Burn vob Files To DVD On Mac / Linux

If you’ve got some .vob files and wonder how to get those onto a DVD and actually play it on your DVD player, you may get or already have some strange results.
The files might just be listed on the DVD, without the disc actually playing the movie as a DVD, or the disc may play the first vob section, then the second has no sound. And there is a plethora of issues and scenarios, just not the one you were expecting.

There are multiple ways to do it right and to achieve what you want. Here are two distinct ones:

1) Get a program called Roxio Toast 10 Titanium and click on create DVD. Then simply drag your files from left to right, follow the instructions and hit “Burn”. That’s it, it’s that easy if you can fork out $75.-. And the program can do much more than just that, check it out.

2) Save some money, have fun (maybe) and learn in the process.

- Hop on the terminal of you Mac and ensure that you have hdiutil. Type hdiutil info and you’ll know what version you have, which should be close to framework 283.

- Create an ISO which you can then burn to the DVD:  hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name DVD -o DVD Directory_of_DVD where DVD is the name of the iso file. This can take several minutes, depending on the length and size of your movie and the speed of your Mac.

- Mount the iso on your Mac by double clicking it and verify that it works as intended.

- Unmount it and burn it to DVD with Disk Utility or your favorite burner.

Hot To Install Memcache And PHP Client On Mac Snow Leopard

I recently installed the memcached daemon on my MacBook Pro, incuding the necessary PHP client for development purposes. I just prefer to work locally instead of using a VM running Linux. And the process is actually quite simple and straight forward. Please note, I have included both clients, the old standard one and the newer PECL extension, because I deal with different applications and also lots of people seems to get confused when they install one version and their memcache classes cannot get instantiated and throw errors. So, if in doubt, just install both.

These are the five (four if you know which extension you want) components needed:

- libevent (requred library for memcached)

- memcached daemon

- libmemcached (required library for the php client)

- php extension (standard)

- php extension (PECL)

Now open your terminal and off we go: (more…)

How To Install Snow Leopard From USB

Ever been without a DVD/CDROM or installation disk?  Especially MacBook Air users undoubtedly come across this situation. This article will explain how to install Snow Leopard from an external device such as USB or disk drive.

You will need an appropriately sized external drive or USB Flash Drive, as the Snow Leopard install DVD’s size is about 6.2 gigabytes. An 8GB USB stick like the SanDisk Cruzer 8GB is the perfect choice.

Now let’s plug in that USB stick and get started.

1. Start up Disk Utility and select your Flash Drive from the left side pane.

2. Select the Erase tab and set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It should be the first choice in the list. Set Name to Snow Leopard or OS X Install so you can easily keep track of it. Before you the Erase button, be sure that you copied any files or folders from the Flash Drive that you want to keep, as everything will get erased. You’ve been warned! Hit Erase. (more…)

How To Add PHP Mcrypt Module On Snow Leopard 10.6

These instructions assume that you have a working Apache 2.2 / PHP 5.3 in place and want to add the php mcrypt module. It will work as a fresh install, but keep in mind that additional configuration steps after these instructions are necessary to get your webserver working properly. Those additional steps are omitted here, as there are countless resources available on the Internet.

1. If you don’t already have the mcrypt module (in /usr/lib), download the libmcrypt source code from sourceforge here. Then extract the downloaded file in a Terminal and move inside the created directory. (cd libmcrypt-2.5.8 in my case)

2. Execute the following lines in one command in your Terminal, if you have a 64bit version of Apache/PHP:

CFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ \
CXXFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ \
./configure –disable-posix-threads

(for 32 bit versions: ./configure –disable-posix-threads)

(more…)

How to install MySQL Server, PHP and Apache on a Mac

These instructions lead you thru the installation of the latest LAMP Stack on MacOS X Snow Leopard.

1 – Download the installation image from MySQL website here. Then double-click to mount and open the disk image.

2 – Install MySQL Server by double clicking the package “mysql-5.1.*****.pkg” and follow the menu, accepting the default values, unless you want to change something and know exactly what you’re doing.

3 – Install MySQL Startup Item by double-clicking the package “MySQLStartupitem.pkg” and follow the menu.

4 – Install MySQL Preference Pane by double-clicking the file “MySQL.prefPane” and follow the menu. This item will simplify the management of your SQL Server. You can now use the “System Preferences” panel to start and stop the database server.

5 – Enable the php module in your apache config file. You might know that Snow Leopard already ships with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.3, but it needs a couple of tweaks to make it work smoothly. So, open /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and search for “php5_module”. Remove the comment (#) in front of the line, save and close the file, then restart apache (sudo apachectl restart)

(more…)