A Simpler Way of Converting and Uploading Videos from Canon to YouTube

I recently uploaded a video of the kids using our Canon Powershot SX210 as the video camera. Since Canon uses the Quicktime format, I had to do several steps to downsize it from its huge HD format into something that will load easily to YouTube using Microsoft Expressions. This involved several steps as described in my previous blog post.

Then I came across a free software that pretty much does the whole works at much fewer steps. Check out the Freemake Video Converter. It allows you to convert between video formats, while changing resolution at the same time. It even comes with a button that will let you directly upload the video to YouTube at a click of a button (no need to open your browser and go to YouTube).

Freemake even allows you to edit your video (ex. cut out un-needed portions) prior to conversion or upload. Very versatile. And to top it all off, its completely free software. Below is a video from Ethan's birthday using the same camera and Freemake to convert and upload it to YouTube.

Converting DVD into AVI for YouTube Upload

I recorded our appearance on Kabuhayang Swak na Swak the other day. Hey, its not everyday that one gets featured in a major TV channel. Ok, ok, so it was on a Sunday morning at 7am. But quite surprisingly, a few people whom I know saw it, and several interested prospects txt-ed us to know more about the product.

I used my old Philips DVD Recorder to save the show for posterity. The Philips recorder saves its recordings onto its internal hard drive. It does allow you to burn it into removable media as a regular DVD using its burn capability. Since my objective is to upload the video to YouTube, that got me thinking -- how do I convert DVD to a format supported by YouTube?

YouTube supports the major formats like MPEG, Quicktive (.mov), AVI, and Windows Media Video. Unfortunately, the only DVD converter I know is the DivX Converter. And YouTube does not support .divx. I've previously relied on my tech guys to convert DVD music video to WMV for Fliptunes. But now, it looks like I have to figure out how to do this on my own. As usual, first stop is Google!

My search led me to a free software called bitRipper. My search highlighted the word FREE when I searched for a converter, and bitRipper appeared at the top of the list. The installer file is small enough and the website looks very professional. So I installed it on my home PC and ripped the DVD that my Philips recorder burned.

bitRipper worked quickly on the DVD. Its a no fuss, no nonsense program. I did not really tinker with the settings options anymore and just used the default. In a few minutes, I got a 180mb AVI version of the 1-hour DVD content.

Now, obviously, I can't upload the entire show since a large part of it is irrelevant and it contains several commercials. So I needed another program to cut it down to just the portion that I needed (our segment!). I used another free video editing program called Avidemux. Just like bitRipper, its a no-frills program which does what its supposed to do very well. In a matter of minutes, I chopped down the file to just 20MB and just contains our segment. Then off it goes to YouTube!

A strange note -- the day after I did this, my monitor resolution went haywire. The usual 1440x900 widescreen format disappeared. In place are the usual resolutions which are meant more for 4:3 monitors. I tried reinstalling the video drivers to no avail. Finally in desperation, I uninstalled bitRipper. After a reboot, my screen was back to 1440x900. I'm not really sure what happened. I won't categorically say that it was bitRipper that caused the problem as it was working fine after my ripping session. The problem only cropped up after the reboot.

Shopping for Nintendo DS Lite at V-Mall

Took Caitlin shopping at Greenhills to buy her Nintendo DS Lite. I promised her the unit if she ends the school year at ICA with at least second honors, and she did. Well, a deal's a deal.

I hate shopping at Greenhills. There's just too many people and I hate the whole tiangge concept. Too crowded. Too many people bumping into you. We went to the Virra Mall area (now renamed to V-Mall) to look for a unit. We asked around until we settled with a store selling the Nintendo DS Lite package at Php7,600 inclusive of the R4 kit and 80 games pre-loaded.

The R4 is a compatibility kit that allows one to copy games onto a regular Micro SD card. The DS Lite will see it like it was a regular DS Lite cartridge. Below is a video of how it is used.

While at V-Mall, I also saw a couple of video products that I've only recently read about in gadgets magazine. The Western Digital's WD TV, which allows you to copy your movies onto a regular USB using almost any imaginable format, and the WD TV will let you play it onto your HD TV supposedly at 1080p via HDMI cables. The product sells at V-Mall for Php6k++. That's not so bad considering its sold in the US for USD99. The only downside is it has no network support. So you have to transfer whatever you want to view onto a flash drive first. Of course, USB flash drives are dirt cheap already at CD-R King. I think 8Gb Kingstons cost less than Php1k nowadays.

I also saw one shop selling Popcorn Hour already for Php13k++. It retails for about USD215 in the US, so the pricing is not bad. Popcorn Hour is a network video appliance that lets you stream your videos from a PC onto your TV or projector. It also supports most of the popular formats. The A-110 version can have an internal hard drive and has a native BitTorrent client to let you download movies directly to the unit without the need for a PC.

Both products would be a nice addition to our home because I don't have an Full HD player yet and our Samsung Series 5 LCD can do Full HD. However, I feel that I should just wait for the next generation of video players which will most likely have networking built in already. And our home theater has an RJ45 outlet that connects it to the home network.

The WD TV and Popcorn Hour seem to be just stop-gap products while the mainstream consumer electronics play catch up. The same thing pretty much happened to TiVo. It was very innovative at the time, but now, consumer electronics giants like Philips, Sony, etc. have features similar to the TiVo built it to their DVD players. Even Samsung boasts of LCD TV's with built-in TiVo-like functions already.

Here's related article on Nintendo DS and R4 from the venerable PC World.

Streaming Video to your Home Theater via your Home LAN

I was just talking about the possibility of viewing DivX movies over the network last week with the announcement of DivX Connected. Well, it seems that there are other consumer electronic products already in the market which specifically targets this genre.

For those using Windows Media Center on their PC's, the Linksys DMA2x00 allows media files residing on your PC to be "extended" to your TV or home theater. It acts as a gateway between the PC world via an ethernet connection, and the TV/home theater world via standard audio and video connectors like HDMI, S-Video, RCA video plugs and component video. It also comes with Wifi connectivity, but users are cautioned with the quality of the stream if you are on standard 802.11G. The relatively low (54mbps) speed will cause high-definition video to jitter. A wired connection is still best. But if Wifi is really a must, then at least go with 802.11N.

If you are not running Windows Media Center on your PC (I think Win XP does not have this feature), the NetGear EVA8000 may be a better choise. Its a more generic gateway implementation. It reads your media file via the standard network shared folders of your home network; stream it over the network; then output it to your TV or projector.

The EVA8000 is still pretty much a bleeding-edge/first generation product. So don't expect a bug-free experience. This review from C-Net shows that it required several reboots in their test cases. The product specs are also still a bit conflicting. In some articles, it says the EVA8000 supports DivX. In others, its not mentioned.

I mentioned in my blog entry last month that my Philips DVDR3455H Player can play AVI. I found out this weekend that it seems to be picky on the kind of AVI file it will play. I was able to download the BBC Planet Earth series via BitTorrent. The AVI files are in 720p HD format and each were about 2.2GB in size. When I tried converting it to DivX, my DivX Converter gets an error midway. So I burnt it onto a DVD disk as AVI and tried to play it on my Philips DVDR player. It just keeps causing the player to reboot! So I guess to view these types of files, I would rely on products like those above to watch it on TV or projector.

Still, I look forward to having players in the future like my Philips DVDR to have network ports and do their own streaming directly from the network so that I don't have to buy a 3rd party gateway to do that work.

Authoring DivX Videos

I downloaded a 30-day trial copy of the DivX Author software from, well where else -- DivX. Creating DivX movies complete with DVD-style menus was pretty easy. You can import still images/photos, music files or video files (divx, avi, etc.). Video files can easily be edited with the built-in Editor. You can cut sections you don't want, or cut only the section that you do want. Then you put a music track to serve as the background music.

All these look great. The only problem is -- the output of DivX Author can only be played by DivX Ultra certified players. As far as I know, there are no DivX Ultra-certified players in the Philippine market yet. A scan of the list of certified players at DivX shows one that does interest me though -- the Philips DVP5982 has the features including an HDMI interface and upscaling capability to HD (1080i/1080p). And most amazingly, it lists for as low as $59.99 at Circuit City! At the current exchange rate, that's only around P2,500! And so far, I'm pretty happy with the performance of my Philips DVR, which unfortunately, is only DivX standard certified (not Ultra).

Watching the Pacquiao-Marquez Fight in 40 mins

Today's the big boxing bout between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez. Knowing how the commercials last longer than the actual rounds, I decided to just record the entire fight on my Philips DVD Recorder/Player. That way, I could just skip through all the commercials. Since the match went the full 12 rounds, and each round takes 3 mins., I watched the entire fight for 36 mins. vs. about 3 hrs, I think on free TV.

I noted in a previous blog entry about some odd behavior of my DVDR. I made a couple more observations over the weekend as I try some combinations that I haven't previously attempted. For example, it seems that the DVDR can actually record a TV program, while at the same time, playback a recorded episode from the same hard drive simultaneously! In operating system parlance, the firmware seems to be multi-threaded (or at the very least, can perform asynchronous callbacks). I was expecting it to complain when I tried watching a recorded episode while it was recording, but surprisingly, it did not. I noticed some slight skipping in 1 scene during the playback, but that's about it. It was fairly smooth considering it was recording at the same time.

But the strange thing was -- when I tried playing a DVD while it was recording a TV program on the hard disk, it prevented me from doing so. An icon appeared apparently telling me that DVD playback is not allowed during hard disk recording. Now that was strange. The DVD playback was happening on a different media source: the DVD disc drive, as opposed to, the built-in hard drive. If it can handle playback on the same hard drive where it was recording, why would it not handle a playback from a different drive? Wouldn't that actually be simpler since the playback and the recording would not be contending on the same device? Its one of those eccentricities just like not being able to play DivX files from the USB, I guess.

Anyway, I'm beginning to appreciate the DivX format as played on my Philip DVDR. Quality is as good as regular DVD (assuming, of course, that the original source that was encoded into DivX was of good quality). I'm sure that in the very near future, somebody would figure out how to put an ethernet network interface into these personal video recorders and make them IP-accessible. Then you can store all your DivX movies in a central home server with a large drive where the player can just stream it.

The Absolutely Non-sensical Marimar Grand Finale Fight Scene

Just to make things perfectly clear -- I don't watch cheezy Tagalog telenovelas. I couldn't care less about ABS-CBN vs. GMA fighting over the ratings of prime-time soaps. And I certainly don't care about the grand finale / big wedding scene of Sergio (Dingdong Dantes) to Marimar (Marian Rivera) in GMA7's top-rating soap Marimar (or is it supposed to be "MariMar"?). But since my 4-year old daughter, Caitlin, had to go to sleep already and she did not want to miss the big wedding scene, I had to record the episode for her using my trusty Philips DVDR.

What was recorded on my DVDR had to be one of the stupidest fight scene I have ever seen -- EVER! Its so dumb that I can't imagine how this tv series has managed to be the top-rating show for the past 8 months or so (well, for the guys, I can sort of understand because Marian Rivera is pretty hot). But seriously, if that fight scene was representative of the quality of the story for the entire season, then I have to say its really lame!

I started recording at around the scene where Marimar was fighting the evil character played by Katrina Halili. Sorry, but I have no idea what is the name of Katrina's character, so for the purpose of this blog entry, I will refer to her as "The Evil Lady". Anyway, their fight began at a place which kind of resembled a junk yard. It was a night scene. And Sergio were fighting the guys -- I think he was there to rescue Marimar. It was good kick-ass action with Marimar slamming The Evil Lady's head onto the car window a couple of times, and causing her face to bleed everywhere. The Evil Lady runs away and Marimar runs after her. Take note that this was a night scene.

Then in the next scene, it was already mid-day / broad daylight -- and Marimar was still running after The Evil Lady! So let me get this straight -- they were like chasing each other for at least the past 8 hours?! They were no longer in the junk yard but were in some open field /hill (well, surely after running for at least 8 hrs they must have left the junk yard already) and there was a white helicopter waiting with its blades whirling already.

Hmm... was that Marimar's chopper or was it the getaway vehicle for Evil Lady? Well, Evil Lady went straight to the helicopter and boarded it with Marimar hot on her heels and also boarded it before it had the chance to lift off. Aha! So it must be the getaway vehicle for Evil Lady! I mean, otherwise, it would not make any sense to run and board your enemy's (Marimar's) chopper, right? I think.

Then Marimar and Evil Lady duked it out at the back seat of the chopper while the pilot lifts-off and mysteriously hovers about 10 ft. off the ground for a really long time -- or at least really long enough for Sergio to come from nowhere. Presumably he has been running the past 8 hrs also looking for Marimar. Strangely, in the previous scene when he was talking to Richard Gomez's character at the same junk yard, he did not even have any idea that Marimar was in the same place. So how the heck did he figure out where to chase them?! But anyway, since the pilot conveniently hovered his chopper a few feet off the ground for what seemed like an eternity, Sergio makes it and jumps to catch the landing gear of the chopper. He then hangs on there uselessly while the ladies continue to kick each other at the back seat.

Now as to why the chopper pilot lifted off with the ladies fighting at the back totally did not make sense to me either. If assuming that the white chopper is really the getaway vehicle, then that makes the pilot the Evil Henchman. What self-respecting Evil Henchman would fly the chopper instead of just keep it grounded and helping your Evil Mistress against her lone opponent?! Surely the two of you can beat the crap out of Marimar; dump her out of the chopper; then fly away to safety! But NO! The Evil Hencman/Pilot decides to lift-off with his mistress in apparent danger.

Anyway, going back to the fight, Marimar manages to kick Evil Lady out of the chopper. She miraculously manages to catch the landing gear of the chopper also to stop her fall. (Evil Pilot should have landed back his chopper so that Evil Lady will not fall.) Since Sergio was on the other landing gear, Sergio gives her a kick in the gut causing her to lose her hold on the landing gear and falling to her death. I guess the chopper must have flown farther up than the initial 10 ft where it was hovering from earlier (although I never noticed it).

Evil Lady falls to her death. Then the camera pans to show some crocodiles. Then next scene shows Evil Lady's dead body being dragged off the camera (presumably by the crocs). Ok, where the heck did the crocs come from?! Marimar and Evil Lady were running in some open field /hill. It wasn't in some marshland. Crocs just don't hang around regular open fields where choppers can land.

Then next scene shows Marimar and Sergio cuddling inside the chopper. I guess Sergio must have eventually figured out how to climb the chopper from the landing gear. And to add insult to injury, Evil Henchman/Pilot flies them away into safety (and to their impending wedding)! Huh?! If you were the Evil Pilot, why the heck would you do that? Its not like Sergio had a gun pointed to his head telling him to drive. He was doing it voluntarily!

Could it be then that the white chopper was really Marimar's or Sergio's all along, and not Evil Lady's? But if so, why didn't the pilot just keep the chopper grounded and help Marimar beat the crap out of Evil Lady? Why lift off and put their lives in danger? And why did Evil Lady run into the chopper with Marimar hot on her heels if it was Marimar's chopper all along? Who would run head-on to her enemy's getaway vehicle?!

And to think that all these senseless action scenes happened in a span of like 10 mins (minus the long dragging commercials in-between, of course). Arrgghh!! Who knows that other illogical plot actually transpired in the past 8 months?!

Testing DivX

Ok, so I'm a bit of a latecomer when it comes to DivX. I've never really had any need to use it before. But recently, I was trying to make a copy of a DVD from my hard disk (he he he) and when I was using Nero to burn it as DVD Video, the resulting disk image gets bloated. The original five (5) .VOB files which used to fit in a single DVD Video could no longer fit into a single DVD. I can only manage to put in one .VOB file with Nero. So I decided to do some research on DivX and see if it can solve my problem of cramming the original DVD VOB files onto a single disc.

In layman's terms, DivX is to video what MP3 was to audio. Its a video encoding format that is supposed to give incredible compression with very good quality video and audio. One can download a DivX Player and a 15-day trial copy of the DivX Encoder from the DivX site. If you don't want to watch movies on your PC with the DivX Player, there are several DivX standalone players that you can connect directly to your TV set. Incidentally, my oft-mentioned Philips DVDR3455H Recorder is one such standalone player which supports DivX.

My experiments with DivX so far has mixed results. When I encoded some Quicktime .MOV files, it complained that there are "invalid video streams" and refused to encode it. There were some .MOV files that it encoded without any hitch. But I noticed the file sizes are practically the same. So I guess .MOV files are pretty optimized already and there is not much that DivX can do further. The .MOV files which takes up only about a quarter of my 19" widescreen AOC LCD monitor (at 1440 x 900 resolution), when converted to .divx and played on my Philips Player at home, comes out unbelievably clear on the TV. It looks almost as clear as watching a DVD video.

I also tried dragging-and-dropping the .VOB files mentioned above onto the DivX Encoder, and got really strange results. Although the conversion went through, the file actually became three times (3x) larger! Doing the same for the Windows Audio-Visual Interleave (AVI) format yields a slightly better result. It reduced the original AVI file by about 15 to 20 percent only. Its still far from fantastic. But now, at least I can view the videos on the TV instead of on the PC.

The DivX Player has an interface similar to Windows Media Player wherein you can drag-and-drop the movies you like to burn onto its "burn list". Then just click the "burn" button to initiate transfer. However, I noticed that it seems to only support CD burning and not DVD. Maybe I'm better off using Nero to burn onto Data CD or Data DVD format.

The DivX Encoder will let you combine several input files and merge them into a single DivX file complete with menu. But if you want the merged output file to be in some other format like MPG or VOB, you have to use a 3rd party software. The Allok Video Joiner shareware tool allows you to merge multiple DivX files into a single large file with the format of your choice. The unregistered/free trial copy only converts half of each file though. :P I was able to merge 7 x DivX files into a single DVD .VOB file.

Personally, I'm not yet that sold to DivX. I guess I will still have to do some more experimentation.

User-generated Video Content

There's probably no one alive who has not heard of YouTube, that giant Internet-based video sharing site which was purchased by Google for a billion dollars or two. Sure it has its share of lawsuits from the movie and tv companies because some users upload copyrighted materials, but there is no denying that it has the largest video collection of almost any topic that you can think of. It recently launched a mobile version of the site for people who wants to view it using their mobile phones. Smart claims their 3G network supports it. But when I tried using my Nokia 6680 on Smart's network, the built-in RealPlayer gave me some error (I forgot what it was).

To reach the largest number of users and to make it easy for people to view its content, YouTube uses the Adobe/Macromedia Flash format. Since Flash is already installed in most modern-day browsers, viewers do not need to download a separate plug-in unlike the other video sharing service. The downside of this approach is the format that YouTube uses is still the old Flash format (Flash 7). Its quality leaves much to be desired. If you compare it with its newer rivals, the poor video quality becomes apparent.

The top 2 video sharing sites that PC World recently reviewed and rated based on quality and performance are Blip.tv and Stage6 (note: YouTube ranked only No. 7 in the list). What these two lack in content, they make up for superb video streaming that will hopefully bring more people in to use their service. Both are free and follow the same YouTube business model of placing ads.

One of the shows that I saw at Blip.tv is the Midwest Teen Sex Show. Its a really funny skit show ran by several teens (although Nikol looks kinda old to me). But it is worthwhile to note the size and resolution of their show versus the ones you would normally see in YouTube.

Stage6 requires you to download the DivX plug-in and install it onto your browser. This is because their video is saved in DivX format. This is not surprising because Stage6 is operated by the same people who developed the DivX codec/format! Downloading and installing the plug-in was quite trivial. What I found really annoying was the plug-in installer also automatically installed along the Yahoo Toolbar onto my browser without asking for my permission. I had to manually uninstall it from my Windows Control Panel. Just for that -- I really wouldn't recommend this site. :P

Metacafe was not included in the PC World roundup. I don't know if it was because its quality was not worthy to be included in the Top 10 list? Personally, I think the quality is comparable to YouTube. One of their top draw is a guy named Kip Kay who comes up with these really amazing do-it-yourself gadgets and tricks like making infrared goggles and increasing your car's mileage by using low-cost, everyday materials.

But for most people, I guess YouTube will still be the main destination. And with Google's resources behind it, they will most likely upgrade their video quality pretty soon. So in the meantime, enjoy one of my favorite YouTube channels -- HotForWords with the linguist/philologist, Marina.