No one else seems willing to share this sort of thing.
Many hours of experimentation have led me to conclude that the ideal quality-to-file-size tradeoffs for encoding video to watch on a (standard def) TV are:
Encoder: Apple H.264 main profile.
Video: 512x288 (for 16x9), 600 kb/s average bit rate, single-pass.
Audio: Stereo AAC, 44.1kHz, 96kb/s.
This yields 215MB for a 44-minute show, and seems at least comparable to a 900 kb/s bitrate for XviD. Unfortunately, this H.264 encoding runs (in
HandBrake) at 7fps on my machine, while the aforementioned XviD setting does more like 17fps. So, like so many things these days, H.264 is great value if your time is worthless.
(Addendum: Average encoding fps for my test was 6.62 on a 2.0 GHz G5 iMac w/ 1.5GB RAM; however, for the same settings and file, a 1.5GHz G4 Powerbook w/ 512MB RAM gets 5.67 fps. So, two conclusions: one, HandBrake is not particularly well-optimized for the G5. Two, a Mac Mini could chew this encoding up pretty well.)
Hear no evil, see no evil, Do No Evil.
You may have heard about Google's
submission to Chinese censorship this week. Although there are
arguments to be made both ways, it's far more illuminating to provide a simple example.
(From
here.)
How to commercialize Roadcasting.
Here's the idea: a free service, not really comparable to
Pandora or
Rhapsody but it could be mistaken as such for sound bite purposes. It'd be a
web app, it'd be called LinkTunes, and it would most simply help a person set up an automated internet radio station that plays his music back to him. It would be accessible anywhere there's an internet connection, including home, work, and maybe over the phone (for Bluetoothing into the car).
Here's the hook: it also supports friends' listening in. Friends upload a list of their own music files -- not the files themselves, just a list of what songs they have -- and the station uses that to make a playlist, playing back stuff from the station owner's library that everyone likes. (Yes, very similar to
Roadcasting, but at long last this is a commercializable implementation.) So, the station owner and his friends can all listen to the same internet radio station at work while they're noodling around on AIM. Mildly interesting, right? Would never float as a pay service, but since it's free you might give it a shot. Blogs and
desperate companies (at the behest of their hip marketing consultants) would inevitably also set up their own stations, so it's seen as an auxiliary, automatic community-building service. No babysitting required.
Now, the Trojan horse: the service can be free because the real value is in the lists of songs people submit (in a non-personally-identifiable manner, of course). The easiest way to afford uploading lists of songs is via the iTunes XML file, and that happens to also contain automatically updated metadata like Date Added, Number of Plays, and etc. Get your hands on a bunch of these, and you have a very good idea of what people are playing and when they're playing it. Combine that with shady but commonly performed IP lookups, and you can then break down this data by region in addition to time. You and I can both think of a few companies that might be willing to pay for this sort of information, especially if it's
straight from the horse's mouse (!) instead of scraped together from
dubious sources or
brick and mortar sales figures.
So there you go. Metadata distills into money, and this is a gusher.
The future of games?
Take a look at
this trailer showing off DirectX 10. Now, ask yourself: Will this technology help make Far Cry 2 fun? Or will Crytek spend all their precious development time adding graphical hoohas?
You tell me. I'll be the guy playing the Revolution on an SD TV.
I promise not to do this regularly.
It is not often that so many interesting, long-winded articles bubble to the surface all at once. So here they are.
- Make It Big in Games
- DMCA Review Sparks Some Well-Written Comments from the Public
- GPL 3 Disses DRM
- Inside the SiN Episodes Dynamic Difficulty System
- Down With Cutscenes
I will actually start writing again soon.
Upgrade.
Whew. As promised, here's Vocabulicious 1.03.
New stuff:
- Built-in online leaderboard; submit and view high scores.
- Starts up much more quickly.
- Word list made slightly bigger onscreen.
- Notifies you of future updates automatically.
- Dictionary updated.
- Greatly simplified installation.
- Numerous bug fixes.
Grab it
here. Unzip the downloaded file, and double-click on Vocabulicious.jar (should work on Mac and Windows).
Announcing Vocabulicious.
This past Christmas, my brother and I decided to actually do something useful with our extraordinarily expensive educations. Utilizing our skills as programmers and procrastinators to the fullest, we cranked out a scrambled-letter word game in about five days. It was a gift for Mom, but it's starting to get around and people seem to like it, so here it is.
It's called Vocabulicious. It's a standalone Java app, for Mac and Windows. Download it
here (536KB, zip). Instructions:
Mac:
- Double-click the zip file to unpack it.
- Follow the instructions in "mac instructions.rtf" in the Vocabulicious directory.
Windows XP:
- Right-click the zip file and click "Extract All..."
- Follow the prompts to unpack the file.
- Open the Vocabulicious folder, and double-click "click_me.bat"
Make sure to let us know what you think! (Especially if stuff doesn't work properly.) We're considering making some additions to it, like a web-based high score board, so if you'd be into that make sure to voice your enthusiasm.
Credits: Word list, back end, and Windows testing: Jeff. Design and front end: Me. Testing: Kate. Sponsored by Mountain Dew.
Smooth.
For the last few weeks, I've had 600 words in the edit queue about how great a general purpose, Linux-powered,
PSP-ish handheld could be if someone would release it as a platform for general innovation. It'd serve as a great platform for prototyping, cost less than $100, and be able to run all sorts of mostly-illegal emulators on the side. Sold as a first product from an upstart
open source bubble company, it'd probably be the first place to go for cool mobile-to-mobile apps and bizarre location-based services. It'd be too cool for school.
Well, before the post managed to come together, it turns out that
someone's already made one. And they've done everything right! Except they forgot to
release the complete source.
Which is, of course, the entire point.
Idiots.
