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Mac applications & files recovery

 

With over 20 years of data recovery experience and nearly 200 data recovery engineers worldwide, Kroll Ontrack® has the capacity and technical expertise required to solve complex Apple Mac data loss disasters.

Our expert engineers can recover data and files for all of the following Mac applications:

To learn more about our Mac applications recovery capabilities or for any urgent enquiry, contact our data recovery consultants on 0800 243 996

iPhoto

iPhoto is a software application made by Apple Inc. exclusively for their Mac OS X operating system. It is part of the iLife suite of applications and comes bundled with every new Macintosh computer. iPhoto can import, organize, edit, print and share digital photos. It is often compared to Google's Picasa and Adobe's Photoshop Album.

Description

iPhoto is designed to allow easy importing from digital cameras, scanners, picture CDs and the internet. Almost all digital cameras work without additional software, as do many scanners. iPhoto supports most common image file formats.

Once photos are imported, they can be optionally titled, labeled, sorted and organized into groups (known as "albums"). Individual photos can be edited with basic image manipulation tools, such as a red-eye filter, contrast and brightness adjustments, crop and resize and other basic functions. iPhoto does not, however, provide the comprehensive editing functionality of programs such as GIMP, Apple's Aperture, or Adobe's Photoshop (not to be confused with Photoshop Elements or Album).

Numerous options then exist to share photos. Photo albums can be made into dynamic slideshows, and optionally set to music imported from iTunes. These slideshows can be exported to QuickTime movie files, further edited in iMovie or burned directly to DVD-video discs using iDVD. Both slideshows and static photos can be shared to other Macs on a local network by using the Bonjour "zero configuration" technology. Or they can be uploaded using simplified web publishing to Apple's .Mac online service. iPhoto can also sync photo albums to any iPod with a color display. These iPods have an audio/video output that allow photos to be played back, along with music, on any modern television. Finally, photos can be printed to a local printer, or, in certain markets, be sent over the internet to Kodak for professional printing. iPhoto users can order a range of products, including standard prints, posters and even 100 page hardcover or softcover volumes—again, such services are available only to users in certain markets.

iLife

iLife is a suite of software applications created by Apple, designed for Mac OS X. These programs are used to create, organize, view and publish digital content, such as pictures, movies, music, and web pages. iLife '08, released in August 2007, consists of five applications: iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb. The application suite is included with all new Macintosh computers, and is also available for purchase separately.

iWork

iWork is a suite of applications created by Apple Inc., containing Pages, a word processing and desktop publishing application, Keynote, a presentation package and Numbers, a spreadsheet application.

Although iWork is billed by Apple as "a successor to AppleWorks" , it does not replicate the functionality of AppleWorks's database and drawing tools. Likewise, it does not compete directly with the Mac version of Microsoft Office, but instead offers tools with a different focus (presentation, rather than analysis) at a lower price. It is designed to integrate with existing applications from Apple's iLife Suite. Although iLife comes free on every Mac, iWork is sold separately. A free 30-day trial of iWork is provided with every new Mac, and with copies of iLife.

Final Cut Studio

Final Cut Studio is a professional video and audio production suite for Mac OS X from Apple Inc.Final Cut Studio 2 contains six main applications and several smaller applications used in editing video. The major applications it includes are:

  • Final Cut Pro 6 - "real-time editing for DV, SD, HD and film"
  • Motion 3 - "real-time motion graphics design"
  • Soundtrack Pro 2 - "advanced audio editing and sound design"
  • DVD Studio Pro 4 - encoding, authoring and burning.
  • Color - a new color grading application adapted from Silicon Color's FinalTouch.
  • Compressor 3 - a video encoding tool for outputting projects in different formats.
  • Additional applications included are:
  • LiveType 2 - a text animation program.
  • Cinema Tools 3 - tools specific to film processing.
  • Apple Qmaster 2 - a distributed processing tool.
  • QuickTime Pro - an enhanced version of QuickTime featuring more advanced tools and some export tools.

History

Final Cut Studio was introduced at the National Association of Broadcasters in April 2005. It is the successor to Production Suite, and added new versions of all the Production Suite applications, as well as a 'new' program, Soundtrack Pro, which is really a new version of Soundtrack, formerly included with Final Cut Pro. In January 2006, Final Cut Studio became the only way to purchase any of the individual major applications. In March 2006, Apple released the Universal Binary version, transferring the version number from Final Cut Pro to the entire suite, so that it became Final Cut Studio 5.1.

Microsoft Entourage

Microsoft Entourage is an e-mail client and personal information manager developed by Microsoft for Mac OS 8.5 and higher. Microsoft first released Entourage in October 2000 as part of the Microsoft Office 2001 office suite; Office 98, the previous version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS, included Outlook Express 5. The current version is Entourage 2004, released as part of Office 2004 for Mac in May 2004. The next version, Entourage 2008, is expected to be released with Office 2008 for Mac in January 2008.

  • Overview

Entourage is an email application. Its personal information management features include a calendar, address book, task list, note list, and project manager. With Entourage 2004, Microsoft began offering a Project Center, which allows the user to create and organize projects. Information may come from within Entourage or outside the program.

Entourage 2008 is expected to feature a new "My Day" utility, which assists in organizing one's day.

  • Comparison to Outlook

Unlike the rest of the Microsoft Office suite, Entourage did not take the name of its Microsoft Windows counterpart. Entourage especially the earliest versions lack some of the groupware functionality of Outlook when acting as a Microsoft Exchange Server client. Although Microsoft continues to improve Entourage's groupware capabilities with regular updates and service packs, some Exchange functionality is still only available via Microsoft Outlook. Such missing features include the "Out of Office Assistant", read receipts, and certain server side rules. If available, users can use Outlook Web Access in tandem with Entourage to bypass these limitations.

Currently, Entourage is unable to sync tasks and notes with an Exchange server. Tasks and notes are stored in a local Entourage database on the user's computer.

  • Entourage import/export limitations

Entourage cannot natively read Outlook Personal Folder files and cannot read Outlook archived emails without first re-importing them back into the main Windows Outlook database. As a result, this makes it impossible to directly transfer email data from Outlook (Windows) into Entourage (Mac).

Although Microsoft has released a PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004 for Mac, this does not solve the problem of exporting data from Windows to Mac, because this utility can only import PST files from Outlook 2001 for the Mac. It is incompatible with any PST files created with Outlook for Windows. In other words, the Import Tool only allows transfer from Mac to Mac, not Windows to Mac.

One can import a Windows Outlook 2000 compatible PST to Mac Outlook 2001, and then use the utility to import into Entourage, however, that route is not feasible for most users who do not have access to the obsolete Mac Outlook 2001 software.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx

  • PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004 for Mac

Microsoft Entourage 2004 users who want to import PST files from Microsoft Outlook 2001 for Mac can use the instructions in this document to install the PST Import Tool. Administrators who are deploying the PST Import Tool in their companies will want to review known issues, error messages and troubleshooting information in the Read Me file. The Read Me file is displayed when you run the PST Import Tool. You can also find the information in the PST Import Tool Help.htm file located in the Documentation folder that is included with the tool.

  • PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004 for Mac

PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004 for Mac

Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro is a professional non-linear editing system developed by Apple Inc. that has found popularity amongst independent filmmakers and is beginning to make inroads with Hollywood film editors who traditionally use Avid software.[citation needed] The program has the ability to edit many digital formats including DV, HDV, DVCProHD, XDCAM, 2K, and IMAX film formats. The system is currently only available for Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later, and is a module of the Final Cut Studio product.

From the early 2000s, Final Cut has developed a large and ever expanding user base. Final Cut Pro has found acceptance among professionals and a number of broadcast facilities because of its cost effective efficiency as an off-line editor as much as a digital on-line editor. Final Cut Pro is also very popular with independent and semi-professional film-makers. As such, it can be used to edit material ranging from FireWire-attached MiniDV video from a consumer digital video camera or professional DV camera to High-Definition (HD) material in the various HD specifications and flavours including HDV. The software logs and captures video onto the computer's hard drive, where it can be edited and processed. The current version of Final Cut Pro 6.0 runs on both Intel and PowerPC processors (minimum G4/1.25Ghz).

  • Features

Final Cut Pro provides non-linear, non-destructive editing of any QuickTime compatible video format. It supports an unlimited number of simultaneously composited video tracks; up to 99 audio tracks; multi-cam editing for cutting video from multiple camera sources; as well as standard ripple, roll, slip, slide, scrub, razor blade and time remapping edit functions. It comes with a range of dissolve, iris, distortion and basic 3D transitions and a range of video and audio filters such as keying tools, mattes and vocal de-poppers and de-essers. It also has a manual 3-way color correction filter, videoscopes and a selection of generators, such as slugs, test cards and noise.

The latest version of Final Cut Pro (version 6) claims better integration with Apple's other Pro applications and improved codec support for editing HD, DV and SD video formats, along with Panasonic's new solid-state recording technology, P2. A new technology called DynamicRT built on the RT Extreme technology was released with Final Cut Pro 4. DynamicRT allows a real-time multistream effects architecture, which can be set to automatically adjust image quality and frame rate during playback to maintain real time effects. For example, when there are a large number of video streams playing simultaneously, it will change, on the fly, to a mode that reduces the quality of the playback so that all of them can be seen in real time; when the computer is capable of it, it will automatically return playback to native quality (that is, when there are fewer simultaneous video streams).

Final Cut Pro 6 now also supports mixed video formats (both resolution and framerate) in the timeline with real time support.

Final Cut Pro 6 uses the included application Cinema Tools to keep track of original film sources through the telecine editing processes. Calligraphy 2 from BorisFX - a plug-in that works natively in Final Cut Pro - is included for higher quality titling and is a subset of the Boris Graffiti titling technology. Final Cut Pro 6 is part of the Final Cut Studio 2 suite, and also has the ability to edit natively in HDV.

Final Cut Express

In 2003, Apple launched Final Cut Express, a less expensive version of Final Cut. It uses the same interface as Final Cut Pro, but it lacks all of the film-specific tools and other advanced options, pruning the feature set for amateur producers.

In January 2005, Soundtrack and Live Type, previously only available with Final Cut Pro, were added to Express, and features were added to edit HDV.

  • Interface

The Final Cut (Pro and Express) interface has four main windows: the Browser, where source media files are listed; the Viewer, where individual media files can be previewed and trimmed; the Timeline, where media can be cut together into a sequence; and the Canvas, where the edited production in the timeline can be viewed. The positions and sizes of these windows can be changed, but by default, the Browser is at the top left, with the Viewer and Canvas to its right, in that order, and the Timeline below. There is also a small Toolbox window and two audio level indicators for the left and right audio channels.

Both the Viewer and Canvas have a shuttle interface (for variable-speed scanning through a clip, forwards or backwards) and a jogging interface (for frame-by-frame advancing). The standard J, K and L keys can be used to play the video at full speed backwards, to pause the video, and to play it at full speed in a forward direction, respectively. The I and O keys can be used to set in and out points for a clip, or for the entire sequence.

  • Browser

As in most digital non-linear editing applications, the Browser is not an interface to the computer's filesystem. It is an entirely virtual space in which references to clips (aliases) are placed, for easy access, and arranged in folders called 'bins'. Since they are only references to clips that are on the media drive of the computer, moving or deleting a source file on the media hard drive destroys the link between the entry in the Browser and the actual media. This results in a 'media offline' situation, and the media must be 'reconnected'. Final Cut Pro can search for the media itself, or the user can do this manually. If multiple clips are offline at the same time, Final Cut can reconnect all the offline media clips that are in the relative directory path as the first offline media clips that is reconnected.

The browser has an 'effects' tab in which video transitions and filters can be browsed and dragged onto or between clips.

  • Canvas

The canvas outputs the contents of the Timeline. To add clips to the Timeline, besides dragging them there, it is possible to drag clips from the Browser or Viewer onto the Canvas, whereupon the so-called 'edit overlay' appears. The edit overlay has seven drop zones, into which clips can be dragged in order to perform different edits. The default is the 'overwrite' edit, which overwrites at an in point or the space occupied after the playhead with the incoming clip. The 'insert' edit slots a clip into the sequence at the in point or playhead's position, keeping the rest of the video intact, but moving it all aside so that the new clip fits. There are also drop zones to have the application automatically insert transitions. The 'replace' edit replaces a clip in the Timeline with an incoming clip, and the 'fit to fill' edit does the same thing, but at the same time, it adjusts the playback speed of the incoming clip so that all of it will fit into the required space [in the Timeline]. Finally there is the 'superimpose' edit, which automatically places the dropped clip on the track above the clip in the Timeline, with a duration equal to the clip below it. Unless an in or out point are set, all edits occur from the position of the playhead in the Timeline.

Using the wireframe view on the canvas, the clip can be manipulated directly - dragging it around in the canvas to change its position, for example, or resizing it. Precise adjustment controls for these things are in the viewer.

  • Viewer

The viewer has tabs for each channel of the selected clip's audio, in which the waveform for the audio can be viewed and scrubbed, and where its volume can be keyframed. The filters tab is where effects for the clip appear and where their parameters can be adjusted and keyframed. If the clip selected is a generator (such as an oval shape), a control tab appears for changing its geometrical properties. Finally, the viewer's motion tab contains tools to adjust the scale, opacity, cropping, rotation, distortion, drop shadow, motion blur and time remapping properties of the clip. Mini-timelines to the right of each parameter allow the property to be keyframed.

  • Compositing

Clips can be edited together in timelines called sequences. Sequences can be nested inside other sequences, so that a filter or transition can be applied to the grouped clips.

The timeline in Final Cut Pro allows 99 video tracks to be layered on top of each other. If a clip is higher in the timeline than another, then it obscures whatever is below it. The size of a video clip can be altered, and the clips can be cropped, among many other settings that can be changed. Opacity levels can also be altered, as well as animated over the course of the clip using keyframes, defined either on a graphical overlay, or in the Viewer's 'motion' tab, where precise percentage opacity values can be entered. Final Cut also has more than a dozen common compositing modes that can be applied to clips, such as Add, Subtract, Difference, Screen, Multiply, Overlay, and Travel Matte Luma/Alpha.

The compositing mode for a clip is changed by control-clicking or right-clicking on the clip and selecting it from the cascading contextual menu, or by selecting the mode from the application's 'modify' menu. For either matte modes, the clip that will perform the key is placed underneath the fill clip on the timeline.

For more advanced compositing Final Cut Pro roundtrips with Apple's Shake and Apple Motion software.