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• I Really Like My New EeePC

  29 août 2010, par Multimedia Mike — General

  Fair warning : I’m just going to use this post to blather disconnectedly about a new-ish toy.

  I really like my new EeePC. I was rather enamored with the original EeePC 701 from late 2007, a little box with a tiny 7″ screen that is credited with kicking off the netbook revolution. Since then, Asus has created about a hundred new EeePC models.

  Since I’m spending so much time on a train these days, I finally took the plunge to get a better netbook. I decided to stay loyal to Asus and their Eee lineage and got the highest end EeePC they presently offer (which was still under US$500)– the EeePC 1201PN. The ’12′ in the model number represents a 12″ screen size and the rest of the specs are commensurately as large. Indeed, it sort of blurs the line between netbook and full-blown laptop.

  
  
  

  Incidentally, after I placed the order for the 1201PN nearly 2 months ago, and I mean the very literal next moment, this Engadget headline came across announcing the EeePC 1215N. My new high-end (such as it is) computer purchase was immediately obsoleted ; I thought that only happened in parody. (As of this writing, the 1215N still doesn’t appear to be shipping, though.)

  It’s a sore point among Linux aficionados that Linux was used to help kickstart the netbook trend but that now it’s pretty much impossible to find Linux pre-installed on a netbook. So it is in this case. This 1201PN comes with Windows 7 Home Premium installed. This is a notable differentiator from most netbooks which only have Windows 7 Home Starter, a.k.a., the Windows 7 version so crippled that it doesn’t even allow the user to change the background image.

  I wished to preserve the Windows 7 installation (you never know when it will come in handy) and dual boot Linux. I thought I would have to use the Windows partition tool to divide work some magic. Fortunately, the default installation already carved the 250 GB HD in half ; I was able to reformat the second partition and install Linux. The details are a little blurry, but I’m pretty sure one of those external USB optical drives shown in my last post actually performed successfully for this task. Lucky break.

  
  
  The EeePC 1201PN, EeePC 701, Belco Alpha-400, and even a comparatively gargantuan Sony Vaio full laptop– all of the portable computers in the household
  

  So I got Ubuntu 10.04 Linux installed in short order. This feels like something of a homecoming for me. You see, I used Linux full-time at home from 1999-2006. In 2007, I switched to using Windows XP full-time, mostly because my home use-case switched to playing a lot of old, bad computer games. By the end of 2008, I had transitioned to using the Mac Mini that I had originally purchased earlier that year for running FATE cycles. That Mac served as my main home computer until I purchased the 1201PN 2 months ago.

  Mostly, I have this overriding desire for computers to just work, at least in their basic functions. And that’s why I’m so roundly impressed with the way Linux handles right out of the box. Nearly everything on the 1201PN works in Linux. The video, the audio, the wireless networking, the webcam, it all works out of the box. I had to do the extra installation step to get the binary nVidia drivers installed but even that’s relatively seamless, especially compared to “the way things used to be” (drop to a prompt, run some binary installer from the prompt as root, watch it fail in arcane ways because the thing is only certified to run on one version of one Linux distribution). The 1201PN, with its nVidia Ion2 graphics, is able to drive both its own 1366×768 screen simultaneously with an external monitor running at up on 2560×1600.

  The only weird hiccup in the whole process was that I had a little trouble with the special volume keys on the keyboard (specifically, the volume up/down/mute keys didn’t do anything). But I quickly learned that I had to install some package related to ACPI and they magically started to do the right thing. Now I get to encounter the Linux Flash Player bug where modifying volume via those special keys forces fullscreen mode to exit. Adobe really should fix that.

  Also, trackpad multitouch gestures don’t work right away. Based on my reading, it is possible to set those up in Linux. But it’s largely a preference thing– I don’t care much for multitouch. This creates a disparity when I use Windows 7 on the 1201PN which is configured per default to use multitouch.

  
  
  The same 4 laptops stacked up
  

  So, in short, I’m really happy with this little machine. Traditionally, I have had absolutely no affinity for laptops/notebooks/portable computers at all even if everyone around was always completely enamored with the devices. What changed for me ? Well for starters, as a long-time Linux user, I was used to having to invest in very specific, carefully-researched hardware lest I not be able to use it under the Linux OS. This was always a major problem in the laptop field which typically reign supreme in custom, proprietary hardware components. These days, not so much, and these netbooks seem to contain well-supported hardware. Then there’s the fact that laptops always cost so much more than similarly capable desktop systems and that I had no real reason for taking a computer with me when I left home. So my use case changed, as did the price point for relatively low-power laptops/netbooks.

  Data I/O geek note : The 1201PN is capable of wireless-N networking — as many netbooks seem to have — but only 100 Mbit ethernet. I wondered why it didn’t have gigabit ethernet. Then I remembered that 100 Mbit ethernet provides 11-11.5 Mbytes/sec of transfer speed which, in my empirical experience, is approximately the maximum write speed of a 5400 RPM hard drive– which is what the 1201PN possesses.

• Error while transcoding using FFMPEG from MXF to mp4

  27 mai 2015, par jasper

  I am using FFmpeg 0.6.3 in command line to transcode files from one format to another in windows server 2008.But when i try to convert mxf file to mp4 format. i am getting the following error message

  ffmpeg error while opening encoder for output stream #0.1 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

  ffmpeg command that is used to transcode
  ffmpeg -y -i "inputfile.mxf" -t 30 -s 640x360 output.mp4 -t 30 -s 1280x720 output2.mp4

• Working way to make video from images in C#

  29 août 2011, par Jim Mischel

  Does anybody have a known reliable way to create a video from a series of image files ? Before you mod me down for not searching for the answer before posting the question, and before you fire off a simple message like "use FFMPEG," read the rest of this message.

  I'm trying to create a video, it doesn't matter too much what format as long as it's widely supported, from a series of images (.jpg, .bmp, etc.). My platform is Windows Server 2008, 64-bit. If I can make the video from within my C# program, that's great, but I'm not averse to writing a series of image files to a directory and then firing off an external program to make a video from those images.

  The only constraints are : it must work on my Windows Server 2008 system, and be scriptable. That is, no GUI programs that require operator intervention.

  I found a number of similar questions on StackOverflow, and have tried several of the solutions, all with varying degrees of frustration and none with anything like success.

  FFMPEG looks like a great program. Maybe it is, on Linux. The two Windows builds I downloaded are broken. Given this command line :

    ffmpeg -r 1 -f image2 -i jpeg\*.jpg video.avi

  One of the builds reads the images and then crashes due to data execution prevention. The other reads the first file and then spits out an error message that says "cannot find suitable codec for file jpeg/image2.jpg". Helpful, that. In any case, FFMPEG looks like a non-starter under Windows.

  One answer to a previous posting recommended Splicer . It looks like pretty good code. I compiled the samples and tried to run, but got some cryptic error message about a file not found. It looks like a COM class isn't registered. I suppose I need to install something (DirectShow, maybe, although I thought that was already installed ?). Depending on what's required, I might have a difficult time justifying its installation on a server. ("What ? Why do you need that on a server ?")

  Another answer suggested the AviFile library from Code Project. That looks simple enough : a wrapper around the Windows AviFile subsystem. Except that the AVI files the package creates appear to have all of the frames, but only the first frame shows when I play the AVI in Windows Media Player. Well, that and if you try to create a compressed video, the program throws an exception.

  So, I'm left wondering if there is a good, reliable way to do what I want : on a Windows system, create an AVI or other common video file format from a series of images, either through a .NET API or using an external program. Any help ?