Well it's on the way, and it's linked with Jack and a general effort to make Linux a pro audio platform, so it won't take long before stuff works
It already has the bare bones. It's not as useable as Sonar, but then it's free and will soon be a lot better, if the mailing list is anything to go by.
Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...
on
Linux Audio Development
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· Score: 4, Informative
However, even the non paranoid don't trust Microsoft. The problem is evidently that the suits are going for Microsoft while the techies (the real ones, who didn't get the job by the list of MCSEs in their CVs) just get beaten into submission.
You're talking about ENCODING, not decoding. MPEG decoders are available all over the place on ATI, Creative and Hollywood style cards. It's the encoding part which is hard, really. Decoding takes less CPU (a little less).
Now, as for dedicated encoders, there must be some around. Like here, or maybe high speed here
(just a quick Google turned these up).
Of course, another thing that can be improved is I/O bandwidth and compression tweaks. As storage gets cheaper and cheaper you can use HuffYUV lossless, and then have a background task to gradually compress to MPEG2 or DivX, I guess. Heck, you could even do that now, but then current generation CPUs can encode and decode at the same time anyways...
The problem with MythTV is that it uses a hacked (in the good sense) version of the NuppelVideo compression scheme... I quote from MythTV:
So, with the hardware able to handle what I required of it, it's back to the software. I significantly modified the NuppelVideo codec: I added the ability to compress the audio using the LAME encoder library, upgraded the RTjpeg code to the latest version, modified it to use the Xvideo extension to convert colorspaces in hardware, added a better de-interlacing filter (taken from MPlayer), and finally c++-ified it all into Recording and Playback classes, so I could easily use the functionality in applications.
MythTV really looks like it rocks. I just need a better machine to test it out (mine is an appallingly slow poor old thing:'( )
but eventually I am going to get a network printer buffer and hook it up to that, so I can print to it from my SuSE box.
If you install CUPS and Samba, you should be able to print to it using Windows printer sharing, and save buying a separate network printer buffer. Or, you could hook it up to your SuSE box, and have your Windows box print to it again via Samba and CUPS - it will appear as a Windows network printer to your network.
Re:But Do They Run Linux?
on
LCD Overtaking CRT
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've seen Linux run on LCDs. No problem. Now, Linux may not have a driver for your crazy digital out video card that runs to your LCD on the digital style cable, but if you have an analogue connector on your video card and LCD, then you'll have no problem.
Digital video card support is limited, but it is there, AFAIK, in Linux.
If only you could get a PVR that just worked, and was programmable like a VCR, with Showview or some other listings, and could pause live TV?
Ideally the box would compress MPEG-2 or 4, and allow you to interface it to a PC for archiving of old shows onto a SVCD or VCD format / MPEG-2 / DivX.
Wait... what am I saying? Why not just buy a PC with an ATI All-in-wonder card?
PVR will only work if there's enough take up. Sky, in the UK, as well as Canal+ in France, are setting up their next generation to go PVR, as *part* of the regular satellite subscription service. This will work. Sadly, the cable companies were not in on the deal with SonicBlue. If they had been, and could have charged $10 extra per month for it or something, and made a deal on hardware, then it would be workable. You cannot beat the giants, they will be right behind with their products.
If you're using that much space, then you're capturing everything as AVI no compression.
Use at least a lossless compressor like HuffYUV or even, with a good machine, you could DivX or something on the fly at a high bitrate, and you/could/ even capture the audio in MP3 directly, or else just at 44.1Khz/16bit.
There's no way you should be needing that much hard disk space for a 50 min capture. I only have 80 Gig in all, and I captured and compressed a 2 hour film in MPEG-1 format, high quality, on the fly, on a PII - 350MHz @ 400x300 or something around that don't remember the exact figure. If I had a better CPU I could do better resolution and MPEG-2 on the fly.
Your battery won't last longer unless you generate less heat in the first place. Just taking it away more efficiently doesn't mean it's not generated by the CPU in the first place, hence it's not going to save battery power/except/ by removing the need for a fan. But then they don't eat a lot of power do they?
I'm not calling Windows users intelligence into question, however I did get some people mod me as a troll (I guess they didn't read the whole post). What I really mean is not that Windows users are unintelligent, but that a Linux Desktopper's intelligence would probably be above the average Windows user, by a small percentile.
Sadly, even having taken time to research and send this comment, I still get modded as a troll for even daring to leave my comment open to an interpretation as hammering Windows users.
You are right. Linux is not up there on the desktop. You may, however, theoretically raise the percentage of Linux "Googlers" by noting that these figures are usually calculated on a percentage of page accesses, and Windows users will, I postulate, access more pages served by Google than Linux users, since Linux desktoppers are on the cutting edge and may have better search techniques and not go trawling onto the 30th page of results in order to find something like some Windows novices. For sure, there are advanced searchers that use Windows too - don't take this as a troll.
Now, the interesting paragraph in the article should be held up for all to see:
The actual market-share shift from Windows to Linux is obviously more complicated. When someone purchases a PC with Windows pre-installed, and then overwrites that pre-installed Windows with Linux, nobody subtracts "one" from the installed base of Windows and then recalculates the Windows market share. So Windows starts out with a false boost and maintains its illusory market share even as it gets replaced by Linux.
This is not important in the server market. I would be surprised to see too many people buy servers pre-installed with Windows, only to re-install Linux. Major vendors already have Linux preinstall options. I think from a desktop perspective this paragraph is valid, but we must be cautious. Maybe some low end servers are really desktops that did come pre-installed with Windows, and then there's people like me who keep dual-boot on my workstation for the inevitable crazy formatted Word/Excel/PowerPoint document that I have to edit and reply without changing any of the crazy formatting. So we can take this minus one argument with a pinch of salt, but it's still an interesting one nonetheless.
Interesting statistics are out there though, but they're so well known... still, it's good to keep track. We are seeing big advances in web serving: Apache is now serving over 66% of active web sites (source: www.netcraft.com/survey/). This is overwhelmingly not Microsoft + Apache/Win32: of 11 million sites, only appx. 10 thousand are on an MS platform (source: www.netcraft.com/survey/). However, there will be a lot of people running not just GNU/Linux but also FreeBSD, Solaris, etc, and I can't find any data like that on Netcraft.
If you look at the graph over the last few months it would also seem to suggest that recently Apache has again gained market share against Microsoft platform standards like IIS and Commerce Server. Cool.
Now, as far as vendor evidence is concerned, IBM, Oracle and Dell have all featured Linux in advertising recently, and Linux is being used in high profile embedded apps like mobile handsets. This is excellent. Linux is being talked about more than ever, and I think it is the way forward for the IT industry in general. 2003 will be a good year for Linux, IMHO.
Hooray for GNU/Linux! and remember, the server market share is what really matters. Microsoft will dominate the desktop for some time to come, but I believe Linux will start to make inroads on the desktop market when kernel 2.6 comes out. I have just compiled 2.5.64 and I must say the X windows experience (I was running 2.4.18 before) is fantastic. Much smoother, and less jerky, with additional perks like better ALSA support, more hardware support for USB devices and of course Bluetooth and other things starting to happen nicely. The next commit to the kernel tree will be very interesting too. I'm keeping my eyes wide open and focused on Linux. I'm already making money converting sites from ASP/MSSQL to PHP/MySQL because hosting is much more expensive on Windows platforms and customers are feeling the pinch. They are ready to invest now, to save monthly outgoings, to weather 2003's rather bleak outlook.
Sounds to me like you need a plane to do this, or a car that can also become a helicopter, or something:-
FAQ:
A4. The route will be similar to a desert off-road race. For example, it will be possible for a skilled driver in a commercial four-wheel drive vehicle to traverse the route, although not necessarily at the speeds necessary to qualify for the award.
Not neccessarily at the speeds necessary to qualify for the award? So you need to design a vehicle, possibly, that can go FASTER than a commercial 4x4?
On the "making up speed on normal roads":-
FAQ A2. The exact route has not been determined, but the off-road portion will be approximately 250 miles.
TMDA for the first one. A sender has to validate his or her existence by replying to an automated mail and has to understand what it says in the email in order for the system to work.
Hash cash for the second one... an interesting system, that might just catch on.
I'd like to know if you practice what you preach. Do you go out of your way to use GPG/PGP or other encryption on all correspondance, run all your web applications under TLS/SSL, and generally advocate this? Or is cryptography something for which you think only specific applications are in order?
The reason I'm asking is because there are a lot of great techies out there, but it's rather the geeks that seem to do most of the advocacy and who seem to be able best to stick to their guns and force their peers to use GPG, etc.
Also, I used the word "abuse" also. Do you think you've ever gone over the top with crypting everything, or have you ever used your knowledge to gain access to information that you should not have seen (however trivial), or have you ever been paid to crack something encrypted, won prizes, that sort of thing?
Yeah well you can fix that. You'd have to flash it with the right BIOS instructions anyway, and there's no way a chip manufacturer would know what BIOS to flash on there (nor would it be worth their while to do it)
There are some good bios rescue techniques. There's an Open BIOS flashing project, if you're interested then I can get you the URL. Worked to flash upgrade my BIOS where the original MoBo mfr tool didn't work, and has some pretty cool other options too.
Replying to myself, there is this FANTASTIC looking project called Ardour which I will be checking out very soon. However, it won't sync with MIDI, but that's no so bad.
No I just have to find out if it has some standard effects or not. I need at least compression and reverb to save having to buy an expensive outside effects box.
This point has been made. When I can see some professional quality MULTITRACK recording software and the hardware support to go with it, I can get rid of Windows completely.
However, supporting pro hardware, and syncing MIDI with real audio, at 24 bit resolution, including a reasonable GUI to do it all with, is the domain of Mac/Windows only as far as I can tell. Cakewalk Sonar leads by a long way on this. You can add digital effects in real time, chuck in a canned drumbeat while you lay down the first couple tracks, export to a single compressed file (lossless) and all sorts of wonderful stuff. That's what a pro studio needs.
Editing single stereo files is NOT what professional recording studios do. Radio stations have very low requirements in this regard, they just pre-record shows and interviews, compress them in a lossy format, and send them out. Since FM and digital radios have analog or digital compression anyway, then OGG at high bitrates is fine. However, artefacts from SEVERAL mp3/ogg streams all in a multitrack environment is not acceptable.
The fact that film, as a medium, is not real-time like theatre, opera and other "live" performance arts, means that the judgement is really based on all sorts of things since the days when it became economically feasible to shoot a scene multiple times. Directors are probably getting a little bit too perfectionist because of the latest technologies and taking scenes way too many times, but the actors still have to produce the raw acting.
Now, as far back as the 30s (maybe further) there have been special effects and multiple takes used in film. Mattes and other painted backgrounds were used effectively in films as far back as the Wizard of Oz. Animation mixed with real acting happened in Mary Poppins, probably before that.
As long as real actors are being used, and their acting is not replaced by completely computer generated stuff, then it qualifies as "live action" in my book. Even if you edit out bad acting, there still has to be some good acting left.
Directors already get separate awards for how well they direct. Editors get awards for how well they edit. It's a bit like the old Karaoke machine claim "Makes a good singer sound great; makes a bad singer sound good!". You might agree with the first statement as far as a good singer is concerned, you will probably disagree with the second if you've ever had to sit through some hopeless singer's rendition of "My Way" late at night in a Karaoke bar. I think the same rules apply to cinema. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
However, the wood cut printing does not predate the clay stuff in China which I mentioned. Gutenberg started the industry of printing, not replaced until lithography somewhere towards the end of the 19th century.
Slashdot Mirror
It already has the bare bones. It's not as useable as Sonar, but then it's free and will soon be a lot better, if the mailing list is anything to go by.
-Simon
Beware of the man behind the curtain
However, even the non paranoid don't trust Microsoft. The problem is evidently that the suits are going for Microsoft while the techies (the real ones, who didn't get the job by the list of MCSEs in their CVs) just get beaten into submission.
Now, as for dedicated encoders, there must be some around. Like here, or maybe high speed here (just a quick Google turned these up).
Of course, another thing that can be improved is I/O bandwidth and compression tweaks. As storage gets cheaper and cheaper you can use HuffYUV lossless, and then have a background task to gradually compress to MPEG2 or DivX, I guess. Heck, you could even do that now, but then current generation CPUs can encode and decode at the same time anyways...
The problem with MythTV is that it uses a hacked (in the good sense) version of the NuppelVideo compression scheme... I quote from MythTV:
MythTV really looks like it rocks. I just need a better machine to test it out (mine is an appallingly slow poor old thing :'( )
For examples: Here, , and also here
If you install CUPS and Samba, you should be able to print to it using Windows printer sharing, and save buying a separate network printer buffer. Or, you could hook it up to your SuSE box, and have your Windows box print to it again via Samba and CUPS - it will appear as a Windows network printer to your network.
Digital video card support is limited, but it is there, AFAIK, in Linux.
Ideally the box would compress MPEG-2 or 4, and allow you to interface it to a PC for archiving of old shows onto a SVCD or VCD format / MPEG-2 / DivX.
Wait... what am I saying? Why not just buy a PC with an ATI All-in-wonder card?
PVR will only work if there's enough take up. Sky, in the UK, as well as Canal+ in France, are setting up their next generation to go PVR, as *part* of the regular satellite subscription service. This will work. Sadly, the cable companies were not in on the deal with SonicBlue. If they had been, and could have charged $10 extra per month for it or something, and made a deal on hardware, then it would be workable. You cannot beat the giants, they will be right behind with their products.
Use at least a lossless compressor like HuffYUV or even, with a good machine, you could DivX or something on the fly at a high bitrate, and you /could/ even capture the audio in MP3 directly, or else just at 44.1Khz/16bit.
There's no way you should be needing that much hard disk space for a 50 min capture. I only have 80 Gig in all, and I captured and compressed a 2 hour film in MPEG-1 format, high quality, on the fly, on a PII - 350MHz @ 400x300 or something around that don't remember the exact figure. If I had a better CPU I could do better resolution and MPEG-2 on the fly.
Your battery won't last longer unless you generate less heat in the first place. Just taking it away more efficiently doesn't mean it's not generated by the CPU in the first place, hence it's not going to save battery power /except/ by removing the need for a fan. But then they don't eat a lot of power do they?
Sadly, even having taken time to research and send this comment, I still get modded as a troll for even daring to leave my comment open to an interpretation as hammering Windows users.
Now, the interesting paragraph in the article should be held up for all to see:
This is not important in the server market. I would be surprised to see too many people buy servers pre-installed with Windows, only to re-install Linux. Major vendors already have Linux preinstall options. I think from a desktop perspective this paragraph is valid, but we must be cautious. Maybe some low end servers are really desktops that did come pre-installed with Windows, and then there's people like me who keep dual-boot on my workstation for the inevitable crazy formatted Word/Excel/PowerPoint document that I have to edit and reply without changing any of the crazy formatting. So we can take this minus one argument with a pinch of salt, but it's still an interesting one nonetheless.
Interesting statistics are out there though, but they're so well known... still, it's good to keep track. We are seeing big advances in web serving: Apache is now serving over 66% of active web sites (source: www.netcraft.com/survey/). This is overwhelmingly not Microsoft + Apache/Win32: of 11 million sites, only appx. 10 thousand are on an MS platform (source: www.netcraft.com/survey/). However, there will be a lot of people running not just GNU/Linux but also FreeBSD, Solaris, etc, and I can't find any data like that on Netcraft.
If you look at the graph over the last few months it would also seem to suggest that recently Apache has again gained market share against Microsoft platform standards like IIS and Commerce Server. Cool.
Now, as far as vendor evidence is concerned, IBM, Oracle and Dell have all featured Linux in advertising recently, and Linux is being used in high profile embedded apps like mobile handsets. This is excellent. Linux is being talked about more than ever, and I think it is the way forward for the IT industry in general. 2003 will be a good year for Linux, IMHO.
Hooray for GNU/Linux! and remember, the server market share is what really matters. Microsoft will dominate the desktop for some time to come, but I believe Linux will start to make inroads on the desktop market when kernel 2.6 comes out. I have just compiled 2.5.64 and I must say the X windows experience (I was running 2.4.18 before) is fantastic. Much smoother, and less jerky, with additional perks like better ALSA support, more hardware support for USB devices and of course Bluetooth and other things starting to happen nicely. The next commit to the kernel tree will be very interesting too. I'm keeping my eyes wide open and focused on Linux. I'm already making money converting sites from ASP/MSSQL to PHP/MySQL because hosting is much more expensive on Windows platforms and customers are feeling the pinch. They are ready to invest now, to save monthly outgoings, to weather 2003's rather bleak outlook.
FAQ: A4. The route will be similar to a desert off-road race. For example, it will be possible for a skilled driver in a commercial four-wheel drive vehicle to traverse the route, although not necessarily at the speeds necessary to qualify for the award.
Not neccessarily at the speeds necessary to qualify for the award? So you need to design a vehicle, possibly, that can go FASTER than a commercial 4x4?
On the "making up speed on normal roads":-
FAQ A2. The exact route has not been determined, but the off-road portion will be approximately 250 miles.
That's right, the OFF ROAD portion is 250mi.
Maybe watch a little less South Park as well...
Hash cash for the second one... an interesting system, that might just catch on.
The reason I'm asking is because there are a lot of great techies out there, but it's rather the geeks that seem to do most of the advocacy and who seem to be able best to stick to their guns and force their peers to use GPG, etc.
Also, I used the word "abuse" also. Do you think you've ever gone over the top with crypting everything, or have you ever used your knowledge to gain access to information that you should not have seen (however trivial), or have you ever been paid to crack something encrypted, won prizes, that sort of thing?
You can reject IP addresses that don't reverse and all sorts of hocus pocus with an MTA like Postfix.
So what you are asking is possible.
There are some good bios rescue techniques. There's an Open BIOS flashing project, if you're interested then I can get you the URL. Worked to flash upgrade my BIOS where the original MoBo mfr tool didn't work, and has some pretty cool other options too.
No I just have to find out if it has some standard effects or not. I need at least compression and reverb to save having to buy an expensive outside effects box.
However, supporting pro hardware, and syncing MIDI with real audio, at 24 bit resolution, including a reasonable GUI to do it all with, is the domain of Mac/Windows only as far as I can tell. Cakewalk Sonar leads by a long way on this. You can add digital effects in real time, chuck in a canned drumbeat while you lay down the first couple tracks, export to a single compressed file (lossless) and all sorts of wonderful stuff. That's what a pro studio needs.
Editing single stereo files is NOT what professional recording studios do. Radio stations have very low requirements in this regard, they just pre-record shows and interviews, compress them in a lossy format, and send them out. Since FM and digital radios have analog or digital compression anyway, then OGG at high bitrates is fine. However, artefacts from SEVERAL mp3/ogg streams all in a multitrack environment is not acceptable.
Yeah, but you pay / suffer way more for that than sleeping with your secretary in a real office, probably ;-)
Yes but Pluto was NOT discovered in Roman times, right? Only the "Visible to naked eye" planets.
Now, as far back as the 30s (maybe further) there have been special effects and multiple takes used in film. Mattes and other painted backgrounds were used effectively in films as far back as the Wizard of Oz. Animation mixed with real acting happened in Mary Poppins, probably before that.
As long as real actors are being used, and their acting is not replaced by completely computer generated stuff, then it qualifies as "live action" in my book. Even if you edit out bad acting, there still has to be some good acting left.
Directors already get separate awards for how well they direct. Editors get awards for how well they edit. It's a bit like the old Karaoke machine claim "Makes a good singer sound great; makes a bad singer sound good!". You might agree with the first statement as far as a good singer is concerned, you will probably disagree with the second if you've ever had to sit through some hopeless singer's rendition of "My Way" late at night in a Karaoke bar. I think the same rules apply to cinema. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
You mean if someone bothered to name it after a Roman God, right?
However, the wood cut printing does not predate the clay stuff in China which I mentioned. Gutenberg started the industry of printing, not replaced until lithography somewhere towards the end of the 19th century.