Spring Break Hours!

Hi guys!

Don't forget that the studios close an hour before we close! When our schedule changes a little due to breaks and such, the reservation system doesn't recognize that our hours are different, so it's important to be aware of when our hours change. I noticed someone had a reservation open for tonight until 5:30pm, but our studios close at 4:00pm!

For next week, we will be closing at 5pm Monday through Friday, so reservations can only go until 4pm then, too. Normal hours resume Sunday, April 6.

Thanks!!

ELI Project (Garage Band)

 Hello Everyone,

             I just wanted to let you all know that an ELI class is having a audio project.  The students have to record themselves speaking a script English and add other sound effects. Importantly, the professor requested them to specifically use Garage Band. Garage Band is a multi-track audio recording program that allows you to create and record your own music (some of the students are planning to bring in their instruments). If you guys need a refresher on how to use it, please go to the links bellow for a quick tutorial. 

 Video Tutorial:
      Watch this for a super quick crash course-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpUUKJeP7jE
      A detailed series with 3 parts-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqBFCYmo2Ns

Detailed PDF: 
     http://www2.bgsu.edu/downloads/cio/file85784.pdf

Hope this helps! Have an amazing break everyone!! :)

Game Developer Workshop and Kinect chat with Microsoft!

The Computer Animation and Game Design Club at UD will be hosting Microsoft Tech Evangelist, David Voyles who will be demonstrating the basics of how to develop games utilizing the Microsoft Office Visual Suite. No idea what you're doing? No problem! Come get free food and free Xbox 360 and Xbox One game anyway

Bonus games for students who attend BOTH and have a simple (short!!) game done over the 2 day period. Those who have complete games should also apply to present at CAGDstravaganza!

PLUS you get BizSpark memberships, granting access to all Microsoft Software (Visual Studio, Office 365, Windows 8), AND $150 / month in Azure credits.

Those can be used for website hosting, virtual machines, etc. Get your BizSpark membership here: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/Register.aspx?SecurityCode=9Oe1fFqjKx

Please download Windows 8 and Visual Studio BEFORE you arrive. Please also download and install Unity & Construct2.

Here is what BizSpark gives you: http://wootstudio.ca/startups/bizspark.aspx
Here is what you should read before you arrive: http://marianaggaga.azurewebsites.net/?p=5651

Beginner Workshop:
Friday, April 25, 4-9 PM

Advanced Workshop:
Sunday, April 27, 2-7 PM

Converting PDF to Microsoft Word

Sometimes the world frowns on the common man.  Your rent is due, your car got towed, your significant other gets lost on the way to Pizza Hut.  Other times your group project partner insensitively sends you a PDF instead of the Word document you requested.  In what way can we passive aggressively deal with the insolent worm who uses PDFs for their tables?  With magic, that's how.

Acrobat wizard hears your mortal suffering and pities your forsaken soul.

Adobe Acrobat allows the user to save in multiple file formats, one of which is the coveted ".doc".  The ubiquitous file format is far more useful than PDFs, which are for digitized copies of government surveys, and no one reads those anyway.

Acrobat wizard takes payment in eternal gratitude and Krispy Kreme donuts.

Adobe Reader is different.  It cannot save in multiple formats.  It can only waste your time, unless you're reading government surveys, in which case, everything is wasting your time.

A 98% match for  the personification of Adobe Reader.

Think of it in terms of Batman vs. Superman.  Adobe Acrobat is Batman, doing all kinds of useful stuff and saving all kinds of days, generally ridding the world of crime and ignorance.  Adobe Reader is Superman.  He looks good and sounds good, but then put him in action and the rest of the Justice League has to pick up his slack.

Wasting Batman's time since 2001.

Cleaning Our Equipment?

Hello Everyone,

The other day a student came in asking for a pair of headphones. I thought, hey no biggie, nothing I haven't done before. After I had finished checking the headphones out, she asked me a question I legitimately did not have an answer for. "Do you guys clean these after someone brings them back?"

My gut wanted to say yes, but to my knowledge, the only equipment that we clean regularly are the computers throughout the center and the laptops that we frequently checkout to patrons. I'm still relatively new to the center, so I don't know if there is a point where we do spring cleaning of all of our available equipment. I know I would feel more comfortable checking out equipment from the center if I had a guarantee that nothing from the last user would accidentally be transferred over to me. Can anyone shed some light on this situation? Do you think we should be cleaning all of the equipment more often? Or is there something I just don't know of?

Thanks,

Stephen McLaren

Screen capture

Whats up guys,

Just wanted to share this site I found today with you. http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ is a website that lets you take recordings of your screen without having to download any software. It runs in your browser, and although the videos are limited to 15 minutes each, the website is free to use and you can download your videos right to your computer quick and easily. I thought this might be a useful thing for anyone that is making a video for their project and wants to record their computer screen as part of it.

Justin

Merge PDF Files

The other day, a user had a question about how to combine multiple PDFs into one PDF file on a Mac.  There are multiple ways to do this, but one simple way is using Preview.  First, open one of the files in Preview.  Select the icon circled below in order to view the sidebar.  

You can then drag the other PDF files into this sidebar area to combine the documents together.  Once all documents are combined, you can save the file under a new name.

On a Windows, this task can be accomplished using Adobe Acrobat.  Open one of the files, and select "Create" in the top left corner.  In the drop-down menu that opens, select the option "Merge Files into a Single PDF."  This opens a window that allows you to browse through the documents on the computer and select which documents you want to merge.

Projector Remote

Tonight a patron came to the desk asking for assistance with the projector remote. Although SMDC does not typically oversee technical problems in rooms like 049 (where they were located), I still made sure that the remote would work properly for them.

When I arrived in the room and tested out the remote, the projector was not recognizing it. The student's laptop screen was also not being projected. I thought the projector itself might need to be turned on and off, so with the help of a taller gentleman in the room, we tried to click the off then on button. The light was red and the projector was still not recognizing any request.

I finally turned to Diana for help. We unplugged the projector cable itself attached the ceiling outlet. This actually turned the projector back on, and the light showed green. Though a promising sign, the projector was still not projecting the student's laptop screen.

After several attempts, Diana actually realized that the main cable that runs from the computer next to the door was unplugged. Who unplugged it? We have no idea. But after replugging the system into the wall, the screen came to life and the student's laptop screen was projected.

Again this was not a task we would normally oversee, however with a little persistence and attention to detail, we figured out the source of the problem, and restored peace to group once more.

I hope this is helpful in the future, should a student have issues with a projector/projector remote again.

Thunderbolts and Adapters

The other day a user came to the desk asking for a VGA adapter but informed me that certain ones that look like they fit in her computer don't work.  She said when she comes to the desk we give her a specific adapter that works with her computer.  I was confused as to what she was talking about because we only have two types of VGA adapters and the old one clearly didnt fit in her computer.  I then noticed that the VGA adapter I was trying to loan her had a sign on it saying that it will only work with thunderbolt port.  I had never noticed this before and realized this was the reason the other VGA adapters didn't work with her computer. 

I thought I would share this because I'm sure other student assistants were not aware of this issue that could occur with certain Mac laptops. 

Problems with Garage Band? Try Audacity!

The other day a student was having trouble transferring mp3 files into Garage Band. After everything we tried failed, the files were successfully transferred into Audacity where they could be edited with no trouble. The possible problem was that the student downloaded the files first on a PC, then uploaded them to a Mac with a hard drive. Garage Band didn't like this. So, if this happens to you try using Audacity instead of Garage Band before switching computers!

Importing from Photoshop and Premiere Pro into After Effects

Hi all, hopefully you're ready for break-

 

Adobe After Effects is a powerful and oft underutilized tool in the Adobe arsenal. It allows you to edit video, but it definitely has its own niche not covered by Premiere: it gives you an incredible amount of control over visual effects (green screens, colorizing footage, creating animations. One capability that people don’t normally know that After Effects has is that it acts as a conduit between the various Adobe softwares. It gives you the ability to import from and export to Premiere without having to go through the separate process of rendering a video. Adobe’s dynamic link allows you to edit a clip from Premiere, and it will update the edited clip while you work.

Since After Effects can also import Photoshop files (among others,) this Dynamic link allows you to significantly cut down on workflow time. For example, you could create an overlay in photoshop, and import the overlay and a composition from Premiere into After Effects and edit them in real time in all three programs in real time without having to render.

Best,

Sam

Exporting projects in Audacity

When finished recording on Audacity, it is important to EXPORT the project. Audacity automatically saves a project as an ‘Audacity Project File’ or ‘.aup’ – a file format that only Audacity can read.

Under the ‘File’ tab, there will be an option to export what has just been recorded. After clicking ‘Export,’ there will be a drop-down allowing the project to be exported to one of the various file formats. Once the format is selected and the project has been named, click ‘save.’

*The most common format is MP3 – you will be able to open to this file on almost any device and/or program.

Most of the time there will be a pop-up after clicking ‘save project as,’ that warns users of this particular format, but if/when this warning doesn’t show up, knowing how to export the project will be helpful.

- Greg  

Transferring Project Files On iMovie 2013

Hey guys!

So today I got my first look at iMovie 2013, which is the newest version of iMovie.  The problem that arose is that Apple has changed the location of the event folder and the project folder that we all are familiar with.

When helping users with the version of iMovie that we currently have here at the center, we just have them drag both of the folders onto their external hard drive.  This allows users to take their files with them without losing any of their work.  However, if someone has iMovie 2013 on their computer and would like to transfer their files to another machine/hard drive, the process is different.  Apple has compacted all of the files into the "iMovie Library" in the finder, similar to how they have the iTunes library set up.  This is to keep people from messing with the folders and screwing up their projects.  All of the transferring of files is kept within the iMovie app, rather than going into Finder and moving things around.

After doing a little bit of research we were able to figure out how users can transfer their files on the new version.  In iMovie, go to File > Open Library > New.  A dialog box will pop up for you to create a new library.  Set your new library to be located on your external hard drive.  Once the new library is created is should show up in the left side bar list of libraries.  From here, all you have to do is drag and drop your event(s) containing your clips and project to your new library.  It will now all be on your external hard drive.

For example on the screen shown below, you could drag "Jan 2014" from the "Charities" library into the "Window Cleaner" library.

Hope this helps!
Krystina

Printing Jobs in 30 minutes or less

Hey guys!

The other day a patron came up to the desk visibly upset, when asked what had happened she said that she sent 15+ documents needing to be printed to the print station but were now all gone. Michael S. began to assist her to try and pinpoint the problem. Instead of chalking it up to faulty technology (even though the printing station has been acting up lately) he asked her a series of questions, one in particluar. "How long ago did you send the documents?".

This question was right on the money, because the patron then answered "45 minutes ago". I didn't know this but it turns out that print jobs will automatically be deleted after 30 minutes if it hasn't been printed yet (Thank you, Nadine for letting us know!) . Unfortunately this didn't help the patron out because those documents were long gone, but if another patron comes up to the desk with the same predicament, we can let them know and hopefully they can resend the print job easily.


Marshilla Brahma

The Most Irritating Thing Imaginable (The F11 key)

I experienced a debilitating problem when I was working at the desk this evening. Minor, mundane, accidental, yes. But rarely have I been so irked by such a small thing.

Many of you may have experienced this in your travels. If you have been working at the main desk and you pushed the keyboard in rapidly, say, when you were scooting forward to help a user, you might have accidentally caused this.

When the keyboard moves forward rapidly sometimes the F11 key is pressed down. I did that. In my eagerness to help a user, I moved forward too quickly. The F11 row of keys at the top made brutal contact with the desk. When I had finished helping the user and returned to my browsing activities I found that the tool bars at the top and the bottom of the screen had disappeared. So I was just like:

Without any knowledge of what I had done, or what key had been pressed, my heart rate quickened in anger; the tide of my wrath threatened to boil forth, overwhelming everything it came in contact with. I still had enough self control to ask my colleagues how to solve the problem. Trey failed me; claiming ignorance was a clever ruse to leave me to the wolves. Nadine, however, did not abandon me in my hour of need.

She told me to mouse over the top of the screen, hit minimize on the browser window, then maximize. The rest, as they say, is history. So I was just like:

Later that evening I inquired from Diana as to the true origination of this miserable episode; F11 put the browser window into full screen mode. A simple second press of the F11 key would have solved the problem but the more circuitous route that Nadine provided (for she did not know the origination of the issue) was the true path to my salvation.

Beware the F11 key my friends! Beware the keyboard that hits upon yonder desk! I present this, a warning, from your humble servant.

Helpful InDesign Tips

Hey All!

I have been working on a book project for one of my classes within InDesign and I was having a lot of trouble with placing a caption on top of an illustration that is currently undergoing text wrap. The following site not only answered my question swiftly and effectively but also offered several other informative pointers that I feel would be helpful for people when using InDesign! Check it out:

http://layersmagazine.com/14-little-known-indesign-tips.html

Unable to Print at Print Release Station

I'm sure most of us here at the Center have encountered this strange problem and know the reason why this occurs... but I'll post this to inform the new student assistants as it comes up quite frequently!

When a patron comes up to the desk and asks why their document won't print, although it is on the Print Release Station's queue, it can probably be assumed that it is a paper size issue. The document will be listed on the monitor, but it will not be selectable, therefore the user will not be prompted to swipe their card and print.

The issue is that the document is in a paper size that our printers do not support. For example, a student may have a Word Document in A4 paper size. To solve this, just go back to the computer they were on, go to page setup and switch from A4 to something supportable (US Letter). Send the document again by printing, and it will now be selectable at the Print Release Station.

For some reason, this only seems to occur on the Macs, and in my experience, it has always been in A4 size (the non-North American, metric system standard paper size). Has anyone seen a case where this has happened on a Windows, or if there was another problem causing the job to not be selectable?

Visual Hub

So today a student came in wanting to edit a highlights video of UD's Football Team. Handbrake is a handy application that can be used to do this that normally would work very well. Just select the source and where it is being saved to and the rest is history. There was only one problem with this though, the DVD was encrypted so an error message kept popping up and causing trouble. We decided to use Visual Hub instead to create an MP4 file so that way the video could be opened in iMovie and edited to all of its glory. Just be sure though that if it is a basic DVD you leave the quality on standard because otherwise an error message will appear. The program cant take a standard definition video and turn in into HD because that would make things too easy.
Regardless, Visual Hub is a great alternative to other programs that allow you to capture video and download it onto your computer. All of the Macs in the SMDC Center have the application installed so it is very easy to do.

Setting up Sparklines in Excel

Today someone asked me how to insert sparklines into their excel document for a MISY class so I thought I’d briefly share how I did it in case this other students come in with the same question. Sparklines are essentially like little line graphs that allow the user to spot trends in a bunch of data all at once. To insert a sparkline, select the empty cell where you want to place the line. Click Insert > Sparkline

You will come a pop-up window that looks like this:

In the first box, select the data that you want the sparkline to calculate and include. I suggest clicking on your first cell and dragging the mouse down to the last cell in order to select the full range of data all at once.

In the second box, select WHERE you want the sparklines to appear. Again, I suggest clicking on the first empty cell next to the data and dragging your mouse down to the last empty cell to select the full range.

Since this question was new to me as well, this is a helpful website that I used to guide myself through the process.

 http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16759/how-to-use-sparklines-in-excel-2010/

FYI: New verison of iMovie (iMovie 10)

(To avoid confusion iMovie 10 is the newest version of iMovie. The previous version, commonly referred to as iMovie '11, is actually release 9. Apple is not using the year of release in titling this new version, but rather the release number instead.)

A user came in with her own laptop after installing the Maverick update, and had some problems with the new version of iMovie. The two issues were that her older projects did not appear in the project pane, and that video projects would not share(export).

This new version saves projects differently than the iMovie we are used to working with. These older files can be saved/converted to the newer iMovie format, so older content is not only relegated to the previous version.

iMovie 10.0.1 (the version that comes with the Maverick update) has a known bug that prevents projects from sharing. The fix for this is to simply install the update (iMovie 10.0.2). This update is assessable by going to the Apple menu in the top left corner, then select System Update. If it is not already installed, you will see an update for iMovie listed.

If a user is not happy with this new version, they can keep using the old iMovie 9 by going into their Apps folder and opening the "iMovie 9.0.9" folder.

As far as cross-compatibility goes, older files can be converted to work with the iMovie 10, but not the other way around. If someone wants to use iMovie here at The Center and on their own computer, it would be wise to do everything through iMovie 9.

Scaling Strokes Proportionally in Illustrator

Hey guys! I thought I'd share a little useful tip I learned in Illustrator recently that you guys might want to use in your own projects or when assisting other students in the library. When you open illustrator and create a shape with a stroke around it, do you notice how the ratio of the stroke to shape changes when you try to resize the shape bigger or smaller on the page? I have found myself in this situation a number of times and it can be quite frustrating when you're designing on a smaller scale, and get everything perfect and exactly how you want to look, but then it all changes when you try to scale it bigger.

Up until now, I had come up with my own remedy: When I wanted to resize a shape with a stroke around it proportionally, I selected the shape, clicked "Object" in the top menu bar, clicked "Expand", and made sure that both "stroke" and "fill" were selected. This process transformed my stroke into another shape, allowing it to resize proportionally.

However, there is an easier method to achieve this! By clicking Illustrator > Preferences > General and selecting "Scale Strokes and Effects", Illustrator will automatically scale your strokes proportionally so that the ratio of stroke to shape stays the same no matter what size you make it on your page.

Scaling a shape with a stroke *without* "Scale Strokes and Effects" selected

Scaling a shape with a stroke *with* "Scale Strokes and Effects" selected

Transferring iMovie file to a hard drive

In case you don't already know, since we had someone today who needed it done, it is very easy to transfer iMovie projects on to an external hard drive.

• First, plug the hard drive into the mac via fire wire cable.
• If the external drive shows up on the desktop but not in iMovie simply close out of iMovie and re-open it (don't worry iMovie saves automatically)
• Next, open up the projects library tab in iMovie which is the gray arrow in the top left corner
• Finally, simply drag your project from the Mac hard drive to the External Mac hard drive and a popup will appear asking if you want to copy the project, OR the project and events.
•  MAKE SURE YOU CLICK "PROJECTS AND EVENTS"
• If you do not the student WILL NOT be able to edit their project in the future

It's that simple. However, if none of these steps work for you you can always go into the iMovie folder and copy BOTH the imovie projects and events folder straight onto the hard drive. However, the first process is a lot easier and convenient to use.

Converting jpeg photos to PDF

Yesterday I had a student come in to print several posters of jpeg files from his email, but for those that are new at the SMDC, the SMDC only prints posters through PDF format so in order to do this I showed him that you could open the file in Photoshop then change size to anything you want then finally save as Adobe PDF. Then once he had the PDFs he needed to save them onto a USB drive which is also a policy of the SMDC.

Eventually we will get to the point during this semester where many students will need to print posters and when that happens just make sure they have the file saved as a PDF on a USB drive .If they do not have a USB the SMDC offers two in library use only ones. Once you have the USB with the file inform a staff member and they will inspect the file then do the print. Also we have instructions on how to convert a powerpoint into a pdf from both a MAC and PC. Its on the Guides and Manuals folder of the multimedia drive(U).

Spring forward

It's time to spring forward.  March 9 is the second Sunday in March this year, so at 2:00 Sunday morning, you will turn your clocks ahead one hour, marking the return to Daylight Saving Time.

All Sony battery type #5 are equal but some type #5 batteries are more equal than others

When Video Camera Kit Sony HXR-NX0U #3 was returned, the large type #5 battery in the camera was depleted.  Checking the charge of the small type #5 battery that had been loaned with the camera proved impossible in the camera because the grooves in the battery don't allow it to be installed.

Lessons learned: while small type #5 batteries may work well in the Sony HDR-PJ710V intermediate cameras, they can't be used in the Sony HXR-NX70U advanced cameras.  As medium type #5 batteries work in the Sony HXR-NX70U, try to loan only medium or large type #5 batteries with the Sony HXR-NX70U.

Photoshop Layers Trick

For those of you who use Photoshop regularly or just to play around sometimes, I learned an awesome shortcut that is very helpful when using a lot of layers.  Usually my Photoshop documents consist of tons of layers in no particular order with vague labels or sometimes no labels at all making it very hard to find an individual layer.  

To quickly find a layer run your mouse over what you would like to select in your Photoshop document.  For Mac, left click and click control at the same time and a small info box will pop up with the name of your layer.  Click the name and that layer will become highlighted in the layers panel, ready for you to make changes.  To use this shortcut in Windows, move your mouse over what you would like to select and right click.    

Hope you guys find this shortcut as helpful as I did! 

Making copies with printing allocation

Hey guys! Throughout my time working here I have seen many times that students will come in wanting to make copies using their printing allocation.  As you all know, printing allocation cannot be used for copying - only printing. A quick trick that I've always used and maybe some of you have to, is to tell the user that they could scan their document for free and then send it to themselves and print it from another computer using the printing allocation. This is a quick and simple way around that problem when they don't have any flex money.  So for those of you who have never thought of it, and some of our newer employees, remember that you can always give customers this option.

Krystina