 Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NoCellicast podcast, hosted at podfeed.com, a technology podcast with an ever so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, August 13th, 2023, and this is show number 953. Well, we had a great time off in Mammoth for the week, but thanks to some very kind NoCellicast ways, we have a big show for you today. I need to tell you though that this coming Sunday, we will not have a live show. So let me check the date here. On Sunday the 20th, there will not be a live show because the show is going to come out on Wednesday the 16th because we're off again this time to Houston to meet our brand new grandson, Teddy. So things are gonna be a little crazy for the next few weeks and because we got another trip planned after that, but in case there will be a show next week, but it will not be a live show, will not be live on the 20th. All right, with that, let's go ahead and kick into the show. We're gonna start out with Kurt Liebeszeit. My adult children think I'm an anachronism. I write paper checks to pay my utility bills. I have an iPhone, but it's an oldish iPhone XR, or maybe that's 10R, and I don't even use half of my three gigabyte data allotment. I don't do social media other than to sign into Discord on Sunday nights to check in with the friendly and enthusiastic no-silicasterways. And I still use a real desktop computer, not even a cool Apple Silicon laptop. As detailed in an earlier submission, I'm still using a 2010 Mac Pro as a daily driver for reasons that will soon be revealed. I have a lot of 33 and a third LP records, nearly all of them in the folk music genre. I haven't counted them lately, but there's about 35 linear feet of LPs stacked tightly in four bookcases. I have an ongoing project of transferring content from these spinning vinyl disks to digital formats so that I can play them on the radio program that I host bi-weekly at the local radio station, KBOO-FM Portland. This is why I need a real desktop computer with a CD, DVD, burner drive. I could easily rip the LPs to digital files and call that sufficient, but I'm kind of old school and anachronistic. I like to make CDs that include not only the audio files, but also the liner notes and the artwork. This is possible with programs like Toast, which you can use to create what are called enhanced audio CDs that have separate sub volumes for the musical tracks and the digital data. It also turns out that when you create a CD that closely replicates the order and timing of an original LP, it will often be recognized by Apple Music, or iTunes, as a commercially produced CD, and music will automatically download the metadata, like performer, song title, and album, from Grace Note, saving a lot of manual data entry. My workflow for the project goes something like this. Play an LP while recording it through a Scarlett 24-bit stereo A-to-D converter. The stereo digital stream is captured by Amadeus Pro, a sound editing program. Send the resulting AIFF file through a unfortunately now obsolete program called Click Repair to clean up the clicks and pops of the vinyl record, restoring it to near CD audio quality. Adjust the levels of the tracks and split the tracks out to individual files in 16-bit AIFF format back in Amadeus Pro again. Photograph the album covers front and back along with any enclosed liner notes. Then burn the whole dataset to a CD using a CD burner program. I'm careful to use the highest quality discs that I can lay my hands on and run the burning program at minimum speed, usually 4X. With good quality Tio Euden or JVC discs, now superseded by CMC discs, I've had good luck with CD still being readable after 15 years. Once the CD has been burned, I mount it so that music sees it and tries to match it up to a commercial CD product. Often, it will find an appropriate match and then I just direct music to rip the CD to MP3 format within music. If it doesn't find a match with Grace Note, then I have to manually enter the metadata in music before ripping the CD to an MP3. Now when I sync with my iPhone, the MP3 gets transferred to the phone where I can listen to it on the go, in the car, or at work. I archive the AIFF files and the photo documentation on network attached storage for safekeeping. Now you might be listening to this thinking, optical media is dead, Apple got rid of it 10 years ago, why should I care? One reason that I can think of is that I still think that it is a good idea to have a layered defense against data loss. There's a technology out there called the MDisk, which is supposedly archival quality. The manufacturer has put their discs through rigorous testing and they make the claim that data stored on an MDisk should last a thousand years. Even if you discount that specific claim, it seems likely that an MDisk will hold your data through the next generation or two. So maybe it makes sense to put together a couple of MDisk DVDs containing your most irreplaceable family photos, videos, and oral histories. You can get a portable CD DVD burner from Otherworld Computer for about $35, and the MDisks themselves are available from Amazon. So what is the problem to be solved then? In one word, toast. I started using toast 5 back in 2003 when it ran on a titanium power book G4. Corel, formerly Roxio, has continued to issue new versions of toast that correspond roughly to major operating system changes. They're now up to version 20, and although they have added features to the suite of software that they ship with toast, the underlying main program hasn't changed much. In fact, I would say that the main program has actually regressed. I used to repurchase the whole shooting match under duress every three or four years when Apple's operating system changes made the old toast unusable and I was often disappointed to note that the old reliable features that were critical to my workflow were either hidden or bug ridden. Honestly, if toast 5 were able to run on my current hardware, that's what I would be using. I forget what exactly it was that was the final straw for me. It might have been the more stringent licensing check that was unable to handle allowing more than one user on a given computer to be able to run the program. There was a workaround involving a directory copy in terminal which I was perfectly capable of doing but I was annoyed. I decided to go looking for a replacement for toast. I want to mention here a useful resource that perhaps our listeners might not be familiar with or perhaps were aware of at one time but have forgotten. That resource is the website alternative2.net. You can go to that website, type in the name of a program and it will show you crowdsourced alternatives that provide a similar function. When I did that for toast, it showed me a bunch of Windows programs that burn CDs but not much for the Mac operating system. The main standout that pops up for the Mac operating system is a free software package called Burn from Martin Foucair hosted on Sourceforge. It turns out that Burn is a straightforward, perfectly capable solution for burning audio CDs. It even supports burning enhanced audio format CDs. Burn has a simple interface. You drag audio cuts into a window in the order you desire for them to play and then you are given an opportunity to set the burn parameters such as burn speed which I always set at minimum. Then you press the burn button. Putting together an enhanced CD requires two steps. You burn the audio files first but check a box that says to leave the session open, meaning not finalized. Then you burn the data files in a second burn step and this time uncheck the box so that the catalog is finalized. Burn has never given me a problem as far as working with various disc manufacturers or even various CD burner hardware. Burn also has the capability to burn DVD discs. My needs are almost exclusively in the audio only side so I've only made a couple of data DVD discs and one DVD player disc. Burning a data DVD is essentially the same as burning a data CD simple and straightforward or as one reviewer on alternative.net put it non-fussy. Burning a DVD for playback on a DVD player is one area where burn comes up decidedly short compared to toast. Toast gives you a choice of multiple themes for a playback DVD along with various menu style options. With burn there really is only a single theme and it's best if you only have a single video feature. If you drop a video file on burn that isn't quite what a DVD should have burn will invoke its own copy of the open source FF MPEG program in the background to reprocess the file into a compatible format with possible loss of quality it should be noted. It all works but it's not going to win any academy awards. I found a glitch in burn when I first started using it several years ago. It was leaving an audible click in each CD audio file very close to the end of the playback period. I wrote to Martin about it and he quickly issued a fix within about a week. He continues to update the program periodically in response to Apple's ever-changing API interface. There is a user form on his source forage page where you can ask questions and report bugs. You may find this funny but the worst thing about burn is the name. Try typing burn or even burn for Mac into a search engine and be prepared to scroll through pages of non-useful results before finding Martin's program. If you're like me and work with audio CD almost exclusively then switching to burn is a no-brainer. If you're a person who only occasionally has the need to put together a playback DVD with say home movies for your parents or non-techie friends then burn will get the job done at zero cost. I've already mentioned the usefulness of being able to burn a data DVD of precious memories. You won't have to get dragged along on toast's relentless upgrade cycles with the attendant cost and risk. And of course if you want to put together many different video projects then you're better off with toast I would say. I can say that I've been happier since I switched to burn and left toast behind. There's the money saved of course but the greater issue was putting up with the seemingly pointless user interface changes for the sake of quote modernizing the app. Adios toast hello burn. Well thanks so much for that Kurt. You know to the audience we put up the post that Kurt wrote that goes along with this audio recording quite a few days ago and it's gotten a lot of traction. People are saying well I've got a stack of CDs too so maybe Kurt isn't so different from everybody else in looking for a solution to this easier way to burn CDs. You've been hearing me complain at length about trying to get Apple's help figuring out why the battery doesn't last as long as it should in my 14 inch M1 MacBook Pro. You also probably remember that they had me doing so many time-based experiments on it that I bought an M2 MacBook Air so I could continue to get work done while they made me do these experiments. The good news is that I'm in love with the MacBook Air and I've been stretching its capabilities and I've yet to find a limit to what it can do. I have to tell you it seriously has me questioning whether I even need a Pro machine. I decided to see whether I could conduct my part of the live show while on the road at Lindsey's house using only the MacBook Air. Now my first attempt I carried both laptops just in case the MacBook Air wasn't actually up to the task. The main limitation for my work with the MacBook Air is that it has only two Thunderbolt USB-C ports. I use a lot of peripherals when I'm doing the live show and at home I have a CalDigit TS3 Plus dock and an OWC Thunderbolt hub which together manage all of those connections. But when I'm on the road, that'd be a lot to carry along. Let's review the listed devices I need to plug into my traveling Mac for the live show. First I have a ShureMvi USB interface for my XLR microphone. Now that's not my standard interface but it's the one I take on the road. I also have an Ethernet since Wi-Fi makes video a bit unpredictable. The third thing I need is an external USB-C display which is currently the 15-inch 4K KYY display. With all of the different windows I have to have open I simply can't do it on a single display so having that external USB-C display is perfect for doing the live show. Next I have the Logitech Litroglo LED USB light panel. I could do without that and technically the show would still come out but the lighting in Forbes's room where I do the recordings is absolutely hideous so hideous for this. It's fine for a bedroom but it's hideous for getting a good video display and you've got to have good lighting on your face. Finally I'm now using my iPhone for continuity camera when I'm on the road. The first time I tried using the MacBook Air for the live show I used the Satechi 4 port USB-C hub that I reviewed a few months ago. This hub provides 4 USB-C 3.0 Gen1 data ports. It doesn't provide pass-through power delivery but I can use the MagSafe charger on the MacBook Air and not take up a USB-C port. Now remember my very recent article when I talked about the difference between a hub and a dock and we said that a hub just multiplies the existing ports. In this case a hub is the right choice because the MacBook Air only has those two Thunderbolt USB-C ports on it. I'm really comfortable using dongles to make those USB-C ports into anything I want so I don't need a dock to change the functionality. I only need more USB-C ports. Now the challenge of using a USB-C hub was that many devices don't work properly if plugged in through a USB-C hub or any kind of USB hub. Especially if it's a bus powered hub like my Satechi. For example the KYY USB-C display simply will not function if it's plugged in via a USB-C hub. In my testing at home I realized that the microphone interface also required a direct connection in my Mac. If both of those devices have to connect directly then that's both of my USB-C ports used up and I can't add any other peripherals including that Satechi hub. Well around the time I was preparing for this exercise I heard Pilot Pete say on the Mac Geek Gab that he figured out how to trick his mic interface into working through a USB-C hub. He said if the Mac was off or at least asleep when you plug in the interface when you awaken the Mac the interface will work through a hub. This solution actually worked for me. This bent I could have the external display take one port and the USB-C hub from Satechi take the second port and I'd gain those three USB-C ports. This allowed me to plug in all of my devices while at Lindsay's. Now it did require a lot of pre-thinking and organizing of my devices but everything worked. However we experienced some instability in my audio during the live show. This very likely could have been a problem with StreamYard or the local network but I was worried that maybe the USB-C hub might have been the problem. Perhaps a Thunderbolt hub would do a better job. Now the ability to have a hub for Thunderbolt only came out with Mac OS Big Sur in 2020. Before then Thunderbolt devices ended the Thunderbolt chain. But with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 equipped Macs and Thunderbolt 4 equipped PCs we can now all enjoy Thunderbolt hubs multiplying the number of Thunderbolt ports. In my article from January 2022 entitled The Wonder of Thunderbolt Hubbing with the OWC Thunderbolt hub I explained how on my desktop I have that OWC Thunderbolt hub connected to the CalDigit TS3 Plus dock which adds two more Thunderbolt ports to my Mac setup. But for travel I'd need something with even more ports. Back when I wrote the article about the OWC Thunderbolt hub David Price commented on the post asking me did you consider the CalDigit Element Thunderbolt hub? I had to confess at the time I didn't even realize that existed when I wrote about the one from OWC. But a few months ago when Steve and I visited David Roth and his lovely wife Jennifer and more importantly their Darling Golden Retrievers Luna and Melody I noticed a tiny box on David's desk next to his Mac. It was the CalDigit Element Thunderbolt hub that David Price had asked me about. This hub is about the size of a deck of playing cards and is similar in size to the OWC Thunderbolt hub. But sitting on his desk it looks so tiny and portable it really caught my eye. I tried to take David's from his house but he caught me so instead he sent me a note when the CalDigit Thunderbolt Element hub was on sale. I picked one up to see if it would make my travel setup any easier. The great news is that on our first test there were zero glitches with my audio or video using the CalDigit Element hub along with the MacBook Air. Not only that this hub has so many ports I actually had some left over. The CalDigit Thunderbolt Element hub has one Thunderbolt port on the end and that's where you connect your computer and it gives you three Thunderbolt ports in return. Like the OWC Thunderbolt hub that means you really only gain two Thunderbolt ports. But where the OWC hub throws in one 10 gigabit per second USB 3.2 port the CalDigit Thunderbolt Element hub gives you four USB 3.2 ports at 10 gigabits per second. So you end up with a lot more ports with the CalDigit than you do on the OWC. Now the side effect of this embarrassment of riches in ports was that I actually had to remove some of the dongles I keep attached to my USB-A devices because those were USB-A ports. Since all Thunderbolt 4 ports are also USB-4 I plugged all of my USB-C devices into the Thunderbolt side and then the USB-A devices into the USB 3.2 side. So I have three USB-C ports on this and in there I put the Ethernet to USB-C dongle the KYI display and the Logitech Lighter Glow for power only. On the four USB-A ports side I put the Shure MVI interface for my XLR microphone and the USB-A to lightning to iPhone for continuity camera. The included Thunderbolt cable connects the CalDigit Thunderbolt element hub for all of the data transfer of all of those devices. Since it's a powered hub I didn't even have to plug the MacBook Air into power using MagSafe. One cable to rule them all. Now I know that's a lot of stuff to keep in your head so in the show notes I included a handy-dandy diagram of the setup along with a photo of exactly how messy but awesome this was. There are two things I want to mention about this setup. By our new handy-dandy definition of a hub versus a dock a hub should multiply the existing ports but both the OWCI use at home and the CalDigit I bought for the road multiply Thunderbolt hubs but they also add USB-A ports. Now I guess we're going to allow it in our definition since Thunderbolt 4 is also USB 4 but it did make me smile to kind of think that through. There's also one downside of a Thunderbolt hub for traveling like this. As I said earlier seeing the CalDigit Thunderbolt element hub on David's desk attracted me because it was so tiny but what I didn't take into account was how huge the power supplies are for these devices. This tiny CalDigit Thunderbolt element hub by itself only weighs 6.5 ounces but the power supply with its power cable weighs an additional 17 ounces. Now the whole reason to get a MacBook Air is because they're so thin and light so you don't have a lot to carry around but adding this huge weight in size to my bag gave me pause. I started thinking about whether it makes sense to travel with the MacBook Air when I'm going to do the live show or whether I should just carry the MacBook Pro since it doesn't need a hub because it has more ports. It was time for some math. MacBook Pro weighs 54 ounces but the MacBook Air plus the CalDigit Thunderbolt element hub including its massive power supply weighs 66 ounces so that makes the MacBook Air combo kit 22% heavier. Now it may be illogical but I'll still travel with the MacBook Air. It's easy to take out in the car to get some work done. It's easier to carry between rooms. It's easier in just about every way to use than the 14-inch MacBook Pro. I'm willing to pay the price of the extra weight of the hub just to have that convenience the rest of the time when I'm away from home and I'm not recording. Don't forget, I'm already carrying a mic, a mic interface, a mic tripod, big headphones, a light and a 15-inch USB-C display so what's an extra pound and a half in that Mac? The final reason I won't travel with my MacBook Pro is that the battery life problem still has not been resolved. I'm afraid it may live out the rest of its days as a desktop. The MacBook Air has a longer battery life even if the MacBook Pro didn't have problems so it wins on all of those counts. I have to say that the CalDigit Thunderbolt element hub is a great little device for expanding the Thunderbolt and USB ports you have on your computer whether it's a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, or a Thunderbolt 4 equipped PC. You can buy it on Amazon for $230 right now and as of the time of this article there's a $20 off coupon. Did you know that buying things like the CalDigit Thunderbolt element hub actually cost me money in order to make the show for you and keep it going? Well, there's a way you can help support the show to help me pay those bills and that's by going to podfeed.com slash Patreon if you wanted to be a patron of the Podfeed Podcast and do a weekly or monthly donation to help support the show. You can also go to podfeed.com slash PayPal if you'd rather do a one-time donation. I really appreciate your support and it really does help make this podcast possible. Hi, this is Jill from the Northwoods. I mentioned before I just got a new job and I decided to get myself a present. I got the Anker Power Comp S3 speakerphone. The reason I did this is that during the pandemic I've been on Zoom calls all day long. It's part of my job to be on so many meetings but now I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my working career. I decided it was time to get away from those headphones that were just tethering me down. Sometimes I'd like to stand maybe pace a little bit while I'm in these long meetings. I'm sitting way too much. So my present for this job is that I got the speakerphone and it's amazing. I sound good in it. I asked various people to test things with me and they were able to hear me very well not only that I'm able to hear the calls very well. No longer tether to any headphones no longer having anything on my head. Again this is going to be the rest of my working career so I wanted something else. This particular speaking phone has six microphones. I noticed that when I'm talking I think it's meant for a conference room it'll point to the direction it hears. Sometimes my bird sets it off a little but nobody says that they hear my bird. So it enhances the voice and gets rid of the bird. And I noticed it even can be a little farther away and people still hear me very well. The voice tracking it does is really good. It also has Bluetooth capability or you can plug it in directly into your computer. I found for myself in general I found Bluetooth items don't work as well as plugging directly into your computer when it comes to latency and other types of issues like that. But I even tried the Bluetooth and this did pretty well too. There's no reason why I shouldn't plug it in so I do. But I can also use it in the future for things like my iPhone if I'm having any kind of call on it to just sound even better. It works with every type of call software that you use Skype, FaceTime, it has Zoom, WebEx, GoToMeeting and it works like a charm. In my job I work with a couple of different pieces of software and when I log into an app it automatically recognizes I'm in an app and gives me controls right on the face of the speaker phone itself. There is an app you can get for it too if you need to do that gives you some more controls like volume, firmware updates, other types of settings but I haven't found so far that I need it. Plus it has a handy travel case. This last week when I traveled out to California I brought it with me. Sometimes I take calls in my hotel room and it was small enough easy enough for me to use that I could just use it everywhere. It also has a built-in battery so if I'm in my hotel room not looking to plug it in it says it can work for up to 24 hours on a fully charged battery and has the ability to act as a battery pack for one other device. I haven't found that to be necessary I don't need another battery but I guess it's good to know I have something else there. Of course like most types of headphones and other types of speaker phones it has a mute button which also synchronizes with the mute on Teams that's the one I've been using and other applications so I can either click on the button in Teams or use the mute button right on the device itself make things louder, quieter and it has a quick response. During the pandemic I bought a terrible speakerphone but that was because everyone was going crazy with the Zoom meeting stuff it was the only one I was able to find and get right away. It was pretty terrible people couldn't hear me and I didn't think I heard other people very well at all but this one top notch and for everything I was looking for it just did a great job. I noticed there are a couple of different models out there this one ran me $99 on sale if you heard Amazon just had a big sale going on last week and right now it is still $99 but they also have other models with different features and different costs but for me this one's just been great it had great reviews and when I got it it worked exactly as expected I'm certain that these other models out there are primarily about how big is your conference room again I'm just using it for myself or when I'm in a hotel so I didn't need anything for a large room I sell bigger models for sure this one for just me and maybe a couple other people is perfect so I got this as a gift for myself and I love it already it's going to make the rest of my working life so much better and I recommended it to people I work with who struggled to find good ways of getting people to hear them while they're on calls either they're using their laptop microphone this is so much better than that and people can hear you and when you work remotely and the entire impression people get from you is how you sound whether or not you forget to unmute your phone or whether you forget to mute your phone and you're crunching on your chips while your boss is talking this is the perfect device to helping you sound amazing and be that employee you hope to be while working remotely if you have any questions you're always welcome to ask me either on the blog article itself or on Allison Slack channel so I hope you enjoy the Anker PowerConf S3 speakerphone as much as I do that was great Jill I love it it's funny it just doesn't seem like something we would buy nowadays is a speakerphone but I completely understand why that works Lindsay has one and I know she really likes it for her calls but I'd like to throw in a few extra comments I talked to Jill about the Anker PowerConf 3 and I asked her if the internal battery charges when it's tethered to the computer and she confirmed that it does the other question I had was whether this is a full duplex device now you care about full duplex because that's the technology that allows you to talk and hear from the device at the same time rather than one getting cut off single duplex uses the same channel for send and receive so you can talk or listen but not do both at the same time finding the answer to this took a wee bit more digging as the amazon listing for the Anker PowerConf 3 didn't say I was able to find a support article on support.ankerwork.com where they confirmed that it is definitely a full duplex device Hi this is husband Steve with a review of the Insta360X3 action camera a few months ago our good friend Pat Dengler showed us her news spherical camera the Insta360X3 and after seeing its capabilities I knew I wanted one being the thoughtful wife she is Allison kindly bought me one as a gift her one condition was that I write a review of the camera to make sure I really learned how to use it Insta360 cameras come in a few models and the latest is the X3 to simplify things in this review going forward I'll refer to the camera simply as the X3 before I begin I have to mention one item that as an engineer bothers me about the name 360 used for these types of cameras the field of view for 360 cameras is actually four pi steridians meaning the captured image covers a full sphere including top and bottom not just a 360 degree cylinder as the name implies but we'll just stay with a 360 naming convention here said since generally accepted terminology my first 360 camera was a RICO theta 5 from a few years ago I learned the basics of 360 photography and videography with the theta and I thought the camera was well engineered however the X3 stands well above the theta in many respects overall I really like the X3 for its style controls and functionality the X3 is relatively small measuring four and a half inches tall by 1.8 inches wide by 1.3 inches thick including the hemispherical lenses which bulge out quite a bit from the body it weighs 180 grams which is about 6.3 ounces the camera body is nice to the touch with rounded edges and sides that are slightly ridged for a more sure grip the rear face has a crisp 2.3 inch display which is super bright bright enough for use in direct sunlight prominent on the camera are the dual fisheye f1.9 lenses the X3 seamlessly stitches the two lenses output and creates a cohesive spherical view for both photos and videos on the bottom of the camera is a standard 1.25x20 screw mount allowing it to be attached to most camera mounts and tripods when mounted to a selfie stick or any long narrow support the X3 has enough coverage from the two separate lenses to automatically remove the camera and stick from the image this results in 360 photos and videos from a perspective that appears to be floating in mid-air not supported by anything a pretty cool effect the camera comes with a removable rechargeable 1800 mAh battery that supports 81 minutes of continuous video recording you can fully charge the battery from zero in about 90 minutes using a standard USB-C cable the X3 has onboard storage but also supports a microSD card for additional storage and for offloading photos and videos more quickly to eliminate shakes and jitters and provide very good motion stabilized images the X3 uses gyroscopes and advanced algorithms since the camera has a full 360-degree view the image perspective is held in the same direction regardless of how you move rotate or reorient the camera some of the other key features of the X3 are it's waterproof down to 10 meters and rated IPX8 it offers easy-to-use reframing tools after shooting 360 so you don't need to worry about the camera's viewing angle while shooting it also has four built-in microphones which support stereo wind noise reduction and direction focus that's where the camera enhances the audio in the direction of the viewing angle when reframing 360 video it is Wi-Fi enabled at both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands and it supports Bluetooth 5.0 and it supports voice commands the X3 is fairly easy to use but some of the on-camera menu selections are buried a couple levels down you can use the X3 standalone but its utility goes way up if you pair it with your phone using the 360 app on your phone either iPhone or Android you connect the camera via an ad hoc Wi-Fi network that supports high data transfer speeds which are needed for the large 360 photo and video files the app provides full photo video control and image viewing of the X3 from your phone viewing on the phone allows you to spin the image or video by dragging it to see the full 360-degree view from any perspective you want you can also view the 360 image in a wide crop rectangular version instead of the full 360 view the Insta app is very handy if you want to take a photo while the X3 is at the end of a long selfie stick and is hard to reach it also lets you get a larger view of the images and videos you've captured with your phone's display you can download your photos and videos directly from the X3 into your photo library one of the coolest features of the Insta app are the many special animation effects it provides since most photo viewers don't allow the user to manipulate and view a full 360-degree image the Insta app provides five animation effects which automatically spin, zoom, and reorient the 360 image in various ways to create a video of your still image from many perspectives they also offer background music of various styles that you can add to the video of your animated 360 still photo the X3 offers several video and photo shooting modes for video you can record up to 5.7k resolution at 30 frames per second and you can select standard, active HDR time lapse time shift which is like a hyperlapse video bullet time which is slow-mo video with a 360-degree spin popularized on the matrix loop recording which overwrites the earliest content after reaching a maximum length and the new pre-recording mode which records video up to 15 to 30 seconds before you even hit the record button for photos you can shoot up to 72 megapixels resolution and you can select standard, HDR, burst, and interval it also has a very cool starlapse mode that I haven't used yet but will by placing the X3 on a tripod at night in starlapse mode it will record the streaks left by stars planets and meteors as the earth rotates under the heavens a couple of other nifty features of the X3 are that you can connect it directly to your apple watch instead of your phone to control the camera you can take photos start stop videos and change shooting modes however you cannot view images or videos on your watch you can also in real time stream 360 videos from your X3 to Facebook, YouTube, and a few other platforms through your phone however I was not successful in performing this because during my test I did not have a good cell signal the X3 uses a cell connection for streaming to the internet since wifi is being used to connect the X3 to the phone the X3 comes with a usb-c cable one battery and a soft pouch type case I also got a few extra accessories that have come in handy first is a semi-hard case that zips open and close to better protect the camera probably one of the most useful accessories is the selfie stick which is important for removing your hand and arm from a 360 photo or video one version of the selfie stick that insta offers has three small legs that unfold at the bottom of the stick so you can free standard on a surface like a tripod I also got a two-sided lens protector which is easy to slide on and off just the lens portion of the camera it's very important to use this cover when you're not shooting since the lenses on both sides of the X3 bulge out significantly from the camera body if the camera falls or scrapes on a hard surface the bulging lenses will be one of the first things to get scratched so I highly recommend getting the two-sided lens protector that covers both front and back lenses I make a point of putting the cover back on the camera whenever I finish shooting with it finally I got a dual battery pack charger that supports USB-C charging along with a spare battery okay bottom line the insta 360 x3 is the most capable portable 360 action can that I've seen so far at about $450 on amazon the x3 is not inexpensive but I think it's worth it it's rugged fully featured has great software support and produces high quality photos and videos the camera has so many features I haven't discovered let alone used them all yet so I have a lot of fun ahead of me finding out what this action camera can really do well I know many of you whenever you tell me about some cool new gadget you got the first thing I say is so when's the review coming I realized after doing my talk at max stock of learn by teaching that if I could get Steve to do the review then he would learn how to use it and it does seem to have worked I'm really happy that he got this because we just got back from mammoth and he did a lot of work learning to use it before we left and being able to write this article and so he was able to take some really really cool pictures and videos while we were on our trip I think my favorite one was when he actually stuck the camera under water I think he mentioned it's waterproof he stuck a hat one lens underwater and one out of the water and got this really cool picture in and out of the water in 360 or in four pi steradian as we like to say around this house the other thing I wanted to say was he mentioned the lens protector and I was really happy that I was able to find that good lens protector that's so easy to put on and take off but will never fall off because when he had the Ricoh theta he did get a scratch on one of the lenses and as a result I got really good at going opening his photos in affinity photo and opening the recto linear editing function that they have where you can actually edit 360 photos and I was able to go in and just you know use inpainting to get rid of that little smudge on every single one of his photos so I'm really glad that we were able to get that that lens cover form and it does take really cool pictures and videos Lindsay asked me for a very unusual present for her birthday this year she asked for a motion book from themotionbooks.com the motion book is a video screen inside a book that automatically plays any videos or slideshows you put on its internal storage she wanted one of the motion books so she could have her wedding video and maybe some slideshows as a coffee table book that design sounds simple enough but the execution and elegance of the software in the instructions really made me want to tell you about the motion books the motion book is a very elegant linen covered book that's eight and a half by six by point five inches when you open the book inside is a six and a half inch diagonal 16 by nine aspect ratio screen with five buttons below it there's one for rewind play pause fast forward and volume up and down opening the motion book auto plays the video from the beginning after about five seconds during that few seconds of wait time you'll see the battery charge level of the book before the video starts to play now that you understand what it looks like and have a feeling for how it plays let's talk about the elegant setup inside the box is a little card with a qr code that will take you to themotionbooks.com slash learn where you can watch a very short two and a half minute video on how to set up the device it's a really well done screen cast with a simultaneous split screen of windows on the left and macOS on the right with the voiceover giving very clear instructions now those instructions explain to connect the motion book to your computer using the included nine inch long micro usb cable boo that it's not usb-c anyway the motion book then shows up like a normal usb attached drive there are two little video files on the motion book one is a welcome file and one is the same help video to explain the setup after I'd followed the instructions it occurred to me that I probably could have watched the videos right on the motion book the instructions tell you to delete those two videos from the book and empty the trash and only then to drag your own videos to the motion book the last part of the instructions and another included card in the box both say in giant letters do not format it goes on to say formatting the motion books will remove our unique software and break the video playback functionalities to free up memory on your device move the files you want to delete into the trash and empty the trash do not format the motion books needless to say I chose not to format the motion book I got for Lindsay after I dragged Lindsay's wedding video onto the device I opened the book and it instantly played well after five seconds the audio was just fine about what you would expect from a six inch tablet it was perfect for the device if you hold down the fast forward and rewind buttons it easily moves forward and back through your video the instructions also explain that if you want to control which video plays first in your book simply change the names of the files with a leading numerical prefix to alphabetize them on the device easy peasy if you know someone who is tech phobic the motion books will preload your video for free before delivery you upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox, Google Drive or pretty much anywhere with a URL and they'll upload it and install it on your book the motion book website I should say the motion books website have many different options on which book you buy but in reality they're pretty much all the same they're the same size they're the same storage they're the same color of linen but you do get to choose what one line of text appears on the front and the font for that you can choose from our wedding best day ever we do or memories you could also personalize your cover message now the pricing is interesting every single book option is priced currently at one hundred and five to one hundred and twenty five dollars now I assume that would be two different sizes or two different amounts of storage but it's actually whether or not you have the motion book branding on the back of the book you know how if you have a calendar made it'll say Mimeo photos or Shutterfly in the back it's just like that I gladly took the $20 cheaper price for two reasons firstly because it doesn't detract from the beauty of the book at all and secondly I believe there should be a law across the land that all good products have the name of the company imprinted on them so you can figure out how to buy another one can't tell you how long I spent trying to figure out who made this one kind of plastic spatula I like so much the motion books have free shipping in the continental US as of the time of this writing and they have a long list of countries they ship to as well I think the motion book is a wonderful gift if you take the time to create videos or slide shows to remember an event by the way the reason I keep saying the motion book so that you remember the URL is themotionbook.com now if you've been listening I said earlier themotionbooks.com and luckily for us they bought both of those URLs but you do have to remember the word the at the beginning so themotionbook.com well that is going to wind us up for this week did you know you can email me at allisonatpodfee.com anytime you like if you have a question or suggestion just send it on over heck if you got a new gadget do a review got a new piece of software you like do a review I love reviews and you can send them to allisonatpodfee.com you can follow me on mastodontatpodfee.com at kast.social remember everything good starts with podfee.com if you want to join the fun of the conversation you can join our Slack community at podfee.com slash slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely no-cellicast ways that are 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