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.

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.
Continue reading Ebay Scam. →

New England is a funny place for winter. It seems to be the only place on the planet that gets snow every winter and where people forget how to drive every winter. Even though we usually can get snow for half the year. Compared to North Carolina, we have no excuses. Our towns own plows, we know what winter tires look like, most of us have driven in it, and I’ve seen it snow in May.

Yesterday, in parts of North Carolina it was snowing 2 inches an hour. These people have no idea what to do with it. It’s as if a landslide came down the hills of Worcester and a 6.9 earthquake opened up on downtown Boston. Game over, close the doors, go home.

Christine was headed to UNC Chapel Hill for a grad school interview. They cancelled the 5:00PM flight, she was unable to fit on the 7:00, and had to wait around Logan until 10:00. Bowl of suck.

I think it’s not as bad as it could be, because people in the South don’t even bother to drive. Here in New England however, we do drive. We drive our 10,000Lb Lincoln SUV with bald “all seasons” down 93 at 75MPH. Then we blame the “freak” patch of black ice for flipping the boat 4 times, throwing headrest mounted LCD panels everywhere, and the resulting 14 car pile-up.

I often find it funny when I am unable to solve my own computer problems. I equate it to the carpenters unfinished house.

I got a sweet DVD burner for Christmas, and it’s been hooked up for a month now. I have successfully made 1 DVD. The $20 pile of crashed DVD-R’s in the trash was starting to pile up. You see – the system would write about 20% of the data, the system would blue-screen, and then reboot.

Updated the BIOS, the drivers, the software, the DVD firmware, the VIA main board drivers, and then went to SP4. Click… Burn… Crash.

I turned off the “reboot automatically feature” and was able to see the offending command. NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM was causing the boat to run aground. I googled the dump and the responding Microsquash tech article said in so many words:

Of course it worked. It’s always the simple stuff screwing up the complicated stuff. It’s always the complicated stuff screwing up the easy stuff. I was able to backup some files on the single remaining DVD-R I had.
groan

– Kris

I’ve been thinking about buying a new PDA for about a year now. I cut my teeth on a Handspring Visor back in 2000, and have been a PalmOS PDA user ever since. Last year I upgraded to a refurbished Visor Prism. I was worried about battery life, and evils of backlit color. The Prism is still working great, but I’m wanting more.

This search started when the sleek new PalmOne Tungsten caught my eye. I have some basic requirements for a PDA.

1. It can fit in my pocket and take said abuse. The Prism is a bit on the bulky side. It’s the limit of what I will cram in my front pocket. So anything thinner / shorter would be an improvement.
2. It runs PalmOS and stores; Phone numbers, to-do lists, journal entries, email drafts, alarms, and some random astronomy applications. The “camera-phone-cappuccino-maker-mini-keyboard” option does nothing for me. A high res color screen would be nice – but that just leads to palm pr0n.
3. Some sort of upgradeability. Springboard, SD, MemoryStick, etc. Even if no company ever makes 3rd party stuff for the gameboy sized slot on the back of your PDA. It’s there and it makes me THINK that I have options.

… and finally
4. WiFi. No, not Bluetooth. I mean 802.11B. This is where we hit our big stumbling block for PDA’s. Even PocketPC’s have this problem. “That’s not true Kris! My iPaq is on teh int@rw3b!” Well, it’s a hack at best. Pull the giant PCMCIA WiFi card out of the ass of your PDA, and ask yourself if it’s an “integrated solution”.
Continue reading WiFi + PDA = FADWiiP? →

I have 2 comments to make about the Super Bowl:

1. The thought of millions of PVR owners – going back and forth over the halftime show. Like a goddamn Zapruder film. Back… and to the left. Wait for it! Wait for the boob. Does America have anything better to talk about? Apparently not…

TiVo: Jackson stunt most replayed moment ever

2. I enjoyed the game and I’m glad they won. Had they lost – I would not want to go to work in Boston this morning.
buzzkill++

Violence mars celebrations as fans cheer Super Bowl win.
Being a Boston sports fan.

– Kris