It was my birthday yesterday we had pleasant but quiet evening. On a blog-relevant note, I got a Shure MPA-3c "Music Phone Adapter Cable" as a gift. It's a cable that plugs into the iPhone and let's you use any pair of headphones (such as my nice in-ears ones), but it also has a microphone on it and also a switch within the cable so you can control the iPhone just as with the standard iPhone earbuds. In my opinion this is a must-have item for iPhone users, and no other cable or adapter is comparable (even Apple Store staff we not consistently well informed on this issue).
In-ear headphones were first recommended to me by Eric Bourque (computer scientist and former musician) and they are well worth the hefty price tags. They side right inside your ear canal and block out extraneous sound without being bulky; they provide good sound quality, and they preclude your having to turn your earphone volume up (thus preserving your ears). It's worth getting high-quality set since they come with different inserts to assure a comfortable fit for your particular shape of ear. I have had a couple of pairs and the ones made by Shure (like the SE310-K and or SE530PTH) are by far the best with respect to comfort. I also have a cheaper pair made by Bose and the erognomics are much worse (to the point I never use them), even though the sound quality is as good.
The Shure cable has a decent microphone, is nice and sleek, and works perfectly. It also allows you to use the iPhone for audio and/or simultaneous telephone conversations in the car too.
You can find them at the Apple on-line store (currently with a 3-week back order) or the retail stores (where they are usually sold out, but they are a bit cheaper at
Amazon.com [link to item] Note that the SE530PTH combine the features of this cable with a pair of in-ear phones.
The full Shure part ID is MPA-3C-K-EFS
2007
2007
This year I am serving on the one of the Federal granting councils that awards the basic NSERC grant to computer science researchers. It's a lot of work but it has already provided and interesting overview of the research scene in Canada. As opposed to a typical conference program committee or journal editorial board, this kinds of applications is very diverse both with respect to research topic and level of seniority.
The first phases of the process involved the identification of possible conflicts of interest and the subsequent assignment of reviewers. It is streamlined to work very smoothly and to be as fair as possible. Since each candidate proposes a set of reviewers, we try and use some of their suggestions, as well as throwing in a few other reviewers they have not suggested. This addresses the possibility that the suggested reviewers are all biased to be especially favorable, which is probably a commonplace selection bias.
One obvious reality is that via the assignment of biased reviewers one could indirectly bias the outcome unfairly. This is true with any reviewing process and this is no exception. The very diversity of the applications seem to make bias even more of a risk since for some esoteric research areas there might not be multiple applications to compare againt one another, and the match between the proposals and the particular specialities of the panel are not as finely tuned. Also, unlike a conference, the results of this process cannot be overturned for a long time (the review cycle is typically every 5 years). All this makes the assignment of reviewers very time consuming, but rather interesting. All in all I spent a lot more time considering and assigning reviewers that I had expected or than I might have done in other contexts. That was especially painful since I had other issues keeping me busy.
2007
These are shell incantations for transcoding video with ffmpeg, especially for the ipod or iphone. ffmpeg is one of several free open source video editing programs you can use. These recipes are here partly to make it easier for other people to find them, and partly for me to find them again.
The standard open-source programs for transforming video are ffmpeg and mencoder. Each is capable from reading video in many different files formats, and writing out video using many different video encoding options. Each is supported in some form on Mac OS X, Linux and probably Windows. Both use common source libraries. You can get ffmpeg at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html in many forms, or else compiled for Win32 at http://sourceforge.net /project/showfiles.php? group_id=205275.
mencoder has more filters than ffmpeg for processing the video. ffmpeg supports more different input and output formats, including direct output to mp4 container files. mencoder support for non-avi files is new and questionable, so for use with Quicktime you need to post-process with mp4creator: that's too much hassle for me, but instructions can be found at: mplayerhq.
My preferred solution is simply to use ffmpeg.
Basic command for iphone-compatible video
ffmpeg -i input-file -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -maxrate 1000 -b 700
-bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 192 -s 480x320 output-file
iphone (better setting than above)
INFILE="$1"
OUTFILE="$2"
ffmpeg -i "$INFILE" -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -maxrate 1000 -b 700 -qmin 3 -qmax 5
-bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 192 -s 480x320 -aspect 4:3 "$OUTFILE"
This should be fine with any ipod-like device, but it is customized for
the iPhone screen size.
The -s 480x320 refers to the size of the iPhone screen; customization for the video iPod would use the same incantation, but with a screen size of 320x240 to produce slightly smaller files. On the other hand, showing the video on TV would benefit from the larger size, or even 640x480. The Apple TV uses as much as 1280x720. (It is never worth using a larger size than your input footage, however, which is often limited to 640x480 for NTSC.)
Thus, for the ipod video is might be:
ipod video
ffmpeg -i "$INFILE" -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -maxrate 1000 -b 700 -qmin 3 -qmax 5
-bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 192 -s 320x240 -aspect 4:3 "$OUTFILE"
Other more exotic settings are the following:
sample separate image frames to jpeg images
ffmpeg -i "$INFILE" -y -ss 5 -an -sameq -f image2 -r 1/4 frame%03d.jpg
remove logo(from) from commercial video with lavc mpeg4 codec, avi container
mencoder -vf "delogo=545:401:100:45" -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:acodec=libfaac 002.mpg -o 002.avi
Contrast enhancement (not recommended, can confuse compression)
mencoder -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:acodec=libfaac -vf pp=autolevels:f 002.mpg -o 002.avi
WARNING: note that the -i inputfile flag needs to come early otherwise the resize (resizing/rescaling) flag -s will not have any effect. This is incredibly stupid, yes. At one point I found it didn't work and it took me a long time to figure out the problem that caused my resize to fail.
If you want to play with these, a quick guide to the key (somewhat obscure) ffmpeg parameters are as follows:
`-title string' Set the title. `-b bitrate' Set the video bitrate in bit/s (default = 200 kb/s). `-ss position' Seek to given time position in seconds. hh:mm:ss[.xxx] syntax is also supported. -r fps Set to frame rate `-s size' Set frame size. The format is `wxh' (ffserver default = 160x128, ffmpeg default = same as source). A few of the many allowed appreciations are: `qqvga' 160x120 `qvga' 320x240 `vga' 640x480 `-maxrate bitrate' Set max video bitrate (in bit/s). `-minrate bitrate' Set min video bitrate (in bit/s). `-ar freq' Set the audio sampling frequency (default = 44100 Hz). `-ab bitrate' Set the audio bitrate in bit/s (default = 64k). `-ac channels' Set the number of audio channels (default = 1). `-an' Disable audio recording. `-acodec codec' Force audio codec to codec. Use the copy special value to specify that the raw codec data must be copied as is.
2007
For some time I had been dismayed at how the USA has mandated the termination of regular analog TV as of 2009, but was relieved that Canada had not done the same thing. I just learned that the CRTC in Canada has mandated that as of 2011 no further analog (regular) television will be broadcast in Canada either. In addition, the situation for HDTV over the air, no matter where you live, is much worse than I had realized.
Canada decided (a few years back) to use the ATSC digital TV system, used only by the USA and a couple of other countries, as opposed the the DVB-T standard that was adopted world-wide (including all of Europe). As a result, ATSC devices are going to be more expensive than DVB-T, less compatible with assorted devices, and slower to come to market. Oh, and ATSC doesn't even work as well as DVB-T; nobody really knows yet how to make it work well with mobile devices.
Oh, and more frustrating yet, if you want to receive a full selection of digital TV broadcasts over the air (which is the only non-subscription choice), then in many (most?) you need a complicated set of one or more outdoor antennas, which may have to be to be directed using a rotor! Among other things, that precludes rapidly switching channels (I guess broadcasters love that). Ugh! Antennas on the roof! Wires, cables!
This just amounts to a not-so-slow and ugly death for over-the-air television. How many people are really going to mount an outdoor antenna, or a set of antennas. With rotors! What about those whose home or apartment faces the wrong way? Broadcast TV, and hence free TV, will be gone by 2020 as a result of this move. As the number of viewers shrink, so will the available programming, and prices will go up. That's a death spiral for sure.
Instead, we'll have televison you have to pay for, and for which there is steady feedback to the broadcasters regarding who watched what, and for how long (as already exists with most cable TV devices).
Background information
While standard definition remains the dominant viewing choice the world over, HDTV is already making gradual and progressive inroads. When color TV was introduced, it was developed to be backwards compatible and it gradually forced out black and white TV by being more appealing. In contrast, within the United States, Canada, and several other countries legislative action has been taken to force analog television off the air and replace it with terrestrial HDTV broadcasts. Satellite or cable broadcasting can remain with non-HDTV formats.
The primary reason for this is that digital broadcasting makes more efficient use of the available bandwidth, so if analog broadcasting is replaced by digital, the spectrum space is made available for other uses such as cellular phones or additional channels. More cynical explanations include the fact that forced adoption of digital technology closes the what the rights holding industries called the "analog hole", meaning the ability of home viewers to record or event distribute programming they received.
In the North America at least, digital television occupies largely the same portion of the electromagnetic spectrum as traditional analog television. Due to its digital nature, if the packets making up a program are too badly degraded, no signal whatsoever will be viewable. As a result, in locations with poor reception digital television may not function whereas analog television might still deliver a degraded signal.
On final concern about HDTV broadcasting in Canada, in particular: it doesn't accomodate disabled people properly. For years, there have been legistative requirements re. closed captioning of regular broadcast TV to assist those who are hard of hearing (or vision, since closed caption narratives can be transformed into audio fairly easily -- know any older people?). Quoting from Joe Clark's long article on this subject: "There is no requirement that Canadian HD devices receive, decode, or display captioning. Of course the U.S. has a requirement and we usually get the same equipment, and of course captioning is included in the ATSC specification, but there is no legislative guarantee that caption-capable high-definition equipment actually make it into Canadian homes." (... or that broadcasters insert captions into HD content.)
Well, good riddance. Maybe we'll read books instead.
