Archive for February, 2009

Misery..

Posted by Kedar on Friday, 27 February, 2009

Misery can make a poet out of a moron if it strikes the right chords!

Category: My Quotes, Posts Comments (0)

Video Converters..

Posted by Kedar on Tuesday, 24 February, 2009

I am currently evaluating several video converters in my attempt to backup my home videos. The problem is as I have stated before. I want to save them so that I can find them easily and also, I want to save them in an efficient way – from storage and quality point of view. I know both these points of views go tangential to each other, but still I want to reach a middle ground that I can live with.

Now what do I have ?

  • DVDs – Videos imported from old VHS cassettes and old VHS-C Camcorder cassettes – Mpeg-2 / AC3 audio (720×480)
  • miniDV cassettes (DV format – (720×480)
  • Mpeg-1 videos on Digital Camera – Mpeg-1 / MP2 audio (640×480)

What do I want the output format to be? I have chosen mpeg-2 as my universal output format. AVI is out of question (will take too much storage space), mpeg-4 DivX or XviD..? hmm.. not sure, it is more for the web and there is too much compression there.

Anyways, so I looked at the following:

  • MPEG_Streamclip : Works if you choose “Convert to MPG with MP2 audio” or “Convert to Headed MPEG” which gets AC3 audio. It is Free!
  • SUPER from eRightSoft : Too technical but does its job. And it is Free!
  • TMPGEnc XPRESS : Too expensive ($99). Did not try.
  • AVS Video Converter : You have to pay $59. I have read mixed reviews
  • OJOSoft Total Video Converter : Did the job well. You have to pay $26.99 however. If I feel like buying something, I might go for it.

I vote for MPEG_Streamclip or SUPER obviously because they are Free! Still working on finding the easiest and fastest solution for this.. will keep updating this post I guess.

In the meanwhile, anybody has any other suggestions/comments?

Category: Posts, Technical Comments (1)

Somik.net

Posted by Kedar on Thursday, 19 February, 2009

For a long time, I did not do much on our main site (http://www.somik.net) since it was too cumbersome to sit down and handcode everything, although I did manage to host videos etc laboriously struggling with complex html tags and hacks for streaming videos.

Finally I found a solution to my problems. I installed Joomla – a Content Management System – and finally was able to get everything going within a day. Very easy to maintain and update. I actually feel good about it!

Check it out – http://www.somik.net

Category: Family, Posts Comments (0)