Working with photo’s and Video’s and iOS devices

This past couple of months I have started looking for a different way to handle my photo’s and video’s that I capture with my iPad and iPhone. I used to not have that many to deal with so I simply hooked that cable up to my laptop, plugged in my iOS device and imported it all into iPhoto. Then I would hit the delete option after importing. This would keep my camera roll cleared out and keep me from importing duplicates the next time around. Now that I have my iPhone it has become as bit more complicated because I am capturing many more photo’s and video with the phone. So let me fill you in on how I am dealing with this issue.

First thing to keep clear is the difference between the camera roll and your photo library. The camera roll is where a picture will go when you shoot it with your camera. That picture will sit in the camera roll until you delete it. The camera roll is also where screen shots are stored, any pictures you save from the Safari app and any other app.

Your Photos app is where you put photo’s when you are syncing from your computer.

Apple’s Photo Stream makes these two apps a bit more confusing. If you have Photo Stream turned on then your last 1,000 photo’s will be streamed out to the cloud. (This time I do NOT mean videos by the way. Photo Stream does not do video as of right now.) So you will be able to see the photo’s that are in your Camera Roll, inside of your Photo’s App under the Photo Stream button. Those photo’s are not actually in your Photo’s app though. You are simply looking at your pictures that are out there in the cloud. Now remember that your Photo Stream are the last 1.000 pictures from ALL your devices, your iPhone, iPad, iPodTouch, Computer or whatever else you have hooked up to your stream.

Obviously you would probably want to save the pictures from your camera roll and cherish those precious moments forever. Photo Stream makes this an easy process! Take a look in iPhoto at the options under Photo Stream. Those settings allow you to automatically import the photo’s (not videos) from your iPhone or iPad camera roll and iPhoto will import those into your permanent iPhoto database.

This is an easy way to take ALL of your camera roll pictures (not videos) and get them into your computer for further manipulation. The videos you need to find another way to deal with those – which is easily done by hooking that cable up between the computer and the iOS device.

There is one huge issue though with this process. If you let Photo Stream and iPhoto do all the work of importing your photo’s (not videos) into your computer iPhoto database, you will be left with the original photo’s on your iOS device. This gets confusing after awhile though. I’m constantly forgetting what I have imported and what still needs to be imported. The answer is to delete the photo’s from the camera roll once you know that iPhoto has imported them form your Photo Stream. Of course you can do this one at a time on the iOS device but this gets tedious, especially if you have 400+ pictures like i did tonight. You cannot delete them using iPhoto either – in the old days before Photo Stream did the improving of the photo’s for us, we would click the import button and then click the delete button after the import was done.

There is a quick solution. A very unused app, Image Capture, sits in your applications folder. It comes with every Mac and most of us never use it. If you hook your iOS device up and start that app you will find a very easy way to delete your photo’s (JUST REMEMBER – those videos were never imported by Photo Stream!) In fact you will see that using this app you can import pictures (and those videos), rotate them, and delete them. Plus you can select all or some. Another bonus is that Image Capture is really fast! Take a look at the screen shot below to see what your options look like. There are even other options available. Things like having Image Capture open automatically when you hook up your iPhone or iPad, you can import the media to a folder or even directly into iPhoto or a different app. Image Capture will even let you make a web page of the media and email pictures as well. This app is capable of many things. Dig around and enjoy.

I will be taking a look at several other apps I have found to deal with getting that media off your iOS device and into your computer in the next couple of days. So stay tuned.

PS…. sorry if you are looking for information about using your iOS device with a PC – I am a user of Macs.

iTunes Match

iTunes Match is done. It took 32 hours for 15,609 songs. 

Much of the process has been smooth sailing. I say much, because I am running into one issue.

My songs are in the Cloud – I know this because I can access them all from my iPad or iPhone. No issues connecting and listening to these either. They load fast. It seems that if I am accessing the Cloud from an iOS device the song I am playing is stored on my iOS device. This is a benefit because later if I do not have a network connection, as in on a bike ride with my iPodTouch, I can still listen to music. I can also select songs, albums or artists to download at my choosing. In other words I would not have to push play on each individual track to get them all downloaded and stored on my device. The problem now is that I can not delete songs that I had previously loaded onto my iPad. My thought is that if I can download individual songs as I need them why store as much for those “just in case I want that song” moments. My previous method of hooking the iPad up to my laptop, selecting the songs in iTunes and deleting are not working. In fact when I did that my iPad then showed that it was 3.3 GB over capacity! I had 6.2 GB of music stored on my iPad. If I can just simply access any song or album at will then I don’t need to actually store all that music on there. When I have the desire to listen to something I will access it through the cloud at that time, it will then download to my iPad as it plays.  The problem, as mentioned, is that I can not get the music to delete!

So my solution…. go to my iPad, turn off iTunes Match and then delta the music. Boom – all gone – as expected! Now I’ve got tons more free space on my iPad.

Now I re-sync one more time and go turn iTunes Match back on.

Using SIRI and voice dicatation in the classroom

So for those of you with a nifty new iPhone 4s i read a great article from TUAW today. I have had Mobile Mouse installed on my iPod touch and now on my iPhone for some time now. It is a very nice way to interact with the computer that is hooked up to my projector in the front of the band room. I never once thought about this possibility though. When using Mobile Mouse if you are have the mouse in a text input situation othe computer, like trying to run a Google searthen a web browser, yu can simply tap the mic and dictate through mobile mouse to the computer. This is going to be WAY faster than trying to type from my iPhone!

By the way, I’m on an iPad typing this in the web interface on WordPress. Seems as though there is a bit of a bug. I lost the ability to see my cursor until I hid the keyboard and tapped back into the typing area.

Anyways, here is the link to the original article,

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/11/19/how-to-use-siri-for-voice-dictation-on-a-mac/

If you have never used Mobile Mouse it is a wonderful remote to your computer. There are all sorts of bells and whistles to it! I use it to control SmartMusic for one! This let’s mestand back ithe percussion section and still run the computer.

One great reason to use an iPad in Music Education!

 

Music Organization - Old Way

This is the way I used to organize my music scores for all the different groups I conduct throughout the day and year…. One thing to keep in mind is that I have already pulled all the music from these folders! Imagine all the scores still in these folders! Also can you imagine trying to keep this straight, accessible, and useable?

 

 

 

 

Music Organization - New Way

 

 

 

Now that I have an iPad here is what my corner finally looks like. With the same amount of music involved, with better organization….

The only question I have now is what do I do with this thing?

What do I do with this?

Using your iPad and PDF’s to make music in the classroom more efficient.

I am using the iPad to make my life easier and more efficient. That in turn gives me a chance to do my job better as a music teacher.

First thing is that I have come up with a workflow that I think is going to streamline one of the biggest hassles we have as music teachers. That job of getting music out to students. From now on I will be creating PDF files of every song we do in class. I will have two files, one for the score and one for the parts. I tried creating a separate PDF for each part but have decided that gave me too many files to keep track of and properly label. It is so much easier to just create one PDF with all the parts in it. So now when I need a part for a student, I simply find the correct page and print off a part. The beauty of this is that I can do this very quickly from my iPad. If I have all the current songs we are playing in my DropBox account, or even better right on my iPad, access is quick and it is easy to print out that one sheet. What used to take a trip off the podium, to the music cabinet, digging through the box of music (and hoping there was still a part in there) and then a trip to the copy room is now boiled down to about 30 seconds. I will of course have a much larger collection of all the songs I have ever created PDF’s for on my computer. I suppose there really isn’t any need to carry al those with me on my iPad though, just the current pieces we are working on.

The second workflow involves songs that are in Sibelius. I have quite a few songs that I have Sibelius files for. With Scorch for the iPad now available I can see that I will be creating even more files soon. Yes it will take time to put those songs into Sibelius but I think it will be worth it in the long run. These will be songs that I will use in future years, not just a one time thing. Having the piece in Sibelius opens up flexibility I would not have otherwise. For instance, I currently have a freshman horn player. She is very capable but young. She needs some assistance and backup on a few important riffs in her part. Since I have the parts in Sibelius I can take those sections and mix them into the trombone part, where I have a very strong upperclassman player, and come up with a new part so everything is covered! One thing about Sibelius files though that is going to change this year. In the past I never made PDF files of the parts for those pieces. I made a PDF of the score for my iPad but not the parts. I would go open Sibelius and print the music from there. From now on I will be creating a PDF file with all the parts in it too. Why? Access and speed. It is so much faster to open a PDF then it is Sibelius.

Third point I want to bring out is the annotation of PDF files from my iPad. It has been discussed, very heatedly in some cases, about whether or not musicians should be annotating their music. I am of the opinion that this is a no brainer. My students know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they should be writing on their music. My students see me writing in my music. During marching band I write drill notes in my music scores. When I play my euphonium I am constantly writing in fingerings, notes from the conductor, circling passages to practice more and making marks to help me be a better performer. All these annotations should be kept for future reference! The trouble is that they only live on my iPad until I export them out. ForScore does a great job of this for instance. After annotating pieces, I go to the email icon under “Share Files” and select “with annotations” and email myself a PDF. After renaming the file so I know there are annotations in this version I file it in the proper spot with the original, clean PDF. If you have the right software you could just print the file to your computer as well. For this sort of solution check out Printopia. (http://www.ecamm.com/mac/printopia/)

So the moral of the story? PDF files for all! Life should be easier and more fun!

Using unrealBook and PDF Music more fully

Is that title grammatically correct? Oh well you get the idea….

Doug from http://strategicsongselection.blogspot.com  and I have been throwing some ideas around in the comment section of a post a few days ago. I thought I would bring those thoughts up here to the front.

I had just dug in and discovered the beauty of a multi-song PDF – My PDF had 192 songs and 220 pages in it! In order to use it though I needed to learn the beauty (and ugliness) of  index’s in unrealBook. I mean who wants to scroll through all those pages to try to find the correct page for that one song?

Then Doug brought up the point that even though I could now look at the index and find any given song FAST, I could not use those index listings as a part of a set list. The solution was simple. I learned what Aron, the developer of unrealBook, created Bookmarks for. What I do now is find the one song in that 192 song PDF, then while on that song I create a Bookmark. That Bookmark show up then in Songs Menu under All Files – Not just the Indexes section! This means that now I can use those bookmarks in a Set-List. My Set-List can contain single song PDF’s, Blank PDF’s created from the Modify Set List Menu (look for the white Plus Sign), and also Bookmarks that pull up my 220 page PDF with 192 Songs in it. The beauty of that Bookmark is that it pulls up the 220 page PDF to the correct page for that song. If it is a song with more than one page to it – no problem because you are actually looking at all 220 pages not just that ONE page. The Blank PDF that I mentioned is one other feature that I just discovered. It allows you to insert a page on which you can use the drawing and annotation tools built into unrealBook so that you can create notes to yourself about the set list.

iPad Stylus options

I had a question about what options were out there for different stylus tips. I know in the stores around here I have only seen about 2 maybe 3 options. I came across this video today and thought I would post it up here. There are 12 different options here so it gives you a quick overview of more than what I have seen. If anyone has a stylus that they really like using and an app that you are using it with consistently leave a comment.

MacWorld Review Different Styluses

AirPlay, iOS and Music Education

How many wire do you have running around your computers, speakers, band room, choir room or living room? I know I have too many, my wife doesn’t let me forget either! Plus hooking up all those wires takes time! Especially when you are in front of your middle school band kids who have the natural talent of talkign too much as it is PLUS they have noise makers in their hands (or swords if they are percussion kids).

So if I am in my Band class, standing on the podium and would like the students to listen to a piece of music I used to have to grab my iPad, walk over to the stereo system, find the cable and plugin my iPad then hit play. Now with Apple’s AirPlay things are much better. The only problem is that using ONLY Apple’s solution I can not solve the mentioned situation! I can play music going from my laptop TO my iPad but not the other way around! When I am teaching I want to leave the laptop alone! I want to stand on my podium and hit play on my iPad and have it shoot out through the classroom sound system without hooking up wires!

A while back I wrote about AirServerApp and how this piece of software allowed me to do just this very thing. Hit play on my iPad/iPodTouch and it shoots out to my laptop. It worked very well. The only issue was that ANYONE could connect to it at will. So I was in the middle of a rehearsal and some kid starts playing his song from the weight room down the hall way! As you can imagine this was a bit of a disruption!  I had to still go over and turn the volume up and down while not using the AirServer App my self – this I could do though a lot easier than going through all the “old steps”. I wrote to the developers about the possibility of putting in a password – much like you have to do when using the Apple Remote app. The developer got back to me and said – “great idea – we will pass this on to our programmers” then I never heard any more about it.

Tonight I dug in and read more about Rogue Amoeba AirFoil app they have out. I have seen this app in the past and I have been noticing a flurry of information about the latest update. Come to find out I think that Rogue Amoeba has given us the solution…. AirPlay from an iOS device back to a computer WITH a password! Now the only problem is that I seem to be having issues with my network tonight. When I first installed the needed apps in the needed spots and hit play it worked like would expect it to, for about 15 seconds and then it started stuttering. I was disappointed – until I switched over and tried the AirServerApp and that did the about the same thing. I think that when I don’t have3 teenage boys trying to pull video off my laptop or streaming songs from Pandora or watching their TV off the internet things might go a little better (which by the way says something for a 5 year old AirPortExpress and Charter Cable Internet!)

So go for it I say – try these apps out and tell me what you think. there are probably two questions you have though still…. 1)HOW MUCH – AirFoil is around $25 and AirServerApp is $5. Each company has apps for the computer as well as the iOS device. 2)ummm…. I forgot what the other question was – you tell me in the comments below……

You might be wondering why in the world don’t I just use Apple’s Remote App….. well both apps offer way more options than simply remote controlling iTunes from you iOS device – AirServerApp for instance will let you serve up video and photos!

Another great resource for iOS Musicians

Over at TouchSound there are four great guys who have all joined up to start producing a podcast with the mission as they put it “our mission is to discuss everything and anything surrounding mobile music including apps, hardware, rumors, artists and so much more!”

Looks like some of the same websites I follow on a daily basis anyways – and what could be better than to listen to four people get together and discuss this stuff!

I will let you see for yourself - http://touchsoundpodcast.com/

iPad and AirPlay Mirroring in iOS5

This week Apple announced that we will be able to use AirPlay and mirror our iPad displays. I am amazed at what this is capable of! I was just assuming video – little did I even imagine sound too! I’m not sure why – I should have figured sound and video both but wow!

Watch this clip…. I did not even realize at first that I was watching a large screen TV hanging on the wall – I thought it was an iPad at first then I took my eyes off the middle of the video and looked at what was around the screen and realized that this was not an iPad. I was too busy watching what the guy was doing I guess.