Sketchbook Pro meets iCloud Harmony

What happens when you take a fantastic sketching program and tie it with cloud syncing? A versatile sketchbook that is literally always with you. When Autodesk announced iCloud syncing for their Sketchbook Pro Suite, I instantly opted-in on the black friday app sale, picking up the iPhone and iPad app for a sweet $3; A very worthwhile purchase too. 

Just as Apple advertised iCloud: work on something on one device, continue where you left off on another. The syncing sometimes wasn’t instantly automatic though, sometimes I had to wait for one device to even recognize changes from iCloud. This might have something to do with iCloud’s still slightly spotty service. Nonetheless, there is nothing like this app’s iCloud functionality in the App Store making it a truly defining feature for Sketchbook Pro.

The drawing app itself is very polished. There are plenty of brushes, all customizable. The app even has an in-house store with tons of free brushes to download. The UI takes time to make habit, but is extremely functional for a touch based UI. The desktop version comes baked with Wacom tablet compatibility as well as tradition mouse input. Anyone that has been inspired by how iCloud is changing their life ought to try out Sketchbook Pro. 

Download for the iPhone ($1.99), iPad ($4.99), and Lion ($59.99).

Good Looking Front Row Action

This weekend I have been keeping the Mac experience extra Applesque by using the an Apple Remote and Front Row, one of the most beautiful displays of your iTunes media in a pre-bundled OSX application. Unfortunetly, things can get pretty ugly when it comes to finding media that works in it, and keeping the place organized and easy to get to. Here is my guide to Front Row bliss.

A. Have the right converters

AVIs, MKVs, and other popular video formats do not play so nice with iTunes. FLV Crunch has successfully converted all my MKV videos I got from DVDs into the proper MPEG4 format. This app also keeps the integrity of the videos definition without degradation. Another option is iSquint which in my time has given me really high quality AVI to MPEG4 conversions outstandingly with no pops in the audio. Both are good to have just in case one or the other decides it does not want to work for you in any particular day. 

B. Video Tag Editor for TV shows and music videos stored on portable hard drives

If you are not already storing half of your iTunes on your portable hard drive, here is a guide on how to do just that. Unfortunetly apple has not updated front row to properly work with iTunes 10s new tagging system, so it is important that when changing movies to music videos and TV shows, you use Make Video Tags V1.2. Do all the installer steps which I had trouble doing but you might have more luck than I did. You should end up with a folder in your iTunes folder called scripts.

Then in iTunes, highlight the music video or tv shows you have converted and then click the script icon that should appear next to the commands bar on the top of your screen. This window should pop up…

Tick the tv show label if it is a Tv show, enter in the season, and a year. If it is a music video just tick music video. Then hit apply and the tags will be completed. You can highlight more than one video if you were wondering. This tip in my experience will work with any media you posted on a foreign hard drive, anything on your Mac’s hard drive should already work.

There you have it, If you are still wondering why I included the video tag demonstration, it is because when I first launched Front Row I had 100 episodes of Avatar the last airbender to scroll through before I could enjoy the movie I just got.