CD Ripping under Ubuntu 10.04

Need to rip a CD? Got Ubuntu? Try Rubyripper. Inspired by Exact Audio Copy (Which will no longer run for me under Ubuntu 10.04 using WINE), Rubyripper has the same priority of accuracy over everything else as the former, and after testing it on my quite-scratched Metallica CD, I can confirm it does at least as good a job as EAC, although the interface could certainly be prettier (again, just like EAC).

For ease of install, try grabbing the "GetDeb" .deb file apropriate for your version of Ubuntu here: http://linuxappfinder.com/package/rubyripper. Please also make sure you have the audio codecs you want to transcode to installed as well (You can install LAME for MP3 encoding through the Ubuntu Software Center).

Timidity and DOSBox in Ubuntu 10.04

For those of you who care about this sort of thing, here's how I finally got decent General MIDI playback for DOSBox in Ubuntu 10.04:

(These instructions are somewhat adapted from a post by Malor on the official Ubuntu forums)

1. Go into Synaptic Package Manager and install these packages:

• dosbox
• timidity
• fluid-soundfont-gm
• fluid-soundfont-gs

2. Open a command prompt, and type:

sudo gedit /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg

• The last line in the file says:

  source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg

  Put a # mark at the beginning of that line to comment it out. We're going to use the soundfonts we installed from the previous step.
  
  
• On the next line, type:

  soundfont /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2

• Save and exit

3. If you don't already have a dosbox.conf you want to use, type:

dosbox

and hit enter. Dosbox will pop up. At its command prompt, type:

config -writeconf dosbox.conf

This will generate one for you. Then type:

exit

to quit dosbox.

4. Type

gedit dosbox.conf

• Click the Find button, type:

  mpu401=

  and click Find. You should see a line highlighted.
• Close the search popup.
• The three lines starting with mpu401= should look like this:

  mpu401=intelligent

  device=alsa

  config=128:0

• Save and exit

5. Restart Ubuntu

6. Open a command prompt, type:

timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os -EFreverb=0 2>&1 &

7. Start dosbox

8. Enjoy General MIDI. :)

9. Close terminal window when finished.

Note: You may have to occasionally change

config=128:0

To

config=129:0

in your dosbox.conf. Watch the output when you start timidity and it'll show which to use.

Also, if you get permission errors while installing or running timidity, you may have to add "timidity" to the "audio", "pulse", and "pulse-access" groups in Users and Groups (In the System menu).

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

I finally broke down and installed it, and here's some initial thoughts:

The Bad:

-The "Default Keyring" thing is still around, and it must die. Now.

- There should be an option to install "forbidden" codec support and encrypted DVD playback during installation. Given the amount of people who need to play MP3s alone, this should be a no brainer. I'm sick of having to explain to potential Ubuntu users why they can't do something every other operating does out of the box without jumping through hoops.

- No volume control on the top bar without the mail/messaging control? Really?

- Adding the Medibuntu repository is still a necessary evil if you want to use Handbrake or FFWin to convert Flash video to another format... like for your iPhone or PSP.

The Good:

- Snappy boot performance, slightly better than before.

- I thought I'd hate the new cosmetic changes, but the left-side window controls are actually kind of handy, and the new default theme is actually pretty cool looking (salmon accents aside).

- Overall better performance.

- New Thunderbird and Firefox. The former especially is a major upgrade.

- Ubuntu Software Center. It's almost to the point of being the easiest package manager ever made.

It feels more like a non-Long Term Service release, but still worth upgrading IMHO. My issues may not be the same as yours, so take my comments accordingly.

A note on burning DVDs in Ubuntu

If you have issues with DVDs burning far more slowly than the burner is rated for (and you know the blank DVD+/-Rs you're using are also rated for the same speed), here are some suggestions:

• Make sure that your PC can keep up with the data rate. Disable hard-disk intensive programs while burning (usually the burn would fail if this is the case, but just to be on the safe side...).
• Install K3B. It's the best overall disc burner in Ubuntu anyways.
• If you're still getting low burn speeds, go into the settings menu, K3b settings, and the advanced tab. There, check "Force unsafe operations". It should now burn substantially faster.

Please note I'm currently running Ubuntu 9.10. On other versions, your mileage may vary. Also, please don't hold me responsible for a hardware failure if something happens. When in doubt, double-check your settings and documentation before trying anything.

Film vs. "Digital" - the myths of reliability

There are a lot of myths in the film industry, and some of them are harmful to newcomers trying to enter and learn the buisness. One is that getting a new camera (film or digital) will automatically make you a film director. Another is that going to film school and getting a degree means you are now by default a filmmaker. The answer to both: although a new camera and a film degree can be helpful, you become a filmmaker by making movies, and the stories you tell are vastly more important than the technology.

However, there still continues to be a debate over which tools are superior to use, and the myths that crop up as a result are becoming perhaps the largest point of confusion for people entering the film business.

On the one side, you have people who believe that image acquisition using "digital" (video, DSLRs, or special-purpose cameras like the Red One) is inherently superior because the image is captured and processed right there on the set, then backed up in safe, secure hard drives or tape backups.

On the other side, you have film lovers, who argue about film's superior latitude and resolution, and the virtue of having a real, physical copy of the image you can always go back to.

Here's a dirty little secret: neither is really all that safe. There are films less than ten years old that have to be restored because the prints have degraded so badly. Digital acquisition is even worse. In an interview with someone at a major studio who handles data archiving, they basically admit that they have to be constantly backing up old data onto new devices to avoid drive failures.

I'm working on a film called Doggie Boogie right now as a data wrangler. The film is shot using the much-hyped Red One, which has an entirely data-centric workflow. We have some of the most reliable external hard drives available on set to back up to. We back up to two drives, mirroring each other, and each drive is actually two disks set up in a mirrored RAID. We are safe as houses. Except last week one of the drives died. No warning, nothing. We still have the one drive as a backup, but it just goes to show: digital is only as reliable as the medium you store it on, and none of the mediums out there are safe enough to trust on their own.

Why not just use film, then? Because at different points in the process, film is even more unreliable. You can't see imperfections in the image until the film is developed (usually) the next day, but even more crucially, even small amounts of light leaks in the camera or the film canister can cause your image to get washed out or completely erased in a white blur. Then there's the mechanical issues with film cameras, like frame stuttering or scratches from minute particles of dirt. All of these issues can be minimized by hiring a crew that knows what they're doing, but again: Film is not a quick fix for reliability. It needs to be handled with lots of care.

So, to reiterate: there is no "safer" medium. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of each, and plan your shoot accordingly.

Update - Here's a video from the Library of Congress about the "home" side of this subject: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/videos/digipres/index.html

Ubuntu 9.10 and DOSBox

Just a quick update: on Ubuntu 9.10, the fabulous DOSBox 0.73 can be installed from the Ubuntu Software Center, which means it's no longer necessary to go through compiling source code for the latest (as of this post) version of DOSBox! You may want to change (in your dosbox.conf or dosbox-0.73.conf) the mixer settings to "rate=44100" and the "prebuffer=50" to avoid stuttering sound, but try and see what happens. I haven't tried setting up General MIDI to work with it yet, but I'll post here if I do.

More on buying decisions

In addition to looking for a new camera, I'm also looking into a computer upgrade to handle the increased demands of editing full HD (or greater) footage.

Here's a great site for helping to decide whether it's time to get a new Mac system:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Buyer%27s_Guide_%28time-ordered%29

The conclusion I've come to on both camera and computer is to wait a bit. Apparently, the Mac Pro is due for a major update in March, and it will be probably about that long before test footage from the fixed-lens RED Scarlet comes out.

DSLRs vs Prosumer Video Cameras vs RED

So, I'm in the beginning stages of a documentary, and the camera I have for shooting HD (A Sony HDR-HC7 HDV-based handycam) is looking pretty low quality compared to what's out there right now.

I have essentially three options within the budget we're looking at:

1) Prosumer video camera - The Panasonic HMC-150 is the closest form factor to my old DVX100, is around $3500, and uses SDHC cards, which are cheap. However, it also has a fixed lens, so shooting something from a distance is going to be a pain in the ass. There is also some chromatic aberration in the lens that becomes especially visible around dark objects in front of a very bright light source (like, say, tree trunks against the sky). The compression also has trouble with lots of random movement, such as turbulent streams up close.

I could go with a better HDV camera, which would give me the advantage of using cheap tapes instead of expensive memory cards, not needing a laptop or field recorder, etc. The image quality difference is fairly large at this point, though, and many TV stations today will simply not accept shows shot using HDV.

There are better prosumer cameras, such as the Sony EX3, but they are about twice as expensive, use much more expensive media, and still have highly compressed video (unless you buy/rent an expensive external recording device like the Nanoflash).

2) DSLR - The Canon 5D Mark II and 7D have created a whole new category in indie production by integrating HD video into high quality still cameras. The advantages they bring are lenses that are sharper, have much shallower depth of field (Which looks much more like film), and a very reasonable price (Around $1800 for the 7D, $3500 for the 5D Mark II, both with a zoom lens). Oh, and with lens adapters, you can use a wide variety of lenses (including cinema lenses). On paper and in some of the video clips shown around the internet, this would seem ideal. However, there are a few issues:

• The cameras have crappy on-board audio recording. You can plug in an external mic, but in order to get decent audio, you need an external mic preamp box which requires additional power; plus an unofficial firmware hack to disable the cameras automatic level adjustments. A much simpler (although possibly more expensive) way of dealing with this is to record audio with a portable audio recorder and use a clapper slate (or clapping your hands in front of the lens) to sync up with the image and/or crappy on-camera audio in post-production. Either way, a hassle.
• The video recorded is not the same size as the image sensor, and the process of squishing the image down to video size in the camera creates some problems, namely aliasing, which can get downright ugly. Aliasing is most visible with distinct lines next to each other, say in a truck's front grill or a striped t-shirt.
• The video is recorded in a highly compressed format that will lose a lot of detail in really dark areas, and can create some fairly visible compression artifacts if you're not careful.
• Due to either format limitations or EU regulations regarding a tax on video cameras, DSLRs do not record video clips larger than 4GB or longer than 10-11 mins, whichever comes first. This makes using a DSLR a lot like using a film camera, but sucks for documentaries where you could easily end up stopping the camera in the middle of a perfect moment that you cannot recreate.
• Speaking of documentaries, DSLRs are very difficult to get a stable image from while being hand-held, which means you need to get additional accessories (a shoulder mount, basically) in order to do proper handheld work... which costs an extra $800 at least.
• Each time a frame of video is recorded, it's not drawn all at once. Each line of the frame is recorded top to bottom in sequence. For relatively still images, this is fine, but when something moves rapidly through the frame (say, a car), it looks slanted. This is the "rolling shutter issue" or "jello", and if you ask me, it's fugly.
• The 5D Mark II, while having a larger sensor area and better low-light performance than the 7D, shoots in a non-standard framerate. There's supposedly a firmware update that fixes this - in 4-6 months.

Basically, these cameras were originally designed for photojournalists who wanted to also shoot some video, but in the same style that they shoot pictures - short, silent (or with unmixed audio) and not edited to a significant degree. If you can control what you're shooting, you can get gorgeous images. If not, you get image problems. Oh, did I mention the rolling shutter issue? Anyway, you get the idea...

3) RED Scarlet - Speaking of 4-6 month out, this camera seems on paper to be the answer to my concerns. Based around the same tech as the über-successful RED One, the Scarlet uses a vastly superior codec with much higher resolution, significantly more dynamic range, an next to no compression artifacts. The image captured is not downsampled like on the DSLR (at least, not by default), so aliasing is very little to none, and (if it's like the RED One) the rolling shutter issue is much less noticeable than on a DSLR. So what's the problem?

• You can get the Scarlet for $4750, but that's a fixed-lens design, so you can't swap the lens out like on a DSLR. Even if the built-in zoom lens is great, the sort of wildlife photography I'll likely be doing on this documentary will require a very long telephoto lens.
• The interchangeable-lens model is $2750, plus $950 per prime lens (or you can use DSLR lenses by using an adapter for $500 [either Canon or Nikon]), but you also have to buy the audio interface, batteries, etc. Oh, and if you want a proper viewfinder instead of a back-of-camera LCD display? $3200. Side handle for proper handheld shooting? $950.
• There has been exactly one 15-second clip of Scarlet footage shown so far (a close-up of an iguana on a soundstage), so it's impossible to judge what the final image quality will be like...yet.
• RED cameras are often back-ordered into the stone age, and pre-orders have yet to even start for the Scarlet, so good luck getting one this year.
• The image captured by the RED cameras is totally unprocessed (in terms of color and brightness adjustments, not compression), which gives you more options, but also makes it more work to deal with in post.
• RED cameras are not "shoot anything and it will look beautiful" cameras like mid-to-upper-end video cameras. For better or for worse, the RED needs a significant understanding of how images will look in post in order to shoot good-looking footage. When you have control over what you're shooting, this is fine. When you don't, you run a greater risk than other cameras of getting bland footage that no amount of post-processing can fix.

So, basically each of these options have significant drawbacks, and at least two of them are likely to be replaced with vastly superior models within a year. I will continue to do research, of course, but in the meantime it's a really tough decision.

On Ubuntu and DOSBox

Okay, I've had enough. After a third virus/malware scare in less than two years, I'm switching to Ubuntu Linux for my web browsing and general work. I still have an XP partition around for video /sound editing, but that is only connected to the internet for updates. I can now run my email, web browsing, and Skype needs out of Linux, without having to worry about Windows viruses/malware/keyloggers/etc. Ubuntu 9.04 is also by far the most polished and accessible Linux I've ever used, which helps quite a bit. It's still not "grandma" material, as you do have to put up with a lot of configuration wackiness, especially if you have hardware that's a little unusual, like me having two sound cards and a webcam.

On the plus side, almost everything in the whole world of Linux can be done on Ubuntu, and usually a simple Google search will not only tell you how to do it, but give you the command-line commands to do it, which you simple copy, then paste in an open terminal window. For someone like me who's grow up around computers, this is an acceptable compromise.

I don't have a lot of hard drive space allocated to Ubuntu, but thankfully, I like to play classic games. To this end, I use the fabulous open-source DOS emulator, DOSBox.

For those of you who would like to try this as well, I looked at the following forum posts:

Tutorial: dosbox with Glide under Linux and DOSBox 0.72 and MIDI Support

And here is my condensed summary (Note: I'll mark the general-midi portions of the setup in green, so that if you don't want to mess with your system sound settings, you don't have to):

Note: This is for Ubuntu 9.04 and DOSBox 0.73. If you try this with a different version of either, your mileage may vary.

Update: On Ubuntu 9.10, DOSBox 0.73 can be installed from the Ubuntu Software Center, so you can skip the compilation steps below. You may want to change (in your dosbox.conf or dosbox-0.73.conf) the mixer settings to "rate=44100" and the "prebuffer=50" to avoid stuttering sound. I haven't tried setting up General MIDI to work with it yet, but I'll post here if I do.

1. Get DOSBox (the "source" version, as this is frequently the most current).
2. Extract the package into your /home/yournamehere directory.
3. Open a terminal window and copy/paste the following command in and run it:

   sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-sound1.2-dev libsdl-net1.2-dev libpcap-dev build-essential cvs

4. When that's done, "cd" into the folder you extracted earlier , for example "cd /home/yournamehere/dosbox-0.73".
5. copy/paste, run the following commands (one at a time, in order):

   ./configure
   
   make
   
   sudo make install

6. Then, get the following packages (you can just paste this in the command-line, like before):
   

   sudo apt-get install dosbox timidity fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs

7. Type "dosbox".
8. This should automatically make a dosbox.conf (or dosbox-version.conf) file. You can check by opening your /home/yournamehere directory, turning on "Show Hidden Files" in the "View" menu, then scrolling down and opening the ".dosboxrc" folder. If you don't see the file there, go back to dosbox and type:
   

   config -writeconf dosbox.conf

9. When you see the file in the directory, close DOSBox, and open up the dosbox.conf file by double-clicking it.
10. Scroll down until you see a line that starts with "mp401=", then make sure it looks like this:
    

    mpu401=intelligent
    mididevice=alsa
    midiconfig=128:0

11. Save the file and exit it.
12. In the terminal window, type (or paste) the following command:
    

    sudo gedit /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg

13. Scroll down, put a "#" in front of the line that reads "source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg", then paste this on the next line:
    

    soundfont /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2

14. Save and close. In the terminal, type (or paste) the following command:
    

    sudo /etc/init.d/timidity restart

15. DOSBox should now be configured for General MIDI sound.
16. Now, you'll need to create a folder for DOSBox to use to store and run programs. I call mine "dosdisk", but you can name it anything you want, and I'd recommend creating it in your "home/yournamehere" folder.
17. Open up the dosbox.conf, scroll down to the very bottom of the file. Under "[autoexec]
    # Lines in this section will be run at startup", type the following (change folder names as appropriate):
    

    #Hard drives:
    mount c /home/yournamehere/dosdisk
    #CD-ROMs:
    mount d /media/cdrom0 -t cdrom
    c:

18. Save and quit. Open a terminal window and run dosbox. It should mount your folder and DVD-ROM drive as c: and d: respectively. If it gives you an error, quit out, go back to dosbox.conf, and check your autoexec section at the bottom is pointing at the right folders/drives.
    
19. Now, you can either take zip files of classic games and extract them to the "dosdisk" folder directly, or put a game cd in your drive, start DOSBox, and install it just as you would on a real DOS machine. DOSBox works exactly like real DOS, except you don't usually have to mess with all that memory management crap.
    
20. If you have any further questions, message me, or check out either the DOSBox or Ubuntu forums (search for dosbox in the latter).
21. Have fun!

On DVDs and a film festival

When a film festival shows DVDs, they have a couple of issues:

• Inserting the sponsor logos and festival trailer to right before the start of the movie
• Different, possible dodgy DVD+/-Rs from filmmakers
• European DVDs in PAL format

In addition, if they do a short films program, they may have to do several disc swaps between two or more DVD players over the course of the program.

Or they can try to consolidate.

Over the past few days, I got to be the "consolidator" for the shorts programs at the Sausalito Film Festival, where I learned some new things about DVDs and how Macs can handle them.

Prior to showing up, I did a little online research, and came up with the following workflow:

• Rip DVDs using MacTheRipper to rip the encrypted DVDs
• Use MPEG Streamclip to rip the unencrypted DVDs
• Import into DVD Studio Pro
• Profit!

Well, having grabbed some alternate programs just in case, I went in and started ripping away. As it turns out, DVD Studio Pro (Like Encore on the PC) needs a particular set of files to import into a new DVD project. As far as I can understand it, .VOB files describe some file formatting info as well as the raw media content, and DVD Studio Pro does not have the means to strip that info away.

So, new plan:

• Rip the encrypted DVDs using MacTheRipper
• Import the .VOB files or unencypted DVD into MPEG Streamclip
• Export out .m2v and .ac3 (or .aiff for PCM audio) from said program
• Import those files into DVD Studio Pro
• Profit! (Okay, I'll stop using that now)

Well, all of this went fine, until I had to rip a film with subtitles. As luck would have it, there were several films like that, and they were all in PAL (of course).

So, my next idea was to transcode all the discs into ProRes using Streamclip and show them off a MacBook Pro. I started to mess around with that a bit, before I realized a tiny flaw in my plan:

MPEG Streamclip couldn't extract the subtitles.

I checked MacTheRipper, and it had no subtitle ripping options either. None of the programs I had could do it. To make a long story short, I found that the process of ripping and overlaying subtitles was going to be time consuming, and crappy quality to boot.

To understand why this was so unexpected to me, you have to realize I'm a PC guy. And on the PC, there's a program called DVD Shrink. Shrink will let you re-author a DVD from a disc, folders with .VOB files in them (VIDEO_TS folders extracted from a DVD), or both. It will let you select what audio tracks to include, what video to use (by title, which actually could span several .VOB files), and most importantly, what subtitles to carry over, even allowing you to force them to display. Other for-pay DVD prosumer programs can do this, but Shrink does it for free.

No free program for the Mac will let you do all this. In hindsight, I probably should have asked to get a copy of Toast. But that still wouldn't have solved the problem of mixing PAL and NTSC material on the same disc without reencoding anything.

I ended up having to punt on the PAL discs, as time was running out, so the festival used a universal player for those discs, and I compiled the NTSC shorts together into a DVD per short program. It worked well in the end, but the process was really dissapointing for me.

One of the reasons all of this matters is that the festival had to use a video switcher, which introduced minor audio latency (delay), since it didn't switch the audio as well.

One possible solution for next year (if the program is still mostly DVD-based) is to get the films together early, then dump all the discs into Final Cut Pro via an HDMI connection from a really good upconverting DVD player (probably one NTSC and one PAL player, actually) to 720p HD ProRes 422 HQ (or 1080p if the projector is high-res enough). Then, you could edit in the sponsor info and festival trailer at the beginning of each segment, and play back all the material via Front Row from a Macbook Pro with an HDMI-equipped video outboard unit (Such as the AJA iO). This way, you could go directly into the projector and sound system without using the latency-inducing switcher, and you could also pre-tweak the volume in Final Cut Pro to maintain consistant levels over the course of the program. You would also never have to change aspect ratios or any other settings on the projection equiptment.

You would probably still have to rip the encrypted DVDs so you could copy via the HDMI cable, and check for issues switching between video files in Front Row, but basically, I think it could be done.

Oh well, next year.

Also, the festival was a blast both to work for and attend, so I would reccomend anyone in the Bay Area next year should check it out.

Wonder why people like the Red One so much?

This is why. (click the picture to enlarge it)

And this is from an HDTV (1920x1080) downconversion. The original file is at 2k resolution (and it can shoot at up to 4k resolution).

The only thing I've noticed is that medium to light pastel blues tend to pop out unnaturally, but some of that can be minimized in post-production color correction.

This short was shot using a set of fairly expensive Zeiss prime lenses. While the RED-branded prime lenses appear to work quite well (and I would consider shooting with them for some projects), good quality film lenses like the Zeiss and Cooke primes handle the shape and depth of the image in different ways. They aren't necessarily as "accurate" as the RED lenses, but they give a more classic film "feel", which personally I think helps to sell it to those filmmakers who are going to use it in place of film, since their end product will conform more to what audiences expect to see (at least subconciously). As an exercise, note how the focus falls off in the image above, then go look at this Red Prime lens test. A more extreme example is if you look at films shot using anamorphic (film) lenses, which can really distort the image around the edges, yet still remain pleasing to the eye (check out Road Warrior for a good example). Car commercials in the last few years have taken to computer-generating the distinctive lens flares from anamorphic lenses because they like them so much.

I'll try to get up a clip of the short this still is from in the near future so I can make a better comparison.