Schadenfreude » video

mkvmerge + mplayer Sadness Fix

Erik — Sun, 22 May 2011 21:12:49 +0000

I have been having some issues with newer versions of mkvmerge creating files that make mplayer cry. I finally messed around with the options enough to discover what (I think) was the problem. Header compression reduces filesizes of attachments significantly, but there are some compatibility problems with the files that have this option enabled. Here’s what I finally ended up with:

mkvmerge -o video.mkv --default-language eng \
  --compression -1:none --default-duration 0:41.708ms \
  --nalu-size-length 0:4 -A video.264 --compression -1:none \
   audio.dts subs.srt

Note that this doesn’t set the output language for the audio and subtitle tracks, but there’s only one of each, so I don’t really care. The key point is since this is an elementary h264 stream, I have to set the default-duration and nalu-size-length options manually, since they’re not encoded into the file. This default-duration corresponds to a 23.976fps frame rate, so you have to convert according to your source.

Really, the header compression option should be disabled by default; I have no idea why it’s on. It does save about 30MB of space in the output file, but that’s moot if it ruins compatibility.

Classical Rickrolling

Erik — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:06:00 +0000

Sometimes, I want to hear classical music, but it helps if I can relate to the music being played and really get into it (see: John Williams). Walt Ribeiro recently has awoken me to some awesome arrangements like Pork and Beans and The RickRoll Song that he has produced. You should buy them here if you like them, as I did. Here are some nice samples:

Actually, truth be told, I bought Pork and Beans, and Walt was cool enough to notice and send me Never Gonna Give You Up for free! Please spend money on him!

Sad display of humanity

Erik — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:51:00 +0000

It’s pretty sick when an old man is hit by a driver and they don’t even have the common courtesy to stop.

Originally from here, but they took it down for some reason. It’s disturbing, but I see no reason to stop society from seeing itself.

Ubuntu on the Dell M1530

Erik — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:00:00 +0000

I got my new laptop today!! It’s awesome – I installed Ubuntu very easily on it, and Beryl using a second monitor on the HDMI port even works without much tweaking (just enabling TwinView with the restricted nVidia driver):

I made an Ubuntu Wiki Page on the matter. All the information about what works and doesn’t is on there.

Officer Salvatore Rivieri hates skateboarders

Erik — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:01:00 +0000

“If you keep [skateboarding], someone’s going to kill you..”

Action Cats!

Erik — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:51:00 +0000

OMFG Action Cats!

Graduation Video

Erik — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:03:00 +0000

I found my graduation video while cleaning up today.

You can download the 70MB MP4 copy as well.

Flash Video Player for Mephisto

Erik — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:50:00 +0000

So I made this awesome filter for Mephisto that allows you to easily embed flash videos in your post. May require tweaking if using a non-standard URL root.

It’s as simple as this:


/assets/2007/8/13/party.flv

Or, you can make it complicated:


/assets/2007/8/13/party.flv

Which ends up like this:

Installation

Install it from your mephisto directory:


./script/plugin install -x https://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/code/rails/mephisto/filtered_column_flash_video

Voila! Firebreathing!

Eins, zwei, drei, vier!

Erik — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 02:44:00 +0000

Kittens on a mission!