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BRMUG BRMUG July 1998 Newsletter This is the index of the July 1998 BRMUG Newsletter: Features: Rethinking the Move to Digital by Glenn Matherne Regular Columns: Front Page News by Isaac Traxler July Meeting June Meeting Review Apple's Financial Status Software Stratedgy iMac Trivia Brewbachers after the meeting Essentials (MacGuru) by Isaac Traxler Graphic Utility of the Month (Scansoft Text Bridge 8.0)by Glenn Matherne Nonessentials (Prosoniq Sonicworx Artist Basic) by Glenn Matherne Web Page of the Month (InfoMac)by Isaac Traxler Cartoon by Pete Steinfeld Return to BRMUG Newsletter Index Front Page News July Meeting The June meeting will be held at the Bluebonnet Library on May 18th, the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 6:30 P.M. This month's meeting will feature a two presentations. Glenn Matherne will do a brief presentation about OCR and Isaac Traxler will discuss compression/segmenting. The meeting will start at 6:30 P.M. with the presentation starting shortly afterward. At 7:30 P.M., we will begin the Question and Answer session. Meeting will end at 8:30 P.M. so that we can clean up and leave prior to the 9:00 P.M. closing time. Don't forget the get together at Brewbacher's after the meeting! This month Glenn Matherne will give a brief demonstration of OCR (Optical Character Recognition). He will scan a document in and then convert the graphic into text with OCR software. Following Glenn's presentation, Isaac Traxler will talk about archives, compression and segmentation. Many people try to backup to limited media (floppies and/or zip disks). Quite often the file or files being backed up will not fit on a single peice of media. Archiving helps collect related files into one entity (kind of like a folder does). Compression can dramatically reduce the size of the archive. Segmentation can be used i to split a large archive across multiple pieces of media. June Meeting Thank you Glenn for your presentation at the June meeting. Your introduction to Multimedia was a good overview of what Multimedia is and what it takes to get into it. Apple's Financial Status MacWorld happened last week. Many things happened. Apple's stock rose to a high of 33 5/8 (another 52-week high) and closed the week at 32 1/16. Steve Jobs said that a 3rd quarter profit would be posted (THREE positive quarters in a row!). The Christmas season has a lot of promise also. Financially, Apple seems to have turned around. Apple has sold 750,000 PowerMac G3 systems in the first seven months since they were introduced (since November 1997). Serious production of the iMac has now begun and Apple intends to have 250,000 units available when they start shipping on about August 15. By the end of 1998, iMac sales are projected to be between 400,000 units and 1,000,000 units. The large spread points out that the iMac is expected to be a great success with Apple production issues being the prime item that will limit sales. Apple's Software Stratedgy MacWorld also produced some more information about Apple's future software stratedgy. Rhapsody will be renamed Mac OS X Server (pronounced ten by some). Mac OS X is due as a beta in Q1 1999 with release in Q3. Mac OS 8.5 is due in late September of 1998 with Mac OS 8.6 due in Q1 1999 followed by Sonata in Q3 1999 along with Mac OS X. On the down side, Apple did say that Mac OS X is being planned only for Apple G3 systems. 603, 604 and G3 upgraded systems will probably not be able to run Mac OS X. At MacWorld, Jobs announced that 177 apps have been announced for the Macintosh since the iMac was announced. He also said that the current Apple management is game friendly (unlike some previous ones). iMac Trivia After the June meeting, we hope to start a new tradition. I will be going to the Brewbacher's on Bluebonnet after the meeting to get a bite to eat and to socialize. Everyone is invited to join me. This will allow us to leave the library in a timely manner and still have plenty of time to talk. After the Meeting When the iMac was announced, many people were concerned about some of its limitations (no ADB, dependency on USB, no writeable removeable media, no serial ports). Many were concerned about the inability to use current peripherals. Asante announced an inexpensive localtalk to ethernet device (less than a $100). HP announced a USB to serial adapter to allow current HP printers to be used with the iMac. Iomega announced a USB version of the Zip drive ($140 near Christmas). SyQuest announced a USB version of the 1Gb SparQ. Looks like plenty of options to use old or get new peripherals. Return to Top of Page Rethinking the Digital Move by Glenn Matherene For the past few months, I have been searching for ways to do digital audio on my Macintosh. I cruised the internet for audio cards, digital audio tape recorders (DAT), microphones, digital mixers, storage devices and cd-recorders. I was horrified to learn that the only thing that is has come down in price is the software used to record, edit and produce music. The most popular program package is the Steinberg Cubase VST package. It works on all Power Macs and Pentium PCs, and retails for about $250....$2000 if you buy all of the add-ons. This package is capable of making an album to record on a blank CD-R. However, it is very finicky and crashes some computers. DAT recorders have gone up in price over the last five years. No manufacturer makes one for under $750. They break very easily and usually cannot standup to years of use. A good sturdy professional model starts at $3000. The Tascam DA-MK30II at $3000 is the cheapest one used by most professional musicians. DAT records like a VCR and uses a 4 mm tape. ADAT is a newer standard created by Alesis which uses a Super-VHS. ADAT machines start at $3000. There are only three portable DAT recorders on the market. The Sony model is a $750 Walkman. The Tascam model is a sturdy no frills $1800 recorder. The best one is the $7000 Fostex recorder. Digital mixers can be quite expensive. They start at $2000 and can easily reach $500,000. The cheap ones will only work with MIDI devices and digital tape sources. The expensive ones will word with just about any combination of analog and digital. Portable Digital Studios are the best compromise if you are on a tight budget. They combine the features of a mixer and a recorder with a microphone pre-amp. PDSes start at $1400 and go up to $4000. Fostex, Akai, Roland, Tascam, Korg and Yamaha make similar models. Since they record to a hard drive or a Jaz disk, no tape is needed. The bad news is that the hard drives are small( about 1 or 2 gig) and cost $700 from the manufacturer. If you drop it, repairs can be very expensive. They frequently fail to record properly. Good microphones are expensive. This is very true if you go digital. Because you want the best audio to go into your digital system, be prepared to pay anywhere from $100 to $100,000 for that microphone to do your recording. AKG, Hafler, Electrovoice and Neumann are the best. Shure makes the cheapest line used by professionals. So to make a long story short, I decided to go analog. I got a Fostex X-28H eight-track cassette recorder for $750 to use with my Macintosh, my VCR, my cassette deck and my Shure microphone with no additional digital hardware. It sounds great, is easy to use, uses cassette tapes, works with a cigarette-lighter adapter or a camera flash battery pack, and best of all I can get it repaired in town. In my mind, going digital was not the best way to go. Many musicians agree. Return to Top of Page Graphic Utility of the Month by Glenn Matherene This month, I plan to demonstrate how to scan a page of printed paper text and place it in a text document using Scansoft Text Bridge 8.0 (formerly Xerox Text Bridge). Text Bridge 8.0 is and OCR program and is available for about $45. For many people, the art of using a scanner with an Optical Character Recognition progam or OCR is a challenge best left to the professionals. Just pronouncing the words optical character recognition hurts. So most people never use these programs to put their paper text documents into their computer. What I am talking about is that for many years people have been able to use a scanner to scan a piece of printed paper, and then put it into a new document or to fax it. The problem is that no one has been able to create a pain-less way to do this. OCR programs are notorious for scrambling letters and fonts and mistranslating words. The more serious of problems is that an OCR program converts a scan of a document page and converts it into a graphic with one font and one text size. This is essentially a fax. When a document contains several fonts and multiple sized letter, the OCR program gets confused. It is also confused by documents with multi-colored and lower contrast paper. To partially solve these problems, most programs, such as Text Bridge 8.0, have a teach feature. This teach feature enables the user to retype the words that the program cannot identify. The problem is that a document from a modern textbook may have to be completely retyped. Thus, meaning that a simple 30 second scan of one page of a favorite book suddenly takes 30 minutes.This problem is the one hurdle that OCR programs have not been able to surmount. However, if you are simply copying a document such as a letter type-written on white paper, in a single font with only one letter size, OCR will work well for you. You will be able to successfully this document and transfer it to a wordprocessor, a fax or a webpage within a minute or two. Text Bridge 8.0 translates scanned documents into ClarisWorks RTF, Microsoft RTF, and HTML. These formats work with ClarisWorks 5.0, Microsoft Word 6.0 or higher and with your favorite HTML editors. So, the next time you see that favorite news article from the checkout counter at the grocery store, that favorite postcard from your visit to the Pet Rock farm in California, those directions for re-assembling your home entertainment center in authentic Mandarin Chinese, OCR IT. This way you'll always have a copy on your computer for future reference. It's also a good way to pass your pearls of wisdom to future generations. Return to Top of Page Essentials - MacGuru by Isaac Traxler MacGuru is another one of those essential products that I cannot live without. It is also another one of those freebies! MacGuru is provided by Newer Technologies who sells all kinds of memory products. Guru 2.6 is the latest version. When Guru first opens up you are greeted by a list of Macintosh categories (Figure 1). When you click on one of these categories, you are given a list of models that fall into that category. When you choose a model, you see a screen that contains lots of neat information about the selected model. The information is divided into three sections: General Information, Memory, and Video (Figure 2). The General Information includes details about the system (such as processor model, processor speed, L1 and L2 cache info, bus speed and size, slots, power supply, release/termination date, SCSI connection, serial ports, sound, ADB, ethernet, Gestalt and battery, ROM size, and floppy information). The Memory section describes what kind of memory the machine uses, the system memory range (min to max), the number and kind of memory expansion, and the size. The Video section list all the built-in video options available. If video memory can be expanded, this section will tell by how much and what you need. It will also tell you what depth (1, 4, 8, 14 or 24 bit) and what resolutions it can display them in. This is really useful when trying to decide what mode a monitor can be run in. Guru can tell you a lot about your computer. Knowing the possible memory configurations allows you to decide if you want to upgrade memory. The video data makes it possible to decide if a particular monitor can be properly attached to your machine. Tools like Guru make mixing and matching hardware much easier. Knowing (for sure) the expansion possibilities for a machine makes it much easier to decide to invest in a used machine. Return to Top of Page Nonessentials by Glenn Matherene This month, I'm going to give a cautious endorsement of the product, Prosoniq Sonicworx Artist Basic (a freeware version of Sonicworx Artist). It is a fairly sophisticated professional audio recorder and shaper. Sonicworx Artist Basic comes with about ten professional audio effects such as reverb, flange, compressor, delay and smooth. It also reduces the volume of your sound files to play distortion free. It records in mono or stereo from 22khz to 48khz, depending upon your audio hardware. It is not dependent upon Quicktime to do any of its effects or processing. However, it is not without a few annoying problems. This program tends to lose the cursor after a few minutes. It also crashed a few times while I was working with some audio files. The commands in the menubar and prompt section are sometimes in German, but that can be educational for some people. Sometimes, the effects menu failed to show when opening audio files to work on. The raw files mode altered the original sound to an unrecognizable form. That said, I seem to like Sonicworx Artist Basic. It processes audio very quickly and cleanly. It exports in aiff, wav and sound deck II formats. The record section records very loudly to eliminate background noise. The price is right. All in all it is not a bad product. I seem to think that it is probably a beta version of the full version. I recommend it to anyone who wants to start working in digital audio and is not afraid of a few minor problems. After all, most of the professional stuff like Steinberg Cubase are riddled with bugs that audio people have to grin and bare. This just another problem with going digital. Return to Top of Page Web Page of the Month by Isaac Traxler InfoMac has been around for years. It started life as a mailing list (and still is available that way). I prefer reading InfoMac in its web format (called HyperDigest) at http://digester.et. tudelft.nl/. This site maintains copies of InfoMac since 1996. The InfoMac web pages are created with Digester (available free). InfoMac serves two main purposes: software announcements and question/answer forum. Many commercial/shareware/freeware packages are announced in InfoMac. Announcing demos, shareware and freeware on InfoMac is important because that is how the InfoMac archives get updated (most Macintosh archives are based on the InfoMac archives). The HyperDigest takes this a step further, it actually provides links to the software at various InfoMac archives so that you can immediately download the file after reading its information. It is a great way to keep up with what is going on. It is also a great place for information. Many Macintosh users post questions on InfoMac. A large number of very know-ledgeable people read and answer questions on InfoMac. This is one of the best places to find information about current problems and solutions. This forum is a great way to keep up with the Macintosh world. All questions and answers are accumulated into a single daily archive. This means that you can read many different questions and responses at one time instead of having to follow a news thread for days. The HyperDigest Archive is a great service to the Macintosh community. Visit it from our brmug periodicals area http://www.brmug.org/periodical.html. Return to Top of Page