.PNG Error Message (could not parse the file)…

I’m going to start posting more web fixes I come across because it’s amazing how many seemingly random things happen just trying to create something digitally.

I built a site and could see all of my picture art fine in Safari, but the images were not showing up in Firefox. I googled the error message I was getting from Photoshop and not many people knew what was happening. The error message I received upon trying to open these .png files I had saved was,

“Could not complete your request because the file-format module can not parse the file.”

Many software savvy people were telling bewildered newbies that their program had bugs, that they needed to uninstall and then reinstall their programs, etc… but I think I have figured out why, at least for me, that this was happening.

In an effort to keep from creating a lot of large files on my computer, every time I made a change to one of my .png files I would just resave it with the same file name to replace the existing file. After I stopped doing that, and just saved my changes as a new file, seeing and reopening the files is not a problem. If I find that this is not the case, I’ll add to this post, but as it stands it seems you just need to stop replacing the same file numerous times.

Problem sending email from Mac mail…

I became aware of this problem a few months ago, and finally after perusing the forums and calling GoDaddy, I have fixed the problem.

I have several GoDaddy accounts and several email addresses attached to them, so I only have the instructions for how to setup these types of accounts. Also I have Mac OS X Version 10.5.8.

• When you setup your email account for GoDaddy email addresses, there are a few things to remember

1. Your username is the full email address. Rather than just entering ‘julie’, you should enter ‘julie@juliemeadows.com’… which is obviously my email address and not yours. Hopefully, you are picking up what I’m dropping down.
2. The ‘Incoming Mail Server’ address is: pop.secureserver.net. ‘Outgoing Mail Server’ is: smtpout.secureserver.net
3. When you get to the dialogue box that asks for the ‘Outoing Mail Server’ information, I have found a strange step must be taken…

The dialogue box appears before me with the ‘Use Authentication’ box already checked and my ‘Username’ and ‘Password’ already entered. Thing is, this poses a problem, for me, if I don’t re-enter the username and password. So, I uncheck the ‘Use Authentication’, recheck it, then click inside the ‘Username’ field and my information disappears. By re-entering everything fresh and making sure the ‘Use Authentication’ box is checked, I avoid the problem I would otherwise have. It probably sounds strange, but it fixed my problem with setting up the account. It takes several minutes for my computer to communicate with the remote server, but eventually it is fine. I also found in many forums people saying that unchecking the ‘Use SSL’ box under ‘Preferences’>’Advanced’ helped with connectivity.

Hopefully, this will help anyone having the same issue I was having! It had started to make my batty, I must confess.

I NEED MERLIN ANDEAN SILK!!! – UPDATE!!!

No, it’s not a Celtic incantation to turn my glass of homogenized milk into a root beer float. And no, I’m not crazy. I am at the end of this f**king sweater I started a few dollars and many hours ago and the pattern has left me short on yarn. Thing is, Knit Picks has discontinued the color that I’m using, which means that unless I find someone with an extra ball of Merlin Andean Silk laying around, I have to finish it in another color (no), spend more money and coultless hours finding the right dye to apply to a ball of white Andean Silk (weird but not impossible), throw the whole thing out (Oh, HELLS NO!), or resign Doug to owning and never wearing a boatneck sweater like the one I made for myself–falling over the shoulders all sexy-like (sobbing ensues). Needless to say, afetr all this effort, to come this far, stop working on it altogether because the f**king pattern is wrong and severely incomplete; to pick it back up again because I got pissed off, just to find that the pattern called for one ball short of what is actually needed, I am ready to fling turds at someone’s f**king cranium! I will never knit another pattern from the f**king Stitch ‘N Bitch books ever again! My fuchsia sweater is wrong, too. The pattern had the front and back not matching up size-wise. I had to improvise because I’d finished knitting an entire sweater and was not going to turn around and redo it just because someone threw a pattern into a book without double checking it. I am so upset. I. Could. Spit!

Now, if anyone anywhere on the planet Earth knows where I can find one ball of Knit Picks Andean Silk in the color “Merlin”, item# 24213, could you please let me know so I don’t throw a f**cking fit f**cking f**cked up enough to f**cking hurl my f**cking self or some-f**cking-body else off of a tall f**king building!?!? Motherf**cking f**k, f**k!!!!!

UPDATE–What did my loving husband do this morning? He called corporate headquarters and talked to a woman about possibly locating two skeins of the Andean Silk in the color I need to finish his sweater. He says he had her laughing about how much time and money I’ve spent, crying because I couldn’t understand the funky instructions and, consequently, the murderous intentions welling up in my brain. All this from a conversation last night. When he called he hadn’t seen my blog post, which he says he would surely have sent to her because of how hard he laughed when he saw it. And what did this kind woman do?? She located two skeins of what I need and is shipping them to me… for FREE!!!

Now that I know Knit Picks makes batches of colored yarn they will eventually discontinue, and now that I know I will never knit anything from the Stitch ‘N Bitch books ever again, I can’t tell you how happy I am that Knit Picks came through so that I can finish this f**king sweater and hand it to my loving husband as a holiday gift. I. Am. So. F**king. Happy!! I LOVE YOU, HONEY!!!!

Craigslist Scam — Free iPad

Evidently this has been going on for a bit, but this is what happened to me:

I posted an ad to sell something on Craigslist last night. This morning I got an email from a “Martin Taggart”, asking for my phone number for calling or texting. I responded by saying that, yes, I have a number, but is he interested in the item I’m selling? I didn’t hear anything for awhile, and then I get a response telling me I have won a free iPad. This is the letter:

“Attention Cl User,

My name is Martin Taggart, Ceo of Craigslist. We have recently joined up with Apple company regarding a one-time promotional event today, we are giving away no cost Apple iPads to randomly selected folks who have submitted an advert on Craig’s list. You have been chosen as one of our newest winners for today. We randomly select numbers to match up with ads on Cl and your ad matched with our latest drawing.

We have partnered up with Apple inc to advertise their hottest product yet, the Apple iPad. Once again, we are operating this promotion for one-day only. All you need to do is CLICK HERE to check out our website made for this promotion and enter your email to obtain yours for free. Just make sure you enter your email so we can locate our records to guarantee that we have reserved one for you. That’s it!

Congrats on winning a free Apple iPad (valued at $800). If you have any query or concerns, feel free to email me back. However, you need to claim your free iPad 1st to ensure one will be reserved for you before the deadline ends. We do understand that you may possibly not receive this email until after the deadline, however, we suggest you check out the site and enter your email to see if we still have got yours on hold, which we often-times do because others have not claimed theirs in time.

Martin Taggart

CEO, C-list”

Very suspicious, right? So I go to the site and read the fine print. They are not in any way affiliated with Apple®, but I’m still curious. Who wouldn’t want a free iPad, right?! So I gooogled “craigslist giving away iPads” and found a site explaining that it is, in fact, a scam.

Something similar was pulled via PayPal, with a convincing site that looked just like PayPal, a few years ago. It was asking for updated information but had a field for entering in the Social Security Number. I turned to Doug because it looked fishy and he pointed out the url, which did not have “PayPal” anywhere in it. Besides, they never asked for my SSN in the past.

So, if you’re not sure, if it looks too good to be true, even if you’d like to believe it’s real, inspect the url, read the fine print, etc… The careless misspelling of words, anything! Anything that doesn’t seem right, investigate. Some folks don’t mind conning people out of money, will even admit they’re doing it for the thrill of watching naïve people get taken. They’re selfish and well trained and it’s all they know, but I don’t want anyone getting scammed. When your bullshit meter starts to tip, please pay attention.

Heather Dixon’s “Cable Guy” sweater has me stumped! — I figured it out!

I am not an expert level knitter, but I consider myself pretty logical and, usually, as long as I follow the exact instructions for any pattern I can get through the pattern with little-to-no effort.

Heather Dixon’s pattern “Cable Guy” comes from Debbie Stoller’s book Son of Stitch ‘n Bitch. It’s a gorgeous-looking sweater, custom made for men and as soon as Doug saw it, he said he wanted it. I started it a month and a half ago and I’m mostly finished, but now that I’m ready to join the body with the sleeves to finish knitting it in the round, the instructions are eluding me.

I have knitted the sleeves and body up to this point, correctly. I noticed a few mistake that aren’t that big a deal:

• For the body, Rnds 28-31 I noticed that an extra number for *k12, p1 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)… which must be a mistake because there aren’t enough sizes to fit this pattern and the rest of the pattern makes no sense by suddenly reducing the purl to 1 for size medium.
• For the sleeve, Rnd 88 from * to last 12 (11, 11, 10, 10) sts, k12 — they obviously just didn’t complete the steps from here because the rest of the rows call for repeated knit/purl instructions that are very straightforward.

I am stumped with knitting the first six stitches of each sleeve and then the joining row that follows.

Logic tells me that if I match up the twelve stitches of waste yarn from each sleeve with the twelve stitches of waste yarn from the body, I can continue the pattern and graft these forty-eight stitches at the end. Thing is, when I begin to knit five stitches from the first sleeve, after the first knit six, I follow the pattern around the first sleeve, around the body to the middle point where twelve more stitches are set aside with waste yarn on the body, but the instructions call for a repeat of the beginning. If I pass the six stitches on the second sleeve to knit the next five, these six just hang inside next to the “last twelve” on waste yarn with no apparent way to go from there. There are no followup instruction for these loose six, for either sleeve, and the final stitch number after the first row is completed actually includes these stitches in the final tally. I don’t understand the point of knitting the first six stitches of each sleeve at all. Now, I could just drop this step and proceed, remembering to cable every fourteenth row since this step drops off from the instructions, but I’m using good yarn and can only knit and unravel my work so many times before I start to go nuts and want to just throw the whole thing in the trash. I want it to be right, and I want the stitches to match up and decrease at the right points, etc… If the first six are being knit because they are supposed to be part of the twelve held on waste yarn to graft later, I just need to know that and I’ll proceed. I’ve knit and unraveled so many times now that I refuse to proceed without help. I suppose I could have typed all of this out in a forum, but at least this way I can just copy and paste if I must register to a knitting forum, as a last resort.

I hope someone can help me!!! I’ve been googling this topic for a week with no luck!!

Sincerely,

Frustrated Knitter

UPDATE: Having successfully accomplished knitting this sweater, here are the revised instructions I followed for the sweater. Of course, I knit for size ‘medium’ and it was a long sweater, fit for a basketball player. I should have knit it in a small.

When you finish the sleeves, do not K6. Place the first six and last six stitches onto waste yarn and the rest onto a stitch holder.

Now the join makes sense, but ‘cont patt’ means that you have to remember where to add your cable from here on out. The pattern will not tell you, but the existing pattern is a fourteen-stitch interval with the first row being the cable, so on your first row joining the body to the sleeves, you have to also cable it, then knit thirteen, then continue that process until the last nine knit rows of the neck.

When you get to neck shaping, the pattern doesn’t begin where it should. It’s incorrect in a number on Round 1, as well. The fix goes as follows:

• Rnd 1  *K1, k2tog, ssk, k1, sm, k2, k2tog, work in pattern as est to 4 sts from next marker, ssk, k2, sm; rep from * once more
• Rnd 2  *K2tog, ssk, sm, k2, k2tog, work in pattern as est to 4 sts from next marker, ssk, k2, sm; rep from * once more
• Rnd 3  *SSK, sm, k2, k2tog, work in pattern as est to 4 sts from next marker, ssk, k2, sm; rep from * once more
• Rnd 4  *K1, sm, k2, k2tog, work in pattern as est to 4 sts from next marker, ssk, k2, sm; rep from * once more

Repeat the rest of the pattern as instructed and you will have a beautiful sweater courtesy of Heather Dixon!

Step-by-step with AVCHD video

A lot of people have questions concerning AVCHD files, so I’m going to walk you through my process.

My Tools:

• Canon Vixia
• Sony card reader
• Final Cut Pro 7
• After Effects CS4

I had to Google almost every problem I ran into, so I will provide links, if I can, during my walkthrough.

I shoot the footage and then insert the SDHC card into Final Cut Pro 7. If you go to Log and Transfer and don’t see the files, you must change a setting.

At the top of the window, click the cog button for ‘Perform tasks for the selected item’. Select Preferences.

Open AVCHD Plugin. You’ll see AVCHD, and next to it, Apple Intermediate Codec. Choose Apple ProRes 422 (for optimum quality). It’s important to change this setting so that FCP recognizes the AVCHD files.

If you plan on using After Effects CS4 and not the latest version (CS5), you will have problems dropping the ProRes 422 footage into After Effects and using it in FCP if you don’t do one of two things: 1) Change the codec in an export before dropping it into AE, or 2) export it from AE as Apple ProRes 422. Otherwise, the AE export will result in stuttering video footage in you FCP timeline. I posted this yesterday, but not as detailed. I thought it might be more helpful to walk entirely through the process.

At this link, Dave LaRonde, a very helpful person in the Creative Cow forums explains it plainly:

“If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following — footage in an HDV acquisition codec, MPEG1, MPEG2, AVCHD, mp4, mts, m2t, H.261 or H.264 — you need to convert it to a different codec.

These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.”

Anytime Dave speaks up in a forum, I pay attention. Other techies add their input, but Dave usually gets right to the heart of the problem by asking questions and ultimately (I’ve found, so far), gives the most informed advice. I don’t know. He just has an insight that is very thoughtful; very seasoned.

And when I found my other Apple’s AE CS4 program didn’t offer the ProRes 422 codec?

Dave has this to say:

“First AE lesson: DON’T EXPORT! Render using the Render Queue. Exporting is for weenies and FCP users, who have little choice in the matter while in FCP.

Next AE lesson: you’re usually best off rendering in the codec in which you’ll edit in FCP. Typically that means ProRes 422, reserving ProRes 4444 for AE work intended to have an alpha channel.

Final AE lesson: if you don’t have AE installed on the same machine with FCP, you won’t access to thoseProRes codecs, and you’ll have to use either The Animation or PNG codecs.

Yes, I mean a PNG codec and not a PNG sequence: go look at the codecs you get in QT Pro.”

Good to know!

The trials of editing…

I am editing the Lily Cade interview and it has been an interesting experience.

Evidently, AVCHD footage is a major bitch to work with, even though the most updated versions of Final Cut Pro and and Adobe Creative Suite 5 can handle it. It has been a journey working through the problems and I only just discovered that using AVCHD footage in After Effects, unless it is exported first into a different codec, stutters a lot after export in Final Cut Pro. Grrrrr……. Of course, I have Adobe CS4, not CS5, so I spent most of my evening researching and reading forum threads to find out what my problem is. At this point, I’ll be shy about dealing with anything not AVCHD because I’ll have become such an expert at fighting its fires.

The helpful link I found:

Choppy AE footage in FCP

Choppy AE footage in FCP - continued