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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Sunday, April 24, 2005Tiger Feature of the Day: DVD Player 4.5While the original Mac OS X DVD player--a weird round ball of a program--was lacking, the versions Apple has shipped in the past few point updates of Mac OS X have been quite nice. DVD Player 4.5, the version that ships in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger," is no exception.Apple has updated DVD Player with the following new features (which are called out as 7 individual features in its 200+ New Features what's new list for Tiger. Audio Equalizer. The tinkerers among us can use the new translucent Audio Equalizer window to custom-configure sound output. As you might expect, you can manually adjust different frequencies with the equalizer's settings, or you can choose from presets such as Bass and Vocal Boost, Bass Boost, Small Speakers, or Vocal Boost. I had expected the presets to improve sound output on my PowerBook's small speakers, but the results were better than I had anticipated. Bookmarks. A new Bookmarks window--which is not translucent--allows you to create Bookmarks, similar to those in Safari, at your favorite moments in any DVD. You can name the Bookmarks, and then click on them in the Bookmarks window to later return to that point in the movie. One cool option--which should be the default--lets you display a thumbnail for each Bookmark. There's also one small problem: Bookmarks are stored alphabetically, not in time sequence. Doh.  Animated Dock Icon. When you minimize DVD Player on a Quartz Extreme-equipped Mac, the movie keeps playing inside of the Dock icon, though the sound is muted. You can also optionally pause the DVD playback when the player is minimized, which frankly should be the default. I'm guessing this effect looks pretty cool on a 30" Cinema Display. On my 1024 x 768 PowerBook, it's just sad.  Navigator. A new translucent Navigator window provides real-time statistics about the currently-playing DVD. Unlike the Info display that was available in previous versions, the Navigator is interactive: You can mouse over items like Title and Chapter to navigate to different parts of the movie, or Subtitle to select a subtitle. You can also switch between elapsed time and remaining time, or adjust the volume.  Video Clips. The Video Clips window (which is shared with Bookmarks for some reason) lets you create QuickTime-style video clips, or video subsets, of a DVD. The way you create these clips is somewhat awkward: When you click the Add Video clip button in the Video Clips window, the movie pauses and a new dialog appears, with buttons to Set and Clear the Start Time and End Time of the clip. To start a clip, you just click the Set button next to Start Time. And then ... It's not clear what to do next. It turns out you restart the movie and then wait until the moment arrives where you'd like the clip to end. At that point, you click the Set button next to End Time. Like the Bookmarks feature, you can name Video Clips and view them by thumbnail, which is just cool. Video Color. Another translucent window, Video Color lets you adjust the brightness, contrast, color, and tint of the DVD playback window. You can also choose from presets like Brighter, Deeper, and Richer. Some of these effects are quite dramatic. My guess is that this feature will prove valuable in certain situations, such as when trying to watch a DVD on an airline flight. Video Zoom. Video Zoom lets you magnify the image width and height independently using two sliders, though it's set to lock the aspect ration by default. If you're annoyed by the black bands at the top and bottom of widescreen movies and don't mind losing a bit of the picture at the edges, this might just be the ticket. Overall, the improvements to DVD Player are quite nice. It's a solid update. [ Posted at 6:46 PM | Permalink ]
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