RND(tech) - Softwarez

burning files larger than 4GB with linux!

nospam@example.com (Khanh Tran) — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:51:18 -0700

Burning files larger than 4GB seems to be a tricky thing in most programs. Lets say for example, you have a DV file that's 6GB. You should be able to fit it on a dual layer DVD without issue, but most burning programs fail to handle it.

Linux seems to work wonders for me on the command line. If I figure out something in Mac or Windows, I'll let you know, but I don't have access to a dual layer burner on either of those OSes at this time.

In Linux, you can make the appropriate ISO image with either:

mkisofs -r -R -J -l -allow-limited-size -udf -o largefile.iso largefile.ext

or use:

genisoimage -allow-limited-size -udf -o largefile.iso largefile.ext

Once the ISO is generated, you could burn with growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=largefile.iso or move the ISO to Mac or Windows...

enabling OS X screen sharing remotely in Terminal

nospam@example.com (Khanh Tran) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:40:56 -0700

short and simple for 10.5 (Leopard)

sudo sh -c "/bin/echo -n enabled > /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd"

slightly different for 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

sudo sh -c "/bin/echo -n enabled > /private/etc/ScreenSharing.launchd"

rm the file to disable it. launchd polls regularyly, so after you "enable" the service, it'll be loaded by the time you check for the open port with netstat -an

more MythTV and Intel G33 video performance

nospam@example.com (Khanh Tran) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:30:10 -0700

Apparently the key to HD playback on MythTV using the Intel integrated X3100 video card (G33 chipset) is not the "extra audio buffering" setting. In a previous post, I enabled this setting and suddenly my HD video stopped stuttering.

Unfortunately, that wasn't totally the solution. When I started playing back my homemade DVDs (from iDVD), I noticed they were all playing back audio fine, but the video was choppy, like the frames were dropping. The audio tracks on these DVDs were uncompressed PCM. Anything else (like AC3) would be fine. The issue was that I was using OSS for sound (via /dev/dsp).

The trick here is to use ALSA. Changing the sound output in MythTV to ALSA and undoing the "extra audio buffering" yielded HD playback and smooth DVDs with PCM audio.

So far, I can get the Intel X3100 to perform well with MPEG-2 HD (720p and 1080i) content, DVDs (with greedyhdeint x2) and MPEG-4/AAC video at HD frame sizes but low bitrates. Unfortunately, h.264 video from the HD PVR 1212 with 720p frame sizes at high bitrates (the 7, 10 and 13.5 samples found here) still peg my Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz at 102%+