Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
FFmpeg for Mac OSX
I have just recently bought my very first Mac, a very tasty 27inch iMac with Snow Leopard. Most of the software I use is fully cross platform, however this does not always mean its readily available for the different platforms.
For example I use a lot of FFmpeg for my video conversion scripts, on Ubuntu its as easy as Synaptic. On Windows the easiest way is Cygwin Ports. On a mac, erm …
Rather than compiling from source I found the ffmpeg binary in the package files of Miro Video Converter. It does not include support for libfaac but the built in aac codec actually performs quite well compared to the Ubuntu and Cygwin versions so It can produce reasonable acc audio. There was also the binary for ffmpeg2theora so I thought I would share this as well.
Download ffmpeg for OSX Snow Leopard
Download ffmpeg2theora for OSX Snow Leopoard
Read the rest of this entry »Converting Videos for Android using Command Line FFmpeg in MPEG4 or H264
This one has taken me a while. I found out quickly what FFmpeg paremeters to use to convert a video to MPEG4 that will play on an Android device but the H264 was tricky. H264 support on Android is loose at best and has a real pig to get working but I have finally managed this almost impossible feat. H264 is the ultimate codec we have at current for mobile devices as it uses far less disc space to achieve the same quality as other codecs, although the encoding time is far greater.
Do not Google any further, I found many examples on the web but none seemed to work, these definitely do. This has all be done on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) and you will need to enable the medibuntu.org repository to get the non-free codecs for H264 to work.
Read the rest of this entry »Transcode/Convert Videos for Cowon J3/S9 using Mencoder on Command Line
There are many programs around for converting or transcoding videos, but I find GUI tools can sometimes be a lot of clicking to get the job done. The command line is ideal for this task as in one line we can transcode and resize/resample any video we want. The real power, however, is when we add this to a script to start automating the work for us. In this example I have used the Mencoder tool which is part of Mplayer program but there are others such as ffmpeg and transcode (Linux only). I also believe Avidemux can be used on the command line as well.
Read the rest of this entry »Why Windows 7 Still Isn’t Good Enough
I have been using Linux since Fedora Core 4, which was in 2005. I switched over from Windows XP quite simply for the reason that I was running a OEM copy which didn’t want to work on my computer as I had changed a broken motherboard. Apparently I would need the retail copy to work with a new motherboard as its technically a new PC. Out of disgust for Windows licensing I made a shift to a free alternative.
As a web developer I need to test websites on multiple web browsers and since Safari was made available for Windows, this meant that I could run every web browser within Windows. My current practice is to fire up Windows in a virtual machine to test IE and Safari but there was a chance this inconvenience could be over, I just needed to see if I could work with Windows as my main platform.
My current laptop came with an OEM disc of Windows 7 and 6 months ago I decided to install it. I thought that I could force myself to be happy with Windows, after all most of the software I use is cross platform so all I require Windows to do is be an operating system. I was wrong as I have found Windows to be a pain and very primitive in some cases. I could have forced myself to continue using it but I have decided to move back to using Linux (Ubuntu), not because I am a Linux geek/fan boy or a MS hater, just because generally I feel that its a better system, especially when using Gnome window manager.
There are many good and bad points about all systems, even though you will not hear OSX users admit to this. My writing here is not to be completely negative against Windows 7, just to point out the reasons why I decided to stop using it. This is not intended to be a Windows/Ubuntu comparison as that would be unfair. It’s just the issued I am raising with Windows are problems solved with Ubuntu. For the record, I was impressed by many aspects of Windows 7, and for use as a pleasure machine then this is the OS I would choose, but for business and productivity Ubuntu with Gnome wins in my opinion.
Read the rest of this entry »Roadsend PHP Compiler Ubuntu 64bit deb package
I have built a binary package for Roadsend Compiler. Unfortunately It does not include support for GTK 2 but the website says support is under development. The PHP-Qt website also says its working on support for Roadsend. I had trouble compiling in ODBC support so I expect this will not work.
Read the rest of this entry »