April 2008 Archives

Handbrake is a fantastic application for converting standard definition DVD's to another format. In my case, I use it to encode to AppleTV (H.264/AAC/AC3). I've followed the development of Handbrake for some time now, but until recently, it's been too buggy or incomplete for me to use. That all changed when version 0.9.2 was released.

Using Handbrake, I can decrypt, rip and convert to MPEG-4 in one simple step. One of my test videos for encoding applications has been the TV series Roswell, which aired on both the WB and Fox network about eight years ago. One of the reasons I use this as a test is that the content was originally shot on film (23.976 fps) and was telecined resulting in 29.97 frames per second. The shows typically loose cadence quite frequently resulting in a good test for IVTC filters. There are always a lot of both horizontal and vertical movement as well as dark (or black) scenes which can be quite difficult for the encoder to process.

After many tests, I'm posting what I feel like are my ultimate settings. Some people use handbrake to make smaller, transportable files. Others use it for conversion to mobile devices. I use it with the intention of playing back an exact (or very close representative) copy of my DVD's on my Apple TV device. The only things I cared about when creating these presets were:

• The content was standards-based MP4 (H.264, AAC)
• Able to play back on Apple TV
• Introduced little or no visual artifacts
  
• Provided a Dolby Digital/5.1 surround track

Currently Handbrake does not have a method to import or export presents. So for the time being, you'll have to locate the UserPresets file (~/Library/Application Support/HandBrake/UserPresets.plist on a Mac) and add the contents of the download after the last </dict> in the file. You can download my custom preset here.

August 24th, 2008 - This blog entry is outdated. Please visit the MT-Cumulus project page for a proper Movable Type 4.x plugin of this very popular Flash-based tag cloud. View the MT-Cumulus 1.0 announcement.

No doubt, the availability of plugins for Movable Type is few and far between. After searching for a Flash-based tag cloud for Movable Type 4 and finding no results, I finally gave up. Instead, I focused my energy on finding a similar plugin for WordPress and adapting the implementation for use with Movable Type. The result is WP-Cumulus developed by Roy Tanck which is now successfully running in MT.

Being new to MT, I did not know how to create a plugin, so I opted for the implementation instead. For those of you interested in using this excellent plugin on your MT blog, create a dedicated widget and call it say 'Tag Cloud - Flash'. Then in your layout, include this widget. The only file you'll need from the plugin, is the actual swf file. The rest of the files are WordPress specific and you can discard them.

Here's my code for 'Tag Cloud - Flash'

<div class="widget-tag-cloud widget">
  <h3 class="widget-header">Tag Cloud</h3>
  <div id="tagcloudflash"></div>

  <script type="text/javascript">	 
    var tags = "<tags>";
    <mt:Tags limit="30" sort_by="rank">
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="1"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="18pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="2"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="16pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="3"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="14pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="4"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="12pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="5"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="10pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="6"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="8pt" /></mt:If>
    tags += "%3Ca+href%3D%27<$mt:TagSearchLink$>%27+class%3D%27tag-link-66%27+title%3D%27<$mt:TagName$>%27+rel%3D%27tag%27+style=%27font-size:+<mt:Var name="font"/>%3B%27%3E<$mt:TagName$>%3C%2Fa%3E%0A";
    </mt:Tags>  
    tags = tags.replace(/\?/g, "%3F");
    tags = tags.replace(/&amp;/g, "%26");
    tags += "</tags>";

    var so = new SWFObject("/scripts/tagcloud.swf", "tagcloudflash", "365", "365", "7", "#292929");
    so.addVariable("tcolor", "0xEBAF00");
    so.addVariable("tagcloud", tags);
    so.write("tagcloudflash");
  </script>

</div>

Alternatively, you can download my Tag Cloud Widget here.
A special thank you goes out to Roy Tanck for his work on this project.

WordPress filled a huge gap in the marketplace when Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, decided to screw with their licensing. At the time, Movable Type was numero uno in the blogesphere. Researching articles with the keywords 'migrate', 'wordpress', 'movable type' returns thousands of results of people switching from WordPress to Movable Type, but very few results the other way around.

As of late, WordPress has been annoying the hell out of me. Ever since the 'upgrade' to version 2.3, I've had nothing but issues with WordPress. My number one complaint was my theme was magically possessed. On blog entries, it would sometimes show the correct number of comments, sometimes not. Navigating to the entry page would show the comments, and still the number of comments would be wrong. Perhaps this was a 'feature' of version 2.3. In any case, it was quite annoying and caused me to reevaluate my blogging software.

Another issue I had was with WP-Cache. WordPress in a shared hosting environment such as mine, is quite slow. WP-Cache sped things up a bit, but only marginally. Perhaps it would of done a better job if my site was getting hit all the time - but it wasn't.

I evaluated Expression Engine and Movable Type 4. I decided to go with Movable Type because Six Apart has since changed their licensing and have made available a free version for personal use as well as an open source version. All of which are compatible with their larger commercial offering.

Being somewhat shallow, one of the major selling points for me was the interface. Movable Type is pretty, it's sexy and it's completely functional. Think of it as a Lamborghini that's as easy to drive as a Honda.

The decision of ditching WordPress in favor of Movable Type was taken very seriously. I knew in advance that the plugin support, availability of themes, etc was far superior in the land of WordPress and almost desert-like for Movable Type. Even with these obstacles, I chose my migration path.

The actual migration was quite painless. Movable Type was able to import all of my uploads, entries and comments. The only thing I had to do was figure out the templating system. At first, it made absolutely no sense at all. After a few hours of experimentation, I found it to be quite logical. It was just very different from WordPress, so my learning curve was a bit steeper.

So for all of you celebrating the release of WordPress 2.5, I'm happy for you. May it work better for you than it did for me.