E’ sempre un piacere leggere il blog del Quinta, oggi questo suo post Domanda e offerta secondo Lapalisse mi ha fatto pensare:

Stamattina lavoro da casa…

Dopo aver accompagnato la prole a scuola, improcrastinabile taglio di capelli. Che poi e’ di fianco alla videoteca che e’ una vita che non ci vado (la sera corro a casa…) prendo un film e vado a casa, poi quando esco lo rendo.

No, non lo guardo adesso. Nel tempo che ho scritto questo post, lo ho rippato e messo sul server; lo guardero’ con XBMC (xbox media center) quando avro’ tempo.

Non e’ colpa mia se i titolari dei diritti vogliono impormi una modalità d’uso che non è adeguata alla mia vita.

D’altronde sono abbastanza convinto che, nonostante i loro comportamenti suggeriscano il contrario, siano piu’ felici di incassare i miei 4 euro che non incassare nulla.

Accompagnare i bambini a scuola, passare dal barbiere per tagliarsi i capelli, noleggiare un dvd e ripparlo … comportamenti comuni, quotidiani, che c’è di male ? L’ ultimo di questi, tuttavia, è illecito nonostante Stefano, come la maggior parte della cittadinanza non lo riconosca (più) come degno di biasimo, se è vero che ne scrive apertamente sul suo blog.

A questo mio commento, in effetti, lo stesso Stefano replica:

ecchenonloso che e’ un illecito ? ne ho scritto apertamente sul blog per denuncia (sperando che Davide non mi denunci… ma proprio per questo ne ho scritto. “disobbedienza civile”, as they call it…

Una cosa che spesso sfugge quando si parla di questi temi, di modelli di business ormai resi obsoleti dallo sviluppo della tecnologia, di comportamenti protezionistici da parte di industrie che non vogliono rivedere i loro sistemi di distribuzione e, quindi, il loro potere, di assurdi inasprimenti nell’enforcement di normative che non corrispondono più al comune sentire di gran parte dei cittadini è che ci stiamo giocando ben di più e ben altro, ovvero il principio di effettività del diritto, che dovrebbe essere un cardine in una democrazia.

Quando si comincia così non si può sapere dove si andrà a finire … e ben venga allora la “disobbedienza civile” del Quinta, è un atto di profonda democrazia.

I have been asked numerous times about how to encode purchased DVDs into the video equivalent of MP3. For me, and many others, this is MP4.

The below steps will explain how to convert a DVD into a MP4 format, complete with metadata and artwork. (The process is nearly identical on Windows and Mac – Sorry Linux fans, I have yet to dabble with this on that platform, but I’m sure it’s almost the same too)

Even though you own the DVD, the act of ripping it and converting to another format is still very much a legal grey area. (I hope this guide doesn’t get pulled because of this!)

You will need a few applications;
MacTheRipper (Mac) or DVDShrink (Windows)
Handbrake (Mac & Windows)
MetaX (Mac & Windows) or Subler (Mac)

And a few sites to help with obtaining the metadata;
IMDb (General Data)
Netflix (Genre and Outline)
Barnes & Noble (Chapters)
tagChimp (General Data and Chapters)
Wikipedia (General Data)
Get Video Artwork (High resolution artwork)
Blockbuster (UK Ratings)
Internet Movie Poster Database (Last resort if you cannot find decent artwork)

Ripping the DVD

Handbrake can convert straight form the physical disk itself, but I prefer to rip it to my Hard Drive first.

With MacTheRipper, it’s easier to insert the disk and click “Go!”. This will rip the entire contents of the DVD, allowing you to pick out the parts you need later. Ripping a specific Title can be a bit fiddly.

DVDShrink can do the same thing via the “Entire Disk” button. But it is much easier to rip just the Title of the Main Feature using the Re-Author option.

To save getting into unnecessary detail, for the purpose of this guide, rip the whole Disk.

Encoding the Movie

1. Launch Handbrake. You should be prompted for the Source File(s). If not, select File>Open.

2. Handbrake will scan the Contents. Once finished, open the Preset tray and select Universal.

3. In the main screen pick the Title you want to encode. This is usually the longest one for the main feature. Play the DVD elsewhere and take note of the Title number to be sure.

4. Type in the location and name of your desired output file (for the Windows version, all special characters must be removed. You can change the filename after).

The default setup here should be fine for most people, so it is safe to skip onto the Audio and Subtitles Step – you will be left with a perfectly acceptable video file. If you’re interested in some of the finer points, read on…

5. In the Video tab click Picture Settings.

5a. Set Anamorphic to Strict – this will force Handbrake to keep a pixel-for-pixel resolution of the original (no scaling like with the loose option)

Because of this, you have to adjust the Cropping to keep the video the correct shape;

5b. Set the crop to Custom and adjust the numbers so that they are multiples of 16 (this is to do with macroblocks – there are numerous post online explaining this, but for now trust me, 16 is the magic number) and even numbers (e.g. if you find you have 71 and 73 for the top and bottom, you should change them to 72 and 72 – this is to do with efficient encoding).

Keep note of how much of the video you are cutting away or adding back. adding too much back may leave more black edges than you would have liked. Cutting too much away may take away too much of the film. The last one is highly unlikely as, when overscan on CRT TVs was an issue, the extreme edges of the film were cut off anyway.

5c. If your source is interlaced or Telecined (again, plenty of posts about this elsewhere) select the relevant Filters. Decomb can be left on if you are unsure, as this is like a ’safe’ de-interlacer that will only be brought into effect if needed.

5d. Now check your Source, Output and Anamorphic numbers;

The Output should be the source minus your crop values, exactly. The Anamorphic should with the same height as the Output. This can be ignored if you have chosen “Loose Anamorphic”. I prefer strict as you are left with an exact pixel-for-pixel copy of the original without any scaling.

6. Onto the Audio and Subtitles Tab.

6a. The default here is for track 1 to be an AAC Pro Logic II mix-down of the 5.1 AC3 source, with Tack 2 being a passthru of the source. This is fine in nearly every case.

The two tracks are for compatibility. The Apple TV and Media Players can pick off the AC3 5.1 track (Amplifier friendly) whereas the iPhone and iPods can use the Pro Logic II track, as it’s just stereo. The ProLogic II allows those with PLII amps to playback the pseudo-5.1 from the portable devices too.

Ideally you would do away with both of these and choose the 6-Channel discrete AAC, as this is the ideal equivalent to AC3 5.1. But due to a slow uptake on this standard we are forced to use the 2-Track method above, breaking the MP4 standards. Plex and XBMC can down-sample 6-Channel discrete AAC to AC3 5.1, but they are the only ones, leaving you with a file un-playable on the iPods and iPhone and a mix-down to something non-AC3 from the Apple TV. A real shame, but what can you do?

You can set the 2nd Track to None if the source is only Stereo or Dolby Surround (no point have two sets of 2-Channel tracks).

6b. Choose any subtitles you would like hard-encoded to the movie file. These will be ‘burnt’ onto the video itself so be sure before you choose any (such as Forces Subtitles where some Movies may have translated scenes). I will post another guide for adding soft-subs to your files once I have found a bullet-proof method.

7. The Chapters Tab.

7a. Fill in the chapters via whichever method suites you (copy and pasting from one of the sites listed above, manually from the DVD box, or choose your own by watching the movie).

The Advanced Tab can be left alone, as this is really reserved for the hard-core tinkeres.

8. Click Add To Queue or Start depending on how many DVDs you are encoding. Depending on your Computer, the encoding process can take anywhere from 1 hour to 1 day (yes my 8 year old PC used to take a whole day to do this!).

Adding the Metadata, or ‘tags’

If you’re only interested in a file to playback the Movie, indifferent to cataloguing your collection, you can skip adding any data to the file. I, however, like having all the information stored within the file, like with MP3s (it’s only Apple Media players and various Operating Systems that can read this data for now, but this will change).

Open your weapon of choice, be it MetaX, Subler or one of the more obscure ones and populate all the required fields. The sites listed above are great for this.

Once complete, Save/Write the data to the file.

You’re done!

The file you are left with is about 33% to 50% the size of the DVD Title and can be imported to iTunes with all the data intact. It will be exactly the same resolution as the original (if you choose the ’strict’ method) and can be played back on almost any device – one file the rule them all!

I will post a guide for Blu-ray and High Def rips once that process has been more streamlined and standardised.

Some likely questions and things to note

Why choose the ‘Universal’ Preset?
This is the most compatible format to use. It leaves out all the unnecessary ‘extras’ that make it un-playable on some devices. One example is the B-frames added for the Apple TV preset – this only saves about 10% more file space but makes no improvements to video quality.
The consoles are always changing their requirements and therefore rendering their presets useless too often. They are being removed from the next release I believe.
The AVI container is a dying format and will also be removed from the next release of Handbrake.
The device-specific presets reduce the resolution for playback via the device’s screen only – too low for TV use really.

Be careful of blank chapters at the end of a Title.
Some DVDs are authored with a chapter at the end of the movie no more than about 3 seconds long. This is to help with the menu navigation (I think) and can be left out (select the previous Chapter as the last one in Handbrake’s main screen). leaving it in will result in an unwanted entry at the end of your Chapter List – not a huge deal, but irritating non the less.

Double-check your Movie duration once encoding is complete.
Handbrake will add or remove a few frames here and there to keep things in sync (nothing that can be spotted during playback, don’t worry) so the output file’s duration should be the same as the original, give or take a few seconds at the most. The movie studios are very aware that programs like Handbrake can circumvent most attempts to prevent encoding, so have started adding deliberate errors to the DVDs. These errors are handled by stand-alone players no problem, and skipped over, but many can cause Handbrake to choke. I am suffering from this issue with Iron Man – selecting the subtitle track for the bits of translation at various scenes causes Handbrake to drop whole scenes from the movie, leaving me with a file a full 15 minutes too short. This is because they haven’t kept that particular subtitle track’s time-stamp in sync with the main movie… sneaky cretins.

You can set the Constant Quality to anything from 59% to 62%.
Anything lower will result in noticeable artefacts. Any higher and you are wasting space. In this version of Handbrake, the percentage is in relation to the original film source, not the DVD – setting it to 80% will result in a file the same size as the original DVD, any higher and the size balloons. In comparison, a Blu-ray is considered 95% percent of the original film source.

The same method can be followed for TV Shows and 4:3 sources.
Just select the required Title, or Chapter range, that relates to the episode you’re wanting.

Some DVDs will flat-out refuse to rip.
For these you can plump out for DVDFab.

Please post any questions relating to this guide in the comments below.
I will respond as best I can.

Now, I’m fullly aware that the whole games industry is based up ripping each other off, but usually they try and do it a little bit tactfully. When it comes to the point that one company is making a retarded version of another’s game, then perhaps it’s time someone called them up on it?

If you’ve used the internet at all in the last few months, then you’ll probably have seen adverts for Evony. You know, the one with the boobs? Yeah, you know it. And if you don’t, then here’s a link. Knock yourself out.

http://www.evony.com/

Don’t get me wrong, Evony isn’t a bad game. I enjoyed it, for the various times I could be bothered to play it. But that’s because I’m sad and I like the sense of achievement you get from very slowly creating something to try and be better than everyone else, then realising it’s the same as everyone elses. But that’s not the point here.

If you have Facebook, and you keep up to date with new game/application things that come along to irritate people and waste time, then you may have noticed this:

http://apps.facebook.com/kingdomsofcamelot/

Now, there’s ripping off, and then there’s exactly the same. “Kingdoms of Camelot” is in every aspect the same as Evony, even down to at some points paraphasing and others pratically copy-pasting descriptions from Evony to add to buildings with different names.

If you’ve played Evony, you’ll know the drill of what’s going on here. It’s a real-time building type MMORPG thing. You build a city, it takes a long time, you train troops and attack other people’s time-consuming constructions and gain status and power and you join alliances and blah blah.

I know I’m making it sound like I don’t like it again. But I really do. Not because it’s good or anything. Mainly because it’s got the balls to keep using 2D graphics in a world so obsessed with 3D. I’d talk at length about good 2D is better than shitty 3D, but a) I can’t be bothered right now. And b) Yahtzee beat me to it.

Anyway..

That’s the two Map screens. Yes, on both games it’s called the Map screen. And then both have a Map screen. And every other screen. The same. Oh God.

So, if you’re a fan of Evony, and faniced playing a worse version of it with a severe graphical downgrade on Facebook, then you know where to look.

Enjoy yourself, you weirdo.

tipping, New Delhi, India

©Aakash Nihalani

ripping, New Delhi, India

©Aakash Nihalani

www.aakashnihalani.com>

Acidrip

Today i will be reviewing Acidrip…

Acidrip is a total free and open source software for basic purpose of ripping/transcoding. It is based on its CLI counterpart application name MEncoder, which in itself is quite popular among the CLI users. It is available for both GTK and QTK. It is available for every distro as source code and binary for few like rpm and deb. It is also supported by many package managers but not all as some distros consider it buggy and in an experimental state which has some truth in it.

It is ridiculously simple and easy but it does not offer the level of configuration that Avidemux does as it does not support proprietary codecs and is based only on the ones which are open source like the revered faac and  xvid.

It is very easy to learn as it does not have much to learn to do what you want to do and the options are laid out pretty clearly. Although it is very good at many things..it lacks one of the basic things that are required for it to be labelled as user friendly and that thing is presets. That means you will have to fiddle with the options to gain the output you want.

Anyway, general Acidrip window is divided into two parts … one consisting tabs (five of them for different purposes of ripping/transcoding), one of which is always selected and the other consisting statuses.

The following is a general layout of Acidrip:

Status Side of Acidrip:

Status are displayed in right side of Acidrip and do not change even if the tab is changed. I call it the status side although it has no name just the sake for naming it. It actually consists of three parts Video Source, Cache Status, Encoding Status.

Vidoe Source:

It has customizable path in which Acidrip would look for video files. It has a load options to load videos from the path specified. When a source has many files you can choose which one to encode by highlighting that file in the directory content options (the place where the titles are displayed). You should usually choose the file with the highest playing time if there are multiple files which are of the same title but are in different branch of title tree.

Cache Status:

It simply shows cache available and being used by the encoding process

Encoding Status:

It has general encoding status..that is – it has time left, Encoding speed, Estimated resultant file size, Time encoded, Average bitrate and a bar for showing the progress.

Tab Side of Acidrip:

It consists of two parts…one is tab part and the other one I like to main options of part.

Tab Part:

It consist of five tabs namely – General, Video, Preview, Queue and Settings.

They are pretty neatly laid out and are easy to understand even by a novice.

General Tab:

It consists of three parts namely – General, Audio and Other Stuff.

General part of the general tab mainly deals with the file’s physical properties like Track title. Filename. Container(Format), file size, number of files (the number of files to be made out of the Input file) and file info. File Info contains options to edit the name, artist, subject, genre and copyright of the file.

Audio part of the general tab mainly deals with the audio properties of the file like language, codec, gain and options. Language is the option to choose which language the audio the file should be in if there are multiple languages available. Codec lists the various codec which are available to encode the file. Gain is if you find the audio volume level too high or low for your preference and want to change it. Options are the options you want to use for the selected audio codec.

Other stuff part of the general tab deals with the option like subtitles which are available and you want to use. It also contains the options to keep the subtitles in a separate file or to be directly rendered to the video. It also contains Miscellaneous options which are the options which cannot be put anywhere else.

Video Tab:

It contains or four parts – video, crop, scale and filters.

Video part of the video tab mainly consists of everything video like Codec to be used, Passes to be made, Bitrate and Options for configuration.

Crop part of the video tab has the options to crop the video (nothing special here). It also contains an auto-detect option.

Scale part of the video tab contains options to resize the video.

Filter contain options which can be associated with filters. It can use distortion options and the likes

Preview Tab:

It constist of only one part. As the name suggests it is preview. Preview can be important in deciding if you want to remain with the settings you have choosen.

Preview can be showed in separated window or it can be embedded in the Acidrip window. There is also an option to view the preview frame by frame.

Queue Tab:

It consist of uncompleted encoded that are added to queue.

There are options to erase the items in the queue or even export them.

Setting Tab:

It consist of the settings and the options of Acidrip. They do not directly affect the encoding and are irrelevant to our purpose of ripping/encoding  so i am not going to include them, but believe me they are very simple and if you want to know about what any options do then you just have to move your mouse over that option and you will be told in text the use of that option. Do try out the settings and customize to your heart’s content as to what should happen before or after encoding. And don’t forget to save them after you have chosen them to you likeness. If you think that you have goofed up or want the original setting than you can simply revert them using the revert button.

Main Options Part:

It contains of four options and they do not change with the change of tab. The options are fairly simple to understand. They are ‘Queue’, ‘Start’, ‘Compact’ and ‘Quit’.

Verdict:

The Guide/Review is before you. The verdict is that Acidrip is very easy to use and has a well laid out layout. But it lack in areas such as presets and configuration that can be achieved. It hardly has any such thing assmall tweaks under its sleeve. It is the best option if you strictly want to stick FLOSS (free/libre open source software which is same as FOSS).

May you find life in yourself…. Ankit Sangwan

Avidemux Video Editor

The first application/tool i would be reviewing is Avidemux Video Editor.

Avidemux is a FOSS program made for multi-purpose video editing and processing. It supports CLI. It is also compatible to both GTK and QTK graphics toolkit. Like all other application which have received good response, it is available in almost all the Distros (and many package managers).

It is a great tool for video authoring and certainly the most powerful in its league. But some say it does not have the ease of use most users would be expecting at the end of the day after you sit down and want a relaxing transcoding of the new dvd you bought which is not exactly true.

Although its is a little inconvenient to learn as there is certainly not a well drafted and publicized manual to all its functions, it has simplicity at its side.  Once you have learned its uses, then it is fairly easy to navigate though the maze of options (which are as much as you can wish for but are hidden in nooks and crannies). I say that it is simple because much of the main used option are just a click away(if you manage to find where those clicks should be).

This is a Avidemux window:

It mainly consists 4 areas – Menubar, Main Toolbar, A/V toolbar and video preview area.

Menubar:

Menubar contains 10 menu…namely file, edit, view, video, audio, tools, auto, go, custom, help

File Menu:

File menu contains options like open, append, save, properties, all of which are self explanatory and are concerned about starting projects and saving them.

Edit Menu:

Edit menu contains options to edit general setting of Avidemux, again all the option are self explanatory.

View Menu:

View menu contains option to change the general view of Avidemux, as till now, all the options are self explanatory.

Video Menu:

Video Menu in Avidemux contains video authoring option like decoding, encoding, filters and the likes which are not that self-explanatory to those of you who are new to Ripping/Transcoding field and will be discussed later in this post with some detail (A/V Side Bar Section).

Audio Menu:

Audio Menu in Avidemux contains audio option like track options. It also has encoding and filters options which will be discussed later in this post with some detail (A/V Side Bar Section).

Tools Menu:

It has tools for frame configuration and the like, which i find no need to discuss while giving a short overview. It also has a calculator tool which will be discussed in some detail later (Main Toolbar).

Auto Menu:

Auto menu contains popular presets for video encoding. Presets contain automatic bitrate, crop, filters, codecs to be used, container to be used, etc. It is really useful if you don’t have a clue as to which settings you should choose if you want a certain type of output such as one for IPOD or PSP.

Go Menu:

Go menu in avidemux contains various navigation option in video. It has options to play/stop video , go to a specified frame/time and skip or fast-forward though a video.

Custom Menu:

Custom Menu contain custom user settings…no further explanation avalable.

Help Menu:

It contains knowledge about the installed plugins, version of avidemux, built-in support and the likes.

Main Toolbar:

Main toolbar contains general file options such as open, save and properties as well as tools like calculator. It also contains volume control and file options like input, output, side, separate and the likes.

Calculator Tool:

Calculator tool is a very useful one and probably one of a kind. It is used the calculate the resultant bitrate, size, bits/pixel of a file under certain conditions such as format, duration, audio bitrate, etc.

A/V Side Bar:

This is the main section we are concerned with…A/V Side Bar is the main section in which most of the transcoding can be done. We will be discussing its options in detail.

It consists of three main part…Video, Audio and Format

Video:

It contains three sub parts … video codec, configuration option for the codec and the filters that can be used

Video codec option in avidemux in its A/V side bar contains the various codecs that are supported by Avidemux and can be used. The above lists shows the codec available in avidemux and the copy option is for ripping the media to the hard drive in the format of the original media. Avidemux contains by default the support for all the major codecs including H.264, MP4 for x264 and Xvid…which are pretty popular.

Configuration option for video codecs are different for different codecs but basically it contains bitrate, quality, passes, etc. which are pretty good option to play with if you are an enthusiast but to be left if you don’t know much about video authoring

Filters options contains various filters that can be used. It mainly consists of 8 sections…namely ‘Transform’, ‘Interlacing’, ‘Colors’, ‘Noise’, ‘Sharpness’, ‘Subtitle’, ‘Miscellaneous’ and ‘External’.

Few filter to be taken notice of are ‘Resize’, ‘Crop’ and ‘Subtitles’ as you might end up using them a lot of times as no video is perfect for you preferences.

Audio:

It contains three sub-parts as with Video. They are Codec, Configuration for the codec (which is not different for different codecs as in Video) and Filters that can be used.

Audio codec option in avidemux in it’s A/V side bar contains the various codecs that are supported by Avidemux and can be used. The above lists shows the codec available in avidemux and the copy option is for ripping the audio to the hard drive in the format of the original audio. Audio Codecs in Avidemux are diverse and very useful.

Configure option consists of audio bitrate configuration and that is the beginning and the end of it.

Audio Filter option in A/V side bar Audio section is pretty uncomplicated (simple) and contain various filters like Frame rate change, mixer, gain and the likes.

Frame rate change is simply a frame rate change mode changer. Mixer is for mixing audio and changing its compatibility options ( here I mean the output audio) such as mono, stereo, surround and 5 channel sound. Gain is for gaining or reducing the audio volume. Other options are either self-explanatory or not needed to be tweaked.

Format:

Format in Avidemux A/V Side Bar is for choosing container. Container here meaning the extension it will be using. It is very important as some devices like IPod do not support all formats.

Verdict:

There you have the review and a guide now. The verdict for this one is that it is simple for those who like to just get on with the get over with it and has many tweaking (which i have not explained here at all) for those of you who are enthusiasts. It is overall a good all-rounder.

May you find life in yourself….Ankit Sangwan

…and other lame singings from yors truly. You’ve just stepped into karaoke night at the lamest most swankified place in town. Prepare to be amazed… or not.

Okay, so the first person up is a lonely soul from a small town somewhere who’s complaining about some kind of boy she lost. *squints at teleprompter* Wait, she never had him? She wanted a bologna sandwich? Well, either way, here she is:

Wow, how emotional. Okay, next person.

Person #2 apparently has some issues with dramatic men. Soap opera stars. Thespians. Or people who “apparently like ripping people’s hearts in two.”

Well, this place is about to shut down, so I’d better get my deodorant out of the locker before I can’t anymore… That would be a problem…

*poofs*

Contrariamente ad altri dispositivi di cui ho scritto la scorsa volta, i CD audio non hanno filesystem, quindi non vanno montati. Sicuramente i vostri favolosi programmi li leggono tranquillamente, se non lo fanno basta configurarli andando nelle impostazioni in modo da indicargli il percorso del lettore (generalmente /dev/cdrom). Ma visto che l’audio non richiede certo la presenza di un programma colorato e con tanti tastini scintillanti per essere apprezzato, scrivero’ di come riprodurre i nostri CD audio da terminale, come estrarre le tracce e convertirle in vari formati.

Useremo il sempreverde mplayer, se non l’avete installatelo:
# apt-get install mplayer-nogui

Fatto. Ora non ci resta che ascoltarci il nostro CD, inseriamolo nel lettore, apriamo un terminale e scriviamo:
$ mplayer cdda://
se ci dovesse segnalare un errore, e’ probabile che il percorso del lettore non sia quello che mplayer si aspettava, indichiamogli allora il percorso giusto:
$ mplayer -cdrom-device /dev/percorsogiusto cdda://

Se non vogliamo ascoltarci tutto il CD, ma solo la terza traccia allora:
$ mplayer cdda://3
se invece vogliamo ascoltare dalla quinta alla nona traccia:
$ mplayer cdda://5-9

Per approfondire:
$ man mplayer

E’ possibile anche usare cdplay, per fare le cose elencate sopra i comandi da terminale sono:
$ cdplay /dev/cdrom
$ cdplay 3 /dev/cdrom
$ cdplay 5 9 /dev/cdrom
Per fermare la riproduzione:
$ cdstop /dev/cdrom

Per usare cdplay dovete installare cdtool:
# apt-get install cdtool

E’ un tool potente, cercate nel manuale tutto quello che potete fare:
$ man cdtool

Se volete convertire il vostro CD audio in comodi file audio da tenere nel vostro portatile e ascoltare in giro senza dovervi portare appresso i CD, la soluzione e’ dir2ogg. Se non lo avete installatelo:
# apt-get install dir2ogg

Ora inserite il vostro CD audio nel lettore, aprite un terminale, spostatevi nella directory dove volete vengano salvati i file audio e scrivete:
$ dir2ogg -c
se il lettore dovesse essere in un percorso diverso da quello che dir2ogg si aspetta scrivete:
$ dir2ogg -c /dev/percorsogiusto
Appena finisce di convertire il CD audio controllate nella directory e vedrete i vostri file ogg di ottima qualita’.

Mi chiederete: “ma perche’ non li convertiamo in mp3?“. Perche’ l’mp3 e’ un formato proprietario, mentre il formato ogg e’ libero. Inoltre a parita’ di qualita’, la compressione e’ migliore nei file ogg.

Ascoltate i vostri file flac con un impianto che ne valorizzi la qualita'

Inserito il CD audio diamo quindi questo comando da terminale:
$ cdparanoia -B
Estrarra’ tutto il CD, e mettera’ ogni traccia in un file wav. Se vogliamo estrarre solo la traccia numero tre scriviamo:
$ cdparanoia "3"
se vogliamo estrarre dalla traccia numero cinque alla numero nove, scriviamo:
$ cdparanoia "5-9"
per convertire i file .wav in flac ci bastera’ scrivere:
$ flac *.wav

Per le varie opzioni (e sono tante) leggete:
$ man cdparanoia
e
$ man flac

Infine se non volete estrarre le tracce dal CD audio con dir2ogg, ma volete successivamente convertire da wav o da flac a ogg [1], bastera’ scrivere su terminale:
$ dir2ogg -d /directory/con/file/wav
o
$ dir2ogg -d /directory/con/file/flac

[1] Mi direte: “avevi scritto un post su come convertire i vari formati audio in ogg con ffmpeg, e ora tiri fuori dir2ogg che sembra molto piu’ semplice?“. Avete ragione, ma se avessi presentato subito il metodo facile chi mai avrebbe provato quello piu’ complesso? [^]

[^] torna su | post<li> | 

I’ve spent all my free time this past week burning and ripping the new Beatles mono and stereo remastered CDs. I can’t believe how much time this process takes.

As “Ringo” said in Yellow Submarine about time, “It’s a 24 hour a day job, isn’t it?”

The last year harddisk prices have been dropping like there is no tomorrow. For the price of a mere 60 dollars you can get one terabyte of storage these days. Cosidering these cheap storage prices more and more people have started to rip/convert their DVD collection to their storage devices (HTPC or NAS). Cosidering most movies can be ripped to your disk and would take around 4-5 gigabyte of room even buying one of these harddrives can host more then 200 movies for you. So what are your options? Should you encode your dvd movies to another format? Or just rip them and keep quality high.

Ripping raw DVD movies

The two most used programs for ripping DVD movies to your harddrive are defintily DVD Shrink and DVD Fab. DVD Shrink sadly is not supported anymore and can’t handle all DVD’s anymore. This leaves DVD Fab as the number one program for ripping DVD movies to your harddrive. The best thing about this? It’s free. You can download DVD Fab here.

DVDFab - You can custimize how you want your backup

With DVD Fab you can choose to copy only the movie and the desired audio track/subtitle track to your harddrive. Often saving quite a little bit of space because you are ignoring the menu and extras. So what is the benefit of this method? Wel for starters; it’s really fast. Copying one DVD often takes only 5-7 minutes depending on the size and encryption method used. There is also no quality loss at all. The downside of this method would be that storage could be a limiting factor, but as said earlyer, 200 movies for around 60 dollars is not a huge investment.

WVGA Games

In versions of iTunes prior to 9, videos that are compatible with a device have been displayed with black text, incompatible with grey. In iTunes 9, I was looking at the TV settings for the iPhone and noticed that all of my TV shows appeared in black. I’ve ripped all my DVDs as 768 x 576 (4:3) or 1024 x 576 anamorphic (16:9), 2500Kbps H.264, 160Kbps AAC. Up to this point, I was never able to sync a file greater than iPod resolution.

To my delight and surprise, these PAL-derived monsters synced across and played. Here’s one from Arrested Development, ripped from a Region 4 PAL DVD:

iPhone Settings Panel, Showing Compatible TV Show

This is the only 720 HD TV show I have, Dollhouse. It’s a rip from a TV broadcast. The iPhone wouldn’t accept it:

iPhone Settings Panel, Showing Incompatible HD TV Show

Next I tested an iPod Classic, the true standard. Despite the apparent compatibility (black text), it wouldn’t sync anything above iPod standard:

iPod Settings Panel, Showing Incompatible TV Show

What does it mean? It means less work when preparing DVD content. I can now rip one version of movies, TV shows and music videos, as long as I sync to an iPhone (and presumably, an iPod Touch). This is a pretty major step forward. Perhaps next year we’ll be able to sync 720 HD.

Predictably, I’ve decided that, in contrary to what I said in my last post, I’m going fully lossless. That means that all CDs will be reripped as Apple Lossless. The journey will end.

I’m going to start with those CDs that have hidden tracks. As I’ve ripped my collection, I’ve been alert to unusually long final tracks, which often denote a hidden track. I don’t rip these in iTunes. I open the CD in the Finder and drag the final track to the desktop. I then open it in QuickTime Player, find and chop out the hidden track, save that as an AIFF and save the shortened original as an AIFF. I then drag these into iTunes and rip as Apple Lossless. I used to then rip those to 256Kbps AAC and store the Lossless originals in a folder archive, out of iTunes.

So that’s the starting point. Rip the CD minus the two last tracks, drag in the Lossless tracks, done.

Well, almost. They need to be “double-tagged“. I’ve started trialling Meta X. It’s not perfect. For a start, it wants to classify a Lossless track as a movie, a TV show or a music video. It thinks it’s video. I run the tracks through Lostify first, specifying a kind of  Normal (Audio). Meta X then respects this. Meta X allows me to write two tags that Lostify can’t: audio Content Rating and Purchase Date. This latter is a little flaky. If I enter 2005-05-29, it’s converted to Zulu notation and given a time as well. The date is always a day later, so the above example will appear something like 30 May 2005 6:00PM in the Summary tab of the Get Info dialog for a single track. I need to understand how Zulu time works.

I’ve got a database listing every single CD I’ve bought, with the date, supplier and cost, so I have the purchase data. I’m hoping a later revision will also present the Purchased By tag so I can finish the job with my name.

What about the other end of the equation, the real bottleneck, the iPod? I had an inspiration. My two-year-old 160Gb Classic would not be worth too much now, especially after tomorrow’s iPod event, so I’m better off keeping it. The solution is simple: buy an additional Classic and run two Classics to hold the library. I would have put off getting an additional Classic until next year but the free space is being consumed at an alarming rate and I’ll run out in about a month. Two Classics, especially if the new one tomorrow is 160Gb or greater, is the solution until that fabled 500Gb iPod Touch becomes reality.

I tried to work out how much space to expect Lossless files to take up, but the math is difficult. I believe Lossless compresses at different rates depending on the audio pattern. For example, the last track of Massive Attack’s 100th Window, Antistar, is bigger than the hidden track, LP4, even though LP4 is much longer. LP4 is little more than 11:23 of static, which is super-efficient to compress. It will take months, probably a year, given all my projects, before I could rerip everything, so space will not be an immediate concern.

So that’s my journey. Light at the end of the tunnel at last. Enjoyable all the way.

So this is the first time I’ve ridden my bike to school, I left at 7:05, the time I usually use to catch the bus, but instead of getting to school at 7:50, I got to school at 7:30… and I got bored and waited, and did stuff, not really. Anyway, after school I race Matt on the 22, and win and we eat at Mi Tierra on 24 and Santa Clara. After that, Matt rides around on the sidewalk, learning again how to ride a bike. Justin shows up outta nowhere, and we both watch in horror as Matt nearly runs down a few people, and this one guy on a bike. blahblahblah, well he eventually falls (the seat wasnt properly adjusted for him) and destroys one side of my bar tape, (which still isnt entirely off yet), dumb adhesive was stronger than i thought. anyway, we ride down to 28th street where Justin gets something at McDonalds, and takes the 23 going that way [points that way]. Afterwards, Matt hops onto a 522 rapid, and I race him, for the record I was in the lead 522 was stuck at a red light, when going down 21st street i hear a loud pop, look behind, and my tire blew clear off the rim :|

I carried my baby home, i never realized how long the walk was when you’re carrying this huge 20lb bike. I eventually drop it off at my grandmas house, and begin making my way past two in the morning, actually it was three, and I was making my way downtown, where we hop on the light rail and get off at Cottle Station to get to Bici Bikes, where I buy orange tape and 27″ tubes [actually 700c tires, but they stretch], we then go to baskin robins, which we now know to have 40 flavors, most of them pretty much the same. Afterwards, we hop onto a 68, then the 72 and we make our way to my place where the bus driver was pretty fond of our singing

we stay there forever while singing songs, eating ice cream, feeding fishies, and other scandalous things. Afterwards three minutes the bus is supposed to get to the stop, we leave, with my computer, tool box, and newly acquired bike parts. We see a bus coming, and frantically flail our arms, and the bus driver stops at not the stop.

One thing we have wanted to do for ever is to upload our entire CD collection to a PC for distribution around the house. I have had a love/hate relationship with iTunes and its proprietariness, is that a word? Anyway itunes seems to have got better so I can easily merge albums and also store our entire collection on a 500Gb network drive. I now need to see if we can both use iTunes on different PC’s in the house using the same library. If we can we are set.

Anyway it’s wonderfull discovering albums I have never heard or music I haven’t heard for years. I plan to hook the collection up to our large screen wall mounted TV and then into our stereo for better sound output. Once we move into our new home I also want to wire the place for sound as I think music is also the heart of any home and entertaining space so it will be an interesting project. I anticipate a media server, perhaps a rack mounted mega PC to cope with movies, dvd’s, music and our burgeoning photo collection.

Of course the question then is what do you do with the CD’s? Do you sell them? Wouldn’t that then be considered theft as you have sold the CD’s and no longer own the right to use them or do you keep them in storage incase you need them again. I think what we will end up doing is giving away to a charity shop the old clubbing CD’s, the classical CD’s which are all out of copyright anyway, and all the old CD’s we are pretty much never going to play except on shuffle on the PC. That way our library is intact but we keep all the more well used CD’s for higher quality playback.

Thats another thing I remember linking up my laptop to our stero and comparing the quality of the output from the laptop via the stereo or from the CD player in the stereo out. The quality of the laptop audio output was so inferior it made me wonder about the loss of quality so many people are suffering when they upload their cd’s to their computer. The richness and depth is just gone or lost forever I don’t know. Would it return with a better computer with a better sound card? I hope so as this is something I will need to investigate before we dispose of any of our CD collection.

Anyway I am currently on CD 150 and have another couple of hundred to go. I am surprised at how slow iTunes is on importing the CD’s, even on a new Quad Core 64 bit PC this is taking forever. Of course I then have to manually find the CD covered on the internet as iTunes cant find it. If you ask me that is pretty poor software if it can find the name of the CD, the artist and the tracks from the CD and it cannot find the album cover on the internet. That to me is very very poor programming. OK you might get some choices but it should find something. Anyway it is giving me the time while it is taking for ever burning to find the cover so no harm done.

I anticipate I will be done by Tuesday and with a very sore back.

I’m ripping CDs to 256Kbps AAC, mostly because it’s Apple’s standard on the iTunes Store. I started out in 2002, ripping to 128Kbps, again because it was what Apple was doing, but also because my iPod was 30Gb and I had to fit everything on it plus leave some space for my rapidly burgeoning collection. iPods, in my book, dictate the bitrate you will be using.

I just bought two albums from sources other than the iTunes Store: the remarkable chiptunes tribute to Kind of Blue, Kind of Bloop and a new Paul & Price EP, Believing. I like the iTunes Store’s 256Kbps, but these two titles had a killer feature–they both were available in a lossless format. I ripped both to 256Kbps AAC and stored the lossless files away for later use.

I’ve been through three bitrate standards: 128Kpbs, 192Kbps and now 256Kbps. Each phase represents a time when the iPod (and to a lesser degree, local storage) capacity increased markedly. There is another phase to come, but thankfully it will be the last. When the iPod has another great leap forward in capacity, say to 500Gb, I will make that final step to full lossless for all my CDs.

The beauty of lossless, from a management viewpoint, is that you can’t make it any better, and thus your bitrate journey is over. By lossless, I specifically mean Apple’s Apple Lossless format, because that’s the one I’ve selected for compatibility with iTunes and the iPod.

It struck me, with these two titles I bought, that I don’t need to convert them to 256Kbps. There are only 9 songs between them, and keeping the lossless versions in iTunes means I don’t have to archive copies and there is no need to maintain two versions. My 160Gb iPod Classic still has about 25Gb free, and my iTunes library is on a readily upgradeable Drobo, so there’s no need to be careful about space considerations. I wouldn’t do this with all my music yet–there’s still the iPod capacity barrier, but the distinction here is that these files do not have a hardware CD source. I might as well leave these bits and bobs as lossless. Now I need replacement lossless versions for the Neptune Pink Floyd tribute compilations None of Us is Pink and The Return of the Sons of Neptune, lost in a hard-drive accident.