Treasured's Movie Repair Guide -- Borrow a Mac

Advice for non-Mac users that borrow or buy a Mac to do a repair.


1. Get a Mac for one day. Repair takes only a few minutes, but with one day you have margin.

2. Prepare a USB memory stick containing the damaged file and with enough space to contain the repaired file (roughly same size as damaged file).

3. Copy also the Repair Kit to the USB stick. You can do this from your Windows PC for more convenience.

4. Have your Windows PC next to you, so that you can easily communicate with Aero Quartet (email, chat, internet).


As you may not be very familiar with the Mac, you will only have to do the minimum things on the Mac: repair. No need to configure internet or anything. That's why we are using the USB stick.


5. Boot the Mac, connect the USB stick

6. Launch "RepairMovie" (a program included in the Repair Kit)

7. Specify the damaged file, launch the repair.

8. Check the result. Before payment, the repaired movie has a watermark.


9. Once it's ok you can pay. Payment is done through Aero Quartet on-line store. Paypal and credit cards accepted.

10. You receive a registration key by email. Enter this key in RepairMovie.

11. Launch the repair again. This time, the movie has no watermark.

12. Shut down the Mac, connect the USB memory to your Windows PC and verify that the file plays fine on your PC.

13. end of story


Alternative: Buy a cheap second-hand Mac

You can find bargains on sites like eBay.

The computer you purchase doesn't have to be a recent Mac. You can find profiles of all Mac since the beginning of times here:

http://lowendmac.com/profiles.htm


Minimum configuration: 

Any Mac with operating system version 10.4 (Tiger) or higher.

Older PowerPC Macs are also supported.


Recommended configuration:

All Macs since January 2006 use Intel processors. (replacing older PowerPC processors)

Intel Macs are significantly faster than PowerPCs and have two advantages:

- they can run Windows operating system (so investing in a Mac gives you also a good PC for free)

- support won't be discontinued anytime soon.


Any Intel Mac has enough horse power to run the Repair Kits decently.

Besides CPU, other aspects can be a bottleneck the repair performance: RAM, hard disk speed, and transfer speed if data is stored on an external disk or network. Those considerations should only concern people having to repair hundreds of files. For the rest, repair speed is not important.


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A good match for people coming from the Windows world is the Mac mini: You can connect existing screen, USB keyboard and USB mouse and only have to purchase the computer.

New Mac mini starts around $600.


Alternative: Transform your PC in a Mac for one day

This is possible and you can find how to do it in the Internet. Still, it's not legal and I will not explain nor endorse it.