Tag: media center

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2008 Olympics

So I wasn’t planning to blog about the 2008 Olympics, mostly because I’m not much of a sports fans, but over the past few days, I’ve accumulated a few things regarding the 2008 Olympics I wanted to share.

First, Artemyst blogged about the 2008 Beijing Olympics song/music video: 北京歡迎你 (Beijing Welcomes You). Update: It appears YouTube has taken down the video. Here’s a mirror.

At first I found the accent a bit off, but after awhile, I realized many of the cast were Hong Kong actors singing in Mandarin. The lyrics were borrowed from Artemyst’s blog, but the English translations were rather bad in the YouTube video description. I’ve gone ahead and did my best at translating it:

北京歡迎你/群星
Beijing Welcomes You/Various Artists

作曲：小柯
Composer: Xiao Ke

填詞：林夕
Lyrics: Leo Ku

主唱：群星
Artist: Celebrities

【陳天佳】 迎接另一個晨曦　帶來全新空氣
[Chen Tian Jia] We welcome the next morning, bringing in fresh air

【劉歡】 氣息改變情味不變　茶香飄滿情誼
[Liu Huan] Weather may change but friendship will not, the tea’s fragrance is filled with friendship

【那英】 我家大門常打開　開放懷抱等你
[Na Ying] Our door is always open, waiting for you with open arms

【孫燕姿】 擁抱過就有了默契　你會愛上這裡
[Stefanie Sun] After hugging and developing a bond, you will fall in love with here

【孫悅】 不管遠近都是客人　請不用客氣
[Sun Yue] Everyone is a guest no matter how far away, please feel at home

【王力宏】 相約好了再一起　我們歡迎你
[Wang Lee Hom] Agreed to get together, we welcome you

【韓紅】 我家種著萬年青　開放每段傳奇
[Han Hong] We’ve planted evergreens, displaying every spectacle

【周華健】 為傳統的土壤播種　為你留下回憶
[Wakin Chau] Sowing seeds into the soil, leaving you with good memories

【梁詠琪】 陌生熟悉都是客人　請不用拘禮
[Gigi Leung] Strangers and friends are all guests, no need to be formal

【羽泉】 第幾次來沒關係　有太多話題
[Yu Quan] No matter how many times you come, there are much to talk about

【成龍】 北京歡迎你　為你開天辟地
[Jackie Chan] Beijing welcomes you, opening your eyes to a new world

【任賢齊】 流動中的魅力充滿著朝氣
[Richie Ren] The flowing charm is full of life

【蔡依林】 北京歡迎你　在太陽下分享呼吸
[Jolin Tsai] Beijing welcomes you, sharing the joy of breathing under the sun

【孫楠】 在黃土地刷新成績
[Sun Nan] Making new records on our yellow soil

【周筆暢】 我家大門常打開　開懷容納天地
[Bibi Zhou] Our door is always open, welcoming the world with open arms

【韋唯】 歲月綻放青春笑容　迎接這個日期
[Wei Wei] The old ages is smiling like youth, welcoming this day

【黃曉明】 天大地大都是朋友　請不用客氣
[Huang Xiao Ming] Everyone is friends, please feel at home

【韓庚】 畫意詩情帶笑意　只為等待你
[Han Geng] The arts bring smiles, only waiting for you

【汪峰】 北京歡迎你　像音樂感動你
[Wang Feng] Beijing welcomes you, like how the music moves you

【莫文蔚】 讓我們都加油去超越自己
[Karen Mok] Let’s work hard together to go beyond ourselves

【譚晶】 北京歡迎你　有夢想誰都了不起
[Tan Jing] Beijing welcomes you, with dreams everyone can be great

【陳奕迅】 有勇氣就會有奇跡
[Eason Chan] Having courage will bring miracles

【閻維文】 北京歡迎你　為你開天辟地
[Yan Weiwen] Beijing welcomes you, opening your eyes to a new world

【戴玉強】 流動中的魅力充滿著朝氣
[Dai Yu Qiang] The flowing charm is full of life

【王霞．李雙松】 北京歡迎你　在太陽下分享呼吸
[Wang Xia, Li Shuang Song] Beijing welcomes you, sharing the joy of breathing under the sun

【廖昌永】 在黃土地刷新成績
[Liao Chang Yong] Making new records on our yellow soil

【林依輪】 北京歡迎你　像音樂感動你
[Lin Yi Lun] Beijing welcomes you, may the music move you

【張娜拉】 讓我們都加油去超越自己
[Jang Nara] Let’s work hard together to go beyond ourselves

【林俊傑】 北京歡迎你　有夢想誰都了不起
[JJ Lin] Beijing welcomes you, with dreams everyone can be great

【阿杜】 有勇氣就會有奇跡
[A-Do] Having courage will bring miracles

【京劇】 北京歡迎你呀
[Beijing Opera] Beijing weclomes you

【容祖兒】 我家大門常打開　開懷容納天地
[Joey Yung] Our door is always open, welcoming the world with open arms

【李宇春】 擁抱過就有了默契　你會愛上這裡
[Chris Li] After hugging and developing a bond, you will fall in love with here

【黃大煒】 不管遠近都是客人　請不用客氣
[David Wong] Everyone is a guest no matter how far away, please feel at home

【陳坤】 相約好了再一起　我們歡迎你
[Chen Kun] Agreed to get together, we welcome you

【謝霆鋒】 北京歡迎你　為你開天辟地
[Nicholas Tse] Beijing welcomes you, opening your eyes to a new world

【韓磊】 流動中的魅力充滿著朝氣
[Han Lei] The flowing charm is full of life

【徐若瑄】 北京歡迎你　在太陽下分享呼吸
[Vivian Hsu] Beijing welcomes you, sharing the joy of breathing under the sun

【費翔】 在黃土地刷新成績
[Kris Phillips] Making new records on our yellow soil

【湯燦】 我家大門常打開　開懷容納天地
[Tang Can] Our door is always open, welcoming the world with open arms

【林志玲　張梓琳】 歲月綻放青春笑容　迎接這個日期
[Lin Chi-ling, Zhang Zilin] The old ages is smiling like youth, welcoming this day

【張靚穎】 天大地大都是朋友　請不用客氣
[Jane Zhang] Everyone is friends, please feel at home

【許茹芸　伍思凱】 畫意詩情帶笑意　只為等待你
[Valen Hsu, Sky Wu] The arts bring smiles, only waiting for you

【楊坤．範瑋琪】 北京歡迎你　像音樂感動你
[Yang Kun, Christine Fan] Beijing welcomes you, like how the music moves you

【游鴻明．周曉歐】 讓我們都加油去超越自己
[Yu Hungming, Zhou Xiao’ou] Let’s work hard together to go beyond ourselves

【沙寶亮．滿文軍】 北京歡迎你　有夢想誰都了不起
[Sha Baoliang, Man Wenjun] Beijing welcomes you, with dreams everyone can be great

【金海心．何潤東】 有勇氣就會有奇跡
[Jin Haixin, Peter Ho] Having courage will bring miracles

【飛兒．龐龍】 北京歡迎你　為你開天辟地
[F.I.R., Pang Long] Beijing welcomes you, opening your eyes to a new world

【吳克群．齊峰】 流動中的魅力充滿著朝氣
[Kenji Wu, Qi Feng] The flowing charm is full of life

【5566．胡彥斌】 北京歡迎你　在太陽下分享呼吸
[5566, Anson Hu] Beijing welcomes you, sharing the joy of breathing under the sun

【鄭希怡．刀郎】 在黃土地刷新成績
[Yumiko Cheng, Dao Lang] Making new records on our yellow soil

【紀敏加．屠洪剛．吳彤】 北京歡迎你　像音樂感動你
[Ji Minjia, Tu Honggang, Denis Ng] Beijing welcomes you, like how the music moves you

【郭容．劉耕宏．騰格爾】 讓我們都加油去超越自己
[Guo Rong, Will Liu, Tengger] Let’s work hard together to go beyond ourselves

【金莎．蘇醒．韋嘉】 北京歡迎你　有夢想誰都了不起
[Kym Jin Sha, Allen Su, Wei Jia] Beijing welcomes you, with dreams everyone can be great

【付麗珊．黃征．房祖】 有勇氣就會有奇跡
[Fu Lishan, Shawn Huang, Jaycee Chan] Having courage will bring miracles

【全體】 北京歡迎你　有夢想誰都了不起
[All] Beijing welcomes you, with dreams everyone can be great

【全體】 有勇氣就會有奇跡
[All] Having courage will bring miracles

【全體】 北京歡迎你　有夢想誰都了不起
[All] Beijing welcomes you, with dreams everyone can be great

【全體】 有勇氣就會有奇跡
[All] Having courage will bring miracles

If you notice any translation problems above, please do tell. I notice most places label this song as Welcome to Beijing, which I guess is technically correct or Englishfied, but to me there’s a difference between Welcome to Beijing and Beijing welcomes you. May be I’m being nitpicking.

Later I saw these awesome photos: 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony. These images are just magnificent and as someone mentioned in the Digg comments, many of these images reminded me of Magic Eye. Did I mention how beautiful these photos are?

Finally, Windows Media Center, TVTonic, and NBC teamed together to bring you easy access to the Olympics: NBC Olympics On The Go. The whole company got an email late this past week stating about the project. When VonLobster was over here earlier today, he brought that up and we decided to check it out.

The process was much more complicated than I had expected. After clicking “Launch” from the MCE menu, it prompted that it’ll be opening a browser and I’ll have to run the setup after it finishes downloading. I don’t see why it couldn’t have streamlined the process. It even specifically stated I wouldn’t be able to use the remote to continue with the setup.

After installing and launching TVTonic within MCE, I would have to say the navigation was rather poorly designed. It took us quite awhile to figure out what to do. We were just trying to figure out how to watch a video, and that took a good 5-10 minutes.

After we figured out how to subscribe to channels, things went pretty smoothly from there. Videos would automatically start downloading and if we wanted to watch a particular one, priority would be given to that one and it would pretty much start streaming immediately. We checked out a few swimming ones and the opening ceremony.

The Lenovo ads did get a bit annoying after awhile. Between every clip, it would play. I understand it’s sponsored by Lenovo, but maybe if there were just more than 2 Lenovo ads, that’ll be okay, but I’ve seen the laser vaporizing and the fruit basket one at least 8x today. It also didn’t help that the audio volume was much lower in the actual clips than the ad, so immediately after the clip, the Lenovo ad would be SUPER LOUD.

I was hoping to share some of these videos with my parents, but unfortunately they’re drmed and requires a TVTonic license to view. I know it’s free, but I doubt I can teach my parents how to install TVTonic.

It also took me awhile to figure out where they were caching these. On Windows Vista, it’s located in:
C:\Users\All Users\Wavexpress\TVTonic\Cache\Services

Update #2: Ohfuee had asked me for the names of the artists, but unfortunately I only had the list of them in their Chinese names. I then found this video/description which lists all of them: Various Artists – Beijing Welcomes You w / Translation. They even have a download link to the mp3.

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How To Get Media Center to Play Any Video File

So for the longest time, I have been trying to get Media Center to play .mp4 files, but after countless searching for solutions, I never really came across a working solution. There have been instructions on installing different codecs and adding/modifying registry entries.

Today I realized that after my format, I could no longer play Quicktime (*.mov) HD trailers in Media Center anymore. I’m pretty sure this has to do with the fact that I had reinstalled Windows Vista Ultimate recently and never bother to do something. I’m pretty sure Quicktime Alternative (now better known as QT Lite) has already been installed, but I reinstalled it just in case, but that didn’t seem to work. HD trailers played fine in WMP11 and Media Player Classic.

I knew it worked before, but I had no idea what I had changed. I started searching again and after a few tries, ended up on this thread: Quicktime movies in Vista MCE. The key thing to take away from that thread is:

Hi there

I’ve had the problem of after installing QT alternative, it will play .mov files quite happliy in mediaplayer 11, but doesn’t get picked up in Mediacentre (this is on vista, when i had MCE2005 it went fine)

Any obvious reason/fix?

Thanks

Just found the answer on greenbutton,.com:

You need to install Quicktime Alternative. This has a DirectShow Quicktime plug-in that will allow .movs to play within Media Player or even Media Centre. However, for the .mov files to even appear in MCE, you need to make the following registry edit:

In HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mov create a REG_SZ called “PerceivedType” and name it “video”.

Worked a treat. (one has to ask why Olympus made there cameras to record video in a format used by about 5% of the population – if you are a PC fiddler like most of us then we’ll find a way around it, for the vast majority it’ll be no holiday videos on the MCE machine).

The trick is to create a new String Value, name it PerceivedType and give it a value of video. So I thought, what if I did this to the other file types I wanted. I went ahead and added this string value to .mp4, .ts, etc. and now they ALL show up and play in Media Center. Of course you have to get the codecs to get it playing in WMP before you can actually get it to play in Media Center.

Update:
Now if I can only figure out how to get non DVD files to show up in my DVD library.

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Some New Toys

It’s been awhile since my last post, but this post is going to be short and probably only a summary. I’ve recently obtained some rather new cool toys to play with.

First of all, I finally took the plunge and purchased an HDHR (HDHomeRun). For those who don’t know what this thing is, it’s a dual external QAM/ATSC tuner for your PC and is the easiest way to get QAM channels on your Media Center. I’ve had Media Center for awhile now, but I’ve really ever used it to watch videos and stuff. I finally wanted to play with the TV settings and like I said, took the plunge. I got it for a $160 shipped (deal is still available, inquire if you’re interested), only to find out a few days later a rumor of an employee discount. I’ll probably talk more about this later.

The next toy I got is my new Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet. I had actually ordered this back in mid-December, but due to a UPS fiasco and them delivering my package to some other address, Lenovo to build another one and that’s why it took so long for it to arrive. Then there was the fact I was no longer in Monterey Park, and had to change the shipping which was more complicated than I originally thought. Anyway, I had been holding out for a portable laptop for some time since my IBM Thinkpad X31. I really wanted a X-series Thinkpad with a better screen. They decided to put a better screen on the Tablet, but not the regular X-series, so I finally made up my mind to get it. I was also contemplating on waiting for Apple to release the MacBook Slim (or what I had called it), but finally gave up on waiting for it. When the MacBook Air was announced a few days ago, I justified to myself that most 1st generation Apple products have a lot of problems.

Anyway, this morning I was having some sort of dream. I can’t remember what exactly the dream was but it involved a doorbell ringing. Doorbell ringing?!?! I jumped out of bed, ran to the window and saw the UPS truck. I ran down the 2 flights of stairs as a kid would do on Christmas morning to greet my UPS guy and signed for my package. I’ve played with it for awhile really nice. I’m still not that accustomed to the tablet features, but it’ll probably come bit by bit. It comes with Vista Business and definitely needs more RAM. Fortunately, a 2GB stick is on its way. I’d go into the specs later with its official post.

Yep, life is good. 🙂

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Video Thumbnail Generation

So after I fixed my Vista Media Center yesterday, I got tired of how long it took to generate thumbnails for the video files in Media Center. I understand it has to open each video file and create a thumbnail from that and since all my videos are located on a file server (even though it’s on a gigabit network), I can see why it’s taking awhile. Of course it caches it and stores it into ehThumbs.db, but once in awhile, it decides that those thumbnails are out of date and clears and redoes everything.

I had learnt a trick that if you have a jpg with the same file name (i.e. video1.avi and video1.jpg), Media Center will load that image instead of generating its own. I’m actually not sure if Media Center 2005 supports this, but I know Vista Media Center does. So I decided to check how fast it took to load all those images on a test directory and BOY WAS IT FAST! I had just taken a random image and copied it a bunch of times after naming it after the video files in that directory.

So now I needed a video thumbnail generation software, hopefully something that will automatically go through directories, create these jpgs images, and then name it correctly. Sounded like a very specific program and a brief search resulted in nothing. It did however give me an idea that instead of generating a thumbnail, I can maybe go with a screenshot. I know Media Player Classic and a couple other video software I have allows me to take screenshots, but having almost 1,000 video files, doing that manually would really suck.

So I talked to RayAlome and we decided the best way to do was find a program that can take screenshots from videos via a command line, which I can then script to automatically run that line on all the videos under a certain directory and subdirectories. RayAlome suggested virtualdub, but I decided to take a look at my Gallery and see what it uses to generate thumbnails for the video files. It uses this thing called FFmpeg, which somehow led me to MPlayer. Apparently MPlayer allows you to save screenshots via command line after reading this: Re: Video output to jpeg/png file and Tools for extracting individual frames of an AVI movie file.

So I decided to give it a try:
mplayer.exe -vo jpeg -frames 1 -ss 300 X:\video1.avi

and it worked! I got an image named 00000001.jpg in the current directory. Renaming and moving the file should be simple enough. What was funny was the fact when it created the screenshot, audio was played for about a second. I knew that’d get annoying if it was processing hundreds or thousands of video files, so I added the -nosound option to it.

I got off starting to write a script. I did mine in Perl, though any scripting language would’ve worked. I realized my Perl knowledge was quite lacking after not using it for so long, but searching for Perl commands online wasn’t that bad. Interestingly enough, Perl doesn’t have a way for you to check if an item exists in an array (or none that I saw) and you had to inverse the array (as a hashtable) and check by calling the hashtable’s key. Another weird thing is that their way of defining methods and functions really sucks. They’re actually called sub (short for subroutines) and looks rather ugly.

Anyway, what the final script does is take a starting directory (current working directory if no starting directory is specified) and finds all the files with the preset list of extensions (changeable) and generates thumbnails for it. You’ll need to download MPlayer for Windows and update the path to it in the script.

There’s also a few other defaults you can change. I set the default time to take a screenshot at 300 seconds (5 minutes).

Another thing I added was to skip processing videos that already had an associating screenshot/thumbnail. Since I was testing this script out quite a bit, I realized that it was redoing a lot of screenshots that already existed. However, you can pass in the -f option and it’ll force it to regenerate everything under the starting directory.

One thing you must realize is that if the video file is not long enough to generate a screenshot at the given time, it just skips it. My HD trailers typically run from about 30 seconds to 2 minutes and having a 5 minute capture time basically skips over all of those. I then reran the script with a screenshot time of 30 seconds in that directory and everything came out fine.

Since I feel that others may be in my situation, I’ve decided to share the script here in case anyone wants to use it:
Generate Video Thumbnails for Media Center Perl Script

Usage: generateThumbnails.pl [-OPTIONS [-MORE_OPTIONS]]

OPTIONS:
-d StartingDirectory Sets the starting directory [cwd]
-f Forces Thumbnail Generation [off]
-t TimeInSecs Time in video to grab screenshot [300s]

Use this script at your own risk. I will not take any responsibility for any damage it causes. Of course to use this, you’ll need perl for your system. I also have cygwin installed, so I’m not sure if there’s any environmental differences.

As noted earlier, these are generating screenshots, not thumbnails. So depending on the resolution of your video, it can result in a screenshot that varies from about 30KB to 100KB. I’ve thought about finding a command line utility to shrink the screenshots to thumbnail sizes, but for now, this will work and until either it becomes intolerably slow again or if someone has knowledge of how to do so and is willing to share it with me, I’m probably not going to add this feature any time soon.

After running this script on all my video files, I will have to say that browsing videos in Media Center became a lot quicker and faster. Enjoy!