I was quite excited when our new MacPro arrived last week after 2 months of back order. Although it’s main use will be as an edit suite in the office I can see it becoming a regular traveller to some of the larger shows. As such I made it my job to spend some time trying various connections and resolutions in both OS-X and Windows. I had hoped it would be a quick post saying it all worked amazingly well but from initial testing those of us planning on using one (and a backup of course)  for shows will need to do extensive testing to make sure the little trashcan can do what it should.

The Machine –

  • 3.0GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5
  • 32GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC – 4X8GB
  • 1TB PCIe-based Flash Storage
  • 2x AMD FirePro D700-6GB VRAM
  • OS-X 10.9.2
  • Windows 8

4K + 4K + 2k = OK

Apples promotional material mention support for up to 6x 1080 displays or 2x 4k Monitors. I unfortunately don’t have a  4k monitor to test the maximum output on let alone two but we do have a couple of bits of gear that can take some form of a 4k feed and at least indicate it’s working – in my case a Blackmagic ATEM 1M/E 4k and a Datapath X4 image wall processor.

So far I can confirm that the MacPro can handle more than just 2x 4k outputs (at 30hz) – in my case I had both outputs running at 3840×2160 and a 3rd monitor running at 1920×1080. I did load a 7680×2160 clip into Millumin and noticed some stutter but it could be to do with the outputs sub 50Hz refresh rate as the both the CPU and RAM reported low usage numbers.

This could all change with the release of 10.9.3 which has already show come quite bit improvements with both 60Hz  and HiDpi support coming to both the MacPro and 2013 rMBP.

Built in HDMI Out

Based on OS-X System Info this port is considered a Passive connection and so is considered 1 of your 2 passive connections available to use – want 2 outputs and an HDMI out? Well you’ll need an active adaptor to get them all to work. I’m also yet to get Windows to work with this port at all.

Active vs Passive Mini Displayport Adaptors

Active-Mini-DP-to-Single-Link-DVI-pig-tail-AdapterFirst off – Not all adaptors are created the same and if you want more than 2 outputs from a MacPro you’ll need ACTIVE adaptors. A quick eBay search shows the price difference.
Now from my experience (albeit by testing only a couple of options) not all active miniDP adaptors are the same either. I bought the cheapest active adaptors I could find and although they were fine for DVI they wouldn’t display HDMI in the right colour space in OS-X (although Windows was fine).
Also another note that all miniDP->VGA adaptors are active as they need to convert from a digital to analogue signal.

OS-X Quirks

OS-X has always been the weaker performer when it comes to GPU performance compared to Windows and even though the MacPro is a graphical powerhouse I’m still expecting the same app on either platform to perform at least 20% better on Windows.

First off – as previously mentioned – you can only use 2x generic miniDP->DVI/HDMI adaptors before you need to invest in Active adaptors. Plugging more screens won’t make any difference – they just won’t work. What’s weird/interesting is that 3+ passive adaptors will work in Windows.

MacPro Active Out ProblemNow depending on which active adaptors you have will depend on how well they work – I have two to try – the official Apple Dual Link DVI adaptor ($NZ159) and a cheaper Wieson adaptor bought for $NZ40. When connecting DVI both work perfectly – but when connecting HDMI the Wieson used a weird colour profile and was unusable. The Apple one worked no matter which connection I used at the other end.

As OS-X doesn’t support AMD Crossfire each card is considered an individual card and all connections are routed from a single card (slot-1) with the other card (slot-0) never shows anything connected (as is also the case in Windows).

Windows Quirks

The new MacPro supports only Windows 8.1 so despite me hoping to avoid that turd I’ve been forced to give it a whirl. For now I’ve only used the bootcamp gfx drivers but apparently you can also install the current AMD drivers. I’ve also enabled CrossFire so both cards should work as one.

First off – never expect your outputs to be laid out the same on reboot. What was your primary display on one boot may completely shift to another output on reboot. This is a major pain for those of use wanting things to be exactly as they just were (crazy I know). With no primary connection any port seems to be chosen at random to be your primary screen.

Even though I got 6x 1080 outputs correctly working in Windows 8.1 eventually, upon rebooting all previous resolutions were lost (except for the 2x connected monitors) and no amount of replugging order would work to get back to 1080 output being an option for the 4x feeds going into our Blackmagic 1M/E switcher. Even trying another brand HDMI->SDI adaptor wouldn’t help Windows set the output resolution to 1920×1080. 

Wrap Up

So there you have it – lots of little issues but once some bugs are fixed, hopefully soon, the Mac Pro should make for quite the playback machine for gigs that need lots of outputs from a single computer.

Now that I have my Mac Mini working seamlessly I wanted to have the normal Freeview 7 Day EPG, not just the 24hr one included in the stream. There was a handy scripted shared by Fossie on Geekzone but that was posted a few years ago and no longer works (as the geek.nz xml hosting was no longer live) so I took it on my self to fix it with the new location for the XML (now nzepg.org).

The attached Zip includes the updated script and and a compiled app of the same script. Both will do what you need to automatically download the xml.gz, uncompress and then send it to EyeTV. You can use iCal to automate it to run every week so your EyeTV is always up to date. Sweetbix.

EyeTV Freeview XMLTV Script (31kb)

In my first post I covered how to get your Logitech Harmony remote to work via a standard Mac IR port and map the buttons accordingly. In this post I show how to take those steps and use them to seamlessly let you control 2 programs from the couch.
If you’re setting up something similar you might be interested in the follow steps as it took me weeks of reading and joining the dots across many forum and blog posts.

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Retiring my XBOX1 and XBMC setup was inevitable. It had long since shown its 733mhz CPU was able to output HD but just didn’t have the muscle to actually decode anything over SD resolution.
So when Apple announced the new Unibody Mac Mini just days before my birthday I saw it as a perfect own-gift.
The Core2Duo CPU was more than adequate to decode all codecs and resolutions and its new super thin and sexy casing was just the sugar on top. As far as I can tell its the best HTPC chassis out there – if only it had BluRay (stay tuned).
The Mini could finally give me a media centre, Freeview PVR and a rock solid *nix based NAS with the ability to run various background servers (UPnP, AirVideo, iTunes etc).

Unfortunately controlling all this from the couch was always going to require some work. OS-X’s default HTPC app, Frontrow, is extremely basic to say the least.
Thankfully there are two great applications that do almost everything, the XBMC fork, Plex and Elgatos EyeTV. Both have support for the standard Apple remote, but with only 6 buttons a lot of things were inaccessible or required weird combos to get to.

As I already owned the fantastic Logitech Harmony 725 remote I was pretty keen to get it working on my new HTPC but unfortunately Apples infrared remote implementation is very limited and only supports Apple remote controls few commands via 6 buttons.

The following steps are from my fair share of reading blogs, wikis and forums on this subject and what I’ve finally managed to figure out to get this working as I want.

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I used to be a big Outlook user, finding it the only PIM client that kept my life even slightly sorted. I was so tied to Outlook that when I first brought my Intel based Mac, I quickly installed the beta release of Boot Camp, XP and got Outlook going. For the first couple of months of owning a Mac, I ran Windows almost exclusively.
Outlooks IMAP support has always been my single biggest peev. That, and its continued use of a single PST file for all data storage. There a lot of good reasons to not use a single file db, mainly if it corrupts you could loose ALL your previous history from emails to contacts. I have seen more than one person just about cry when they loose all their digital lives thanks to a Windows reinstall and not seeing their well hidden PST file deep in the documents & settings folders.

Of course Outlook being a Microsoft program, export options are nonexistent, unless you wanted to move to, say, Outlook. If so then no worries.
There are commercial applications that can take care of this whole process but I like to do things the free, slightly harder way – so for you all here is a compilation of various steps to take a large PST file to a complete export to iCal, Address Book and Mail.app (or other standard supporting applications on other platforms).
These steps are for Windows XP and Outlook 2007, but should be the same or very similar on Vista.

Getting your email to Mail.app.
This is originally from Schwie’s Pad’s blog post, refined by myself.

  • First you’ll need a copy of Outlook Express installed on your XP machine. In our case we’re going to use it as a conversion tool and not the just the shittiest email client ever. I would recommend a virgin setup of Outlook Express.
  • Open Outlook Express, it should detect your other Outlook profile and ask if you want to import the profile. If it doesn’t detect Outlook, you can import your mail manually. Under the File menu, choose Import, Messages. Choose Microsoft Outlook.
  • Choose the default profile and then choose selected folders and choose any folders that have email in them. You can use CTRL to select multiple folders. You do not need to choose contacts or calendars, that is done via other workarounds below.
    Import Outlook Profile to Express
  • It should spend sometime slurping through your emails and bringing them into Outlook Express.
  • Once they are all imported, we now need to access the Outlook Express .dbx email files, these are stored in your Documents & Setting folder on your system drive (probably C:\). Best plan is to enable hidden files (via Tools menu, properties) and then go through the folders from C:\ – in my case it was – C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{D54D6AEB-503D-49E3-BD59-11545746A4D2}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
    The two italicized names can be different but you should be able to get there.
  • Now you’ll need a little command line app by Ulrich Krebs called DbxConv.exe. It’s freeware and available here. Extract the zip into you Outlook Express folder you just found. This program will convert your email folders from MS’s dbx format to the standard mbox format.
  • Open command line via the Start Menu and Run command – from here type CMD.
  • Now for the tricky bit, as command line was designed from the days of 8.3 file names theres no real easy way to get your way to a folder buried deep in windows file system – I have discovered though if you type “cd ” and then drag the folder icon in the address bar of explorer to the line in command line, it will insert the full folder address in to the  command. Press enter and you should be in the same folder as the files you need to convert.Insert address in to dos command promptResulting command
  • Now in command prompt type this command – dbxconv -mbx *.dbx
  • Depending on the size of your original pst file it could take a while (up to 20mins). You will see few failed items that don’t convert (such as Contacts, calendars, Folders and Offline), you will not need these.
    Congratulations – your email is now in a format all reasonable email clients should use – mbox. From here you aren’t just limited to Mail.app, other clients support mbox including (ironically) Microsofts own version of Outlook for the Mac, Entourage and the opensource Thunderbird.

Getting your mail into Mail.app

  • From here you’ll want to get your newly created mbx files from windows to your OS-X install. I would recommend taking only the mbox files of previous email folders you want – Inbox.mbx and Sent.mbx being the obvious choices.
  • Now with them on your Mac, open Mail.app. If this is your first time opening Mail.app, setup your email accounts as you need. Once you’re all done there open Import Mailboxes from the File menu.
  • Choose mbox files and navigate to the folder with your converted mbox emails in them. You can select miltiple mbox files which will be imported as separate folders into Mail.app.
  • A progress bar later and you should find an IMPORTED folder, and you can now move them as you need to.

Exporting your contacts from Outlook to Address Book
Originally from macosxhints.
As you may have figured out by now, Microsoft makes it as difficult as possible to escape their Office/Exchange ecosystem, either by not including export options or making it as much a convoluted process as they can. For this we will make the files we need by faking an email with all your contacts as attachments – smart.
You can export individual contacts to a vcf file by selecting the contact and choosing Save As under the file menu. This is great for a couple of contacts but not those of us with 1000 odd contacts –

  • Switch to contacts view in Outlook, Select All contacts (or just the contacts you want to take with you) and the under the Actions menu, Send Full Contacts and then In Internet Format (*.vcf).
    Send Outlook Contacts as vcf files.
  • Outlook should then make a new email with attachments of all you contacts as usable VCF files. You could email that to yourself but if you have quite a few contacts, it’s best to copy the files out the unsent email and into a folder to move manually. Click on one of the vcf file icons in the attachment panes and select all. Drag its icon to an folder in an explorer window.
  • From here you need to get the folder of vcf files to you mac, open Address Book and drag all the vcf’s on to the Address Book window.

Getting your calendar
This is actually the easiest part of the process.

  • Switch to calendar view in Outlook and select the calendar you want to export.
  • Under the File menu, choose Save As. ical format should be the default.
  • Choose more options and set the date range as Whole Calendar, detail on Full, leave the advanced options unticked.Save as ical format in Outlook dialogue
  • Save.
  • Again, get the resulting files on to your mac, and then open iCal.
  • Choose File, Import and choose Import and iCal file
  • You’ll be asked if you want to merge with a previous calendar or make a new one.
  • Rinse & repeat if you have more calendars.

Things that don’t export/import.
Tasks! although these can be imported as an email folder via the Outlook Express method although tasks will be turned into emails as far as Mail.app is concerned.

This link should come as quite the resource for any nerd who has wonder WTF that noise is coming from their harddrive and why it might not be working anymore.
Canadian data recovery company, Data Cent have a list of numerous failing harddrives, a sound bite and what is causing the failure.
I for one have heard far too many of those noises in my time and can now finally know if its me or if the drive is actually failing…. YAY!

I  thought I might do a post on my current media playback setup, but more than anything, highlight how far a modded XBOX1 can and can’t go using one and XBOX Media Center (XBMC). Via modding the XBOX has turned into the ugly little console that can. I’ve had more fun on it in the years since it was discontinued than I ever did when I got it.

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