So I found myself having to add subtitles to a videofile, however there were a few kinks. I had the .SRT file that matched, BUT the videoclip already had subtitles burned in in another language, and the .SRT subtitles were just overlaid these burned in subtitles which made both unreadable. My thought were to raise the .SRT subtitle so it was above the burned in one, however this was easier said than done, Handbrake supports importing subtitles and allow for burn in – however it does not allow for placement or other adjustments.
After a bit of googling I came up with this;
This excellent software (free) will allow you to do all sorts of things with subtitle files.
and you likely already know the video conversion utility Handbrake (also free)
https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php
What I ended up doing was;
Importing the SRT file into Aegissub
Setting the vertical offset to 50 (just above the other subtitle)
Changing the font color and border blur
Saving as an .ASS file
Opening the video file in Handbrake
Switch to the subtitle tab (4)
Import the .ass file (5)
Selecting “burn in” to make it embed into the video file (6)
And then encode the file
Viola, done and perfect result.
USB-C is quite confusing, even though the connectors look similar, then functionality may be wastly different.
Recently I had to see if I could add an additional monitor to my work setup, well you can easily buy a cable that connects USB-C to an HDMI plug, but will it work – the cable is not expensive as such, but costly enough that it would be annoying to buy it just to discover that it didnt work.
Luckily I found this nice description on USB-C to HDMI, like if you need to have an additional screen connected to your laptop (or want to use your phone to connect to a monitor or tv). So what is important is that the USB-C port MUST support “DisplayPort alt mode” – and how do you know if it does? Well for phones and tablets you need to look it up, but for notebooks you may be lucky enough that the manufactor has put some nice icons on the port for you 🙂 (but only if you are lucky)..
Here is how they look;
And here is what they mean;
- Is there a symbol of a lightning (Thunderbolt 3) next to the USB-C port? Then you can use this port to charge and to transfer video. That means, you can connect a monitor to the port. This port also supports DisplayPort alt mode.
- Is there a symbol of a D (DisplayPort) next to the USB-C port? Then you can use this port to transfer a video signal. That means, you can connect a monitor. This port supports DisplayPort alt model.
- Is there a symbol of a battery next to the USB-C port? Then you can use this port to charge your laptop. This port doesn’t support DisplayPort alt mode.
So for me, sadly I had the latter and hence no dice this time. But at least now I know what those strange icons mean.
Credit where credit is due;
How do you check which type of USB-C port my laptop has? – Coolblue – anything for a smile
So I was reading about the Intel NUC which is a mini pc that will fit in your palm, I heard it was just released in an i5 version (previously i3) so it is a fairly crafty machine that will easily run Windows and even throw in a virtual machine or two. One drawback though is the price, with a full fledged Intel cpu the price shoots up :-/ not unreasonable but enough that it’s not for me.
Anyway, a comment in a review led me to this link;
http://www.minix.com.hk/Products/MINIX-NEOX7.html
so at 1/3 the price (more or less) you get a cool gadget, that although it will not run Windows will run Android and although not being super fast and powerful as the i5 processor it is fast enough for realtime HD video, netflix and the lot..
Bottom line, if you are looking for an extention to your big screen tv, to play a bit of netflix, surf and other stuff this Minix Neox7 looks real cute and fair priced.
Today my Roku2 set top box arrived from the USA (my first order via www.shopusa.com which seem to have workd fine), I had ordered this to be able to watch Netflix in my bedroom and the Roku2 box seemed the easiest and cheapest way.
The device which comes with remote and build-in wifi seemed nice, small and elegant and I did not expect many issues connecting it, I had read in advance that the service www.unblock-us.com was supporting this unit so everything should be a brease.
Well things did not go acording to plan 🙁
First things first, www.unblock-us.com works by you replacing your DNS servers with servernames (or rather IP’s) they provide, well the darn box has no network settings it gets it’s configuration from DHCP and that is it. Well no problem, I run a Windows 2008R2 server with DHCP so I just created a new reservation for the MAC address of the Roku 2 box and setup the Unblock-us DNS server ip’s for this reservation – and sure enough this part worked like a charm (note you have to follow the instructions on the www.unblock-us.com site and activate the service before starting to use it, I’m not 100% sure how they register you, likely by your external IP – but how do they deal with dynamic IP’s then??).
So now I had the device connected to my WLAN and tv. The first thing is then to link the Roku box to an account, you need you computer for this – so I created an account and entered the ID-code from the Roku 2 box (it displays a code you need to enter into your new Roku account to link the device to your account), and everything worked like a charm (I used a P.O.Box address in the USA as my postal address and my American Express as credit card, everything was fine). But now began my trouble, see the device somehow knew that it was not in the USA and only showed a few totally uninteresting streaming channels (no Netflix, no Hulu etc. etc.), and now began a lot of googling – I found these two threads that seemed to give some insight to the matter;
http://support.unblock-us.com/customer/portal/questions/141869-roku-2-not-showing-us-content
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1695235
And the issue appears to be that the account somehow is not accepted as a fully valid USA account, now I tried deleting the account and recreating it via a USA vpn as some suggested, I tried different credit cards, I tried creating a USA Paypal account but nothing solved the issue. It was suggested that by using a verified USA creditcard you might overcome the problem, however USA credit cards are hard to come by in Europe :-/ I only know of a few places where you can obtain these and these are not free so a streaming service would end up being fairly expensive 😐
Link to obtaining a USA credit card;
http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/us-unlocked
https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=1860 (might also work)
I did however in the end find a liveable solution to my torment, once the device is fully configured and setup you unlink it from your Roku account – then you wait a few minutes and either restart the Roku or refresh your channels – this strangely enough caused the device to remove all channels BUT at the same time restore the Netflix launch button to the frontpage – and now Netflix works (and possibly also Hulu) – you still need Unblock-us not to forget, however all other channels are gone… Ok, my objective was to get Netflix so I’m happy with this, but at the same time it’s a shame to not be able to try out all the other stuff – but I guess there is no winning every time 🙁
Btw; the powersupply supports both 110v and 220v so no problems there other than the wall jack which a universal adapter took care off
So status at the moment is; Got Netflix working (by unlinking the Roku from my Roku account) but now that is all the device can do….. Hrmpf I am not totally satisfied, but guess this will have to do…
Streaming and Netflix navigation seem to work fine, quality is not fully as good as when I stream from a PC but quite acceptable. Do let me know if anyone figures out a way around this messy situation.
Another odd thing about the Roku 2 box, there is no standby? you need to unplug the darn thing to shut it down, acording to Roku it is because it uses so little power, now I don’t know in these days where we all are suposed to be thinking about the environment :-/
UPDATE March 8th 2012;
Found this site that appear to offer a workaround for any non USA credit card problems, I have not had the need to test it myself but it looks like a workable solution:
http://www.buyfrompowerseller.com
Want to add video to your website? Well take a look at Flowplayer, it is a free open source player that is very easy to implement.
http://flowplayer.org/demos/installation/index.html
http://flowplayer.org/documentation/installation/index.html
Adobe is making the next version of their “Content Aware Fill” feature in Photoshop even more intelligent, this will allow you to edit out even complex structures from pictures and this without advanced knowledge of photo editing.
See the video for a demonstration, it is quite amazing.
Here is yet another capture program for capturing online video streams “Web Video Cap” (eg. for youtube etc etc).
Pros; Easy operations, it will capture everything in the background, its from our friends at www.nirsoft.net whom usually makes excellent tools.
Cons; Unless you stop it/configure it, it will capture EVERYTHING/ANYTIME.
As with most other capture products you need to install WinPcap (a resident background driver) so nothing new there.
Download Web Video Capture here; http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/web_video_capture.html
Read much more here; http://www.ghacks.net/2010/04/02/download-online-videos-with-web-video-cap/
I somewhere read about this software a while ago called “Boxee”, it’s a new mediacenter software which can be downloaded for free from http://www.boxee.tv But with so much mediacenter software out there it got lost in the masses. Anyway, recently I was reminded as D-Link is rattling their sable with the forthcoming release of the Boxee Box (well that is hardly going to be the name but still).. It looks VERY interesting especially with a full qwerty keyboard being merged into the very neat remote that come with it, and it does seem somewhat more interesting than the WD Live TV (A LOT more apps/widgets) and a more finished design overall.
It does indeed look interesting. Boxee seem to be based upon XBMC (X-Box Media Center) http://xbmc.org/download (which I btw still use on my old trusty X-Box 1 Classic)
Should you want to preview the experience you can download the free software for your pc/mac here http://www.boxee.tv/box
A few notes though;
- You need version 10.1 of Adobe Flash (currently only available as beta software), you will find it here; http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
- The box is generally good at recognizing your video and music files (even series etc), BUT if it does not recognize the media file (it does so from the naming of the file) it wont show it :-/ thus you will need to rename it to a naming convention it understands which seem silly and acquad. From what I can tell it will be getting the data (including photos) from IMDB.
- I had some issues getting it to accept a share on a Windows 2003 server, I could ‘bypass’ this by mapping the share as a drive letter on my Win 7 machine where I ran Boxee but I am still puzzled as to why it did not seem to accept a simple Windows Share.
- A further cause of concern is, what data is reported back to the producers of this software!? Do they get the complete list of my music, video etc. archives? Sadly I don’t know which concerns me as you have to register to run the software 😐
A quick look at what formats it recognizes;
Video:
- Adobe Flash 10.1
- H.264 (MKV, MOV)
- VC-1
- WMV
- MPEG-1
- MPEG-2
- MPEG-4
- AVI
- Xvid
- Divx
- PCM/LPCM
- VOB
Lyd:
- MP3
- WMA
- WAV
- AIFF
- FLAC
- AAC
- DTS
- Dolby Digital
- Ogg Vorbis
Billeder:
- JPEG
- TIFF
- BMP
- PNG
So if you want to be totally up-beat or perhaps are testing out Boxee then you will want to install the latest Adobe Flash Player (Boxee actually seem to require this), but no worries you can get it right here;
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
Among other things this version will add HW acceleration, neat for Netbooks as compatible GFX cards now can assist in playing video and thus perhaps adding HD playback to your otherwise slow Atom processor (however this DO require a compatible GFX card to work like the Nvidia ION and others).