Tag Archives: tutorials

How To

Get iMovie '08 to import 3GP files

I recorded a few video clips with my wife’s mobile phone today, and when I tried to import them into iMovie ’08, I found out that I couldn’t. Apparently, I’m not alone, because if you do a search for this on Google you’ll find there are plenty of other people with the same problem.

Fortunately, there are two ways to work this out, but neither is necessarily obvious. Pick one of them:

  • Open up the clips in Quicktime. I was able to open them up and play them right away. Now, export each clip as an MP4 file. You must specifically select File > Export, then select Movie to MPEG-4 from the Export drop-down menu. Don’t just Save the clip, because it’ll package it as a MOV file, which iMovie ’08 will still refuse to import. You must Export it as an MP4 file. You may also be able to export to other formats, but MP4 is what worked for me.
  • Open them clips in Turbo.264, then export them to some format (try Apple TV or iPod Standard, for example). There’s a catch here though. If the resolution of the clips is too small, Turbo.264 may not be able to convert them, and will give you an error. Best stick with Quicktime then.

Now open up iMovie ’08, and go to File > Import Movies, browse for them, and import to your heart’s content. That’s it!

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How To

If iMovie '08 crashes…

You can try bothering with the preferences files, or the codecs, or the color profiles, as the forums tell you to do, or you can do the following:

  1. Go to your home folder > Movies > iMovie Events. Locate the folder with the last clips you imported. Delete the iMovie Cache and iMovie Thumbnails folders.
  2. Restart iMovie. For most of you, that’s all you’ll need to do.
  3. If it still crashes, that means one or more of the actual clips themselves weren’t closed properly by the video camera (perhaps you ran out of battery, space on the card, etc.). Open them up in Quicktime (if you have Quicktime Pro) or some other application (like the software that came with the camera) and snip 1-2 seconds off the end of each clip. Save them, then delete the iMovie Cache and iMovie Thumbnails folders (in case iMovie re-created them).
  4. Now restart iMovie. It should work fine now.

A few words to explain some things:

  • If a movie clip doesn’t open at all from the Finder, then it is corrupted. Perhaps only its header is messed up for some reason. At any rate, I have not yet found software that will fix those movie clips. I searched enough, and only found spyware that promises to do it.
  • If a movie clip opens and plays fine in Quicktime, but iMovie crashes when trying to import it, then its ending is corrupted, as explained in step #3 above. Cutting 1-2 seconds off the end of the clip in some software other than iMovie will restore its ending and let you import it without crashes in iMovie.
  • The method I described above has worked reliably for me on three occasions now, and this is after I wasted hours on the phone with Apple Support. It only occurred to them to let me re-import video clips after having me try all of that other stuff, including a re-install of iMovie ’08 and also the creation of a new account to see if the problems re-occur there. Pointless. I say go to the root of the problem and take care of it right away, don’t beat around the bush.

Hope this helps you too.

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How To

How to install or upgrade WordPress via SSH

If you know how to log in via SSH (Secure Shell Access), then you will be able to upgrade your WordPress site in three minutes or less by using the following lines of code.

I have to admit right away that I’m highly indebted to this pre-existing tutorial from Techtites. But that tutorial is a little dated for the newer versions of Linux, and one of the commands given there no longer works on my web server, because it’s been deprecated (I use 1and1). I thought it useful to provide the right commands in this post, and to keep it updated in case something changes.

A few words of CAUTION:

  1. BACK UP all of your site files and your site database before running the upgrade. Take the time to do both, or you may deeply regret it later. As a matter of fact, it’s a great idea to back up your site files and database on a weekly basis, if not more often, just in case you get hacked or the web server crashes, etc.
  2. I’m not a Linux expert. I’m just glad I found these commands and that they’ve made the upgrade process easier for me. Don’t ask me to help you configure this for your web server. If the commands don’t work there, or something gets screwed up, you’re on your own.
  3. Should you use the WP-Cache plugin, disable it and delete any cached files BEFORE running the upgrade process. Even better, disable ALL your plugins before the upgrade process. If you don’t do this, you may get a big, fat 500 error afterwards.

Now, initiate a SSH session to your web server (I use Putty). Your web host should have the directions on how to do this. Go to the root level of your site/WP install folder (this is NOT the same as the root level of your SSH login).

Once you’re at the root level of your WordPress install (the one where you can see the wp-config.php file), enter the following Bash commands, in the order they appear. Wait for each of them to execute successfully before proceeding to the next one.

This will download the latest version of WP directly from WordPress.org:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

This will unzip it, creating a directory called wordpress:

tar xfz latest.tar.gz

This will delete the wp-includes and wp-admin folders:

rm -rf ./wp-includes/
rm -rf ./wp-admin/

This will take you inside the wordpress folder:

cd wordpress/

This will copy everything inside the wordpress folder to the root level of your site, overwriting any existing files and directories. This line is the only line that’s changed from the Techtites tutorial:

cp -rpf -f * ../

This will take you back out to the root of your WordPress install:

cd ..

This will delete the wordpress directory and the downloaded WP archive, since they’re not needed any more:

rm -rf ./wordpress/
rm -f latest.tar.gz

Hope this helps!

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