But now with a video copy of what is basically just a song, I needed to get it into iTunes so it could play nice with my other songs and go for rides on iPods and show up in MythTV, etc. – all the good things that come from being in the iTunes library. So I used VLC to try exporting a number of different ways. VLC 2.1′s file exporting/transcoding is slightly better than in the past but it still isn’t great. There’s some good flexibility but there’s little assistance so it’s hard to know what to do. I took some stabs at different formats and failed. The only one that seemed to make progress was exporting to OGG. So you choose to export, then choose the item to export, then uncheck transcode video and check only transcode audio. For format, I went with MP3/256 and chose a encapsulation of OGG. It didn’t work in iTunes but it came up nicely in Audacity. Then in Audacity, I simply did an export and entered the file information. Double -clicking on the file that Audacity created opened it in (and copied it to) my iTunes Library and now I’m good to go.

So, summarizing, use FrostWire to rip the file from YouTube, use VLC to extract audio content only to OGG, and then use Audacity to make an iTunes friendly version of the file. That’s it! Okay, it’s a few steps more than I’d like but it’s a little surprising that it is even that easy. If somebody has a suggestion for how to cut out a step, I’d love to hear it. Although, truthfully, I think it’s probably very infrequent that I’ll actually be ripping files from YouTube since the Audio quality is generally poor and there’s better and easier ways to get good quality audio.

President Obama wanted to move the [Correspondents'] Dinner to the Kennedy Center this year but the Republicans wanted to keep it here at the Hilton. So they compromised and here we are at the Hilton.

In their proposal, near the top of page 3, the FCC states that “77 percent of cable subscribers have at least one digital cable set-top box or retail CableCARD device in their home”. That may be true but ignores the fact that there are likely other outlets in the house that do not have a cable box. It also ignores the fact that it’s very likely that a good portion of that 77 percent isn’t very happy about even having that one cable box in the house. So what’s the percentage of all outlets where a cable box is desired? And even if you assume for a minute that there are no other outlets in those 77 percent of households and that all 77 percent of those households are happy having a cable box, what about the other 23 percent? That’s not a trivial amount of households!!! We aren’t talking about a small isolated group of Americans. Even in the most favorable view of that statistic, the FCC is saying they propose that a nearly quarter of all American cable subscribing households will be mandated to add special equipment rented from the cable company!!!

It was only two and a half years ago that Big Cable started this attack by moving all the channels that they were allowed to off of the “cable ready” channels and onto the digital broadcast spectrum. So as I feared then, it was the opening salvo in the war to fully control every television tuner with a Big Cable provided device. The cable provider makes more money on rental and the cable hardware manufacturer makes money on the sale of the device to the cable provider. So everyone is happy. Except for the consumer. That the FCC is supposed to be watching out for.

I think it’s amazing that the FCC thinks it’s important to protect me from a 30 millisecond view of MIA’s middle finger but doesn’t think it’s important to protect the country from an onslaught of corporate takeover of our television equipment.

Indecision 2012 – The Gingrich Who Stole South Carolina

]]> http://blog.katharsys.com/?feed=rss2&p=3711 0 http://blog.katharsys.com/?p=3647 http://blog.katharsys.com/?p=3647#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:16:33 +0000 Ken http://blog.katharsys.com/?p=3647 Wow, that was a decisive victory last night in South Carolina.  Hunh.  I guess Newt’s populism can really gain traction with some people.  I was guessing he’d be a close second but he’s a clear winner instead.  I’ve been hoping Newt would keep nipping at Romney’s heels through the next couple of months and then just go away.  Since I think the country is on the right track and the Bush 43 mess just takes time to clean up and Obama is doing the best he can with a Boehner led congress, I am hoping for an Obama victory.  And the best way to ensure that is to have a weak opponent.  And since I’ve been assuming that opponent will be Mitt Romney, the more Romney is attacked now, the less appealing he’ll be in November.

But I had a scary thought this morning.  I woke up thinking about the surprise win yesterday and impressed with the impact populism has.  I was also a little surprised by how collegial all the candidates sounded.  As though they recognized that they needed to be confrontational to win South Carolina but need to switch gears in case they need to work together.  And then it hit me:  What if the winner is Romney and he picks his former rival Gingrich as his running mate?  Romney would pull in the moderates and the rich who want the country run for them while Newt would pull in those drawn by his populism.  And that ticket might be tough for Obama to beat.  A scary future for our country.

Oh, and before you say that they couldn’t get together because they are rivals, c’mon.  First of all we’re talking about Republican politicians which means they are masters at saying something to make their case regardless of the truthiness of it.  They’ll have no problem switching from attacking to a love fest (like Perry and Huntsman did when they dropped out and scrubbed their web sites of anti-other-candidate messages) and they’ll make it all about unifying to beat Obama.  And that will help sell the populist message even more.  Second, we’re talking about Republican politicians which means that their goal is election and not principles (despite what their supposed message has been) so they’ll have no problem shifting again to move towards each other to make peace for the unified goal of power.

The only snag for these two potential lovebirds would be their individual baggage.  Romney is so pro-captialism that he’s anti-real-people (companies are not people) and has money everywhere (including in the Cayman Islands) and houses everywhere and yet pays less in taxes percentage-wise than the average low to moderate income guy.  Newt may not have literally asked for an “open marriage” but he was probably caught cheating on wife #2 with eventual wife #3 and that’s after leaving wife #1 while she was sick.  And Newt is of course the guy who consulted with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while they were in the midst of causing the housing crisis he is against now.  So that’s a lot of shared baggage and you could argue the ticket would be better off with a relative unknown without the baggage.  Still, the whole relative unknown thing didn’t work out well for McCain/Palin so the GOP may push for something like a Romney/Gingrich thing.

First, I ran an ffmpeg conversion on the Myth box.  ffmpeg is a program that is probably on every Myth box already and if not, it’s easy to get with apt-get.  I opened a Terminal window and switched to the directory containing recordings – /var/lib/mythtv/recordings.  The command I ran is:

ffmpeg -i filename_orig.mpg -target ntsc-svcd -acodec mp2 -ar 48000 -ab 192000 -ac 2 filename_cvrt.mpg

When that finished, still on the Myth box, I used the ReplayTVTools library’s rtvconvert to convert the resulting MPEG-2 file into the non-conforming MPEG-2 file format that ReplayTV needs using the following command:

/path/to/ReplayTVTools/rev4/bin/linux/rtvconvert filename_cvrt.mpg filename_rtv.mpg

The output of this conversion is a set of 3 files ready for use in DVArchive.  I do have DVArchive installed on my Myth box so I can play ReplayTV shows on Myth but for some reason, when DVArchive runs on my Myth computer, it isn’t visible to other DVArchives (perhaps because of existing UPnP for MythTV?).  So instead, I moved the 3 files to my PC that is acting as my WiRNS/IVS Magic server.  (Assuming you are still in the recordings directory on the Myth box, that directory is shared by default by Myth so all you need to do is find the share in the Network explorer window on the Windows PC.) On that computer, I used DVArchive to Import the files from a temp directory, gave the appropriate name information and watched the import progress bar excitedly. In fact, you if you check the delete after import box on the import dialog, you won’t even see the progress bar because it will go quickly and you’ll save space and delete the files you had copied over.

Back in IVS Magic, I was able to refresh the local_guide from the status page, then click on the send show local guide and see the imported file show up there.  Now I’m ready to send!

I created the following simple script to automate the process for me.

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -ne 1 ]
then
    echo "converts MythTV format files to ReplayTV formatted files"
    echo "usage:  $0 filename"
    exit 1
fi

FILENAME=${1%.mpg}

if [ ! -r "${FILENAME}.mpg" ]
then
    echo "could not access ${FILENAME}.mpg."
    exit 1
fi

echo "converting $FILENAME..."

ffmpeg -i ${1}.mpg -target ntsc-svcd -acodec mp2 -ar 48000 -ab 192000 \
       -ac 2 ${1}_tmp.mpg

~/bin/rtvconvert ${1}_tmp.mpg ${1}_rtv.mpg

rm ${1}_tmp.mpg

exit 0

It’s also worth noting that I tried using VLC conversion and using TMPGEnc conversions and neither worked. VLC couldn’t produce a file format that TMPGEnc would use and the one time I accidentally got a format that TMPGEnc did work with, there was no audio in the finished product. I also had some failures with TMPGEnc crashing and producing empty files too. There was a lot of trial and error that went into the above ffmpeg string. Hope it helps out somebody else.

First up: Chuck.  The show continues to deliver the entertainment.  I’m both laughing and always engaged in an episode of Chuck.  Which is why the following statement is so sad:  The last episode is on tomorrow night.  It’s the series finale!  I would have liked the show to just go on and on but clearly there aren’t enough people who agree with me.  The season started with Morgan as the Intersect which seemed like a good premise but I think the writers got to the same place I did as a viewer a little later which is there’s only so much dopey stuff Morgan can do as the Intersect without it feeling repetitive.  I guess the writers probably had the sense that they were writing for the final season either before the season began or shortly after because the plots seemed to shift toward Chuck and Sarah figuring out what comes next.  Their seeming eventual series conclusion will be with Chuck and Sarah starting a family while being cyberspy fighters – a logical step for the characters that probably wouldn’t be very interesting for us viewers.  But in the penultimate cliffhanger, now Sarah has the Intersect to save Chuck and Casey.  I’m looking forward to tuning in tomorrow night to see what happens and how things end.  So sad.

I’m really frustrated about Hawaii Five-O.  Granted, I’m still mostly watching for the scenery.  (Get your mind out of the gutter; I’m talking about the island!)  But it’d be nice if I didn’t feel mental whiplash by the plots.  So in the first episode of the second season, most of the intricate stuff that went down in the first season finale is suddenly resolved including a new governor and a new team member.  And in the early episodes we learned that the nice agent who had been helping McGarrett track Wo Fat turned out to be working with Wo Fat?  That’s utter bullshit.  First the previous season’s governor and now one of their own team?  They are just pulling fast ones here.  Next up, McGarrett is actually chasing himself as a clone!?  And then the nice father figure they introduce this season turns out to be doing secret stuff behind the scenes too?  C’mon.  The season plot seems to be like a malfunctioning car where it can only go too fast or too slow.  And episode plots are also inconsistent – I liked the episode where there was a busload of kids held hostage because it seemed somewhat realistic about how the cops slowly found their way to the kids.  But other episodes have seemed contrived and just one happenstance after another.  I know – why keep watching?  I still like the scenery.  (shut up.)

Nikita is a totally different story – literally.  I’d almost given up on it last season but it got really smart suddenly and each episode really feels like something new.  There’s lots of interesting info continually being divulged.  You could say it’s the opposite of Lost in this way where you don’t feel constantly confused.  You feel like you are constantly catching on but at the same time, you realize there’s more to the story.  Division is now fractured from the politicians that run it, the megalomaniacal nut that used to manage it, and the new megalomaniacal nut running it now, the rogue agent and her friends, the other rogue agent, and the Russian crazy people.  It really has become enjoyable to watch.  Sure there’s absurdity about how a team of 3 (or 4) can manage to simultaneously ruin things for the ultra-powerful government rogue agency, the ulta-powerful Russian industrial monopoly, and the ulta-powerful corrupt politicians.  And the three main leads aren’t the best thespians around.  But I’m sticking around for the story.  Oh and for Birkhoff’s bon mots too.

The Office is still humming along with Dilbert-esque corporate absurdity and the familiar cast of nuts.  I was a little concerned about what James Spader would do to the dynamic and it is a little worse for his inclusion.  But having Andy replace Michael has been fine and the episode when Andy got a tattoo was a highlight of the season. It’s a fun show but I can’t say I am anxious for the next episode like I am with, say, Modern Family.  (Which isn’t reviewed here but is still damned funny.)

Way too much has been made of Alicia’s bangs.  Damn, people, women change their hair styles all the time so who cares if there are bangs this season.  Looking past the bangs, I’m glad to say that they seem to have let the Alicia and Will thing run its course.  Now, after the writers allowed them to be together, they can do a Sam and Diane thing where there is the post relationship tension instead of the will-they-or-won’t-they.  I still wasn’t sure where things were going with Kalinda last season so it’s good to see a sort of response to that in the form of the ADA Dana Lodge.  And any time either Peter, Eli, or Michael J. Fox’s character get screen time is good time.  Although Eli’s character has lost a little punch since he moved “in house” with Lockhart Gardner.  Overall, though, at this point in the season, I don’t think we are far enough along to offer much opinion.  I feel like there’s been a lot of set up for what’s to come.  Looking forward to it.

Ratings: (out of 10)

Chuck season so far: 9

Nikita season so far: 8

Hawaii Five-O season so far: 4

The Office season so far: 6

The Good Wife season so far: 7

Axe body spray has a new product for women. I’m guessing it’s mace.