Vimeo App

last week i downloaded the new Vimeo iPhone app just after reading about it on Lifehacker.com. i was a little skeptical cause i'm still rolling with my 3GS. but it was free, so what would be the harm. i gotta say that it's not bad.

it crashed on me a few times. and 1 was a little frustrated every time i tried to add a pic shot in portrait mode it would somehow appear turned 90 degrees to the right. i figured out i'd have to save the project every time i added something to the timeline. so after overcoming the frustration with the app crashing i managed to piece together a short video consisting of a photo and two video clips of me and my buddy jimmy climbing an indoor rock wall. i was able to add some text, however adjusting the volume levels after adding a music track was probably too much my 3GS to handle. it would consistently crash doing that.

as for the video...
my buddy Jimmy and i decided to do a little indoor rock climbing at the Lifetime Fitness center in Cary N.C.. i was about 4 feet away from reach the top. my only excuse is my 30 minutes of high cardio on an elliptical machine prior to talking the wall. it's all good fun, however. i must admit i was very concerned (and perhaps a little scared) that the safety line wasn't going to hold me if i fell. there was quite a bit of panic in that last moment just before my fingers gave out. good times.

camera work by my buddies Dennis, Jimmy, and myself.

back to the app...
despite the crashes i have to say that the app worked very well. and i'm willing to put up with it cause 1) it's free, and 2) it works on my phone.

hopefully i can make more use of it later on down the line. perhaps Vimeo will release an update that will address the crashes on my 3GS, and add some nice features that will rival that of Apple's iMovie for iPhone. one can only hope. thanks Vimeo!

peace,
@riel

Pandora App, What's missing

Pandora is another app deserving of being among my top 5.  i probably use this app more often than any other.  i have created so many radio stations which include artists from New Edition to Squarepusher; Expose to Run DMC; Imogen Heap to Daft Punk.  

lately i have gotten hooked into Steely Dan.  a lot of the songs Pandora has been playing base on that have been songs i've heard so many times over growing up, and some i've have never heard of before. despite that i'm really digging it.

this app keeps me company while driving to work and back, when i'm grocery shopping, or just relaxing at home.

here's the problem; i have created a lot of radio stations, but  the app - or perhaps the service itself - only allows me one QuickMix.  A QuickMix is a way to combine multiple radio stations so that you can get enjoy a greater range of music selections.  

if Pandora and i were to sit together over coffee and talk about what i think is missing in the app and/or service there's only one thing i would request for, multiple QuickMix's.  

i think it would be great to organize different radio stations into playlists or QuickMix's.  i could name each QuickMix. there would be a section just for QuickMix's for easy access. you can edit them allowing you to add new stations to them.

still - absent being able to do that - it's my among my most used app.  and well deserving of being among my top 5 app.


peace,
@riel

NetFlix App, Whats missing.

the Netflix app for my iPhone is within the top 5 apps i use regularly.  the fact that i can watch movies or tv shows when eating a quick meal at a restaurant, or waiting for a doctors appointment, or my flight at the airport is among the best ways to kill time.  the app itself is very easy to use.  the app simplifies the process by limit you to only parts of the service that applies to the streaming video.  the video quality has yet to disappoint.  and Netflix is mindful of their customer's experience with their product and services. every so often i get an email from them inquiring about the video quality and playback of the what i just finished watching.

i have no doubt that Netflix is always looking to improve the user experience for their customers.  if Netflix were to sit down with me over coffee and ask what i think is missing in their mobile app and/or service i"d tell the following:

1. multiple instant queues

this would be nice to have so that i can organize several queues by movies vs TV shows, or comedy vs sci-fi.  

2. create and organize playlists

this would be especially nice so that i can put together a series of tv shows available and let the player run through them without having to be prompted to move on to the next show.  this may pit them even deeper against Hulu.com, but that's competition for you.

all in all i'm very pleased to have Netflix's mobile app on my iphone.  since i downloaded it i've managed to enjoy dozens of TV series such as Futurama and The IT Crowd, and movies such as MST3K.  the streaming over 3G is prompt, and the video quality is more than adequate.  and because of my frequent use it's deserving of being in my top 5.


peace,
@riel

John & Mark covers "Jessie" (video)

lately i've been fortunate with a opportunity to assist as a photographer and videographer on a music venture by two co-workers of mine. John Lobe (vocals) and Mark Benton (keys) have formed a new and budding two-man band specializing in easy listening music for the older crowd. so far I've recorded them at The Rose Garden in Upton (twice), FireFlies in Framingham, during the Westborough Festival, Borders Bookstore in Shrewsbury, and during rehearsal sessions. most of those footages will be seen on the group's band site.

but i have posted a video on Vimeo i edited during one of their rehearsal session. this video is special to me, because it's the first time i ever edited anything like this. a simple linear editing process using footage shot from two different angles.

• camera #1, front - JVC Everio 30GB HDD, wide screen mode
• camera #2, right - Sony DSC-H9 in standard mode

keep in ming that i'm still working with my 2008 Mac Mini. and working with this little-train-that-could wasn't easy. things are little different now that i'm running Final Cut Express 4 (FCE4) under Snow Leopard 10.6.4. my 2GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 2GB of 667 memory is barely enough to edit a single video source within FCE4. but two?

to make this simple music video required a some prep. first off after extracting the videos from my cameras i had to convert both video sources into readable MPEG2 files, and extract the audio tracks using MPEG Streamclip.

i dumped both video and audio files into a FCE4 project and began the lengthy process of syncing everything together. i wasn't going to use both audio tracks, just the one from the JVC camcorder, as it was the better of the two audios. but both were needed in order to help with the syncing of the two videos. probably not the most efficient way to go about this, but my little mac can't handle the video scrubbing very well. so using the both audio tracks (lined up with their respected video tracks) helped a great deal.

once both video tracks were synced up and match to the main audio track, the next step was to determine how to pan from one video track to the next. after listening to the song and trying to identify certain cues, i ended up with the final edit.

filters were added to both video tracks to help with the brightness, contrast, gamma, and de-interlacing. these took a while to find a satisfactory adjustment, because of the under-powered nature of Mac Mini. actually it wouldn't be so bad if the mini had a real GPU with (and here's the key now) dedicated video memory. but i digress.

after exporting the final cut to an MPEG4, i imported the video into Handbrake. i love this app. it takes all the imperfection found from the original source videos, and the compression process from FCE4 and cleans it up real nicely. because of the poor low-light performance of both cameras at the time of recoding, the source videos were very grainy. Handbrake helped to fix of all - if not most - of that and produced a great quality video playback.

the video sources may not have been the best - i know, it looks 80's-public-access-channel cheesy - but the focus here was on the editing. all in all i'm quite pleased with the final cut. i hope to do more work like this in the future, but first off i gotta get an iMac - i know i keep saying that - along with better camcorders. damn it! why must my hobbies be so expensive?!!!

peace,
@riel

My First Linux Script.

from the days of DOS, Win95, and Win98 i was very curious about DOS batch scripting and automation. it's neat that you write a list of instructions for the computer execute. even setup a simple text-based menu driven interface using runlevels. DOS batch scripting was pretty powerful for automation back in the days, and the batch scripts i wrote were minimum 3 pages, maximum 10 pages long.

as the years went by a co-worker introduced me to AutoIt - a windows oriented scripting language similar to Microsoft's VB. and thus continued my fascination with scripting and automation.

this past semester i took a Linux class. one of the lesson covered was BASH shell scripting using the vi editor. most of my understanding about scripting came from prior experience of using AutoIt. the only difference was the syntax structure of the language.

one of the final labs for the class was to write a shell script where the user is asked to enter their name, the month born, and the year born. the output of the script was the acknowledgment of the user's name, and the calculate age based on the month and year. also there needed to be a loop to re-run the process until the user quits.

i submitted a scrip that covered all the requirements specified by the lab. it even contained multiple loops; after each question given is answered by the user, the script responds with confirmation before moving on to the next step.

you may download the script here.

all-in-all it was pretty neat, and well written for a newb. though i'm sure most of you Linux gurus could accomplish the same goal with only 4 lines of code. however it was my first attempt, and with Linux becoming a force to be reckoned with, hopefully it won't be my last.

peace,
@riel