iBubble

I had this idea as early as May this year, but I never got around to publishing it.  It has just been a thought that sat in my Wordpress Drafts waiting for me to give it a write up.  Anyway, you might be able to guess what the idea is from the title.

I, like many other people I know, get tired of using head phones, especially those ear buds.  They just get on my nerves after awhile and depending on how loud you listen to them, they are damaging to your ears.  That is why I had the idea for the iBubble.  It really is the iPod meets Back to the Future, but hey I can dream right?

The iBubble would essentially be just what it says, a bubble of sound around you.  However, it would have to be self contained.  With in 3 or 4 feet from your head, that way you aren’t distrubing the neighborhood like a radio does, and don’t have the burden of headphones.

I don’t think the iBubble should be a physical item either.  Perhaps it could be done with a device that emits some sort of wave, like oh, I don’t know, brain waves, that are only emmitted a few feet before dying off.  Perhaps it would just be easier to hot wire your brain with a device that you plug an SD card holding your music into.  Then the music just plays inside of your head.  Maybe it will never happen.

MOV to MP3: No Messy Programs

I was stumbling through some music tonight and it reminded me that I wanted this one song by GG Allin.  I heard the song originally in a skate video that I downloaded for free.  Try as I might, I couldn’t the version of the song I wanted anywhere.  So I began thinking, how would I go about getting this song out of the video.  My first thought was that someone would have a tutorial online or something.  So I searched Google quickly, only to find multiple programs that will convert .mov to .mp3.  I really wasn’t in the mood to download a spyware infested program, so I began poking around in Quicktime.

Now for this to work, I believe you need Quicktime Pro, so go get that.  Alright, do you have it now?  Good.  So open up your .mov video and go into the menu ‘Window.’  From here click ‘Show Movie Properties’ or for those of you who love short cuts, just type CTRL + J.

Alright, so now you have the window with all the audio and video listings open.  This is where it can be a pain in the ass.  If the video is big, and they didn’t lable each individual song, or the tracks are huge, you could have problems finding what you want.  But if your looking at skate videos like me, at four minutes a pop, then the audio is probably a single track.  So click the which audio you think it is (look at the duration, it can help give you a hint of which track is yours), and then click on the extract button in the upper left.  Another Quicktime window should pop up.  Do a File > Save As, and save it somewhere where you will find it, like your desktop.

If you don’t already have file extensions showing, go into Windows Explorer (Windows Key + E) and click on Tools > Folder Options.  Select the View tab and uncheck ‘Hide extensions for known file types.’  This should show you ‘whatever.mov’ instead of just ‘whatever’.  With that in mind, right click on your movie and select Rename.  Rename it to ‘whatever.aac’, this should keep it as a Quicktime file, but will change it from video to strickly sound, which you already did, sorta, by exptracting it.

Now that you have this double click it to open the file with Quicktime and go File > Export.  Change your Export type to a .wav and say save.  This may take some time depending on the file size.

Once you have your file, ‘whatever.wav’, drop it into  iTunes and right click and select convert to mp3.

That’s that.  Easy?  Sort of, but you didn’t have to download any programs.  This is good if you only want to do it for a few songs, otherwise, get a program.  Please don’t use this to do anything illegal because I will take no responsibility for it.  The song I am getting is a cover.