arturmarques.com iLog

Tip: how to add or remove entries from Windows’ send to folder

am — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 09:26:36 +0000

In Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista and Windows 7, the “send to” entries are a folder at

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Just copy/paste the above expression to “Windows Explorer” and the program will browse to that local folder. Its contents control, for example, whatever appears on the “send to” menu that happens when one right-clicks a file.

20120409 03:05 AM – Queen – the legendary 1975 concert

am — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:00:48 +0000

In just a few hours time, 2012-04-09, monday, 0305 AM, London time, BBC 4 will broadcast

“Queen : The Legendary 1975 Concert”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p4hgm

Get your digital recorders ready!

Reusing Mini-DV tapes

am — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 19:07:18 +0000

To tape in HD1080, I use the original Canon HV20, which records the digital video in Mini-DV tapes. The compression is lower than in any other domestic format, the bitrate is higher, the quality is superior, but the tapes are a turn-off for many, who prefer the comfort of an internal HDD, even if with higher compression and much harder editing.

I do NOT archive the videos on tape: I transfer them to a PC’s HDD, using the great [and free] HDVSplit 0.77:
http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm

On average, each tape eats 12 GB per hour of HDD space. I never record more than 1 hour in a tape.
The transfer is 100% digital and does not affect the original’s quality.

I reuse high quality tapes often: as I write, I am transferring one tape which as been recorded 10+ times.

However, problems might arise with Mini-DV tapes, even for those who record on older and simpler analogue DV cameras.
The problems end up being sequencing issues that in digital recordings can kill entire sequences – entire tapes, really. The probability of such errors increases with tape reutilization because previous recordings might leave vestiges of their timelines that corrupt the more recent data. Why the “vestiges” happen is eventually because of mechanical micro flutuations during the recording process, dirt on the recording heads, etc. In some cases, the best thing to do is just to replace the tape.

But, in other occasions, you might save a perfect tape with a simple trick: rewind the tape and record 1 hour of black video; repeat the process. Scan the whole recording: it shoud show 1 hour of black without any signal drops. If it does, rewind and reuse – the tape has been saved!

Workaround for adding network shares to Windows Media Library

am — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:01:50 +0000

In Windows 7, if you try to add a network share to your “music” or “videos” or “pictures” libraries, you’ll probably get an error, either because the network folder is not indexed or indexable, or the remote files are not available offline.

Well, it might not be indexed or the files might not be available offline, precisely to avoid burdens, such as duplicating them locally.

There is a workaround to fool Windows Explorer in allowing any kind of remote share. Just follow and adapt these steps, here examplified for a “music” library hosted on a remote network share named \\server\music

(1) run the local command prompt as an administrator

(2) make a local folder to represent the folder you’ll add to the music library, e.g.

md c:\network.shares\music

(3) using the local Windows Explorer, goto desktop/libraries/music and add the empty location just created

c:\network.shares\music

(4) back to the local command prompt, remove the just created folder, typing

rd c:\network.shares\music

(5) instead of a regular folder, you’ll now make a symbolic link to the network share:

mklink /d c:\network.shares\music \\server\music

It is done. No need to do anything else using Windows Explorer, because the music library is already mapped to
c:\network.shares\music
although that location changed from a regular local folder to a symbolic link to a remote resource.

Converting from iSpy partials to something usable

am — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:13:55 +0000

I use iSpy to record house activity. It is fun to look back and play an entire day at some accelerated speed, for example using Media Player Classic (the shortcut to speed up playback is CTRL+UP Arrow) as provided in the K-Lite Mega Codec package.

iSpy is free at
http://www.ispyconnect.com/download.aspx

K-Lite is free at
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_mega_codec_pack.htm

In my case iSpy outputs some ~300 1280×720 MP4 files per day, averaging some 6 GB. The source is a MS LifeCam Studio HD cam. It should be trivial to join them using one of the so called “video joiners”, but all fail, namely producing an output that can NOT be navigated.

I am still experimenting to find an appropriate workflow. My best candidate right now is converting the MP4s to “MS Compatible AVI” files using the free WinFF and then joining them using the commercial “Ultra Video Joiner“.

WinFF is free at
http://winff.org/html_new/downloads.html

Ultra Video Joiner can be bought at
https://www.regnow.com/checkout/cart/add/13185-12

Ultra Video Joiner beats all the “video joiner” alternatives I tried, and although it is not free, it does work.

Using the process below, the resulting file is much smaller (~500 MB) than the original partials, but seems to keep its quality and is usable, i.e., you can browse to any point in the timeline with no problems.

1) Use WinFF to convert from MP4 to:

AVI, MS Compatible AVI, forcing the “video size” to its original source value (of 1280×720 in my case) and “2 pass” in the “video” tab of the options.

2) Use “Ultra Video Joiner” to join the converted files.

After this, optionally,

3) Delete the converted partials.

4) Delete the original partials from iSpy.

5) Move the joined file to somewhere safe.