Compressing a compressed video using AutoGK etc
Word dump: 大阪恋の歌 - 10:02 PM 7/28/2006
This word dump is from 大阪恋の歌 by モーニング娘。 (Osaka Koi no Uta by Morning Musume).
| Kanji | Kana | English |
|---|---|---|
| とぎれる | to be interrupted | |
| マーク | mark | |
| はなればなれ | separate | |
| えんきょり | long distance | |
| むり | impossible | |
| ぎゅっと | tight(ly) | |
| じゅんじょう | naivete | |
| どうして | why? | |
| おわり | the end | |
| しかたない | it can’t be helped | |
| 話し | はなし | conversation |
| すごい | wonderful | |
| とろける | to be enchanted with | |
| せりふ | words | |
| まったり | laid-back (lifestyle) | |
| かこけい | past tense | |
| じまん | pride | |
| おどろかす | to surprise | |
| ちょっとした | trifling | |
| いたずら | prank | |
| きょり | distance | |
| とおすぎる | to be too far | |
| もう | already |
The statistics:
- Previous “average new words/song”: 16
- New words in this song: 23
- New “average new words/song”: 19.5
- Total words in word list: 1217
Google Trends - 9:27 AM 7/28/2006
Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) is a cool service from Google. Basically, you separate several search terms with commas (for example “Ubuntu, Kubuntu”) and Google will then show a graph showing time vs search volume of each search term. By looking at the graph, we can get a rough idea which term is searched more often.
Here are some samples:
- Ubuntu vs Kubuntu (Ubuntu is way more popular)
- Linux vs Windows (Windows is of course searched more often)
- Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Biology (Computer Science is the loser?)
- Morning Musume vs Do As Infinity (on the regional details below the main graph, we can see that in Thailand Momusu is searched around 8x more often than DaI, while in Indonesia DaI is searched around 3x more often than Momusu)
From TXT to HTML - 10:20 PM 7/27/2006
The file I use to write blogs ofline is “boab.txt”. However, since the content inside is really HTML, I renamed it to “boab.html”.
Now when Notepad++ opens it, syntax highlighting and auto tag closing will automatically be on. (previously I need to manually set the language to HTML from the “Language” menu)
Compressing a compressed video using AutoGK - 10:33 PM 7/24/2006
PVs lurking on my drive take quite a lot of space. Recompressing them will certainly free some space at the expense of quality. I currently don’t have a need for it, but because I was curious about the quality decline I tried compressing one of them to 20 MB and 10 MB.
So I fired AutoGK, an XviD/DivX encoding tool. I first found AutoGK when trying to encode an MPEG2 file to XviD/DivX (somehow MPEG2 files seek badly on my media players). The tutorial that came with the installation was very handy.
For the test I used “Ai Araba IT’S ALL RIGHT” which is around 111 MB. The procedure is basically to choose an input file, define the output file name, and choose the desired size. Because I didn’t want AutoGK to choose the output resolution, I clicked the “Advanced Settings” button and defined the image width myself (I chose the “fixed width” option and gave it the same value as the original file which was 640).
After some processor hums, the output file was created (along with some quite large temporary files in the “agk_tmp” folder). The output file sizes were 22.7 MB (quite close to the requested 20 MB) and 17.8 MB (10 MB is just not possible). Some images for comparison (original width is 640 px but I resized them to 450 px to fit on this blog’s layout):
111 MB
22.7 MB
17.8 MB
111 MB
22.7 MB
17.8 MB
The quality difference is significant but I’m still quite amazed that the 17.8 MB version is still intelligible. 6.5 MB is actually used for the audio stream, so if the audio bit rate is tuned down a smaller file size can be achieved (AutoGK can do it). Choosing a lower resolution will also make smaller file sizes possible.
What will the size of the image data be if the video consist of uncompressed bitmaps? The resolution is 640 px * 320 px. The duration is 4:44 and the frame rate is 30 fps. Using 24 bits per pixel, the size will be (4 + 44/60) min * 60 (sec / min) * 30 (frame / sec) * (640 * 320) (px / frame) * 24 (bit / px) = 41877504000 bit = 5234688000 byte (around 4.9 GB).
Murphy’s Law - 10:07 PM 7/22/2006
Murphy’s Law is a famous law in engineering that basically means “if something bad can happen, it WILL happen”. It is supposed to warn engineers not to dismiss potential breakdowns. However it can also be applied to daily life.
Example 1: My friend put a glass of tea near a laptop. What bad things could possibly happen? Well, the glass could be tipped off accidentaly. Murphy’s law states that it WILL happen (if not to him, to other people on the same situation). Well, it DID happen to my friend (eventhough the water splashed the laptop, luckily the laptop wasn’t broken). Moral: don’t put a glass near electronics because there is a possibility that the water will spill.
Example 2: I put a CD on my lap while doing other things. What bad things could possibly happen? The CD could fall. Murphy’s law states that it WILL happen (if not to me, to other people on the same situation). It happened to me. Moral: don’t put fragile stuffs on your lap.
Example 3: I ran towards a short solid fence to talk to someone across (actually to order food), and bumped myself to the fence. What bad things could possibly happen? Well, there could be some sharp stuffs on the fence. In my case, there was a nail and it hit me! Moral: don’t bump yourself to fences, walls, etc (what’s the use of it anyway?).
So, if there’s two way of doing something and it differs in safety, choose the safer one even though it might be slightly more inconvenient.
August 26th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
About the glass of tea, it actually spilled because Arifin was reading non-work-related stuff on work-hour. So another moral of the story: don’t do non-work-related stuff on work-hour.