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Multimedia-filter: Looking for help from all you Network and digital media Gurus in making my first house totally awesome. Movies, Televsion, Music, Wifi, Streaming Content and 50mgbt broadband within.

Cogentesque — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:03:13 -0800

Multimedia-filter: Looking for help from HDTV, NAS, Media Servers and Network Gurus' in making my first house totaly awesome. Movies, Televsion, Music, Wifi, Streaming Content and 50mgbt broadband within. Ok guys, this is my first new message on metafilter, so thanks for everything thus far - to business.

The Premise:
In two weekends time, my girlfriend and I are moving into our first house together in Southampton (UK).

Thankfully she is very accomadating and shares the same views with me reguarding the wonder of technology and allure of gadgetry and thus: we have decided to go down the "cyberhouse" network route - all be it slowly.

What we currently have
50mgbt line and a Television package from Virgin.
2 relatively high-spec PCs downstairs (in the lounge) (XP/Vista soon upgrading to Windows 7 im sure)
A new TV - to be bought - (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/154997/show_product_reviews?offset=10&review_type=both&review_order_by=RLF - ebuyer's own)
1 ipod touch
Host of parts to make a low spec PC.

What I would like in my cyber house
DVD's playable on the TV
Normal channels (Virgin package) playable on the TV
Video (films, episodes) from PC's playable on the TV
Music, both downstairs and upstairs: DAB radio/Cd's/Downloaded Music/Online Radio (last.fm etc would be great)
The ability to change the music remotely (ideally, different sources for different rooms)

Some ideas I've been looking at so far
KVM Switch and a long HDMI cable for my computer to use TV as alternative screen - enabling videos from pc to be played
NAT Storage hiding somewhere in the network
Popcorn Hour to play video from PC
Sonos music system to play upstairs and downstairs
Media pc configured to do the job of sonos and popcorn hour (apparantly this is very tricky?)

What do you think metafilter? Remember that we are definately "on a budget" but I much more trust your collective ideas and conceptions than my own - so what would you reccomend should be my immediate course of action?

Adding ADDITIONAL audio to an avi file

Charlie Lesoine — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:23:01 -0800

How do I add an additional audio track to a .avi movie file in OSX? I downloaded a full length movie, it had stereo channel audio, but one of the audio tracks was still missing, possibly the center channel that was lost from a surround sound mix when it was bounced to standard 2 channel audio. I now have the missing audio file and need to add it to the other two. I could just remove one of the existing tracks, or turn the existing two tracks into a mono track and then add the 3rd missing track. It doesn't need to sound amazing...but I don't know what software to use to do this. Any ideas?

AniPod?

Oktober — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:29:15 -0800

I have a substantial amount of anime that I'd like to watch, but a less-than-perfect system for doing it. Pretty much all of it is in .mkv files (h.264 video and AAC audio) with subtitles, and I'd like to transcode them to a format that's playable on either my iPhone or my PS3 with subtitles intact. I've tried both handbrake and VLC, and I either get 1) no subtitles in handbrake or 2) encoder errors in VLC. So, hive mind, what am I doing wrong here?

r/e/m/i/x/t/h/i/s/v/i/d/e/o

nitsuj — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:41:27 -0800

Okay, so how are people making those video remixes that are ever so popular right now? I can see it happening a few different ways:

1) They rip the original video from YouTube and pull it into Final Cut or whatever, and edit the sound bites and video with the music (made in some other program, presumably).
2) They rip the video from YouTube and bring the audio only into an audio/music program, and then re-edit the video to match the audio.
3) Some other way I'm not thinking?

What software are people using?

Webcam recording softwrae

gocubbies — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:36:47 -0800

I need to record myself giving a presentation for school. My laptop has a built in webcam and microphone. What free Windows software would you recommend for this task?

Help me hook up a new HDTV to an old(ish) stereo receiver?

Dr. Wu — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:03:39 -0800

Can you help me connect my optical-out DVD players to my new HDMI-in HDTV? This is the kind of thing that drives me bananas.

Just got a nice, brand-new Sony HDTV, with several HDMI-in ports. I would like to get the highest resolution I possibly can out of my video components -- generally DVD. In the past, when I had an older, analog TV, I just used the stereo receiver as an A/V switcher, for which purpose it works very well. But now this functionality has been compromised by the new array of input/output jacks.

Here's the setup:
- The two DVD players I have (one "regular" and one multistandard) both have optical-out ports. I have an old laserdisc and an even older VHS player hooked up to the system, too, but I'm not terribly concerned about them right now.

- I have all audio and video components running through a good, but eight-year-old, Sony A/V receiver. LP/tape/VHS/LD are connected via regular old component RCA plugs, which are just fine. The CD player and the two DVD players can connect to the receiver with optical cables -- which I prefer to use whenever I can. They work well and provide good sound.

- The problem is that the new HDTV does not have any optical-in ports. (If it did, I'd just run the sound from the DVD players through the receiver, and the picture, via optical cable, right to the TV. But I can't do this.) It does have composite-in and component-in, but no optical-in. And the receiver has only composite-out.

The receiver I have is a Sony STR-DA 333 ES. The manual, in PDF form, is available on this page; click "primary user manual" and go to Page 5.

The HDTV I have is a Sony Bravia KDL-46VE5. The manual doesn't seem to be online, but you can find the details here by clicking on "Specifications." (The site will not allow me to access that page directly.)

- The upshot of all this (if you're still with me) is that my only current option is to run all video components into the receiver, and thence to the TV via a crappy composite video cable. Which would sort of defeat the purpose of the 1080p set that I just bought. (We don't have any sort of cable, satellite, or other TV, so this new HDTV is really just going to be used as a monitor for movies on the DVD players.)

What I would like to do is get the highest possible resolution (the HDTV can handle 1080p/24f) when I watch DVDs. Is there a simple, inexpensive way to convert the optical signal to HDMI?

I can imagine several options:
1. I find a magical converter device that can handle multiple optical inputs and output HDMI. This device would be a switcher, so I could run optical cables from both DVD players into it, and then a single HDMI cable from the switcher to the HDTV.

2. If it's cheaper, I certainly don't mind eschewing with the idea of the switcher box and just getting two separate optical-to-HDMI cables, one for each DVD player.

HOWEVER: the problem I foresee: What about the audio??
I want to run the audio from the DVD players through my stereo system, which has a nice 5.1 setup. HDMI handles both video and audio, right? So if I choose either option above, will I be locked into using the speakers built into the HDTV? Or would I then just add another cable, so that the setup would look something like this:

DVD optical out --> HDMI cable --> HDMI in to HDTV --> TV audio out --> receiver. (In which case the audio running from the HDTV to the receiver would be component, yes? Which would be a step downwards, yes?)

I am reasonably good with stuff like this, but the age disparity between the new HDTV and the older stereo system is giving me a headache.

What's the best, cheapest, most reliable way for me to get the highest-quality picture from the DVD players onto the TV, and still get the room-shaking audio through the stereo?

Should I just buy a new multistandard, HDMI-out DVD player? If I did, I could connect it right to the HDTV, but I'd still have the audio problem that I detail above.

*****
Related questions, for masochists and/or AV geeks:

- Let's say I solve this problem above. I'm still left with an LD and a VHS, both of which I still use occasionally, that will be unconnected. Is my best bet with these just to run A/V to the receiver, and thence to the HDTV via component cables?

- I'd like to minimize the number of A/V component switchers. Ideally, I'd still like my receiver to be the one and only device that switches between ALL a/v components. And what's nice is that I can split the audio and the video signals -- that is, I can listen to the CD player while watching the signal from the VHS, if I so desire. Is there some way I can use this functionality to refrain from buying any further switchers?

How to delay Mac sound output?

i_cola — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:53:45 -0800

I want to delay the sound output from my Mac Mini so I can get it to sync with video from a different source. I've got a radio commentary (available via Safari or iTunes on the MacMini) that is up to a minute ahead of the TV feed I'm watching on my laptop. I want to watch the TV feed with the radio commentary roughly in sync.

Is there a software solution out there that will allow me to adjustably delay the entire audio out from the MacMini?

Even better would be the ability to delay the audio from a particular application & I'd like the option to be able to sync both feeds on a single Mac.

Hello RIAA, I'd like to give you some money

IanMorr — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:11:06 -0800

Is it horribly expensive to license snippets of music for videos that I share on my blog? I have a blog that I use to share pics and videos with my friends and family. I post, at most, 2 videos a month. They're usually about 30 - 40 seconds. Because the audio on these is usually my wife and I encouraging our kid to walk in the stupid tones you use when talking to kids, I want to replace the audio track with music.

I have a large, legal, personal library and can usually think of the right song to use pretty quickly. I'd much rather pay a reasonable fee to be allowed to add a bit of a commercial tune to my video than to spend time searching for an appropriate license free piece of music.

Is this an option? I don't want to do a bunch of paperwork every time I use a different song, I'm looking for some kind of central licensing body that can take, say $20 a year and license me to use bits of songs in my library on videos that are going on the internet where, in theory, anyone in the world could see them, but in practice would only be viewed by my mum and her cat.

Why do so many audio (and video) cables have the same connector on both ends?

RustyBrooks — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:12:40 -0800

Why do so many audio (and video) cables have the same connector on both ends? After painting our living and installing new floors, I'm putting the whole A/V system back together and started to wonder why almost all video and audio connectors are the same on both ends (usually both male). RCA, coax, hdmi, fiber audio (OK this is probably a technical issue since you probably can't easily join these end to end anyway), maybe svideo I don't have on on hand to check.

There doesn't *really* seem to be an advantage to it, because in most cases a cord goes from an output on one device to an input on another. In the computer world, most cables seem to be male on one and end female on the other (parallel, serial, usb, firewire, vga, ps/2, etc)

The primary advantage of one male/one female is that you can easily make longer cables by joining shorter ones end-to-end. I can't think of any real advantages to both-ends-male. Is there one?

Simple AV capture program for a Windows laptop?

killdevil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:06:50 -0800

I need a Windows program that will capture audio from my laptop's mic and video from my laptop's built-in camera, then dump the combined results to disk in some convenient video format. This sort of quick-and-dirty video capture is such an obvious thing to do that I feel sure decent software must exist (how else would the YouTube-loving peoples of the world capture for posterity the gyrations of their cats upon monitors and keyboards, after all?), but Google turns up nothing but terrible-looking junk. Bonus points for free and/or open source. I'm also not averse to paying for trial-ware that I can check out before I commit to anything.

Also, as I'm just hoping to record some lectures for my own review later on, the output doesn't have be production-quality -- it just has to let me see and hear what went on.

Ah, obsolence.

converge — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:08:18 -0800

I'd like to hook up my new laptop to my old TV, but I can't find the parts. Care to help? Video and audio outputs on the laptop: VGA, HDMI, SPDIF. I also have a headphone jack and a couple of free USB ports.
Inputs on the TV: Component, RCA, and SVideo.
The laptop's an HP Pavilion dv7-1270. TV's an older Sony Trinitron.

I know any solutions will not involve HD, as the TV won't support it. I'm cool with that, though I would like to watch Blu-Ray movies on it anyway (laptop has a drive).

Any suggestions? Do I really need to buy a receiver? Would even that work?

Full audio/video of Michael Steel's speech

keith0718 — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:09:37 -0800

I'm looking for full & unedited audio or video of Michael Steele's speech last Tuesday (May 19).

Where can I learn about standards for web graphics and video?

word_virus — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:05:02 -0800

Where can I learn about standards for web graphics and video? I need to get up to speed on "best practices" for creating graphics and video for use on the web.

I work for a website that produces a lot of media content including a daily mp3 and video podcast. Ostensibly, I'm the systems administrator but lately I find the focus of my job moving into helping produce graphics and video for the site.

I would be okay with this, but I don't really know what I'm doing and no else here really does either, so there's no one to ask when questions arise. I'm okay with learning on my own but I haven't been able to find a decent authoritative resource.

What file sizes should I be shooting for? What are the pros and cons of different graphic file formats? What resolution should things be at?

How do you learn this stuff? Is there a book or website anyone can recommend that can point me in the right direction?

Thanks

How to speed up video files?

blahtsk — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:53:33 -0800

How do I speed up AVI video files by 35% ? I use an audio editing app called GoldWave to speed up MP3s (great for podcasts). Using the "Time Warp" effect, I can increase the tempo while keeping the pitch the same (so people don't sound like chipmunks).

Is it possible to do this with videos?

Why won't certain DVDs play in my DVD player?

KevinSkomsvold — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:20:13 -0800

Our Kia Sedona has one of those built in DVD players, An Audiovox PROV710. For the life of me I can't get DVDs to play in it. In the manual it says:

Types of Discs your DVD will play
• DVD discs – DVDs discs which contain video.
• Audio discs – Audio CDs contain musical or sound content only.
• MP3 discs – A disc that contains audio files (for example, a CD-R with downloaded MP3 files).
Loading and Playing Discs

Before you load a disc, make sure that it is compatible with the player.
Note: the following Discs CANNOT be used with this player :
• MiniDisc
• Laserdisc
• CD-I, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM

So it won't play DVD-ROM disks but it will play DVDs. I'm confused.
Ironically, I found a DVD of "Dawn of The Dead" that was all scratched and popped it in. It started right up.

I took a stack of my daughters CDs and of all of them, only Lion King and Nemo worked like a champ. I can't tell what the difference is between the ones that work and the ones that don't.

How to display a transcript in sync with a media file?

isnotchicago — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:54:42 -0800

I have a transcript with timestamps and a media file. How do I display both of them on a webpage at the same time, synchronized? Oh, and it has to work in any browser or OS. I have a transcript (foo.txt) composed of 1000 sentences. Each sentence is given its own line, and some sentences have accompanying comment lines as well. The sentence lines are formatted as "Speaker|Sentence sentence sentence.|timestamp", and the comments lines are formatted as "comment|Comment comment comment". An example could be:

*MOT|which way we're gonna go ?|01234_02234
%com|Mother is gesturing toward train set.
*CHI|backwards .|02234_02934

With this transcript is a media file (audio or video, the solution should be able to handle both). The timestamps correspond to points in the media file (in milliseconds).

I want to display the entire transcript alongside the media file, and when playing the media file, have the corresponding lines in the transcript be highlighted (1). The transcript should also automatically scroll so that the media is always in view. Finally, users should be able to begin playback either by going to a particular point in the transcript and hitting play (or some keyboard shortcut), or a particular point in the media and hitting play (or some keyboard shortcut).

An important caveat is that this must work in older browsers and both Windows/OS X (Linux support is unnecessary/probably follows from Windows/OS X support). All my research has come up with solutions using HTML5, which obviously won't work in older browsers. Staying away from Flash is also preferable, but not mandatory.

My guess is that there's some Ajax that can grab the time in the media and compare that to the timestamp for each line, and then highlight that particular line (either by encapsulating each line with a tag, or some fancy XML or JSON parsing). I don't know! Help me, hive!

(1) Particularly, I'm not looking for closed-captioning (a la Quicktime and SMIL). The transcript should be separate from the media file, and should itself be navigable.

Making an mp3 from a Youtube video

cashman — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:05:07 -0800

I'm trying to make a high quality mp3 of the first 3:41 of this yt video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWz-x7YMVCk I have bass-increasing headphones and in them the song sounds great. But the mp3 I made is missing all of that. I tried to use audacity and acid to make mp3s of this video that sound good - capture the bass and the song in general. I can't do it without it sounding 'quiet' or alternatively, clipping. Can someone get me a high quality mp3 of this video of Red doing his live beatboxing?

My email's in my profile.

How should I make a video from pre-recorded audio and screenshots?

entropic — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:20:27 -0800

How should I go about making a video from screenshots and pre-recorded audio? I'd like to make a video using audio that I've already recorded and static images of my screen. I can take the screenshots and save them as an appropriate image type (I'm assuming .jpg), but I'm not sure about the best way to combine that with the audio. I want to be able to control how long each image is shown in the final video in order to match the images up with my recorded audio. Any control over transition effects and similar features is welcome but not essential.

My initial thought is to view my screenshots as a slideshow in the order I want them to appear, and use something like CamStudio to record what's on the screen while playing the audio, but I'm guessing there might be a better way to do this. I should probably note that I'd like these screenshots that I'm taking to fill up the frame of the video.

Challenging Video Editing Software for PC Question

noir — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:56:42 -0800

Challenging Video Editing question: If I wanted to take video from a multiple number of different sources (off DVD's or maybe Blue-Ray) and produce a single video from those sources (say each video has its own quarter of the screen), which editing tool(s) would be best to perform these tasks? Software must be PC. By best, I mean: * relatively simple to learn, * open source, or relatively inexpensive * produces good quality, quad-screen videos in high enough resolution to look good on typical home televisions, not just computer screens. *Makes it easy to add your own music tracks or soundtrack, or it can use audio from any of the 4 videos as well, preferably both.

Vanishing iMovie Audio

rosken — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:47:43 -0800

My video project is due in 2 days, and out of nowhere, a bunch of my audio files in iMovie have become corrupt (I think). Is there any way to fix this, short of re-recording them? I've been making a video collage of clips of Obama, McCain and Palin for a group project. Just now when I opened iMovie, though, lots of the dubbed voice clips (but not all) that worked yesterday seem to have gone quiet. The clips in question no longer show the standard audio output graph image, but instead have text saying "Voice 44" etc. I can't undo any changes in the project, and my only backup isn't useful as it was made before lots of the clips in question were recorded. Should I risk a restart? Is this hopeless?

I am using one of the old white macbooks with OSX 10.5.5 and iMovie HD 6.0.3

MacBook and Home Theater

cmoj — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:29:51 -0800

Any ideas about a wireless (or at least fairly elegant) MacBook Pro/1080p projector entertainment system setup? So, I've got a fairly new MacBook pro with a DMI-I hookup and all that. I run the audio through an old-fashioned stereo amplifier into old-fashioned floor speakers, and the video through a new-fangled 1080p projector. I also have a mostly adequate Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse.
How can I use this setup without ensnaring my laptop in a web of cables? Well, only four, but it still takes long enough to connect and disconnect that the point of having a laptop is diminished.

I'm looking for essentially this:
Bluetooth or equivalent audio that will go to RCA connectors... adapters are okay as long as I'm not losing too much quality.
Bluetooth or equivalent 1080p video (maybe the hard part).

Continuous recordings

Brennus — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:40:01 -0800

I'm looking for standalone devices to continuously record video and/or audio. I would like to record while biking and when the memory is full automatic overwrite should occur. I.e. I always want to have the last X minutes of the recording ready in case something interesting happens. Anybody know of an affordable solution for this?

Not Getting Famous on YouTube

tmcw — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:24:55 -0800

I have a song I composed / recorded / etc. I'd like to make simple video by cutting together fragments of public-domain films with this song. I have a MacBook. How to get to point B? iMovie is crashing on every import. iMovie seems to crash every time I open the "Import Movie" dialog. Not a sign of quality software.

I don't want to spend much/any money on this. I've tried writing a quick app in Processing.org to do this, but the movies I'm working with are 100-200MB mpg files, and that fills up Java's heap very, very quickly - I can't imagine throwing FFT analysis on top of that.

Are there are any open-source or cheap applications that allow fairly basic video editing capabilities like this? Anything possibly designed for VJs or very nonlinear editing like this will be? I'm a little miffed that there hasn't been an obvious, slick answer to this like there has been for 99% of my mac artsy-software needs.

Thanks for any help!

Phrased-based audio or video generators for the lulz?

turbodog — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:20:29 -0800

Are there any other phrase-based message or video generators along the lines of the late Sprint valentine greeting from the late Isaac Hayes or a more general purpose video generator like the one that inserts a name for president? The Isaac Hayes site is gone and I can't find any examples of its output, but you could type in a short message and it would generate an Isaac Hayes-sung version of your message from samples of his voice. Any word not in its "vocabulary" would yield umms and unhs.

Also I remember way back on MeFi a soft drink (?) site from India (??) that generated a video from text, but my Google fu is failing to find it.

And yes, this is for the lulz, so it is serius bizness.

Audio-Video-Computing wish list

Echidna882003 — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:56:10 -0800

I'm moving and starting over just about from scratch. I'd like people's input on what I should do about setting up nifty integrated audio/visual/computing stuff in my new place. Here are some details:
1) I'm renting, so things like mounting speakers inside walls, drilling a bunch of holes for cables, etc. is probably out.
2) I will have a decent LCD HDTV.
3) I own a 80 hour dual tuner TiVo, I like it okay.
4) I own a PS3 (w/ remote), so I have a pretty good BluRay player.
5) I have my nice T60p laptop (with XP) and a decent dell desktop (with Ubuntu.)
6) cable internet and TV from Comcast (sigh.)
7. I'm fairly technically competent, I just haven't kept up in this area.

So what would you do? Media server? What kind of stereo components are essential or just nice to have? Universal remote of some kind? A safe way to make and watch "backups" of DVDs (wink)? Software recommendations? Internet radio? Clever integration?

Which awesome website do you folks love that deals with this kinda stuff?

Thanks folks!

(sorry if this topic has been covered before, but I'm a very special person who deserves a lot of individual attention, plus I'm very lazy!)