Creating MP3's from YouTube Videos on a Mac

Just realized I haven't written anything here in a while and what I wanted to talk about today isn't really game related, but I think it will be useful nonetheless.

With the shutdown of certain peer to peer network programs (like LimeWire) there has probably been a number of people having trouble getting music files. Now I'm not here to promote piracy, but there are times when I'm sure you'd love to take the music portion of a YouTube video and easily convert it into an MP3. Not just for music but other things, too.

There are a bunch of websites and tools out there to do it, but I'm going to share with you my method. I found that the online tools tend to be slow, inconsistent, and generally a pain in the ass.

Now the first thing you are going to want to do is make sure that your Mac can import FLV files into iMovie. Mine just started to be able to do this after installing the full Adobe suite which may be required and if so, sorry about that (unless you already have it). If you can drag and drop an FLV file into iMovie without screwing around you are golden.

The FLV file is the file that contains the "flash video" that YouTube uses. The tool that I use is the excellent iFunia YouTube downloader. It's free and you can get it here. Just go to YouTube, find the video you want and cut and paste the address into the software. No mess.

Now you have the FLV file, drag it into iMovie. Move the clip into the timeline and select "Split audio" from the edit menu. You will now be separating the audio from the video.

Now run a free great audio tool like Audacity. Arrange the windows on the screen so you can drag the audio track from iMovie into Audacity. Make sure in Audacity you have grabbed the LAME MP3 stuff to be able to export to MP3.

Once your audio is in Audacity you can trim it (if there is extra stuff at the beginning or end you don't want) or play with fading, volume, etc.

Now just export it as MP3 and voila! You are done.

It sounds like there is a lot of setup involved but it's really not that bad and once you have this solution ready to go it's very easy to continue to use it and becomes quite intuitive. Enjoy!

Canadian Olympic Gold

I know I usually write about video games in this space, but today I just had to add my thoughts about games of a different sort - the Olympic Games. A recent article in the Star-Telegram really bugs me because it seems like no matter what we do, we often get viewed by Americans in a bad light. This guy basically beats Canada down for the fact that we showed a huge hint of patriotism, at the cost of failing to recognize that the Olympics are a worldwide event.

Huh? Clearly it's a worlwide event and one that gives each country a chance to be proud of its accomplishments amongst other countries. That's kind of the point. It seems like the minute we show the faintest sign of patriotism we get criticized for doing so. You're telling me the Americans don't act and do things the same way?

Having dealt with Americans my whole life I can tell you that like anything, there are exceptions to the rule. By and large though, most Americans I've dealt with don't seem to understand Canada except in the most stereotypical ways. We don't all live in Igloos. We don't all drink beer all the time (but I have to point out truly that ours is better), and we don't all sit around saying "EH?". We also don't mean to say "a boot" when we say "a bout" and I can also honestly say that we don't hear it that way.

I just don't get it. We're normally meek and mild and quiet about how we feel about our country. We finally stand up and actually show some of the patriotism that the Americans normally do, we get beat down...by an American.

Wow. Ironic. And dumb. Clearly this guy is a hockey fan and he's just pissed. He's from Texas though, so he probably has a gun. A big one. Ouch, it hurts doesn't it? Just remember the stereotyping can work both ways.

I went to a Toronto Maple Leafs game last night and I can tell you that the pride for our country hasn't just ended with the conclusion of the Olympics. We were louder, prouder and stronger than ever last night when our anthem played. I was proud to take part in it.

New License Plate

So I finally did it...after whining about getting a custom license plate for my car I took the plunge and here it is! PCMUSEUM is exactly what I wanted and now that Ontario offers 8 digit plates I was good to go! Of course, I had to accessorize it with a "WILL WORK FOR BANDWIDTH" plate holder that I picked up from ThinkGeek.com.

So if you're out driving around town and you see this plate, you'll think of the Personal Computer Museum and come pay us a visit sometime!

Auto Incrementing with InfoPath

So instead of my usual conversation, I thought I'd add a "practical" technical experience I went through because I was not able to find the solution to this particular problem online. If I couldn't find it, perhaps other people out there have had similar issues.

I've been using Microsoft's InfoPath to create a form for Human Resources to do Performance Reviews. Various sections include parts where I wanted to put in a repeating table and although I found ways to "auto increment" an area there to number the entries the user added dynamically, I did not want to use numbers. You see, my sections are numbered and therefore this would just look wrong. It would be much better if my entries were incremented with letters starting with "a".

I wanted my repeating table to look like this:

1. Indicate the primary responsibilities of the position:
a) | User types in section A
b) | User types in section B

So in this table (with two columns, the "a)" is in a column by itself) I set the first "a)" to be an Expression Box. Then you can right click on it and select "Properties". The data source should be "XPath" and set the function to be:

concat(substring("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz", position(), 1), ")")

What this function does is concatenate (join) the letter of the alphabet based upon how far down the list you are, and then adds the ")" at the end.

You can make this work with uppercase letters or change the ")" to a "." or whatever you want.

Seems easy once you set it up, but I struggled a bit at first finding where to put this. My programming background came in handy to create the function itself.

Enjoy!