Friday Funny

Another oldy but goody.

Friday Funny

I've linked this before, but not from Youtube....

Happy Birthday Matthew!

My son is 9 years old today!

I Like Andy Mckee

I'm 38 ...

... and I have nothing particularly interesting to say!

I'm 37!

I'm not old!

The Quest for Divx/Xvid, Part Three

Sorry about the delay on this, I had trouble with my final entry. I found this tool a few years ago, but it seemed primarily for ripping which I wasn't interested in. Now that I want to encode home video in a compact format, it seemed worth a try. I got good results at the start, but then I had trouble with the program freezing on me as I was writing up the review. However, I recently found time to grind down some home vid for the family, and I decided to give it another whirl, and it worked fine. So, I'm somewhat flummoxed why I had the problems before.

So, with all that out of the way, let me describe AutoGK. It's a simple interface to the more complicated Gordian Knot. Which is an combination of Audio/Video tools designed primarily for DVD rips. This set of tools is more than up to the job of handling home video, though. The only issues with this tool are occasional random freezing, which usually happens very early in the process, and the fact that it only works with Type 2, DV-AVI. I covered how to deal with the type 1 to type 2 issue in an earlier post. The program can take the DV-AVI file, and with just a couple of clicks, be on it's way to creating a very pleasing encode of that file. It seems to achieve this by cutting the resolution somewhat(when you select for a specific file size), but the results on my television were great! There were no blocks or artifacts on the screen, and the file compressed down to roughly 12 Megs per minute (a bitrate of about 1.5 MB/s).

There was one other issue, but it is also intermittant. Occasionally, the sound seems to lose sync, but just by a fraction. I was able to use Avidemux2(mentioned here) to move the sound slightly and re-align audio with video.

The end of Analog

I am recording a cassette tape. After this one, there are only two more to go. At this point. I will have everything, finally, digitized. Shortly after finishing that last tape, I intend to pack away the remnants of my old stereo (CD player long gone, record player already put up, just the receiver and the old tape deck left) and hopefully get rid of it all in a year or two.

Nothing really special about this, just thought I'd mark the occasion. When video and photographs catch up to this, I'll be a happy guy.

The Quest for Divx/Xvid, Part Two

Tomorrow, Four days later, what's the difference?

The next tool I tried was Avidemux. This program promises it can encode a whole lotta different types of video. It actually does, but it's limitations were a little different. It apparently uses ffmpeg and mjpegtools to create it's files, tools I've experimented with before. Whether they are the cause of this or not, the program automatically breaks files up to the 4096 byte point, which is annoying when you intend to burn files to 4.7GB. It wont allow me to set it any higher. I wanted to use this program to break up my DV-AVI files, but never mind.

The Xvid files I wanted to create would not be that large, so I figured I'd try this program for that purpose. Unfortunately, any files that looked good were too large to be of any use (approx 2 mbps or greater). The lower bit rates didn't even look fair on the P.C.

one more tool to go...