WeaponsGradeCode » Computers

mencoder Command Line to transcode VOB to iphone

Brian — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:23:15 +0000

ffmpeg -i “movie.VOB” -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -maxrate 1000k -b 700k -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 192k -s 480×368 -aspect 4:3 /Volumes/data/share/temp/3.mov

Here’s s’more Xen HVM and Paravirtualization Notes.

Brian — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:19:02 +0000

The best write up for lean and mean paravirtualization configuration for Xen Centos 5.3 DomU’s on a Centos 5.3 Dom0 is at: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Xen/InstallingCentOSDomU

…and for HVM I like this site: http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/Configuring_and_Installing_a_Xen_Hardware_Virtual_Machine_(HVM)_domainU_Guest

Never use XFS with Xen on Centos. It will crash Dom0.

Brian — Sat, 02 May 2009 19:26:05 +0000

This is one of those week or so long learning experiences that you must go through whenever exploring a new technology.

I installed Centos 5.3 and Xen on a hot new piece of hardware with the intention of runnig paravirtualized Centos 5.3 images on it. I’d probably be running a half dozen images at a time and with disk images at > 4GB I thought I’d run XFS as the Dom0 file system to speed the file access/create/delete times.

Big Mistake.

Every time I’d run a DomU guest, the host/Dom0 machine would consistently, but at different time intervals, crash. That’s right, the entire server would crash/hang/freeze. After a week of goofing around I finally tried a guest on a stock ext3 file system and Shazam! everything worked.

Manually controlling bridge networking on Xen

Brian — Sat, 02 May 2009 19:15:39 +0000

I followed this great article: http://henning.schmiedehausen.org/wingnut-diaries/archives/86

Installing a simple paravirtualized Centos DomU on Centos

Brian — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:59:56 +0000

A simple challenge: Install a stock Centos 5.3 Xen host/Dom0 and a paravirtualized Centos 5.3 guest/DomU. After weeks of frustration, detailed in another post, I got this going with the help of this guide:

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Xen/InstallingCentOSDomU

Power Desktop: Late 2008 Macbook Pro, XPS M1730, Inspiron e1705

Brian — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:04:23 +0000

As I’ll explain in a later post, my e1705 died under warranty. It was the hottest e1705 you could buy at the time (7900GS, 2GB Core2Duo 2.2GHz) so Dell quickly replaced it with an unbelievably hot XPS M1730 (2x 8700, 2.8GHz Extreme, 4GB.) That was too much machine for me so I switched and bought a late 2008 aluminum Macbook Pro 2.53GHz. Here are some pictures of the machines together.

Here’s the M1730 and e1705 side by side:

Here’s a good looking blog design…

Brian — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:15:09 +0000

…I really like the shaded viewing surface:

Found here: http://www.digitalpropulsion.org/

The iPhone’s working again…

Brian — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:10:18 +0000

…brought it to the Apple store and they restored it for me. That’s one _very_ nice thing about buying apple, you can go to the store and play with the products before buying, and bring the stuff back to get fixed when needed.

Dell has been _very_, VERY, good to me and I’d recommend them in a second. But buying $2,000 laptops sight unseen is a bit unnerving.

DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR IPHONE TO 2.2.1

Brian — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:22:24 +0000

It’ll break your iphone. I’ve got a new iPhone and new MacBook Pro with little on them and the update failed leaving the device useless, and you’ll likely lose your data. It’s clear the second stringers put together this release and passed on any testing. Do NOT upgrade.

Converting DVD or VOB files to Palm using Handbrake

Brian — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:17:13 +0000

Two years ago I picked up a Palm TX for the wife to keep track of contacts and schedule. I went with the TX as it was the ‘Cadillac’ model at the time with all the features. Also, I thought it’d be fun to copy movies to it for the kids to watch in a pinch. Two years on I finally got around to this task.

Unfortunately, I just discovered that the WiFi is broken on the unit. It’s a bummer because that was a fun feature, but not terribly useful as the included browser ‘Blazer’ sucked. The symptoms were strange: everytime I turned on the Wifi radio, the TX would immediately reset. I’m sure it was a software problem so after hard reseting and clearing data a couple times, even with Palm tech support, I gave up. I even tried loading a new ROM from here with no luck.

Back on topic… I keep all the movies I have in their original VOB format off the DVD. That means we can watch them on the TV at the same quality in which they came off the disk, and transcoding for projects like this becomes a bit easier and higher quality. Space wise it’s not a problem now that we have 1.5TB disks…

To start, download and install the Handbrake GUI (it includes the command line tool) from here http://handbrake.fr/?article=download to your PC.

Then download tcpmp.palmos.0.72RC1.zip from here:

http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/

…extract the files and install these to your Palm TX

tcpmp.prc
tcpmp_mp3_plugin.prc
tcpmp_mpeg4_plugin.prc

You can install these others, but the free xvid video and mp3 audio codecs above work well enough. I’d recommend these for flexibility as they support the DVD video and audio formats:

ac3.plugin.0.72RC1.zip
ffmpeg.plugin.0.72RC1.zip

After getting the above software installed and collect the VOBs or AVIs of the movies you’d like to transfer, open handbrake and configure these options (click to see the full size image):

1) Select file
2) Browse for the VOB you’d like to convert
3) Enter an output name with an .avi extension
4) Select the XVID video encoder
5) Select the MP3 audio encoder
6) Set the size to 480×320 the maximum dimensions of the TX display.
7) Optionally de-interlace the video. This is very technical, but if the source is interlaced (likely) and you don’t de-interlace, the output on the TX will look terrible. If the source is not Interlaced, you don’t need this. I don’t think de-interlacing a non-interlaced source will hurt so you may want to always set this.

Then select the video tab (8)

9) Set the bit rate to 400. This looks reasonably good. You may want to set it higher (5 or 6 hundred) for a higher quality movie.

Click ‘Start’ and wait. One hour of video takes about an hour to transcode on a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo.

Copy the new avi file to the Palm TX via an SD card and enjoy. Be sure to rotate the display and view in ‘full screen’ mode.

Note, for those who prefer the command line, here’s the above settings for the Handbrake command line too:

“c:\Program Files\Handbrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe” -i -o -w 480 -l 320 -d -E lame -e xvid