-j tells the system not to try to set the date, but to look for input from the -f flag
-f denotes that you’re going to specify the input format of the date you’re trying to convert

Then you need to describe the input format. The Wikipedia page on the the UNIX date command has all of the details on the different representations of year, month, day, weeks, etc.

Here are some samples:

date -jf “%m_%d_%y” 2_29_12 “+%Y-%m-%d”

date -jf “%y%m%d” 120402 “+%Y-%m-%d”

date -jf “%y/%m/%d” 12/4/2 “+%Y-%m-%d”

date -jf “%m_%d_%y” 2_29_12 “+%Y-%m-%d”

Given I’m only a day into this, but so far so good. The compromise of not being able to use Google Maps while on a call is a tradeoff I’m happy to make if the call really works.

For the record, I haven’t cancelled my AT&T account yet. I just bought a Verizon iPhone from the Apple Store. They have plenty in stock and there is a 30 day cancellation & return policy, with no restocking fee. That made it very easy to decide to just try it for comparison. If you buy from a Verizon store it’s only 14 days and there’s a $35 restocking fee. Somehow though, I don’t think either will matter. Unless this level of service is a fluke, I’m keeping this phone.

———————–

So, the week later follow up… It’s pretty much just what I hoped. The phone works flawlessly. I haven’t dropped a single call and I’ve stopped worrying that I will.  The only bummer so far is that the battery life seems to be much worse.  I charge the phone overnight, and usually by the time I’m going to bed, it’s in the red and I’ve gotten a 10% warning.  I haven’t had a chance yet to take it in and have it checked yet, but I will.

First off, there are a number of add-ons you’ll likely want to load. For each of these just download the latest source. I was able to simply run ./configure, make, make install for each of these with no hiccups.

I’d recommend that you start by creating a folder in your home directory called Source. Uncompress all of these to that Source folder and keep all your work in there.

yasm (http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/wiki/Download)
faac (http://www.audiocoding.com/)
lame (http://lame.sourceforge.net/download.php)
x264 (http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html)

If you’re going to be dealing with ProRes files, you can use these qt_tools to convert them to a format that FFmpeg can work with. Worth downloading and installing.

qt_tools (http://www.omino.com/sw/qt_tools/)

Finally, you’ll want to get the latest version of libavfilter. Open the Terminal and cd into your Source directory.

svn co svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/soc/libavfilter

Next, cd into libavfilter and run checkout.sh

Then, cd into the ffmpeg directory and run ./configure to prepare your build. On Leopard I used this command:

./configure --enable-avfilter --enable-libmp3lame --enable-shared --disable-mmx \
 --arch=x86_32 --enable-libfaac --enable-nonfree --enable-filter=movie --enable-avfilter-lavf \
 --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl

On Snow Leoapard I ran this. The only difference being 64 bit support:

./configure --enable-avfilter --enable-libmp3lame --enable-shared --disable-mmx \
--arch=x86_64 --enable-libfaac --enable-nonfree --enable-filter=movie --enable-avfilter-lavf \
--enable-libx264 --enable-gpl

Assuming you are still error-free, you can now run `make` and when that finishes, `make install`.

Whew, the scary stuff is done. Now you have qt_tools which will let you get out of ProRes format and the latest greatest version of FFmpeg with support for AAC audio, MP3 Audio, h.264 video encoding and watermarking.

To use qt_export you have to create a settings file which it will use to decode your video. In the terminal type `qt_export –dodialog –savesettings=mySettings.qts` This will open the Quicktime export dialog box. You can go ahead and select all the settings you want to use. When you click OK it will create a file called mySettings.qts or whatever you put in the terminal command. You only have to do this once. The next command is what you use to process a video file.

qt_export --loadsettings=mySettings.qts input.mov video.mov

So that will take input.mov, convert it to whatever settings you saved in the mySettings.qts file and spit out video.mov

Finally, this command is what you use to overlay your watermark. In this example, the watermark file is the same frame size as the video. I’m using a PNG file with transparency. You’ll want to go through and setup your ffmpeg parameters for whatever your application may be. I’m outputting a 15Mbit MP4 file, 720p with 256kbit AAC audio.

ffmpeg -i video.mov -f mp4  -b 15M -acodec libfaac -ab 256k  \
-vf "movie=0:png:preview.png [wm];[in][wm] overlay=0:0:1 [out]" out.mp4

That should do it!

Here’s a sample video I encoded using the following command. It’s a nice, crappy, very compressed file.

ffmpeg -i video.mov -s 640x360 -f mp4  -b 800k -acodec libfaac \
-ab 64k  -vf "movie=0:png:watermark-half.png [wm];[in][wm] overlay=0:0:1 [out]" out.mp4

[qt:http://www.corbellconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/out.mp4 640 360]

The solution is to unplug all but one ethernet port through the install, and to run Software Update at least once afterward, before plugging the other ports back in.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669

“AppleTalk note: If your printer can only use the AppleTalk protocol, the printer must be connected to, and then shared by, an appropriate AppleTalk-capable printer server. Snow Leopard can then use that print share to print via a supported IP-based protocol. See the “How to add a printer” section of this article for details about how to connect to a shared printer to your Snow Leopard system.”

In the print dialog, click on the Advanced button toward the botton on the left.

In the Advanced Print Setup dialog, choose Postscript Options from the list on the left. Then, you’re going to want to click the “Discolored Background Correction” checkbox at the bottom of the list of options.