Encoding videos can be a real pain. While ffmpeg is an excellent utility for converting videos between various formats it is also a pain to use. If you put H.264 codec on top of this, you will get a real mess with command lines that are longer than 200 characters. H.264 is a great format and linux1 implementation is hiding in the libx264. It will come pre-installed with Ubuntu 10.04, but if you are more adventurous you should try and install the latest versions from SVN repositories as described on Ubuntu forums. The whole procedure is quite easy and very well documented so in this post I will assume that you have installed the latest versions.
The focus of this test and tutorial will be on video production, more specifically on an average YouTube Vlogger video. This means, one pass encoding, high compression and very uniform videos. For encoding movies and other videos with very dynamic content and big changes in the scenes you will have to look elsewhere of wait for another post. :)
Your Ubuntu Linux installation is getting bigger and bigger and you are running out of space on your hard disk. You got your new hard drive and now you need to clone your old drive to the new one. The dreaded cloning is actually quite easy and relatively simple to do. The only thing you will need is a little patience and some typing skills. No special software just your already installed Ubuntu Linux.
The regular obligatory disclaimer: This procedure worked for me several times, I use it almost on a daily basis and I had no problems with it. Your mileage my vary. Make sure you double check all the commands that you type and that you do not format your data drive. You will end up with two empty disks. If you have any questions feel free to ask. READ MORE
It was a thing of a moment. We decided to try some live streaming of Monkey Island 2, special edition. After realizing that Xfire fails miserably with streaming games that are not listed as supported we went looking for another solution.
Livestream’s Procaster was the first thing we tried and while we had some trouble at first it picked up rather nicely and the overall quality was decent enough.
Procaster supports streaming of any Direct3D game together with sound and in the free version you can mix output of your web camera and your screencast. We also had some trouble with the sound being recorded from the camera and we needed few minutes to figure out how to turn off the extra sound input. Here is some room for improvement, an audio mixer that can be controlled while streaming.
All in all, the broadcasting was an interesting experience and we are likely to do some more screencasts in the future. We were pleasantly surprised with the recording of our video. If you missed it and you are not bored with pirate oriented adventure games you can watch our screencast below.
We will let the video to speak for itself. This is a small amount of material that we recorded on E3 2010. Next time we will be more organized, more prepared and more ready! We promise.
A little delayed wrap up of E3 is in order. Games, gadgets and entertainment, they were all there. Rigor mortis is gone and everything is starting to decompose, so we will get on with out impressions about the event. Teaming up with Nixie Pixel turned out to be a great success (make sure you also check her E3 Highlights) and the amount of swag collected in just three days was amazing. Headphones, keyboard cleaners, Power balls, Dog tags, T-shirts, sweaters, press kit USB drives and DVD discs, and so on and so on.
