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Twitter is great if you know who to follow.

Chinese government investigates fake Apple Stores

China is known for making knock-offs, but who would think that they would start creating rip-off retail stores? The Chinese government has launched an investigation into electronics stores in Kunming. The investigation includes fake Apple Stores that look so real, when customers purchase products they actually believe they are in an Apple Store. The employees even believe they work for Apple. The Associated Press reported five fake Apple stores have been found in the town of Kunming alone. The investigation will be broader than just Kunming; the Chinese government wants to start looking into all electronics business permits and licenses. The Wall Street Journal reported the fake Apple stores owners didn’t even have licences or business permits. Two businesses without licences were closed down and Yu Cheng, who owned three of the fake Apple stores, has now applied to Apple to open an authorized store. Wonder what they’ll say?

How to convert H.264 footage into Apple Intermediate Codec

A reader recently asked me: "Dave, I just bought a new DSLR camera, the video modes are really cool but how do I import them onto my computer so I can edit them without all the rendering in Final Cut?"

I recently purchased the Canon 60D largely for video editing. As you may know the clips are huge files! I use Final Cut Express for my video editing. Today I’m going to be teaching you how to convert your clips from the SD card of your camera into Apple Intermediate Codec. The reason you may want to convert into this codec is you can edit the large file sizes in Final Cut without having to render the clip and you can also scale and make sure your clips are edit ready.

The first thing you have to do is drag the video clips from the SD card into your computer. This might take a while. Once you’ve saved the clips from the SD card onto your hard drive, you now need to download a free program called MPEG Stream Clip.

Now that you downloaded the software and you’ve saved the clips from your SD card onto your hard drive, you’re ready to convert. In MPEG StreamClip you can convert a clip individually or convert a bunch at once. I recommend the latter.

To convert numerous clips at once: Open MPEG Stream Clip, then at the top of the window click List, then Batch List. Now drag all the clips into that Batch List window.

Export them into Quick Time and click OK. Then you are asked where you want to save the converted clips. Now you are presented with the converting options. For converting to the Apple Intermediate Codec, these are the conversion options I use:

Compression: Apple Intermediate Codec

Quality: 100%

Frame Size: 1280×720 (HDTV 720p)

Sound: Uncompressed, Stereo, Auto

Once you’ve selected your conversion options. Click To Batch.

Then click Go.

Your clips are now converting and once finished are edit ready. Now just add them to Final Cut Express and you are ready to start editing.

If you have Final Cut Pro, I’d recommend using the Apple Pro Res Codec. Hope this helped.

Five interesting users on Twitter

Twitter can be a really great service, but if you don’t have anyone interesting to follow then it’s not fun at all. Maybe this list will help.

1. @LMAOTwitPics – For all of you that don’t know, LMAO stands for laugh my ass off. This account tweets funny pictures that users that follow the account send in. Most of the pictures are hilarious, and none of them are appropriate. This account is super fun to follow.

2. @ConanOBrien – He lost his show and now he is back. Every time Conan tweets I always get a laugh. His sense of humor is fantastic. He is a definite follow.

3. @HuffingtonPost – Huff is an internet newspaper, and it tweets interesting headlines and articles. If you are interested in finding out what’s happening in the world, or if you just want to see what Barack Obama’s chest looks like, follow the Huff. My favourite news website by far.

4. @Lord_Voldemort7 – This tweeter seems like a really stubborn guy who tweets about stuff he hates or things that piss him off. His tweets are funny and interesting.

5. @KevinRose – I find Kevin to be a really interesting guy. He’s the founder of the website Digg, and he is just a really cool dude. I always watch his podcast, and he has an addictive personality. He is a great guy to follow on Twitter.

Apple’s iPhone 5 being tested by carriers

The number one question I receive is "when is the new iPhone 5 coming out?" Apparently the new iPhone will not be coming out until at least October. The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. claims there are mobile carriers overseas testing the iPhone 5 as I write. These phones are in sealed metal boxes and are only distributed to high-level staff. They’re also enclosed in what is called a dummy body, which gives no hint as to what the new device will look like.