theYinYeti

As I understand it, for FreeNAS (or equivalent), you have to build a minimal x86 PC around the big hard drive. You should privilege a good network connexion, and adequate DMA and PCI speeds I suppose. Apart from that, this PC might have no sound card, no graphics card, and not much RAM I think... just a small hard drive or CD drive (for FreeNAS itself), and a floppy or usb-key (for settings). Yves.

Thanks for the link to this very interesting tool. You should be able to use your mpa and mpv files as the script does, only without the -m option, which indeed doesn't exist (but will probably soon exist). You'll have to be able to follow the script (shell knowledge), else you can remove the -m N option where it is in the script, and re-run it from start. In most cases though, the script isn't as optimized as "manual" encoding in the mencoder step, because it cannot try as hard as we can, to make the video codec-friendly. On the other hand, everything after the mencoder step can be relied upon. Yves.

For completeness, here are the two encoding lines I used recently for encoding a movie I recorded from TV: mencoder -mc 0 record.avi -edl record.edl -endpos 1:34:10.60 -vf crop=368:208:8:40,pp=ha/va/dr,hqdn3d,harddup -ovc lavc -lavcopts aspect=1.76923:vbitrate=927:vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1:turbo:dia=3:cmp=3:subcmp=3:last_pred=2:trell:mbd=2:v4mv -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3:br=64:q=0:aq=0 -ofps 25 -o /dev/null mencoder -mc 0 record.avi -edl record.edl -endpos 1:34:10.60 -vf crop=368:208:8:40,pp=ha/va/dr,hqdn3d,harddup -ovc lavc -lavcopts aspect=1.76923:vbitrate=927:vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=2:dia=3:cmp=3:subcmp=3:last_pred=2:trell:mbd=2:v4mv -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3:br=64:q=0:aq=0 -ofps 25 -o usual_suspects.avi That's for an AVI container (no constraint and any aspect allowed, not only 4/3 and 16/9), but the video inside is ISO MPEG4. This time it is not anime so the optimal parameters (part in bold) are not the same (again, see the doc). In last post, I forgot one important point: how to compute the vbitrate. Let's take your case: a 28min video. You want to fit 4 such videos on a CD (roughly 700000 kB), so each will have 175000 kB available (and remember a byte (B ) is 8 bits (b )). Let's assume 64kbps for sound (as in example above) is OK for you (it's not perfect sound, but considering it is VBR -variable bitrate- and MP3, it is not that bad). You have 175000*8 kbits available, for a 28*60=1680 seconds of film. Then you have (175000*8/1680)-64 kbits available for the video; hence your vbitrate would be 769. Don't worry, that's a good vbitrate, especially considering your source is of DVD quality. I have encoded recordings from TV with vbitrates ranging from 550 to 1000+, and that's with mediocre input quality. Yves.

I have very little experience with subtitles, but you should find what you need here: http://www.linux.com/feature/125978 For converting, this is my bible: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML-single/en/MPlayer.html Based on this doc and mplayer man-page, here is for example a two-pass conversion from DVD to SVCD using mencoder, downmixing 5.1 sound to 2.0 (normal stereo), selecting the French audio channel, and saving the French subtitles: (actually 2 lines, but each is split for better readability and explanations) mencoder -mc 0 dvd://1 -alang fr -af pan=2:1:0:0:1:1:0:0:1:0.5:0.5:1:1 -vf crop=640:576:40:0,scale=480:448,expand=480:576:0:64,harddup -of mpeg -mpegopts format=xsvcd:vaspect=4/3 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vpass=1:turbo:aspect=4/3:vrc_buf_size=917:vrc_maxrate=2500:vbitrate=1000:keyint=15:trell:mbd=2:cmp=2:su bcmp=2 -oac twolame -twolameopts br=64 -ofps 25 -o /dev/null mencoder -mc 0 dvd://1 -alang fr -af pan=2:1:0:0:1:1:0:0:1:0.5:0.5:1:1 -slang fr -vobsubout subtitles -vf crop=640:576:40:0,scale=480:448,expand=480:576:0:64,harddup -of mpeg -mpegopts format=xsvcd:vaspect=4/3 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vpass=2:aspect=4/3:vrc_buf_size=917:vrc_maxrate=2500:vbitrate=1000:keyint=15:trell:mbd=2:cmp=2:su bcmp=2 -oac twolame -twolameopts br=64 -ofps 25 -o output.mpg The brown part is simply mencoder invocation, telling it not to try and be smart (-mc 0), because we know the source is of good quality, and telling it to read the 1st DVD track, as shown by lsdvd. In dark green is the audio selection and down-mixing. With the second pass only (on the first pass it would be CPU spent for nothing), you add the saving of the subtitles (dark blue). In orange are some filters for the video: 1/ crop, that is remove black borders; 2/ scale to the SVCD imposed (strange) ratio; 3/ expand, that is add black borders to fit the SVCD imposed image dimension; 4/ harddup is there for better reliability. The cropped dimension must be carefully chosen so that: - the useless part of the picture is removed, - the cropped width and height are even, - the scaled width and height (non-aggressive numbers rounding is acceptable), are multiple of 16, - ...without removing too much in the first step... not always easy. Then the expand part is done so that a multiple of 16 pixels of black border is added on top and on bottom (may need to be un-balanced). Down to the orange line, you specify what you want, and how you transform it in memory, before actual storage. Then comes the red line that says that you want the SVCD variety of the MPEG container, in 4/3 (only 4/3 and 16/9 are allowed for MPEG). Here the conversion and encoding begin. The pink line is a combination of the SVCD constraints and optimum codec parameters for my input (anime), all found in the documentation. Just notice the part in bold that is different in pass1 and pass2 of the encoding. The part in light green specifies a SVCD-compatible audio output (MP2) And finally (light blue), you tell mencoder in which file to store the resulting video, and at which frame-rate. Notice (in bold) that in the first pass, you do not store the result, because it is useless (only the computed statistics are usefull). Yves.

OK. So you have 4 films of about 30min each, which amounts to 2 hours in total. And you want to keep the subtitles. From my experience, 2 hours are easy to fit on a single CD using ISO MPEG4 (an AVI file; I use mencoder). Else you may use the SVCD format (thus enabling reading in any DVD player), but 2 hours is the maximum length I ever fit on a CD with this format; it all depends on how well compression goes. Either way, you'll have to do a 2-pass compression. So, you have several options: - Either you create a SVCD with standard SVCD subtitles (you'll have to be lucky for all to fit on a CD). - Or you create 4 standard ISO MPEG4 files (readable on any computer), with accompanying text files for the subtitles. - Or you merge the subtitles into the films, and create the videos this way. Besides, there's another possibility I have less experience with: - Create DivX-compliant videos, thus enabling reading in DivX-capable DVD players. I have to leave; I'll be back... Yves.

I think Mandriva is an excellent distribution on the technical side, although it is sometimes a bit too much over the bleeding edge (but well, that's what I want). And yes, Mandriva has roughly a 6-month release cycle: there's 200x.0, and then 200x.1 (called "200x Spring"). Yves.

Reducing the resulution is indeed a good idea; it won't be linear though (4 times less pixels won't give 4 times smaller files). It would help to know how the DVD is organized, apart from menus and such: is it one main film, or several films of equal importance? And: is it multi-lingual? If it is, do you intend to keep one language only or all? If I remember correctly, there's a command line tool called "lsdvd" that might give us usefull info. Yves.

This is not strictly what you're looking for, but it may suit your need: http://www.freenas.org/ A quick search on DistroWatch also found this one: http://www.openfiler.com/ Yves.

The proper way to handle this issue, in my opinion, would be for rpmdrake to trigger the download when the package is clicked on, IF the network is up, in background. The complete information would show when/if the extra information is available, else just minimal information would show. Yves.

Done: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=77190 Yves.

Well, If you go to my site, you'll see a live site using the current (v2) framework, so at least it works. Another site written with the v2 framework: http://assolesoisillons.free.fr/ I'm not very organized but if you're interested, I can do my best to help you get started with what I currently have. The same is true for anyone else. In short: if you're interested: send a PrivateMessage to me with your email, and I'll answer. Don't be in too much hurry though, because I'll soon change home, so I'm currently preparing the financial aspect of it, after which the hard work part of it will come :) Yves.

Thanks Ian :) This is my first theme, and I didn't know if art.gnome.org or gnome-look.org was the right place. Yves.

Hello, This week-end, I created a Metacity format-1 theme, and then yesterday evening I adapted it to format-2 (more buttons, transparency). Here is the screenshot: Aside from a Rox desktop, 2 Gnome panels and a background from gnome-look.org, this screenshot shows three windows, 2 of which are shaded (one focused and one unfocused) and one is normal but unfocused (Gimp). The mouse pointer is currently on the "minimize" button from the shaded focused window (Firefox). As you can see: - The titlebar is transparent, - Small stones represent the buttons, and all buttons and the icon kind of "sit on" the window. Buttons get "lighted on" when focused. - Only buttons and a ghost titlebar show when the window is unfocused. - Colors (here brown and gray) depend only on the current Gtk colors. Besides, The buttons overlap the window top and the title bar and borders are hidden when the window is maximized, thus leading to an almost maximum maximised size. The theme should support "shade", "stick", and "above" buttons. However I enabled "shade" and "stick", and the shift between "stick"/"unstick", "shade"/"unshade" seems to be buggy, at least under Compiz. Finally, I cannot be sure it is exactly as I intended, because Compiz seems to treat all windows as normal windows (I didn't find any dialog, modal dialog... anywhere, and detached menus don't show decorations at all): - All not-normal windows should have a border 1px-wide instead of 2px. - Focused modal dialogs should have a red border instead of the "gtk selected background" border. - The title (written smaller) should act as a window menu in place of the mini-icon for not-normal windows. Now I wonder: do you think this theme could interest others? If so, where should I store/submit it? Yves.

It's been a long time. I had forgotten about this thread. I just wanted to add that the "project" is not dead. However, since last time I posted, it evolved to version 2 where PHP is not seen anymore (eg: <easy:news file="file.news" feed="atom"/>), and even this version is now obsoleted by the one currently in (stagnated) development. Yves.

A separate /usr partition is something you use in big Unix intranets, where each workstation's / partition contains what is needed for booting and networking, and then all applications and extra data (images, icons...) are mounted under /usr via the network from a central server. As /usr is almost only for reading (/usr/local being the exception), it is indeed useless to have it as a separate partition, unless you fall into the above use-case. Yves.

Yes, but it "is" the new Netscape, the one that started with version 6 and was based off Mozilla 0.9; the old Netscape 4 branch is definitely dead but still usefull (see my previous post) and can still be found here: http://browser.netscape.com/downloads/archive/ Yves.

:lol:Although I've read the article, the thread has run for quite a while and I lost track. You're right of course. Yves.

Thanks for sharing :) This is indeed interesting. Yves.

Besides, although I don't generally support the idea of an army, we shouldn't forget that in many countries nowadays, the army plays different (and good) roles: assistance to injured persons, fire rescue or other kinds of rescue, management of "disorder" where and when it arises (huge traffic jams due to accidents or strikes..., other causes...) I'm glad some of those tasks might be helped by Linux. Yves.

Does this trick with LD_LIBRARY_PATH work for you? https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=51024 Yves.

This page seems to contain the solution: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Installing_Mandriva_Linux I think you can combine the "Booting the installer direct from a hard disk - Windows method" and "Installation from hard disk" ideas to get the wanted result. Yves.

I followed the very-well-written how-to for booting C: inside VMWare. All seems rather safe and seems to work out well. However, once Windows is booted, I login and Windows tells me I have to: - register this windows copy to MS on internet, - or register this windows copy to MS on the phone, - or decline (logout). The windows XP pro I use is genuine and was delivered pre-installed on the laptop I'm using for work. But work is the only reason I use Windows, and I'm not familiar with Windows' licences. I suppose this register-thing came from the fact that I boot using a different hardware profile (as explained in the how-to). Is it safe and legal for me to accept to register (again?) this windows copy via the net? Yves.

I don't really know... *synaptics programmers, I guess. Screen rotation was designed at a time when tablets were still quite new. Text-typing, however, existed since a long time ago, and I remember seeing rotated screens on typists' desks more or less 20 years ago. Yves.

I suppose "they" just didn't think about this. Touchpads are usually found on laptops, and laptops are not the kind of things you usually rotate. Yves.

Oh! Sorry, I misread your post. Since the beginning, I was thinking about MAF where in fact you're speaking about MHT. Thanks for the link, that's an interesting extention. Yves.