planetkris

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the crash…

I sat down the other day to do something that one might consider “mundane” in the 21st Century. I created a video that I wanted to burn to a DVD-R. Pretty simple. I have a digital video camera and I want to make a digital video disc with it. Input and output. I have gobs of ones and zeros that I want a laser to etch onto a foil bathed in chemical. If I can capture DVD quality video, one would think I could create a DVD with it.

Firewire cable, Firewire card, IEE1394 drivers, Sony camera control drivers, Capture drivers, Adobe Premier, Render work area, Export DV, AVI, DV codec, TMPGEnc MPEG2 encoder, MPG, and TMPGEnc DVD Author. Head spinning?

Shall we take the data path instead? 9.7GB of raw DV is captured. Then edited and saved creating another 8GB file. That file is encoded to MPEG2 turning it into a 4.1GB file. Then a menu and DVD commands are added. The result is another set of files totaling 4.2GB. 26GB - Twenty Six GIGAbytes on my hard drive. Mind you this is for a ONE hour long video. What’s time? A few hours editing, 2 hours to export the finished product, 5 hours compressing, 1 hour authoring, 2 hours burning 4 copies. Hate.

Two more observations. (bear with me)

1. Dear MPAA. You really have little to worry about. Piracy! Theft! Consider for a moment that our friend “Jeb” wants a copy of “Spider Man” on DVD. He don’t want’a PAY for it, cuz that’s the American way. So Jeb goes out and buys hardware for his PC, media, labels, and those special DVD cases, plus his $50 a month broadband account. Now he’s $300 into his “free DVD’s.” He spends hours trolling for new videos and it takes days to download them. Most of them turn out to be shitty porn or not what they were labeled as, but that’s okay - We’s get’n FREE DeeVeeDees! Once he has 3 or 4 movies he realizes that a 10GB hard drive won’t cut the mustard, so he heads out for more hardware. Now he has to down sample the video in order to fit it on a disc. That’s right! You see Hollywood has these cool 8GB pressed discs for movies. The current technology has only given us 4.7GB burned DVD’s. How do you get 8GB of data onto a 4.7GB disc without losing quality? You don’t! So now Jebs’ got himself a copy of “Spider Man.” It only took him a couple days to find and download it. He spent several hours fiddling with the compression and menu options. After a few tries he got one to burn correctly and work in “most” of his buddies players. Got the jacket cover art printed out, and cool labels made up… And you know what the other 99% of the people looking for “Spider Man” did? They bought the frigging thing for $19!**

2. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that 99% of the people who own a digital video camera have NEVER output the video. Sure they may save it to the hard drive, and make the occasional DivX movie, but the majority are piling up little mini-DV tapes of their memories. They use their camera like a damn VCR and soon - very soon, the tired tape motors and heads will wear out. Game over. My advice: Don’t buy a DV cam unless it outputs DIRECTLY to Mini-DVD, or you know what firmware your DVD burner has by heart.

Where does this leave me? I’m a freak, a nerd. I want to figure it out and conquer digital video once and for all. First my hardware was giving me trouble. BAD_POOL_CALLER showed up and I still can’t get completely rid of him. I use the most stable piece of video editing software (for PC *cough): Adobe Premier. This is way more then I need, but it’s a nice change after crashing every version of ULead BitemePRO, and Sonic MyDVD. TMPGEnc saved my ass. They have a great encoder, and a pretty decent DVD authoring tool.

I now have a path. A list of hardware and software that takes me from tape to DVD. This path was hard fought. With my PC crashing and other problems I have 4 new coasters that cost a buck each. I do have a much better understanding of how stupid it was for me to say: “Oh, I’ll just burn it to DVD for everyone.”

Other lessons and links:
1. Good media and burn speed is the difference between “compatable” and “Disc Error.”
2. Limit the tracks to one if you can, with chapters only, and a very simple menu layout.
3. Never de-interlace, it’s a waste of compression time and makes the output look like ass.
4. www. no more coasters .com - The word of God (for DVD stuff anyway)
5. TMPGEnc - Pegasys Inc.
6. Your digital camera and DVD burner hate you too.

**This story is true, names have been changed. “Jeb” actually held out his copy of “Spider Man” to me in an electronics store that I worked for. He asked if he could “try it out” in all of the DVD players we sold. I had never laughed in a customers face until that moment.

“Maruchan Ramen”
- A Poem -

Oh, that brick
One long string
Cheap and good
Boil
Heat
Wait
Splash that pan
Great big bite
Tasty sip

Flavor
Fake
False
Faux
Like powder
Chicken
A cheat
Tricks you
Tastes the same

Box of ten
Food for one
Fork
Spoon
Water
All you need
Time is money
Money got scared
Left with Ramen

I think a scam was just tried on me. I’m researching how it works and what’s involved. If anyone out there knows the details of something like this, or how it goes, please let me know… I smell foul play.

Here’s what just went down.
I was looking for a USB 3.5″ hard drive case. I went to Ebay and did a search. For starters, I found the shipping and handling costs of computer related products outrageous. $15 for handling on a $14 item? I see how they make money. It seems that the majority of auctioneers are using this same practice.

I find what I’m looking for. It’s an aluminum case 3.5″ drive bay with USB cables and software. 1hr 22min remaining - no bids. I carefully go over the specs, and the shipping and handling costs, etc. I contemplate how much this would cost at CompUSA and what little selection I’d have. Plus the time to drive 20 miles to Salem, NH.

Opening bid price is $14.95. It has a “Buy Now!” price of $16.95. I think about how many hundreds of drive bays they had listed and if it’s worth the $2 to secure my purchase. I figure I could use the two extra bucks and match the starting bid of $14.95. I click bid. I go get lunch.
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Is this a great graphic or what? I can hear this jingle in my head that sounds like a 50’s TV ad. “RoAd TriP, You ESS AEEE!!” That’s when I knew it would work. When the psychotic jingle popped into my head. “Let’s go! Let’s GO! Get packed! Get PACKED! It’s TIME for RoAd TriPp, U! S! A!” *aherm

Christine and I have been packing stuff into boxes for the last few days. The logistics have been worked out. I have to separate stuff into essentially three piles. (A. Moving to California.), (B. Moving to storage.), (C. Trash, burn, or ebay.) The speed of which I do this will pick up as we get closer to July.

I pulled out the camping gear and cleaned off the bugs from the flatware. I’m starting to make a list of stuff that we will need in the car. The exciting part for me will be trying to cram 100 pounds of electric / computer / radio gear into a 2000 Chevy Malibu. The short list of cool gadgets to have: Digital Camera, Digital Video, CB, FRS, Scanner, WiFi, GPS, probably 2 laptops , MP3, USB to Motorola v120 Phone, USB Hanspring data cable, Power inverter, Phone chargers, etc. This will allow us to not only thwart an alien attack, but blog across the US.

So, those of you living vicariously through me , or mildly interested in a planetkris road trip - we’ll be leaving towards the end of August. We’ll be blogging the whole way. Pictures, bad hotels, places we hold up, you’ll get it all! Watch for the graphic! “RoAd TRIP, you ess AAEEEE!”

This won’t be so much of a book review as it will be a review of how this series has interested me for many years.

I have begun again. The journey of Roland and his companions across the desert, the forest, other worlds, and other dimensions. I began reading Stephen King back in High School. Some of his work did little to stir my curiosity. “Carrie,” “Christine,” “Firestarter.” Some of his work still fascinates me in it’s complexity. The Dark Tower books 1 and 2 had been out for a while, and in 1992 “The Waste Lands” came out. In a fever I read “The Gunslinger” and “The Drawing of the Three.” I walked right into a trap. First, I was hooked. I wanted more. Second, the third book was a huge cliff hanger. Not a “We’ll see what Roland gets into next week.” or “Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure!” but a plot that twisted and wrapped you up so that you were with Roland traveling into the unknown. Would we crash? Would we be forced into a terrible position? Who knew? “When is the next book coming out?” “He doesn’t know! What do you mean HE DOESN’T KNOW?!”

I cooled my energy by reading “The Stand.” This 1300 pager is not for the big print faint of heart. It’s a great long read. I read it twice. After this I kept up with some of King’s other work. “Dolores Claiborne,” “Needful Things,” etc. I then grew tired of his newer stuff and moved on.

Then in 1997 “Wizards & Glass” came to print. “Did you know there is a new Dark Tower book out!” My remaining High School friends shouted to me on the phone. “Yes… I know…” I sighed. I asked for it for Christmas that year, or my birthday if I remember. I never read it. I mean, I was going to get around to it. I really wanted to re-read the first 3 books. Then hit book four fresh, with vigor! Never happened.
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I think it was back in 1998 or 97 that I put my faith in the MP3 data format. Some of the guys that I worked with at PictureTel were compiling every Rush CD they had and encoding it to a server. This was big stuff back then! The drives were slow, the encoders were slow, the files were big. I mean 65MB for a whole CD worth of music was pretty cool, but you have to remember that we had 4GIG drives in servers, and 1GIG drives in desktops. This is how I was able to obtain everything that Rush ever recorded from the beginning to 1998. It fit on two 650MB CD’s!

It was around this time that I decided to rip everything I had to MP3. The Great MP3 Project was born. After about 20 CD’s I was pooped. (Mind you this took hours - because on a P133 and a 12X CD-ROM it took close to 35 minutes to rip a CD…) I figured if this was ever going to get done - and done right, I would have to make some changes as to how I listened to, and ripped CD’s.
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Thunderstorms brought me a new IP last night. I was almost 100% sure that it was because I haven’t paid the cable bill. I have all the domains listed at everydns.net and changing the IP took no time at all. Plus the minute I finished the update - we were back on line. I say “we” because 3 of us use my server for blogs. I’ll bother setting up dynamic IP when we’re in Irvine.

The server will be moving again. Probably this weekend. So don’t be shocked if it’s up and down.

We had a good time in New Jersey for the long weekend. Christine showed me what the jersey shore looked like. I’ve never been out on an actual boardwalk. We had a good mileage test of the rallycar and made it home in the rain without too much drama.