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Audio and Video Questions and Answers

"I am trying to install Google Calendar Sync, but when it begins to install, a message pops up that I must close Outlook first. I do not have Outlook open. Any suggestions?"

There are many instances where you will have closed the Outlook application window without Outlook actually being closed. I'm not sure if this is a problem with Outlook or a feature designed to make it load faster when you re-open it later, but I find it frustrating on a regular basis. Some manual intervention is required to fix the problem.

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"I have ripped albums into Windows Media Player and have downloaded podcasts into iTunes and would like to keep the two separate, but WMP keeps picking up podcasts which makes streaming through my albums a pain, b/c all of a sudden Ira Glass is talking to me when I was in the groove doing homework to some good jazz music. Is there a way I can keep WMP from picking up my podcasts?"

There's two ways you could go about solving this problem. One way would be to create an Auto Playlist starting at Library - Create Auto Playlist in Windows Media Player. You'd then select only tracks you want to hear by genre or other meaningful details about the songs. This first method doesn't get Windows Media Player to ignore you podcasts. If you really want to eliminate the podcast files from being exposed to Windows Media Player, you need to have the software ignore the folder where the podcasts are downloaded.

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"taskkill works great in XP Pro, but how do you accomplish the same thing on XP Home system?"

If you want to quickly kill off running processes from the command line in Windows XP Professional, taskkill.exe is a great way to get the job done. XP Home does not include this utility, only including the more limited tkill.exe instead. Microsoft does provide a free solution to this via their acquisition of the Sysinternals team.

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"A friend downloaded some television programmes for me. When I try to play them with Windows Media Player I only get the sound and no pics. What do I need to do to watch these programmes?"

Video files that play the sound but don't play the video are more common than you might realize. This problem is almost always caused by one of two problems. Either you don't have the required codec installed on your system to decode the video portion of the file you downloaded or Windows Media Player isn't properly associating the correct codec on your system in a way that makes viewing video possible. This is complicated by a huge volume of codecs out there. Here's how to get the file to play:

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"What program converts Sony Digital8 Handycam tapes to digital files?"

Many programs will capture the footage of Digital8 (and MiniDV) tapes allowing you to convert them to digital files. One of the easiest to use is Windows Movie Maker, which is included with both Windows XP and Windows Vista. If you have minimal editing to do to the files, my favorite solution is to capture Digital8 tapes with WinDV and then save out the files to a smaller format using VirtualDub. No matter what method you use, make sure your computer has a FireWire port for capturing from the camcorder.

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"I have read your guide on how to use an HDTV as a computer monitor and found it to be very informative. There is however one detail I am unsure of. This is Sound. If I were to plug my PC video card to my HDTV via a DVI/HDMI cable I would get pure digital visual but no audio correct? But if I were to plug it in via HDMI/HDMI from video card to HDTV would I get audio? Or do i have to buy a sound card with HDMI out to get surround sound?"

There are a several different ways to get audio passed from your PC to your HDTV. Depending on what hardware you have available, you may be limited to stereo audio, with a few cases where you can also get surround sound.

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"I want to use my Xbox with my computer, but I don't want to use the TV screen. I want to use the computer screen instead. Is there anything that I need to get to enable this?"

As long as your computer monitor has at least one VGA connection, you'll need to things to have a great Xbox 360 gaming experience. First you need an Xbox 360 VGA cable. Microsoft makes the Xbox 360 VGA HD AV Cable, which sells for about $40. There are also 3rd-party Xbox VGA cables for about $20. The other thing you need is a stereo female RCA to mini-plug adapter, for connecting the audio out on your Xbox 360 to your computer speakers. If you have computer speakers with support for ToS Link you can use that for audio instead.

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