Timesavers for working with images, music and video on Mac OS X
From ipinfinity.com
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1. Find missing album artwork faster and easier
If iTunes' built-in tool fails to find artwork for your album, use the Amazon Album Art widget from www.widget-foundry.com. This can quickly and easily locate and copy artwork making your music collection perfect.
2. Quickly create new playlists
In iTunes, rather than manually dragging tracks to a playlist, multiple select them by holding Cmd + clicking on them. Then choose File > New Playlist from Selection.
3. Save time importing images
Go to Applications > Image Capture with an iPhone or digital camera connected. From the device window, click Options and then choose Connection Options > automatically download all items.
4. Back up your iPhoto library faster
Rather than exporting lots of photos, simply go to your Home folder > Pictures and locate the iPhoto Library file. Duplicate this onto an external drive for the fastest possible total backup of all your pictures.
5. Save time when tagging music in iTunes
Adding information to lots of music tracks can be a tiresome chore. So, multiple-select the tracks you want in iTunes and press Cmd + [I]. In the resulting Info window, you can add tags and when you press OK they will be applied to every file in one go.
6. How to find photos quickly in iPhoto
By adding tags or keywords to photos you can then use the Search bar at the bottom of the window to search by keyword. This will soon filter a large image library down to just the images you actually want.
7. Copy music from iTunes faster
You can drag as many music or video tracks as you like out of iTunes to a folder on the Desktop. You'll find this is much quicker than using the File menu to export a playlist.
8. How to speed up starting iTunes or iPhoto
In iTunes and iPhoto you can hold down the Cmd key on startup to show the Library options. This will let you create and switch between multiple images or music libraries. By having several smaller libraries rather than one large one, each one will start up much faster and you can keep different projects or music collections separate.
9. Save time when exporting movies
In iMovie 08, when you select Share > Media Browser, you will get the option to export multiple movies at different sizes for different destinations. By checking off just the ones you really need you can reduce the overall render time.
10. Burn movies to DVD faster
In iDVD, just select File > OneStep DVD. If you connect your digital camera into your Mac over FireWire and put it into VCR mode, iDVD will handily rewind the tape, import the footage and burn it to DVD automatically.
11. Find music faster in your iTunes library
In iTunes, go to the Music section of the Library on the left and then enter a search term in the box at the top right. Filtering by artist, album or song, this searches your entire library very quickly and leaves you with a much-reduced list to search for what you want to listen to.
12. Export your images faster using iPhoto
In iPhoto, multiple-select any number of images and then choose File > Export. The compression settings that are applied here will be made to all images and pressing Export will cause all images to be batch processed.
13. Quickly make a video blog
In iMovie 08, create a film project and then press Cmd + [I]. On any Mac with a built-in iSight the camera will be activated and you can record sound and video without connecting any other equipment. You'll then be free to show off your videos to the world.
14. Make your own music tracks in record time
In GarageBand, select File > New > Magic GarageBand. From the resulting window, choose a style and then press Audition. Tweak the instruments and then press Create Project. GarageBand will automatically create the relevant tracks, loops and instruments for you.
15. Copy your images faster from iPhoto
To quickly copy raw images from iPhoto, all you have to do is simply drag them from iPhoto onto the Desktop.
16. Build websites faster
In iWeb, choose View > Media Browser and you can access all the music, pictures and movies in your iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie libraries. These can be dragged and dropped into projects and iWeb will automatically create the right kinds of plug-ins to enable the content to display.
17. Save time when creating podcasts
With your project completed in GarageBand, choose Share > Send Podcast to iWeb, and GarageBand will mixdown and normalize the audio file, and then open iWeb and place the file directly into a page. From here you can simply add some text and choose File > Publish to MobileMe or Submit Podcast to iTunes.
18. Save time sending pictures in Mail
In iPhoto, select one or more images and click the Email button at the bottom of the window. Choose a compression ratio – smaller sizes for quicker sending – and hit Compose. A new Mail message is created with the pictures attached and ready to send.
19. Reclaim disk space quickly with iMovie
In iMovie 08, rather than going through a library to try to identify unused clips, choose File > Space Saver. You can then choose to view and delete any clips that are not currently in use in any projects, saving you time. Click Move Rejected to Trash to have them moved from wherever they are over to the Trash.
20. Quickly find duplicate music files in iTunes
It's easy to accidentally add a track more than once to your iTunes library and end up with duplicate files. Choose File > Show Duplicates and then sort the resulting list by track name. However big your music library this will quickly show your doubles and give you the option to delete one whilst leaving the other.
21. Spend less time finding new music
If you activate the Genius feature in iTunes, it will recommend new music to you based on your existing listening habits. This is quicker than searching the iTunes Store by genre in the hope of finding something you might like.
22. Quickly find purchased music in your library
In a big iTunes library, it can take a while to locate tracks that you purchased from the iTunes Store. To quickly hunt them down go to the Store tab on the left, and select the green Purchased option. iTunes will then only display the tracks you have bought from the iTunes Store.
23. Minimise DVD render times
In iDVD, make sure Encode in Background is switched on from the Advanced menu. Also, go into the Project > Project Info menu and set the encoding quality. Professional quality does take a bit longer but choosing Best Performance will offer the fastest render time, making it worth it.
