Choose fast recompress from the menu, though, and you're all set.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:42 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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(via Amritas)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:56 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Currently there's just the one torrent containing all the clips; creating and seeding dozens of torrents is too much trouble unless there's a lot of interest in this.

Let me know if you have problems downloading (other than speed; it will be slow to start with until I get another seed running), or with playing any of the files.

Oh yeah, this includes the opening and closing credits of Kamichu! in "glorious fake HDTV". Fake it may be, but it is significantly better than the standard 640x360 files.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:52 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Dexia Bank ATM machines are expiriencing a curious problem. The machines stop functioning when someone enters the number 7, making it impossible for people with a 7 in their pin (personal identification number) code to perform a cash withdrawal.

The problem has been occuring for a month. To prevent people from running out of cash, they are able to perform cash withdrawals inside. "We are expiriencing a problem with the software", a Dexia spokesman admitted last wednesday in the daily journal Het Laatste Nieuws, "the problems should be solved within three weeks."

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:13 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Anyway, for this work I use the simple but very functional VirtualDub. VirtualDub lets me say "start here" and "stop there" and snip out a minute and a half of video without the time-consuming (and quality-destroying) re-encoding. It just grabs what's there, bit-for-bit (and creates new keyframes as necessary).

But VirtualDub is designed for AVIs with fixed bit-rate MP3 soundtracks. Kamichu! has been released so-far as an HDTV** Matroska file with AAC audio. Standard VirtualDub won't have a bar of it. VirtualDubMod, which has been patched to handle Matroska files, crashes violently on Kamichu!

I'm not that easy to stop, however. I used MKVextract to split the Matroska file into an XVID-encoded video-only AVI and a separate AAC audio file. Then I used All Converter to turn the AAC file into a raw WAV. Then I fired up VirtualDub again, and told it to load the video from the AVI and the audio from the WAV, and re-interleave them into a new AVI file and snip out this bit (the opening credits) and that bit (the closing credits) for me.

Which it did. And lo, the opening credits were very good. But the closing credits were teh suck, because the audio was hugely, and I mean hugely out of sync with the video, and the main reason that the closing credits of Kamichu! are cute is that they are in sync with the music. As you will see when I put them up for you to download. Via Bittorrent.

This caused a certain amount of puzzlement as it slowly dawned on me that not only were the audio and video out of sync, but that the problem became worse over time. Close examination indicated that even if they were in sync at the start of the clip, they were out by fifteen or twenty seconds at the end, which is a hell of a lot.

This, it turns out, is because the closing credits run at 30 frames per second, while the rest of the show runs at 24 fps. Why anyone would wish to do that I have no idea, but that is indeed what they have done. In the original video file it works just fine, but when I clip out the closing credits, it falls apart. But if I take that clip and tell it hey, you run at 30 fps... It works!

But you can't see it, because we have no bandwidth left.

* Between the anime fans and the bastard referrer spammers, the bandwidth well has run dry this month. I was planning to get another server to offload some of our stuff, but the hosting company seems to have run out as well.
** As it happens, it's really just up-converted anamorphic widescreen 704x480 video, not native 720p. It still looks pretty.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Mirroring these drives merely gives you a longer window before they disappear.

Well, at least now I know why half a million files just disappeared.

There's a patch. A patch. For a hard disk. Oh, joy.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:24 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Like Pocky, Peanut Butter M&Ms are not available in Australia. Twenty years ago, that would have meant that they were not available in Australia. Today it just means that you have to look around a bit.

Munch crunch.

Okay, it sounded revolting, but it seems to work. I think I still prefer the peanut ones, but these aren't bad.

Next up: Almond.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:55 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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It also makes four out of five of the current movies that I want to see -

Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-rabbit
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Serenity
Howl's Moving Castle
Corpse Bride

Howl's Moving Castle is a great (but flawed) movie by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso...). Rotten Tomatoes gives it 84%, which as far as I can see is the worst rating they have given to any Miyazaki film.

I'm planning to put up a review of all five movies at some point, so for now I'll just note that if you enjoy animated films or fantasy stories at all, this is a must see while it's on the big screen. But as I noted (and unlike most of Miyazaki's previous work) there are a couple of rough edges.

I can't say for certain whether these crept in during translation (possible for one of the problems), are present in the original novel by Diana Wynne Jones (most of Miyazaki's films are from stories of his own creation), or are Miyazaki's fault. I'll be seeking out the book tomorrow, so I'll be able to clear that one up at least.

As to what the rough edges are... Well, wait for the review.

Ah. Okay. From one of the reviews on Amazon:

Diana Wynne Jones is much more subtle with her lessons in the book than Miyazaki is in the movie so don't expect the "war is bad" and "love is good" lessons to be thrown in your face. In fact, there isn't even a war in the book! That was something that was added in the jump from page to screen.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:45 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I went to the movies today

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:42 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sunni Turnout Is High In Vote on Iraqi Charter

Insurgents largely suspended attacks, granting Sunni Arab voters a chance to try to defeat the U.S.-backed charter and giving much of the country a rare day of peace that belied the deep fractures exposed by the vote.

Fortunately we have blogs; in this instance The Belmont Club. At least Wretchard knows the difference between reporting and speculation.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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