FLV -> ??? on a Mac

Have you ever wanted .flv files in a different format? Well, I was in this particular predicament. I wanted audio (in MP3 format) out of a .flv file. After playing around with a bunch of things that didn't work, I discovered a two-step process for it.

First off, on your Mac, open download FFmpegX and associated binaries (instructions on the site) and install it. Then, open it and drop your .flv file into the left-hand pane, and choose to convert it to iPod h.264 320w or 640w. Hit Encode and wait for it to complete. When that's done, drag the resulting file into the left-hand pane of ffmpegx and, in the right, choose Movie audio to mp3, and hit Encode. It should spit out a nice MP3 file that you can drag into whichever application you like to use to listen to such things.

The end.

Mac Apps

It occurs to me that I don't have a collective list of Mac applications that I like. I'm an avid OS X user, and I have my own special set of applications that I love. Primarily, I'm doing this for my friend Tim, for whom I promised I would do this a long time ago.

1. Quicksilver is an awesome little (more than a) launcher. It's quick, pretty, faster than Finder, and indexes your harddrive so that you can reach anything in the shortest time possible. There's a tutorial if you want to see what more you can do.
   
2. Adium is just about the best instant messager on the planet. It's heavily configurable and has loads of interesting features, and supports things like Google Talk, Twitter, and Facebook natively.
   
3. Growl is a notifier. Lots of applications support Growl. It allows these applications to send messages to Growl, which will the pop up little notification screens on the actions that just happened. For instance, Adium supports Growl by sending instant message texts to it so that the body of the message can just pop up on the screen for a few seconds to allow you a preview.
   
4. Mail/Address Book are built-in to OS X. What's really cool, though, is the integration they have with each other. Instead of Mail having its own e-mail address book, it uses the OS's native address book. Other applications do this too, but these exhibit the best integration I've seen.
   
5. Opera 10 Beta/Firefox/Safari - Three very different browsers, but each serves its purpose, and each is pretty cool. The Opera 10 Beta is fantastic, fast, and has features no other browsers share, like the ability to view thumbnails of all your tabs, but doing so within the tab bar, and Speeddial (which was stolen by Apple for Safari). Firefox has loads of interesting plug-ins, like Noscript, Flashblock, Download Helper, and other features. The Safari 4 beta is pretty cool, too. It's also quick, and, like all Apple products, has a very pretty user interface.
   
6. Handbrake is a pretty phenomenal way to ahem backup DVDs.
   
7. Delicious Library is one of the only applications I've purchased for OS X. It's a digital library for DVDs, books, and games. One of the coolest features it has, though, is the ability to use my Macbook's built-in iSight camera to scan the bar codes of these items and then pull their information from Amazon.
   
8. I Love Stars provides a very pleasant interface for ensuring that you have rated all of your music.
   
9. VLC is just about the best video player ever.
   
10. Perian is one of those applications you'll install and never see again. What it does, though, is critical. It gives Quicktime the ability to play loads and loads of other types of videos, and pretty much just makes the Quicktime experience a bit more enjoyable.
    
    That's all for now. As i remember more, I might update, but that's my list of core applications.