Category: Digital Video

Capturing HD video from PVR on a Mac & WPtouch WordPress Plugin

Two quick notes to add in the “Technical Shit That’s Happening Around These Here Virtual Parts” Department (and no, I have no idea why I’d suddenly be speaking like an ironic cowboy).

First, the last two posts to this blog have included a bit of HD video captured to my new MacBook via a piece of hardware I already owned and a terrific little software package that I found courtesy of teh Intarwebs.  The video was captured from my BellTV PVR via a Haupaugge! HD PVR unit, connected via USB 2.0 cable to my MacBook.  I captured the video on my MacBook by way of Steven Toth’s excellent Mac application “HDPVR Capture”.  That setup may have some redundancy built into it – there’s really no reason to have a set top box PVR connected to another device that itself turns a computer into a PVR, really – but I tend to carry my MacBook around with me a lot and it’s not likely to be sitting next to the TV ready to capture whatever television programs I might want to record, so (in my case) it does actually make a little sense from a hardware standpoint.  The hardware configuration is really unimportant, though: the more interesting bit about this is the software package I used to capture the (HD) video to computer.  The Haupagge unit ships (or at least it did when I bought it) with software for Windows-based PCs, but no applications are provided for Mac users. I don’t believe you’ll ever consider selling MacBook. The Windows-based notebook that I had previously been using to capture video barely fit the minimum specs and it frequently choked on the video capture tasks set for out.  Worse still, the capture process was producing an “m2ts” file on the computer, a file set out in a format (as I understand it) designed to be understood by PVRs, but supported by precious little editing/playback software out there.  The end result was that I found myself struggling to make reliable copies of programs I had recorded, and generally unable to thereafter edit or trim the files (even to do something simple like take out commercials), and unable to archive the files on optical media by burning them to DVDs.

Enter Steven Toth.  Let me say that I don’t know the man and I’m not receiving any compensation from him whatsoever; I am just a very satisifed user of the application he has developed, “HDPVR Capture”.  As I understand it, Mr. Toth knows quite a bit about the Haupaugge device because he’s worked on the inside there;  he knew that the manufacturer was choosing not to support Mac Users, so he filled the void himself and wrote such an application.

My review of this software: It Kicks Ass.  Simply stated, it works.  Easy to install, easy to use, I had it up and running in a matter of moments after my licence key was received via email (there is a demo version available for free download with certain features locked out or restricted, paid licence allows the user to access all features, but the licence is restricted to use with one Haupaugge unit only).

The videos I’ve captured convert easily into .mp4 files, which then import easily into iMovie and may be edited exported like any other captured video, no problem whatsoever.

Second: I have installed a plugin on the site called WPtouch.  The plugin automatically creates a version of the site for iPhones and various other smartphones.  If you have WordPress 2.7 or higher installed, you can install this plugin directly from your admin panel by clicking on the Plugins/Add New link, then typing “WPtouch” in the search box, clicking on the appropriate link when it comes up and following the on-screen instructions that follow thereafter.  The whole installation process took me about three minutes from stem to stern, and – again – it worked like a charm, at least I think.

Would anybody who’s accessing the site from smartphone let me know how the site is functioning for you.  Any thoughts, suggestions as to whether the smartphone specific theme works for you?

Rookie Tournament: Leafs 1 at Penguins 4

Spouse and I did make the drive down to Kitchener last night (earlier this evening, actually) to watch the Leafs rookies vs. the Penguins rookies.  I’ll have more to say about the game later – right now it’s late and I need to get to bed if I’m going to be a productive member of society tomorrow – but here are some preliminary thoughts:

  • Kid Kadri!!!!1  He’s the real deal, people.  He could use some bulking up, especially up top, but the guy is slick smooth with incredible hand/eye co-ordination and a retinue of subtle moves, little shifts from side to side, slight changes of pace, small stick movements, etc. – that put his opponents off balance and allow him to sift through defenders and to find open space.  I don’t think he’s NHL ready right now, but I would be willing to bet he’ll make the Leafs next year;
  • Jesse Blacker has a howitzer for a shot.  That kid is some steady, too.  I was impressed with his play, though he was on the ice for the Penguins’ second goal, scored on a soft little spinerama move on the goalline  by Moon;
  • Stalberg and Stefanovich showed lots of promise and combined on the Leafs’ only goal of the evening – basically a short 2 on 0 after a Penguin defender turned it over to Stralberg in the high slot;
  • I didn’t notice Bozak and Hanson as much as I thought I might.  I did see Hanson a lot, and he seemed to be playing well positionally, but they didn’t seem to accomplish much.  The power play (which featured these two prominently) was an abomination worthy of an actual big league Maple Leafs power play – it was that bad;
  • Dale Mitchell continues to get noticed.  He’s full of energy and plays a smart positional game, especially defensively.  He played on a line with Gilati and Kurtz, and these three were more visible to my eye (especially in the late stages of the game) than Bozak and Hanson (though Stalberg, the third forward on that line, did impress me);
  • Andrew Engelage (former goaltender for the Memorial Cup Champion Windsor Spitfires) unfortunately didn’t do much to increase his chances of landing and keeping a big league deal – the Leafs had scored to make it 2-1 and were coming on in a big way and threatening to tie the game midway through the 3rd when Engelage coughed up a Raycroftian hairball and whiffed on Robert Bortuzzo’s weak shot for the 3rd Penguin goal, effectively extinguishing the Maple Leaf comeback attempt.   Too bad for Andrew, I’d like to see him get a shot somewhere.

Here’s a quick mashup of some video I shot at the game.  There are no fancy transitions, ’cause I haven’t figured out how to use that part of my new video editing software yet.  Shown in this video are:

  1. A picture of the teams lined up for the national anthems;
  2. The Leafs skating out on to the ice for the 3rd period;
  3. The Penguins first goal, the one iPhone and I combined to describe on Twitter as a “Quasimodo breakaway” – you gotta love “autocorrect”.  And yes, those people in front of me DO have rather large heads, and yes, I should have used the “zoom” feature.  Thanks for your help;
  4. The fight between Slaney and Bortuzzo.  Bombs away, this is truculence;
  5. A bit of the play – featuring Bozak, Hanson and Stalberg, if I recall correctly; and
  6. Kid Kadri doing some stuff, and then unfortunately getting drilled – he’s the guy taking the draw and wearing number 43.

I’ll take a little closer look at the footage I’ve got on Friday night and see if I can’t cobble together a little something better than this.  In the meantime, enjoy.

Like “Brewster’s Millions”, But Less Plausible…

This is how I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that print journalism must be anachronistic, irrelevant and doomed:  I have been asked to write a piece on the Leafs for publication in an actual hold-it-in-your-hand, you-could-drop-that-thing-and-bruise-a-toe book.   And get this:  I am told that I will be getting paid to do this thing.  From this latter fact, I conclude that the publishers of this tome are almost certainly lunatic immigrant millionaires with a tenuous-to-non-existent grasp on the English language.  Believing that they are allergic to money,  I suspect they have resolved to rid themselves of the cursed lucre in the most pro-social way possible;  by contributing to the publication of a well-respected and important medical journal filled with scholarly research.  I just pray someone has a camera when these well-meaning but misguided philanthropists are presented with the finished product – I foresee an instant and compelling portrait of blinking uncomprehension and, quite possibly, some feces throwing.

I can’t give out a lot of details at the moment, mostly because I don’t want you to steal this gig from me, but rest assured I will be pimping the book like a madman once it has been brought into existence.   As much as you are now staring at the screen, cursing the rotten luck that leaves you bereft of detail, I can promise you that you will someday remember fondly the happy times before this godforsaken book was mentioned by me in every sentence.

I’ll bet you can’t wait to be that unhappy.  In the meantime, I am busy trying to figure out how the hell I am going to manage to get everything done that I will need to:  for example, not only do I now have to find the time to research and write the piece, if I am going to be a writer I also have to make sure that I spend the correct amount of time bellyaching about how making the deadline is going to be a bitch and so on.  I guess this post is a pretty good start on that.  I must be a quick learner.

All kidding aside, I do have some degree of concern about taking on yet another project:  at present, for those of you keeping track, I am (theoretically) in the middle of:

And those are just the projects I’ve blogged about!  I also have it in my mind to convert some old VHS video to digital (I spent a large part of last Saturday wondering why I haven’t yet converted my copy of Leafs/Kings Game 7 in ’93 to an iPod-friendly format so that I can watch it whenever I feel the urge.   This, as much as it may be a cry for help,  is not a lie.)   There are also three or four crates of old vinyl LPs that are practically begging for my attention, so much of my (formerly?) beloved music desperate to enter the 21st century at last.

Anyway, no doubt some of my time tippy-tapping away at my article will take away somewhat from the time I have available to examine my navel here for your benefit;  you must be devastated, I can tell.  I have to say, though, that over the last week or so, I’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes in front of the blank screen with the cursor blinking and a hundred poopy jokes wanting to be written.  I guess I’m having fun writing, and I’ve pushed back a little bit at the multi-armed time-eating monster that my job has recently become.  I have been forcing myself to make just a little bit of time to sit here and flap my virtual gums at you, and it has made me feel a bit better, so I am going to try (see the list of projects above) to keep it up.

Seriously, stop laughing at me.

————

Note:  The Spitfires lost to Brampton last night 4-2.  I recorded the game via Freecorder, loaded it on to my iPod then carefully avoided hearing about the score;  I listened to the game after I went to bed at around 11:30.  About two hours later, I was bummed out – and sleepy.   Anyway, Dad and I won’t be seeing the Spits claim the Championship Trophy tomorrow night in Brampton;  I just hope I haven’t jinxed them too badly.  We want another W!

The Domino Effect: Blender Revisited

A quick post today;  I was back to work for the first time in three glorious weeks, and I have to admit that it only took about two hours of the chaos inherent in office life to get me pining nostalgically for my morning cup of tea in the living room with the cat purring contentedly on the back of the chair behind me.  I will be calling it an early night tonight and trying not to get too exhausted in my first week back.

You may recall that some time back, I mentioned that I was fooling around with a package of 3d modelling software called Blender.   Part of my last vacation hurrah on Saturday and Sunday was to spend some quality time in front of the monitor fiddling about with this little package of digital wonders.  I was greatly assisted in getting back up to speed by a terrific series of tutorials posted on YouTube by super3boy.

The video below is a brief animation I rendered after completing super3boy’s 19th blender tutorial, on the subject of domino physics.   The animation shows a series of “dominoes” set up on a plane;  the first domino falls over and knocks over the next one in sequence, causing a tower of dominoes to crash to the ground.  It was remarkable how simple this was to create.  All it took was some very basic modelling – creating and scaling a mesh cube, really – then copying the “domino” several times and placing it on the plane.   Blender takes care of the rest;  the physics of the virtual world are already coded in the software and all the (ahem) visual artist need do is designate the appropriate objects as “actors” in the scene to be animated.  A brief key sequence starts the “game engine”, which is the piece of software that calculates the physical outcome of the scene you’ve created (in this case, tumbling dominoes) and – last but not least, a command to render the scene into the desired video format.   It took only about five to ten minutes of my interaction with the computer to do this;  the rest was taken care of by the software.  I am flabbergasted.  Blender is also capable of adding textures, lighting and shading effects to all of the objects (none of which are evident in the scene below, as I didn’t take the time to apply these effects), which is to say it’s capable of making the animation look a hell of a lot more realistic than the sequence below.   Right now, I’m just astounded by the ease with which this sequence was created.

I am looking very much forward to using Blender more extensively in some video projects I have germinating in the recesses of my mind.  I am especially anxious to explore the video compositing capabilities of the package, and to combine 3d effects created and rendered in Blender with actual video footage captured from live action cameras.

Sony DCR-HC26 Firewire Port Problem: An Update

Some time ago now, I wrote a post about some problems I was experiencing with the transfer of Mini-DV video from my Sony Handycam through a Firewire cable to my computer.

sony_dcr_hc26_camcorder
The offending device

I had no idea how common a problem this seems to be.  Since posting about my struggles with the camera, that post and posts about my adventures with a Craftsman Lawn Tractor seem to have generated an awful lot of traffic to the site.  My camera still isn’t working, but I now think I know why.  It occurred to me that an update might help someone else with similar technical problems teetering on the precipice of a murderous rage.

It would appear that the problem in my particular case is the Firewire (IEEE 1394) port on the side of the camera.  A close examination of the pins inside the port suggests that somehow one or more of the pins that are supposed to make contact with the IEEE 1394 cable have come off.  The port needs to be replaced.

Since the camera warranty is long expired, and I didn’t purchase the extended warranty offered by the retailer, I’m on my own.  When I spoke with folks at the Future Shop about getting repairs done, they suggested that it would make more sense to buy a new camera.  I’m not ready to go that route just yet, partly because this is already my second Mini-DV camera – the first was a JVC model (GL something or other, I think) that stopped functioning consistently just shortly before Spouse and I were married – it has developed the dreaded E04 Safeguard Mode error, which (according to teh Intarwebs) is a common and apparently lethal affliction for JVC camcorders.

The thing is I have a LOT of material on a number of Mini-DV tapes that I need to be able to access.

The immediate solution I’m going to attempt is to replace the port – or the circuit board on which it’s mounted – myself.  Madness, right?  Maybe.  Maybe not – I found the service manual for the camera at servicemanuals.net and – for a fee of about $15 – downloaded a copy.   Now I have a schematic of how the camera comes apart, and (more importantly) how it goes back together.  I plan to study it carefully before attempting the dissassembly. I also need to do a little research to find out how much the replacement part or parts will cost, but I don’t expect to be spending more than fifty or sixty bucks.

I will try to remember to post an update on what’s going on with the repair.

In the meantime, if you are experiencing the same sort of problem, my research on the Net suggests that you should:

  • test the Firewire cable by connecting another camcorder to it (borrow one from a friend if you have to)- if your operating system immediately detects a camcorder, the problem is with your camcorder, not the cable or computer;
  • only connect the camera to the computer when the AC power supply – not the battery – is powering the camcorder.  There is some evidence out the problem may occur more frequently when transferring when the camera is powered by battery alone;
  • make sure that the “USB streaming” option (in the camera menu) is turned OFF – if this setting is turned on, the camera will not send video through the Firewire port, even when a Firewire cable is attached.  Remember, the camera will transfere data either by USB or by Firewire, but not both.   I strongly recommend that you choose to use Firewire for all video transfer anyway because the USB transfer is lower resolution video;  it has fewer pixels and a lower frame rate, and looks kind of like a crappy webcam. Also, the audio transferred is mono instead of stereo;
  • be sure that your camera is set to the “playback”, rather than “camera” mode (though really, it should work in both configurations.  Mine used to work regardless of which mode the camera was in);
  • if none of the above suggestions fixes the problem, try experimenting with the order in which you are connecting the camera, firing up your software, etc.  Try commencing playback on the camera first, then connecting the Firewire cable, then starting your software, then beginning the video capture.  If that sequence doesn’t work, try connecting the cable first, then powering up the software and THEN commencing playback, etc.

One more thing – several of the various video forums I combed looking for solutions to the problem had threads in which people were complaining that their camera wasn’t functioning because it didn’t display a “DV Out” message when the Firewire cable was plugged in.   Be aware that the camera does NOT and shouldnot display this message.  If you’re waiting for those words to appear on your little LCD screen, you’ll be waiting a long time because they don’t appear when the camera is functioning properly.  The “DV In” message is simply meant to convey to the user that the camera is receiving DV-related information from the computer to which its attached;  all camcorders with Firewire ports are “DV Out” enabled – that’s what the port is for. Not all cameras, however, are designed to receive control signals from the computer (mostly tape transport instructions like fast forward, rewind etc.)   If you’re seeing the “DV In” message and your camcorder isn’t transferring video over the IEEE 1394 cable you’ve got connected to it, there is nothing wrong with the cable – the camera is receiving information from the computer.  My immediate suspicion is that you need to disable the USB streaming feature in order to START streaming via Firewire.

Wish me luck, I’ll keep y’all posted.

Introducing Wavy Gravy and Sebastien’s Theme.

HeroesinstudiotriptychIn 1998, it somehow happened that my band agreed to write some music – on a volunteer, we can’t pay you for this basis – for a movie that was being directed by a friend of a friend.  In truth, I do remember how this arrangement came to pass, but the story is boring, pointless and convoluted and involves far too many ridiculous characters.  In one of life’s clever little ironies, it so happens that one might say exactly the same thing about the script for the movie in question.  (Dammit, Joel Siegel, this game is easy!)  It’s more fun, therefore, if I decline to tell you the truth about how this composing engagement came to pass and simply tell you instead that Heroes in Rehab won this opportunity as a prize for placing sixth in a sack race at the Directors Guild of Canada annual summer picnic.  That is saying something, because even this last explanation is roughly as much fun as gum disease.

But I digress.

My point is that we had this job to do and people were depending on us.  Those of you in the working world will understand these concepts and identify them as something known as “responsibility”.  It is something that is entirely foreign to musicians, serious artists and other more highly evolved and important life forms.  Being a musician is not about producing things on time (except for musicians who actually get paid to do what they do because they’re good at it);  when you are a Serious Artist (please read: “unemployed”) working on a Weighty Piece of Art, you cannot be rushed, especially when you haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re doing or why (which is most of the time).

Continue reading Introducing Wavy Gravy and Sebastien’s Theme.

Sony DCR-HC26 Video Capture Problem

sony_dcr_hc26_camcorder Once I finished the cabinets up yesterday afternoon, I transitioned from “handyman” to “geek” mode and started working on a little video for the charity event Spouse and I are helping to organize; it’s essentially a commercial for the event that I’m going to put up on YouTube.

I spent the late/afternoon and early evening shooting the footage I needed (it’s not complicated, believe me, and the “actors” are compliant enough types – little plastic figurines from the Homestar Runner series of web-toons).

That part of the “shoot” was easy and fun enough;  I had rigged up the workshop like a little studio, complete with a bristol-board background that I hope will do service as a (very low) budget “green screen” for some fun chroma key effects (superimposing the “actors” on a couple of amusing stock photos, etc.).

After dinner, I headed upstairs and connected my Sony DCR-HC26 to the computer to “capture” the footage I’d shot into my video editing suite of choice.  I have captured video successfully from this exact camera (using this very same cable) many times before without any appreciable difficulty, but on this occasion (probably because I’m working toward a deadline), the technical ghosts and goblins ran rampant over me.

Historically, I have connected the camera to my computer through an IEEE-1394 compliant, “Firewire” type cable.  The cable has the smaller “4 pin” connector at the end that attaches to the camera, and the normal size “6 pin” connector at the end that plugs in to the computer’s IEEE-1394 port.  Video capture has been smooth, fast and reliable, with few (if any) dropped frames.  Typically, with my video capture software package already running (and waiting expectantly for a “capture device” to be connected), I plug the cable in to the camera first, place the camera atop the desktop machine (it’s just a convenient surface to rest the camera on while capturing), then connect the cable to the computer.  Finally, I power up the camera and within a matter of seconds, Windows usually detects the camera, loads the necessary drivers and I’m good to go.

Continue reading Sony DCR-HC26 Video Capture Problem