InfoHole

Whilst Youtube offers a "view this video in high quality" link below most videos on their site now, when you embed the videos they are still low quality. I have found a way to embed the high quality videos, detailed here: http://www.microscopics.co.uk/blog/2008/how-to-embed-high-quality-youtube-videos/

Although instead of using the fmt=18 as suggested in that article, I would suggest using fmt=6. Format 18 is a mp4 quality file at 512kbps, 128kbps stereo. And format 6 is a flv at 900kbps, 96kbps mono. As detailed here: http://blog.jimmyr.com/High_Quality_on_Youtube_11_2008.php

If you click play on both of the videos at the same time you should notice that the standard quality load progress bar loads more quickly than the high quality video bar. You will also be able to see the difference in quality by comparing the videos.

High quality:


Standard quality:

gordonrp computing

If you need to fake your geo-location on the web, and don’t want to use a free/open/slow proxy that will probably steal your credit card info then you will need to have a server in the desired country.

Get Putty, set some basic tunnel settings within it, ensure that AllowTcpForwarding is set to yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on your server, and change your browser settings to use your new proxy/tunnel.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for wanting to do this (encrypting your traffic across your ISP to your trusted server) aswell as plenty of questionable reasons, such as wanting to watch hulu.com content from outside of the USA.

gordonrp computing hulu, openssh, proxy, putty, tunnel

After posting an example of 720p resolution H.264 video I was annoyed that whilst viewing my own blog I was not receiving the best video load rates, as my blog is hosted on a server in the USA and I am located in the UK.

Regular encoded .flv videos would load perfectly well as I could download from the USA at 200kB/sec and these videos only require about 90kB/sec of bandwidth, but the H.264 video requires about 470kB/sec to load/play instantly.

So, I have coded a simple CDN solution and now videos for users from the Western hemisphere will load from a server in the USA and videos for users east of the Atlantic will load from my server in the UK. I now receive download speeds of 480kB/sec which is just enough for the H.264 video and only limited by my broadband connection.

I shall expand upon the CDN code in due course, but for now it is a perfect and fully automated solution requiring no maintenance.

If you experience any troubles with the videos on the site then please let me know by posting a comment below.

gordonrp computing cdn, flash, h.264, video

Adobe announced last year that the beta flash player supported H.264 video, and since then the latest Flash Player 9 release version with H.264 has rolled out and most people seem to have it installed (thanks to MySpace and other large social networks often forcing flash player updates).

H.264 is a more processor intensive codec than previous codecs allowing for much higher quality video to be stored in smaller files. Apple has been making use of this technology for a while now within their .mov offering, but the ability to play H.264 video with the flash player means that web video can easily take advantage of this technology.

I just grabbed the Transformers movie trailer from Apple (in 720p .mov format, encoded with H.264) totalling 105MB, and have plugged it into the flash player below. Check out the full screen quality!

Previously even with ON2 VP6 such quality would of required around a 170MB file.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Update 29th May 2008: I have uploaded three copies of the IronMan movie trailer to demo the quality of H.264 at various bitrates and filesizes. Honestly I have a hard time telling the difference in quality even on a 24″ monitor. The 480p seems like a perfect solution for full screen web video.

480p 56mB

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

720p 121mB

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

1080p 197mB

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

gordonrp computing, web development

Trying to contact someone that is stuck in the 1980s? Previously I would hook up my laptop to a phone line to send faxes, but that was a real hassle.

I have just recently discovered the PamFax plugin for Skype, which allows you to send faxes using your Skype credit. PamFax accepts a variety of document types, I simply sent a PNG of my scanned document.

PamFax was kind enough to let me know via Skype chat that my fax sent without any issues. You can also check the status of your faxes via the “portal”.

gordonrp computing fax, pam, skype

Vista Service Pack 1 was released a while ago but at the time there were a lot of reported install problems, these appear to have been resolved.

I have just installed SP1 which took about 30 minutes to complete. Amongst other fixes that I have yet to notice network transfers now begin much more quickly, or atleast the status bar begins working more quickly. Network drives also appear to mount more quickly, but that could just be my imagination.

You can download the 32bit version here: 32bit Vista SP1

gordonrp computing

More programs are making use of multi cores now that they are being programed or reprogrammed to do so. Only a few games currently make use of multiple cores but Nero Vision and Windows Movie Maker (vista version) both make use of multiple cores reducing video transcoding time dramatically.

Converting a 90 minute movie from .avi to dvd format used to take about 45 minutes on a 3ghz single core processor, but on this 2.4ghz quad core machine it now only takes about 16 minutes to convert the video.

gordonrp computing quad core, transcoding, video

I’ve created a web spider and sent it on a crawl for specific pieces of information. I will update this blog with the findings in a month or so once it has analyzed enough data. The current crawl rate is quite slow, but should improve as I make tweaks to the code.

gordonrp computing

I purchased a copy of Adobe’s “Creative Suite 3 Web Premium” today, but I did so via the Adobe US store rather than the UK store and saved £604/$1209 by doing so.

Adobe sell the product for $1599 on the US site coming in $1,209 cheaper than the UK store list price of £1404.02 ($2,808). Even without VAT (UK Tax) the product is £1,195 ($2,390) from the UK store, a $790 premium over the US price.

You will need a US credit card / billing address to purchase from the US store.

I’m sure if Adobe ever comment on the matter they will come up with something along the lines of “UK support costs…..”. Well I don’t know about any of you, but I have never in my life called any sort of software technical support line.

Shame on Adobe for charging Brits nearly twice the amount that they charge people in the US.

gordonrp computing, money

If you are using an encryption program like TrueCrypt to keep your hard drive data encrypted, you should power down your PC when ever it is not being used.

A recent video, by researchers at Princeton, demonstrates how an attacker can recover the contents of RAM from a running machine, or even one that has only been shut down for a short period of time. If you have your encrypted drives mounted at the time of the physical attack then the encryption key can most likely be recovered from the memory image.

People, including most experts, previously believed that RAM instantly lost all of it’s data when power was removed. This appears to not be the case with most DDR RAM, with memory taking a few seconds to several minutes to fade away.

Check out the video below for more information and a demonstration of the attack. Be sure to put your RAM modules through your shredder if you suspect an imminent physical attack.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

gordonrp computing