Searching from the address bar is one of my favorite features of any browser. For example, if I want to search Wikipedia for Bill Gates, I enter the following string into the address bar: w Bill Gates
Or if I'm searching for a movie: m Star Wars
These shortcuts can work with multiple search engines and multiple browsers. You can add search engines to Firefox by looking through their addon library. You can add them to Chrome manually. Here's my top four Chrome search engines, listed by keyword, search engine name, and search engine URL string:
y
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&search_type=&aq=1&oq=lady+
m
IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/find?q=%s
d
Merriam-Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%s
w
Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Script for bulk encoding videos to H.264 with Handbrake
I'm writing this because I needed a simple way to drop a batch file onto a computer, let it run for a few days, and when I come back all my files have been magically converted to H.264. So before we begin, I'm going to assume you have some knowledge of computers, scripts, and video encoding (Windows, Mac, or Linux). Be careful with the word wraps on this post, the command lines being executed are quite long!
Why H.264?
Much like MPEG2 for DVD video or MP3 for audio, H.264 is a flexible video standard for all sorts of media, such as Blu-ray Discs, web streaming, and portable video devices (iPod Touch or iPhone). Here's a little background information for H.264 and x264:
H.264 is a form of video compression - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264
x264 is a method(software) for encoding video into H.264 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264
One of the things I like so much about H.264 is that it's very flexible. You can encode videos into very high quality HD videos, or something low resolution for use with a phone. The x264 software allows us to make these these adjustments very easily. We'll be using the command line version of Handbrake to do all our encoding. http://handbrake.fr It's free, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I'll assume you have the latest version installed at this location: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Handbrake\Handbrake.exe"
Bulk encoding
There's more than a few ways to do this. If you're on a Windows PC probably the simplest way is to use a batch file. If you're like most people, your videos are stored in a particular location. For example, you may have a directory structure like this:
Encoding methods
Handbrake is quite flexible when it comes to importing various file types. I've been able to import DivX, XviD, wmv, etc. One of the most important components of video encoding is the quality. With Handbrake you can handle this three ways:
- setting an average bitrate (1500 kbps for example)
- setting a target file size (Handbrake will adjust the bit rate to fit the requested size)
- setting a constant quality
For our encoding process we'll be using the constant quality method. The first two methods work well if all your videos are from the same source, the same resolution, and using the same codec, but if you have a mixed bag of videos then constant quality is easier to work with.
What quality level should we use?
I'd suggest running a few tests first. Find a video file (the shorter the better, such as a movie trailer), and lets encode it with various levels of quality. In Handbrake, 100% quality is an extreme amount and you'll probably never use something this high. So we'll start with 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70%. After the encoding process is complete, take a look at the file sizes and the level of quality. It may be that you'll need to adjust the level to 65%, or 55%.
I'm encoding my videos for playback on Apple TV, iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone\Touch can playback video with a resolution up to 640 x 480 (even though the displayed video is only 480 x 320). You can adjust these settings as well. For example you may want to encode video to 720p or 1080p, to do so just read up on Handbrake's command line switches for -X -Y -w -l, more info here: http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/CLIGuide I'm also limiting the audio to 64kbps. You can bump this up as well using the -B switch, something like -B 128.
OK, so you've found a video that you'd like to test. A short video, correct? Place the video in a directory all by itself. Create a new batch with this code in the same directory. Start up a command line windows, navigate to the directory, and run the batch file. Depending on your hardware, this encoding process may take a few minutes, or a few hours if you're using a long video (I told you to use a short video).
After this batch file runs you should have 4 new videos, each at a different levels of quality. If you'd like to tweak your quality level, you can adjust the -q value up or down, such as -q .55 or -q .65 and you can also adjust the maximum bitrate with the vbv-maxrate=somevalue_kbps.
For my videos, I'm going with these settings:
In the batch file, we'll be looking to convert any avi file, divx file, wmv, etc. Place this file in your base video directory (such as c:\videos) and let it run (it may take a while to complete). It will crawl through all your subdirectories looking for video files to convert. We'll also dump our progress to a log file so you can see what video is currently being encoded. And when you put all this together with the other settings, here's what it looks like... aka, the TL;DR section:
If you want date & time in the log file:
Other utilities
MediaInfo is an informative little app. And with it's context menu it's very handy. It's good at finding video codec information, audio codec, resolution, bit rate, etc - http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en
Why H.264?
Much like MPEG2 for DVD video or MP3 for audio, H.264 is a flexible video standard for all sorts of media, such as Blu-ray Discs, web streaming, and portable video devices (iPod Touch or iPhone). Here's a little background information for H.264 and x264:
H.264 is a form of video compression - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264
x264 is a method(software) for encoding video into H.264 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264
One of the things I like so much about H.264 is that it's very flexible. You can encode videos into very high quality HD videos, or something low resolution for use with a phone. The x264 software allows us to make these these adjustments very easily. We'll be using the command line version of Handbrake to do all our encoding. http://handbrake.fr It's free, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I'll assume you have the latest version installed at this location: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Handbrake\Handbrake.exe"
Bulk encoding
There's more than a few ways to do this. If you're on a Windows PC probably the simplest way is to use a batch file. If you're like most people, your videos are stored in a particular location. For example, you may have a directory structure like this:
c:\videos c:\videos\video1\video1.mpeg c:\videos\video2\video2.avi c:\videos\video3\video3.xvidWe'll use a batch file to start at the base directory (c:\videos) and work ourselves down through all the subdirectories and encode the video files into H.264. Here's an example batch file that can traverse subdirectories and do something along the way, convert.bat:
@for /r %%F in (*.filetype) do ( some command here some command here some command here)
Encoding methods
Handbrake is quite flexible when it comes to importing various file types. I've been able to import DivX, XviD, wmv, etc. One of the most important components of video encoding is the quality. With Handbrake you can handle this three ways:
- setting an average bitrate (1500 kbps for example)
- setting a target file size (Handbrake will adjust the bit rate to fit the requested size)
- setting a constant quality
For our encoding process we'll be using the constant quality method. The first two methods work well if all your videos are from the same source, the same resolution, and using the same codec, but if you have a mixed bag of videos then constant quality is easier to work with.
What quality level should we use?
I'd suggest running a few tests first. Find a video file (the shorter the better, such as a movie trailer), and lets encode it with various levels of quality. In Handbrake, 100% quality is an extreme amount and you'll probably never use something this high. So we'll start with 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70%. After the encoding process is complete, take a look at the file sizes and the level of quality. It may be that you'll need to adjust the level to 65%, or 55%.
I'm encoding my videos for playback on Apple TV, iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone\Touch can playback video with a resolution up to 640 x 480 (even though the displayed video is only 480 x 320). You can adjust these settings as well. For example you may want to encode video to 720p or 1080p, to do so just read up on Handbrake's command line switches for -X -Y -w -l, more info here: http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/CLIGuide I'm also limiting the audio to 64kbps. You can bump this up as well using the -B switch, something like -B 128.
OK, so you've found a video that you'd like to test. A short video, correct? Place the video in a directory all by itself. Create a new batch with this code in the same directory. Start up a command line windows, navigate to the directory, and run the batch file. Depending on your hardware, this encoding process may take a few minutes, or a few hours if you're using a long video (I told you to use a short video).
@for /r %%F in (*.avi,*.mov,*.wmv,*.mpg,*.mpeg,*.divx) do ( "C:\Program Files (x86)\HandBrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i "%%F" -o "%%~pnF-x40.mp4" -f mp4 -2 -I -O -X 640 -Y 480 -e x264 -q .40 -a 1 -E faac -6 auto -R Auto -B 64 -D 0.0 -m -x level=30:bframes=0:cabac=0:ref=1:vbv-maxrate=400:vbv-bufsize=2000:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=0,0:subq=6:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:weightb=0:mixed-refs=0 -v 1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\HandBrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i "%%F" -o "%%~pnF-x50.mp4" -f mp4 -2 -I -O -X 640 -Y 480 -e x264 -q .50 -a 1 -E faac -6 auto -R Auto -B 64 -D 0.0 -m -x level=30:bframes=0:cabac=0:ref=1:vbv-maxrate=500:vbv-bufsize=2000:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=0,0:subq=6:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:weightb=0:mixed-refs=0 -v 1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\HandBrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i "%%F" -o "%%~pnF-x60.mp4" -f mp4 -2 -I -O -X 640 -Y 480 -e x264 -q .60 -a 1 -E faac -6 auto -R Auto -B 64 -D 0.0 -m -x level=30:bframes=0:cabac=0:ref=1:vbv-maxrate=700:vbv-bufsize=2000:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=0,0:subq=6:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:weightb=0:mixed-refs=0 -v 1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\HandBrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i "%%F" -o "%%~pnF-x70.mp4" -f mp4 -2 -I -O -X 640 -Y 480 -e x264 -q .70 -a 1 -E faac -6 auto -R Auto -B 64 -D 0.0 -m -x level=30:bframes=0:cabac=0:ref=1:vbv-maxrate=900:vbv-bufsize=2000:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=0,0:subq=6:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:weightb=0:mixed-refs=0 -v 1)
After this batch file runs you should have 4 new videos, each at a different levels of quality. If you'd like to tweak your quality level, you can adjust the -q value up or down, such as -q .55 or -q .65 and you can also adjust the maximum bitrate with the vbv-maxrate=somevalue_kbps.
For my videos, I'm going with these settings:
-2 [two-pass encode] -T [make the first pass go turbo!] -O [optimize for web streaming, YAAA] -I [for 5.5G ipods] -X 640 [maximum width] -Y 480 [maximum height] -q .60 [not bad, not great, good file size] -B 64 [64kbps is enough for me]
In the batch file, we'll be looking to convert any avi file, divx file, wmv, etc. Place this file in your base video directory (such as c:\videos) and let it run (it may take a while to complete). It will crawl through all your subdirectories looking for video files to convert. We'll also dump our progress to a log file so you can see what video is currently being encoded. And when you put all this together with the other settings, here's what it looks like... aka, the TL;DR section:
@for /r %%F in (*.avi,*.mov,*.wmv,*.mpg,*.mpeg,*.divx) do ( @echo "- starting %%F" >> convert.log "C:\Program Files (x86)\HandBrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i "%%F" -o "%%~pnF-x60.mp4" -f mp4 -2 -T -I -O -X 640 -Y 480 -e x264 -q .60 -a 1 -E faac -6 auto -R Auto -B 64 -D 0.0 -m -x level=30:bframes=0:cabac=0:ref=1:vbv-maxrate=700:vbv-bufsize=2000:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=0,0:subq=6:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:weightb=0:mixed-refs=0 -v 1 @echo "- completed %%~pnF-x60.mp4" >> convert.log)
If you want date & time in the log file:
@for /r %%F in (*.avi,*.mov,*.wmv,*.mpg,*.mpeg,*.divx) do ( @echo - starting %%F >> convert.log date /t >> convert.log time /t >> convert.log "C:\Program Files (x86)\HandBrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i "%%F" -o "%%~pnF-x60.mp4" -f mp4 -2 -T -I -O -X 640 -Y 480 -e x264 -q .60 -a 1 -E faac -6 auto -R Auto -B 64 -D 0.0 -m -x level=30:bframes=0:cabac=0:ref=1:vbv-maxrate=700:vbv-bufsize=2000:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=0,0:subq=6:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:weightb=0:mixed-refs=0 -v 1 @echo - completed %%~pnF-x60.mp4 >> convert.log date /t >> convert.log time /t >> convert.log)
Other utilities
MediaInfo is an informative little app. And with it's context menu it's very handy. It's good at finding video codec information, audio codec, resolution, bit rate, etc - http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en
Monday, January 11, 2010
Better performance with Compiz Fusion in a VirtualBox VM on Windows 7
First some background.... my previous entries about VMware and VirtualBox:
Compiz Fusion and VMware Workstation 7 not playing nice:
http://orsontyrell.blogspot.com/2009/11/compiz-fusion-and-vmware-workstation-7.html
Compiz Fusion and Virtual Box 3.10 playing together:
http://orsontyrell.blogspot.com/2009/11/compiz-fusion-and-virtual-box-310.html
Today I'm seeing some great performance improvements with the latest version of VirtualBox, version 3.1.2. Specifically I'm now satisfied with the performance of Compiz Fusion running in a VM on Windows 7. Previous I'd see delays in the menuing system or delays when typing in a terminal window, but now the windowing performance is fine.
After upgrading to VirtualBox 3.1.2, I upgraded the VirtualBox Guest Additions on an existing VM, and I also tested a new VM. In both instances (an Ubuntu VM and a Linux Mint VM) I saw the same performance improvements.
Compiz Fusion and VMware Workstation 7 not playing nice:
http://orsontyrell.blogspot.com/2009/11/compiz-fusion-and-vmware-workstation-7.html
Compiz Fusion and Virtual Box 3.10 playing together:
http://orsontyrell.blogspot.com/2009/11/compiz-fusion-and-virtual-box-310.html
Today I'm seeing some great performance improvements with the latest version of VirtualBox, version 3.1.2. Specifically I'm now satisfied with the performance of Compiz Fusion running in a VM on Windows 7. Previous I'd see delays in the menuing system or delays when typing in a terminal window, but now the windowing performance is fine.
After upgrading to VirtualBox 3.1.2, I upgraded the VirtualBox Guest Additions on an existing VM, and I also tested a new VM. In both instances (an Ubuntu VM and a Linux Mint VM) I saw the same performance improvements.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Halo Reach: this is not the media you're looking for, move along.
The CES 2010 Keynote Address is available online. Great, except it's not. At around the 1 hour mark, Microsoft's President of Entertainment and Devices Division Robbie Bach mentions the latest episode in the Halo saga. Instead of showing the video presented at CES, the viewer is greated with the screenshot below:
Why not show the video?
or Why not just cut the video out all together?
Why leave it on the screen to linger for over two minutes, all the while playing crappy elevator music?
Oh and sure, when the video feed returns, we're greeted with the audiance's applause of what they just saw... thanks Bungie.
[UPDATE]
uggh... and they do it again with Microsoft's own Gameroom Arcade...
Why not show the video?
or Why not just cut the video out all together?
Why leave it on the screen to linger for over two minutes, all the while playing crappy elevator music?
Oh and sure, when the video feed returns, we're greeted with the audiance's applause of what they just saw... thanks Bungie.
[UPDATE]
uggh... and they do it again with Microsoft's own Gameroom Arcade...
Monday, January 4, 2010
MP3 to M4B: free, quick, and easy audiobook coversion for your iPhone
Quick?
Maybe, maybe not. Depends on your hardware.
Why M4B?
MP3 is nice for songs, but if you have a long audio book in MP3 form, it may be 10, 20, 30+ individual MP3 files. M4B lumps them all in one. M4A is similar to M4B, but it doesn't offer bookmarking(remembering playback location) which is a necessity when listening to a long audiobook. Sure, in some instances an app will remember the playback location of both MP3 and M4A, but as the file size increase so does the chance loosing your location. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4b
So why not just throw everything in iTunes and use a playlist?
In my experience, the iPod app for the iPhone sucks. Plan and simple. Everytime I charge my iPhone via the computer's USB port, the iPhone looses it current playback location. I've run into similar instances when syncinging. So what the solution? I've found an audiobook player app with some good features, and most importantly it doesn't loose it's playback location. The app even supports background playback (the only non-Apple app I've come accross that does this). The app is called Bookmark http://bookmarkapp.com/ , Bookmark Blog http://bookmarkapp.wordpress.com/
And now let's start with some apps that I've tried, but for one reason or another haven't had much success:
Maybe, maybe not. Depends on your hardware.
Why M4B?
MP3 is nice for songs, but if you have a long audio book in MP3 form, it may be 10, 20, 30+ individual MP3 files. M4B lumps them all in one. M4A is similar to M4B, but it doesn't offer bookmarking(remembering playback location) which is a necessity when listening to a long audiobook. Sure, in some instances an app will remember the playback location of both MP3 and M4A, but as the file size increase so does the chance loosing your location. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4b
So why not just throw everything in iTunes and use a playlist?
In my experience, the iPod app for the iPhone sucks. Plan and simple. Everytime I charge my iPhone via the computer's USB port, the iPhone looses it current playback location. I've run into similar instances when syncinging. So what the solution? I've found an audiobook player app with some good features, and most importantly it doesn't loose it's playback location. The app even supports background playback (the only non-Apple app I've come accross that does this). The app is called Bookmark http://bookmarkapp.com/ , Bookmark Blog http://bookmarkapp.wordpress.com/
And now let's start with some apps that I've tried, but for one reason or another haven't had much success:
- Audiobook Maker version 0.1b for Mac OSX - http://audiobookmaker.sourceforge.net/ - A free MP3 to AAC app. For me, this app is hit and miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes it crashes, and sometimes I just get the spinning beachball. The good news is it's open source if anyone wants to pick it up, unfortunately the app was last updated Dec 03, 2005 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/audiobookmaker/files/). Maybe it's incompatibilities with Snow Leopard, I don't know.
- MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter version 0.18 for Windows - http://freeipodsoftware.com/ - Another free all-in-one type app. And again, it's hit and miss with conversions. I tend to have better success when running it on XP, unfortunately most of my PCs have moved to Windows 7. When running under Win 7 I tend to run into a Java error at the start of the conversion process.
- MP3 files to M4A files - using Format Factory version 2.20 - http://www.formatoz.com/ - This free app converts all kinds kinds of media. If you have a large number of files to convert it has a great queuing system. Just drop them in the queue and let it crank away. Out comes the M4A files.
- M4A files to a single chaptered M4B - using Chapter and Verse version 1.3.3.5 - http://lodensoftware.com/chapter-and-verse/ - Another free app. Creating the M4B is rather simple, just add the M4A files, make any necessary meta data changes (Author, Title, Album Art, etc), then click the Build Audiobook button. Individual files are converted to chapter breaks in the single M4B file, but with the Bookmark app this isn't really neccessary.
- Drop the M4B into iTunes and BAM! your done. If you don't want to use iTunes, you can use CopyTrans Manager http://www.copytrans.net/
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