It is not often that you come upon an application that provides everything you need to access restricted services. Saver 2 Bundle is a free software collection for Windows that is an all-on one solution providing access to services such as Pandora, Rhapsody Radio, Last.fm, Songza or Meemix.

The program installs several programs on your computer that work well together. You can start the core application directly and use the integrated Opera USB browser to load the web services. It is alternatively possible to use other web browsers which may need to be configured properly before they can be used, or the optional Pandora Radio player that can be installed with the main program.

Saver2 uses the Tor Network to establish proxy connections. This basically tunnels the connection so that it appears as if it is coming from one of the allowed locations in the world. For Pandora Radio, this would be an endpoint in the United States.

The connection to one of the supported services should work right away and without the dreaded “country unsupported” message that users would see otherwise. Quality of playback during tests was good; Music streams from Pandora Radio and several other services were playing without buffering issues and errors.

Saver2 can be configured to download music from supported services automatically or on demand. The program is configured to download everything automatically. The preferences offer options to save only on approval.

The program furthermore tries to replace lower quality songs with higher quality versions, looks up album art on Amazon and may query the MusicDNS service for additional information.

Files can be re-encoded, for instance to a lower quality setting or file extension. Other options include configuring a blacklist or whitelist.

New users may feel overwhelmed at first by the applications that get installed and displayed on the screen when the main program is started. The majority of windows can be minimized though. All it takes to get started is to run the main application, wait until a proxy connection has been established to finally load the website that you want to access.

Windows users can download the Saver2 Bundle from the developer website.

As you can see from the screenshot below they’ve also been given a very prominent position, listed third in the list of sixteen help and support subject areas.  Personally I’m delighted with what Microsoft have done to showcase them.  Microsoft do occasionally showcase help and support content from MVPs but this will be the first video content on the Microsoft help and support site.  I will also in the future be providing more content for the site covering products including Windows 7, Windows 8 and Microsoft Office.

Screenshot only, no playable video in this image

You may also remember that a little while ago Microsoft Press released for free on YouTube a series of videos I had made accompany their Windows 7 and Word 2010 Step by Step books.  The videos are full tutorials to the products and run to more than 10 hours.  I can also announce that discussions are in an advanced stage for Microsoft to also host these videos on their support website.  IN addition to these I also made tutorial video series for PowerPoint 2010 and HTML5.  I can certainly see the latter being popular, while any tutorials that can help teach people how not to bore their co-workers to death with PowerPoint has got to be welcomed  :)

In other news!  I can also now announce that my next eBook will be released by US publisher Fair Trade Digital Exchange (FTDX) in November (if I ever finish writing it!).  Need2Know Office 365 Security for Small Business will look at all aspects of running a safe and secure business environment using Microsoft’s new cloud-based server and productivity package.  As well as looking at Office 365 itself, the book will also look holistically at every aspect of your business computing security from your domain hosting and broadband connection, to your storage solutions, PCs, laptops and smartphones and also your attitudes to mobile working and workers using their own IT hardware.

Finally the big announcement!  As if all this wasn’t enough for one day there is one final announcement, but I can’t officially say anything for another month or so.  All I can officially do is make a statement and show you a picture.  Though it shouldn’t be at all difficult to piece together the clues.

The statement… “I will definitely NOT be writing a Windows 8 Power Users Guide as a follow on to my similar guide to Windows 7”
And the image…

…have you guessed yet?  ;)

Lets start with the video format. A format consists basically of a set of rules and parameters that define the video. This is the native resolution, color depth, the frames per second among other parameters. Video format examples are the DVD video format, the 3GP video format or 1080p and 1080i formats.

A video codec acts as a interpreter for the video format or formats it supports. Devices and software use codecs to compress and decompress video.

It is used by video players to determine how the video needs to be played correctly on the system. Many video players on a computer system come with their own set of binary codecs that only they can use. Codec packs on the other hand install codecs system wide so that applications like Windows Media Player can make use of them to play specific video formats.

A container more or less bundles multiple files. For videos, this is usually the video and audio track. More advanced container formats can include other data types as well like menus for example. Popular container formats are avi, mkv or mov.

One advantage of using a container for a video is that programs can use different codecs for the tracks of the video. It is therefor possible to use one codec for the video and one for the audio, which is often preferable to using a single codec.

To paraphrase: The video format sets the rules, the codec interprets them and a container format is a meta format that bundles multiple files into one container.

It’s not just videos I’ve made too, as Excel 2010 Step by Step has also been released for free.  In all there’s around 15 hours of video available.  This is made up up of 5.5 hours of Windows 7 tutorials split into 12 lessons, 4.5 hours of Word 2010 tutorials in 16 lessons and 4.5 hours of Excel 2010 tutorials in 15 lessons.

I have to say that personally I’m incredibly proud of these videos and I’m utterly delighted that they’ve been made available free to everybody who wants to get more out of these products.

In their press release the company said…

We’re pretty excited to unveil nearly fifteen hours of free video instruction, based on three of our most popular recent Microsoft Press Step by Step title releases. The videos are based on, but not exact copies of, each book; there’s material in the videos that you won’t find in the books, and vice versa.

Why free? We’d like to know what you think of these and if you find them helpful. We all learn in different ways, and if there’s enough demand for video editions or companions to existing Microsoft Press books, we’ll certainly consider making the commitment to produce more. We’re even open to the possibility of creating learning resources exclusively in video.

There are more videos waiting to be released for free, and I can see my HTML5 Step by Step tutorials being popular in the long term.  Microsoft Press is wanting your feedback on these videos though so please leave comments for them and tell them that you want more and what you’d like to see in the future.  You can watch the videos online, sadly they’re not available for download, on these links.

Mike Halsey: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Step by Step
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE70E63A6B2DFD196
12 video lessons, totaling 5 hours, avg 30 minutes each
Book authors: Joan Lambert and Joyce Cox
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735626676/

Mike Halsey: Microsoft® Word 2010 Step by Step
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEC59ED056A5F1C58
16 video lessons, totaling 4 hours 24 minutes, avg 18 minutes each
Book authors: Joan Lambert and Joyce Cox
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735626935/

Curt Frye: Microsoft® Excel® 2010 Step by Step
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBB8F203F33525925
15 video lessons, totaling 4 hours 35 minutes, avg 20 minutes each
Book author: Curtis D. Frye
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735626942

Back then it was not clear if and how embedded players would benefit from the design change. A post on Friday revealed that YouTube plans to roll our a dark player design for YouTube embeds from August 10 on. From that day on, all embedded YouTube videos will sport a new dark player design.

The design change can be problematic on websites that use a lighter theme. YouTube for exactly this situation has added two new player parameters to the YouTube embedded player.

The new theme parameter defines the overall theme of the embedded player. Available options are dark or light. The color parameter on the other hand defines the color of the time bar which can either be red or white.

The default theme and color is set to dark and red. A total of three additional designs are available.

If you do not want the default dark themed played to show up on your site, you need to modify the player code manually. This could be problematic for webmasters who have embedded lots of YouTube videos on their web properties. Probably the best option for those webmasters is to create a script that modifies all embedded YouTube scripts on the website automatically.

The code to embed YouTube videos looks like this. Take notice of the parameters theme and color in the video url.

<iframe width="560" height="349"
src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9h1swNWgP8Q?theme=light&color=red"
frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Here you define the theme and color that you want to be displayed on your website. What’s your take on the new YouTube layout and embedded player layout? Good change, bad change?

Now though Microsoft are hitting out at Google with the introduction of the Gmail man, an annoying postman who reads everyone’s emails before delivering them to search for key words he can use to deliver adverts to them.  The video is an advertisement itself for Microsoft’s new Office 365 product.

It was spotted online by ZD Net blogger Mary-Jo Foley who asked Microsoft is the video was from them, as it includes touches like the company name “Contoso” which is the company’s favourite fake company name, and one I’ve had to use myself with Microsoft Press.  She received a firm “no comment”.

Now I happen to like Microsoft much more than I like Google, though that’s down to really disliking Google more than anything else.  I have to say though that this video is a cheap shot across Google’s bow.  I can’t understand for starters why anybody would compare Gmail to Office 365.  There’s no mention of Google Docs in the video.  It’s entirely about Gmail and advertising.  The video is trying very hard to discredit Google’s reputation for honesty.  I have to say it fails badly.

The producers of this video have used every outdated stereotype in the book, from the annoying man you just want to hate, to the little girl portraying the high moral ground.  The whole video is pretty wretched stuff.

The most important part though is that while it is based on truth, it’s twisting it considerably and stretching credibility too far.

Compare this to Apple’s “I’m a PC” advertisements after Windows 7 launched which were genuinely funny, had some excellent writers and, factually, simply couldn’t be argued with.  They were in response to Microsoft’s own “I’m a PC” ads and Microsoft’s attempts to get back at Apple failed abysmally.

In all the Gmail man is utterly forgettable as a video, if you watch it you’ll probably just come away disliking Microsoft a little bit more.  Perhaps they should have got Google to read the notes first to get keywords they could use in the script?  ;)  You can watch the Gmail man video here:

The four minute video was welcome, considering that it offered the first live footage of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. Later that day, a demonstration was held at the Computex 2011 in Taiwan by Mike Angiulo, Microsoft corporate vice president which showcased the new operating system for more than 30 minutes.

While you see more footage of Mike talking on stage, you will see live footage of the operating system as well. Probably more interesting than that are the explanations of Mike.

Mike’s words have caused some confusion in Germany, where popular media outlets such as Heise reported that Windows 8 would only support UEFI, a new interface between an operating system and platform firmware, and not BIOS. This would mean that the majority of Windows customers would not be able to upgrade to Windows 8, considering that more than 99% of all users worldwide have a BIOS interface and not UEFI.

What Mike said was actually different from what Heise reported. Windows 8 on ARM hardware requires UEFI. Windows 8 on x86 hardware won’t. It will support UEFI and users can make use of it to address hard drives with 3 Terabytes and more. But Windows 8 won’t require UEFI on x86 hardware.

Now that we have cleared up the confusion, enjoy the Windows 8 video presentation.

What’s your take on what has been shown so far? Let us know in the comments.

Then you need to correct the out of sync audio before you burn the video to DVD. If you do not chance is high that viewing the video DVD will not be a pleasure at all, considering that most hardware DVD players do not have options to correct audio that is not synchronous to the video.

One of the best programs to correct out of sync audio is VirtualDub. Downside is that it may not work with all video formats, and that you may need to install a codec to work with a specific video format in the program.

The process itself is however dead easy, provided that you know the exact milliseconds that the audio is playing to early or to late.

Load the video into VirtualDub after installation. You do that with a click on File and the selection of Open Video File from the menu. If you get an error that a codec is missing you need to install an appropriate codec for the video format before you can correct the audio discrepancy. This is usually the case when you use a video player like VLC or MPlayer which come with their own binary codecs that cannot be used system-wide.

Make sure Direct Stream Copy is selected under Video and Audio in the menu bar. Now select Audio > Interleaving. You should see the following screen.

Locate the Delay audio track by setting and enter the time in milliseconds that is needed to synchronize the audio with the video. Enter a positive number to delay the audio track, or a negative number to start the audio track earlier.

I suggest you use a program like VLC to find out the exact time in milliseconds that that audio is out of sync. It usually takes to long to use VirtualDub to find that out.

Click OK afterwards to close the configuration screen again. Now select File > Save as Avi to save the video with corrected audio to the local system.

And that’s it. You have correct out of sync audio of a video file which can now be burned to video DVD.

Because of this switch, I thought I should give a bit of an update on where Banshee is now as a multi-media player. What are the nifty features that will easily win over the hearts of the Rhythmbox faithful? Let’s take a look.

Banshee features

Outside of the standard media-player features, you will find the following in Banshee:

• Cover art.
• BPM detection.
• Play youtube videos within Banshee.
• Subscribe to podcasts.
• Fix broken metadata.
• Context pane.

And much more. There are so many great features to this media player, you might be wondering what stopped you from using it before?

BPM

There are plenty of user-types that require Beats Per Minute (BPM) detection. DeeJays and fitness instructors are two groups that come to mind. When you play a song in Banshee the BPM is not auto-detected. You actually have to tell Banshee to detect the BPM. How is that done? Follow these steps:

1. 

   Figure 1

   Right click on a track and select  Edit Track Information.

2. Click on the Extra tab (see Figure 1).
3. Click the Detect button.
4. Click the Play button (next to the Detection button).
5. Very shortly after the song starts playing the BPM will show up and you can click Save.

If the BPM is not detected, you can also manually detect the BPM by clicking the Play button and then clicking the Tap button to the beat of the music and the BPM will be set.

Adding podcasts

Although this feature isn’t very intuitive at first, once you know how, the task is incredibly simple. Banshee has built in Miro which is a great place to find podcasts. So to add a podcast follow these steps:

1. Click on the Miro link in the left nav.
2. Navigate through Miro until you find a podcast you want to subscribe to.
3. When you find a podcast you like, click the ADD FEED TO YOUR SIDEBAR button.
4. From the left nav click on the Podcast button.
5. Navigate to the podcast you want to listen to and double click on it.

If you have a specific URL for a podcast you want to add you can do the following:

1. Click on the Podcast button in the left nav.
2. Click Add Podcast button in the upper right corner of the window.
3. Copy the URL in the resulting window and select how you want the podcast to be downloaded.

Context pane

This pane is incredibly useful in discovering new music (or information about the band/track you are currently playing). To view this pane click View > Context Pane. The Context Pane will allow you to see (based on the track/disk you are playing):

1. Last.fm recommendations.
2. Wikipedia information about the artist.
3. Related youtube videos.

Final thoughts

Like I said, at first I was skeptical about the switch to Banshee. But after using it for a few weeks I have discovered that Banshee is, in fact, a much richer experience than is Rhythmbox. Give Banshee a go and I think you will agree.

What is it?

GUVCView is a GTK+ front-end for the capturing of video from devices supported by the UVC driver. GUVCView was based on the luvcview project created by the QuickCamTeam. With GUVCView you can capture video or images along with audio. You can also control the look of your captured images/videos with easy to use sliders and check boxes. There is no need to be a video or audio expert to get high-quality video with GUVCView.

Installation

Installation is simple. I will demonstrate in Ubuntu 10.10. To install this tool do the following:

1. Open up the Ubuntu Software Center.
2. Search for guvcview.
3. Click the Install button associated with GUVCView.
4. Type your sudo password.
5. Accept any dependencies (if applicable).

Let the installation complete. Once the installation is finished, you will find GUVCView in the Applications > Sound & Video menu.

Usage

Figure 1

The basic usage of GUVCView is simple. When opened you will see two different windows. Figure 1 shows me pointing out the two different windows used by GUVCView. The left window is the preview window that will show a real-time viewer as you record your video (or take your picture). The right window is where you control the video and set up the options for the recording.

If you notice your camera is not auto-detected, you will want to go to the Video & Files tab and then see if your device is listed in the Device tab. If it is, but is not selected, go ahead and select it. If it is not listed, the camera might not be supported (or the drivers installed). Typically speaking, if your camera is supported in Cheese, it will be supported in GUVCView.

In this same tab you can select various options for your video recording. One very important option is the resolution. Remember, the higher the resolution the better the quality but the larger the file size.

Do the same for audio in the Audio tab. You might have to select a different Input device (depending upon the camera you have).

Once you have all of your options set up you are ready to record. To do this just make sure you are within the frame of the camera lense and hit the Cap. Video button in the control window. As soon as you click the Cap. Video button, you are recording. When you click the Cap. Video button it will change to Stop Video. To stop recording click th Stop Video button and the file will automatically be saved.

Final thoughts

GUVCView, from my perspective, is a much better means of recording video than Cheese. This especially applies if the video you are recording is to be used for something other than, say, Skype chatting.

But fear not, there is a fix. Although a bit kludgy, there is a way you can solve this problem. So, if you are itching to create animated titles for your video projects, after just a minimum amount of work, you can do so.

First things first

You will want to make sure you are up to date on both OpenShot and Blender. Better yet, let’s go from a clean install and install the pieces manually. First let’s get OpenShot installed. If you are using Ubuntu greater than 9.10 you will need to follow these instructions:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonoomph/openshot-edge.
3. Issue the command sudo apt-get update.
4. Issue the command sudo apt-get install openshot openshot-doc.

You should now have the latest release of OpenShot on your Ubuntu machine. Now let’s get blender >=2.5 installed on your machine. Follow these steps:

Open up a terminal window.

1. Issue the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cheleb/blender-svn && sudo apt-get update
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install blender

You should now have the latest version of Blender installed.

Configure Blender in OpenShot

You now have to make sure OpenShot knows where your blender executable is installed. The Blender executable will be found in /usr/bin/blender. Open up OpenShot and then click Edit > Preferences. In the resulting window make sure the Blender executable is /usr/bin/blender.

Apply the fix

Now for the fun part. In order to get animated titles working with CENTER alignment you have to run a fairly long command. The command must be run in the /usr/share/pyshared directory or it will not work. So follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Change to the proper directory with the command cd /usr/share/pyshared.
3. Issue the command sudo sed -i 's/CENTRAL/CENTER/g' openshot/blender/*.xml openshot/blender/scripts/*.pysed -i 's/CENTRAL/CENTER/g'openshot/blender/*.xml openshot/blender/scripts/*.py sudo sed -i 's/CENTRAL/CENTER/g' openshot/blender/*.xml openshot/blender/scripts/*.pysed -i 's/CENTRAL/CENTER/g'openshot/blender/*.xml openshot/blender/scripts/*.py.

Yes the above command is all one line and it is very important that you run the command as such. You might see an error stating something to the effect that file(s) *.pysed cannot be found. That error is fine and will not prevent the fix from working.

Check the fix

This is simple. All you need to do is open up OpenShot, click Title > New Animated Title and then attempt to create a new animated title using the CENTER alignment. If you get no warnings or errors (which you shouldn’t) you are good to go.

Final thoughts

It’s good a solution for this problem is available, because the animated title feature in OpenShot is very nice to have. Animated titles make your video project all the more professional. Hopefully, in future releases, this will not be required.

The OpenShot Video Editor has a built-in tool for the creation of titles. With this built in tool you can create static or animated titles. Now, the title editor relies heavily on Blender >= 2.5, so you will need to have this vector graphics tool installed as well. NOTE: If you are using Ubuntu 10.10 the installation of Blender does not meet the requirements (it is 2.4x and not 2.5). For this to work you will need to install Blender from source.

Once you have Blender installed all you have to do is find out what directory has the Blender executable (open up a terminal window and issue the command which blender to find this out). Once you have that path, click Edit > Preferences and then enter the full path to the executable in the Blender section. You should also know there are issues with older releases of the Blender/OpenShot combination on Ubuntu causing titles that are CENTERED to not work. Hopefully this bug will be worked out soon.

You can begin creating your titles even before you have created your video. All you have to do is open up OpenShot and click Title > New Animated Title to begin creating your title. Of course you do not have to create an animated title. You can easily create a static title for your video and then spice it up with transitions and/or fades.

Let’s create a title

Figure 1

After you click Title > New Animated Title a new window will open for you to begin your creation (see Figure 1). As you can see, there are a number of different types of animated titles. And each different type of title will require you to enter different information/configurations for the end result. In my sample I have chosen a Blur title. For that title I must enter at least enter:

File Name: This is the file name for the resulting title file.

Title: This is the text for the title.

The rest of the configurations can all work with the defaults. If your installation has trouble working with CENTRAL (AKA CENTERED) just select a different alignment for your title text. When you’ve configured your title click the Render button.

As you might expect, the very term “Render” could bring your PC into the realm of slow motion. Even rendering a short title can bog your machine down…so don’t do any crucial work during the rendering process.

After the rendering is finished you will then have a fancy new title clip to add to your video project. To add the title all you do is click File > Import Files, navigate to where you saved the title, and add it. Naturally you will want to add the right title to the right location (as in Intro titles to the beginning and Credit titles at the end).

Final thoughts

OpenShot is an amazing tool for creating video projects for various purposes. The ability to create static or animated titles only heightens the level of professionalism to your video.

OpenShot is a multi-timeline video editor that allows you to add music, effects, transitions, and multiple tracks all in a single, easy to use user interface. Even a novice can be editing videos within minutes of installation. Let’s take a look at the installation and basic use of OpenShot (NOTE: In later articles I will instruct how effects and transitions are done.)

Installation

OpenShot video editor can be found in all of the standard repositories, so installation is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility (such as Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center, PackageKit, etc).
2. Search for “openshot” (No quotes).
3. Select OpenShot for installation.
4. Click Apply to install (or click the Install button if you are using the Ubuntu Software Center.)
5. Allow any/all dependencies to be installed.

Once the installation is complete you can close out the Add/Remove Software utility. You will then find OpenShot in the Applications > Sound & Video menu.

Usage

Figure 1

When you first open up OpenShot you will be greeted by the main OpenShot window (see Figure 1).

The first step in creating your video is to import files and add them to tracks. You can add videos, music, and images. Adding images allow you to create very nice transitions, or you can just create a video scrapbook if you like.

Once you have added all of the files to your project, you then must add the files to tracks. This is very simple. In the the left pane all of your files will be listed. Select the first file you want to add to the track and then drag it down to the track you want it to belong on.

Figure 2

The reason you have multiple tracks is that it makes creating transitions much easier. Once you have added your tracks you can then easily do things like fade a clip in and fade it out. To achieve this all you do is right-click a clip and select from the options. Figure 2 shows the available sub-menus you can apply to clips.

One nice touch is the title feature. You can create a title for your video that can be either static or animated. I will give you warning…if you are installing in Ubuntu the animated titles will give you fits if you attempt to Center the text. OpenShot relies on Inkscape to render the titles and there is a bug between the latest releases on each. This should be resolved soon, so the title pages will work fine in a release or two.

Final thoughts

OpenShot is an incredibly powerful video editor. What you have seen here is nothing but a scratch of the surface. In later articles I will demonstrate effects, transitions, and more.

The portable software is compatible with avi and wmv files, and offers a basic interface to load videos from the local system, enable the image by image mode and configure it with the Set Position button.

The video plays in stop motion, sort of when Image by Image is selected from the menubar of the video player.

The program uses Microsoft’s Windows Media Player to play the video. The standard video controls are displayed below the image, it is possible to pause the video, change the volume or move to a specific position of the current video.

A right-click on the video displays a context menu with options to change the play speed, zoom in or out and control the video this way.

The Set Position button offers to display a specific video position by specifying the time of the scene. There is another option to go back and forth in steps in the video.

Image by Image can be handy for users who want to view a video in detail, and for users who need a specific screenshot taken of a video.

The software requires the Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 and Windows Media Player 9 or higher. The download is provided at the developer website.

Videos at a glance is a Chrome extension that offers video previews on several popular video hosting and posting sites such as Youtube, Twitter, Bing, Google Search, Digg and Reddit.

The extension adds a thumbnail stripe to pages where videos are posted. For Youtube that’s for instance the search results pages but also individual video pages.

videos at a glance

Thumbnails are displayed with the time they have been captured. Hovering over a thumbnail changes the bigger video image so that a larger sized version of the preview image is shown.

A click on a thumbnail loads the video and plays it from that time on, which makes it possible to skip sequences.

The second feature offered by Videos at a glance is the option to display related videos in a sidebar in the browser. The results that are displayed are different from the video results displayed at Youtube, which means it may sometimes make sense to use the extension’s option in addition to the related videos that may be displayed on a video page.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the extension is the ability to directly jump to specific positions in the video based on the preview thumbnails.

Chrome users who view a lot if videos may find the extension very helpful. Videos at a glance causes some display problems on some supported sites, nothing major but still visible.

Update: The videos at a glance extension has been discontinued. It is no longer available at the official Chrome Web Store. The website of the developer of the add-on, Video Surf is still available.

Now, the MPEG LA standards organisation responsible for the codec have answered the concerns of business and consumers by announcing the standard will remain royalty-free forever.

In the past some companies have decided to cash in on the popularity of standards they introduce, as was tried with JPEG, and this news will come as a relief to software and hardware makers building the standard into their programs and devices.

The announcement also means that browser makers, Opera and Firefox, who would not have money to pay such a royalty, can safely introduce H.264 video support into their browsers, following Microsoft, Google and Apple.

In the breaking story from Business Wire, it was said that…

MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License. MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015 (see http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf), and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides access to essential patent rights for the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard. In addition to Internet Broadcast AVC Video, MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides coverage for devices that decode and encode AVC video, AVC video sold to end users for a fee on a title or subscription basis and free television video services. AVC video is used in set-top boxes, media player and other personal computer software, mobile devices including telephones and mobile television receivers, Blu-ray Disc™ players and recorders, Blu-ray video optical discs, game machines, personal media player devices and still and video cameras.

 This is excellent news for everybody going forward.

Source : NeoWin and Engadget

Media Cope is a free media converter that supports photo, audio and video conversions and then some. The application uses tabs for the different program options.

free media converter

• Audio / Video Player – it is possible to play audio and video files right into the program’s interface. Supports the most popular file formats and offers several additional features like creating screenshots, changing the ratio or watching a video frame by frame.
• Audio / Video Cutter – Ability to cut audio and video files and save the results in all supported file formats.
• Audio Converter – Convert audio files in batch mode. All popular audio formats including mp3, flac and aac supported.
• Video Converter – Convert videos directly into different formats, popular video formats like avi, mpg, wmv, flv, 3gp and mkv supported
• Photo Cutter – Load a photo into the program interface and draw a rectangle around the area that should be saved as a separate image. Jpg, gif and png supported among other formats.
• Photo Resizer / Converter – Lets the user convert photos in batch mode. The same output formats are available, options to select a specific resolution, custom resolution, and to cut or stretch the photos to make them fit.
• Slide Show – Create a photo slide show, add photos and music, click go to start the slideshow.

Media Cope’s strength is its versatility. It could use advanced quality settings in the video and audio categories, as it is only possible to select a quality level but not the bitrate and other related settings.

The software is a solid free media converter otherwise, download available from the developer’s website, should be compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. Tested on Windows 7 Pro.

Video playback and conversions did not seem to work in the current version of Media Cope, the error Problem playing the file was displayed trying to play the file while video conversions resulted in a 0-byte file.

This is something that the developer’s should fix immediately.

Free Video to DVD converter is such an alternative. It requires almost no configuration at all and can convert most popular video formats to a DVD compatible format.

The program is offered as a standalone software and as part of a suite at the developer’s website. Both applications are free and offer the same functionality. We did have troubles with the standalone software which did not install properly on our Windows 7 test system.

Uninstalling that version and installing the complete software suite solved the problem. The installer offers to install a toolbar during installation which most users probably do not want at all. Unchecking the box will prevent the installation of the toolbar.

The interface of Free Video to DVD Converter is as basic as it can get. There are virtually no options except for the presets where the quality and video standard (NTSC or PAL) can be selected.

The program supports both single layer and dual layer DVDs and displays the output size of the added video files in a bar at the bottom of the screen to give an indication if the user has to burn a single or dual layer DVD.

Files can be added by clicking on the browse button in the interface. The program does not limit the video files that can be added for conversion (or warn the user) which means that it is possible to end up with a size that does not fit on one DVD. This is obviously problematic as it is not possible to burn the videos to DVD if they exceed the maximum capacities. The program does not split the DVDs or reduce the quality settings automatically.

The user has to make sure that the maximum capacities of a single or dual layer DVD are not exceeded. The converter will create a Video_TS folder out of the video files that are added by the user.

It is possible to just create the Video_TS folder or burn the DVD automatically in the end. Another nuisance is that the program will display an advertisement to install the toolbar again when the user closes it.

Free Video to DVD Converter is nevertheless one of the easiest to use programs to burn videos to DVD. Users of all experience levels can use it to create video DVDs easily. The developers should consider to add warnings when the space limit is exceed or implement an option to automatically split the videos on multiple DVDs if the space is exceeded.

Free Video to DVD Converter can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. A free alternative with an advanced functionality is DVD Flick.

Here it is possible to change the output directory and video bitrate before the queued videos are processed. Advanced users can edit batch files with advanced settings that are located in the program’s installation directory. These batch files contain the default configuration for the video to mkv conversion. The standard settings produce great results but advanced users might want to tweak the settings further to improve the quality of the output further.

Video To MKV will automatically detect several subtitle formats (srt, idx, sub) which are then automatically embedded in the mkv file that is created. The software program supports multiple audio channels as well.

Video To MKV is an easy to use program. All it takes to convert videos to the mkv format is to drag and drop them into the interface to process them one after the other. Advanced users can tweak the settings in the supplied batch files. Not the most comfortable way of editing the video conversion settings but better than no options to tweak them at all.

The software is available for download at the developer’s website. It is compatible with most versions of Microsoft Windows and does not need any additional software installed to function properly.

It is possible to combine filters as well using the checkboxes. Videos are displayed with their name, size, source and several thumbnail screenshots which usually gives a good indication of the video’s contents. Video search results can be sorted in several ways including relevance, popularity, duration or date they have been added.

It is furthermore possible to save a video search and to embed it in a website. Videosurf comes with two Firefox add-ons that make it more comfortable to search for videos. Videos at a Glance will display visual video thumbnails while the Videosurf Search Plugin adds the video search engine to the list of Firefox search engines.

Update: The VideoSurf and Videos at a Glance add-ons for the Firefox browser are no longer available at the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. The service itself is still operational and users can visit the homepage of the video searching service to find videos.

It is not clear why the two video search add-ons provided by the service have been removed from the add-on repository. Possible explanations include lack of popularity or the concentration of resources on the video surf website.