I’ll give you the boilerplate ad copy from the vendor, and then below that what I’ve found with it, and my settings.

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ConvertXtoDVD – top-choice video conversion software – convert and burn any videos such as Avi to DVD, WMV to DVD, MKV to DVD, YouTube, ogm, mpeg, quicktime mov !

This award-winning divx to dvd video converter software burn video and audio formats to DVD, video conversion supports avi, divx, wmv, mkv, xvid, vcd, vob, dvd…

All in one video conversion and burning software.

Key Features

• Video formats supported: avi, divx, xvid, mov, mkv, flv , mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg-, nsv, dvr-ms, ts, ifo, vob, asf, wmv, realmedia, rm, rmvb, ogm, existing files from digital camcorders, TV/Sat, capture cards, etc. No external codecs needed like avi codec download More formats…
• Create DVD menus with different templates available, possibility to add background video, image or audio, have chapter and audio/subtitle menus
• Conversion advisor wizard, control of the conversion speed vs. quality
• Fast and quality encoder, typically less than 1 hour for converting 1 movie, and supports Multi-Core processors!
• Included burning engine with burn speed control choice of SAO or packet writing methods, supports all DVD formats
• Custom and or automatic chapter creation with markers and preview window
• Advanced file merging possibilities
• Audio formats supported internal and external: AC3, DTS, PCM, OGG, MP3, WMA and more… Select audio output format.
• Subtitles files supported internal and external: SRT, .SUB/IDX, .SSA, opensubtitles, dvbsub with color and font selection, and supports tags like italic, bold, turn on/off with DVD player remote control
• Video output for video standard (NTSC, PAL), TV Screen (Widescreen 16:9, Fullscreen 4:3) and DVD Resolution (Full D1, Broadcast D1, Half D1, SIF), or choose automatic for all choices listed above. Also convert video from NTSC to PAL or PAL to NTSC
• Video post processing settings like video resize-pad/cropping and de-interlacing options
• Multilingual support available languages…
• Works with 32 and 64bits edition of Windows XP, Vista, 7
• The trial version will integrate a watermark into the DVD. Please try before you buy! ( DVDs created by the registered version do not contain any watermark)

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Good software.  Now actually uses a good portion of my 8 logical cores in the i7 Intel – significantly faster conversion, with better quality than their earlier version 3 of this software.

One general thing that has sped up my conversions has been to turn off the video preview window – it takes some horsepower to run that, even with a great graphics card. Systems with less than top cards will suffer even more.  Of course, that just adds time, but I don’t need to see it while it’s being converted

Within the Settings, in the General tab, setting the working directory to my non-encrypted “scratch” partition / drive, that is a RAId stripe helps – I don’t need integrity for the conversion process, just the result once done <grin>

Under DVD Menus, I have all items checked.

For quality purposes, under the Encoding tab I have encoding set to SP / Short Projects, 110 minutes and under. It is important to check Two-Pass Encoding with this.  Thus, the first pass will figure out that my 2.5 hour movie uses X amount of space, and it will do a better job on the second pass of filling up what I have set as a DVD-5 Target size. I also set Conversion Priority to “Lowest” here.

The only other defaults I change are under the Burning tab.  I set the result to an .Iso file in the working folder. Feel free to change other things, or adopt other settings – this is merely what I use to turn my files into working DVD images. (I prefer to go to .iso for storage, and often just play that directly, but if needed I can easily burn an actual DVD from the .iso image).

The program does seem to do a good job taking the family cam 1080p stuff down to DVD format, so Great Auntie Gertrude can view it (on her younger neighbor’s player).  Hope this helps some of you all with your family movie collections!
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Now playing: Rolling Stones – She’s So Cold
via FoxyTunes

It’s amazing just how many quality applications are out there, that I haven’t discovered yet. Here was one for today.

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About

XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, OSX, Windows, and the original Xbox. Created in 2003 by a group of like minded programmers, XBMC is a non-profit project run and developed by volunteers located around the world. More than 50 software developers have contributed to XBMC, and 100-plus translators have worked to expand its reach, making it available in more than 30 languages.

While XBMC functions very well as a standard media player application for your computer, it has been designed to be the perfect companion for your HTPC. Supporting an almost endless range of remote controls, and combined with its beautiful interface and powerful skinning engine, XBMC feels very natural to use from the couch and is the ideal solution for your home theater.

Currently XBMC can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. Use your media as-is: XBMC can play CDs and DVDs directly from the disk or image file, almost all popular archive formats from your hard drive, and even files inside ZIP and RAR archives. It will even scan all of your media and automatically create a personalized library complete with box covers, descriptions, and fanart. There are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations. Once installed, your computer will become a fully functional multimedia jukebox.

It is difficult to put into words all that XBMC can do, head to the gallery to see some examples, or take the plunge and Try it Today.
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Now playing: Buckcherry – Lit Up
via FoxyTunes

Patriot’s Box Office 1080P High Definition Media Player looks to be a much lower cost solution than many out there in the “home entertainment” category. They say :

The Patriot Box Office is a media player that frees your digital media library from the constraints of a PC and bridges digital media to your home entertainment system to bring your entire media library to the comfort of your living room. Box Office is optimized for full 1080P HD video playback, includes the latest in video processing technology, and a Dolby®/DTS™ encoder to create a stunning HD video and 5.1/7.1 channel surround sound experience on your home entertainment system. With support for the most popular media formats (H.264, ISO, VOB, DivX, xVid, MKV, MOV, MPEG and more) you can remove the limits of your media collection. Box Office offers a variety of ways to connect to your media library: 3 USB ports for any USB storage device, internal 2.5” hard drive (not included), UPnP streaming, 10/100 Ethernet connection and optional WiFi USB adapter. The Box Office is the all-in-one solution to bridge your digital media collection and your living room.

Music playback – Listen to your entire music library with fast forward, rewind, pause, repeat and shuffle options.

HDMI and composite video connections – The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port lets you connect to the highest quality HDTV or home theater. Additional composite (RCA) outputs ensure compatibility with virtually all television sets.

File Formats Supported Music – WMA, MP3, Real Audio (RA)
Graphics – JPEG, BMP, PNG
Video – [MPEG-1] MPG/MPEG/DAT, [MPEG-2] MPG/MPEG/VOB/ISO/TS/TP/M2TS, [MPEG-4] MP4/AVI/MOV, WMV9, FLA, [H.264/AVC] MKV/TS/AVI/MOV/M2TS, [DviX 3/4/5/6, Xvid] AVI/MKV, [Real Video 8/9/10] RM/RMVB

System Requirements: External USB storage device or internal 2.5″ SATA SSD/HDD with supported video or audio content stored on it. Standard or high definition television with HDMI or composite video connections.

Package Contents: Box Office Media Player, remote with batteries, composite AV cable, HDMI 1.3 cable, AC adapter, Quick Install Guide, Software and CD Manual.

I was a tiny bit disappointed that the LAN port wasn’t gigabit, but only 10/100.  This should be fine for current generation 1080p titles, I just see little reason not to put a gig-e port on anything new these days. I am impressed they actually included all the needed cabling accessories.

Patriot cautions than they only recommend their own USB wireless B/G adapter for the system, for guaranteed compatibility, which is normally not included. At this Amazon.com link, they are offering it thrown in, whole package for under $100 (including shipping, if you choose the super saver option) by clicking the appropriate button there.

The newest firmware adds support for Blu-ray ISO files and gives the player support for multi-channel HDMI audio out.

Further reviews : http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1147/1/ & http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1136/1/

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Now playing: Johnny Cash – God’s Gonna Cut You Down
via FoxyTunes

Sad, really.

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Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected

DECEMBER 17, 2009

U.S. Air Force U.S. enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan have used off-the-shelf programs to intercept video feeds from Predator unmanned aircraft.

Some of the most detailed evidence of intercepted feeds has been discovered in Iraq, but adversaries have also intercepted drone video feeds in Afghanistan, according to people briefed on the matter. These intercept techniques could be employed in other locations where the U.S. is using pilotless planes, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, they said.

The Pentagon is deploying record numbers of drones to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration’s troop surge there. Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who oversees the Air Force’s unmanned aviation program, said some of the drones would employ a sophisticated new camera system called “Gorgon Stare,” which allows a single aerial vehicle to transmit back at least 10 separate video feeds simultaneously.

Gen. Deptula, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said there were inherent risks to using drones since they are remotely controlled and need to send and receive video and other data over great distances. “Those kinds of things are subject to listening and exploitation,” he said, adding the military was trying to solve the problems by better encrypting the drones’ feeds.

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it, the officials said.

Last December, U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered copies of Predator drone feeds on a laptop belonging to a Shiite militant, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter. “There was evidence this was not a one-time deal,” this person said. The U.S. accuses Iran of providing weapons, money and training to Shiite fighters in Iraq, a charge that Tehran has long denied.

The militants use programs such as SkyGrabber, from Russian company SkySoftware. Andrew Solonikov, one of the software’s developers, said he was unaware that his software could be used to intercept drone feeds. “It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet — no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content,” he said by email from Russia.

Officials stepped up efforts to prevent insurgents from intercepting video feeds after the July incident. The difficulty, officials said, is that adding encryption to a network that is more than a decade old involves more than placing a new piece of equipment on individual drones. Instead, many components of the network linking the drones to their operators in the U.S., Afghanistan or Pakistan have to be upgraded to handle the changes. Additional concerns remain about the vulnerability of the communications signals to electronic jamming, though there’s no evidence that has occurred, said people familiar with reports on the matter.

Predator drones are built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego. Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren’t readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.

In an email, a spokeswoman said that for security reasons, the company couldn’t comment on “specific data link capabilities and limitations.”

Fixing the security gap would have caused delays, according to current and former military officials. It would have added to the Predator’s price. Some officials worried that adding encryption would make it harder to quickly share time-sensitive data within the U.S. military, and with allies.

“There’s a balance between pragmatics and sophistication,” said Mike Wynne, Air Force Secretary from 2005 to 2008.

The Air Force has staked its future on unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones account for 36% of the planes in the service’s proposed 2010 budget.

Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator. General Atomics expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 Reapers.

(via http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html )

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Yes, security lapses like this are unfortunately all too common. It is easy to see why there’s a need for hardware based encryption here. How much would it really cost to add an ASIC with something at least of the level of 256 bit Twofish, or AES, etc. While the tactical value of the drone video may decay pretty quickly, perhaps we don’t want any random folks reviewing an entire day’s video feed in, say, 10 years.

It’s high time that folks consider any public venue to be “compromisable”, whether wireless, or wired (copper, fiber, etc.)  If many business require the use of strong crypto (often via VPN) from your laptop back to the company office before you can even browse to an intranet https-secured site, perhaps this should be a clue for standards in other places, too.

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Now playing: Rob Zombie – Foxy, Foxy
via FoxyTunes

ATI may be taking the lead here (vs. my general Nvidia preference), from what I’ve recently seen :

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/10/ati-radeon-eyefinity-unveiled-up-to-six-monitors-on-a-single-ca/

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity.aspx

And their 5000 series seems pretty reasonably priced, as well. Hmmm.

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Matrox, which hasn’t been heard of [by most of us] in a dog’s age has something as well, though not priced for most of us :

Matrox pushes eight displays with a single-slot PCIe x16 GPU

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/10/matrox-pushes-eight-displays-with-a-single-slot-pcie-x16-gpu/

I do love folks contemplating huge multi-monitor rooms vs. HD TV’s, HD projectors, and bezel-less fun.

I’m going to admit to being boring, and hold it at two monitors max per system @ home, just for myself

One of the Windows 7 features many aren’t aware of is how the new OS can use the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU, or simple video cards / subsystems) to do other work than video display, speeding up the user experience.

Windows 7 includes GPGPU / DirectX 11 / the Direct Computing API

I’m more grounded in Windows than I am in OS X, so again I will highlight that, though I’m agnostic when it comes to getting the work done . . .

AMD’s ATI division supports this work via several new cards that directly support DirectX 11 via their “Stream” technology, and Nvidia supports this with their current DX10 / 10.1 cards via CUDA; Nvidia also will continue to support this in upcoming DX11 cards. Both manufacturers have quality drivers (32 and 64 bit mode) for Windows 7; I am just using the default Microsoft WHQL drivers, and have had no issues.

DirectCompute is essentially Microsoft’s answer to Khronos’ OpenCL for Windows. It is intended to be used in games and other consumer software to speed up multimedia algorithms via the considerable computational prowess of on-board GPUs. This leaves the CPU free to do other tasks, or just to increase the number of effective cores / CPU’s that you are throwing against that 1080p movie rendering project.

These days even non-business users want to speed up everything they can in their computing worlds; since most applications do not even activate the hugely powerful 3D  engine of the two most common higher-end GPU makers, there’s a lot of room here to significantly increase system functionality.

One of the many manufacturers lists the following benefits for Windows 7 with their cards :

DirectX Compute: The most significant addition to Windows 7 is the DirectX Compute API for GPU-accelerated compute applications. This API will enable great visual and interactive experiences such as new high-quality video and photo enhancements, simplified ways to interact with your devices, faster, more responsive PCs, and even new realistic gaming effects. One example is a cool new drag and drop feature built directly into Window 7. This feature allows quick and easy copy and conversion of media files from your PC directly to your portable media player. With GPU-acceleration built-in, you can perform this conversion up to 5X faster, so that you spend less time waiting and more time enjoying your movie. DirectX Compute runs on NVIDIA’s 100Mu+ CUDA-enabled GPUs. For a truly Premium Experience for Windows 7 equip your PC with an EVGA GeForce® DirectX 10 GPU with built-in NVIDIA CUDA technology.

DirectX Video Acceleration –High Definition (DXVA-HD): Windows 7 expands the use of the GPU to accelerate video playback and offer a better overall experience for watching high-definition H.264/MPEG-4 video content. DXVA-HD uses the GPU to improve video decode, processing, and presentation. This new hardware-accelerated engine is particularly helpful when dealing with the interactive features of Blu-ray material including the compositing of Picture-in-Picture with fullscreen graphics, a task that is extremely taxing when performed on the CPU.

Direct2D: Aligned to the end-consumer desire for basic applications to be more visually compelling, Microsoft introduced a new 2D API to Windows 7. Direct2D uses the advanced processing power of the GPU to provide hardware acceleration for 2D geometry, bitmaps, and text. Using Direct2D, applications will be able to achieve higher visual quality and better responsiveness.

DirectWrite: Building on the capabilities of Direct2D, DirectWrite offers hardware accelerated fonts, complete with antialiasing for unrivaled visual quality. This API will translate to the best reading experiences ever on a PC.

Microsoft has also made significant changes to the 3D Aero Windows desktop in Windows 7. With the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) v1.1 built for Windows 7, the Windows desktop is able to leverage the DirectX 10 API to provide a higher-performance experience. In addition, Windows 7 effectively takes advantage of the GPU to reduce by half the amount of memory consumed to draw desktop windows. The result is better windows responsiveness and more system memory available for other applications.

When similar OpenCL support arrived from Apple (when they introduced Snow Leopard / OS X 10.6), you can bet this trend isn’t going away anytime soon. Again, both ATI and Nvidia support OpenCL.

Further references :

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/partner/archive/2009/08/22/gpu-computing-and-windows-7.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/9d6d9ca5-3668-4e46-b038-107535de0be7

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/10/windows_7_and_gpu_computing_a.php

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2354336,00.asp

http://www.geeks3d.com/forums/index.php/topic,681.0.html

http://www.ditii.com/2009/08/22/gpu-computing-via-directcompute-in-windows-7/

http://www.hpcwire.com/blogs/A-Pervasive-GPU-Computing-Strategy-65667732.html

http://www.evga.com/articles/00511/

I’m impressed with the amount of traction that WordPress (WP) has within the world these days; the idea of a hosted site at .com and a self-hosted option via .org has always appealed to me, ever since I learned of WP. “Code is Poetry”, indeed.

http://wordpress.org/development/2009/11/upcoming-wordcamps-3/ lists upcoming WordCamps; these conferences have “tracks” like many other get-togethers, and can include topics for end users (bloggers), developers of various pieces, administrators, and many other areas. They’ve seemingly designed these very intelligently, and kept the prices extremely reasonable; no wonder they are still enjoying huge yearly growth.

I’m especially impressed with the live video stream planned for at least one of these events : http://phxwordcamp.com/live-video-stream/ though I may well be able to still make an event live this year.

While I’d really love to hit up the Bangkok version with my buddy Dong Limsawas, I don’t think this is likely to happen due to budgetary constraints

These camps have been and are being held worldwide, here are just a few more listed for the near future. If you are at all interested in blogging, whether for business or pleasure, the learning opportunities seem too good to pass up as they’ve been made very affordable, which speaks well of their intent; it’s also savvy.

WordCamp Phoenix November 13 Phoenix, Arizona

WordCamp Victoria November 14  Victoria, British Columbia

WordCamp New York November 14–15 New York, New York

WordCamp Bangkok November 15  Bangkok, Thailand

WordCamp Peru November 28  Lima, Peru

WordCamp Orlando December 5 Orlando, Florida

WordCamp Boston January 23  Boston, Massachusetts

WordCamp Indonesia January 30  Jakarta, Indonesia

WordCamp Toronto March 27–28 Toronto, Ontario

Good luck in scheduling yourself into something that could enhance your life; I will be a late attendee if able to make one this month, due to recent operations (alas). /Cheers!

Not to take away from other important IT projects, but many of us can use a bit of thought about upgrading our video subsystems.

These recommendations are for PCI-e card types; there is nothing wrong with the AGP format, but not much new development is headed there of course.

As well, I prefer the newer DVI format of connector, vs the older VGA 15 pin style.

While I tend to prefer the Nvidia GeForce line versus their most common competitor the ATI Radeon, either have a range of products from the lowest priced to the highest performance in the industry.

To dovetail with the general mid-line monitor article, I will talk about a mid-line graphics card : the Nvidia Geforce GTS 250.

It easily supports dual monitors at high resolutions, and is plenty fast for many uses. Again, this may not be enough performance for a professional graphics user, or a high level power gamer running intense graphical games on multiple monitors, but for the average person this should be enough for a good while.

This line of cards does work well under Windows 7 in my experience, in either 32 or 64 bit versions, and can easily handle high resolution HD video delivery full screen at max resolution. I have not tried running two HD movies side by side, but looking at the performance impact with my GTX 275 in doing this, I think the 250 should be able to handle that fine; luckily, I’m generally not running two “serious” graphical screens at once, but sometimes one plus browser / email, etc.

I hope this “value article” gives you some idea of the economical but powerful capabilities of current graphics cards; for more detail you can always check out somewhere like Tom’s Guide for the deeper content and graphs; I particularly like their “best cards for the money” type articles listed there, which are updated fairly often.

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Now playing: Pink Floyd – Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict
via FoxyTunes

Handy bits below that can display quite a bit of info about your computer’s video card using just your browser, and Java.

Nothing to install, just click.

“Requires Java1.4 or higher. You may be asked to confirm a security dialog: The JOGL-API is signed by Sun Microsystems.”

Nifty stuff by others

via Karma Implementor — Mr. MyOGL — online OpenGL extension lister