Chasing My Own Tale
If you like the products at Design Within Reach you’ll love the video The American Look.
It’s a love letter to the mid-century designer… pardon me, “Stylist” with all of the bombastic pronouncements that you might expect from a corporate-sponsored documentary from 1958. It’s just about a half hour long and minutes 26 and 27 are the retro-futuist scenes, but the whole thing is a real Modernist treat.
Jock wrote Dear Television Networks and noted:
In fact it seems that all you guys are willing to do just about anything, except the one thing the consumers really want. We want to buy the shows, and watch them commercial free whenever and where ever we want. We want to be your customers.
Jock, You know this isn’t how the economics work. Advertisers pay WAY more money than viewers will ever pay for the content of the shows. Even longtailing the shows, the productions companies would have to have some sort of up front ROI in order to stay in business.
But advertisers are willing to spend LOTS of money to ‘borrow’ our eyeballs. They don’t understand that (poorly done) commercials are less effective than they think. One day advertisers might get a clue, but only after all the ad agencies sales staff have been rounded up and put to pasture…
If you noticed my Depeche Mode fandom it should not come as a surprise that I may have a bit of a Depeche Mode library. Having been an obsessive collector of Depeche Mode for a number of years (tapering off after the Ultra era), I still have quite a collection of releases, but there are a few items that have always been out of reach. One of those items recently became available:
eBay: DEPECHE MODE – STRANGE * JAPANESE LASERDISC WITH OBI
Yes, the only non-VHS release of these videos up until the DVD era. Now here’s why this is important in a Depeche Mode collection: 1) it is laserdisc, which means playing it more than once doesn’t risk destroying the media (unlike video tape), 2) it is laserdisc which means, properly taken care of, it will retain a higher quality signal than the VHS release, 3) it has entire song and cuts of other videos that are currently unavailable on DVD.
The closest release of these videos on DVD was The Videos 86->98 DVD, which had the ‘single mix’ of most of the tracks (A Question Of Time, Strangelove, Never Let Me Down Again, and Behind The Wheel) which is a terrible thing, and a travesty when it comes to the NLMDA video because it cuts out NEARLY HALF of the original footage! Adding to the problem is the lack of the short inter-song connections and the the complete loss of the video for Pimpf. What makes Pimpf so special? It’s the only b-side that Mode has ever made a video for.
Strange is one of the best Mode releases, ever. Now I have it in the most pristine format ever released.
So, as of this week I finally have purchased (but not received yet) the Japanese laserdisc release of Strange, thanks to an eBay god, a friend of mine who goes by the handle “HighVelocityVav”. Vavrin, your are my hero, my fast-fingered-friend!
…And before you ask, yes, I do actually own a laserdisc player and no, I don’t even have to dig it out of storage.
So I got the $100 rebate from Apple for my iPhone and added that to a small monetary gift I got recently to purchase the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid which I had on my wish list for a while. The device receives HDTV signals and passes them to a Mac and works pretty well.
The one piece missing from the package is an antenna. A simple $20 antenna gets a good solid signal. Given the location of our TV, facing west out through our westward-facing windows out to the West Hills where the TV broadcast antennas are at, we could have gone with the even cheaper $10 model. Remember, in most cities, HDTV broadcasts use the UHF band, and any UHF antenna can be use. (There’s no need to get an HD-specific antenna so don’t over spend in this arena.)
The biggest problem with our setup is that the Mac Mini only has the base 512MB of RAM. Until an upgrade, a few of the highest quality channels stutter. KGW seems to be pushing out a full 1080p signal, which I think is overwhelming the RAM buffer. Whereas the KOIN and KATU feeds are at 720p and the Mini keeps up with them pretty well.
The reason I’m most interested in Over The Air (OTA) HDTV is that our analog cable signal gets horrible crosstalk and ghosting. With a lack of insulated coaxial wiring, local channels are bad to really bad. Now we can see them really in clear, sharp high quality. Next to getting Digital Cable, this is the best way to get these channels.
The latest process:
1) I’ve saved my DVDs using MacTheRipper (For discs that are tough for Handbrake to handle.)
2) Recoded them to .m4v (MPEG-4) with Handbrake (great for iTunes. Handbrake also automagically runs the file through MetaX to gather more info.)
3) Converted the the .m4v’s to .mpg (MPEG-2) via Tivoizer. (I had to really look hard to find a copy of Tivoizer on the web. If you’re looking for it and want a copy, send me an e-mail. It’s just a GUI wrapper to FFmpeg, but it makes it easy to set and forget.)
4) Holding down Option while opening up the TiVo Desktop system preference shows the Videos tab for sharing them from the Mac to TiVo. (This step only needs to be done once, the first time.)
5) Drop the .mpg file into the folder that’s set in the TiVo Desktop Video tab preferences.
6) After a while, the TiVo Desktop software processes the video and creates a *.properties file
7) The .properties file can be edited by hand in a text editor to reflect the Title and such that you want the TiVo to show. (Note that the TiVo Desktop software uses the first part of the filenames to associate the .properties and the .mpeg files. The “title” property in the .properties file does not have to use the exact filename as the source file, so it can be edited to your heart’s content.)
As TiVo is the main way that Amy and I watch TV, this is the best way we have to integrate what used to be a separate video source (DVD Player, PlayStation 2, LasedrDisc, or Mac Mini) which require another remote control to operate. Now everything we have, video-wise, is accessible via TiVo’s interface. Now I’ve just got to get Miro to drop stuff into the proper folder after converting the incoming videos to MPEG-2.
Of late, I’ve finally started watching more of the movies I’ve got on DVD, because I’ve ripped them to my iPhone. (Please don’t tell the MPAA, kthx)
Office Space was a wish list gift from Amy last year and I finally got around to actually watching it again. It really holds up well even though it’s from 1999. The floppies and the hybrid MacOS menus with the Windows Hourglass wait-state cursor is still a little funky but it’s a fun show.
The latest version of HandBrake is the reason for the sudden interest here. Its latest revision now has automatic presets that work really well. It was only about 5 minutes to get used to the app and look through the windows and panes and preferences before just choosing the default iPhone settings and letting it rip… literally.
Now I’ve got Episodes IV, V, and VI ripped and waiting for the next sync. I think the The Work of Directors discs are next on the list. I devoured the first box set when we got it, but I’ve been slow to getting to the second set, even though it’s got Anton Corbijn’s disc.
So now when I’ve got a free moment at lunch or sitting, waiting, I’ve got a couple of full length feature films that I can watch for great lines and cultural appreciation.
One improvement to HandBrake that I’m hoping will make it in the next version or two is support for auto-ripping and ejecting. Having a whole DVD ripping work flow that works as well as iTunes’ would sure be nice. Drop a disc in, come back later and see and ejected disc and drop the next one in. Bang bang bang.
The last piece of the puzzle after the iPhone rips will be the Tivo rips. Our Tivo has the ability to pick up videos from my Mac, once the proper steps are taken. (Step One, Step 2) but I still need to find a simple way to again rip the DVDs to the proper file format.
Handbrake creates MPEG-4 files from DVDs. But Tivo wants MPEG-2 files:
| Resolution | 720 x 480, 704 x 480 (D1), 544 x 480 (3/4 D1), 480 x 480 (2/3 D1), and 352 x 480 (1/2 D1). The higher the resolution, the better the video quality and the larger the resulting file, which means longer transfer time and more disk usage on your PC and DVR. |
| Bit Rate | 1 – 8 Mbps. The higher the bit rate, the better the video quality and the larger the resulting file. 4 Mbps is recommended for high-quality video. |
| Frame Rate | 29.97 (standard NTSC). Do not try any different frame rates. |
| Aspect Ratio | 4:3 (recommended) or 16:9 |
| Audio | MPEG-1 Layer 2 for TiVo DVRs without DVD; AC/3 (Dolby) for TiVo DVRs with DVD. |
Just read an interesting post about this sort of thing. So it looks like Mac the Ripper + Visualhub will be the two step process I’ll need to go through to get this put together.
I just saw this on Boing Boing where Working Assets is asking for an iPhone boycott because of AT&T’s practices.
I just want to point out that when Apple launched the iTunes Store and got in bed with all of the RIAA labels, it was Apple who changed (so far) EMI, not the other way around. Will AT&T go green, or suddenly become a non-profit? Of course not, but I can’t think of too many companies that would be a better influence, based on their recent history, as Apple.
I heard that someone got video of Michael at the wrap party for WebVisions at the Greek Cusinia. Please get in contact with me if you do. It will be the highlight of next year’s show!
UPDATE: YES!! Yes yes yes!
I’ve been using Final Cut Studio at work with Motion 2.
It seriously rocks and this new version adds motion tracking: Motion Tracking Demo Movie in Motion 3.
I am salivating! We make displays at Planar and the ability to just drop in an image onto a monitor that’s in a trucking or panning shot would be spectacular!
For my first Oscar office pool I’ve used a statistical method of picking based on nearly abritrary (and lingusitcally dubious) elements of Google’s results for the various nominees. You can see the list that I used below:
Best Picture
Babel
The Departed
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The QueenDirector
Paul Greengrass, United 93
Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima
Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Alejandro González Iñárritu, BabelActor
Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Peter O’Toole, Venus
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of ScotlandActress
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Kate Winslet, Little Children
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Penélope Cruz, Volver
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears PradaSupporting Actor
Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg, The DepartedSupporting Actress
Adriana Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, BabelOriginal Screenplay
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
Pan’s Labyrinth
The QueenAdapted Screenplay
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Children of Men
The Departed
Little Children
Notes on a ScandalCinematography
The Black Dahlia
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Pan’s Labyrinth
The PrestigeEditing
Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed
United 93Art Direction
Dreamgirls
The Good Shepherd
Pan’s Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
The PrestigeCostume Design
Curse of the Golden Flower
The Devil Wears Prada
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette
The QueenOriginal Score
Babel
The Good Shepherd
Notes on a Scandal
Pan’s Labyrinth
The QueenOriginal Song
I Need to Wake Up, An Inconvenient Truth
Our Town, Cars
Listen, Dreamgirls
Love You I Do, Dreamgirls
Patience, DreamgirlsMakeup
Apocalypto
Click
Pan’s LabyrinthSound Editing
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Flags of Our Fathers
Letters from Iwo Jima
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s ChestSound Mixing
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Dreamgirls
Flags of Our Fathers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s ChestVisual Effects
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Poseidon
Superman ReturnsAnimated Feature Film
Foreign Language Film
After the Wedding
Days of Glory
The Lives of Others
Pan’s Labyrinth
WaterDocumentary Feature
Deliver Us from Evil
An Inconvenient Truth
Iraq in Fragments
Jesus Camp
My Country, My CountryDocumentary Short
The Blood of Yingzhou District
Recycled Life
Rehearsing a Dream
Two HandsLive Action Short
Binta and the Great Idea
Helmer & Son
One Too Many
The Saviour
West Bank StoryAnimated Short
The Danish Poet
Lifted
The Little Matchgirl
Maestro
No Time for Nuts
Fav’d Tweets