First off, you should now that I like to study languages. I have studied Spanish for a good amount of time (and have a site related to learning spanish for beginners). I’ve also studied French and German and a smattering of other languages. In fact, you might even say that my interest in shortwave radio comes from that same fascination with other languages. Anyway, I have a good number of dvds that I’ve used to help in language learning. Since DVD’s support multiple subtitle and language tracks they can be a great way to practice either your (light) reading or listening skills in a language you’re studying. However, up until now I didn’t know of a video file type that supported multiple audio tracks on the pc. I can’t say that I looked too hard, but….
Tag: dvd
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What Should you Look for in a New Computer?
This is one of the questions that I deal with at least weekly. Here’s where I usually start answering… First you have to ask yourself what you want to do with a computer. If your goal is email and internet access, most ANYTHING sold new today is much more than sufficient to the task. It will be hard to find something that won’t work for you. If you want to work with office documents, spreadsheets and other text files, you’re still looking at just about anything currently on the market. But what if you want to do some gaming or get into video or music editing?
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Meniere’s Disease – diagnosed yesterday
Update – you can follow more about my experiences with Meniere’s Disease at my Meniere’s diagnosis blog.
Well… after several doctors visits, I have been diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease. Let me back up a bit…. several years ago I started getting a stuffy feeling in my right ear on occasion. I had allergies and it reminded me of an ear infection years ago, but I didn’t have a fever. It would come for a few days and go. Of course, it was always the right ear and I would always have a hard time hearing out of that ear. Occasionally, it would be accompanied by a roaring sound like a fan…. sometimes loud, sometimes soft. Sometimes it would feel like the ear drum was “tight as a drum” as you could actually FEEL sounds as well as hearing them slightly. Eventually I just got used to it coming and going. I’ve chalked it up to allergies…. over the years I’ve been prescribed and taken most every allergy medication I can think of and the next step was allergy shots…. well, it was a nuisance not a MAJOR problem, just a nuisance. Then… I would start feeling dizzy if my ear had been stopped up for 3-5 days running or more. That was still inconvenient, but I knew when to expect it and could manage…. Then the vertigo hit…. April 2006…
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Custom livecd’s, virtualbox, seamlessrdp and sata dvd burners…
I thought this writeup was interesting on the idea of using a web interface to customize a livecd. I’ve built a couple livecd’s (that I still use) for tech support, but I’m always thinking of one more tool that I’d like to have. After looking through their wizard it seems a bit limited in the granularity of what can be chosen (at least for what I’m thinking of.) But… it might introduce a new interest in the use of livecds.
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High powered laser from a dvd burner
I really don’t know if I want to do this or not… but I found several sites talking about how to salvage the laser from a dvd burner and use it as a VERY high powered handheld laser. (i.e. “light that candle” kind of power….) Don’t get me wrong, I would like to be able to start the campfire from 10 paces just like anybody else would… in fact that would be VERY cool…. but the whole “instant blindness” thing kind of slows my eagerness down a bit. (Plus maybe the “is that skin burning?” thought that comes along there too…) You see I’ve got a 6 year old in the house (and another due in February… well – he won’t be six but… ) I know how much my 6 year old likes to get his hands my combo flashlight/laserpointer that I carry with me all the time and in fact when it was first given to me at Christmas (my brothers got identical ones), he was very quick to scarf one up that was within reach and start playing with it. Now we’ve had talks about being careful, not pointint it at someone else’s eyes, not looking into it, etc… but he’s not at an age where that really clicks… so if I build one of these I’ll need to lock it away in a gun cabinet…. And really ANYBODY that makes one of these OUGHT to treat it with the same respect as a loaded weapon. (No you’re not going to kill anyone, but blinded for life would not be fun….) Treat them responsibly. Links below the fold.
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Wikipedia download revisited
A while ago I wrote about various ways to have an offline copy of the wikipedia. Yes, I know there are credibility issues with wikipedia, but taken with a few grains of salt and objective thinking it is one of the single most useful references online. (I don’t count search engines here – they link to other stuff – i.e. no – you can’t download google. ) So, why would anyone be interested in having it copied offline? Isn’t the great benefit that it’s constantly updated and “fresh”? Well…. if you assume that 24/7 highspeed internet access is a fixed constant… i.e. we’ll ALWAYS have an internet connection anytime anywhere, then… there would be no good reason… but..
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Emailing large files….
There are lot’s of ways to get a file from one place to another, emailing is the first that many think of. (For larger files I’ll usually just upload to a directory on the website and then email a link…) The problem with email is multiple…. 1)viruses exploit email as a delivery vehicle and so attachments are looked at with rightful suspicion…. and 2) the size of emails is usually capped SOMEWHERE along the way, my isp, your isp, etc…. Usually that cap is around 5-10MB There are other ways to get a big file from point a to point b – (don’t underestimate the bandwidth of the postal service and dvd-r’s….) One online alternative though is yousendit.com – you upload a file, tell who you want it sent to and it appears that they send a link via email so the recipient can download.
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Windows Vista upgrade clean install workaround
You had to know it would be a matter of time. Not long after I wrote about the limitations of Vista’s upgrade version I found this. First let me reset. Previous versions of Windows upgrade versions would allow you to do a “clean” install (format the drive) if you had the previous versions install media at hand. The install would stop to validate the install media and you could proceed. Very handy if recovering from a full hard drive failure, virus infestation, etc. Well the word was, Vista upgrade requires the previous OS version that you upgrade from to be installed on the Hard drive. This makes the rebuild process from such failures sound VERY nasty and tedious (read: just go buy a new pc…) However….
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Converting mpg to dv
One of the slickest video editing tools I’ve used in linux is kino. The only problem is that it’s geared towards dv files which comes straight from a camcorder (using the dv format.) Most of my video clips are in mpg format…. so there are ways to get it converted… here’s one such suggestion….
ffmpeg -i some.mpeg -s PAL -r PAL -ar 48000 -ac 2 out.dv
of course, you may want to adjust the format (PAL/NTSC) according to your situation.
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dvdstyler under linux
One of the utilities under Linux I’ve made use of in the last few months is Dvdstyler. It essentially will take your dvd ready video and make the DVD filesystem (as well as menus). Simple menus are very straightforward as is setting bookmarks (chapters) within a file imported into a dvd project. However… for the more interesting configurations… like having a title play immediately upon disc insert like this you might want to consult the dvdstyler wiki at sourceforge.net.