Simple DVD Authoring tool with DVD Flick

DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles as well as a menu for easier navigation.

Link:
http://www.dvdflick.net

Ubuntu Studio. A multimedia creation flavor of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional.

We provide a suite of the best open-source applications available for multimedia creation. Completely free to use, modify and redistribute. Your only limitation is your imagination.

This is more of a quick post about something that may be of interest to the Linux readers. Not sure how old or how actively maintained this is. Check it out and leave a comment if you decide to install it.

Link:
http://ubuntustudio.org/home

Hulu on the Desktop

Hulu Desktop is a lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer. It features a sleek new look that's optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center remote controls or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu's entire library with just six buttons. For users without remotes, the application is keyboard and mouse-enabled. Hulu Desktop is a downloadable application and will work on PCs and Macs. It will initially launch as a beta product during which we plan to gather and incorporate user feedback to improve the service.

Link:
http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop

Change the software in your media player with RockBox

Rockbox is an Open Source replacement firmware for portable digital audio players

Supported Players:

• Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
  (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd/4th gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
• Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
• Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
• iriver: iHP100 series, H100 series, H300 series and H10 series
• Olympus: M:Robe 100
• SanDisk: Sansa c200 series, e200 series and e200R series (not the AMS models)
• Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)

Link:
http://www.rockbox.org/

Super 2009 Multimedia Encoder

SUPER is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click. If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER is all you need. SUPER does NOT require any additional external codec to be installed, absolutely nothing. Necessary codecs are built in!

Link:
http://www.freewaregeeks.com/...

How I found Hulu

Looking around for some complete movie and TV episodes on video hosting websites I stumbled across Hulu. Glad I did as they have an HD quality The Office episode that I had missed and even more important, they have past It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes. If you haven't heard or watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia check it out on Hulu. Watching in Full Screen works well and the videos stay buffered nicely so there is very little, if any, delays.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/2768/...

The Office in HD:
http://www.hulu.com/hd/45918

Find something good on Hulu? Leave a comment.

Extract video and audio from FLV files

Extracts video and audio from FLV files without decompressing or recompressing. The video is saved as AVI (H.263/FLV1 and VP6/VP6F) or raw elementary stream (H.264/AVC). The audio is saved as MP3, AAC (with ADTS headers), or WAV (PCM).

Link:
http://moitah.net/#FLVExtract

Transform Ubuntu into a Media Center with XBMC

Linux has come a long way in support for multimedia and graphics. Today we will see how to transform Ubuntu 8.10 into a media center platform. You can achieve this using various software like MythTV and Boxee, but we’re going to use XBMC Media Center (formerly XBox Media Center).

XBMC is an award winning media center application for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and XBox. The ultimate hub for all your media, XBMC is easy to use, looks slick, and has a large helpful community.

Link:
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/12/09/...

HowTo: Convert a DVD video to VCD (Mpeg1)

How to convert a DVD format movie (VOB) to VCD (Mpeg1). The reason I had a need to find out how to do this is the Dazzle DVD capture hardware can capture the video to your harddrive in DVD format (VOB) but my DVD player would not recognize the burned media. My DVD player is much more forgiving with a VCD formatted media (Mpeg1).

Software you will need:

• Dazzle DVD Capture**
  
• DGIndex (free)
  
• TMPGenc (free)
  
• StarBurn (free)

** Dazzle is only required if you want to capture video from a digital camera or VCR or other video source

Steps:

1. When capturing video from Dazzle make sure its saving it to your harddrive (will create a folder called VIDEO_TS)
2. Convert the VOB file to an Indexed Mpeg2 using a DGIndex (free).
   
1. Start DGIndex and open the VOB file of your captured video.
   
2. Now save the project, in the same folder as the VOB file, as a DGIndex project file (d2v).
   
3. Close DGIndex
3. Re-encode the video as a VCD compliant video (Mpeg1) using TMPGEnc.
   
1. Start TMPGEnc
2. Choose Video-CD from the wizard and press next
3. Choose the d2v file from Step2 for the video
4. Choose the wav file that was created from Step2 and click next
5. You can set some options on this screen (clip frame is a great way to clean up the rough edges of a captured video)
6. Press until you get to the screen to start processing
7. Save the Mpg file where you want.
8. Close TMPGEnc
   
4. Now you have a proper VCD format from a DVD movie so you can burn this to CD to play in any DVD player. The burning process must be done with software that can burn videos - I use StarBurn as its works great and is free.

Enjoy!

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

Link:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Quickly convert your VHS tapes to DVD with Dazzle

Quickly transfer and share your videos on DVD with Dazzle DVD Recorder. Thanks to its plug-in-play simplicity and a step-by step guide, copying your home movies from almost any video device to DVD has never been easier or faster.

I was looking for a way to convert a bunch of VHS tapes to DVD (or mpeg) as I didn't want to have my VCR hooked up anymore. Did lots of research and cames across Dazzle from Pinnacle. This has got to be the easiest and quickest way as its as simple as connecting the hardware interface between the VCR 'out' and a USB2.0 in on my computer and letting the wizard style software do the rest. The software captures the video feed from the VCR and burns it to a DVD.

Now I can finally get rid of my VCR from the living room. Now I keep it in my office for converting tapes to DVD's...

(more information coming on converting the video from Dazzle (DVD) to VCD or SVCD using only freely available software)

Link:
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/...

WinZip 12 can compress Jpeg files by 20 - 25%

WinZip will now compress your JPEG files (digital photos or graphic images) by 20 to 25% and still without any loss of photo quality or data integrity. Now you can send photos faster or fit more on your hard drive and removable media than ever before.

About time someone came up with a method to compress Jpeg images without any additional loss in quality.

Link:
http://www.winzip.com/whatsnew120.htm

Giving away 3 Camtasia Studio Licenses

First, what is Camtasia Studio:

Imagine being able to show exactly what's on your screen to anyone, anywhere. Imagine that it's easy. Now you've imagined Camtasia Studio. With the smartest screen recording tools on the planet, Camtasia Studio makes everything from training videos to PowerPoint presentations to lectures look better, reach more people, and pack more punch. Which makes you look even smarter, too.

I have used Camtasia Studio for years now and its an excellent tool that makes creating videos a simple process. From screen recording to post production to publishing the video, everything is logical and easy to do.

Link:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

Second, how to enter:
Leave a comment to this post saying one thing you like about Camtasia Studio (at least try it before leaving a comment). Also, in the comment leave your name and email address (use a format like name-a-t-domain-com so spammers won't pick it up) or use a Blogger account where I can locate your email address to send the registration key to.

I will be selecting at random three comments at the end of the month.

(please don't enter multiple time)

Value: $299.00

Closed - Selecting winners later today

Best Buy to buy Napster....why?

A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday confirms that retailer Best Buy has entered into a deal to completely purchase online music service Napster, for $121 million including $54 million up front.

Why? Where is Best Buy going with this? Are the brick and mortar companies as we know it on the way out the door?

Link:
http://www.betanews.com/...

6 Online Photo Storage websites besides Flickr

ImageShack
ImageShack is an intuitive and easy-to-use free media hosting service. It can be used to upload images, flash files, and movies, and share them with friends using any imaginable means.



PhotoBucket
Photobucket is a media-sharing and hosting site that also allows users to upload video clips, edit them using Adobe Remix, and create profiles and portfolios to share.



Picassa Web Albums
Show your photos at their best. View full-screen slideshows, see your pictures arranged on a global map, enjoy video playback, and more.



ShutterFly
Helping you enhance, organize and store your digital photography allows us to provide the highest quality products for you, our customer.



WebShots
Webshots is one of the largest photo- and video-sharing sites.



Zooomr
Everyone can sign-up and share unlimited photos with their family, friends and the entire world as well.

Howto: Stream Your Music Online

You've spent a lot of time and money collecting digital music. And by now, you have a pretty sweet library of MP3s and AACs to show for the effort.

But let's say you want to take that library to go? Before you start carrying around a huge hard drive, you might want to try streaming your tunes online instead. All it takes to start streaming your music over the internet is a playlist, a server with some storage space, and a software player that can open and play an internet stream.

Link:
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/...

Media Management in Gmail with Xoopit

Firefox extension Xoopit turns Gmail into a robust, searchable media management tool for every piece of media that comes through your inbox. By indexing every attachment as well as every link to photos and videos from sites like Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube, Xoopit allows you to easily search for and find any picture or video and view it from directly inside Gmail.

The only thing that makes this questionable is they want your Gmail login password. Not sure how many people are comfortable with that, but I'm not.

Link:
http://lifehacker.com/374651/...

Amazing Photosynth Demo built on Seadragon

Top 10 Free Programs to make the most out of your MP3 Collection

Here comes a carefully chosen list of free programs that might help you squeeze the best out of your MP3 collection.

My List:

• Player: Winamp
• Manager: MediaMonkey
• Ripper: CDEx

Link:
http://www.killertechtips.com/...

IDEA: Playlist processor

Create a website that accepts uploads of a music playlist and provides:

• A list of songs I like. Basically just a very friendly listing of the songs contained within my playlist
  
• An analysis of the type of music I like to listen to (kinda of like what WTF Music Info does)
• Suggestions of music that may appeal to me

How to be profitable:

• Use an affiliate link to songs and music I may like
• Advertising to key music websites

What it needs to be successful:

• Access to a very large song database (like CDDB) for comparing and extracting information from a song list
  

Get DivX Pro for free

Back in June, DivX offered a free version of DivX Pro for Windows and Mac which would normally cost $20. They must be in the holiday mood because they’re once again offering it for free. All you need is a valid email address and you’ll be set to go.Remember, this is the Pro version which includes DivX Converter and DivX Pro Codec.

Link:
http://.../free-divx-pro-download-for-a-limited-time-only/

Direct Download:
http://www.divx.com/dff/

Miro is a free video player that plays all

Quite simply, Miro is a free application for channels of internet video (also known as 'video podcasts and video rss). Miro is designed to be easy to use and to give you an elegant fullscreen viewing experience. There are thousands of free internet video channels that you can watch. You'll be able to download all the videos that each channel offers and when new ones are released, Miro will grab them automatically. Unlike tiny videos on websites like YouTube, Miro videos are usually very high quality and look great when watched full screen. Since Miro downloads videos completely before you watch, your videos will never skip or stutter while they are playing.

Link:
http://www.getmiro.com

A complete, free CD burning solution with CDBurnerXP

CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components

Very nice and a complete CD burning solution. It always amazes me at what developers make available for free.

Link:
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/home

Winamp 5.5 10th Anniversary Edition

Winamp has release a 10th anniversary edition that contains:

• 29 New Additions
• 34 Improvements
• 46 Fixes

If you look back over the 5.0 version, which has been out for many years, this is the largest update ever. Seems that AOL has been holding on to updates and fixes to make this a more special version.

Why release a 10th Anniversary edition today? It was released on 10/10 at 10:00am.

Link:
http://www.winamp.com/

You Convert It

YouconvertIt.com, the world's first and most complete conversion website allowing internet users to convert audio video images and documents into an array of formats.

YouconvertIt.com’s service is free, instant, and does not require any tedious download and software installations.

Link:
http://www.youconvertit.com

Rumor: Winamp to release a 10th anniversary edition today

I have heard that Winamp will be releasing a 10th anniversary edition today, versioned as Winamp v5.5. Is it true?

Here's what its supposed to contain:

Album Art Display
Enhance your music collection with album art. Winamp finds it, you enjoy it

The Media Monitor
Enjoy the best music on the web. Save it, playlist it. It’s music to your ears

iPod and other MP3 Player Support
Manage music and videos and create playlists on your iPod or other MP3 player

Dynamic Song Recommendations
Get a custom playlist of songs like your current favorites with a single click

Artist and Song Smart Search
Get instant concert news, artist bios, web videos and more with Smart Search

Acoustic Fingerprinting
Get the most accurate information about your music with acoustic fingerprinting

MP3 Surround Sound Support
Get the full effect of surround sound music with MP3 Surround

Winamp Remote: Access Your Music and Videos - When and Where You Want
Enjoy your media on the web, on mobile, on TV through the Wii, and more

Winamp Toolbar: Control Winamp From Your Browser
Play and manage your music and videos from your browser toolbar

Access Thousands of Online Radio Stations, Videos and More
The fun never stops with thousands of Radio stations, videos and MP3 downloads

Beta version may come out here:
http://beta.aol.com/projects.php?project=winamp&loc=0

GeeXboX turns your computer into a Home Theater PC

GeeXboX is a free embedded Linux distribution which aims at turning your computer into a so called HTPC (Home Theater PC) or Media Center. Being a standalone LiveCD-based distribution, it's a ready to boot operating system than works on any Pentium-class x86 computer or PowerPC Macintosh, implying no software requirement. You can even use it on a diskless computer, the whole system being loaded in RAM.

Despite his tiny ISO image size, the distribution comes with a complete and automatic hardware detection, not requiring any driver to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either being CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or Internet.

Link:
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

Wal-Mart Begins Selling Music in MP3

Wal-Mart said Tuesday it will begin offering MP3 tracks from its music download service through arrangements with labels EMI and Universal.

Link:
http://.../WalMart_Begins_Selling_Music_in_MP3/

Convert YouTube videos to MPG (and other formats)

Vixy.net makes it easy to convert a YouTube video, and all FLV video formats, to MPG4 / AVI / MOV / MP4 / MP3 / 3GP.

This service allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube's videos,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online. It is using a compressed domain transcoder technology (outline in Japanese). It converts FLV to MPEG4 faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder.

Want to setup your own Vixy.net? Then check out the Open Source project they have released.

Link:
http://vixy.net/

A new uncenersored image hosting service from Pirate Bay

bayimg.com is a place where you can host all your images. We do not censor them. We believe in freedom of speech, it's of utter importance to us.

You can upload about 140 different formats. There's even support for .RAR and .ZIP-archives! If you upload an archive with multiple images, you'll also get an album-address for all the pictures inside of it. Tags are separated by spaces, removal code is a password to let you remove images you upload.

Seems they are also working on a Video hosting service, like YouTube, but since its in a closed beta really can't get any other information on it. Try it if you want but this one isn't for me.

My Image:
http://bayimg.com/eaPOkaAap

Link:
http://www.bayimg.com/

Fotowoosh Will Turn Any Picture Into A 3D Image

Fotowoosh Will Turn Any Picture Into A 3D Image: "Fotowoosh, a new service from Maryland-based startup Freewebs, will turn any image (preferably an outdoor image) into a 3D model. They went live on Friday. Examples of what the service can do are above (along with the original 2D images. A video is here which shows more examples."

Link:
http://.../fotowoosh-will-turn-any-picture-into-3d-image/

Online Converters

Big and comprehensive list of Online Converters. Work checking out as the future is moving to online applications.

Some of mine:

• Online Image Resizer
• Online Password Creator
• See how a server reacts to a domain
• Image Color Report

Have an idea for an online application? Contact me and I'll see if I can get it implemented.

Now this is cool

Pictures with long exposure times of video games:
http://www.rosemariefiore.com/...

Show us more....

Quick Thumbnail + Whats Its Color = 2 great tools

Are online applications / tools the wave of the future? Will everything be available in an online, thin client version? I think so even though in some ways I just can't seeing it work. There are a few (probably many) applications that just screem to be put online and Image Resizer is one of them.

Quick Thumbnail is a super easy, yet powerful online image resizer that allows you to resize an image from any system regardless of your skill level.

Link:
http://quickthumbnail.com/


Whats its Color is more in the realm of fun applications. Sure it provides useful information that can be used in any type of design but its just fun to play with. What it does is take an image and evaulate every pixel and comes up with the 'colors' of that image. It also goes one step further and displays your image on what is determined to be the best background color to show off that image.

Link:
http://whatsitscolor.com/

Midomi: If you can sing it, they can find it

midomi.com makes it fun and easy to find and discover music and people. For the first time, you can use your voice to instantly connect to your favorite music, and to a community of people that share your musical interests.

Seems like a natural progression for locating music and songs but unsure about lending my voice to a search engine. I know that both Google and Microsoft are working on new search engines: one based on voice and another based on images.

Link:
http://www.midomi.com/

The Shining wasn't so scary

As seen by this trailer.

Link:
http://www.youtube.com/...

Online video encoder through Hey!Watch

A great way to re-encode video files without installing software on your system. The problem is the free account can be limiting (see below). You would be amazed at the amount of video files they support. Signup for a free account and give it a try. Who knows, the 10min limit on a free account may work for you.


Link:
http://heywatch.com/site

Normalize the audio of your MP3 collection

I hate when I have a bunch of MP3 files all at different audio levels. That's where MP3Gain comes in and saves the day. What MP3Gain does is normalize the audio levels of all MP3 so they have the same audio level, from what we can hear.

While you're at it check out MediaMonkey is it provides this, and much more, functionality. This is a great freeware tool.

Mp3Gain:
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

MediaMonkey:
http://.../mediamonkey-is-tops-for-music.html

Whats Its Color by Veign

Whats Its Color is a fun little online application for getting the primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image. Why is this useful? Well, if you were creating a website around an image or using an image as the primary inspiration for any type is design it can be very helpful to know what its primary dominant color is or what are the unique colors that people can see when viewing the image. The final results will display your image on a background that is best suited for that image. This application is just fun to play around with.

Link:
http://www.whatsitscolor.com/

More downloads from me:
http://www.veign.com/download_main.asp

What is this?

Look interesting? Where is it?

What is the Gspot?

Sexual? no. Useful? very.

Ever get an AVI file and try to play it in Windows Media Player only to get an error about missing codecs? Fear not. GSpot not only gives you detailed information about the video but it also gives you the codec required to play it properly. So get your mind out of the gutter and grab this excellent utility while its available.

Link:
http://...find_what_video_and_audio_codecs_to_use.cfm

Also, stop by their forums for everything video:
http://forums.afterdawn.com/

Quick and free media converters

AVI2DVD:
http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareAvi2Dvd.html

AVI2VCD (very small footprint):
http://home.cogeco.ca/~avi2vcd/

TMPGEnc (powerful)
http://www.tmpgenc.net/en/e_main.html

AllofMp3 soon to be NoneOfMP3

Its seems that AllofMP3 may be on the way out. Never really understood how this russian based MP3 site was to stay operational for long considering the are selling copyrighted music at ridiculously low prices (like $2.00 per CD).

So get'em while you can as its may be closing its doors very soon.

Read on:
http://.../Russia_Poised_to_Shutter_AllofMP3/1164748997

The sounds of Vista

This is a very cool video (really just audio) that displays the sounds of Win Vista as compared to WinXP. The sounds are much softer and in some cases I think a bit too soft.

Link:
http://.../20061110/vista-sounds-compare/

Or are these the actual sounds:
http://.../enjoy-the-windows-vista-sounds/