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• Winamp and the March of GUI

  1er juillet 2012, par Multimedia Mike — General, ars technica, gui, user interface, winamp

  Ars Technica recently published a 15-year retrospective on the venerable Winamp multimedia player, prompting bouts of nostalgia and revelations of "Huh ? That program is still around ?" from many readers. I was among them.

  
  
  

  I remember first using Winamp in 1997. I remember finding a few of these new files called MP3s online and being able to play the first 20 seconds using the official Fraunhofer Windows player— full playback required the fully licensed version. Then I searched for another player and came up with Winamp. The first version I ever used was v1.05 in the summer of 1997. I remember checking the website often for updates and trying out every single one. I can’t imagine doing that nowadays— programs need to auto-update themselves (which Winamp probably does now ; I can’t recall the last time I used the program).

  Video Underdog
  The last time Winamp came up on my radar was early in 2003 when a new version came with support for a custom, proprietary multimedia audio/video format called Nullsoft Video (NSV). I remember the timeframe because the date is indicated in the earliest revision of my NSV spec document (back when I was maintaining such docs in a series of plaintext files). This was cobbled together from details I and others in the open source multimedia community sorted out from sample files. It was missing quite a few details, though.

  Then, Winamp founder Justin Frankel — introduced through a colleague on the xine team — emailed me his official NSV format and told me I was free to incorporate details into my document just as long as it wasn’t obvious that I had the official spec. This put me in an obnoxious position of trying to incorporate details which would have been very difficult to reverse engineer without the official doc. I think I coped with the situation by never really getting around to updating my doc in any meaningful way. Then, one day, the official spec was released to the world anyway, and it is now mirrored here at multimedia.cx.

  I don’t think the format ever really caught on in any meaningful way, so not a big deal. (Anytime I say that about a format, I always learn it saw huge adoption is some small but vocal community.)

  What’s Wrong With This Picture ?
  What I really wanted to discuss in this post was the matter of graphical user interfaces and how they have changed in the last 15 years.
  
  I still remember when I first downloaded Winamp v1.05 and tried it on my Windows machine at the time. Indignantly, the first thought I had was, "What makes this program think it’s so special that it’s allowed to violate the user interface conventions put forth by the rest of the desktop ?" All of the Windows programs followed a standard set of user interface patterns and had a consistent look and feel... and then Winamp came along and felt it could violate all those conventions.

  I guess I let the program get away with it because it was either that or only play 20-second clips from the unregistered Fraunhofer player. Though incredibly sterile by comparison, the Fraunhofer player, it should be noted, followed Windows UI guidelines to the letter.

  As the summer of 1997 progressed and more Winamp versions were released, eventually one came out (I think it was v1.6 or so) that supported skins. I was excited because there was a skin that made the program look like a proper Windows program— at least if you used the default Windows color scheme, and had all of your fonts a certain type and size.

  Skins were implemented by packaging together a set of BMP images to overlay on various UI elements. I immediately saw a number of shortcomings with this skinning approach. A big one was UI lock-in. Ironically, if you skin an app and wish to maintain backwards compatibility with the thousands of skins selflessly authored by your vibrant community (seriously, I couldn’t believe how prolific these things were), then you were effectively locked into the primary UI. Forget about adding a new button anywhere.

  Another big problem was resolution-independence. Basing your UI on static bitmaps doesn’t scale well with various resolutions. Winamp had its normal mode and it also had double-sized mode.

  Skins proliferated among many types of programs in the late 1990s. I always treasured this Suck.com (remember them ? that’s a whole other nostalgia trip) essay from April, 2000 entitled Skin Cancer. Still, Winamp was basically the standard, and the best, and I put away my righteous nerd rage and even dug through the vast troves of skins. I remember settling on Swankamp for a good part of 1998, probably due to the neo-swing revival at the time.

  
  
  

  Then again, if Winamp irked me, imagine my reaction when I was first exposed to the Sonique Music Player in 1998 :

  
  
  

  The New UI Order
  Upon reflection, I realize now that I had a really myopic view of what a computer GUI should be. I thought the GUIs were necessarily supposed to follow the WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pointer) paradigm and couldn’t conceive of anything different. For a long time, I couldn’t envision a useful GUI on a small device (like a phone) because WIMP didn’t fit well on such a small interface (even though I saw various ill-fated attempts to make it work). This thinking seriously crippled me when I was trying to craft a GUI for a custom console media player I was developing as a hobby many years ago.

  I’m looking around at what I have open on my Windows 7 desktop right now. Google Chrome browser, Apple iTunes, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and VMware Player are 4 programs which all seem to have their own skins. Maybe Winamp doesn’t look so out of place these days.

• Switch to Matomo for WordPress from Google Analytics

  10 mars 2020, par Joselyn Khor — Plugins, Privacy
  While Google Analytics may seem like a great plugin option on the WordPress directory, we’d like to present a new ethical alternative called Matomo for WordPress, which gives you 100% data ownership and privacy protection.

  Firstly what does Google Analytics offer in WordPress ?

  When you think of getting insights about visitors on your WordPress (WP) sites, the first thing that comes to mind might be Google Analytics. Why not right ? Especially when there are good free Google Analytics plugins, like Monster Insights and Site Kit. 

  These give you access to a great analytics platform, but the downside with Google Analytics is the lack of transparency around privacy and data ownership.

  

  Matomo Analytics for WordPress is an ethical alternative to Google Analytics for WordPress

  If you’re more interested in a privacy-respecting, GDPR compliant alternative, there’s now a new option on the WP plugins directory : Matomo Analytics – Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights. 

  It’s free and can be considered the #1 ethical alternative to Google Analytics in terms of features and capabilities. Why is it important to choose a web analytics platform that respects privacy ?

  

  Risk facing fines for non-GDPR compliance and privacy/data breaches

  In Europe there’s an overarching privacy law called GDPR which provides better privacy protection for EU citizens on the web. 

  Websites need to be GDPR compliant and follow rules governing how personal data is used or risk facing fines up to 4% of their yearly revenue for data/privacy breaches or non-compliance. Even if your website is based outside of Europe. If you have visitors from Europe, you can still be liable.

  

  In the US, there isn’t one main privacy law, there hundreds on both the federal and state levels to protect the personal data (or personally identifiable information) of US residents – like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). There are also industry-specific statutes related to data privacy like HIPAA.

  To protect your website from coming under fire for privacy breaches, best practise is to find platforms that are privacy and GDPR compliant by design. 

  When you own your own data – as with the case of Matomo – you have control over where data is stored, what you’re doing with it, and can better protect the privacy of your visitors.

  At this point you may be asking, “what’s the point of an analytics platform if you have to follow all these rules ?”

  The importance of analytics for your WordPress site

  • Figuring out how your audience behaves to increase conversions
  • Setting, tracking and measuring conversion goals
  • Being able to find insights to improve and optimize your site 
  • Making smarter, data-driven decisions so your company can thrive, rather than risk being left behind

  Analytics is used to answer questions like :

  • Where are your website visitors coming from (location) ?
  • How many people visit your website ?
  • Which are the most popular pages on your site ?
  • What sources of traffic are coming to your site (social, marketing campaigns, search) ?
  • Is your marketing campaign performing better this month compared to last ?

  Matomo can answer all of the above questions. BONUS : On top of that, with Matomo you get the peace of mind knowing you’re the only one who has access to those answers.

  

  Matomo Analytics vs Google Analytics on WordPress

  The top 5 most useful features in Matomo Analytics that’s comparable to GA

  1. Campaign measurement – traffic. Matomo also has a URL builder that lets you track which campaigns are working effectively
  2. Tracking goals. Matomo empowers you to set goals you can track. Being able to see this means you can accurately measure your return on investment (ROI) 
  3. Audience reports to learn about visitors. Matomo’s powerful visitors feature lets you learn who is visiting your site, what their journey is and the steps they take to conversion.
  4. In depth view of behaviour with Funnels in Matomo. This tracks the journey of your visitors from the moment they enter your site, to when they leave. Giving you insight into where and why you lose your visitors.
  5. Custom reports. Where you create your unique reports to fit your business goals.

  Other benefits of using Matomo :

  • No data sampling which means you get 100% accurate reporting
  • 100% data ownership
  • Free Tag Manager
  • Search engine keyword rankings
  • Unlimited websites
  • Unlimited team members
  • GDPR manager
  • API access
  • Hosted on your own servers so you have full control over where your data is stored

  Learn more about the differences in this comprehensive table.

  

  Matomo Analytics for WordPress is free !

  Matomo Analytics is the best free Google Analytics alternative on the WordPress Directory. In addition to having comparable features where you can do pretty much do everything you wanted to do in GA. Matomo Analytics for WordPress makes for an ethical choice because you can respect your visitor’s privacy, can become GDPR compliant, and maintain control over your own data.

  Google Analytics leads the market for good reasons. It’s a great free tool for those who want analytics, but there’s no clarity when it comes to grey areas like privacy and data ownership. If these are major concerns for you, Matomo offers complete peace of mind that you’re doing the best you can to stay ethical while growing your business and website.

  It’s just as easy to install in a few click !

  Install and see for yourself !

• ffmpeg command for faster encoding at a decent bitrate with smaller file size

  28 juillet 2023, par Blair Holmes

  I'm currently using an implementation of ffmpeg on my android app. I'm allowing users to take short videos within my app and then when they upload them to the server, I'm crunching them down with ffmpeg to decrease file size so they're not passing huge amounts of data over the wire.

  



  the problem is, it's taking forever to encode the videos on the android device. These videos usually aren't longer than 45 seconds and can take 20 minutes to encode. I've done some playing around with different switches / parameters on the ffmpeg command line and I now have it at a more comfortable time, but the file sizes are significantly bigger. I'm just not sure what codec I should use (fastest encoding but with decent quality output), how ffmpeg handles changing size (aspect ratio) in terms of speed of encoding etc.

  



  Here are the two commands I've been using. This first one outputs the file size / quality that I want, but it just takes way too long to encode, not to mention it makes my device get really hot while it's encoding for so long :

  



  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -b:v 1024k -c:a copy -vf scale=960:540 output.mp4


  



  I've tweaked the bitrate some on that as well as changed the scale to a smaller size, but I don't want to have to make the videos really small (in terms of scale) to accomplish a faster encoding. this second command goes a lot faster but makes the file size significantly bigger :

  



  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -preset fast -c:a copy -s 960x540 output.mp4


  



  I'd like to find a happy medium (smaller file size but faster encoding) keeping the video scale size close to the original. ffmpeg just has so many different parameters / switches that it's difficult to wrap my head around what I should be doing.

  



  EDIT : adding ffmpeg output.

  



  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -crf 30 -preset veryfast -c:a copy -s 960x540 output.mp4

  



      09-13 11:06:28.330 10881-10881/someapp D/home: ffmpeg version n3.0.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
09-13 11:06:28.330 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   built with gcc 4.8 (GCC)
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   configuration: --target-os=linux --cross-prefix=/home/vagrant/SourceCode/ffmpeg-android/toolchain-android/bin/arm-linux-androideabi- --arch=arm --cpu=cortex-a8 --enable-runtime-cpudetect --sysroot=/home/vagrant/SourceCode/ffmpeg-android/toolchain-android/sysroot --enable-pic --enable-libx264 --enable-libass --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libmp3lame --enable-fontconfig --enable-pthreads --disable-debug --disable-ffserver --enable-version3 --enable-hardcoded-tables --disable-ffplay --disable-ffprobe --enable-gpl --enable-yasm --disable-doc --disable-shared --enable-static --pkg-config=/home/vagrant/SourceCode/ffmpeg-android/ffmpeg-pkg-config --prefix=/home/vagrant/SourceCode/ffmpeg-android/build/armeabi-v7a --extra-cflags='-I/home/vagrant/SourceCode/ffmpeg-android/toolchain-android/include -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fno-strict-overflow -fstack-protector-all' --extra-ldflags='-L/home/vagrant/SourceCode/ffmpeg-android/toolchain-android/lib -Wl,-z,relro -Wl,-z,now -pie' --extra-libs='-lpng -lexpat -lm' --extra-cxxflags=
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libavutil      55. 17.103 / 55. 17.103
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libavcodec     57. 24.102 / 57. 24.102
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libavformat    57. 25.100 / 57. 25.100
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libavdevice    57.  0.101 / 57.  0.101
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libavfilter     6. 31.100 /  6. 31.100
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libswscale      4.  0.100 /  4.  0.100
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libswresample   2.  0.101 /  2.  0.101
09-13 11:06:28.331 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   libpostproc    54.  0.100 / 54.  0.100
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home: Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '/storage/emulated/0/ExpeditionSpot/Videos/20160913110411.mp4':
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   Metadata:
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     major_brand     : mp42
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     minor_version   : 0
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     compatible_brands: isommp42
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     creation_time   : 2016-09-13 17:04:33
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     com.android.version: 6.0.1
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   Duration: 00:00:19.41, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 20222 kb/s
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 1920x1080, 19963 kb/s, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 30.03 fps, 30 tbr, 90k tbn, 180k tbc (default)
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Metadata:
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       creation_time   : 2016-09-13 17:04:33
09-13 11:06:28.430 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       handler_name    : VideoHandle
09-13 11:06:28.431 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 96 kb/s (default)
09-13 11:06:28.431 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Metadata:
09-13 11:06:28.431 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       creation_time   : 2016-09-13 17:04:33
09-13 11:06:28.431 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       handler_name    : SoundHandle
09-13 11:06:28.448 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] using SAR=1/1
09-13 11:06:28.448 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] using cpu capabilities: none!
09-13 11:06:28.516 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] profile High, level 3.1
09-13 11:06:28.516 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] 264 - core 148 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2015 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=1 ref=1 deblock=1:0:0 analyse=0x3:0x113 me=hex subme=2 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=0 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=0 8x8dct=1 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=0 threads=12 lookahead_threads=4 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=3 b_pyramid=2 b_adapt=1 b_bias=0 direct=1 weightb=1 open_gop=0 weightp=1 keyint=250 keyint_min=25 scenecut=40 intra_refresh=0 rc_lookahead=10 rc=crf mbtree=1 crf=27.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=69 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=1:1.00
09-13 11:06:28.532 10881-10881/someapp D/home: Output #0, mp4, to '/storage/emulated/0/ExpeditionSpot/.tmp/small-20160913110411.mp4':
09-13 11:06:28.532 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   Metadata:
09-13 11:06:28.532 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     major_brand     : mp42
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     minor_version   : 0
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     compatible_brands: isommp42
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     com.android.version: 6.0.1
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     encoder         : Lavf57.25.100
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (libx264) ([33][0][0][0] / 0x0021), yuv420p, 960x540 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=-1--1, 30 fps, 15360 tbn, 30 tbc (default)
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Metadata:
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       creation_time   : 2016-09-13 17:04:33
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       handler_name    : VideoHandle
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       encoder         : Lavc57.24.102 libx264
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Side data:
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       unknown side data type 10 (24 bytes)
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) ([64][0][0][0] / 0x0040), 48000 Hz, stereo, 96 kb/s (default)
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:     Metadata:
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       creation_time   : 2016-09-13 17:04:33
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:       handler_name    : SoundHandle
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home: Stream mapping:
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> h264 (libx264))
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home:   Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (copy)
09-13 11:06:28.533 10881-10881/someapp D/home: Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
09-13 11:06:29.102 10881-10881/someapp D/home: frame=    7 fps=0.0 q=0.0 size=       0kB time=00:00:01.04 bitrate=   0.4kbits/s speed=2.08x    
09-13 11:06:29.699 10881-10881/someapp D/home: frame=   16 fps= 15 q=0.0 size=       0kB time=00:00:01.04 bitrate=   0.4kbits/s speed=0.998x    
....
09-13 11:07:12.674 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] frame I:3     Avg QP:26.83  size: 21896
09-13 11:07:12.674 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] frame P:279   Avg QP:28.76  size:  5859
09-13 11:07:12.674 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] frame B:296   Avg QP:29.93  size:   863
09-13 11:07:12.674 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] consecutive B-frames: 18.3% 32.2% 23.9% 25.6%
09-13 11:07:12.674 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] mb I  I16..4: 16.9% 54.2% 28.9%
09-13 11:07:12.674 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] mb P  I16..4:  7.7%  9.1%  0.4%  P16..4: 27.5% 11.1%  4.0%  0.0%  0.0%    skip:40.1%
09-13 11:07:12.674 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] mb B  I16..4:  0.8%  0.6%  0.0%  B16..8: 10.9%  2.4%  0.1%  direct: 1.8%  skip:83.5%  L0:35.8% L1:54.2% BI:10.0%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] 8x8 transform intra:52.0% inter:41.3%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 28.9% 26.0% 2.1% inter: 6.4% 5.0% 0.0%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] i16 v,h,dc,p: 57% 20% 17%  6%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 33% 23% 34%  1%  2%  1%  3%  2%  2%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 36% 21% 17%  2%  7%  4%  6%  4%  4%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] i8c dc,h,v,p: 59% 16% 23%  2%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] Weighted P-Frames: Y:16.8% UV:4.7%
09-13 11:07:12.675 10881-10881/someapp D/home: [libx264 @ 0xf71c4400] kb/s:812.09