to a recent post on Mac Rumors noting that a forthcoming release of iTunes will have a facility to download Blu-Ray DVD data from Gracenote (the database currently used to source your CD metadata). OK, it's a major leap from that snippet to concluding that DVD ripping will be offered soon, but if you add it to all the other suggestions it could be that a major new feature upgrade is on the near horizon.

Put it another way, why add movie database features if you're not going to offer movie ripping?

iPod Service Module Error

You may have seen the earlier entry on this blog posting suggested solutions to the dreaded iPod Service Module Error. Since this was originally suggested (sadly not be me but by a blog reader) I've received many positive comments saying this soultuion has worked for others.

If you're looking at this and the earlier, longer, set of instructions and for any reason you having a problem I'd suggest you look at the responses to the posts. These don't automatically appear and one of the comments suggests an alternative location at which one of the instruction steps can be located. Best of luck with this.

Oh, and in answer to another post, I don't think there is a "simple" solution to the curse of the iPod Service Module Error.

iPod Alaska? No iPod Sound - A Frozen , Pinched Solution

One of podServe,co.uk's clients rang earlier this morning to say that his iPod had suddenly lost sound. Had been working fine but all of a sudden nothing. He had tried connecting other headphones and using a docking system, but no sound from the iPod. If he cranked the volume up to the maximum he could hear a tinny noise, nothing more.

My suggestion was to restore the iPod as he has all his music on his PC, nothing would be lost apart from an hour or too as the iPod re-syncs. If that didn't cure the fault my only other suggestion was an iPod doctor.

Client rang back a couple of hours later. Having done some digging on the internet he found two possible solutions - to put his iPod in the freezer for a few minutes, and to pinch the bottom right corner. So, he gave it a good pinch, then froze it for 30 minutes. Much to his amazement - it worked. So if you suddenly lose sound give you iPod a pinch and if necessary the cold treatment.

iPod, no sound, podserve.co.uk

XPlay 3 & Senuti

Ever since podServe began I've been using a great program called XPlay, now in its third incarnation. There have been so many times when this piece of software has got me (and our clients) out of a tight spot. Here's a typical case study.

Client has three iPods, a USB hard drive and a new computer replacing the machine that previously housed his music library. The old PC was damaged beyond recovery so the task we were given was to reconstruct one complete music library from four locations. The procedure is pretty simple, you just recover the music from each iPod, merge it with what's on the drive and then do some housekeeping to remove duplicates.

So each iPod was connected in turn to one of our Windows machines that runs XPlay 3, and it dutifully recovered two of the three iPods. Unfortunately it struggled with the third. XPlay recognised the iPod and opened it, but refused to display the contents of the music folder. We were able to update the iPod's firmware (an XPLay function), ran standard Windows disk checking functions, but all to no avail. Music stays stuck on iPod which by bad fortune holds more music than any of the other units.

What could be done? Nothing to be lost by trying to recover the music on one of our Macs. I didn't have much hope and was mentally planning my "Oops sorry" speech to my client. XPlay is Windows only, the equivalent software we have on Mac is called Senuti (yes, that's iTunes backwards). I was immensely relieved to find Senuti quickly grabbed the iPod and promptly started to download the music from iPod to the Apple hard drive.

I was so pleased to have achieved the recovery we needed I was more than happy to overlook the slowness of Senuti compared with XPlay. So while I remain an XPlay fan I'm finding Senuti is quickly winning a place in my heart.

Error Code 39 - Vista - Lost DVD & CD Drives

If I ever get famous I shall use my position to publicise what will become known as Underwood's Second Law of Computing - never start a quick job on a Friday afternoon.

Client rings up, he wants some music put onto his iPod from the backup DVDs we supplied when we ripped his CD collection last summer. As he's off on holiday he wants it done quickly, and his PC has broken. Can we help? Yes, this is one for our great standby program XPlay 3 which enables you to move digital music files onto (or off) an iPod without using iTunes. "Great" says client (who lives in Chelsea) "I'm on the A12, about 10 minutes away, can you do it while I wait?"

Of course, we did, and client went away to his cottage in Suffolk very happy. But afterwards I couldn't use either of the DVD drives on the PC. They were there in the System properties boxes but with a yellow warning triangle next to them. Looking into properties it said something about Code 39, a driver being out of date. I fiddled and fiddled, by which time it was 18:00 and I had to be somewhere else. But it nagged at me all weekend, I put in an hour on Saturday and a couple of hours on Sunday, but no joy.

Today, Monday, I just had to get the DVD Reader / Writers back so I sat down to crack the problem. Which I eventually did. I won't bore you with how but I will tell you why it went wrong.

Connecting an iPod to a computer incurs the risk that it will be grabbed by iTunes and automatically synchronised. Client's iPod should be linked to his PC, even though that's broken. So I didn't want to run the risk that all his music would be lost, specially as he was sitting in my kitchen reading The Times. So to be absolutely safe and sure I deleted iTunes from that PC.

Now I find that a consequence of deleting iTunes in Vista (plus a few other programs according to Microsoft's website) is that the uninstall program deletes key values in Registry. It is Registry that lets your operating system know what is attached, so the computer thought the DVD devices were corrupted.

The fix was achieved by running a downloadable fix from Microsoft, equally it would probably have been fixed when I re-install iTunes for the project that begins tomorrow. So there you have it - if you lose your ROM drives, if you get the yellow triangle and driver error code 39, you know what to do - but most of all, if you plan to attempt a quick computer job, don't do it on Friday afternoon.

Useful Podcasts - at Last.

When I first heard about podcasts I thought they'd be big, really big. I know many clients sign up for them, I know here in the UK The Archers daily radio soap is one of the most popular and that comedian Ricky Gervais has made squillions from his hilarious podcasts.

But somehow I think the technology has not blossomed as I'd expected.

Anyway, I came across a useful collection of podcasts from respectable academic sources under the title "50 Terrific iTunes U Lectures to Get You Through the Economic Crisis". Worth taking a look.

iPod Wins the Cup

Last Sunday Tottenham played the all-conquering Manchester United at Wembley. Despite being a lifelong Spurs fan I didn't watch (partly due to family commitments, mainly because this is another major sporting event on pay-per-view), perhaps couldn't bear to watch as given recent football form I expected Man U to regally thump Spurs.

I checked to find the final score, hoping it would be less than 5-0, only to find it was 0-0 and into extra time. So I switched on the radio and listened. When it went to penalties I was sure Spurs would lose, and they did. Then on Monday morning the sports pages were saying Manchester had won with the help of an iPod. How?

My first thought was the goalkeeper had used his to block out the sound of opposing fans trying to put him off but no, apparently Manchest had used an iPod to show their goalkeeper footage of Spurs players taking penalties, I assume this gave him an inside track on their preference to hit the ball to the left or right. Sure enough Tim Foster cleverly anticipated a couple of kicks and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now we at podServe have converted a lot of video to run on iPods, very good it is too. But one thing has always bothered me, and I was remined of this last night by a CNet posting on ripping videos / movies in iTunes, and that is copyright. I don't think it is a legal right to copy video onto an iPod if the source material is commercial.

So here's my issue - why aren't Man U being sued for copyright breach? My guess is that the footage they had stored for Foster was clipped off TV broadcasts. If it was then I think a little naughty has been committed - unless you know otherwise. I'd love to hear.

iTunes Help in Video

Last week I had a few tech support calls, you know the type "How can I fix iTunes?", or "My iPod won't ..." plus a couple of very techie questions. One call came to my mobile while I was at a clients home setting up his music library and linking it to Apple TV. After the call my client asked if I'd thought of recording the instructions?

Total conceit overwhelmed me, client is an agent for artists and actors, was he thinking he'd found the next Sean Connery? Mr Bean? No, he politely pointed out that I'd delivered the instructions far too fast for person on the other end of the line to understand or make notes as we spoke. Client says this is complex, I need to take it more slowly, run through it a few times. Above all - get onto the clients screen and show him exactly what to do. Make it personal, make it interactive, bring it into the 21st century. At which point we digress into conversation about how a famous actor has just been paid a huge sum to do a voice over for some kind of instructional film.

As I chugged home on the underground I gave the idea some thought and by the time I got to Liverpool Street I made up my mind to do it. How hard can it be to record the sort of thing I say over the phone ten times a week? I'll tell you. Easy bit first.

Select some software. I wanted it to run on my Macs, a much nicer platform. So I checked a few offerings. Now I know what it's like to be truly confused. After much head scratching I homed in on ScreenFlow from Telestream. I'd like to say its the best but to be honest it was the only one I could understand and from the trial I can safely say it works pretty much out of the box. That I thought was the hard part.

It being snowing so I sat down to make my first video. Good? Am I good? No, I'm hopeless - I think I've made ten shots (could have been twenty) at getting anything. The phone rings, the central heating kicks in and the boiler fires up, I start to spout gibberish, I click the wrong bit of iTunes - we even had a pidgeon fly into the door out to the garden. Eventually, after well over an hour, I have produced my first iTunes video. It's just over two minutes, I can't believe how long its taken me to generate such a short video.

I have managed to upload it to YouTube and if you're in the mood for a giggle search for podServeVid01 and you can cringe through it. Well done Telestream, your ScreenFlow is great and I'm very glad I made the investment. All I need to do now is work out why YouTube has destroyed the quality of my first full length, feature packed, all star, low budget movie.

And if you hear of an actor being paid a fortune "just" to do a voice over, he's worth every penny.

Ripfactory

Ever since the earliest days of podServe I've been in contact with Patrick McGrath, formerly of Ripfactory. If you're casting a film and looking for 'lovable Irish rogue' I don't think you could find a better match. He was always helpful and amusing. Our conversations were mainly about copyright issues and Patrick was a great help.

At some point Patrick raised the question of their robotic ripping system and datagrooming software. Somehow ripping in quantity had never struck me as anything other than a task suited to a parallel rather than a serial approach so I said no to the robot, but yes to their software. The investment was modest, less than £500, but I did expect it to work in accordance with their own leaflets.

It soon became clear that the code was horrendously defective. Despite the best efforts of their technicians none of the programs I bought ever worked as described. Then in the autumn of 2007 I was contacted by a very irate Ripfactory robot owner. He felt he'd been treated very badly by Patrick, sold a robot, paid for it, no unit supplied. This was followed by other contacts from people with the same or similar stories - orders not fulfilled, poorly performing products. They were not happy bunnies. As I've said to many people now, not buying a robot was one of the best decisions I have made in CD ripping. In fact it was such a good decision I think I'm going to make it again today.

I was prompted to put a post here on the matter, and I called it "Ripfactory RIP?" That prompted a call from a less than happy Patrick McGrath. Early in 2008 Patrick contacted me again and said that the issues my post had highlighted had been resolved to the purchasers satisfaction, that the US company MF Digital had taken over supply of the hardware / software bundle, so would I remove my less than flattering entry. Which I did. Despite one or two more rumblings and grumblings things went very quiet on the Ripfactory front.

Yesterday I got a message from a contact in America suggesting I visit Ripfactory's site. Well, it seems poor Patrick's company has hit the buffers and has passed over to MF Digital. This strikes me as better news for Ripfactory's existing clients as I've been impressed by the people I've spoken to at MF Digital. If I had a mobile phone number for Patrick I'd ring him and ask what happened to the investors behind Ripfactory whose pockets were so deep they'd never let the company go but I'll let that one pass.

In these parlous times, and with other robot offerings now available, it strikes me that more suppliers will be fighting over a shrinking market. It will be tough to stay in the game, although thankfully for MF Digital they have other revenue streams so hopefully they'll be able to stay the course. But I still don't think CD ripping is a robot-solved problem, or maybe I'm just a parallel man to the core.

Anyway, even if Ripfactory is no more I hope Patrick resurfaces. Robots are a dime a dozen; lovable Irish rogues are in short supply.