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12.30.2007

Firewire Solo with Vista drove me nuts

I was puzzled by the problem that I am facing: I have a Firewire Solo audio interface. It works fine on both my desktop and my laptop ... and so I thought. Then today I tried to do some vocal recording, only to find out the on my desktop, the recorded sound were terrible.

So I tried recording vocal using my laptop. All went fine .... except that in the beginning, the system initiated a firmware update. I was suddenly thinking: maybe it's the driver that caused problem on my desktop. I looked into the driver setting on my laptop, and it said something like this:



And I checked my desktop, and found something like that:



So I thought, hell, maybe the older driver, FW_V32_5.10.00.5048, works better than the newer one.

Well it didn't work. The audio recording was still terrible. I can only conclude that .... Vista hates Firewire and my machine and ... oh damn me.

So everytime I need to do recording I have to use my my laptop.

In denial

Yes, I am in denial on my hard disk problem. Besides the fact that the harddisk seems looking pretty OK so far, it's also the fact that these days I am too lazy to install OS. I much rather creating things with my computer than managing it. But then with a XP OS on another parition. I am ready for the worst.

12.29.2007

Problem drive Saga

I used the Disk Diagnostic Tool that comes with my DELL computer (access by pressing F12 during startup) and found no problem with all my drives. Still puzzled, I used SpinRite 6.0 and during start up I saw this:



Once I am in the application I did a surface scan and along to way check the S.M.A.R.T setting. I saw this:



Besides that red line, I didn't see any problem, so ... we'll see .. since SpinRite 6 is still running.

Finally my Tablet PC sees my iPod Classic 80Gb

At first I was very puzzled when I found out that the Lenovo X60T Tablet PC didn't recognize the iPod Classic 80Gb. I thought it was the problem with the new sync cable, and but found that the same happened to the original sync cable. Being fustrated, I rebooted the machine, only to find out that the system saw the iPod and used it as a harddisk from then on.

Strange, but at least problem solved.

Why does Windows keep from deleting files?

I always hate it when Windows have some leftover files during installation, and and keep you from deleting those files like indefinitely. So I am trying to find soem way to combat those files. I found this site and tried some of the applications mentioned in the page. Under extreme situation we need extreme measure, so I popped in a Windows XP Installation CD, boot the disc, and try to delete the file from recovery console.

I got access deny error.

So I am like very very pissed now.

Finally I did managed to delete all those damn files. I forgot the exact detail, but basically it goes something like this:

  • Bootup Windows Vista in Safe Mode.
  • Right click on the folder that I tried to delete.
  • Select the Security tab.
  • Select the user that I am using now in the top list box.
  • Click [Advanced] button.
  • And then I just play with the permission, basically tried to allow my user account to have the Full Control on those damn files. And definitely need to check the checkbox "Replace all existing inheritable permissions on all descendants with inheritable permissions from this object.
Basically that's it. Damn happy to see those nasty file all gone.

Now I need to the problem which the Vista reported something wrong with my 160Gb Harddisk. Sigh.

Media Sharing with Windows Media

I was trying out Media Sharing using Windows Media Player between two Windows Vista machine. The desktop OS is Vista Ultimate and the laptop is Vista Business. So far the setting seems to work pretty nice with audio, but I couldn't make video to work. I think mostly because the WiFi connection is kind of slow. But then opening media file directly using KMPlayer thru network seems to work pretty OK. So ... I am pretty clueless.

Here's the reason why NOT to buy game from Wii Virtual Console

I just finished Super Mario World (actually Super Mario Advance 2 for GBA) World 6 on my Nintendo DS and about to start World 7 Valley of Bowser 1. And I found out that I definitely WON'T FINISH the game unless I have help with to instant save feature provide by the M3 card I was using. And since most of the retro game I enjoy has a GBA version, so it doesn't make much sense to buy those games on Wii virtual console as there's no way for me to cheat my way through the game. Yeah I know this is chessy but I only have so much time to play video game, and it would be ultra fustrating by continuously lossing the game again and again and again for thousand times.

Al Hail GBA Instant Save! :-D

Something bad maybe able to happend on my C Drive

I got this message today:



So probably something no good is about to happen to my C Drive on Vista. That is actually a 160Gb Harddisk which I brought with me, and my fuzzy memory told me that it had some problem before. Besides, these days I heard that one of the internal drive making some "drilllllll" sound. So maybe something bad is about to happen. I better start backing up the OS.

12.26.2007

No WebService class in Flash CS3

Adobe sure pissed a lot of people off by NOT implement the web service class in Adobe Flash CS3, like this one, this one, and a lot more. Sure there are several free implementation of webservice class for ActionScript 3.0 in case you have to live with flash, but for me, I don't want to learn some non-first-party class.

Without webservice, I have not going to waste my time on Actionscript 3.0. I will stay with the 2.0 way. In fact there are multiple way to do it, outlined by this article and then this and so on. And in 2.0 you can choose between remoting and web service, although to me I will definitely go for the standard way, which means the web service route.

VMWare Workstation and PC Tools Firewall Plus finally works together

I was a bit puzzled that I could make the OS in VMWare Workstation seeing the outside network. I know it has something to do with PC Tools Firewall Plus, and eventually I found the solution:

On PC Tools Firewall Plus,
  • Select [Settings]
  • Select [Adapters] tab
  • Select the physical adapter ("Intel 82566DC Gigabit Platfrom LAN Connec" in my case)
  • In Zone, choose "Allow all traffic".
I know it may be too much, but too bad that the firewall does not see the virtual Ethernet adapter. Besides I still have Application based firewall. And on the top of all that, I have the physical WiFi router as the physical. So I guess it's still good.

Firewall headache

There must be some firewall setting that I need to setup in order to let my desktop access files on my laptop. Right now it's kind of a one way ticket. The laptop sees my desktop, and can access files that are shared on my desktop. But my desktop have problem discovering and utilizing the shared resources from my laptop. I know it has something to do with some of the Programs that I blocked on my LAPTOP's Zone Alarm firewall. For instance, after I allowed the "Bonjour Service" on my laptop, suddenly the desktop sees the laptop's network connection, although it still have problem connecting it.

Oh wait, Bonjour Service is a Apple service installed with iTune. It has nothing to do with network sharing on Vista ...

.....


And you know what? I give up. I even turned off Zone Alarm on my Tablet PC and the desktop still can't see the laptop. So forget it.

My Lenovo X60T is in Sleep mode

I made a good decision by setting my Tablet PC to run in Hibernate mode instead of sleep mode. Now it has more battery left when it wakes up. It still takes a long time to boot up even when it's in Sleep mode, and I still need to reboot to get the network, so why bother the sleep mode.

12.25.2007

Optimize video to play on iPod Classic 80

I just realize that I should NOT use the "Full (All Aspect Ratio)" when ripping DVD video with Xiliosft DVD Ripper Platinum, especially when the video is in wide screen format. That is because the pixels in wide screen format are not in square shape, so when you play the video on iPod Classic 80, the size of content will be squashed horizontally. Thus, I am using "Apple TV MPEG-4 High 480P (640x 480)) and then for zoom use "Pan and Scan". That will optimize the viewing on my iPod Classic. But then I may actually need to reconvert the video with iPod Touch if I want to optimize the video.

So the best way is use "iPod Touch MEPG-4 Wide Screen" with "Pan and Scan". That way I have an optimized video to play on desktop or iPod touch is the feature, and still looks good on my iPod Classic 80.

iPod USB Sync cable can cause Keyboard failure problem

It was so strange, but it did happened: a loosely connected iPod USB Sync Cable can cause keyboard failure problem.

All started after I tried out the USB sync cable I brought form DealExtreme. The cable worked fine, and the price was just super at US$2.98. However, it had a very strange side effect: if the cable was not connected tightly, like all the way plugged into the iPod port until making a click sound, the cable can render my DELL's input to failure functioning. And then the whole machine will freeze up. Even if I reboot it, I will get a "Keyboard failure" message. The only way to get rid of it is by unplugging the POWER cable of my DELL and replug it again. Very starnge, but at least that solves the problem.

Since I figured out the symptom, I did two things:
  • Open up a bigger hole on the plastic protector of my iPod so that it's easy to plug in the cable.
  • Making sure that the cable is connected tightly by pushing the plug all the way until I hear the click sound.
  • To play save, maybe I should unplug the USB plug first, wait til the iPod plug on the cable is tightly connected to the iPod, and then replug the USB cable again.
Again, what a strange problem, and what a strange solution that was.

H.264 performance on iPod Classic 80

I was trying to figure out the best codec and format to use to convert video to view on my iPod Classic 80Gb, and yet still preserve enough quality in order I migrate from iPod Classic to iPod Touch (hey one can always dream :> ) And then I found out a hard reality: my iPod Classic 80Gb does not support h264. So instead I should use "Apple TV MEPG-4 High 480P(640 x 480)" option under Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum.

Well, at least I figure this out when I have some spare time, like during Christmas season.

Time to try IMAP with Gmail and Thunderbird 2.0

I was using Thunderbird with some webmail extract plugin to get Gmail message offline so that I can have a offline backup in case the Internet connection is not work. That scheme worked OK so far, and even though Gmail later provides native Popmail support, I was too lazy to make any changes.

Then last night I found out that not all the mail was being downloaded offline, and I thought, this is about time to try out the new IMAP native support of Gmail.

So I downloaded the new version of Thunderbird portable, and started following the instruction provided by gmail on enabling IMAP and then setting up Thunderbird for IMAP with Gmail. It all went pretty well, and now I have offline messages on my local machine while a copy is still living inside the "All Mail" folder in Gmail online account.

Some observation:
  • By default, the mail was not being downloaded to local machine. To force a downloading, I created a local inbox folder, and then drag messages from InBox of Gmail to my local inbox. Not only it downloaded all the messages to my local inbox, it also clear up the messages from my online Gmail inbox.
  • In seems like sometime not all messages are downloaded in the Gmail InBox. For instance, there may be 10 messages in my inbox online, but the Thunderbird only shows 3. I have to drag and drag the 3 to my local folder first, and then a few more will show up on Gmail InBox. And so on. Eventually I will be able to retrieve all, but it take some manual work.
  • I can even grab the "All Mail" folder, but I haven't dare to try copying all files to my local folder form "All Mail". Maybe I'll give it a try when I am in my office using fast company Internet line.

12.23.2007

Found a Firewall that works good on Vista

I had some serious problem installing and running ZoneAlarm on Vista Ultimate Edition on my desktop. So after a bit of search, I found PC Tools Firewall Plus 3.0 for Vista and Windows XP, and it seems to work pretty fine so far. At least I don't see any blue screen of death so far.

However, I need to do some workaround for now until I find some time to twist it:
  • On VMWare Workstation, I have to set the Network connection from "Bridged" to "NAT".
  • My laptop has no problem accessing my desktop's file, but my desktop seems to have problem accessing the laptop's file.

The more I think about it, the more tempting PC Eee is....

I am getting more and more interest about PC Eee. I found out that:

Sleep mode not happy with WiFi

I was kind of used to use Sleep mode on my Tablet PC since I want fast wakeup whenever I want to use my machine. But then I realized that when my Tablet PC is awaken from sleep mode, the WiFi WILL NOT WORK. And I have to reboot the machine. That's kind of suck and I don't know if I should blame the Lenovo (the maker of my laptop) or blame Vista.

Suddenly Asus PC Eee seems even more appealing than ever...

Windows Dreamscene

It is almost crazy that I would actually praise Windows Vista, but today I found a very interesting reason to stay with Vista: Windows Dreamscene. Basically it allows you to use a video as a wallpaper. I heard that the memory footprint is just 22Mb. And with my QuadCore CPU player, there's more than enough power to spare to support that feature. In fact, I check the windows performance monitor, and found that only tiny little CPU power is being used to generated the effect.

Sure I can run VLC and KMPlayer to mimic to same effect, but then there's chance that I may accidentally trigger the playback. Besides, it's also the cool wallpaper effect that got my attention while testing it. In addition, there are people posted Dreamscene video for people to use. I am downloading some of those now.

The downside here is that the feature only support wmv and mpeg file, but that I probably won't put any arbitary file as a video wallpaper anyway, so it's not way too bad.

By the way, to use the video wallpaper feature in KMPlayer, play the video you like, press [Alt][Enter] to bring the video as full screen, and then press [Shift][Enter] to bring the video as wallpaper. Notice that this scheme does NOT work on Vista somehow :-<

Thunderbird and Gmail account

Everytime I have problem downloading email from my Gmail account, I will update all the Add-on of Thunderbird. Almost everytime that solves the problem.

12.22.2007

Best Codec to prepare Windows Media Center

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack v.3.5.7 beats AVI Codec Pack 2.2.1 hands down. After installing AVI codec Pack, I still couldn't watch a lot of content like mp4. But once I got the mega pack installed, everything plays silky smooth.

12.21.2007

Installing Vista ... AGAIN!?

Yeah, I am installing Vista again, but this time it's Vista Ultimate edition on my home desktop, as I got MSDN Subscription for workplace, and we don't do Vista at work, so I was like, why not giving it a spin at home. Plus I was wonder if I can actually use my old PC Remote on my DELL desktop in Media Center, and I never tried turning on all the Vista bells and whistles on my Quad core desktop before. Let me see if the WOW can actually redeem some of the negative impression I had on this bad boy OS.

At least I found the Media Center useful, and yes it works with my PC Remote Control, which is pretty awesome. I felt like I was using AppleTV.

12.19.2007

Awesome iPod feature : On-The-Go Playlist

"On-The-Go Playlist" is something that I found extremely useful today while I was messing with my iPod. The idea is pretty simply: On-The-Go Playlist is a dynamic playlist. While you are listening to the songs in On-The-Go playlist, you can continue adding songs in it. I found it very useful a feature.

Chinese handwriting support comes with XP

This article seems to imply that you need to have Microsoft Office in order to have handwriting recognition. But at least for Chinese Handwriting recognition, this is not the case. However, you do need to enable New Phonetic in order to get the recognition pad under tools.

12.18.2007

Free Your Mind with VLC

A few days ago I highly praised a portable media player called KMPlayer because of it's high compatibility with all sort of media format. Well, today I found out the there's one thing that VLC Portable does better than KMPlayer: DVD Playback. In fact, right now, I am watching EnVouge's "Free You Mind" music video on my hard disk ripped from a DVD I rented from NetFlix. When I open DVD from KMPLayer, the DVD Menu does not work. On VLC, it works like a charm.

So, great to have both software in my harddisk.

12.17.2007

Synergy, jsut the right app for winter TV watching

I was so glad that I spent the time yesterday setting up my laptop and desktop to work properly with Synergy. However, there's one more thing that I need to do in order to make watching TV on my bed a perfect experience. The issue is that by default Synergy will leave the cursor on the client screen, which is uncool since my client screen is the TV playable screen. Thus while I was setting up the hotkey for "Switch to desktop screen", I did to add the entry that turn OFF the cursor from the screen. That way, when I switch away from the desktop screen, there will not be a cursor sitting in the middle of the screen to affect my TV watching enjoyment.

I also downloaded a Magnifying Glass application. This allows me to switch video files at ease while I am feet away from the desktop.

12.16.2007

Blue screen of death mystery solved in a very twisted way

Remember days ago I mentioned that I suspected the blue screen of death I experienced had something to do with the M-Audio Firewire Solo? Well I guess I proved it today while I was unplugged the Firewire cable from the desktop. The machine was suddenly freeze and I saw the exact same blue screen of death message that I'd seen in the last 2 days.

To think about it, besides the crash during bootup, everything I got the crash I was always playing some video or audio with audio came through the Firewire Solo, so it really explained the problem I've seen. In addition, after the crash, the MAudio Firewire Solo was not recognized by the desktop, and, uninterestingly, I haven't seen the blue screen of death since then.

And I was always find it anonying that whenever the device was plugged between different OS (Mac OSX, Vista and WinXP) the device will instantly demanded and started some strange firmware update. And on the top of that, the Firewire Solo driver for Vista is still in beta.

Hopefully this ends the BSOD saga of my desktop for now.

P.S. I just conencted Firewire Solo to my laptop. Works like a champ, but I still think it's a bad idea to use it while switch between XP and Vista.

Sony eBook reader PRS 505 and Chinese

I love reading with digital device. The ability to search, bookmark and ability to carry tons of books in a light form factor always appeal me. Too bad that so far I haven't found a great solution to this problem. Recently I test drived Sony's new eBook reader PRS 505 at Fry Electronic and was impressed by the screen. It really was a nice device, and I already started imagining myself reading Japanese comics, books and PDF.

However, there's one huge problem that makes PRS 505 a perfect device for me: lack of Chinese support. Fortunately someone hacked at least the Simplified Chinese font support. Now if someone does the same thing to the Traditional Chinese then I will be ready to shell out money for the gadget.

12.15.2007

Remote Control my desktop from my Tablet PC

Here's my assignment to myself yesterday: find a way so that I can control my desktop PC my a Tablet PC. When I say "control", I mean sending mouse and keyboard event from my Tablet to my desktop.

The reason I had that need was because I was ... errr .. lazy. I want to watch video on my bed and I am too lazy to walk off the bed, change video setting, walk back to my bed again, and continue watching. So I told myself: "may be there's some open source software that allows me to remotely send keystroke and mouse movement from my Tablet PC to my desktop. Well, I found it.

The software is called Synergy, and it's basically a virtual KVM. Once the service on the client and server started, you can use the keyboard and mouse of one machine to control another machine.

The concept sounds simply, but when I execute it, it was not as straight forward as I thought I was. But eventually I made it working. Another good thing about synergy is that it's portable friendly. All I need to do is running Synergy.exe from the application folder in all the machiens involved and that's it.

In my setup, during the Synergy session, both my desktop and my tablet PC will share my Tablet PC's keyboard and mouse (Tracepoint of my ThinkPad to be exact). I can temperorily stop the session my using some hotkey.

So now that I establish my premise, let's start setting up:

On my Tablet PC:
  • I ran Synergy. I check the radio button "Share this computer's keyboard and mouse (server)".
  • Click the [Configure ...] button. And the top part of the window you will see a listbox named "Screens". Click [+] button, to bring up a "Add Screen" dialog, and enter the machine name of my tablet PC. Click [OK] to confirm. Now I have the machine name of the Tablet PC in the listbox, but that's not good enough since you need both the machine name of your laptop and the machine name of your DESKTOP to be on the list too. So do the similar setup sequence for the desktop. You should now have 2 items in the listbox, one for your server machine and one for the machine you want to control.
  • Under Options section, click [Advanced..], and in the textbox for Screen Name, enter the machine name of the Tablet PC.
  • Under Options section, click [HotKeys ..], and you will see a hotkey set up screen. I will use this screen to set up two hotkeys so that I can switch between control my Tablet using my Tablet keyboard, or control my desktop PC using my Tablet keyboard. To add a key, click [+] at the left column and then press a key. To set up the associated function, click [+] at the right column, select radio button "Switch To Screen", and then select the screen you want to switch to. Remember the two machine name you entered in the first step? This is where those name got pull form. I picked ALT-1 for tablet and ALT-2 for my desktop.
On my Desktop PC:
  • check the radio button "Use another computer's shared keyboard and mouse (client)". Enter the machine name of the controller (TAblet PC in our case) machine name.
  • Under Options section, click [Advanced..], and in the textbox for Screen Name, enter the machine name of the desktop PC.
OK, now both machine are setup. The final step is to press the START button of each of the Synergy client.

Now when I press ALT-2 on my Tablet, I will start controlling my desktop using both the Tablet and the keyboard. Pressing ALT-1, and I can back to controlling my tablet. Pretty awesome.

Maybe ..... the Firewire Solo

I know this may sound crazy, but was slightly suspected that the M-Audio Firewire solo has something to do with the crash of my machine (regarding to the blue screen of death I had a while ago). After the blue screen, my Firewire MAudio was not functioning, but at the same time I have seem the blue screen of death happening neither. So maybe in the meantime I'll just it that way (after I have even a day since I last saw teh BSOD), and then move forward from there.

Come to think about it, I also saw some crazy BSOD on my Tablet PC and the problem "went away" pretty much without me doing anything. Are computers really that reliable these days?

A better-than-VLC portable media player

I was pretty happy with VLC Portable so far, but recently I have problem playing Ratatouille mkv file. When I skip to the middle or the later of the movie, I got stuck frame.

Being fustrated, I looked around, and found a great portable solution: KMPlayer 2.9.3.1214. So far it plays smooths on whatever crap that I throw at it. It even proves more funky features that I didn't expect, such as zoom in.

Now, it becomes my default player.

Some observation about that blue screen of death..

  • It happened in different times: in the middle of playing a movie video, or during bootup. SEems very random.
  • Some mentioned that the problem seems to occur much more frequent with Core 2 Duo machines.
  • Crap I just realized that Windows XP cannot support more than 3Gb of memory. Could that contribute to part of my problem, since I have 4Gb of memory filling up the memory slots? But then I also tried removing the pair of newly brought Bafflo memory chips (2 x 1Gb) from the machine, and found then the blue screen of death to occur when the pair of original Hilex memories (2 x 1 Gb still in the machine).

What the hell is going on wth my DELL

Damn memory parity error again. So I ran the Windows Memory diagnostic Tool:



And yet it, just like MemTest, tells me that there's no problem so far.

I am pretty damn puzzled now.

12.13.2007

What? Memory error? But Mem Test 86+ said no ....

I was puzzled yesterday when my machine crashed in the middle of nowhere, giving me the following error message:



So I ran MEM Test 86+ and then went to sleep. After 6 hours of sweet sleeping I woke up, and found out that I got ZERO error complain from MEM Test 86+. And this time reboot was success, and I was in XP OS now.

I searched Google, find out that the entry in Microsoft knowledge base seems newly updated (Dec 1 2007), but still doesn't shed a light on the issue. At the same time I saw that there are a few Windows updates waiting to happen, so I thought, why not, and applied the 6 Windows updates. At the same time I upgraded the BIOS firmware from 2.5.1 to 2.5.3 since DELL site mentioned that the firmware update is considered critical.

Now I have them both updated and ... well .. we'll see if the problem still exist.

12.11.2007

Managing iTune ID3 Tags

While I was managing ID3 Tags of the songs in iTune, I realized that iTune the desktop application is case insensitive while iPod (at least my iPod Classic 80Gb) is case sensitive! I realized that when I found out that although iTune consolidate the song with artist name "beatles", "The Beatles" and "BEATLES" into "The Beatles" artist entry, my iPod gives me three different entries on the artist page. So I have to explicitly standardize the artist name to "Beatles". My iPod also tells me that there's genre rock, Rock and ROCK. Again, I have to manually check them all to "Rock".

It's not too troublesome new that I know it, but still it's kind of strange to me that the hardware development were not quite in sync with the software developer.

12.09.2007

Back to DL to SL movie conversion

After having three WinData DVD+R DL disc loss because of bad burn, I was back to the game of trying to figure out what is the Dual Layer to Single Layer disc back up option. In good old days there's DVDShrink, which is fine but the video quality suffered through the process. Here's a new way I found that may yield a better result.
  • Install Cinema Craft Encoder SP v2.70.02.12 or above first.
  • Install DVD Rebuilder version 1.26.2 Pro or above. During the process, point the CCE folder to the path of the encoder you installed above.
  • Run DVD Rebuilder Pro. Make sure that you:
    • check [Setting][Setup] and makes sure that the Path to CCE SP 2.5 and Path to CCE SP (new) are both point to the CCE SP installation directory.
    • check [Setting][CCE Settings] have [CCE SP] selected. (actually I am about to test CCE SP v.2.50)
  • That's it. Now just click [Backup] to start the convertion.

Three WinData DVDR DL discs went down to toilet

I knew I should expected much from the WinData DVD Discs. Even the people in the forum didn't like what they saw.

Today I got 3 bad DL DVD burn. 2 on my Pioneer USB based DVD Recorder, and 1 from the DVD Recorder on my DELL (forgot the brand). I was very pissed, and still am very pissed.

12.05.2007

Humming noise on my DELL Dimension 9200 Desktop

This morning I resolved a problem with my DELL Dimension 9200 desktop machine. The issue was that the machine will create some annoying humming noise that drove me nut. It turns out that once I removed the front panel plastic, the noise went away, so I will keep it like that for a while and see if it really solves my problem.

12.04.2007

Setting Esisode number for videos in iTune

Using "Change Video Info 1.0" to properly setup a list of Episode number is tricky, but at least doable. The trick is to use the playlist as the container, because when "Change Video Info" changes meta data values, it changes everything listed on the screen. That's why you need playlist to filter out files you don't want to manipulate accordingly. It' hard to explain so you just have to experiment yourself. But at least you can set incremental sequential episode value for a set of files.

Something about iPodDrop 1.5

  • You cannot drag and drop multiple items on iPodDrop, which I think it make sense, and you can always write some code to manipulate your batch work.
  • Somehow for the PAL VCD files (MPEG format in 352x288) , the result looks better if I leave out the -tv and so options I mentioned in my last blog.
  • running more than 1 iPodDrop job on my Core 2 Duo machine dramatically degrade my system performance. AV conversion is, as usual, CPU intensive.

12.03.2007

Adding media files to iTune: check read-only flag

When you import of media files (mp4 movies or mp3 files), remember to check and make sure that all files are read-writable. Otherwise, iTune will not be able to overwrite the files with various setting, like modify the ID3 Tag and so on.

Vista simply does NOT like it when you mess with Startup Partition

I am totally pissed by Vista now. It's like a horrible dictator, it doesn't like it when you mess with the startup partition. The best part is that I can get into a situation when the parition got boot up, and yet the keyboard is NOT working. I can't believe that this kind of crap can happen. And then I can't access the Document and Setting folder because the so called damn secuity. I am like totally pissed now,

So what I will do is wipe that *ucking Vista away and go back to XP. It's multiple bootup friend, and gives me more flexibility on everything.

Also I better prepare a list of driver to install XP On my DELL.

Also alwasys use ACronis Disk Director SAFE version instead of the full vesrion.

Almost messed up the OS on my desktop

I almost messed up the Vista OS on my desktop computer by doing the following in Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 (running under Vista) (P.S. My original boot drive, which is a serial ATA drive, has 2 primary partition, and my current OS is running on 2nd partition, with drive letter C: , and with first partition hidden):
  • Set first partition active
  • Set first partition as Drive C
I think it was probably the "set first partition as Drive C) that messed things up, because after I did the above two, installed XP on first partition and tryed to switch back to original Vista by setting second partition active, I found that the feature of setting 2nd partition as C drive was grayed out. Also, because of that, I was not able to switch back to my original Vista using the boot disc of Acronis Disk Director 9 (notice that it's not 10). Eventually I had to do the following to "revive" my old OS:

  • set first partition hidden
  • unhidden second partition
  • set second partition active
Still I will continue to try find a way to dual boot my machine so that I can have both XP and Vista environment.

Also I am creating a bootable CDR of Acronis Disk Director 10, in case I need it to recover the partition manipulated by Acronis Disk Director suite 10 on desktop.

12.02.2007

The Best video to iPod conversion tool is ... FREE

Surprise. It turns out that the BEST video to iPod conversion software is a free tool called iPodDrop 1.5. Simply drag and drop your video file to the .exe and it will automatically convert the file for you and put the result file in your source directory. There was no audio sync problem, and the video quality is simply great. In addition, I accomplish my "Pan and Scan" effect on my iPod Classic by the following:
  • Create a short cut of iPodDrop.
  • Open the propertity of the shortcut. Under the [Shortcut] tab, add " -allowtall -tv" after ".... iPodDrop.exe" in the target textbox. Click [OK] to commit the change.
  • Drag and Drop the file you want to convert on this shortcut instead of directly on the .exe.
  • Sync the .mp4 file to iPod Classic.
  • In iPod Classic, make sure that under video setting, Full Screen option is turned on.
That's it. The above step basically allows you to convert the video file while preserving the video files aspect ratio. By turning Full Screen option on iPod will show the center part of the wildscreen video while using as much screen as possible. This is exactly the effect I want.

Plus, by doing do, I have the highest quality video converted, makes move from iPod Classic to iPhone or iPod Touch in the future an even more joyful experience.

All is well. I can rest in peace now :-D .

I also found a tool called Squared 5 which allows me to trim mp4 video. Awesome tool!

WinData DVD+R DL doesn't seem as bad as I thought after all ...

I had some hardtime burning my first dual layer DVD using WinDATA DL disc. But then when I tried again, one on my desktop and one on the USB DVD burner, it seeems like it's not that bad. In fact I think I will burn DL on my external DVD Burner from now on since that one support buring at much lower 2.6x speed and the verification was success on both the external burner and my internal burner.

Xilisoft Video Converter audio sync problem partially resolved, but ....

I read the FAQ from the Xilisoft site and found that there's a solution for the audio sync problem: Simply choose Add Directshow file instead of drag and dropping files will solve the audio sync problem. Unfortunately it only works for some files, like MPEG file. It doesn't seem to work with divx files, and worst of all it actually renders file into something unwatchable. Sigh. So for divx files I still have to stay with WinAVI.

Review: Software to convert video for iPod

I tried several applications that converts video and/or DVD to iPod video format (mp4).

First I tried Apollo DVD to iPod 2.0, and it wasn't good at all. I also tried the 3.x version and it's not any better. I reviewed 2.0 simply because this is the one that doesn't have obvious audio out of sync problem. This application successfully recognize the DVD I inserted in my PC and got some fairly OK result. Still this software has way too many problems that keeps me from continue using it:
  • Processing speed is dog slow.
  • Cumbersome user interface.
  • Mess up video aspect ratio.
Next I tried Xilisoft Video Converter 3.1.4.8. This one does not recognize DVD disc, instead it converts video files into various formats. I was very impressed by the Zoom feature which allows you to utilize the 320 x 200 iPod screen as much as possible by zomming into the center of the movie (using Pan and Scan option) in case you feed the application a 16:9 movie. However I was very disappointed after realizing that it has audio sync problem with almost ALL the movies that feed to it. It also has serious problem if you try to convert only a segment of the movie, which results in a something totally messed up (audio totally out of sync, and the video plays in half speed). And I tried regular letterbox size, and then various file format like divx and Mpeg, and they all have audio out of sync problem.

And this application is NOT portable friendly.


Next I tried Allok 3GP PSP MP4 iPod Video Converter. It does a fair job and does not have audio sync problem, but the video aspect ratio was a bit messed up. Also it doesn't provide that zoom feautre, this a 16:9 video conversion will result in quite some black space on the iPod screen. By the way, this application is portable friendly.

Now here comes the application that worked for me.

[DVD -> iPod Video]
First it's Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum. Unlike the Xilisoft video converter, this one does NOT have audio sync problem. It recognize all the DVDs that I throw at it, understand Chapter and allows you to rip individual chapter, which is great for ripping music video DVD for my iPod. However, you do need to pay attention that everytime you process a DVD, you should clear the chapter list screen, or else the application may confuse the application. But overall, it's an awesome one stop shop for turning DVD into iPod videos. In addition, this application is portable friendly.

[Divx, MPEG .. Video -> iPod Video]
WinAVI Video Converter iPod/PSP/3GP/MP4 is still the best among all. it does not have audio sync problem, fast processing performance, very nice video picture quality and reasonably simple to use. I am a bit disappointed by the fact that it does not have the Pan and Scan feature to optimize the use of iPod screen, but other than that the application seems pretty solid. In addition, it's very portable friendly. So until I find another app that does not have audio sync problem and have zoom in feature, I will stick with WinAVI.

Watch DVD movie on iPod

My goal is to watch movie on my iPod Classic 80Gb. In the coming 2 week I should try and try and find the best way to do so.

In order to do that, I have to first rip to whole DVD (8.5Gb) perfectly on my computer first. I tried 2 schemes:
  • Use MagicISO to create an .iso on my computer, and then use MovieISO to convert the iso into watchable, region free DVD Video file set on my computer.
  • Directly use MovieISO to convert the movie DVD into watchable, region free DVD Video file set on my computer.
The scheme one didn't work, and I got a lot of track reading error. Scheme 2 works great. In fact it solves my upcoming problem, as I have some DVD I brought form YesAsia.com coming soon, and they are in Region 3.

To watch the DVD video, simply use Portable VLC, select open a directory, and VLC will treat that folder as a DVD disc.

My next stop will be figuring out how to convert these ripped DVD files into iPod video.

Cracked movie from Netflix, literally!

I was pretty glad that my first batch of NetFlix movie was arrived this morning, and then I was pretty PISSED to find out that one of them are cracked, literally! I better contact NetFlix and sort this out.