Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Is there a way to record audio playing in a web browser without using Soundflower? I'm too thick for github and don't have the patience to learn how to install it right now. I used to be able to do it using Audacity on Windoze but everything I see online suggests using both Audacity and Soundflower? I need to rip a track for reference for an edit - AudioNetworks, to their shame, don't let you download a preview for use in rough cuts/getting approval. Basically you have to license the track to get a viable copy of it. I've made recordings using a microphone but it's too tinny. Thoughts?

When do you need it for? Have an audio networks account at work so can download for you if you send me details and then send it across to you if you want the MP3, or we transfer if you want the wav

Screen capture using Quicktime then ditch the video?

Edit: I mean recording a video, not still image/screenshot.

^ This ish. Quick Time also allows you to do audio recording only, the problem is though all it does is that it turns your computer into an audio recorder. I did this with my MA project and I thought it was only going to capture whatever was playing on the computer and I had a cough that night... oh boy, it recorded every single cough of mine. I got alway with it by keeping the room as quiet as possible then to clean up the background nosie in Audition. Depends on how good quality you are after, @CYOA

I have an account too - can't figure how to download a preview (audio watermarks is fine)? Or do they have a subscription based account system like Universal? We used to pay a figure per year and have unlimited usage for our programmes from UNIPM.

This is the sort of thing I imagined doing. But as @ExTra describes I assume it's recording from the mic not internally and you can't set sources? Which means it'll be tinny? Or does it record all sources at once (i.e. internal and external?)

Subscription based, so can access and download as many tracks as we need over the year..

I dont know if it's both internal and external, but I was happy with the results I got. I was playing the tracks (mostly people talking) through speakers and projection as well as headphones, and nobody complained about the quality.

Ah, thanks, good to know it exists. Doesn't seem immediately clear on the website that it's an option. Will investigate though to be honest we use it only sporadically and usually have known tracks rather than library. So, depending on price, not sure it would be worth for the kind of work we do. I'll have a crack with Quicktime this evening.

Cheers for the help all.

great quality audio software by rogue amoeba...piezo or audio hijack might be what you're after.

in free demo mode (before purchasing a license) you get 10 mins recording per launch before noise is added, so if 10 mins is enough...

Audio Hijack used to be so easy to use, I downloaded a newer version last year and couldn't get the fucker to work...

Oddly I've just downloaded it now after faffing with Quicktime and it's spot on. Nice UI, vaguely simple (in that it runs a bit like some other software I use - PluralEyes) and produces nice clear MP3s recorded from the application you select (including web browsers - albeit with a plugin it installs for you). Impressed. Cheers @JonD

hey Guys

Looking for a second hand mac book pro - a unibody one from 2012.

Anyone got one for sale?

I was looking at Hoxton Macs as they seem to have some at fairly decent prices but the name of the company made me wonder if I would be paying a premium price for the trendy name???

Links to honest retailers very much welcomed.

Thanks in advance.

Yeah you will be.
Just keep your eye on Gumtree. Email the person, if they sound shift or cant reply in proper sentences tell them to do one.
I've bought 2 Macbooks that way.

I'm sure this has been asked before, but is there an alternative to iTunes? I only want it to manage the music on my phone.

I still find it hard to believe that iTunes is an Apple product, as generally they are excellent at releasing software that is easy to use, as it is such a fucking horror show of a product.

Is it possible to have finder remember the size and position of various windows? Specifically server windows?
The place where I'm freelancing has several servers and windows that I have to refer to every day. It would be nice if I could get finder to remember the size and position of these windows when I open them. The mac's on yosemite and I don't have admin prefs to update or add 3rd party apps etc.

^ https://manytricks.com/moom/

That looks pretty neat but I don't have admin privileges on this machine. Presumably there's no way to do something similar natively in the OS

fucking horror show of a product

this

Possible swaps, macbook / imac / mini mini ?

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/277750/#comment12649536

Servers...

Our office has three MBPs and I'm about to pick up a 5k iMac. Until now we've been using Google Apps for email, sharing and hosting files etc but, apart from email which we'd like to keep with GApps, it's a bit clunky. I'm thinking of setting up some kind of dedicated server. There's not a massive budget so OS X server sounds promising at £14.99.

We'd primarily want to share documents between existing users and occasionally between freelancers who come in albeit with different permissions.

I'm also interested to see if we can sort some kind of file hosting function rather than using WeTransfer all the time. On that note there are plans to have some kind of client portal on our website - would that be linked to a local server or more to do with our web hosting provider?

We'd need to access the files 24hrs a day, not just when someone is in the office.

We'd need to access locally via Wifi/Ethernet and remotely from home/the field.

Lastly and a bit left field - is there a way to utilise processing power of all computers by somehow daisy chaining them and if so can this be done through the server or would they need to be physically wired together? We're a fast growing video company and often have tons of encoding/exports to do (we use Premiere if that makes a difference) so any extra juice we can find would be more than handy.

At the top end of the scale presumably we'd need a machine running server software that would need to be plugged in at all times. We were thinking of a Mac Mini but what's the lifespan of these things. Can they take the heat? Obviously I don't want to leave the 5k iMac running all the time and the laptops all go out on shoots regularly so we'd need something dedicated.

At the very lower /temporary end of the scale (and shoot me down if this is stupid) but would an AirPort Time Capsule work? Surely we could share files hosted on that to multiple users? Though presumably we couldn't do the more advanced things like access remotely and daisy chain processors for exports?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/render-farm-node,2340.html

^^ Wouldn't dropbox do most of that? You need to be on a decent connection though. Last place I worked at we were 50+ people on a half decent adsl which was terrible for using dropbox

Never use Dropbox instead of a server. Good idea in principle but the worst idea in the world in practice. I know you were not suggesting doing so.
Maybe an old mac pro could be a good server solution?

My iCloud on my Macbook and iPhone are the same account and photos from my phone are set to auto upload but never do. Anyone else have this problem?

Also Airdrop from iPhone to Macbook seems patchy/useless do I need to do anything to sort this?

Used to work ok with my old iPhone 4 but the 6+ just doesn't seem to play ball.