Using Activity Monitor to Un-Hang a Process

Not anything new, but today it helped (ok, at least seemed to help, I'm lacking my empirical data matrix) un-hang a beachballed Safari.

All you have to do is launch Activity Monitor (which just runs the "top" command, like in the Terminal) and it seems to unhang, unfreeze, unbeachball a stuck app.

Does it really work? I dunno. It seems to. It just did. Or at least seemed to. But is it falsifiable?

Safari vs Apple's Own Website

This isn't a Pro App hint, per se, but since I look up a lot of info about Final Cut via Safari when Safari doesn't work it becomes a problem solving a problem with Final Cut.

If you see this error:

Request Entity Too Large. The requested resource /kb/index does not allow request data with GET requests, or the amount of data provided in the request exceeds the capacity limit. Apache/1.3.33 Server at support.apple.com Port 80.

When looking at Apple's site the ONLY fix for me (other than relaunching Safari) is to delete every single Apple cookie in Safari. I don't have the patience to delete one at a time and find the culprit, maybe someone out there does.

Oh, another weird thing about Safari and Apple's own site:



People using Safari 4 see the double text-entry box at discussions.apple.com, those with Firefox don't. You'd think Apple would fix this by now.

Safari 4.0 how to turn off Top Sites and reclaim CPU cycles

Safari 4.0 is out and it steals a lot of CPU if you're not careful. There's a process called Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher which grabs sites for Safari to take screenshots of in the background for Top Sites.

The problem is this background process can eat up to 10% of your CPU when it's running or more. This isn't good when you need every ounce of power out of your Mac while you render or perform Multiclip edits in FCP.

Worse still, is there is a folder at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Webpage Previews which will fill up with .png and .jpeg screenshots of websites you visit (or don't visit but have bookmarked). Not only is this a security risk, (it'll take screenshots of your web email) but it's messy, can eat up a LOT of hard drive space and keeps backup software needlessly busy.

Here's how to stop all this from happening.

Keep in mind Safari 4.0 only came out a few hours ago so this "fix" hasn't been tested in the long term. I'm trying it right now and so far things seem okay. The only caveat seems to be some sites never finish "loading" because they never have a screenshot taken of them. They do complete loading but you'll see spinning gears on some of their tabs.

1. Quit Safari 4.0 and right-click on it's icon in the Finder. Select "Show Package Contents".
2. Look inside the Contents folder and right-click on Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher and select Compress "Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher".
3. Put the original Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher in the trash and empty it.
4. Navigate to ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Webpage Previews and highlight it. Get Info on it.
5. At the bottom click on the padlock, type in your password and then change the Privilege column for your login name to "Read only". Close the Get Info window.
6. Launch Safari.

Btw, a great way to stop ad sites is to set up and use OpenDNS. Also, if you dislike seeing ads in Safari you can install and try either of these: GlimmerBlocker or Safari AdBlock.

An alternate method has been emailed to me which I have not tried so use it at your own risk:

I can confirm that the following list of terminal commands works fine:
cd ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/
rm -rf "Webpage Previews"
ln -s /dev/null "Webpage Previews"

The only issue is that there is an error logged in the console for each website visited.

I haven't tried this as my method seems to be working so far. I think this is from the discussion forums at Apple. Unfortunately I can't credit the original poster as I'm not sure who it is.

UPDATE: Quit Safari toss this into the Terminal to effectively turn off Webpage Previews:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy -int 2

Then relaunch Safari.

To return to Safari generating Webpage Previews quit Safari then throw this into the Terminal:

defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy

VisualHub Can't Convert .flv Anymore?

A client has handed you (meaning you've used Command + Option + A in Safari to open the Activity Window and downloaded that really cool video from YouTube to email your friends) a .flv that they need in some other format for something or other. Opening it in VLC you see that it's h264/mp4a and VisualHub begets you an error like "Cannot allocate temp picture, check pix fmt"

What do you do? Well, you can try altering the Decoding parameter in VisualHub to be QuickTime or ffmpeg or whatever but your luck will vary. It may just work, or need Perian or may never work. flvs are fussy like that.

Even the power of QuickTime alone won't do it; you need 3x the transcoding power.

A) Install Perian
B) Install MPEG Streamclip.
C) Launch MPEG Streamclip and drag your fussy .flv into it.
D) Export it to H.264 (QuickTime) or the codec of your choice.

See, QuickTime + Perian will PLAY the .flv but when you export it it'll likely be MOS (Mit Out Sound). But, opening it with the power of Perian plus exporting it with the power of MPEG Streamclip will result in a transcoded file with audio.

Yup. You didn't even have to restart :) The only downside is that the resultant file will be 60-70% larger than the original .flv but monkey with the settings in MPEG Streamclip and you can bring that down significantly without very much of a loss in quality at all. The first thing to change is the Data Rate with a lower kbits/s. Also, unless you need really high quality audio, try lowering the audio to 22.050 kHz.

Great, thanks, Mr. Not Bruce, but how do I delete these two apps now?

From Perian's site:

How do I remove Perian?
Open the System Preferences. Select the Perian pane and 'Remove.' Now 'Show All' preference panes, control-click the Perian pane and 'Remove "Perian" Preference Pane.

As for MPEG Streamclip...just drag it to the trash.