Encoding DVDs Not A Fun Experience

Took my Windows XP machine (the faster of the two) up to Oliver BC to edit some wedding video for some family friends. Edited a total 92 minutes of video, including some image touch-up (the lighting was terrible in the dance hall), and some sound touch up (their camcorder has a very bad microphone that was at the back of the hall). Everything was going fine until I wanted to export the video and burn it to DVD.

Adobe has a built-in DVD burner that does everything for you, as long as you're not looking for menus and titles and stuff, which I'm not. I still didn't want to use the built-in burner because I wanted to burn multiple copies from one masterfile on my hard drive, and as far as I can tell, Adobe's built-in burner script doesn't keep temporary files around for long. I figured that Nero would be able to handle it all for me, so I exported the video using the MPEG2-DVD option in the Premiere exporter. According to my readings, NTSC DVDs can only handle PCM and Dolby AC3 for the audio, while PAL DVDs can do PCM, AC3, and MP2. Premiere comes with a trial copy of some AC3 encoder, and only having 3 trial encodes left, I opted for the PCM. Adobe ended up exporting an .m2v file and a .wav file (I was expecting it to put both video and audio into one container, but this wasn't a huge problem). I opened up Nero, only to find that it will only handle .vob, .ifo, and .bup's. In order to burn anything else to a DVD Video requires NeroVision DVD. Not feeling like hitting up eMule or any of that nonsense (considering I'm not on my own internet), I tried hunting around for freeware to do conversions and/or burning for me. One project I found was DVDAuthorGUI, which seemed like it would work, by taking the exported files and putting them in .vob files for Nero. When I got that program fired up, it turned out that it couldn't handle PCM wave audio, and needed either .mp2 or .ac3. At that point I had to go hunting for another program to convert my wave file to ac3. BatchffmpegGUI XP helped me along there, so that I had an ac3 audio that could go into a vob along with the mp2, which Nero could then burn. To top all this off, I was constantly short on hard drive space, shuffling files around from partition to partition trying to make this stuff work.

For the people who think that video games cause violence, I can assure them that video games cause far less frustration and pent up anger than having to deal with formats that are patented by large corporations. Why can't the process of exporting a DVD be easier? Why is it that a consumer has to spend hundreds of dollars buying software and licenses, or download software that can't be distributed in compiled form in the United States. The media conglomerates are so interested in their own investments that they make it purposefully difficult and expensive for a consumer to work with his own personal video recording. What a pain in the butt.

Crankworx Video

In relation to my Whistler trip post, I have another post, this time related to the biking aspect. My brother has finished editing a video, that I compressed into XviD/Vorbis/Matroska. You can either dink around with filters for the ultimately crappy Windows Media Player, or you can get VideoLan Client, which will play the video out of the box. You can grab the video off my ftp server here. I would have posted it on something like OurMedia.org, but my brother used a copyrighted song for the background. All the video was taken using my Nikon Coolpix 5900 digital still camera.

The Full/Empty Recycle Bin

I'm trying to clear up some space for the purpose of video editing on my Windows XP Pro machine. The E: drive is my chosen partition for this job, as it has nothing on it except for the raw capture. One problem I was running into was a slight problem of missing 2.4 GB. On a partition that is 24.5 GB, 2.4 GB is a lot of missing real estate. So I made sure that everything was cleared off (except for the raw video), and I mean everything. All the other files were moved to different partitions, the recycle bin was emptied and the system restore points were cleared. Still I'm missing some space. So I ran scandisk and defrag, hoping that would clear up 2.4 GB (a miraculous feat) on this FAT32 partition (I chose FAT32 when installing XP for Linux compatibility reasons). This did not clear up the space, so I converted it to NTFS. I then went directory diving in cmd.exe, deleted a small file from the recycle bin that wasn't showing up in explorer, but that still doesn't get me back my 2.4 GB. Check out the following photo:

Windows Stupidity. Please excuse any Flickr problems, you will need to view the larger size to read the text.

In this photo, on the top left, you can see that the recycle bin is empty, according to the cmd.exe shell command dir. In the bottom left is explorer.exe showing that the recycle bin is empty. On the bottom right we see my explorer settings to show that I am viewing all hidden and system files (I leave my settings like this all the time). Finally, in the top right, we see that the recycle bin is taking up 2.4 GB out of spite for its master. A comparison of the raw video folder with the total partition usage will confirm the 2.4 GB deficit. I know many people wonder why I use Linux, and maybe it's things like this that caused me to switch; Linux just doesn't screw with my head in such evil ways.

Does anybody know any other ways I can get back my hard drive space? I don't want to have to format (raw video is on there, and not enough space on other partitions), but perhaps there are other sneaky things that Windows is doing I don't know about?

Advertising On Adam's Blog?

Yes, it seems that everyone is getting on the Google AdSense bandwagon, and now I am no exception. I'm not actually a fan of advertising, as I usually find it to be intrusive and distracting, with Flash popups and popunders, huge animations, or full page ads that take precious seconds to redirect you to the actual content. But what's wrong with wanting a little money? So I now have an advertisement at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Statistically, according to Google, this is the worst place to put an advertisement, but that's okay, because I'm not paying for blogspot.com anyways, and I highly doubt this will be a big source of revenue for me. So let me test this out: I've picked the smallest ad size that would fit, and stuck with text-only ads. This should keep the advertisers nice and quiet while you read Adam's blog.

Update: I would also like to point out that most of my readers get this through syndication and aggregators (you should, it saves me a lot of time), which does not have the advertisements, thus the majority of my readers are unaffected. That, and I fixed a spelling mistake.

Canadian Indie Music, Wi-Fi Speed Spray

Not too long ago, a Korean MSN correspondent of mine asked me what Canadian music was like. My favourite band is by far The Beatles, with classical music, soundtrack music, and other forms of 60's and 70's rock holding up the rest of my playlist. I sent the Korean some Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive, but that isn't very representative of current Canadian artists. This is when I realized that I'm not very Canadian in my music listening choices. I don't listen to the radio much (kind of hard considering the esoteric stuff that I listen to), and it seems like most of the big bands I have heard of are from the States or from the UK. The only "current" stuff that I could think to send was Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews Band, and Nickelback, and even those weren't yet sitting on my hard drive at the time. Keeping a Canadian identity is very important for our society, especially with the proximity of the heavy-weight American media, and I decided that I needed to change that. I did some research on Canadian Music over at Wikipedia to get some ideas, and am trying out some of the suggestions from there. Today I found out about the CBC Radio 3 Podcast, and am currently listening to show #2. As a point of interest, Grant Lawrence, the DJ for the podcast, claims that the CBC Radio 3 podcast is the first ever public radio podcast with "pod safe" music, which means that the artists approved their music to be played over the podcast (first show, 30 seconds into it). I'm not going to fact check if it is the first legal music podcast in the world, but it wouldn't surprise me. So go check out the podcast, add it to your syndicator programs and be prepared to get blown away by the Canadian underground!

On another note, I've gone ahead and ordered three boxes of Wi-Fi Speed Spray (in case I should buy a Wi-Fi system in the future), and I would urge all of you to do the same. I mean, how can you go wrong with those equations?!

Back From Whistler

My brother and two of his friends volunteered for the Crankworx Mountain Bike Festival up at Whistler over the past weekend, and I volunteered to drive them up and stay with them (as no other parent was available). We drove up Thursday morning at 5, arriving shortly after 8, and were there until 4 in the evening on Sunday. A good time was had by all, the kids meeting all their heros and me walking around on the hiking trails. I set up a flickr account to post a small set of pictures here. The Lost Lake picture is out of order, making it seem as if the lake is at the top of the mountain, when it is actually at the base. I also didn't post any of the biking pictures, as I'm not into that stuff.

Windows Vista Losing Monad

It looks like yet another feature is being pulled from Windows Vista. This time, the Microsoft Shell (MSH, codename Monad) is the feature being pulled from MS's next operating system. Monad was going to be one of those cool features for geeks, as Microsoft was looking to the unix shells as a model on how to do great things with the command line prompt. Personally, I hated the command line, until I started to use Linux, and then I realized how a real command line is supposed to work. Monad has many great features, and looks like it will be a killer system, in conjunction with the Windows File System (also chopped from Vista). I know that Byron was looking forward to Monad, but it looks like his favourite OS company has let him down yet again ;)

MS is planning on releasing Monad with the server version of Longhorn, due to be released sometime in 2007.

Don't Buy Mitsumi DVD-R Media

In relation to this blog, I would like to suggest that one should never buy Mitsumi DVD-R 4.7GB 4x media. I went back to Futureshop and bought a five pack of Memorex DVD-R 8x, and so far 2 burns out of 2 burns have come out fine. I know that my sample size isn't very large, but 10/10 fails with Mitsumi media and 2/2 passes with Memorex media may be the start of a statistical trend. For both media I burned at half the speed they were rated for.

As for the FFII incident, an update that I got through a Debian blog (who in turn got it from ffii.de, but the link doesn't work for me) was that a DNS hosting company chickened out and removed the ffii.org site after receiving a letter from a Nutzwerk lawyer.

Shaw Assigning Different Subnets

Here's an annoying problem for you: two computers in a house, connected through a hub to Shaw Cable Internet. Now try ftping. I've come across this problem earlier this month, and it's back to haunt me today. As it turns out, Shaw's DHCP servers aren't smart enough to assign the same IP subnet to all computers registering through the same cable modem (I am entitled to two public IP addresses). When I try to transfer files over ftp all communications have to go through Shaw's router because they are on different subnets. This means that all transfers are limited to 50KBps, and the transfers will count against me in my monthly upload/downloads. One way I have found around this is to set IP aliases on both machines, creating my own private network (10.x.x.x). Of course, Windows needs to be rebooted every time you fart, so I have to wait for Kevin to save his game of Rollercoaster Tycoon so that I can restart the machine and get my own private network running in parallel. Oh, and this method seems to break the simple domain names that Shaw uses (like "shawmail" for my pop3/smtp server). Do I fiddle around with my DNS and gateway settings (breaking any hope of proper DHCP), or do I reboot Windows twice every time I want to transfer files? I've emailed Shaw technical, and the guy basically said that IP address allocation is handled by the DHCP server so they have no manual control over it.

FFII.org Shut Down By Nutzwerk

Has the FFII website been shutdown by Nutzwerk GmbH? FFII, the foundation that fights to get rid of software patents, among other legal battles, has apparently been driven into the ground by libel lawsuits filed by Nutzwerk GmbH over the past couple months. Apparently, FFII had posted some documents on their website about a legal win over Nutzwerk, and some of the text was seen as libelous to Nutzwerk (the FFII was badmouthing Nutzwerk). Since April, Nutzwerk has filed 5 court lawsuits, and word has it that ffii.org has been taken down due to financial strain. ffii.org.uk is still up, but has no related information. ffii.de is still up, and has links to two news articles, but these articles are both hosted on wiki.ffii.org, and are thus not available. Google has a cache of the earlier article, but has nothing for the more recent article. You can view a German press release on the Nutzwerk website here. Has Nutzwerk managed to take the ffii.org website off the net? Is the FFII merely trying to get the attention of the community? Has anybody heard anything more?