GilesBathgate

I wanted to view youtube videos on my phone, but unfortunately the mobile youtube site seems to have less content than the full site. So I decided to make my own mobile phone compatible video files and upload it to my phone. First things first I needed to get the flash video file from the youtube URL, which can be done with this handy site. Next i needed to convert the flash video into a .3gp file that is compatible with my mobile phone. This can be done using ffmpeg (I used a windows version of ffmpeg)

I converted the flash video using the following command.

ffmpeg -i movie.flv -s qcif -r 12 -b 30k \
-ar 8000 -ac 1 -ab 12.2k movie.3gp

Finally I copied the files into the video folder on my phone using standard USB Storage Media drivers in windows, which simply present my phone to me as if it were a Hard Drive.

I recently decided to try to transcode an .mp4 (quicktime) movie to burn on to a dvd. Using a windows version of MPlayer and following these instructions I started the transcoding process.

mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf \
-vf scale=720:432,expand=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af \
lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:\
vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:\
abitrate=192:aspect=16/9 -ofps 25 -o movie.mpg movie.mp4

This was not the end of the story however. The next step was to convert the output MPG file info a DVD filesystem. This was done using DVDAuthour fortunately version 0.6.9 comes in precompiled windows binaries. The documentation for DVDAuthour was a little flakey however the easiest way was to create the XML file

<dvdauthor>
     <vmgm />
     <titleset>
         <titles>
             <video format="pal" aspect="16:9" resolution="720x576"/>
             <pgc>
                 <vob file="movie.mpg" />
             </pgc>
         </titles>
     </titleset>
 </dvdauthor>

And then build the dvd filesystem using

dvdauthor -o ./dvd -x dvdauthour.xml

Finally I have to burn the files to disk using the windows version of growisofs (which requires mkisofs) Using the command

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z e: -dvd-video -V "VIDEO_DVD" ./dvd

I decided to install wordpress. It was surprisingly easy once I had checked that my server supported the requirements, (which was the hardest part) and that I could overlay the WordPress database tables into the wiki database. It was a doddle.

Oh wouldn’t it be nice if propellerheads had more modes for its ECF-42 Filter module.

While I was at university I remember a mate of mine showing me this software called Reason. He was making some amazing dark drum and bass sounds using it, and I remember thinking how cool it was that the software basically tries to simulate a series of rack based synhesisers. Unfortunately his copy of Reason 1.0 was a demo version which had the limitation that he could not save, and that after 20 minutes the program was forced to close.

Not wanting to be contrained by these limitations I decided to download a copy of the full version of reason using the file sharing tool Emule. I of course do intend to buy the software at some point because propellerheads deserve to have my money for writing such an excellent piece of software, and the only way they can make the software better is if they have customers buying it.

This is my new laptop, it is a Sony Vaio PCG-FX805. I will shortly be receiving as a birthday/graduation gift. I know I am getting it, as my Dad and I were looking for the best price. We ordered it online from simply.co.uk.