Geeky Tecky Spazzy Web Video Conversion

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUMCO.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 16, 2004

Apple is so cruel and heartless.

For many years now, the Mac video workhorse Quicktime has allowed
MPEG-1 video encoding. That means you could make VCDs with it.

VCDs are a kind of video that you can put on a CD (not a DVD, a CD) and
play in your DVD player or on damn near any computer. That's small
enough to upload and download on the Internet, with cable or DSL. In
Asia and Europe it's a very common format. Since an entire movie can be
put on two 30 cent CDs, they're also popular among geeks, hobbyists,
teenagers and pre-teens in America.

The VCD format isn't just used for pirating crappy copies of Hollywood
movies. For instance, friends and I routinely transfer our goofy home
movies and our badfilm and cartoon collections to VCD for mailing to
each other. We always used VHS tape before, but hey, at $1 total, VCDs
cost about $5 less to make and mail.

Then there's SVCD, a format developed in China and now replacing VCD,
which is much better -- nearly DVD-looking -- but uses more CD space.

Anyway, Quicktime used to have a setting whereby one of the formats it
would convert movies to was "TOAST VIDEO CD". Only 3 weeks ago, my main
copy of Quicktime converted the ARISE master to VCD.

But today I sat down to convert a new edited movie from the Detroit
Devival (already made into a DVD) into VCD... and the fucking option
for VCDs wasn't there.

I had just upgraded my system to 10.3.2 and my QuickTime Pro to 6.5.

I thought, DAMN, Apple must have been swayed by the Suited Exec Fux in
show biz, who said, "We don't care if it means no more VCD home movies,
NO MORE VCDs, PERIOD!!! Remove that option before the dumbasses of the
populace figure what it's good for!" And somehow had that whole MPEG-1
conversion facility removed from QT, even QT Pro.

BUT, I thought, fuck that shit, I've still got the OLD OLD Quicktime in
old System 9, AND, if that's been "upgraded" to become less useful,
there's always Wei's Mac, which has NONE of the upgrades, except, well,
maybe just Quicktime 6. something but not the whole Panther system
upgrade, in fact, it's still at 10.2.4.

BUT -- GET THIS -- the "export as video CD" option is no longer on ANY
copy of QT, old or young, in ANY system version, and not even in
Wei's!!

That last Apple Quicktime upgrade must have made a clean sweep through
every system it could get to, and removed that capability.

I check the Apple and various user sites and sure enough, although it
nowhere says WHY, or that things were ever DIFFERENT, it does
specifically say that Quicktime will play BUT NOT EXPORT the mpeg-1
video format.

They "disappeared" a whole format. Erased it from History. Told Winston
Smith to put all copies down the trash tube.

Luckily the excellent geeky tecky sites that I SHOULD check every WEEK
already had the fix months ago, a whole new-to-me Unix-utilizing set of
tools with unlikely names (ffmpegX.0.0.9.a, mpeg2enc etc.), which all
have to be very carefully downloaded, installed, and placed correctly,
all separately, because if somebody made a program that included all
the parts already working together, why then ANY FOOL who could READ
could use it to copy DVDs with abandon.

Since I have no intention of copying anybody's movies besides my own to
DVD, or even FROM DVD, I was within all my legal rights to read all the
complicated instructions and cobble the various tools together into a
Rube Goldbergien set-up whereby NOW, with a quite easy to use
interface, I can convert my finished DV master devival movie copy to
VCD, SVCD, and DivX avi, OR some other shit nobody's ever heard of, all
from one program. (It used to required SEVERAL DIFFERENT
cobbled-together hacker progs to do those other ones.)

All of this stuff is absolutely free, although they politely asked for
$15 at one of the sites. It does however require the user to be ready
to pry open the very operating system itself and work under the hood,
which can be scary and time consuming if anything goes wacky.

The other bastard format, yet my favorite actually, is RealMedia, which
is very common yet much despised for some reason. Encoding your master
DV movie to RM format -- using a MAC -- is either expensive (thus out
of the question) or, perversely, requires going back to a certain OLD
program in the OLD system 9. BUT IT HAS TO OPEN FROM 9! You have to go
under ITS hood and tweak IT so it doesn't default to the modern day
OSX, under which RealMedia is not licensed for conversionability, or
some such shit.

I am typing all this because I'm waiting for the MAN concert clips to
finish converting to RM so I can erase the MAN master and move on to
the edited Amino Acids footage. And get two Hours of Slack out. Clear
the drives for the next movie edit.

I edited the MAN, Amino Acids and some Stang footage from that devival
mainly as a favor for the bands involved but also as PRACTICE for using
my fancy new titling program. Having practiced, I can now title-fy
these nifty animations I've been making using EVERYBODY ELSE'S ARTWORK
AND MUSIC! The titling program IS an animation program, nothing new
really, it just has all these 9 gigs worth of PRESETS that are like Kai
Power Tools shit, in motion, on fonts and backgrounds.

Although Quicktime has forced me to become more and more of a hacker in
order to do what it won't anymore, it nonetheless almost makes up for
it by offering a shitload of new format conversion presets, the most
outlandish of all to me is this new format so low-res that it's used
for sending movies through PHONES. Yes, picture-phone format, "3GPP". I
converted the one-minute SubGenius commercial to that, lowest-res, and
by Gobbs after a couple of tests I got it down to a viewable, hearable
form about the size of a large postage stamp that is only 350k --
smaller than some of the photos that people send you as JPEGs through
email. I did the same to the X-Day Commercial. Not a FUN way to watch a
movie but IT CAN BE SENT AND PLAYED ON A FUCKING TELEPHONE. We have
caught up technologically with the late detective DICK TRACY.

I will be putting these things on alt.binaries.slack, where my fellow
researchers and I develop the open-source aspects of the Church. (As
opposed to the non-open-source aspects, which you pretty much have to
be our real good buddy to help develop.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
> Apple is so cruel and heartless.

When you can't do it YOUR WAY, the
terrorists have won.

Which raises a doctrinal point.

Between the oppression of those two forces of
evil, Microsoft and Apple, and their minions,
eventually the Church and all its followers
will have to have a GREAT EXODUST to the
promised land of Open Source.

Which, in and of itself, would make a great
chapter in the PostScriptures.

Freedom in the land of SubSoftware.

--
"A stupid movie WILL NOT make you turn
down a blowjob. Simple as that."
-- nu-monet

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

Somehow, I KNEW the trouble would all start with a QuickTime update. I
saw it in a vision. I guessed HOW wrong, but it WAS a QuickTime
download, just as I fancied, that set the avalanche in motion!

Or not... probably not.

It does however seem that I am being pushed deeper into the Unix core
rather than hanging back with the shiny jolly buttons on the surface,
and it is the very Conspiracy's chintziness that is providing the push.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
> > Between the oppression of those two forces of
> > evil, Microsoft and Apple, and their minions,
> > eventually the Church and all its followers
> > will have to have a GREAT EXODUST to the
> > promised land of Open Source.
> >
> > Which, in and of itself, would make a great
> > chapter in the PostScriptures.
> >
> > Freedom in the land of SubSoftware.
>
> It does however seem that I am being pushed deeper
> into the Unix core rather than hanging back with
> the shiny jolly buttons on the surface, and it is
> the very Conspiracy's chintziness that is providing
> the push.

Does this mean we have 40 years of wandering aimlessly
in the Linux to look forward to?

--
"HERE LIES NU-MONET.
GOT TRIPLE HIS MONEY BACK."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Klyf Fenderson <news2TURNIP@klyfonline.com>

This is the way we edit a script
Edit a script, edit a script.
This is the way we edit a script,
Ear-liiii in the morning.

--
Rev. St. Klyf "Not Max Cannon" S-M257 the Not-Quite-Sane
Remove "TURNIP" when replying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast."
--The White Queen

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Mike Baranczak <mbaranczak@_REMOVE_THIS_users.sourceforge.net>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUMCO.com> wrote:
> yway, Quicktime used to have a setting whereby one of the formats it
> would convert movies to was "TOAST VIDEO CD". Only 3 weeks ago, my main
> copy of Quicktime converted the ARISE master to VCD.
>

Toast Titanium 6.0 can automatically make VCDs. I only made one that
way, and it worked in my computer, but wouldn't work in my friend's DVD
player - which may be a problem with the player, I don't know.

-MB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

This is so. I made more than one. I ran methodical tests. Toast can
convert all kinds of movies and burn them as VCDs. It just can't make
the conversion WELL. The best that Toast could do looks a whole lot
worse than the worst QuickTime could do. Toast is great for burning but
NOT for the converting.

So far it appears that this wonderful hackerware called ffmpegX.0..0.9a
makes an acceptable VCD, although it also makes SVCDs, and the SVCDs
look much much better.

I am very glad I made my ARISE VCD mpegs before QuickTime sold out.

Most DVD players will play VCDs but they won't all play SVCDs. Some
will play either or both but ONLY if they're free-standing mpegs burned
to a normal CDR, NOT if they're "embedded" in actual VCD or SVCD
trappings. Others, vice versa.

Some computers will play VCDs and some won't, but almost all will play
the MPEG that's hidden inside a VCD. However while many will play a
DVD, they won't play the MPEG that's hidden inside the DVD.

I need to get that program Little Snitch going on my Mac. It warns you
every time a program tries to "phone home" to its parent company to
report your latest buying habits.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Selfs Layer <SelfsLayer@spam-me-not-autobot.cod>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com> quipped and warbled and generally subthunked:
>So far it appears that this wonderful hackerware called ffmpegX.0..0.9a
>makes an acceptable VCD, although it also makes SVCDs, and the SVCDs
>look much much better.

Sounds like it's made by the same people who made ffdshow, which is my
multiple-codec programme of choice as long as you get your hands on
the latest version. Unfortunately, since I re-installed Wimpdows
ffdshow seems not to play as many things as it used to. Maybe I'll
actually have to wander my way through the world of codec priority
looking for canswers.

Selfs Layer
pseudo-epiglot of the dyss-funkshunel bypassers church of lager
Wickedness.

All Hail SubFnordia!

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Original file name: Geeky Tecky Spazzy W#1AD084.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05