Windows XP Hacks, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. Graphics and Multimedia

Hacks 99-107

XP is Microsoft’s first attempt to truly integrate multimedia hardware and graphics-playing abilities. In previous versions of Windows, things such as movie making, music recording, CD burning, and graphics seemed an afterthought rather than a core part of the operating system.

But with XP, that changed. It’s not only that Microsoft dressed up the operating system to make it look better; XP also now offers Windows Media Player, a fully featured piece of music and entertainment software, and Windows Movie Maker, which lets you create home movies and videos.

In this chapter, you’ll find hacks for improving your created movies, burning CDs more easily, importing lyrics into iTunes and the iPod, converting graphics among formats, and more.

Image Conversion in a Pinch

When you need to convert images from one format to another or shrink the size of existing images, try these two graphics tools.

I frequently have to convert graphics from one format to another. For example, I might need to convert a high-quality, very large bitmap TIFF file to a much smaller GIF or JPEG for posting to the Web. Sometimes, I need to shrink the size of a file, while keeping the same format—for example, when sending a picture via email to relatives or friends. When I’m creating my own icons [Hack #19] , I need to convert graphics to the .ico format. Also, I sometimes work with an artist who needs a file in a particular format.

XP’s built-in Paint program can’t ...