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My 9-to-5 From The Lens of Nokia E7 #maxis10

Vincent — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:43:07 +0000

As part of the Nokia E7 Maxis10 reviewers program, each of the 10 selected bloggers are required to record a short video of their 9-to-5 using the E7′s 8MP camera.

Since I don’t have a fixed 9-to-5 as a student pilot, I decided to film what a typical day looks like—starting with a morning roll call, breakfast (not very nice), and later a flight as per schedule.

The E7 is only capable of recording 720p videos, somehow after trimming and exporting from Windows Live Movie Maker, the video can be viewed at 1080p on YouTube.

*bump the video quality to HD for actual footage quality

The video is about 345 MB in size and it took a few hours upload using Maxis Broadband. Good thing the connection behaves well during this period, otherwise I would have to re-upload all over again.

As for the video quality, it seems to be even better than that of my point-and-shoot camera (which also takes 720p videos). What say you?

Merry Christmas! And The Winner Is…

Vincent — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 11:25:30 +0000

Ho ho ho.. the day has arrived. 18 days after the contest was launched, there are 120 fans on SheepTech’s Facebook page, myself included.

To pick the winner, I have used Random.org’s list randomizer. The list of people who liked SheepTech’s Facebook page is copied to Random.org, in the same order as shown on Facebook.

Upon clicking the “Randomize” button, the list will be shuffled, and the person who came on top of the new list will be the winner. I have made a video showing the drawing process:

Congratulations Affan Ruslan! Please check your Facebook message to redeem the prize.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone else. Thank you for participating.

YouTube Switches to 480p on Toggling Full Screen

Vincent — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:13:03 +0000

This is what I usually do on YouTube when I’m on a slow connection:

Click play, then immediately pause the video
When the video is done loading, full screen and play it smoothly
Until recently, this has changed. Step 3 would be “Get pissed when the video is automatically bumped from 360p to 480p. The loaded 360p is gone. Now wait for the 480p version to load, all over again!“

Are you experiencing the same? If yes, this is something you can do:

Go to your account settings (Click on username on top right > Account)
Select Playback Setup (left sidebar)
Select “I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video.”

Works well for me. I can now watch 360p videos in full screen without any interruption. If you’d like to watch the video in higher quality, you can manually bump it up to 480p.

Show Time-stamped Breakdown of YouTube Video Scenes

Vincent — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:33:06 +0000

(Firefox Add-on): Just like torrent files, YouTube videos can get pretty nasty too. Judging from the quality of comments left by the YouTube community, you shouldn’t be surprised to spot some nothing-better-to-do YouTubers uploading fake videos with misleading titles (say, a video full of emoticons titled Pink Panther 2 Trailer: watch).

VideoSurf Videos at a Glance, a Firefox add-on, will dramatically reduce the chance of being tricked into watching a fake video. Instead of displaying screenshots for verification like Vertor, VideoSurf adds an interactive time-stamped storyboard-like summary under YouTube videos, YouTube search results, Google and Yahoo! search results.

The thumbnails, which are scenes from the video, clearly reveal the content of the video, eliminating the guessing game. You can choose to see thumbnails from the best scenes or from all scenes. You can also opt to filter thumbnails so that it will only show scenes that contain human faces.

Clicking on any of the thumbnail will skip the video automatically to the specific scene you have selected.

Key features of VideoSurf Videos at a Glance:

VideoSurf lets you see a breakdown of the most important scenes from the video
Skip to a particular moment by clicking on any of the thumbnails
View thumbnails from the best scenes or all scenes with or without human faces in it
Supports YouTube video page, YouTube homepage, YouTube search, Google search, Yahoo! search and FriendFeed
Make all HD-compatible YouTube videos play in high quality (or HD) by default (optional)

VideoSurf in action on Google search results:

Videosurf on Yahoo! search results:

[VideoSurf Videos at a Glance]

Video: How to prevent earphone wires from getting tangled

Vincent — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:11:47 +0000

After getting rid of 2 big bags worth of old unwanted items from my drawers and shelf (some items date back to 8 years), I sit back and see what else I could do to unclutter my workstation. Two tangled earphones on my desk came to my attention, and naturally I Google for a way to handle them.

I was pointed to a tutorial on lifehacker, which was a very practical way to keep earphones, and more importantly making sure they will not be tangled when I wanted to use them later.

Since lifehacker is just providing the tutorial in words, I filmed a video tutorial to better demonstrate the steps, and to proof that the cables will really not be tangled when you unwrap them later.

On your right hand, tuck your 3rd and 4th finger and extend your 2nd and 5th finger
Hold the earbuds with your 3rd and 4th finger against your palm
Wrap the cable around your 2nd and 5th finger in the shape of “8″
When you have 6 to 8 inches of cable left, wrap the remaining cable around the center of the “8″ shape
Tuck the earphone jack through one of the two loops in the “8″ shape, or through the center wrapping.

The video was captured using only a Nokia N82 under low light condition, so bear with the poor video quality.

YouTube Provides Download Link, Somewhat

Vincent — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:22:57 +0000

As reported at ars technica, YouTube seems to be providing a download link at the bottom left of all videos on the ChangeDotGov channel.

There are a few possibilities. 1) YouTube is experimenting to allow its users to download videos off YouTube itself, 2) YouTube is just providing download links for Obama’s videos, either upon request or out of courtesy.

What say you? It doesn’t really matter anyway, as downloading YouTube videos is as easy as pie using third party tools.

YouTube Mutes Videos with Copyrighted Songs

Vincent — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:28:47 +0000

YouTube is trying hard enough to speed up its suicidal. First they have annoying search boxes on all embedded videos. No one liked it. They ignored.

For now, they decided to mute all videos that contain copyrighted audio track.

In another words, those funny homemade videos, screencasts, or just any other original that is using a copyrighted audio track would now be muted. Laugh all you want at the dull video that won’t make a sound.

Under all these muted videos, there will be a notice that reads:

This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled. More about copyright

See it for yourself. Some comments on videos that were muted already, contain NSFW languages, as expected:

Embed YouTube Videos in High Quality [&fmt=18]

Vincent — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:59:48 +0000

To watch a YouTube video in high quality on YouTube website itself, it is as easy as clicking the “watch in high quality” link, provided it’s available. Even when it is not available, you can use the &fmt=18 trick, which will work on most videos.

But how do you embed a YouTube video in high quality? You can do so by using the HQ Embed Code Generator. Just paste the YouTube video ID of the video you want to embed in high quality into the input field and click “Create Code“—an embed code of high quality video will be generated.

Low Quality

High Quality

Bookmark HQ Embed Code Generator, Open in Sidebar

Since the generator has no styling or whatever, it will open beautifully in Firefox sidebar. For future use, you can bookmark the generator and launch it in your Firefox sidebar without leaving YouTube website itself.

To do so, bookmark the generator, then right click on the bookmark, select “Properties“, then select “Load this bookmark in the sidebar“. The next time you open the bookmark, it will open neatly in the sidebar.

Prefer altering the embed code manually instead of using the generator?

To do it manually, you have to modify the embed code copied from YouTube.

1. Locate the YouTube URLs in the embed code, there are 2. Bolded in the below sample code:

http://www.youtube.com/v/7HPfAhA2FBU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="345">

2. In each of them, add “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18” at the back of it. It’d look something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/7HPfAhA2FBU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

3. Your embed code would then look something like this:

&ap=%2526fmt%3D18">http://www.youtube.com/v/7HPfAhA2FBU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="345">



Fixmymovie: Enhance Your Crappy Video
Vincent — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:46:36 +0000
Handphone cameras, though produces low quality videos most of the time, is one of the most frequently used device to record an unexpected event. Almost everyone carries their phone around, but not an expensive camcorder that will capture DVD quality videos.
 
 With Fixmymovie, there is no need to settle with those handphone-camera-quality anymore. It will not turn your crappy video into DVD quality, but it will make your unwatchable video to a more watchable one—by brightening your dark video, sharpen your blurry video and make your video less jerky.
Example
 The video on the left below is the original video uploaded on YouTube, while the video on the right is after the fix. The original is too dark to see a single thing, but after the fix, you would be able to see someone playing a guitar.

 Click on image to watch and compare
After fixing the video, you can either push it to YouTube or download it. For a fee of $2, you can download the fixed video in four formats, which are Windows media, iPod video, flash video and original movie with the “fixmymovie” logo watermark removed.
Not all videos will look better after being fixed though, some would even look unnatural instead.
©2011 SheepTech

Fixmymovie: Enhance Your Crappy Video