Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Crappy Telemarketers: Text Messaging That I Pay For

There's something particularly galling about getting a telemarketer's scam via text message. I don't have a text-message package with my phone so I have to PAY for each of these messages from these crapheads.
This week, I've received two such messages. The latest, according to caller ID, came from 7605769989. I don't know if this is accurate or if they somehow spoof the number.
The text reads:
Homeowners! Would you like to make your house energy efficient and cut your electric bill? Just text back the word "SAVE" to learn more, or STOP to cancel.
Well, I ain't gonna text anything to a scammer. Any suggestions on how to really get them to stop?
Crapheads!

Monday, September 13, 2010

DRM and CoDec Crap

The Librarian of Congress has given media-studies professors like me an exemption to the DMCA so that we may break the copy protection on DVDs in order to create video clips for pedagogical purposes.
Consequently, we've put together some tutorials on how to create video clips as well as screen shots over on TVCrit.com:
One thing we have yet to figure out, however, is how best to capture high-definition video clips. Or, that is to say, we've figured out pieces of the process, but not the entire thing. Blocking our success is DRM and CoDec (i.e., video compression / decompression) crap. We can get the clip off a Blu-ray disc (BD), but we can't convert it into a usable format.
I figure to use this post to chronicle what I've done so far and the failures I've encountered.
First, the success: Using the following process, I've been able to suck a video clip off a Blu-ray disc--using a Windows 7 computer.
  1. I use AnyDVD to remove DRM encrustations so that I can access the video on the BD. This runs in the background and works on any BD or DVD.
  2. After inserting a BD into the drive, I examine it in Windows Explorer, drilling down through its folders: BDMV --> STREAM. In the STREAM folder I find numerous .m2ts files (video files using the following codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC).
  3. By sorting the .m2ts I can find the video files -- as they're all several gigabytes big. They're big files because the resolution is big: 1920 x 1080 pixels (in a 16x9 video).
  4. I right-click a likely file and choose to open it with VLC Media player. Ever since something like version 1.0, VLC will play BD's!
  5. In VLC, I enable the Advanced Controls in the View menu. This adds a red-dot "Record" button near the controls for playing video.
  6. I start the view playing and then, when I reach the section I want to extract, I click the Record button. When it's finished playing, I click it again to stop recording.
  7. This dumps a fat .ts file in the _________ folder (I forget where). E.g., a 3 minute clip was over 700 MB.
But here's the rub. I can't find anything to convert that .ts file into something more usable.
  • MPEG Streamclip, which I rely on for so much on the Mac, cannot handle the file on Windows. Don't know if it's a Windows issue yet. (Haven't tried it on a Mac.) Gives me a blank image, although it will play the audio.
  • Handbrake is also useless. Just fails when I try to convert the file. No explanation provided.
  • VLC itself promises to do transcoding, but the resulting file has very crummy audio. There might be some setting I've got wrong, but I've tried two or three and gotten nowhere.
  • HDTV to MPEG2 barfs on the file, saying "Could not find a Channel!"
And that's where I stand as of 13 September 2010. Defeated!
Update:
Another failure. Tried RipBot264 and got the following error from AviSynth (which RipBot runs):
DirectShowSource: couldn't open file C:\Users\Jeremy\Videos\Damages20070814qq00_00_00qq.ts:
Unspecified error (E:\temp\RipBot264temp\job1\getinfo.avs, line 2)
There are several guides out there. This Gizmodo one seemed more helpful than most.
Update, 9/14/2010:
Moderate success!
I followed the Gizmodo guide and managed to create in-sync, miniature versions of the clip I wanted. I had to use AnyDVD HD , RipBot264, .NET Framework 2.0, the avisynth, ffdshow, and Quicktime Pro, and the process took hours, but it does work.
Gizmodo goes into all the bloody details, but, essentially, I ripped an episode from the BD using RipBot264 (which took hours), then I opened it in Quicktime Pro (it's gotta be the Pro version) and exported small clips. Here's the files I dealt with:
  • Ripped hour-long episode at 1920 x 1080 pixels: 2.5 gigabytes.
  • Exported for Web (by Quicktime) files:
    • Desktop version: 852 x 480 pixels, 21.9 megabytes
    • iPhone version: 480 x 270 pixels, 14.3 megabytes
    • iPhone cell version: 176 x 99 pixels, 1.3 megabytes
The difference this time around in my use of RipBot264 is that I used it to pull video directly from the BD. Before I was trying to get it to transcode a .ts file that I had captured with VLC media player.