photo credit: justinsomnia

So what caused me to be up till 2 in the morning? Struggling with video encoding, conversion and HTML5 fickleness. Essentially, this is not a process for mere mortals. While video in general is complicated enough, most will and should rely on a site like youtube to share their videos (at least basic creators). However due to certain, ummm… how shall we say, “ambitious” music labels, music video remixes get flagged and punted immediately. It will be nice if we can get a universally supported video codec (stay tuned for Google I/O) as it will greatly streamline this process (or should in theory).

I learned recently that Handbrake has let it’s ogg/theora capability go stale and will not bring it back. Additionally, my video editor of choice, kdenlive doesn’t generate web optimized mp4 files (where the index is at the beginning of the file). Thus, after rendering I struggled a bit to find a combination of programs that would generate the necessary ogv and mp4 videos to support the html5 video browser ecosystem. Here’s what I came up with… Modify to suit your needs.

HandBrakeCLI

HandBrakeCLI -i input.mp4 -o output.mp4 --encoder x264 --vb 2000 --ab 128 --width x --height y --crop 0:0:0:0 --optimize

ffmpeg2theora

ffmpeg2theora -V 2000 input.mp4 #generates input.ogv

It also doesn’t help that ubuntu has decided it can’t ship an ffmpeg with aac support (which means I have to modify kdenlive’s profile.xml to use libmp3lame instead).

Windows 7

Since Windows still doesn’t support dual booting into linux, I starting laying down Windows 7. I choose the Home Professional Upgrade variant and chose to make the jump to amd64. First thing I noticed is that the install process took forever (more than twice as long as installing Kubuntu a few hours later). While in general this doesn’t rank high on discretionary criteria, I had become spoiled by how quickly I can reinstall linux after doing it every six months.

I was pleasantly surprised that it automatically found working drivers for everything (though there is still one unidentified USB device which is bugging me), which was nice having my dual monitor setup working from the start. I still had to download updates for the video and audio drivers, but everything else went smoothly.

It’s a little disheartening to have to relearn everything (especially trying to find things in the new fragmented Control Panel), but I’m assuming with the help of Google, I can figure most things out.

The Windows side of my install only gets used for games (Steam) and Photoshop CS3 work, so it really don’t have excel at very much =)

Kubuntu 10.04

Installation was fast and smooth. I installed the updated nvidia drivers (which borked the bootsplash screen, but that bug is already fixed pending release in the update repositories). Installed Flash 64bit and struggled with the same sound issue that happens every install (for some reason, the audio channels that Flash uses are muted by default in Kubuntu. You have to go into the mixer and fix the muting and volume and then everything works great).

I followed the nice tutorial here or here to get dropbox working without Nautilus.

Also, Ubuntu decided to move sun-java6 over to their partner repository (which unfortunately isn’t enabled by default). While OpenJDK might one day become an adequate replacement, I just don’t think it is yet, so in KPackageKit open up the Software Sources dialog and enable the partner repository under Third Party Software.

Additionally, there are some python-gtk imports that prevent nvidia-settings from merging the xorg.conf file (after you run nvidia-xconfig), so be sure to run it from the command line first to see the errors. It would be nice if Kubuntu included the python-gtk bindings by default.

There is also a rather annoying bug (which I filed) where the authorization window when installing software appears behind all the others. Frustrating, but no big impact.

In conclusion, I was surprised overall by how smoothly the process went (on both sides). There was a lot of prep that went into this in backing up everything to my network drive, so a quick process it wasn’t, but no catastrophes, which is always appreciated.

Babels Blunder

Blue Planet

Strangers

On the whole the old keyboard has served me quite well, though the MIDI-in port is malfunctioning at this point. At some point, I’ll grab a keyboard with weighted keys (and a full complement of 88), but for now I’ll the the most out of it I can.

The painstaking descriptions of the Mars environment really makes everything real – as if this could really be happening and we are oblivious to it. The plot development is a bit like A Wizard’s Dilemma and A Wizard Alone where Kit and Nita are separated for much of the book. I happen to like the stories where they are together a bit more, but I felt the separation was well done and not as forced or contrived as it was in the earlier two books.

Bottom line: I loved it. Duane’s series continues to be one of my all time favorites!

Below is a rough cut of my rendition of devilishlypure‘s song Nerdfighterlike which was then done by Hank & Katherine Green here (of the vlogbrothers).

It is fairly rough at the moment and missing the middle solo, as well as vocals (though in the process of exploring my home studio, I’ve determined my singing range is rather narrow). Let me know what you think though. I’m still getting used to my tools.

Drums were done in Hydrogen and mixing done with Ardour.

Posted via email from griphiam’s posterous

Posted via email from griphiam’s posterous

Unfortunately the price is quite steep ($320), but just think of how many Halloweens this would cover where you didn’t have to stress out about what the hell you’ll wear to that party! Here’s what you need to complete the costume:

• Pants [link] $40
• Suspenders
• Boots [link] $450 (but I’m sure you can find cheaper)
• Holster
• Red Shirt
• Replica Gun

Worth it?

Posted via email from griphiam’s posterous