TriniTech

Setting up a USA iTunes account outside of the USA.

2012-02-02T15:26:00.001-08:00

The iTunes music store is a region locked store. Basically if you live outside the USA you are only able to purchase a subset of the apps. You don’t have access to everything. On Windows Phone 7, apps like WhatsApp are available everywhere, but on iTunes, only available in the USA…

Its stupid, I know.

For that reason, anyone who purchased an iOS device, i am making this post for you. I will show you step by step how to register a USA iTunes account with full access to the iTunes catalogue.

1. Download and install iTunes

DO NOT sign in!!!

2. After you have downloaded and installed iTunes and gone through the initial setup wizard, look on the left hand side of the iTunes application, there you will see the navigation bar, with your music, videos, podcasts and what we’re here for, the iTunes Store.

3. Now scroll to the bottom and look for the Country Selector.

4. Choose the USA store

5. Double check that you’re not signed in and search for a free app. “Remote” is a easy one.

6. Hit the “Free” button and install it

7. Here a popup should appear asking you to either sign in or sign up. You must do the sign up process from here. If you do it any other way you will be prompted to use a USA credit card which most people outside the USA would not have.

8. Follow the steps below filling out the Sign Up form and getting yourself a USA iTunes account with full access to the iTunes Store.

9. Pay special attention here. Notice that you have the “NONE” option to choose for a payment option.

If you have friends or family in the USA you can use their address, otherwise you can use a random one (A Best Buy Outlet etc.)

10. Once you hit the “Create Apple ID” button, you will receive a email with a link to click on and activate the account. Now you would have at your disposal a USA iTunes account.

11. With regards for buying apps and other content, you will need to purchase gift cards as iTunes will not accept credit cards from outside the USA.

Maximus Cards is a great website for purchasing iTunes gift cards, via paypal mastercard, visa, etc. You will be emailed the code for the gift card and copy and paste it into iTunes to be credited the money. The link to redeem gift cards can be found on the right hand side of the iTunes Homepage.

Happy downloading peeps and a good night/day to all. YAY!

New Google homepage… Hello sexy!

2011-06-28T17:25:00.001-07:00

Say hello to the updated and refined Google Homepage.

Adding a subtle minimalism along with a dark brown bar at the top to enhance visibility, a slight change in font for the search buttons, what we see here is a simple but fantastic step in the improvement of the Google home page.

Even the search results page has been updated with a simple new colour scheme and a beautiful search bar. This is also a hint of the changes soon to come in their Chrome OS as well.

For the astute of you, yes, there is now voice search enabled in the browser now, thou you have to be using Google’s own Chrome browser to do the voice search, its by no means a bad trade off.

Great job Google, keep up the great work. Now if I could only get a car that can drive itself.

Windows 8 - Introduction

2011-06-08T17:39:00.001-07:00

At Computex 2011 in Taipei, Microsoft gave us the first preview of Windows 8. More specifically, they showed us the tablet functionality of Windows 8. Surprisingly, this tablet functionality isn't a separate program like Windows Media Center is, instead, it’s a rebuild of the existing Windows Explorer shell. This new touch UI created with the same metro design language as Windows Phone 7, is dynamic, glanceable and very easy on the eyes with its minimal design and oodles of style.

Contrary to what other media houses are reporting, as was said specifically in the Windows 8 showcase, all versions of Windows 8 are coming with this UI as the default UI and there will be no specific tablet version of Windows 8. All versions of Windows 8 will be tablet ready.

When you buy a new PC, and you boot it up, the new Metro UI will be the first thing you see on every version of Windows 8 from Starter to Ultimate on everything from x86 to x64 to ARM, touchscreen present or not, THIS IS the new UI for windows going forward.

Amazingly enough you can still access programs in the legacy Windows desktop environment without logging out of your account and logging back in. In fact, you can run the traditional windows desktop in a panel alongside a modern metro UI app in its fully functional form. No fiddling to go back to classic windows, its there and ready for you whenever you need it.

Just launch Excel and it pops up in the classic Windows Desktop

Using the touch UI gestures, you can align metro apps alongside the Classic Windows Desktop

And there you have full reverse compatibility with “Old Windows”

For the people out there saying, “it’s stupid to have the touch UI as the default on systems that won’t have a touch screen,” remember this, if the UI is good enough for your giant meaty fingers, then it should be a snap for the one pixel precision of a cursor tip.

For Microsoft to get people to used the “tabletised” Windows 8, they need to make the tablet UI front and centre when you first use Windows 8. For now the main challenge will be replicating all the main functionality from the traditional explorer in the new “metro explorer” so users don’t feel like they have one hand tied behind their back.

Just as Paul Thurrott showed interest in, right now I personally want to see how Windows 8 makes use of accelerometers to transition Windows 8 from landscape mode to portrait mode. As we all know, with previous versions of Windows, that transition has been nothing short of jarring and uncomfortable to use when compared with the buttery smooth animation of the iPad.

This I hope clears up a bunch of hooha that has been going on as a result of insane amounts of FUD as a result of misinformation and transmission of said misinformation.

Resintalling Windows - Do's and Dont's

2011-03-25T17:41:00.001-07:00

When reinstalling Windows, there are rules, standards and personal opinions. The first two are simple and easy, the last will require a good bit of self restraint.

Preparation:

Backup all your/your customer’s files (if they haven’t). Try not to leave any of yours behind or you will be cursing yourself under your breath for quite some time.

Get all the drivers together.

For the noobs, they are what’s required to make the different part work at their full potential or work at all in some cases. The can be found at your computer manufacturer’s website under the support section. If you have a custom built system, open the side panel and look at the individual parts and do a Google search for the model numbers on the parts. You should find a link to the manufacturers site and the link to download the driver should not be too far off.

(While you’re in there you could dust it out with a clean soft brush or can of compressed air, your choice. I do it for my customers, I don’t charge but I do mention it so they get a sense of value for money)

Installing Windows:

Install Windows, plain and simple.

For the noobs, insert the Windows install disc, use the boot key and boot into the disc and follow the setup. The boot key on different systems varies. Dells are F12 HP’s are F11. You will need to do research on others. Normally on the boot screen when the computer is now powering up, it’s usually written somewhere on the screen for a few seconds. Be quick :D

If you want to segregate your windows from your personal files on separate partitions or hard drives, there is a program that does that, but requires a few small steps before you start installing drivers and software.

Windows Profile Relocator

After Windows is done installing, install those drivers you downloaded. Make sure you get all of them. You can tell if you missed any by “right clicking” on “My Computer” and hit “manage”. Select “device manager” and there will be a yellow triangle exclamation mark by any hardware that didn’t have its drivers installed.

Next step, install all available Windows updates…. ALL OF THEM. Don’t give the bad guys an opening to blackball you.

Avoid and hide the Windows Activation Technologies update if you are running a pirated copy of windows.

Concerning an antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials is the go to AV for me. The definitions are updated a few times a day and there are no heuristics but this also means you almost never see false positives like AVG and Avast!. It does deal with rootkits which the other free AVs do not. It’s also ridiculously lightweight and did I mention it’s free? It’s also based off of the engine behind Microsoft’s Forefront enterprise class, near bulletproof security platform.

The hard part:

Different technicians like to do installs a little differently but there is one golden rule, LESS IS MORE. Don’t install every ROM you have collected in the last 20 years, don’t install 10 different calculator application. Don’t install 8 different media players.

We have the internet, ROM encyclopaedias are pointless.

You get the idea.

Pick the best of the best and install that.

Two or three web browsers are a good idea in case the others stop working. Java, Flash install them and make sure they are set to auto update.

Media Players are Awesome, but for the average user, Windows Media Player is just fine. Install a basic codec pack like Win7 Codec Pack or Vista Codec Pack (also works on XP) by Shark007 and this will allow every file format know to geekdom to play back in Windows Media Player.

Ask what services the person uses, Yahoo, Windows Live, Google, and install the corresponding suite.

Context menu items, disable as many of them where they don’t make sense. The Nvidia ATI and Intel graphics managers, put the icon in the system tray and disable the context menu entries to launch them. This keeps context menus clear and helps them appear faster. Use a program like “Shell Extension Viewer x86/x64” to do it for programs that don’t give an in program option to disable context menu entries. I recommend you do this especially for apps like Winzip and 7-Zip that add nearly 10 extra item to the context menu for their one program.

What’s in your startup?

Hit the “Start Orb” type “msconfig” right click on the result and choose “run as administrator”. Go to the “startup” tab and deselect any programs that you don’t want to run on startup. If you don’t know what it does, Google the file name and you should find out. Some of these are necessary for windows to run so don’t disable them willy nilly. This should reduce the time it takes for Windows to go from the Welcome Screen to being usable.

There are one or two other apps you can install for the user’s benefit such as Paint.NET, a good simple free video encoder like Freemake Video Encoder. A simple DVD/CD burning program like Nero Burnlite Free. Install a pdf reader that doesn't have all the hooks for the PDF format to mitigate the chance of a malformed PDF exploiting the PC. Sumatra, Foxit are good ones among some others. If you know that your customer is interested in certain things, like say video gaming, install Steam and teach them about it. If they like video editing, sit for 5 mins and show them how to use Windows Live Movie Maker (an excellent piece of video editing software)

As a technician, there are things you need to do for your customers that will keep them coming back to you for all their computer needs.

Putting the User Profile Folder for Windows on another Partition

2011-02-04T10:46:00.001-08:00

We all know that Windows is one OS, that, if it decides to die, it really dies and usually takes all your data along with it. That said, wouldn’t it be brilliant to have Windows and all your programs on one partition/hard drive and all your user data (Desktop, Documents, Music, Pics etc) on a separate drive? If you did that, then if Windows died, you simply format the partition with Windows on it and reinstall Windows while leaving all your data safe on the second partition.

With Windows XP you could right click on the My Documents folder and relocate it somewhere else but it still left the Desktop Folder on the Windows Partition. In Vista and Win 7 you could do the same with each User folder (My Docs, Music, Pics, Vids ETC) the only problem being it got really boring and monotonous really fast and still didn’t move the ‘AppData’ folder

Now, Profile Relocator to the rescue. This nifty lil program does all the dirty work for you on XP (x86), Vista and 7 (x86 and x64). It’s best used with a fresh install of Windows for best result. The steps are pretty simple.

When installing Windows, make sure you create a partition for Windows and another for your user data.
During the Windows setup when you are asked to put in an account name DO NOT put in the name you want for the account. For the initial setup use a temporary account name like “Temp” because we will have to delete this account after we use Profile Relocator.
When Windows is up and running, go to the second partition and create a folder there. Any name would do but i recommend you name it “Users”
Now run Profile Relocator (Be sure to Right Click and choose “Run and Administrator”)
Agree and click ‘Next’
Remember that folder i told you to create on the second partition, now point the Profile Relocator to that folder to move your user folders and files there. Hit ‘start’ and wait for the magic to happen.
When it is done, go to ‘Control Panel > User Accounts’ and create a new account with the user name you want for your account.
Restart the computer, and when it boots back up to the login screen, login with your new account.
If you go to the new location for your user folder on your second partition, you should see a new folder there with the name for the new user account on it.
You can now delete the old Temp account from the Control Panel and now rest assured that all your files are safe on your second partition,
As an added bonus i recommend an imaging application like Macrium Reflect Free/Norton Ghost etc to image your Windows Partition with all your main programs already installed (please avoid imaging games and user files to keep the image size down, thus speeding up the recovery time) to another location so in the event Windows decides to give problems, simply restore Windows to the Image taken with the imaging program and everything should go back to when you made the image allowing you to get back working with minimal downtime.

Cheers Peeps!!

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One point I should note, when you do this move, the indexing library may get corrupted or may still point to where the user files were on the C drive. Thus the Windows 7 libraries feature which relies on the indexing system to work may not function properly anymore.

In the event that happens, simply type “indexing options” in the start menu search,
click it,
tell the indexing too where to index, i.e. the new user directory location,
then choose rebuild index, and the windows 7 libraries will begin to work as before.

Video Playback Software; why does this one playback the video better than the other?

2010-10-11T18:58:00.001-07:00

What do you use to play back your fav vids? VLC, maybe KLite Codec Pack? What are the differences that really make the differences among the variety of media players that roam the wide open interwebs?

I remember a time, it was the year 2000, computer world over were supposed to be failing everywhere and the world would be thrown back to the stone ages. I had gotten my first PC a few years before along with my first bootleged movie, “The Matrix” and my uncle showed me how to play back videos in Windows Media Player (the old school one that was a perfect square box). Soon after I visited my cousins in Miami and i was introduced to a format called “rm” that needed to be played back in a player called “Real Player” Now the video was horrible at best, but i did use the player for playing by my Matrix CD and I noticed that the picture had become dramatically clearer compared with them it was played back in Windows Media Player. That’s where i became curious about why this was so.

Bypassing the technical details, i will opt to just go through the general points. There are 2 kinds of media players, at the top spots; the “Codec Packs” and the “Stand Alone Players”.

The Codec Packs

The best known codec packs, at present are K-Lite Codec Pack, Win7 Codec Pack/Vista Codec Pack and the Combined Community Codec Pack (aka CCCP). These all follow the model of installing external codecs into the systems that can be used by other applications that are on the system, other than the media player bundled with the codec pack (usually Media Player Classic).These tend to be very flexible but do a lot of system modification but result in system wide improvements in usability, such as the built in Windows Media Player being able to handle all the formats the codec pack supports or video encoders being able to see all the streams on files like MKV and OGG.

The All In One Media Player

The all in one media players are the ones with all the codecs built into the player itself, not getting into system related settings and expanding system capabilities and not junking everything up as some codec packs do. Now with regard to this category, the most well known player is VLC, thou not really the best is multiplatform, operating on Linux and Mac besides Windows. The best of the all in ones I’ve seen is one called KM-Player, another free but Windows only app, with functionality resembling the good ole’ Winamp before it became adware. However, it is incredibly flexible and super fast and improves rendering and video quality dramatically.

Cheers Bitches!

Hello AMD Radeon 6800 Series

2010-10-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

So we all know that every year (or almost any way) Graphics Cards companies like Nvidia and AMD Graphics (formerly ATI) release their next generation graphics cards to market.

This year is no exception. AMD has released two new cards, the 6850 and 6870, the first in their new line of cards for the coming year.
They follow the same moniker designation as the last generation’s two most powerful GPUs the 5850 and 5870 and are somewhere between 10 – 5% less powerful than last year’s 5850 and 5870 while being significantly more power efficient and smaller.. weird huh?
There’s a reason for that!
The new 6800 series would have been the replacement for the 5700 cards (mid end) of last year, however AMD isn’t taking the older 5700 series off the shelves as it is going to remain on shelves for the 2011 as well. As such the mid end segment was expanded to the 6800 in an attempt to reduce confusion among consumers (thou questionably so).
Despite their names, they aren’t the two most powerful single GPU cards in AMD’s 2010 line-up as the 5800 was the year before. In reality they are actually the new upper mid end cards. (a new segment to AMD’s graphics line)
Basically we now have lower md end (5700) and upper mid end (6800) graphics cards in AMD’s lineup now.
The actual high end cards will be released under the 6900 moniker formerly reserved for AMD’s dual GPU offerings.
That said, anyone looking for good graphics cards with performance very close to last years 5850 and 5870 cards along with AMD’s Evefinity support for up to 5 displays at once at varying resolutions per monitor, and some other minor improvements along with a more efficient architecture for around $200 USD, this a definite stop on your must see list.
For more info, check out the links below for exceptional and detailed reviews at these fine review sites: -
Read - AnandTech
Read (1), (2) - Guru3D
Read - HardOCP
Read (1), (2) - Bit-tech
Read - PC Perspective
Read - Legit Reviews
Read - Techgage
Read (1), (2) - TweakTown
Read - Hexus
Read (1), (2) - TechPowerUp
Read - HotHardware
Read - TechSpot

Configuring Haali’s Media Splitter for Soft Subtitles

2010-06-30T22:44:00.001-07:00

No matter which way u slice it, a lot of MKV files come with soft subs, however for the people out there who want the vids on devices like PSPs and PS3s and XBOXs, they need something more compatible. As it stands there are many media converters that will convert MKV to something else however embedding the subtitles for foreign language videos is a bit of a problem for most.

XVID4PSP, a program i hold nothing back when confessing my love for this super flexible program, when combined with a codec pack like CCCP or Win7/Vista Codec Pack, and a properly configured Haali’s Media Splitter can fix u up no problem.

As seen above, in the “Languages” branch of the hierarchy there is a entry to specify which audio and subtitle files are tied to each other.

In the case of myself, as you can see, i prefer and English audio track with no subtitles if possible as my first preference, and if that's not available, the Japanese audio with English subtitles.

The layout is simple, preferred language audio is first then a comma with no space, then the code for the language of the subtitle, then separate that combination preference with a semi colon, and then repeat with your second choice combination.

Most anime fans who prefer the original Japanese audio track will use:

jpn,eng;eng,off;

People like me who may just want to listen and not watch will use:

eng,off;jpn,eng;

Now simply drag ur video into XVID4PSP and choose ur device preset or use a preset of ur own choosing and hit the magic encode button and let the fun start! When done you will have a mp4 or avi video with hardcoded subtitles embedded in the video and compatible with a device of ur choice.

Cheers BITCHES XD

For the details of encoding the actual video go to my previous posts on encoding videos using XVID4PSP.

Hello From Windows Live Writer Wave 4 Beta

2010-06-24T17:20:00.001-07:00

Removing the “Shortcut to” prefix when creating shortcuts in Windows 7

2010-05-30T03:55:00.001-07:00

Open the Registry Editor. Click the Start button, type regedit, and press Enter.
If a User Account Control dialog box appears, click "Yes".
Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer
On the right hand pane, double-click the value link, changing its value to 00 00 00 00.
Restart the computer (or just explorer if you know how) and no more “Shortcut to” prefixes XD

If you’re the lazy SOB i know you are i made a registry entry to double click on and it will do it for you XD

Download: - "Shortcut to" Prefix remover

Cheers biches ^_^

Remove the “Me Menu” In Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04

2010-05-25T11:16:00.001-07:00

Alrighty people, the new Ubuntu is out and oh damn it’s fast!!! Moreso they actually integrated social right into the top menu bar with their new “Me Menu” which interfaces with the Gwibber and Empathy IM and Social clients allowing you to broadcast to multiple social networks simultaneously.

However, there are some of us who like a minimal interface or just don’t care for social features like Facebook, Twitter and what not.

Hit Alt+F2 to bring up the Run command
Enter this: sudo apt-get remove indicator-me
Select the Run In Terminal option below and hit OK
Type in your user password if prompted
You should be asked to choose Y/N, choose Y and hit Enter

It will run the command and then then you will need to reboot afterwards.

Once back up, the Me Menu should be gone.

Chhers PPL!!

Why are there so many icons in your system tray?

2010-05-10T09:22:00.001-07:00

Holy FUCK!! Dude there are like 15 icons in ur system tray!!

Don’t you hate turning on someone else’s computer and watching all those lovely icons load up…one..by one…by one? Well, if you are this post is for you.

All the tech guys out there know about bring up RUN and typing ‘msconfig’ in there and disabling startup applications from there but even for us, its a bitching pain in the ass. Its a small box that cannot be resized and there in so little room to do anything other than read the name of the launch app and the first 3 letters of the location column…. it suck i know.. hence the post.

After a bit of digging, i found what’s in startup… nonono not what’s in your start up, i mean the name of the program i found is called What’s in Startup Yes you can click on it and it will take you to the download.

This program is the closest thing to viagra for ur PC. There is no install, just extract and run as administrator. Its that simple XD

The programs are listed there in a nice simple list in a resize able window with a tonne of extra info to help u determine if the said app u want to disable is important or not…

HA.. lemme’ see Microsoft's built in utility do that HEHE. Simply select the programs that are hogging resources on start up, right click and hit your choice of Delete or Disable. I typically use disable in case i need to re-enable them, but if you want to de-clutter your registry then Delete may be for you.

Nice simple and no install needed. Simply keep on your flash drive and you can do an instant tune up on anyone’s PC and speed up start up significantly by disabling all those useless programs running on Startup.

Typically the best way to do this is to go into the individual program’s options panel and manually disable it’s “Run On Startup option” but in the case of programs like Norton Ghost there really is no option other than to use an app like this and disable it form the registry directly as the programs built in option does nothing more than remove the icon from the system tray but not remove it from startup.

Cheers pplz!!

Batch Album Art Resizing

2010-05-05T00:04:00.001-07:00

Going back a couple years to when i had a Sandisk Sansa E250, was when i first started putting some effort into my music collection trying to make sure all my songs had at least an artist and song title embedded in the song tag.

I initially used Windows Media Players built in features for appending song data along with album art, and that worked fine for a while, that was until i got Windows Vista and saw how crappy and low resolution all those album art were, and that they were never actually embedded into the music files themselves. After that I turned to Mediamonkey and MP3TAG, two excellent apps for finding and embedding beautiful high resolution album art in the songs tags.

It was about then i noticed all the songs with nice high resolution album art embedded weren’t showing their album art on my Sansa. In an attempt to find out the reason, i did a little experimenting and found out the Sansa could only read album art that was smaller than 300x300 resolution. But i decided not to downsize my albumart to that because that was what I had before and it was just too low quality for me.

Fastfoward to 2010, i have a PS3 and i am using Playstation 3 Mediaserver to stream my music collection to my PS3, and one advantage it has over Windows Media Player’s streaming function is it also streams the album art, however it wasn't seeing all the album art in my songs, after more fiddling this time, i realised that album art over 500x500 resolution was a bit of a problem for PS3MS to send, so i had to find a way to resize all album art over 500x500 in my collection… (now 40 gigs) to a compatible size. After a bit of googling, I in a ironical twist of fate, found a program called Sanse MP3 Art Sizer which was designed back in 2003 to resize album art in MP3’s to a size compatible with the Sandisk Sansa. However, that size was too small for me even then. I managed to find a small workaround never the less to make this program resize the album art to a size i wanted 500x500.

Download and install the program, and make sure you have a shortcut on the desktop.
Secondly, right click the shortcut to the program and choose Properties
Look for the box labelled Target
Append this text to the right end of the text already in the box SanseMp3ArtSizer.exe /500/100 Now the numbers at the end can be changed to your needs, the ‘500’, can be any value from 100 to 1000 and represents the resolution you want to resize the current album art to. The second number 100 represents the quality of the resized image and can be any number from 50 to 100. (Make sure there is a space between the original text and the new text you are adding in)
Now run the program.

Now in the actual application itself, is an option in the menu that lets the program ignore album art that is already smaller than the resolution you want to resize to. It can be found under Options in the menu bar at the top and is called Skip if original smaller than resize make sure it is selected and it will save your computer from having to do extra work for no reason.

Cheer and crank that volume up PPL XD

Wait.. What happened to my Sidebar?

2010-02-07T01:38:00.001-08:00

WTF… Where did my sidebar go?

Its a question many of us have been asking ourselves since Windows 7 was released.

When the Sidebar was released in Windows Vista; it was a case of either you liked it or you hated it. I was one of those people who liked it because it made Widgets/Gadgets usable to me.

Before the Sidebar, I never used Gadgets because it required me to clear my desktop to see them, and I wasn’t one to memorise shortcuts or even wanted to do that to check something as simple as the time or see how much RAM I had left.

The Sidebar had this nifty feature where you could make it stay above all windows and keep that gadgets docked there, on top of windows as well. The windows when maximised would never go below the sidebar or on top of it, it would align to the side of the Sidebar as it would to the edge of the screen.

In Windows 7, Microsoft removed the Sidebar entirely instead of making it optional. Not only was this stupid, but it warranted someone being kicked in the balls.

In an attempt to thwart these change in events, I found 2 ways to reinstate the Gadget Sidebar In Windows 7. However one of them requires some major hacking of windows files and there are still some incompatibilities with Windows 7 even after you get all of that done. It can be found here Reinstate Vista Windows Sidebar on Windows 7; use at your own risk. The other solution is much simpler and is relatively pain free.

The Gadget Sidebar Gadget ~ Windows 7 Sidebar

A developer, Helmut Buhler, developed a Gadget that replicated the main function of the Vista Sidebar. Called Windows 7 Sidebar, it emulated the Vista Sidebar, while adding a Window-Manager with Live-Thumbnails. The extra features are potentially useful, but are well placed so they are easily ignored if you don’t want to use them.

Overall this is a great standby option until Microsoft decides to officially bring back the sidebar.

XVID4PSP: The Return ~ Revision 90

2010-02-06T23:36:00.001-08:00

So we all know I’m like a Hentai around Japanese School Girls when it comes to; what i consider to be one of the best video encoding applications around… XVID4PSP v5.0. That said, as great a program it is, I do have my share of problems with it.

Not too long ago, a community developer released a mod of XVID4PSP v5.0, XVID4PSP v5.0 R90, which was retuned and a few new features were added in, which fixed a lot of my problems.

Batch File Opening

One of these newly added feature was a one most people have been begging for, for quite some time… the ability to open an entire folder of files, instead of opening files individually.

How it works is you go to File > Open Folder…” (Not DVD folder) and choose the folder of videos you want to open.
The first video will open and opening of videos will pause (The Enqueue and Encode buttons at the top would change to Resume)
When you are done choosing your video encoding and adjustment settings, hit resume, select where to save the completed videos and the crop, trim and aspect ratio settings that you choose for that first video that was opened, should be applied to all the other videos in that folder. (This batch behaviour can be set and modified in Batch encoding settings)

Batch encoding settings found at Settings > Global Settings
Then go to the last tab marked Batch Encoding
Then select the features you want to use (I recommend selecting the first 3 options))

Once done, the Resume buttons would return to their original functions; just hit Encode and let the work begin.

This batch encode is particularly useful for TV series, preferably all from same source.

In the event you want to do several different groups of videos, like Season One of Transformers and then all the Indiana Jones movies,

Group them into different folders,
Open one folder, choose your settings, hit resume, choose where you want the completed videos saved, let it be applied to all the videos in that folder,
Then open the other folder and choose your settings for those files, hit resume, choose where you want the completed videos saved, and let those open,
Once both groups are done opening, hit encode and let it work.

Video Trimming

Now the ability to trim files is super useful, what it is essentially is the ability to choose a certain portion of a video and encode just that piece. Very handy for testing video encoding settings and different filtering settings. Simply trim about a minute of video , try something that would be demanding like a high motion scene (The elevator explosion in the beginning of 007 Casino Royale) or a very dark scene with lots of motion and encode that over and over with various settings until you find something that matches what you wants.

Conclusion

In the end, this a seriously big improvement over the older version, sporting newer codes and other minor but welcomed improvements as well as themes to match Windows Vista/7’s Aero theme. Now go get it!!!!

Podcasts

2009-08-04T08:19:00.001-07:00

What’s a Podcast?

Well firstly, its a downloadable piece of audio or video that's consumable at any time that is convenient for you.

Secondly, just because it has “Pod” in the name doesn’t mean it works with just iPods. It can actually work with any device that says it has podcast support, that includes Apple’s iPod as well as Microsoft’s Zune and Sony’s Walkmans.

Thirdly, Podcasts can be viewed on a computer as well and don’t actually require a portable media device at all.

To Start

Firstly, you need to get an program to manage and download your podcasts for you.

Apple’s iTunes is a good choice, but there is also Microsoft’s Zune Media Software, as well as Miro and Nullsoft's Winamp.

Media Players like iTunes and Zune have a built in Podcast store where you can simply browse and subscribe to many podcasts, some video, others audio. Many are usually free although there are the paid for podcasts.

To Subscribe

For applications like Miro and Winamp, you would need to go to the podcast’s official website and get the official RSS link from there and enter it into the Podcast manager to subscribe.

(Subscribe basically means that you wont need to go and manually download a episode every time a new episode comes out. The podcast management software will do it for you automatically.)

For instance, go to Revision 3's website, and choose a show, for instance “Tekzilla,”

There you will see the subscription area.

Choose “RSS” and then the format you would like to subscribe in, in my case its the “WMV Large” because i know it will work with Windows Media Player.

When you do, there will be another page that comes up.

Here, you simply copy the URL in the address bar, as indicated in the above picture and paste it into the podcast manager of your choice.

In the case of adding it to your manager, look for a button labelled “subscribe” or “add” and paste the acquired link there.

Following suite, the Podcast manager should start downloading the newest episodes of the podcast you subscribed to.

Now you’re all done. Get entertained ppl, its podcast time.!!!!

PS3 Slim with a side of PSP-2?

2009-07-22T16:42:00.001-07:00

Consider this, around the midlife of a Sony platform, Sony likes to introduce a redesign and its successor not to far after; hence the PS1 was released at the midlife of the original PS and the PS2 Slim was released at the midlife of the PS2. Also, around these midlife redesigns, Sony likes to debut or release the successor to the console. The redesign of the PSP has been made public (the redesigns are usually pretty major, all the previous updated were minor), the PSPgo. So it come to mind that the PSP 2 is not far off. I would go as far as to say it will debut around the same time in either Q3 or Q4 of this year, probably when the PS3 Slim is debuted.

If you ask “why not at E3?” it is because if they had announced it that far ahead of release time, the announcement would have cannibalized sales for the existing platforms, meaning anticipation for the PSP 2 and PS3 Slim would have caused sales to slump as people held off buying in order to get the newer models.

This is just my opinion, but if you check the dates and their usual strategy, you will see, I'm not far off.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Update: -

Sigh..... well there was no release but i still have my hopes up for a real PSP 2 some time soon.

Windows 7’s Windows Media Player 12 (2010 Update)

2009-06-02T20:56:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 seems to be the next best thing to sliced bread as of lately. Everyone can’t help but comment on how great it is and how wonderful it seems to interoperate with everything. For the most part this is true, but 7 isn’t without it’s jagged edges. There are the minor things that still take away from the full picture. The addition of the ability to increase the size of the fonts on screen to 125% or 150% is an amazing feature (not that it wasn’t there before, its just really easy to do now), especially for people like me that have high resolution monitors. However it breaks the functionality of some applications such as Encode HD and Xvid4PSP.

Why? well for the most part the reason the program doesn't play nice could be because the developer didn’t write the application to a specific standard which would give it the ability to be properly manipulated by the operating system.

Never the less, there are other areas such as the decision to recreate the Paint and Control Panel Icons among others. The new Icons are nice but they don’t seem to match the overall visual style of Windows Vista’s Icon set which was brought over to Windows 7. In addition, I don’t know what it is exactly that’s causing it, but Windows 7’s Icon set somehow the colouring reminds me of the Windows XP icon set; a little too yellow i guess.

(Windows Media Player 12 is worlds apart from 11 that was shipped in Vista) Much cleaner in terns of interface, it plays songs back snappily with very little delay, however when moving between libraries such as Video and Music or from one library to a playlist, there is a noticeable lag to load the items. Overall performance may be improved but WMP 12 still manages to hiccup now and again causing serious detraction from the overall experience. To add to this, the new “Now Playing” view returns to the days of Windows Media Player 9 with the “Mini View Skins.” Now really and truly, most people don’t use the “Now Playing” view much unless that like to watch the visualisations or the album art.

The downside of the new Now Playing Feature is a variety of things. To get to the now playing screen, you have to press a button on the bottom right of the Player (really… who is even going to look there?). However to get from the now playing screen to the library view, the button to back isn’t on the bottom right, its actually on the top right…? Now to add insult to injury, you have to right click on the now playing screen for user access to the Equaliser and SRS WOW effects and video adjustments etc. There is no direct way to access the equaliser from the Library screen like you did in Windows Media Player 11. Lets add one more scalding point… say you decided to go through your music folders and play random songs as you browse, every time you double click a song, window media player comes up, and you have to minimise it…. EVERY TIME!!!! Back in WMP 11, if you enabled the taskbar mode when you played a song by directly double clicking the file WMP 11 would stay in taskbar mode minimised, and would be not up in you face. The Zune software… interestingly enough, actually still has a taskbar mode. Odd but true.

(As you can see from the screen shot, accessing the equaliser requires the use of a context menu which can get really old, really fast.)

(Also, the classic list view is still there but even when enabled, still does not provide a direct way to access the EQ and other enhancements)

To add insult to injury, the Now Playing and Media Library view are not position independent. So if you wanted to keep the now playing window in the upper left of the screen, and you moved the library window to the bottom right of the screen, when you go back to the Now Playing window, the window ends up approximately in the middle of the screen instead of the upper left. Annoying?… most definitely.

For the most part, Windows 7 has been exquisitely refined and polished, but these few quirks have permanently move me off Windows Media Player to Zune and Winamp for music and KMPlayer for videos.

Someone, please kick Balmer and the team that developed WMP 12 in the NUTS!!

I have to Rename all of that; WTF?

2009-05-22T17:16:00.001-07:00

The Problem

So you just went on that vacation, and you just got carried away taking lots of gorgeous and not so gorgeous photos. You went through them and sorted them out, all you have left to do is rename them. Hold on, don't you have 600 photos from that vacation left?

The Solution

Well an easy solution to that problem is a tiny yet powerful program called A.F.5 Rename. This little wonder can let you rename however you want. Start with a “string” such as [My vacation photos] and end with a “counter” that will number all the photos. Simple and easy.

Hey you know that anime series with 500 episodes that you downloaded from 12 different fan-sub groups, each with its own style of naming the files, this program can also rename those files and make them presentable and organised.

Cheers ^_^

XVID4PSP + .AVI & DIVX - The essential combo.

2009-04-20T19:54:00.001-07:00

Yeah bbe!!! time for the follow up.

So i discussed the differences between containers and formats in my previous post now I'm going to get into actual transcoding/encoding.

Firstly transcoding is when you have a video in one format and you need it in another, so you are “transferring"/transcoding” the video to another format.

Encoding is when you have RAW video fresh form a camera and it is uncompressed and need to be compressed to some easily distributable format. You therefore have to encode it into a format.

The most popular format combination at the moment is the DIVX/XVID encoded video in a .AVI container. This is because several DIVX certified DVD players and game consoles can read these files off of data discs. It allows you to fit 3 hours of video on a 700 MB Compact Disc (CD) with no visible loss of quality when viewed on a standard definition TV.

Now concerning the names, YES! XVID is DIVX spelled backwards. XVID is actually an open source, free, reverse engineered version of DIVX. I highly recommend it.They can both be used interchangeably.

To do the encoding the best application I have ever used is Winnydows’ XVID4PSP application. As the name indicates it was originally a application for transcoding videos for the PSP but it has become far more than that since then. This application has a multitude of features including DIVX and XVID!!

To begin with download the application XVID4PSP. Now remember that it needs Microsoft’s .NET Framework 3.0 to run. So on Vista it will run perfectly, on XP you are out of luck, you will have to head on over to Microsoft's site and download and install the .NET 3.0.

For the rest of us who aren't afraid of change and switched to Vista, install XVID4PSP and run the application.

Now the interface is pretty simple: -

There are the menus on the top row with the most advanced options.
Below that is another row of simple commands that are required very often.
To the left is a column of drop down menus with the simple settings for the video encoding; and little “E” buttons to adjust the advanced options.

Get a Video

The first thing is to get a video/DVD to encode to DIVX. For this “little” post, we’re encoding a video so that is compatible with the PS3. If you are working on a video hit the “open” button and select a video to choose. You will only see the video files the program is capable of converting. This includes .FLV videos from YouTube. If you plan on transcoding .MKV files so they play on your PS3 I highly recommend downloading and installing the Vista Codec Pack by Shark 007.
For DVDs use the “DVD” button. If you have a copy protected DVD you will need to copy the disc to the hard drive and remove the copy protection before you can do anything. "(Google “DVD Shrink”)
Some windows should appear and disappear as the video you added is analysed. DVDs however take a tad bit longer. As the DVD is added you need to choose the correct video stream and audio stream. For example, some Japanese animated films, have two videos on the DVD, one with the English titles and credits and another with them in Japanese. Then they have the English and Japanese audio tracks. Once this is selected the DVD will be indexed and then is ready for conversion to the dark side!!
With this done all you have to do is either choose a preset, or manually select a container, video codec and audio codec and hit “encode”. As we are doing a PS3 compatible DIVX convert, there are some minor tweaks.

Steps to converting: -

Firstly set the container or as they have it labelled “Format” to either .AVI/.MP4. In the case you want this to work on a DIVX DVD player as well, use .AVI exclusively.
Set the Video encoding to “XVID HQ Ultra”
1. Hit the “E” button next to the Video encoding preset.
2. Set the “FOURCC” to “DIVX”. (XVID would work fine as its the default)
3. Click the “Motion” tab and de-select the 3 options
4. Quarter pixel search; Global motion compensation and Chroma motion estimation.
Click “OK” and you are done with the custom configuration.
The audio encoding should be “MP3 CBR 128k” if you are using a .AVI container. For .MP4 use the “AAC-LC ABR 128K” preset.
With this done hit “Encode”, choose where you want the video to be saved and sit back for video compression goodness.

Doing conversions to other formats

If you would like you can try some of the different presets that are available such as the iPod 5.5 and PS3/XBOX 360 presets.

Just remember that the walk through/tutorial that I did used the DIVX/XVID codec to do the encoding and is relatively speedy. Presets like the PS3 and iPod 5.5 use the X.264 codec which results in even better video quality but takes significantly longer. Up to 3 times longer. So its your choice. Play around with the options and you will be pleasantly surprised.

For those interested, XVID4PSP is actually able to automatically detect the “black borders” around video and crop/delete it. If you would like to manually adjust something with respect to the cropping of the video and its aspect ration go to the “Video” menu in the topmost row of menus. Once there select “Resolution/Aspect”.

Now burn it to a disc or copy it to a USB stick and insert in your ps3.

For the inexperienced out there, if you never did this before here is how you do it.

Go onto your USB stick on your computer.
Create a folder and name it “video”. Capitalisation doesn’t matter but remember its “video” singular, NOT “videos” plural.
Then, copy all your videos into that folder. You can create any subfolders in that “video” folder to organise your videos.
Once done copying files over, insert the stick in your ps3 and the device will appear under videos with all the videos available in it.

That's it people.

Cheers!

Video Conversion… SUCH A PAIN!!!!! The basics

2009-04-20T19:04:00.001-07:00

Alrighty, its been a while since my last post. However I’m going to delve into the world of video encoding/transcoding. This is a pretty lengthy and complicated topic so I’ll try and make it as digestible as possible.

To start with, everyone has noticed that at the end of video files are extensions like .AVI .MP4 .MKV .MOV .WMV. However these are not really the actual video formats. These are just containers that hold the actual video file along with an accompanying audio file and in some cases additional files besides audio and video. These two or more files are held in the container file. So inside the .AVI file one should find a video and audio file. The files were muxed together by a program into the .AVI container file.

.AVI is one of the oldest containers, having originally been developed my Microsoft, its full name is actually the “AUDIO VIDEO INTERCHANGE”. Within this container the video file and audio files can actually be a multitude of formats. The audio can be anything form .AAC to .MP3/.MP4/.OGG/.FLAC. The same goes for video which can be .MPG/.MPEG/.DIVX/.XVID etc.

With the .AVI container being as old as it is, it actually has some limitations to it. For instance, it can only hold two items in it, a video and audio. Say you wanted to have a video and 2 audio files, each in a different language, it would be impossible, and more so, if you wanted to add a subtitle file your out of luck. With .AVI it is also incompatible with some of the newest video formats such as H.264/X.264. As such its loosing its relevance slowly but surely.

To deal with the situation, there are newer containers such as .MP4 and .MKV to the rescue. .MP4 is fully compatible with H.264/X.264 and .MKV having the ability to have multiple video files, audio files and subtitle files on one container!!!!! Basically more than two at a time.

.MKV created by the Matroska Foundation is a technological marvel and is completely open source (which means it was developed for free and is available to use for free) However the number of devices and programs that support it is near zero. However with the latest news from the format front saying that DIVX has chosen .MKV as the new container standard for their wildly popular video format due to it greater abilities, more devices will emerge with support for it.

Devices such as the PS3 and XBOX 360 that are fully DIVX certified will have to update their firmware to support the new DIVX standards and stay fully DIVX certified. So with time there will come support for .MKV on more devices, but for the moment all DIVX devices are only able to see DIVX video if it’s encoded in a .AVI container.

So in all there are way to many video formats and standards to cover in any one post. However I will cover the most useful and popular ones that are of the most benefit and the best programs to do the Video Encoding Job!!!

Linux, the future? (Updated 16/01/2010)

2009-03-23T19:40:00.001-07:00

Alright, so we’ve all heard about Linux, its the great free operating system that charges you nothing and can perform miracles. Well that may be overstating it a bit, but the truth to the matter is its actually quite useable. I’ve been going into 2 main operating systems; Ubuntu 9.10 and Linux Mint 8 for some time now and I have been playing around with them. To be honest both are fantastic. The KDE4 desktop environment in Mint is really good, and it feels a lot like Windows in a very good way Gnome looks a bit homely. Gnome in Ubuntu is really customisable and it works really well espically after I tweaked it how you want.

Off the bat, Mint has more codec's than you can shake a mentos filled bottle of soda at. Even X.264 video can be played natively in the operating system and even preview thumbnail are generated. (I managed to do this without a video driver installed by the way) After i installed the restricted extras on Ubuntu, everything worked pretty well. Open office and some other apps are included along with an array of descent well featured programs.

So i got my new desktop and i put Linux, specifically Ubuntu 9.10 on my Vostro 1500. I was really surprised at how quickly files copied because on Windows Vista/7, files copied to my USB Memory Stick at 10mb/s, but on Ubuntu it was 25mb/s .I got rid of it after a week. But the real reason was beacuse, not that the system performed badly or was lacking, but the bundled apps like open office and the media player, were if anything functional, but not very good. They are not really well refined or interesting and Open Office seriously corrupted the Indents and bullet points in all my .docx files when i edited them. I find the fact that the Open Ofiice team is busy tring to emulate the ribbon UI of MS Office 2007 when they cant even get the interoperability of MSO O7 and OO as seamless as possible.

The OS is fine for the most part but Its when the drivers can’t install or a program gives trouble, what do all the help sites say? go to the TERMINAL. Nothing against the terminal, but who wants to use the command line in this day and age? In windows most problems do not require you to use the command prompt, however there are the rare few occasions where you would need to. For the most part, the Linux community is too confusing. At this point they should all get behind one interface and one platform and stay there. As it gains ground then branch off and introduce users to the different flavours. At this point the Linux community needs to create a eye-catching tasteful interface that will draw the user in. Both OS10 and Vista/7 have achieved that, now only Linux is left. PS why is right click drag and drop absent?

Its not that Linux is bad but more like its still lacking and needs work. I tried finding at least one app on Linux to replace each app i use on Windows….not happening. No apps were must have apps and usability and functionality are somewhere between Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It needs work and i hope things with the next release of Ubuntu.

Biggest thing, there needs to be a singular standardised way to install applications and drivers and it must be easy to run the setup with root/admin privileges without going into the terminal.

Peace Out

WTF Winamp?

2009-03-10T16:18:00.001-07:00

I remember the first computer i ever got, it was a Windows 98 machine running some odd AMD CPU with an awesome 56mbs of RAM and a whole 8 gig hdd. It even has a 52x CROM!!!

The first thing the happened was my uncle, the family tech guru came over and installed a tonne of software. One of the applications he installed was this odd application that had 3 parts and one of the parts was an equalizer like the one in my dad’s car.

AWESOME!!!!!

What made it even better was that we had a 2.1 speaker system with the computer so it kicked quite a bit. Winamp was a slick app; quick to start up and ready to blast tunes and let me turn the bass up wayyyy toooo loud.

WTF happened to it?

Now its this bloated app with adds from AOL and excessive features that don’t really work well if at all. All the features seem almost like they were designed without Winamp in mind and were slapped on just to say they’re there. Interestingly enough after all this time it still doesn’t differentiate between videos with a .mp4 extension and audio with a .mp4 extension; freakin c'mon!!! Video playback still seems like an after thought even though its been there since Winamp 2. Windows Media Player, you remember that lil ole’ box from windows 95? Yeah that, is actually a better Media Player than Winamp now. While Winamp continued to slap on garbage, WMP focused on the main thing, allowing the user to effectively manage media on their PC. Now look at it, a major media player in the market. Right now Microsoft is refining the formula and making Windows Media Player 12 for Windows 7 which is shaping up to be a potentially lethal contender in the Media Player Market.

Some of the great things about Winamp revolved around 2 things, the plug-ins and the skins. The skins weren’t all that but some skins really made Winamp feel like a brand new application, MMD3 for instance, Multi Pass and EMP/EMP2 were just amazing to use. The new Bento Skin just makes me want to rip my hair out. For heaven’s sake does everything from the last iteration need to fit into one interface? BLOODY HELL. One of the things that made the original Winamp popular was the flexibility of the interface and the free form factor. At this point i would tell Nullsoft that they should strip Winamp down to a core player leave it as is and develop Winamp 4/6/7 from scratch without any obligations to the previous player or accessories. Hell… why don’t the Nullsoft guys build a new Winamp on the WPF, like Blu did? Not only would they be able to do something unlike anything on the market, they could even return as the innovator and the market leader.

Another big factor was the plug-ins. Every kind of visualization and DSP program you could imagine was there. Sadly now, after windows XP, a lot of them got broke. Iconic plug-ins like DEE and a few others just couldn’t run onthe new OS’. Now we have to use DFX (yuck) and rarely does anyone do anything innovative any more. Yeah there are some equally, if not better plug-ins left; but still, i want the oldies i know and love to work. Maybe, just maybe they should have a hall of fame for plug-ins and the null soft guys should make sure all these oldie Goldie's work on the newest platforms? (Just a random thought)

Honestly, WTF Winamp? Once you were the cool kid setting trends and you were the Media Player everyone wanted to be. Even the haterz loved you. Now you’re fat and old, chugging ice cream on your couch in your middle age all saggy and sad.

Windows 7, Neutered?

2009-03-09T22:28:00.001-07:00

After a lot of hardships and complaints by our European brethren, the ‘big M’ is finally making quite a few applications detachable in Windows.

This is a God-sent for some. The ability to remove a Windows application you don’t like is a change for the better with so many other applications on the market that can do the exact same job as the integrated Windows applications, but much better. Google’s Picasa rips past Windows Photo Gallery in terms of speed and capability. Firefox, Chrome and all the other alternative browsers give you so many reasons to leave Internet Explorer as a standby, on both security and speed.

So why then is Microsoft spending money to develop applications which people can get for free from the web with comparable or better features and functionality than the integrated widows apps, well its because the consumer expects a base level of functionality. For example, you say Microsoft is monopolising the web browser market by bundling IE with windows, but if there isn’t a web browser integrated into windows, then how will you be able to browse the net to get another browser?

It’s a sad day for good ole common sense, however unlike Windows XP, that sad hodge-podge Operating System, where the update system was tied into the browser and the DLNA stream services were a part of Windows Media Player 11, Windows Vista and 7 both have these systems untied from any individual applications, minus DLNA media streaming with was tied to Media Player in Vista. In 7 the DLNA system is linked to the Libraries System for data aggregation. Essentially any folder that is added to a library can be shared along with the other items through the DLNA server which can be enabled form the Network and Sharing Centre, and not Windows Media Player hence untying it from a application.

By untying these applications Microsoft can potentially distribute windows without any applications and have the hardware distributor choose a software suite such as the Google suite i.e Picasa GTalk and Chrome or the Windows Live Suite to replace the integrated apps that come with Windows. What happens next is completely up to chance and dumb luck if you ask me , but i will say this, when Microsoft released Windows Live Photo Gallery, I wanted to remove the Windows Photo Gallery and Fax and Photo Viewer in Vista but i couldn’t. Going into the future, for techies like me to be able to remove applications that we will never use and out clients will never use will be a great help. What would be more interesting is if Microsoft allowed us to easily add third party application to the installations disc. Now that would be interesting!

Oh well, Peace Out!!!!!!!