Q. I have a number of family DVDs that I want to edit down to a single DVD with titles and possibly lighten some of the footage, if that is possible. Do you have a program that you would recommend? I know you can’t answer each letter individually, but I imagine this is a topic that you’ll be dealing with sooner or later.
Mark Joy, Hillsboro, Ill.
A. Make that sooner, Mr. J. Your timely question is one that a lot of folks don’t even think to ask as they wrestle with transferring homemade videos onto DVDs or video CDs.
Two things cause quality problems with this kind of video. Sometimes the amateur filmmaker has set the camcorder wrong, and so the clips turn out overly dark or overly bright. Second is the case with folks who have connected their computers to a VHS recorder and copied old video tapes onto CDs. VHS tape has a tendency to deteriorate over time, and after just a few years the clips can become badly degraded with colors all but washed out, with red bleeding into scenes and a general yellow overcast.
Both problems can be solved with a lot of PC and Macintosh video-making software by using brightness/contrast and hue/saturation/lightness adjustment modules. Just as a hobbyist can tweak a single photo in Photoshop Elements, it is possible to tweak every frame wholesale in a video clip using software. Programs that do this include iMovie from Apple, Adobe Premier Elements, Roxio Videowave, Magix Movie Edit Pro, Ulead DVD MovieFactory and Pinnacle Studio. The Windows Movie Maker built in to Windows XP also offers a modest set of tools to enhance clips.
I must confess a bias in favor of Adobe Premiere Elements because it comes from the maker of business-strength Photoshop and consumer-friendly Photoshop Elements, and who knows contrast and color settings better than Photoshop users? On the other hand, Roxio’s Videowave seems easier to use than Premiere Elements. On the other hand, Magix’s product also makes this aspect of home editing appealingly simple. You’ll need to decide by checking various features of these software packages.
To get a feel for this, just fire up your search engine and type in the company name and movie to get details about frame tweaking and other tools in each, because you really can’t go wrong with any of them when it comes to frame tweaking.
Q. I do work (graphics) for several people on my computer, and I have set up each with their own login. Is there a location in Windows XP that keeps track of login times and durations for each account that I can access and print out? Parents, students and others might be interested in this information also.
Bob Roth @msn.com
A. It makes me feel a bit like Big Brother in George Orwell’s classic novel “1984,” but there is, indeed, a way to track who does what on a computer. This includes who logs in, when they log in and, to one degree or another, what they did while at the keyboard.
This potential spy tool is called the Event Viewer Control Panel, and it can be found by clicking Start and then Control Panel and then Administrative Tools. Until you take the steps I’m about to describe, there won’t be much information in the Event Viewer because the default is for no reports on events like logons.
To change that, start with the Local Security Policy icon, also in the Administrative Tools folder. Give it a click to open the display and click on the Audit Policy item. In the next display look for the line on the right of the display that reads “Audit account logon events.” Give that line a right-click and then select Properties from the pop-up menu that appears. In the next display, put a check mark next to the “Success” entry. Click on Apply, and the computer will henceforth create a log of every successful logon by each account on the computer.
To find that audit report, go back to the Administrative Tools Control Panel and open the icon there for Event Viewer. Now, select the subheading Security. In the pane to the right you will see a list of all of the successful logons noted by time and user name, which is the information you want to collect. Finally, if you click on the Action item in the toolbar for this display, you will be given the option to export a text file holding the report.
Q. My daughter has a computer that didn’t have up-to-date virus protection. Consequently, there were several viruses on the PC. After many hours on the phone with Symantec, we resolved that problem but have encountered another. The text of many of the Word documents (over 500) is scrambled, while many documents are OK.
I’ve researched this problem on the Internet and found that scrambled documents can be caused by viruses. I’ve also explored software that allegedly would recover Word documents. I downloaded several but have been unsuccessful in restoring the scrambled documents to readable text
Do you know of any software that will unscramble virus-damaged Word documents, or are you aware of any method to recover the original text? Any help you can offer would be appreciated. We are desperate.
Barbara Raifsnider @comcast.net
A. It sounds like those documents are being messed up by a so-called macro virus, which is a corruption of the tool built in to Word and other programs that allows advanced users to write small programs called macros. Those programs automate frequently used steps like adding a closing to a letter or changing formatting elements.
When infected with this kind of virus, one can disable these macros by holding down the Shift key while opening the file. When this brings up a document free of the virus’ handiwork, you need to copy the text and move it to a new file. To do this with the document open, press Control + A to select all of the text. Now hold down the Shift key and tap the left cursor arrow button to remove the last paragraph mark. After this, with the text still selected, tap Control + C to copy the words.
Now click on New under the File toolbar in Word and select for a blank document. Move the cursor into that new document and press Control + V to paste the clean text into it. Save this file and you’ll have a version that is macro-free.
As to your problems finding utility software to repair Word files, let me suggest that one can recover most of documents rendered into seeming gibberish in Word files by opening them in the Windows text-based Notepad program. Go to a Word icon and give it a right-click. Select Open with in the pop-up menu this summons. In the list of programs available, scroll down to Notepad and select this.
In the text file this generates, scroll down through the rubbish and you’ll eventually find big blocks of text with the original document without punctuation, formatting and such. You can use the mouse cursor to paint this text and then Control + C to copy that text. Then you can open a new Word file and again use Control + V to paste the recovered text. You will need to do a lot of cleanup, but this method will salvage most of stuff lost this way.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at jcoates@tribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.
