Want to add video to your website? Well take a look at Flowplayer, it is a free open source player that is very easy to implement.
http://flowplayer.org/demos/installation/index.html
http://flowplayer.org/documentation/installation/index.html
Adobe is making the next version of their “Content Aware Fill” feature in Photoshop even more intelligent, this will allow you to edit out even complex structures from pictures and this without advanced knowledge of photo editing.
See the video for a demonstration, it is quite amazing.
Here is yet another capture program for capturing online video streams “Web Video Cap” (eg. for youtube etc etc).
Pros; Easy operations, it will capture everything in the background, its from our friends at www.nirsoft.net whom usually makes excellent tools.
Cons; Unless you stop it/configure it, it will capture EVERYTHING/ANYTIME.
As with most other capture products you need to install WinPcap (a resident background driver) so nothing new there.
Download Web Video Capture here; http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/web_video_capture.html
Read much more here; http://www.ghacks.net/2010/04/02/download-online-videos-with-web-video-cap/
I somewhere read about this software a while ago called “Boxee”, it’s a new mediacenter software which can be downloaded for free from http://www.boxee.tv But with so much mediacenter software out there it got lost in the masses. Anyway, recently I was reminded as D-Link is rattling their sable with the forthcoming release of the Boxee Box (well that is hardly going to be the name but still).. It looks VERY interesting especially with a full qwerty keyboard being merged into the very neat remote that come with it, and it does seem somewhat more interesting than the WD Live TV (A LOT more apps/widgets) and a more finished design overall.
It does indeed look interesting. Boxee seem to be based upon XBMC (X-Box Media Center) http://xbmc.org/download (which I btw still use on my old trusty X-Box 1 Classic)
Should you want to preview the experience you can download the free software for your pc/mac here http://www.boxee.tv/box
A few notes though;
A quick look at what formats it recognizes;
Video:
Lyd:
Billeder:
So if you want to be totally up-beat or perhaps are testing out Boxee then you will want to install the latest Adobe Flash Player (Boxee actually seem to require this), but no worries you can get it right here;
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
Among other things this version will add HW acceleration, neat for Netbooks as compatible GFX cards now can assist in playing video and thus perhaps adding HD playback to your otherwise slow Atom processor (however this DO require a compatible GFX card to work like the Nvidia ION and others).
So you upgraded to Windows 7 but are as always having issues with Codec’s (A codec is the ‘decoder/encoder’ for a video or soundfile in a specific format eg. DivX or Xvid).
Under Windows Vista the Vista Codec pack seemed to work perfectly, but I was reluctant to install it on Windows 7 out of fear to create problems for H.264 (H.264 is now native to Windows 7, which was not the case for Windows Vista). However in the end I had to (too many things did not work without these codec’s), anyway it turned out that the Vista Codec Pack would not install on Windows 7, it cleverly detected that it was a new OS and pointed out that a new package was available here.
So all in all, my worries was laid to rest and I downloaded Windows 7 codec pack and everything was back to the old working state.
Do you need this codec pack? Well very likely not, most users can download the VLC player this player has build in most common codec’s and can thus play most video/snd files you get hold of, however if you need to do video conversion etc. then it is a different matter, Windows then need to be able to ‘understand’ the fileformat and this may ofthen require a codec. The rule should be, try VLC player, if its enough dont install anything more if not install the Windows 7 codec pack or Windows Vista Codec pack (also works for Windows XP).
You likely already know about VLC player from VideoLan.org? It is a nifty little player that has several cool features, like; it is free, it has build in codex’es and oh yeah it is free 
The really cool thing about VLC is that it come with build in codex’es, this is clever because it is often here mediaplaying go wrong, a user simply does not have the right codex and can not display a mediaclip, many PC users have downloaded a codex pack – however your old aunt Oda have not and cant watch the videoclips you put on your website.. Well VLC deal with this by integrating the codexes, this way you wont have to think about it.
In the past the VLC player had one drawback, it was ugly and un userfriendly, however in the first final (it has been in beta for many years now) version this seem to be fixed.. the player looks nice and is easy to navigate..
Download it here;
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html
Just before I was about to post this I was informed about another player very similar;
http://kmplayer.en.softonic.com/ KMPlayer
looks very nice (possibly even a bit better than VLC, so give it a spin also)..
I always wanted a video camera, but to be honest have had very little use for one.. But some day I came across IronGeek.org’s site and was intrigued by this cheap HD camera, and as it proved to be even cheaper in Denmark and I had just received a small bonus check from my insurance company on just that amount, well I ended up buying one..
So how is it really? Well it’s small very light weight and I’d say good value for money, it lack optical zoom and the sound could have been slightly better (but it’s not bad at all).. I’ll see if I can’t record a small demo video and put it up here for you to see some time in the future. Recording is done in .mov format and thus you need to convert it if you wish to transfer it to DVD, but computerplayback works like a charm with Apple Quicktime (which also let you stick to HD).. Recording of 1h full hd is 4gb, so I added a 16gb sd card which leaves plenty of space for recording. All in all I am satisfied.
A few links to news/reviews;
http://www.product-reviews.net/2008/08/12/new-aiptek-pocketdv-ahd-300-1080p-camcorder/
http://www.aiptek.eu/index.php?option=com_product&task=view&productid=162&Itemid=278
And I bought mine here;
http://www.mobiludsalg.dk/pi/Aiptek_PocketDV_AHD_300_11694_.aspx
Which was the cheapest store at the time (DKK 1.000,- €133).
Update; I had some minor problems with video’s I transferred from this camera (they would ‘pixelate’), I actually thought the camera might have been broken – but it turned out to be quite a trivial matter see the explanation here http://www.kanmandet.dk/?p=813 now video’s transferred from the camera is crisp and sharp..
DoubleTwist will allow you to sync music and video from Itunes to a lot of other devices than Iphone/Ipod (such as PSP, Blackberry, Nokia etc), and whom other than DVD JON to be involved in such an annoyance to Apple.
Download a free beta from the DoubleTwist website.
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Ever had a video or audio file you could not play? Most likely yes and the reason is 99% sure a missing codec, a good and easy approach to combat this is to install a codec pack which contain most used codec’es (currently I use Vista Codec Pack which seem to contain all that I need and btw also works fine on XP).
Should you however run into problems with codec’es then you may want to take a look at this “Codec detective” which will assist you in determining just what codec’es you have and their versions, this combined with a little googleing should be of great help.
