Not at all what I expected.

Fred Flinstone · #1 December 24th, 2006, 01:03 PM

As a recent convert to mac (Never having even touched one prior to mid-September) I have had one or two niggling little issues but overall Love the OS 1000 times more that Win-DoSe. However 2 continue to bug the heck outta me!

The first is an issue with QT 7 and it's support for MPeg files. I load up an Mpeg 2 and no sound!. For that I downloaded the likes of VLC PLayer and MPlayer. If I want to hear sound in QT7 I have to first open the movie in one of the other players. Then close that player and reopen the file qith QT7.

I have issues with QT on both WIndows and Mac but being native to Mac this not only surprises me - It bugs me. Mpeg is a mainstream format that does notrequire special codecs.

The other one is the Mac file system and how it handles image files. The amound of 'corrupted' download files I have experienced so far is unacceptable. I often do not remember the source site from which I download an image so cannot revisit and try again. Worse than this if I correct the orientation of an image in preview it still previews 'on its side' in finder. Thumbnail previews akin to those on windows simply arent available and are a real hinderance. Yes I have downloaded 3rd party image viewers which don't hel at all - they actually make things worse by generating thumbnail folders all over the place. Still on this topic There is seemingly no way to create a hierarchical Slideshow by just selecting the Parent Folder. I have tried on iPhoto, Preview, Adobe Bridge and a few others all they look at are the image files in the parentdirectorey and none of those in it's children.

For me perhaps the one windows based app I really do miss is JASC's Media Centre. To date it is still the best Slideshow app on any platform I have come across.

Why then when mac is such a great platform for graphics (believe me - it rocks!!!) does the base operating system seemingly support graphics files so badly? If you need to visually locate an image quickly you have to do a 1 by 1 scoll in finder as opposed to looking at 50 at a time on the scroll.

Also the file structure is a real mess and nomenclature. I find I physically need to drag all images from a folder to a temp folder on the desktop and rename them aa_000001.jpg etc - and Folders zz_00001 etc using Rename4Mac just to be able to order them logically- - separating files from folders. Using the list view in Finder you can more or less do this but the prieview view is a disaster! By my method if I then add new files of folders to the parent they are easy to pick ou, rename and reorder. This is really time consuming.

To me thus far this is one of Macs biggest dissapointments and biggest failings - great if your accustomed to working in complete chaos - othertwise not!

I came here for help - looks like I need a lot of it. aforementioned image browser app was called simply imagebrowser. Not even remotely close to Microsoft's image prievew. (Don't get me wrong here - I loathe Microsoft!!!)

Even on Linux such programs as Gwenview handle basic functions like this rather well - why not Mac?

DeltaMac · #2 December 24th, 2006, 02:25 PM

Someone else here may have other experiences with this, but the MPEG-2 decoder is not free, and is not a standard part of QuickTime. It is a commercial product that you would purchase and add to QuickTime. I don't know if Apple has updated that component for QuickTime 7 yet.

**fryke** · #3 December 24th, 2006, 02:50 PM

Slideshows etc.: iPhoto. Comes with your Mac. It's really nice and probably overbombing for what you intend to do. But the Finder's simply not the place to find all that functionality, currently.

DeltaMac · #4 December 24th, 2006, 03:09 PM

GraphicConverter has been a great Mac product for a long time.
http://www.lemkesoft.com/xd/public/c...lkPTE5Mw_.html

It's been on most any 'must-have' software lists for the Mac for probably 10 years!

Fred Flinstone · #5 December 24th, 2006, 05:08 PM

Thanks for the quick replies -

fryke I think maybe you missed what I said about iPhoto. It is lobely but can not get it to look beyond the parent folder.... meaning I have to rip through tons of folders and copy out all the images into one folder to run as a slideshow. What if I want to leave the file structure as is and view the entire bunch as 1 slideshow? No can do!!! I absolutely love Macs screensavers though - especially the rss live one. If that aint one of the coolest things ever.....

ButGraphics Converter I have seen mentioned elsewhere. Obviously I dont need to convert graphics as I can do that with Photoshop - however if it were to provide the functionality I seek than fabulous.

Still beats me why this has not been better developed on Mac up to now though.

I have not even mentioned the 'fantastic' spotlight tool eiother. I doubt I will ever use it again - rubbish!

I had 3 folders on my hy and I even renamed them all identically and empatented them in a 3-tier structure.

I put a dummy jpeg in each again with the same name as the folder.

spotlight could not find Foldername nor Foldername.jpeg no matter what the search criteria be it on the HD local folder. Accourding to spotlight it simply did not exist at all! I definitely have no confidence in tools like this!!!

Thanks for the feedback once again - I'll look into Graphics Converter to see if it's anyway on track! I'd prefer to have less programs than more on my Machine if you know what I mean. The whole reason for divorcing Win-DoSe in the first place. Cannot be bothered with thirty media players and hundreds of codecs when the object is to merely play a simple movie.

**fryke** · #6 December 24th, 2006, 05:13 PM

Well, iPhoto is like that. It wants to be your one-stop shop for photos. You'd have to let _it_ handle your files in order to make it work for you.

I personally think it's worth it, though.

salival · #7 December 24th, 2006, 05:24 PM

Well since I use Adobe CS 2, I view all my images in Bridge. I agree with your comment tho about the Finder lacking image thumbnails. One thing you could do is to do a Spotlight search for the folder or files you are looking for and the results window will have image thumbnails.

Fred Flinstone · #8 December 24th, 2006, 05:39 PM

I downloaded a trial for graphicconverter and it looks to be well on the lines of what I am looking for. Seems to be a bit like Adobe Lightroom. Has options to look at child folders and nice thumbnailed layout. Must see if you can thumbnail the folders though with images from within

For example I have 10 folders from Bolivia divided into images from different places Would like to visually be able to ID the folder as Jungle with an image of the jungle from within (similar to Win-DoSe) for quick reference rather than having to continually read file and folder names and having to open up 01/02/03 etc...

This looks promising so once again DeltaMac your tip much appreciated indeed.

Salival - I think bridge is great up to a point but thats as far as it goes. Lack of options for slideshows and worse still if you need to open a number of images 'on the fly' you can't unless you want them all to open with photoshop. Unless that is you permanently reassociate your jpegs with preview. I could live with an option whereby clicking them will open tyhem in photoshop but Cmd Clicking willopen them in preview (sort of like a secondary browser function) but alas such functionality does not exist!

Lightroom looks great by comparison and is probably the best thing to come out of Adobe in years!

The tip DeltaMac gave looks nice - gonna explore this to the full before I make any decisions about buying it! Hope you can see where I'm coming from on this and what I'm trying to do. I am way more productive on a mac thus far than I ever was on Windows but hate losing time looking up this file and that file as they are buried someplace under layer upon layer! For that reason alone thumb visibility is all important. By the way - Merry Christmas all!!!