DancingSamurai.ca

I use Zenphoto for my gallery, which uses the Flowplayer plugin (as one option) for playing videos (flv & mp4).

I just noticed this, but the out-of-the box settings for the above do not preserve the aspect ratio of videos (i.e. they are stretched to fit the player, or the screen in full screen mode). And there is no option to change this setting in zenphoto. (They have a dropdown for the aspect ratio of the THUMBNAIL – how useless is that?). So I did some hacking of the code, and now it works great!

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I was having a little issue with Premiere Elements; namely, that when I tried to create a new project, it would not let me “Change Settings” – I clicked on the button, and the dialog that came up was empty, and all the buttons were blank.

This wasn’t an issue before, but I have some videos of my son taken by my brother-in-law’s camcorder, which records in HD. So, I need an HD profile…

The solution is posted here in the Adobe forums:

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A few people were looking for this video, so here it is:

Lindy – Jason & Vanessa

YouTube took the audio off. Silly copyright rules, I would think this is fair use but don’t have the time to argue it with them… anyway… here it is. (The music is Bette Midler’s Stuff Like That There, from the album For the Boys)

via The Spec, I got wind of this hilarious music video… just watch:

I got back to doing some video editing this weekend (old videos of when I was just a kid!) and ran into an Adobe Premiere Elements issue with the audio sync.

This is video from an old VHS tape I got a local video guy to burn to DVD for me (I know, could’ve done this myself, but the capture card not worth the investment since I will likely never need to grab anything off analog formats again…). I had big problems syncing the audio from the VOB files (except for the first one). Actually, the audio would be out of sync in any player except for VLC player…

I tried a bunch of things, and also tried to ’stream’ & save the file through VLC, but nothing worked. Finally I stumbled upon this guide which gave me the simplest solution of all: Use DVD Decrypter to rip the separate 1GB Vobs into one big VOB file. Presto, problem solved, no more sync issues! (I could’ve tried to join the files with VobMerge as the guide suggests but I figured it would be safer just to re-rip).

Anyway, new videos are in my gallery. Ask me for the password if you don’t have it.

Ah… Dungeons & Dragons. I remember playing it throughout my teen years and I really, really miss it. Anyone in the GTA have a good group? :)

I am reminded of this by the funny Lord of the Rings as D&D campaign posted here. Check it out! Oh, and you must have seen the classic summoner D&D parody:

Yes, the Terminator franchise DID need a power ballad. And lo and behold, the pinnacle of LEGEN-DARY:

(via Orac)

I am constantly impressed by the high quality of ‘amateur’ productions available with time, dedication, and modern technology! Here’s a movie I’ll be downloading on the 3rd of May:

(via BoingBoing)