Posted by Ablang on 10/24/05 17:21

October 18th, 2005

Gadget Tips: Windows Media Player Updates Your Podcasts

PC World Contributor Richard Baguley

Podcasts bring personal broadcasting to the masses: Anybody with a
microphone and a PC can share their bons mots with the world. Read
"Singing the Blog Electric: Podcast Your Way to Stardom," for
Contributing Editor Dan Tynan's take on podcasting tools and services:
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,121203,tk,box,00.asp

Instead of using ITunes or downloading new podcasts to your MP3 player
manually, let Windows Media Player 10 do it for you.

If you don't already have one, download and install a podcast receiver
program like IPodder, and set the program to download new podcasts
automatically. Note where the program stores its podcasts (by default,
IPodder stores them in My Documents\My Received Podcasts).

You can find IPodder here:
http://ipodder.sf.net/

Next, open Windows Media Player 10 and select File, Add to Library, By
Monitoring Folders. Click Add and browse to the directory where your
receiver stores its podcasts. Select the folder and click OK twice.

Next, click the Library tab, right-click the Auto Playlists entry
(located near the bottom of the left pane), and select New to open the
New Auto Playlist dialog box. Enter Podcasts in the "Auto Playlist
name" box and choose "Click here to add criteria" below "Create an
auto playlist that includes the following." Select More, File Name,
OK. Back in the New Auto Playlist dialog box, choose click to set next
to "File name Contains." Enter the name of the directory where the
podcasts are stored ('My Documents\My Received Podcasts" in the
iPodder example I've been outlining). A simple way to do this is to
select the folder in Windows Explorer, copy the path in the Address
bar, and paste it into this field. Click OK, and Podcasts will appear
in the auto playlists. Right-click it and select Add to Synch List.

Now when you connect your MP3 player and click Start Synch, all of the
latest podcasts you subscribed to will be copied to the device
automatically.

Cell-Phone Videos on DVD

It's easy to convert videos that were captured by cell phones in the
3GPP format into a format you can put on a DVD. Of course, cell-phone
movies may be great for candid moments, but they can't match the
quality of a camcorder's output, so don't be surprised if the videos
come out looking blocky and jerky.

The Nokia 6620 video cell phone I use saves its files to a memory
card, so I simply pull the card out and pop it into my PC's memory
card reader. Other video cell phones allow you to e-mail the clips.

Once you've transferred the files onto your PC, open Windows Explorer
and click File, New, Folder. Name the folder 3GPP. Next, click here to
download the free video decoder contained in the file 3gptorawavi.zip:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/downloads/3gpToRawAvi.zip

Unzip this file and place its contents into the 3GPP folder that you
just created. Move your video files into the same folder. Now open a
command prompt window: In Windows XP, select Start, All Programs,
Accessories, Command Prompt (the steps are slightly different for
older Windows versions). Type cd C:\3GPP and press Enter. To convert a
3GPP video, type 3gptorawavi.exeA filename, replacing "filename" with
the name of the video file (but excluding the .3gp suffix). For
example, if you want to convert a cell-phone file named
"video(001).3gp', you'd type 3gptorawavi.exe video(001). This
instruction creates a new video file in the MPEG-2 format that retains
the same name but has the .avi suffix.

Now open your DVD authoring program and import the AVI video file. To
start a new DVD-video disc in Nero Express 6, for example, you would
merely click Add Video Files and select the AVI file. Once the video
file is written to the disc, you can pop it into any relatively new
DVD player and enjoy!

For more tips, visit PC World's Digital Entertainment Info Center:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/infocenter/0,ctrid,10,ic,DigitalEntertainment,tk,box,00.asp

Have a question or comment? Write to Richard Baguley:
makingmovies at pcworld.com

Read Richard Baguley's "Making Movies" columns:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/columnist/0,colid,33,tk,bo,00.asp


====
"I don't care (if I get booed). I don't know any of those people. As long as my kids tell me that they love me, I'm fine. My motto is, when people talk about me, I say, 'Who are they? They're not God.' If God was out there booing me, I'd be upset."
-- Bonzi Wells, Sacramento Kings
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