I have been ripping my DVD’s of the hit show for car guys “Rides” for use on my WDTV Live Hub, and I gotta tell you, each time I change the disc Apple’s DVD pops up and it is starting to drive me nuts!
After spending 20 minutes combing through every single item in DVD Player’s preferences, it occurred to me that this is probably a system preference, and to stop it bugging the heck out of me, I could turn it off in there.
To stop DVD Playing automatically each time you insert a disk open your system preferences, and select “CD/DVD”.
Right down the bottom as an entry for DVD, that says “Open DVD Player”
Change the setting to “Ignore” and now you can rip your DVD’s in peace!
In case you are wondering, I am using “MakeMKV” to rip my dvd’s from disc straight into a high quality MKV video format which is compatible and plays beautifully on the WDTV and WDTV Live Hub devices. You can check it out at makemkv.com.
Last year I went to the U.S for a holiday and catch up with some friends, and whilst I was waiting to board Qantas”s sweet new Airbus A380 (which I might actually review here) I was browsing a duty free store and I saw the Flip Mino HD. At that time it was $149 I think? Anyways, upon reading the specs on the box I had to have one. It was smaller than my cell/mobile phone, shot 720P HD video with a bit rate of around 8Mbs, AAC audio, and 2hrs of record time. It is SUCH a cool device!
My wife and I have stayed in a lot of hotels all around the world, and we both agree (which rarely happens) that The Bellagio in Las Vegas is the most beautiful, opulent, and in short, the best. Whilst there I recorded a lot of the Fountain Shows on my Flip Mino HD, and below is what I got.
These video”s were shot through the tinted glass window of our suite in The Bellagio, and what you see is what was shot. Disclaimer – I have tried to clean the audio up a bit though. As any one who has seen a Fountain Show from Las Vegas Blvd will know, the audio on the strip is just wonderful, but 20 something floors up in the tower however, it gets a little messy.
3D video is becoming popular again, and with the tools already available to most of us, its pretty easy to get started making your own 3D movies. There are a lot of programs available that will take your current 2D video and convert it to 3D with varying levels of success, but if you are interested in actually filming in 3D using a stereoscopic camera set up, this is the article for you.
Getting started making 3D can be a bit confusing for beginners. But if you have a PC and a couple of web cams, you are two thirds of the way there. It is really helpful if your webcams are the same to, and a lot of webcams are available in twin packs now as well (one for you, one for your friend), so these are a good place to start.
I had a security camera set up at the last place I lived, and two of the cameras are identical. For 3D filming it is critically important that both cameras are aligned, and looking at exactly the same view. I joined the two together by screwing them to a flat piece of steel at their mounting point, and they lined up quiet well.
In order to achieve the 3D effect your cameras will need to be spaced about 65mm apart. You can technically use any two cameras, but it just makes it a lot easier if they are the same. Once your cameras are mounted together its time to connect them to your computer. If they are USB cams just plug them in, but in my case I had to use a Pinnacle Dazzle for the left camera, and a Easy Cap USB interface I got from Ebay for the right camera, in order to be able to use them. My cameras have a coaxial cable output, and the Dazzle/Easy Cap act like adapters that allow me to plug the cams into them, then they plug into the computers USB port. Once you are all plugged in, the next step is to download a program that will let you view your cams, align them, and eventually record your video. I looked at a lot of programs, and there is only one that gets my thumbs up, and that is Stereoscopic Multiplexer. The only down side is that it doesn’t record audio, so you will need to use a stand alone audio recorder to capture the sound, and then ad it back in processing later. You can download the program and try it out with no restrictions other than a watermark in the image. If you really get the hang of things and want to buy it, you can, and the watermark will be removed. But if you just want to try this out and experiment, you can download it and test it at no cost.
Once Stereoscopic Multiplexer is installed, open it up, and the configuration wizard starts. This is where you can tell it which camera is going to be the left camera, and which is going to be the right camera.
The next step is to select a capture format.
This is basically telling the program the format and quality your webcams can deliver. In my case, my cameras are PAL, and the image size they deliver is 720 pixels wide by 576 pixels high, so I use YUY2 720×576 pixels. The next few windows are OK to leave at the default settings, so keep clicking OK until you get to the preview window. If everything has configured correctly, you will now see a preview window of what your cameras see.
As you can see from my preview, I spent a lot of time making sure the image from the left camera is identical to the right. The pole on the right of the view is the same distance from the edge of the frame in both, as is the positioning of the back of the chair on the left, and the doggy bowl at the bottom.
Now that everything is lined up, its time to start recording. When you click the red record button another window will appear asking you how you want the video compressed.
If you have a fast processor the Cinepak Codec by Radius seems to be pretty good, but in my case I have to record uncompressed. Its a lot faster, but the file sizes are huge. I use Ojosoft Total Converter to compress the videos once I have finished shooting, so the file sizes are more manageable. Make sure you have your preferred compression method highlighted, and you have given your file a name and a “save to” location before you try to click start, otherwise it wont work. Below is a sample of the raw video footage I captured.
httpv://youtu.be/xn0DCKzFw7Q
Stereoscopic Multiplexer is great because your left and right cam footage is in sync, and saved side by side into one file (Hence the frame size of 1440 x 576 when recording from two 720 x 576 cameras). If you were to use two regular video tape cameras, you have to try and match the videos so they both play at exactly the same time, which is not impossible, but is difficult and ads more steps to the process.
Now it’s time to process the raw video – Stay tuned for Part Two!
This is a video of my dog Benson playing with his ball. It is filmed on my Sony HD-1000P in 1080i High Definition. I then imported it into iMovie and slowed it to 25%. I then exported it as 1080p, as interlaced video makes me want to break things! BADLY!
The Sony HD-1000P has a slow motion mode built in, but apart from only being able to film in 3 second bursts, the video looses all of the sharpness and clarity we love in HD. PAL video is only 25 frames per second, and to output into progressive I imagine iMovie has re-encoded to 30. This is obviously why it is jerky when slowed to 25%, it’s only 6 or 7 frames per second.
Even though it’s not perfect, it’s what Ive got, made with what I have, and I will keep working with what I have to make it the best I can. Any idea’s or suggestions on how to make smooth and sharp HD slow motion from 1080i at 25 FPS source video would be greatly appreciated.
To view it in 1080P, click the “360p” in the bottom of the screen when the video is playing to open a menu, and then select 1080P.
Have you ever been sent a video, or downloaded a video from the internet that just wont play? Isn’t it frustrating! Most times it is because the video has been encoded with a codec (compressor/decompressor) that is not on your computer, therefore your system doesn’t know how to play the file.
There are a lot of tools out there to help you with this problem, and with only a few of them, you will be able to play 99% of everything you come across easily.
Once you have downloaded and installed your codec identifier, just drag and drop your pesky video file onto it, and the identifier will analyse it and tell you everything you wanted to know about it, as well as a bunch of stuff you didn’t! Once you have identified the codecs used in creating the file, you can set about searching for it, installing it, and enjoying your video.
As mentioned in my “How to play almost any video with VLC Media Player” post HERE, you can play pretty much anything with VLC Media Player 😉 – But if you don’t want to download a new player, and you are happy using Windows Media Player, or Quicktime, there are some FREE “plugins” which add extended capabilities to your favorite media player. Windows users will definitely want to get your hands on the K-Lite codec pack. There are small, medium, and large packs, but again, 99% of everything you will want to watch will work if you install the “Standard” pack. For Mac owners, Perian is definitely the first plugin you will want. It will allow you to play AVI, XVID, DIVX, FLV and MKV straight away, and for those who want to watch Windows WMV files, Flip For Mac is the solution. If you go to their site, they will push you hard towards their paid version, but there is a free version if you go via Microsoft HERE which will do everything you want it to do.
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