Adding Perian supported Filetypes to Quicktime X

After I upgraded to Snow Leopard (10.6.1) I found that I was no longer able to play .mkv files amongst others in the nice new quicktime player that comes with it.
After the “Perian’s Type Installer” failed and I dont know enough Applescript to fix it 😦 I resorted to fixing it by hand.

I could still view the movies etc in Quicktime Player 7 which meant that the player had not been overwritten during the upgrade.

Ok lets cut to the chase….  open the info.plist  located at /Applications/Quicktime Player/Contents/info.plist

this contains all the filetypes that Quicktime Player will/can open.  We just have to add in the ones Perian adds support for.

Look right dow the bottom for the “Imported Type UTIs” array, if your editing the raw text the search for “UTImportedTypeDeclarations”.  Mine had only one type in it.

now paste the following inside that array, not inside the existing type.
Code Here

Save the file.
Note: you will probably have to give yourself write permissions to the Contents folder and the infor.plist file.

Open any .mkv file in quicktime Player X.

Apparently The Perian Devs are working on fixing this issue but until then this works fine.

Enjoy 😉

New Media Centre Goodness… Ups and Downs

I recently had a major failure of my dvd/divx player and so decided that as I was getting more and more annoyed with burning tv eps to re-writable discs that were beginning to fail.

So after doing some research and also liking my Apple products I decided to go for a Mac Mini 2009 model with an external M3 mini stack 1TB enclosure attached. I figured that this should keep the storage wolves at bay for a bit.

So off I went to my local Apple Reseller and ordered my new base model mini (they didn’t have one in stock which was my first annoyance) and as an added bonus from talking with the salesman about what I was going to use it for he threw in an extra Gig of RAM at no extra cost. This meant that as I had already budgeted for purchasing 4GB ram off ebay I could try out the 2 Gig and see if I really needed the extra.

After waiting for the whole weekend and following monday I got the call that my mini was in.

So I got it home and unpacked it as you do, and tried to connect it to my older VGA flat panel i have arount for just this purpose (setup and testing). Unfortunately all the DVI to VGA adapters did not seem to fit the supplied mini-DVI to DVI adaptor 😦
Not to be stopped by this setback I decided to use VoiceOver to at least get the initial setup done so I could remote into it from my MacBook Pro.
As I have done this a few times with other blind users it was not really a problem, the hardest thing was navigating the system prefs to get remote management turned on!
Once that was done it all seemed pretty good. Nice to play with but couldnt do much even after installing PLEX.

Realising that I needed a mini DVI to VGA (for setup and testing) and a mini DVI to composite Video/s-video I went to bed and went back to the store the next day and got them (you can never have too many adaptors right 😉 I also purchased a 1.5m headphone to RCA cable for the sound output (my DTS is an older Sony and doesn’t have Optical in)

Ok so all good. Now for the big test with the TV.
Connect it all up power up the mini, choose the right tv input and Nothing! just a black screen.
Disappointed by this development I tried a second set of cables on the front inputs of the tv. Same thing although I did notice that I had sound just no visual.
I even connected up the VGA monitor to check that I had not broken a connection. VGA works – TV Doesn’t 😦

So I took the Mini-DVI to composite video adapter back to the shop and explained to the manager that I had a new mini and that the adapter was faulty. He took the adapter out the back and connected it to a macbook with an external screen and the damn thing worked. This really annoyed me and the manager was very helpful and even said that if I could not sort out the issue that he would be willing to sort me out with one of the previous models which did work correctly. He also said that he would give me my money back on the adapter should it prove that it was not suitable for the mini. I told him I would do some research and get back to him.

Later after reviewing several forums and articles about this exact issue with the mini I discovered that Apple had decided to drop analog Video support in the new Mini and so it only came with a mini DVI to DVI-D adaptor, which was why my DVI-I to VGA adapters didnt fit!
This put a real spanner in the works as my TV only had component or composite in, no s-video even 😦
Further research revealed many different and expensive DVI-D to component/s-video or composite out.
I was not willing to pay for a commercial grade signal convertor just to watch tv!
On one of the posts someone noted that they had purchased an item similar to this
and it had worked fine.

I decided to bite the bullet and get one off ebay it cost about AUD $50 but that was way better than the >$1000 I was looking at for the commercial ones. A week later it turned up.
Connected it up and it works great. I now have a fully functioning media centre.
In the interim before I received the convertor I took the mini DVI to Composite video adapter back to the shop got my money back and told the manager of my discoveries about the output of the new mini, he was quite surprised as there was no notice from Apple that this model did not support Analog video.

All in all it turned out ok and I will be revisiting my M3 Ministack saga later

TTFN

Subversion 1.5.4, Xcode 3.1.1 and Versions

Well after trying to find a nicer looking client than SVNx ( dont get me wrong SVNx does a great job but its UI needs a bit of an overhaul) I found Versions

I decided to try it out even though it is still a beta. And well going on first impressions it looks nice, is intuitive to use and the interface is laid out in an easy to understand manner.

On looking at the preferences pane I saw that I was using Subversion 1.4.4 which gets installed when XCode does.  The only downside is that XCode installs the Subversion dylibs and executables in non standard locations.

So after a bit of Google searching i found the 1.5.4 OS X universal installer package, Downloaded it and installed it. After checking the terminal for a version number it was still at 1.4.4 😦 not what I was expecting.

So off to google again. I found a handy little bunch of commands on one of the apple mailing lists which will move aside the 1.4.4 binaries and libs and link to the newly installed binaries.  This makes the integration seamless and invisible to XCode which is what I was looking for.

ok so to cut my long drawn out blurb short, if you are looking to install Subversion 1.5.x for use with XCode 3.1.1 download the latest Subversion Package from here then run this series of commands

cd /usr/lib

sudo mv libapr-1.dylib libapr-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libaprutil-1.dylib libaprutil-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_client-1.dylib libsvn_client-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_delta-1.dylib libsvn_delta-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_diff-1.dylib libsvn_diff-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_fs_fs-1.dylib libsvn_fs_fs-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_fs-1.dylib libsvn_fs-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_ra_local-1.dylib libsvn_ra_local-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_ra_svn-1.0.dylib libsvn_ra_svn-1.0.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_ra-1.dylib libsvn_ra-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_wc-1.dylib libsvn_wc-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_repos-1.dylib libsvn_repos-1.dylib_old
sudo mv libsvn_subr-1.dylib libsvn_subr-1.dylib_old

sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libapr-1.dylib libapr-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libaprutil-1.dylib libaprutil-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_client-1.dylib libsvn_client-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_delta-1.dylib libsvn_delta-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_diff-1.dylib libsvn_diff-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_fs_fs-1.dylib libsvn_fs_fs-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_fs-1.dylib libsvn_fs-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_ra_local-1.dylib libsvn_ra_local-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_ra_svn-1.0.dylib libsvn_ra_svn-1.0.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_ra-1.dylib libsvn_ra-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_wc-1.dylib libsvn_wc-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_repos-1.dylib libsvn_repos-1.dylib
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/libsvn_subr-1.dylib libsvn_subr-1.dylib

cd /usr/bin

sudo mv apr-1-config apr-1-config_old sudo mv apu-1-config apu-1-config_old
sudo mv svn svn_old
sudo mv svnadmin svnadmin_old
sudo mv svndumpfilter svndumpfilter_old
sudo mv svnlook svnlook_old
sudo mv svnserve svnserve_old
sudo mv svnsync svnsync_old
sudo mv svnversion svnversion_old

sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/apr-1-config apr-1-config
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/ apu-1-config apu-1-config
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/svn svn
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/svnadmin svnadmin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/svndumpfilter svndumpfilter
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/svnlook svnlook
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/svnserve svnserve
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/svnsync svnsync
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/svnversion svnversion

Then I tried a project in xcode which was under SVN control and Voila all good.
Did a version check in the terminal again and it was at 1.5.4. YAY!!

This little bit should work if you compile sunversion too as the install goes into the same place.

As a bonus I opened Versions and changed the prefs to 1.5.1 and restarted the app and checked the prefs again and its all good.

Enjoy

The end is the beginning is the end…..

Well I guess the title says it all. My first Post so here it is.

Not sure how often this will get updated but you never know.