Latest Entries »

Slideshow DVD Authoring

Filed Under: VideoFX
Mar.09, 2010

Usually after a vacation it takes me a while until I have all the footage and the pictures ready for viewing. Sometimes I just leave the footage there and I come back to it later or much later. So since I just was in Peru I wanted to process the footage from my Sanyo FH1. I have like 1500 photos and 4 hours of footage that I want to put on DVDs. So the first problem I ran into is the fact that I have no BluRay burner and all of my footage is 720p and 1080p. Too large for regular DVDs. So until then I decided to make a slide-show of the photos I have and send it to family and friends. I wanted to create the slide-show as a regular DVD to play it on the TV. I mean everyone has a DVD in their house, and they comfortably view it as a movie.
So the first try was Adobe DVD Encore, has all kinds of bells and whistles but when I tried to import the 15 hundred photos it took a long time. And I just preempted the task (Task manager End Task) ‘cause it was too much. Then I tried Adobe premiere to make the actual slide-show and the background sound. Premiere worked better but when I exported to a DV format the quality was terrible. So I tried Ulead Movie factory.

Ulead DVD Movie factory made it much easier for me to make my slide-show and it was quick about it. It also enables you to export the MPEG2 video as NTSC or as PAL, and then you can burn it with Adobe Encore or other burning software, or you just export as an ISO or burn it directly with Ulead. The quality was great. Also for 15 hundred pics it take you a while to make transitions pans and zooms but the DVD factory has that built in and it randomizes the movements, which is pretty cool.Now when it comes to the fine tuning is where this app is lacking. But it is really good because on high volumes no one goes through each transition pan and zoom. So it really did a good job.

Tags: , , , ,
read more

Highway driving, it’s just liberating

Filed Under: Fun Stuff, VideoFX
Mar.08, 2010

Over the weekend we had some nice weather, and there is nothing greater than just jumping in the car and driving away. Crank up the music and just go. The sun smiling at you the throughout the entire trip, and no traffic. It’s just beautiful. This is what I did this past weekend, among other things.

I also broke the all time record for speeding on the highway. 500 MPH

Luckily no traffic officers were there to hand out their hot candy tickets. These last couple of years the policies have changed so drastically, that the ticketing has lost it’s purpose, of saving lives, it has just become another mean for income and saving the jobs of the  patrol officers.

Back in the day lets say hundreds of years ago, the role these protectors had was to protect the caravans and tourists from dangerous bandits. But now since thy have no competition at all, they just hand out tickets to the caravans directly. Basically a hidden fee lost somewhere in the grand scheme of the PMT formula. Or governmental extortion?

Pretty funny, I guess we the people, need to get fed up with this predatory enforcement of any kind of tickets.

Well anyway, I can’t turn this into a rant ’cause I had a good time and there were no hidden fees this time. But you can take a look at what I came up with from my travels.

Feel the speed, 500 MPH.


Tags: , ,
read more

Coffee, facts and rumors

Filed Under: health
Mar.06, 2010

For a while now I have been drinking coffee. I am not even sure which are the exact reasons for it, but I have a few hunches. Is it because I have a 9 to 5, is it because I like the taste, or is it a ritual? I don’t know how much of each is it, but I now they all contribute. All  these reasons added together justify it for me. I mean It takes the sleepiness away, but by the end of day I still feel like snoozing in the train back home. I like it with 2 – 2.5 sugars and half and half. So it is the taste and the waking up. I like the ritual of mixing it up and going at my desk and start the day by looking at my computer queue. It sounds also like it is a movie scene where it makes the morning feel better, and is the precursor of a great day. In a nut shell these are my reasons for drinking it.

Now the bad parts, facts and rumors.

I know for a fact that I sweat more when I drink coffee. There are no shades of gray here. I know it because I pieced it together. But a while back I heard these rumors that it take calcium out of the bones. 7-8 years ago I heard that coffee was bad for the bone structure. Then one day I decided to look it up and see what is science saying about it, and the studies at the time were inconclusive if it de-calcifies the bones. Also, couple of years ago I heard this doctor talking about sugars and obesity and the way the body regulates itself. He was saying that at any given time, the bloodstream of a human contains in totality one spoon of sugars. Now I drink mine with 2 – 2.5 sugars so by 9:30 – 10:00 I already have twice or more the normal amount of sugar in my blood stream. This doctor was also saying that there are two hormones that regulate the sugars in the blood stream. One is insulin that deposits the sugars from the blood into fat, and the other one kicks in and determines the body to burn it by increasing the body temperature and other functions. This second hormone is supposedly rendered inefficient in obese people leaving only insulin to deposit everything. Where am I am getting at is that I do sweat more after I had my coffee, and from what the doctor said it seems to be a complete puzzle.  So this is my fact about coffee, I sweat more.

Now I need all of you to post in comments rumors, and also facts you are absolutely sure about, because this would be a nice topic. The only problem is that usually people get fearful when they have to put their emails to comment. I assure you no one will have access to those. This is not my thing, to be a pest and try to inconvenience you by spamming your email.

Today I also had my first green tea in a long time and yesterday was the only day in the week when I treated myself with some coffee and I did sweat. Therefore I will try to see how I feel if I drink green tea in the morning. I feel that if I do my own poll where people talk about their experiences, it feels more personal and it demystifies the topic. Brings a certain grasp of truth over speculations. By this poll someone can see what exactly people have witnessed/experienced on their own, no statistics, no fancy researchers, and no push polling, just people’s accounts. I know I sweat, what happens to you?

So please post comments and digg it if you get engaged by the topic.

Tags: , , , , ,
read more

Monsters, Inc.

Filed Under: Movies
Mar.04, 2010

I just watched this movie again. I watched this movie like 7-8 years ago, but now it was totally different. It was much better than 8 years ago. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed it then too, but now I looked at it more mature and I could see more details in the movie. I could see more of the character development and their interrelationships.

It seems that not a lot of people have seen this movie. It seems that the movie didn’t get the attention for its caliber. This is one of the greatest animations, and is not because the quality of the images, it is because the quality of the story, acting, and the good feeling that leaves you with at the end.

P.S. Don’t forget to watch the credits, really funny.

Tags:
read more

FAA, overexerting themselves to prove they have a grip

Filed Under: Cold Hard Facts
Mar.03, 2010

FAA is already on the proul about this recording where a kid under supervision is directing JFK traffic. I can clearly see the hysteria in the FAA office right now. They been up for 48 hours trying to get to the bottom of this, and make arrests and indict people for couple of hundred years. Like most federal agencies when they need to really step up none of them is capable, but when there are a few civilians in the crosshairs the FAA throws the book at a mere emplyee for makig the day go by easier for anyone. Meanwhile the big fish are roaming free undisturbed whyle FAA is chasing bogus flase flags to reassure the rest of us that they are watching. Pretenders…

Tags: ,
read more

My Peru trip

Filed Under: Fun Stuff
Feb.27, 2010

 

Picture taken with Sanyo Xacti FH1

For my vacation I went to Peru. So we left New York which was around 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and we arrived in Lima at 80 – 85 degrees, just beautiful. Lima, the capital city is located right on the Pacific Ocean. The first night we stayed at the Miramar hotel in Miraflores, the touristic area, and then we went to the San Martin Square in downtown Lima and we stayed at the Bolivar hotel. Hotel Bolivar was really nice. It was an old building with nice architecture, high ceilings, chandeliers, and thick walls, it would easily turn into a fortress. In the reception area they had an old Ford 1920 model. The Lobby was round and it had a dome with painted glass, really nice.

We visited the Museum of Italian art and the new park with artesian water fountains. The artesian fountains are a rarity. They rival and perhaps exceed the Bellagio fountain in Vegas. The admission fee was only 4 soles ~ 2.5 dollars. The park was full of people and teenage couples were the predominant population admiring the fountains.

Afterwards we flew to Cusco City at an altitude of 11 thousand feet and we went sightseeing. The altitude gets to people so I advise you to have some excedrin for headaches. The people there use coca leafs tea to help for digestion and high altitude related problems. Coca leafs have many uses over there and many are medicinal purposes. Too bad that we became too smart and made cocaine, now we have to do without.

We went to places like Moray Valley, Ollantaytambo or Sacred Valley of the Inca, Chinchero, Saqsayhuaman and others. All the sights were breathtaking. We saw the famous Inca constructions that didn’t use mortar, they are actually in use today trough Cusco. They are so well made that a razor blade can’t go in between the blocks. We saw plenty of houses that were build on top of the Inca walls. But the tour guide told us that most of the time on earthquakes the Inca walls have no problem only the constructions on top of them topple.

The people are nice and they don’t seem to get affected by the daily struggles. The two cities left a good impression on me. So all of you that want to go to Peru and you are not sure, just go. Troughout the trip I felt that there isn’t enough time because there were so many things to see. It is unbelievable, the sights are amazing and they have great stories too, go see and hear them for yourselves. I will post some footage for anyone that wats to get a feel of Peru.

By the way the food is unbelievable. Everything we ordered was just good, you have to try it.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
read more

VLC player

Filed Under: Cold Hard Facts
Feb.12, 2010

Recently I acquired a Sanyo Xacti FH1 camcorder and I am having fun with it. But VLC media player is having a hard time playing back the Mpeg-4/ AVC H.264 files 1920 x 1080 @ 60 FPS. It seems that it is lagging behind on play back. Apparently Windows Media player has no problems with that, but it is not friendly. So I  am just waiting for VLC team to update their player. Until then I just have to put up with windows media player.

VLC should include diverse icons for all the file-types, and shouldn’t associate the single “Cone” icon for all the media file-types. I need all my icons to point and differentiate among the file types. I can’t have all looking the same, that is nonsense. Moreover VLC should install without having the icon association checked as default. That is why I don’t really like installers because they install all their crap in your system. After that we the users and admins have to de-crapify the computer after one installer went to town on it.

There are many free and non-free tools out-here that install additional nonsense, and slow down the systems. But so far I am suggesting to the VLC team to take action and make these changes, because it will be beneficial to them. The best media player that I ever used is that Mplayer 6.4 the remade version that is just an executable. You download and run the exe and that is it. No file association nonsense, and other crappy things. That is the cleanest app I ever used, and it seems to work quite good. It just needs some codec updates and it should be taking over the world. Microsoft did a smart thing in Win 7, they made windows media player to behave like 6.4 when one executes a media file. That was really smart on them, Kudos!

Tags: , , , ,
read more
Powered by WordPress and Motion by 85ideas.