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> But when it comes to media stuff (think: cropping a lossless audio file and compressing the result into an AAC or MP3, resizing 20 images, transcoding a movie

by senko 6y ago

> But when it comes to media stuff (think: cropping a lossless audio file and compressing the result into an AAC or MP3, resizing 20 images, transcoding a movie from one format to the other, removing one page from a PDF), on Mac it can usually be done with built in tools. Which tools are these? On Mac I ended up using Audacity for cropping audio files, ffmpeg (cli) to compress it, and used either ffmpeg or Handbrake for transcoding. I don't remember what I used for pdf page split/combine, but I do remember that it was a pain. Honest question - as I still use Mac occasionally, it'd be great to know what are those builtin tools so I can actually use the features the OS has.

cprecioso 6y ago
For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files (to what extent this might be “compression” depends on your use case). PDF page manipulation is the easiest thing on macOS, also quite robust usually. Just open the document in Preview and open the page sidebar. You can reorder or remove pages there; or drag and drop pages from other documents.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  >For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files Quicktime Pro could do this all very well, Quicktime X however? It can trim but the UI is bad and encoding options are so limited I stopped using it all together.
pilsetnieks 6y ago
On a very basic level Quicktime can do that. And Preview lets you easily remove pages from PDFs - select the page in the sidebar, press Delete. Apart from that, more advanced 1st party apps for editing (for certain values of advanced) are available free - iMovie for video, GarageBand for audio, Pages for documents, etc.
limaoscarjuliet 6y ago
It often comes to what we are used to. I switched from Windows to Mac on purpose: being a 20+ years Windows power user (software engineer) I wanted to learn a Mac to be a bit more versatile. It took me a year just to be decent MacOS user and I stil "hate it". For me Windows is still better, as for me it is easier and I know all the tools, etc. I am still to discover a built in set of tools on either platform. I use 3rd party to accomplish my daily tasks on both.

by senko 6y ago

cprecioso 6y ago

For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files (to what extent this might be “compression” depends on your use case). PDF page manipulation is the easiest thing on macOS, also quite robust usually. Just open the document in Preview and open the page sidebar. You can reorder or remove pages there; or drag and drop pages from other documents.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago
>For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files Quicktime Pro could do this all very well, Quicktime X however? It can trim but the UI is bad and encoding options are so limited I stopped using it all together.

pilsetnieks 6y ago

On a very basic level Quicktime can do that. And Preview lets you easily remove pages from PDFs - select the page in the sidebar, press Delete. Apart from that, more advanced 1st party apps for editing (for certain values of advanced) are available free - iMovie for video, GarageBand for audio, Pages for documents, etc.

limaoscarjuliet 6y ago

It often comes to what we are used to. I switched from Windows to Mac on purpose: being a 20+ years Windows power user (software engineer) I wanted to learn a Mac to be a bit more versatile. It took me a year just to be decent MacOS user and I stil "hate it". For me Windows is still better, as for me it is easier and I know all the tools, etc. I am still to discover a built in set of tools on either platform. I use 3rd party to accomplish my daily tasks on both.