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Compressor.app Presets

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Compressor.app supports creating presets for easy export settings. And Apple’s standard line is to add those presets (.settings file) to ~/Library/Application Support/Compressor. However, this is a crappy option for an educational setup where you have several users all using the same computers. You can’t ask students to be installing the settings files themselves (students are a special breed).

So, looking in that folder ~/Library/Application Support/Compressor, you’ll find some Aliases. Right clicking on “Other Workflows”, and saying “Show Original” will have you in /Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj. So, you can drop that .settings file in “Other Workflows” and have it show up for all users.

But better still, is that those will show up in FCP. You should be able to go to File->Share, and change “Apple TV” or whatever is selected to “Other” and select your Settings file.

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RadioShack Deluxe Cable Stripper

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Radioshack Deluxe Cable StripperOn the heels of my post relating to grounding your CATV, I thought I’d do a brief review on this inexpensive, capable coax stripper. I’d been looking online and at local hardware stores for a good quality coax stripper, and any of the really good ones were at least $30. Which, I’d be happy to pay if that’s what it would cost for a good stripper, but on a whim, I looked at RadioShack’s site, and found this, which gets decent reviews, and at the local Radioshack, was only $15! In my few tests, it does a great job, and quickly. After reading in depth about coax the last few days, I’ve read that nicking the conductor of coax when stripping it is bad, which I’m sure I’ve done on some of my crimps. So, over the next few days, I plan to redo several of the terminations in my house to perhaps improve my signal quality to my cable modem (the local demarcation point for CATV is about 10 feet from my house, so all my TV signals look great. I just hope to slightly improve my cable modem signal).

All and all, if you’re going to be doing anymore than a one off coax termination (in which case you might be able to get a friend, or a friendly cable installer to do), I’d highly recommend this stripper. Much cheaper ones are almost as expensive (I have one), and do a MUCH worse job. This one performs as well as any $25-30 I’ve seen.

The old downside being getting replacement blades. The local Radioshack I bought this from didn’t seem to have them, but from reviews, the blades should last some time, and replacement blades can be purchased online here.

[xrr rating=4.75/5]

Ground your cable TV coax!

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Ungrounded CATV coax connections can cause some rather bad speaker hum (at 60hz here in the US), and horizontal lines in your picture. Grounding your coax connection can help alleviate these problems, though it may not fully solve your issues. To demonstrate, here’s some backstory.

We have a older CRT TV in the garage that we use to play DDR/Stepmania, as well as have a TV going when working in the garage. I recently hooked an old computer up to the TV for a permanent Stepmania machine. Right after hooking this computer up, I started getting a really bad ground hum on the TV, which could be quickly fixed by installing a ground lift (Cheater Plug) on the computer power connection, but this is generally a bad idea (computers like being grounded). After doing some research, I found out that an ungrounded CATV connection can cause ground hum. Checking it out, I removed the CATV connection from the TV, and viola, the hum was gone. Okay… so, now to actually FIX the problem.

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