“Every so often my picture previews disappear and then I don’t know what they are (because as you can see they have ridiculous names). If I repair permissions and restart it usually fixes itself but then it happens again.”

Here are a few ways to approach this problem*:

1. If you are noticing any irregularities within your operating system, it can be attributed to a “bug” in the software. This is especially common when new releases of software are distributed. For Mac users, Apple releases regular system patches in “Software Update”. It is important to always update your computer with the latest software to ensure smooth operations. Click on the apple in the top left hand corner and run “software update.”

2. If your software is up-to-date, you may want to look into your Finder settings. Click on the View menu> Show View Options.

Here you can make sure that the box “show icon preview” is checked.

It is important to note that this setting must be check for all four Finder views: List, Column, Icon, Coverflow.

3. If your Finder is still not working correctly, you can delete the finder preference file which can sometimes become corrupt. When you delete a preference file (.plist) it will reappear when you restart finder and will change any settings to your finder/icons back to their default settings.

 Open a Finder window and navigate to Home > Library > Preferences folder.

Trash the file com.apple.finder.plist

Force quit finder then re-open (or you can restart your computer)

*Intended for users running Mac OSX 10.6 or later

Quick Answer: 24/7? No.

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Time Machine requires that you keep your external hard drive plugged in for the first backup, which can take anywhere from 30minutes to multiple hours (depending on how much data is on your mac), and then only when you wish to backup your files after that. Time Machine is such an effective backup solution because after the initial backup, it only writes changes made to your files, making every future backup much faster. If you would like to have hourly backups (perhaps during a major project) you may leave your external on and plugged in, and Time Machine will automatically run.

For the most part, I attach my external drive every week or so, or after a large project, and Time Machine automatically backs up everything I need. Continue for more tips…

If you open up Time Machine preferences from System Preferences>Time Machine

A) Clicking on “Options” allows you to set guidelines for what you’d like to be backed up. For example, perhaps your enormous collection of TV shows isn’t really necessary… or maybe you’re iPod is a sufficient backup of your 100GB music library. These options allow you to maximize the effectiveness of your external backup by excluding unnecessary files.

B) You can make sure that “Show Time Machine status in the menu bar” so that you can see when Time Machine is running and then also when it has completed a backup.

It’s also nice to know that no matter what, you will always have your original backup of your computer. As time goes on, Time Machine will remove the oldest backup of your changes , which makes room for newer updates. Keep in mind that Time Machine will warn you when this happens, and most likely, your subsequent backup will have any files you might need to recover.

Having recent backups eases the pain of a failed hard drive, an accidental empty of the trash bin, or any other mishap that could potentially cause a digital crisis!

Fullscreen hotkey

This will take a screenshot of the full screen, and save it as a file on the desktop

For more specific screenshots you have two other options, Select Area, or  Select Window.

Select Area-

This will change your cursor into an axis, and will allow you to select an area on your screen that you would like to take a picture of. This is useful for specific content on websites, error messages, and smaller screen shots. Once you drag the cursor over an area and release, the picture has been taken. Press the ESC key to switch back to your regular cursor if you do not want to take a picture.

Select Window-

When you click on the space bar in addition to command shift 4, you have the opportunity to select a window. Your cursor changes into a camera icon and you simply click on the open window you’d like to take a picture of. When moving the camera icon, you will see the highlighted area in blue will be the delivered screenshot. This is most helpful for website specific screen shots or icons.

Screenshots come in handy for all sorts of things. If your dock is visible, it will show up as an option to highlight when using the Select Window screenshot method. Here is a fun trend that went around using that premise:

Words created from Dock items:

That Word doc you wrote on your mac not working on a PC? There are a few reasons why this might be happening, but one common reason has to do with extensions.

When you create a document, your computer uses an extension to differentiate what program will handle it. For example, images use .jpeg, .png, .bmp, .tiff among others to let the computer know that this file should go to a program that deals with pictures. Microsoft Word is the same way with documents. For a computer to understand a file as a document, it looks for a .doc extension.

Word offers the ability to “append extension” which can cause some confusion. Here are two quick tips to make sure all your docs can be read on Macs or Pcs.

1. Make Sure “Append Extension” is checked.

2. Make sure your document title does not include any periods. If you do not have a proper file extension at the end of your document, the computer will not be sure how to open it. Alternatively you can use underscores for dates or revisions “9_18_09″

* you may also rename your files at any time with the proper extension. So if you had a doc that’s not opening, trying clicking rename, and adding “.doc” to it!

Believe it or not, I actually had this typed up prior to this text message.

Ken Burns Effect with Photos

To achieve movement with still photos, import a high resolution image into your browser (FCP area diagram). Once added to your timeline, double click it to bring it up into your Viewer. Open up the “Motion” tab in the viewer.

It is very important to make sure that your playhead it at the start of your clip. This is because we are going to make the starting off position for the image. In the Motion tab you can scale the image, rotate it, and move it to the position you wish for it to begin at. Once you are pleased with the setting, create a keyframe by clicking on the diamond under the “Nav” column in the Scale and Center section. See image below:

Notice how keyframes show up to the right of the controls. Now navigate to the last frame of the image. Zoom in or out of your clip, or move the image around in the Canvas to create movement from the starting point. When you have the ending position set, click on the same diamonds to create keyframes at the end of your image. You should then see something like this:

Watch over your clip to make sure the zoom and movement are correct. You can always alter these keyframes— you just have to make sure you are at the beginning or end of the clip. If you wish to clear the keyframes and start over, simply click on the red X in the “Nav” column.

For a step-by-step video tutorial (which is very helpful) :

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/ross_shane/movement_on_stills/video-tutorial.php

Volume Control

You can adjust the volume of audio clips by double clicking them in the timeline and bringing them up in the viewer. From there select the Mono (a1) tab and raise the Level by dBs. Do the same with the Mono (a2) tab.

If you need to raise the volume more than 12dBs, you can add a Gain filter from the Effects tab under: Audio Filters>Final Cut Pro>Gain. This will let you increase your volume of your clips beyond the controls in the timeline. Once you apply the filter to your audio, it will show up in the Filters tab within the Viewer.