WinAVI Video Convertor

Hmm, here comes another entry under the category of Computers & Tech. Just thought I’ll share about this rather great software that I picked up due to several reasons. Actually, so far my main use of this software is to use it to convert Real Media to something non-RM, be it AVI or WMV, so my comments here may be a little restrictive. Do find better reviews if you’re looking for something else k? =D

Official Site

This software has other options, like en-coding to AVI, RM, MPEG and WMV formats. Honestly, I know there’s much more to encoding than this, but at least the software seems clever enough to encode at a suitable bitrate (as compared to the source file you’re compressing from). At least it works that way for the real media files that I’ve converted in wmv format due to some technical problem with one of my drivers. The knowledge centre-ing around video (audio included) encodes is too deep for me and I’ve given up on trying to grasp some of the basics many times. =D

For RM to other formats, you’ll expect the file size to increase (in general). So be prepared to see it taking up more space than its RM counterpart. It’s quite normal, and is almost always the case except for 1 file, which I suspect the RM wasn’t very properly compressed anyway. Hahaha. And to me, this function of the software is what seems to be most attractive, since Real Media is sort of a neglected video format when it comes to re-encoding (partly due to the nature of RM formats). For en-coding your avi/mpeg/wmvs/quicktime files into something mainstream like avi/mpeg1/2, I suggest looking up some of the indepth guides specifically targetting such tasks. Better still, learn a trick or two from people who are part of subtitling teams and in charge of the encoding. I’m sure those people are definitely knowledgeable enough, at least more than enough for your average use of encoding. Heh.

Anyway, this software isn’t exactly free. Without buying the software, the bad thing would be that there’ll be a watermark in whatever video you’ve converted. And it’s not at the top or some corner of the video, but right IN THE MIDDLE of the screen, so you might want to take note of that. Of course, you could get the key from your friend or by some other mean, but I have to say it here that it’s not legal. =P

Hope this entry is of help to some people out there. =) I wonder what the next Computers & Tech entry will be about…

Megaupload SX 3.2

Eh, this time it’s not really introducing/sharing a software, but rather, it’s an addon for Firefox. As you might guess from the title of the entry, it indeed has something to do with Megaupload. I’m sure many of you know what it is, and should know that it is frustrating that your country’s slots are always taken up, or at least that’s the case for me. Seeing the date of its release, I’m actually quite slow in discovering this nifty add-on.

Get the addon here. After adding it on to your Firefox, you’re required to restart the application for it take effect. To use it, just enable it (as shown in the picture). Well, so far it works fine for me but I don’t really grab stuff from Megaupload all that often since many people know better than to use MU. Haha, at least now I won’t have to wait/miss out on good stuff when people upload it to MU (ugh).

Hope this tool will come in handy to you guys. Have fun~

p.s. as for IE/other browser users, I’m sorry that I’m too lazy to find out the equivalent methods (if it even exists). Try Google, your good friend. =D

Combined Community Codec Pack

Decided to take a break from all the reviews and intro this software instead. Different people have their own ways of settling codec issues for whatever videos they are watching. From what I know, the more common practices are 1) to download individual necessary codecs, 2) K lite codec pack, 3) VLC player and 4) Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

For those in group 1, they are usually those can really be bothered to hunt for each codec. Of course they need to know their stuff to download only the necessary stuff and they are usually the kind that cant even tolerate an extra codec lying around in their hard disk and not being used. I guess not many of us would fall under this category.

Let me skip group 2 and talk about VLC player users. Certainly it does seem that VLC itself can play quite a wide range of .avi files and other stuff, but I’ve heard that (never bothered to confirm) VLC can’t play certain things too (dont ask me what). For me, however, I would certainly prefer Media Player Classic over VLC player cos i find the former nicer to use. (what a lame reason…)

Now then, it’s the 2 of the most common codec packs that many people use nowadays. Before CCCP came into the picture, K lite was the most widely used codec pack if i aint mistaken. Some still stick to it, while others (myself included) have switched to CCCP. Why the switch? If u ask me, i certainly wouldn’t justify from the really technical point of view due to my serious lack of knowledge in codec/playback stuff. However, seeing more and more major fansub groups (check their faq section under their official wiki) and other big sites dealing with media recommending CCCP. Perhaps 1 reason is due to the fact that CCCP is much smaller so i suppose it really gives u all the common stuff that you would expect an average person to require, without having multiple stuff that might overlap in terms of their functionality. Hence, less “junk” (like god knows how many players and “useless” codecs) on your hdd, which should be good :)

Well of course u can read for yourself all the supported formats CCCP can offer. If you dont really understand what all those mean (i dont understand fully either), just know that it works which is what’s most important and everyone cares about. Of course if you are into Real Media or Quicktime video formats, you will unfortunately have to go grab Real Alternative & Quicktime Alternative respectively if you dont want more media players lying around. I’ve already mentioned those in my first entry of this category. With that, I should think playing videos shouldn’t be of any problem.

Hmm, I would recommend this to all who tends to watch a considerable amount of videos. All right, that sums up my 3rd entry of this category. I guess I dont really have that much to share in this aspect. Until next time~~

p.s. sorry for all the unrelated non-CCCP stuff. Haha.

µTorrent

Here comes my 2nd IT-related entry! Just my $0.02 after using it and comparing to my past experiences with other BitTorrent clients. Maybe blogging about something like this is a bad idea. But i’m just here to comment about the clients not where i use at or recommend people to use it in. It’s like discussing about guns/weaponry doesnt mean i’m discussing how to use them to kill people right? Okay, getting a little off topic. Time to get back to business.

There are many BT clients out there and of course i havent used all of them, but i can say i’ve tried most of the more popular ones. I’ve used the following before (kinda in some chronological order):

1) Bittorrent - the original (didn’t use for long)
2) Bittornado - formerly known as Shad0w’s experimental client (started using shortly after the original. used for some time. can’t rmb exactly how long)
3) Bitcomet (used for the bulk of the time. till 0.70 since i refuse to upgrade to any version beyond that) & Azureus (rarely used unless BC is banned on that particular tracker)
4) µTorrent (since start of May till unknown)

For a brief comparison of the different clients, take a look at this wiki article. Seriously, there are many clients that i’ve not heard of many of the clients listed in there. I guess they arent as good or popular since good/popular ones will at least come into my “radar” before. Of course, u can gather what features each client has from the article too but i guess it’s kinda troublesome to do so just click on their respective client names for their very own wiki article.

Now onto the introduction proper. µTorrent is a small application (173kb) that doesnt require installation (though there’s an installer version availble at a slightly bigger filesize), very unlike the other clients I’ve used before. Takes up less memory than the other clients, so it’s less taxing on your system. Sounds good? Yea. What’s more, I seem to be able to achieve better speeds with it. I guess the increasing trend of users switching from Bitcomet to µTorrent is largely fueled by these better aspects of the latter.

The program is also very user-friendly. Hardly had any problems switching over. It works quite similar to BitComet so i’m sure a lot of people wouldnt find much difficulty too :) I guess some time will be spent on migrating from old client to this one and settings that need to be tweaked here and there to achieve more desirable results. Other than that it wasn’t much of a hassle for me to switch over.

Why not give µTorrent a try today? U could be pleased with the results. There’s nothing to lose. The most just revert back to whatever u’re using now :) (That sounded so much like an advertisement leh. -_-)

Added: Migration Guide. I know some people will surely ask me from old client how to port over to µTorrent. So that’s the guide on the µTorrent site. In short, that’s more practical if u need to rename a lot of files. Of course, u can do it manually by renaming .ext.bc! (ext = extension for example avi, jpg, zip etc.) to .ext.!ut

Just in case some people have .bc! files as known file types and can’t really change it to .!ut directly u might want to uncheck that option shown in the picture above. To get there, in your folder window select tools -> folder options

I’ll just summarise the steps to migrate from some other client to µTorrent
1) Rename the files as above mentioned.
2) Open µTorrent, open the .torrent file (i assume u have it), choose the folder that has those incomplete files. Select the files that u want to download (if applicable). UNCHECK the “Start torrent” option. Then click OK.
3) Right click on the task and choose Force Recheck (aka hash check in BitComet). After re-checking, it should show a %tage that’s close/same as in your previous client.
4) You’re ready to go! :) Though u might want to do some general settings for µTorrent as well.

I guess I wont go into µTorrent settings since it’ll differ from person to person and the connection that they are using etc. Go tweak on your own! :P

Do correct me if i went wrong anywhere or omitted something important. I’m not sure if this will help anyone though. Hahz.

Real Alternative

Since there are some responses I get that they dont like to use/download/install real player because they dont want an extra media player just to play rm/rmvb files or whatever reason/s they have, I might as well just blog about it. Hopefully it’ll get more people to watch some of the videos I’ve shared since those Chinese makers like to use real media, primarily due to its notably smaller filesize which of course is easier to host. But of course, even for myself if there’s an avi/mpeg1/2/mp4 version i’ll go for those.

Anyway, back to the main topic. Real Alternative became really popular and welcomed because there are many, many others in the world who would prefer not to use real player. Heh. The wiki article covers all the essential info already (it’s wiki for a reason right) and even linking to an external site where u can download it. I guess I wouldnt have to touch much about it. Hope it’s useful to you (if you dont already know about it) and perhaps able to enjoy more media out there. :)

Since I’m at it, I might as well direct you to QuickTime Alternative. The basic idea’s the same. Works in a very similar manner, but I hardly watch stuff in QuickTime format so this isn’t really especially useful to me. I dont know about you, but i guess it’s no harm sharing more info.

As such, I think Media Player Classic is the best media player around. Go use it if you havent.

That ends my first entry related to IT . Gosh, yet another category huh. What’s next?