I have a Canon Elura and imovie. It doesn’t show up when i plug it in with a firewire cord.
What do i do?

by: Geoff FICKE

The benefits immigration has historically provided to the America economy and lifestyle has been thoroughly documented. The waves of Irish, Italian, and eastern European’s that swamped Ellis Island during the 19th century brought little more than hope and the drive to discover an opportunity to pursue a better life in the New World. They were ravaged by the historic poverty in their homelands, hungry, illiterate in many cases and did not speak English. And yet, despite these daunting obstacles, these immigrant masses were the forerunner of the diaspora that continues to this day and from which the United States has enjoyed immeasurable benefits.

Many contemporary Americans have knowledge of family histories that detail the struggles of their first generation American forefathers. There are so many famous stories of immigrant successes from the period: Sam Goldwyn (movies), Guglielmo Marconi (radio), Eugene Strauss  (department stores, Macy’s), Levi Strauss and Isaac Singer (sewing machines) are only a few examples.

Max Factor was an amazing example of immigrant success and the entrepreneurial cocktail that only America has ever fully perfected. Factor was born into poverty and a large family in Russia. He came to the United States at an early age speaking no English. The name Factor was most surely an assigned “Ellis Island” name. Eventually he moved to St. Louis and took a job in a theatre.

At this time, in the late 19th and early 20th century, theatrical plays and actors were very limited by the poor gaslights of the time. Nuance, subtlety and emotion were very difficult to convey to an audience in the stage environment of the time. Mr. Factor, standing in the rear of the theatre each night, waiting for the performance to end, began to notice that the actors were limited by the lack of definition that could be seen in their faces. To be sure, they wore a type of cornstarch makeup, but they appeared as mannequins, over painted and stiff as dead mackerel. He set about finding an answer, a way to project real emotion.

His efforts were rewarded by the introduction of two seemingly obvious creations (at least obvious today): the false eyelash and pan cake makeup. Ask any actor working today what tool they use most crucially to portray emotion and they will answer, the eyes. The false eyelash Mr. Factor created was a rough, stiff, heavily glued shock of trimmed horsehair. Difficult to apply and painful to remove though they were, actors adored them. Within months Mr. Factor was creating false eyelashes for actors everywhere. They unanimously were willing to put up with the pain in return for the opportunity to project emotion to an audience with their eyes.

Pancake makeup was created to give the face a more natural glow while highlighting each actor’s unique physical features. The old starchy pastes made every actor, even male and female, look alike. Finally, there was a light, blended powder base that could be buffed to highlight features. Actors are vain. They love to display themselves, physically, emotionally and vocally. Max Factor’s pancake makeup was the breakthrough that modernized acting as a more subtle, visual art.

Mr. Factor quickly moved to Hollywood. He recognized that the future would be in moving pictures and the movies would require a completely different lineup of cosmetic products. Cameras require light. Light offered new opportunity and Max Factor was always keen to seize opportunity. He adapted pancake makeup to the new demands of movie cameras. Almost immediately, Max Factor became recognized as Hollywood’s leading, must-have makeup designer for the movie studios. His entrepreneurial instincts not sated, he began to package products for sale to the public.The most prominent retailers of the day such as F.W. Woolworth and Kresge dime stores in the United States and Boots in England carried his products. This was the beginning of a worldwide cosmetic empire that continues to prosper to this day. During most of the 20th century Max Factor enjoyed worldwide popularity with the Company’s cutting edge beauty advances. The Max Factor name and brand became world famous.

Max Factor always praised America and revered the freedom, opportunity and economic system that he discovered here. He came with no money, spoke no English and had no formal skill. During the course of his remarkable life he was instrumental in the maturation of two major industries: cosmetics and movies. This could never have happened had he stayed in Russia.

The opportunity to fail, or succeed, is just as possible today. The opportunity to try is not available in much of the world. Men like Max Factor are inspirational. They confirm that our system, while not perfect, is better than anything else yet invented. When you hear a citizen of this country whine about, well, about everything people whine about today, remember that millions of immigrants want to still come here for a reason. There is no place on earth so open and offering so much possibility.

Please contact me at your convenience to discuss this article, or any of my other articles. In my consulting business we help many entrepreneurs, a disproportionate number of them new immigrants, to pursue their dreams.

iPod movie downloads are well-sought after by iPod lovers. As long as you own a new video iPod, you would certainly love to get your hands on some of the hottest and newest iPod movies and videos around. The new video iPods can easily store many hours of video and movie entertainment and it is the perfect entertainment companion when you are traveling or simply outside of home. But where can you find quality iPod movie downloads for pennies?

iTunes is the reigning king for iPod movie downloads. People who first bought the iPods would remember going to iTunes to download music and movies. Finding a movie is easy and the whole process is clear and fast. Before you know it, you would have found, downloaded and synchronized it with your video iPod. iTunes contain millions of files and you can even find the latest movies there. Each iPod movie download costs you $9.99 or more. Compare this to a movie ticket and it is considered cheap. But when you start to compare this price for all their iPod movie downloads, it is hardly cheap at all.

People do not just watch one movie and that’s it. During the weekends, folks hope to catch more than one movie. So it is natural that they would find it expensive to get hold the iPod movie downloads at iTunes. Fortunately, there are now other download sites that offer iPod movie downloads for a fraction of the price. Better still, there are sites that offer unlimited downloads of movies for iPod with a one-off price tag. These are the new generation download sites that offer lifetime memberships for iPod movies.

As usual, it is always good to check around and find out more about these download sites for iPod movie downloads. While there are good and reliable ones, there would always be those that turn out to be scam sites or poorly-run membership sites. You can check on the number of movies they carry, and whether the movie files are compatible with your iPod or they require conversion to iPod formats.

Also, read the website to see if customer service is provided at all times. Since there are dozens of such download sites, be sure to also compare the pricing of memberships and whether they offer one-year, two-year or lifetime memberships. You might be interested to find out if they also offer other iPod media files such as iPod music on top of the iPod movie downloads. Such membership sites often offer other media files such as iPod music downloads, TV shows, software and so on.

For the price of $39.99, you can probably get hold of a quality site for iPod movie downloads. Discover which site is popular among iPod users for iPod movie downloads from my iPod blog.

The content of this article is provided for the purpose of education and illustration only and is in no way associated with Apple, iTune, or any company or subsidiary of Apple. This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

Many people ask that “can I just play iPod iTunes music video movie on Windows Media Player?”, the answer is “Yes” as long as you have a right DRM removal & media converter. Actually, once you get to an appropriate media converter, you can even play music video movie from Windows Media Player on iPod or iTunes the same. Here this tutorial is going to tell you how and why.

Why can’t you play iPod iTunes music video movie on Windows Media Player

1. iTunes music video movie has DRM (Digital Rights Management) which attempts to control use of digital media by  preventing access, copying or conversion by users to other formats or players.  (Files with DRM restrictions are generally obtained from Subscription Services and must be updated periodically to have the License revalidated. Upon expiring, the files will prompt to “please sync to continue your music subscription” when selected on the MP3 player.)

2. iTunes iPod music, video, movie are in unique formats that can’t be recognized by Windows Media Player.  As you might know, iTunes iPod music is in AAC (DRM’ed .m4p and non-DRM .m4a) format, video and movie are in DRM-protected .m4v or .mov formats, while WMP plays .wma, .mp3 audio and .wmv, .avi ,.mp4 video.

How to play iPod iTunes music video movie on Windows Media Player

Now you might know the reason why I referred “a right DRM media converter” at the begining, we need it to remove DRM and convert file format.

1. Aimersoft Media Converter is one of such “DRM media converters” needed here. Download the free version, install and launch it just as what you do with other software, then you go to the main interface as the picture shows bellow:

2. There you see the “Add” button in red circle to import DRM’ed iPod iTunes media files, or you can just drag-and-drop them to the main window directly. Then go to “Setting” in red circle to preset the target output effect you want – including file format (.wma and .wmv is recommended), bit rate, frame rate, aspect ratio, resolution etc

3. When finish the effect presetting, back to the main window, click “Start” button lower-right positioned to convert iPod music video movie to Windows Media Player. Time of conversion varies according to the file size, generally a 15 Mb album costs 2-3 mins.

4. Then you get DRM-free .wma .wmv out of iPod iTunes music video movie to play on WMP. As what was sated previously, this DRM Media Converter can help to convert Windows Media Audio & Video to iPod iTunes playable MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF, FLAC music or MP4, M4V, MOV video vice versa — whether they are protected by Microsoft’s “Plays for Sure” DRM system or just plain .wma .wmv files. Then you can sync Windows Media Audio & Video to iPod as what you do from iTunes to iPod.

While now you see, playing iTunes iPod music video movie on Windows Media Player is just as easy as syncing Windows Media Audio & Video to iPod iTunes as long as you have the access to a helpful DRM media converter.

You might also like to check for even more “How-To” transfer the DRM protected music, video, movie to media devices like iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, Creative Zen, Archos, Sansa, Iriver, Samsung, Cowon, Sony Walkman, as well as mobile phones like HTC, Blackberry, Sony Erricsson, LG, Nokia, Motorola, etc.

It is quite easy to maximize the battery life of your Movie iPod. If you follow the following two tips, they will help you gain more power to watch your favorite movies or listen to your favorite music on your video ipod. When you try them, you’ll see how easy it is to achieve longer ipod battery life. This is useful because it is a an inconvenience to start an ipod movie download and then discover during the process that the ipod battery power is low, forcing an interruption with your download sometimes more than half way through.

First Tip: This tip allows you to gain over 3 hours of movie playback on your 30GB Movie iPod

According to the user’s manual, one full charge of the 30GB movie/video iPod will give you two hours of video playback. Nonetheless, if you compress your movies for iPod during playback and you do not mind giving up a little bit on image size, you would gain almost 3 hours of straight movie/video play. On the 60GB model, you will gain an extra 40 minutes.

Without question, movies with smaller picture sizes, lower bitrates and frame rates, will play longer on one charge than a larger movie file with higher settings. Using MPEG-4 compression, two hours of a full-screen movie, scaled down to only 192 x 144 and at 15 frames per second will play for three hours. Using 15 frames per second instead of 30 and a smaller scale boosts the video playback time considerably.

When using a higher scale, again with MPEG-4 compression, you will get less movie playback time. At what time you use the scale the same size as the movie iPod’s screen, 320 x 240 at 29.97 frames per second and the average bitrate set to 1000Kbps, your movie will play for about two hours before your battery goes out. Run a test for yourself using both settings and see which one you prefer. In any case, if extending your battery life for more movie playback time is your primary goal, definitely use the smaller scale and lower frames per second speed.

Second Tip: Disregard your fast forward button

Regarding saving the movie ipod battery power, the disadvantages of using fast forward button on your iPod far out weighs the advantages. If you desire to have the maximum amount to your battery power to watch your movies or listen to your music, keep your finger off the fast forward button! Remember that the life of your battery is ruled by the requests made on your video iPod’s mechanical hard drive, how many times it has to rewind and read data. This is true especially when you shuffle through your library.

The truth remains that there is very little reason to shuffle through your movie library, because the movie iPod winds through the hard drive at regular intervals, loading your next songs into its solid-state memory. What happens at the times that you shuffle or fast forward is that you actually empty the memory

Emptying your movie ipod library causes your hard drive to work harder. It must now rewind again to read ahead a bunch more movies and/or music. It is a waste of energy, which creates unnecessary wear and tear on your movie iPod. Keeping your play lists short is the easy workaround to avoid the fast-forward button temptation. Take the time to edit your play lists you do not want to have to delete them from the files.

Lastly, you should follow the manuals instructions carefully. The manual likely has maintenance tips that will help you get the most out of your ipod. You can also find helpful information that will guide you through the process of saving your memory and battery while using your iPod.

PopSnail.com  DVD to iPod Converter is the easiest-to-use and fastest DVD to iPod converter software for Apple iPod Movie and iPod Video. It can convert almost any kinds of DVD to iPod Movie / iPod Video format. It is also a powerful DVD to iPod converter due to the conversion speed is far faster than real-time. You will enjoy your favorite DVDs on your iPod as a portable DVD Player. Now you can get this DVD to iPod Converter at a very competitive price!

Directly converts DVD format to iPod. (Some other software will convert DVD to AVI, then convert AVI to iPod, which wastes a lot of time. We only need one step, to directly transfer DVD format to iPod video.);   
Supports almost all kinds of DVD formats to iPod Movie / iPod Video format (MP4 format);   
Supports various iPod video size including H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats;   
A powerful DVD to iPod conversion tool with the conversion speed even faster than real-time;   
Supports “Drag and Drop”;   
Supports subtitle selection, eg. English Subtitle, French Subtitle…   
Supports audio track selection, eg. English audio track, French audio track…   
Various kinds of video crop modes, eg. 16:9, 4:3, full screen and so on;   
Supports DVD to VCD/SVCD conversion;   
Newly adds a feature that user can customize the output file size;   
Fixed some bugs in previous versions.     
Support splitting output video by DVD chapters     
Support customize output video file size and video quality.     
Support the output of latest new video iPod 30G and video iPod 80G MPEG-4 video, at 640 by 480 pixels video resolution.      
Support DVD to MP3 audio conversion.     
Support Dolby, DTS Surround audio track.     
Support DVD to Apple TV New.

How to Convert DVD to iPod for Apple iPod Movie or iPod Audio

Step1: Download Cucusoft DVD to iPod Converter, when this is finished install and run the software, a window like the one shown below should now be on your screen.

Step2: With the program open click “Open DVD” and choose the add one or more video files.

Step3: The area highlighted in the red box shows the contents table of your chosen files.

Step4: Default settings which can be found on the panel of the main window. They can be adjusted or changed manually according your needs. If you don’t know what the setting means, its best to leave the defaults alone.

Step5: The last thing we need to do is set the output folder, click the “Output folder” button inside the box we’ve highlighted in red.

Step6: Finally we’re ready to convert, just click the “Convert” button and the process will begin. [Source : http://www.popsnail.com/artciles/guide-how-to-convert-dvd-ifo-vob-to-ipod-with-cucusoft-dvd-to-ipod-converter.html]

Anyone who bought DRM protected music and movies from iTunes and Windows media center wants to enjoy them without copyrights hurdling, but it is not easy to find an all-in-one DRM removing solution. Here I recommend a powerful DRM Media Converter – Aimersoft Media Converter, which can return your full user rights by removing DRM from iTunes music & movie, as well as the copyright from protected WMA music and WMV video downloaded from Zune MarketPlace, Napster, Rhapsody, Nokia Music Store, Spiralfrog, Bearshare, eMusic, Puretracks, MusicGiants, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, Movielink, Amazon Unbox etc.

This DRM removing guide is going to show you how to remove media copyrights step by step:

Step 1: Free download this DRM media converter, then install and launch this DRM removal software, click “Add” button to load DRM protected music or movie, you can also alternatively drag-drop them into the main processing window.

Step 2: The default preferences of this DRM removal is perfectly compatible with your PC, generally you don’t need any further reconfiguration. Click the “Settings” buttons in red circle, left for audio, right for video; go to the settings board to preset the output effect as the illustration bellow:

(1). Settings board for audio conversion, click the “Format Preset” drop-down list to select the output audio format you want, and the “Bit Rate”, “Sample Rate” for quality and files size as well.

(2). Settings board for video conversion, “Format Preset” for output video format, there you can find various players supported; “Zoom” for the video playback aspect ratio; you can also set the “Bit Rate”, “Resolution” and “Frame Rate” according to your player’s defult configuration requirment (you can find the spec-data on certain player’s official website)

Step 3: When all these done, click “Start”, Aimersoft Media Converter will remove media rights under your command with fast speed and high fidelity. You can easily get the DRM free music and movies when finish removing DRM from the protected media files.

Note: If you have iTunes DRM-protected video files to convert, please pay attention to the notice below.

You might also like to check for even more “How-To” transfer the DRM protected music, video, movie to media devices like iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, Creative Zen, Archos, Sansa, Iriver, Samsung, Cowon, Sony Walkman, as well as mobile phones like HTC, Blackberry, Sony Erricsson, LG, Nokia, Motorola, etc.