Squeezing a DVD on a Mac

While Apple provides an excellent general purpose DVD tool with iDVD, once you find yourself editing 1 hour videos it will quickly become problematic to squeeze those onto a single disc. This is a common problem with shows that we have recorded on our TiVo and would like to archive on a disc to either watch on the road or simply save for a future date. There are some professional tools capable of assisting with this task, but if it’s acceptable that your videos lose some fidelity then SmallDVD may be all you need.

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Assessing Your TimeMachine Backup Strategy

Since returning to a predominantly Macintosh household a few years ago, we have been diligently maintaining backups on our shared TimeMachine volume. Everything is being kept current, and it has been comforting to watch the periodic swirl of the TimeMachine backup status icon in my toolbar. However, we have yet to test this backup strategy and it is now getting to the point where it would be good to know that it’s working.

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