LensWork Technology Blog

VLC Player

On the advice and recommendation of a reader's comments to my post the other day about Windows Media Player 12, I downloaded the open source VLC Player. Very nice. Very universal. I threw every type of file I could think at it and it played all of them flawlessly and smoothly. Video and audio. If there are limitations to this player, I didn't find them.

   

   

So, it can be done. Which begs the question, why don't Apple and Microsoft do it? Why are QuickTime and Windows Media Player (other than version 12) compromised? I do tire of these inane turf wars — particularly as a publisher trying to make something that everyone can access. I guess the next question is how do I get the entire world to install the VLC player? Nice thought, but it ain't gonna happen.

Windows Media Player 12 plays MOV files!

I must have missed this one — this really big one. Or Microsoft did an awful job of spreading the word.

I discovered by accident that my new Windows Media Player (version 12, available only with the Windows 7 operating system) will now play MOV videos. No more necessity to have QuickTime just to play MOV format files. Who knew?

And there's a bit of icing on the cake beyond that. Windows Media Player version 12 will also now play the MTS video format files that come out of my Panasonic cameras. No more converting them from MTS to WMV just to see what's there. Again, who knew?

Way to go Microsoft. A video player that plays videos. I like it!

Unfortunately, the turf wars rage on — iPad won't play Flash; WMV files on a Mac are problematic; the masses who still have Windows XP need QuickTime to play MOV files. It's a mess and I sure don't see it getting any less messy in the near future. Imagine if we didn't have JPG and PNG and had to have different still image file formats for Mac, PC, and iPad.

Dolphin

Remember those innocent days when the only two web browsers in the world were Internet Explorer and Netscape? (Whatever happened to Netscape?) Now there's a plethora — on my smart phone I can choose Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, the default browser, and now Dolphin. I just discovered Dolphin a couple of days ago. Quite honestly, until then I'd never heard of it.

But then, yesterday, Adobe updated Flash to version 11. Everything works fine on my computer (as expected) but on my Android devices there's big trouble. With this update, flash videos no longer play in either Firefox or Opera, my chosen browsers. Damn! They'll probably fix it — I'm sure they're highly motivated — but as of today it's broken. So, yesterday, I started looking for alternatives and stumbled across Dolphin. What a slick little browser!

If you've not seen Dolphin "gestures" in operation, it's worth taking a look. Quite simply, you draw a shape on your touchscreen and Dolphin recognizes that shape as a command to open a website. No typing, simply drawing! It also does a few navigational commands like going to the top of the page, zooming, etc.

I also like the speed dial page that acts as the browser's "homepage" where my most frequently used websites (e.g., www.lenswork.com, ahem) can be configured with a speed dial button. This is similar to Opera's "Start Page." Obviously, I'm only 24 hours in the playing with Dolphin on my phone and my Android tablet, but so far it's very nice, very functional, and could be my new favorite Android browser. I've only seen one hitch that is inconvenient and that's its inability to import my bookmarks from Firefox. They say this is a feature they are working on. Not a serious problem, but too bad its not already resolved.

Oh, and it plays Flash even after yesterday's version 11 update. Sweet!

MP3 problem. Help?

I'm having a dumb little problem with converting some analog recordings to MP3 files and wondering if any of you can help. I have some long recordings — several hours long — that I am uploading to digital files. I do this real-time by simply re-recording the analog file. I play the audio (cassette or reel-to-reel) and pipe it over via patch cord to an MP3 recorder. The resulting MP3 file I then open in Adobe Audition to clean up and save as the archive. Most of the time it works just fine, but on occasion an odd problem crops up.

With these very long recordings, occasionally I cannot open them in Audition. Actually, they open, but are truncated. The, say, 7 hour audio file will play just fine in any MP3 player, so it has all recorded. But, Audition only opens part of the file — perhaps 30 minutes, perhaps a few hours, but definitely truncated. No matter what I do, it always imports into Audition — or Audacity or Premier Pro or SoundBooth — as a truncated file.

I've tried various alternate encoding bitrates; I've tried encoding to WMA files; I've tried converting the truncated file to WAV using a re-encoder. Nothing will fix the file once it is corrupt. My only choice is to rerecord the entire 7-8 hours of audio and hope it doesn't fail. What is so mysterious is that the file will play for the full 7 hours, so I know all the data is there in the file, I simply cannot get to it. It's as though there is an "end of file" byte before the end of the file and once there, all is lost as far as opening the file for editing in any software I have.

Frustrating.

Anyone have a suggestion about how to open/edit these truncated MP3s in their entirety?

Premiere Pro CS5.5

There are probably not many applications that will test the horsepower of a computer system like video editing. I've been frustrated with Premiere Pro throughout my relationship with it because of frequent hangs, crashes, jumpy rendering, interminable waits for video output — you name it.

Of course, I blame Adobe and Premier Pro, but it turns out it was my underpowered computer. (Sorry, Adobe.) My new Yippie Skippy super-fast Dell runs Premier Pro CS5.5 like nobody's business.

Yesterday, I edited video. Actually, I edited three videos — in one day! That's unheard of in my world. One of them was a 30-minute, three-camera shoot of my interview with Doug Ethridge. It was downright easy and the software did precisely what was supposed to do handling the multi-camera edits, when it was supposed to do it, with no lag, and not a single hang or crash. And I might add, I don't even have the recommended, super-expensive video card that can do GPU rendering of video on the fly. I can only imagine how this machine would perform far were willing to spend another $3000 for the video card. But, I'm not and am happy to report that — at least for my needs — I don't need to. I guess the 64-bits in combination with 16 GB of memory is enough to least justify paying for the upgrade to this latest version of Premier Pro.

BookCat — Database for your books

In my last post, I mentioned my book database. A couple of people emailed me about it, so here is an enthusiastic recommendation.

I use a software program called BookCat from FNProgramvare. Simply fabulous. Detailed, easy to use, features galore, fast, rock solid. What's not to like? Some highlights from their website:

• Store information about an (almost) unlimited number of books.
• Save time: Download book data from the Internet.
• Adapt the program to your own needs: Change the data field names to suit your personal preferences. Hide data fields you don't need. Specify your own categories. Split your collection into different catalogs and transfer information between them.
• Comprehensive set of data fields enabling you to catalog a wide range of information: author, title, publisher, ISBN number, publish date, number of pages, editor, original title, translator, binding, edition, type of book (fiction, non-fiction, etc.), category and sub-category, purchase date and price, current value*, condition, status (own, want, for sale), personal rating, owner, location, keywords, awards and nominations, comments, synopsis, and reviews.
• More than 30 custom data fields (in case we have missed something). 
• Add personal comments .
• Store book covers , as well as pictures of authors.
• Find information quickly: Search in all fields with any combination of key words and operators (and, or, etc.). Save your most frequently used searches. Use filters to display only selected data (for example, books that are for sale). 
• Use the search and replace function to search for a specific word or number and replace it with another.
• Sort data by any field with up to five sort levels.
• Keep track of books on loan. Check the program periodically to see what is still out on loan. You will always know who has what and since when. 
• Backup your valuable data with the backup/restore module.

The ability to record current value was one of the features that most attracted me. If you've checked the prices for used copies of your fine art photography books you'll know why. Such information can be invaluable for insurance purposes or to inform your family about the value of your books should they need such information in handling your estate. You think I joke about this, but it adds up like you can't believe. Far too many times I've seen unscrupulous used book dealers offer a pittance lump sum to some unsuspecting family member who is overly concerned about the value of dear old Dad's original artwork but ignorantly anxious to see those pounds and pounds of art books hauled away just to get rid of them. Unless you are a big time famous photographic artist, I'll guarantee that your book collection is worth more than all those prints of yours in the Light Impressions boxes in the closet.

And then there is the lending library issue. Somebody, somewhere, now long forgotten, has my first edition copy of Ansel Adams' Yosemite and the Range of Light. Think I can remember to whom I loaned this book back in the mid-1980s? Not a chance; I'm over 50. On the used market, a first edition is valued somewhere between $250 and $1200 depending on the condition. Mine was pristine, with a pristine dust jacket, so let's just say it's a $750 book for the exercise. Come to think of it, let's not. It's just too painful to think about it.

BookCat. The best $40 you'll ever spend to manage your book library. Sorry Mac folks, this one is PC only. I suppose it would work with a Windows emulation operating system on a Mac, but I can't verify that. Anyone care to recommend a similar Mac software?

Voice Recognition on the Sony Vaio X

Installed Dragon System NaturallySpeaking voice recognition (version 10, I haven't upgrade to 11 yet) and did the minimum training. Fired it up and . . . well, you can judge for yourself . . .

This is what I actually spoke:

This is my first test using voice recognition software on the Sony VAIO. So far, so good. It does seem to recognize my voice and use the built-in microphone effectively. This will really change the dynamic of typing on this undersized keyboard. I'm actually sort of amazed it is doing so well. More typically, when I start dictation after a new installation of the software, I find it a little rough and it mis-registers a number of words at the beginning until I do a little refined training. This very first paragraph, however, appears to be just excellent. I have no doubt that I'll end up using voice recognition a great deal with this laptop so I can avoid typing and, while I'm on the road, respond to e-mails and make field notes without having to struggle with the typing aspect of a netbook.

Read back by me for voice transcription:

This is my first test using voice recognition software on the Sony VAIO. So far, so good. It does seem to recognize my voice and use the built-in microphone effectively. This will really change the dynamic of typing on this undersized keyboard. I'm actually sort of amazed it is doing so well. More typically, when I start dictation after a new installation of the software, I find it a little rough and if Ms. registers a number of words at the beginning until I do a little refined training. This very first paragraph, however, appears to be just excellent. I have no doubt that I'll end up using voice recognition a great deal with this laptop so I can avoid typing and, while I'm on the road, respond to e-mails and make field notes without having to struggle with the typing aspects of a netbook.

Accuracy: 98.7% accurate, 162 words/punctuation with 2 incorrect. [I'll take that any day.]

A bit more rigorous of a test. I'll read (with punctuation) three opening paragraphs that might be familiar:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the Up of belief it was the talk of incredulity it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way --- in short, the period was so far like the present period, but for some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large job and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the boards of the state reserves of moves and fishes, that things in general were settled forever.

It was the year of our Lord 1775. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England that favored., as at this. This is South cup had recently obtained her five and 20 blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the lifeguards have heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the cock Lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after wrapping up its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out pairs. Near messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English crown and people, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the cock Lane. Perhaps, less favored on the whole to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and Trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness downhill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements in sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, as Tom torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honor to the dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some 50 or 60 yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, fate, to come down and be song into boards, to make a certain movable framework the sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough townhouses of some tumors of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, they were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude cards, be spattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the farmer, death, had already set apart to be his tongue Bruins of the revolution. But the Woodman and the farmer, though they work unceasingly, works silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be a theist will and traitorous.

Accuracy: 96.24% — and this with minimum training.

And, is it really fair to dock its accuracy for missing "Mrs. Southcott," "sawn," "bespattered," and "tumbrills"? What the hell is a tumbrill? [Encarta: a cart used to carry prisoners to the guillotine. Well, now I know.]

In general, the accuracy of my manual typing: less than 40% — and I am pretty sure I'm not kidding about this. Because I know you think I'm kidding, behold — and remember that the software is trying to correct my typing as I proceed, so there were actually more mistakes than you see here.

It was the best of times, it was the worsot of times, it was the age of widsong, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epock of velief it was the ppoci of incerdulity itw a the eseasong of light, it ws th eseasong of darkeness, it was the springt of hop, itw was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing beofre us, we were all going direct to Heave,m aw were al going diredt the other way --- in short, the period was so far elike the present period, bifor some of its noiseiest authoristies insiste don its being received, for good orfor evil, in the superlative degree od comparison only.

So, Dragon Systems NaturallySpeaking gets, ahem, ten thumbs up from me, even on the Sony netbook. I trust this puts your ppoci of incerdulity to rest.

Voice e-mail responses

"Due to the volume of email I respond to on a daily basis — combined with my lousy typing abilities! — I find it faster and easier to take advantage of VOICE EMAIL as my reply."

That's the first line of the emails I send as responses to the hundreds of emails I receive. I rarely type an email response; it simply takes me too long with these stubby little fingers of mine. So, I respond with a voice recording and send that instead. Almost without fail, I'll get a response back from the receiver with some mention of the audio recording and how fun it was to hear a response rather than read it. They are excited to try this out for themselves. For example . . .

   

What a fascinating technique for answering an email. I LIKED it; it felt very personal. Your technique of answering by voice file might make an interesting topic for one of your Blogs!

   

Okay, here goes.

   

It's a bit more involved than just the voice email aspect, but I thought as long as I was sharing, here's the whole process that allows me to respond to tons of email.

   

1. If the response only needs to be an acknowledgement or general courtesy, either my assistant or I simply respond with a macro (think "cut and paste") response. Probably not supposed to admit this, but we do use these when that's all that's needed. These are almost the only typed response email I do unless the response is a simple one-liner. Those I will type.
2. Any email that requires a personal response from me gets piped over from Outlook to a special OneNote notebook I use just for email responses. The integration between Outlook and OneNote is spectacular for this. One button click in Outlook can move dozens of emails!
   1. A single OneNote page is created for each email.
   2. Each page is automatically date and time stamped as to when it was created.
   3. It's worth noting that these emails can be moved to OneNote by me or by my assistant. Typically I haven't read the email at that point other than to note it is going to take a more thoughtful response than a simple one-liner.
3. I try to set aside time every day to work these emails.
   1. I read them, highlight the important passages or questions I want to respond to, jot down a few notes for my response (if necessary) and then, sometimes, move on to the next one without responding at that time.
   2. I find it handy to store up a batch for when I know I'll have uninterrupted time to record my audio responses.
   3. When I find I have 15-20 minutes, I can jump in and respond with voice email to as many as 15-20 emails. That's blazingly fast for me, at least compared to having to type responses. Again, keep in mind that these are responses that are more involved than a line or two. Think a few paragraphs or more and you get the idea.

• For the audio recording, I use the simplest audio recorder I can. No use pulling up Audition or Audacity or some full-featured recorder for simple messages like this.
  • In truth, I'd use OneNote's built-in recorder, but it only creates Windows Media audio files and too many Mac users can't play them natively. Instead, I use only universally playable MP3 files in my responses.
  • I'm currently recording voice emails with Step Recorder, a very simple and easy to use software. Shareware. $15. Windows only. I prefer it to Windows built-in Sound Recorder for its extra capabilities. I'm sure there are Mac recorders that do the same, but look for these handy features:
    • It's small. Not much screen real estate.
    • It allows me to determine the MP3 compression settings.
    • It allows recordings of unlimited length.
    • It has a pause control.
    • I can rerecord over parts if I mess something up without having to rerecord the entire message.
    • It automatically saves the file as I record it — no "File, Save as . . ." fussing.
    • Uses a customizable auto file naming setup. I've customized mine as, "Voice response from Brooks Jensen.mp3".
    • It has a voice activation option so as I pause in my speaking, it pauses its recording. Helps make smaller file sizes.
  • I record using mono 48kbps, 22kHz MP3 compression.
  • My typical responses seem to be in the ½- 1½ minute range and file sizes run about 200-375k. Comfortable for emailing as an attachment. I could compress to smaller file sizes, but I prefer this compression as the best compromise between file size and voice fidelity.

1. After I've recorded my voice email, I drag and drop the audio file from the folder on my desktop onto the OneNote page, automatically embedding the MP3 file in the page.
2. I add the following using a keystroke macro. I type in ~bv — my code for Brooks Voicemail, and my macro program types in . . .

      

   Tuesday, October 12, 2010 09:10AM

      

   Due to the volume of email I respond to on a daily basis — combined with my lousy typing abilities! — I find it faster and easier to take advantage of VOICE EMAIL as my reply. Please listen to the attached audio file as my reply to your email. Thanks!

   Brooks Jensen

   Editor, LensWork Publishing

      

   P.S. If you don't have audio capabilities on your computer or would prefer a text reply, please let me know and I'll have my response transcribed and resent to you.

      

   Notice that it automatically inserts the date and time.

3. I copy the return email address from the page to the clipboard. Then I click the "Email this page" button in OneNote which hands off the page, complete with formatting and my highlighting, to Outlook. The audio file is automatically included in the email as an attachment. I add the email address with a paste and send.
4. Last step, I move the OneNote page to an archive folder where the page preserves the original email and my voice recording response.

      

No doubt these instructions look long and involved. Why not just type a response? In practice, I find this approach much, much faster to do than it's taken me to describe here in this post. I once did a test and found that I could do 7 voice emails in the same time it takes me to type a response for one. Again, I'm referring to emails that require something more than a simple one-liner.

And speaking of that, I also find that when I type my response emails, I tend to cut short my response because of time. Think of it this way, I can say a lot more in 60 seconds than I can type in 60 seconds. The result is that I'm able to offer more thorough and engaging responses with the time I have available for any given email.

And finally, there is the personal aspect. Reading a typed response is simply not the same as hearing a person's voice. Inflection, intonation, emotion and enthusiasm — all come across so much more effectively in the spoken word than they do in emoticons. ;-)

So . . . faster, better, easier. What's not to like?

OneNote Killer App

First there were spreadsheets and word processing — the original so-called "killer apps." An argument could easily be mounted that without them the PC revolution would never have happened. Once we all figured out we could do spreadsheets and word processing, we simply had to have a computer.

A few others have come along since then — email, the Internet, databases, desktop publishing, Photoshop. Where would we be without them? There is another, at least in my opinion, that is so powerful, so game-changing that I think it clearly deserves inclusion in the vaunted "killer app" category.

I continue to be dazzled by Microsoft's software application OneNote. I am tempted to try to explain it and why it's become such a foundation of my productivity, but I simply cannot do it justice. Watch the videos. Download the trial software. Shed a tear if you are a Mac user because this one is Windows only. (Mac folks have some alternatives, but nothing quite as powerful.) Let me evangelize just a bit …

Key things to know about it:

• Think of notebooks that have sections that contain pages. Deep organization.
• A page can have text, images, audio, video, links, drawings, highlights — placed anywhere on the page.
• Pages and sections can be moved, the destination of links from other pages, printed, customized, copied
• Notebooks can be private, shared, located on a network, on a cloud location, and moved anywhere
• If you work on a shared notebook but are not connected, you can still add/change/delete anything on your local copy of the notebook. When you next connect your updates are merged with the actual notebook. A wonderful tool for team use.
• When looking for something via search, you can search a page, search a section, search a notebook, or search all the notebooks you have! Wow.
• OneNote integrates with Outlook in several ways

Here is a screen capture of this blog post being written in OneNote.

Microsoft is touting this as a "place for information." It certainly is, but we are finding it so much more than that. Here are a few examples of how we are using this fantastic software:

• Store notes and tidbits of data we need to find (the obvious use of OneNote)
• We keep OneNote notebooks on our server and in "the cloud" where we can all access them and share data, even if we are remotely located outside our building — like when I'm out photographing.
• We port emails over to OneNote from Outlook where I can respond using voice email. Slick!
• We organize the production of LensWork and LensWork Extended using the task markers. We can easily find what is yet to be done by running a report on unchecked task markers. Task can indicate who is assigned to get an item done as well as whether or not it is done.
• I write all my blog posts in OneNote, edit them as needed, and then post them to our blog host directly via OneNote
• I organize my photo projects, thoughts, notes, even write final text in OneNote. I can include thumbnail images, links to the PSD master files, links to InDesign layouts, audio notes captured in the field on my pocket recorder
• OneNote is how we manage all the submissions information, photographer documents and contact information, as well as archive all email correspondence no matter who in our staff has contact with a photographer. We organize submissions by groups — new submissions, alumni submissions, color work, articles, etc.
• Gather notes from web research with both text captures and screen captures. Web page captures include a link back to the originating web page.
• Archive the transcriptions of our podcasts as well as the original audio files
• Staff meeting notes
• I record training audios or videos and make them available to the staff via OneNote
• The development of the content for our workshops on disc was all done in OneNote, as well as the production tasks and keeping track of proofing progress
• We use it for transcriptions of LensWork interviews. By placing the audio file right in OneNote and then transcribing while the audio plays, OneNote keeps track of the audio location for each new paragraph. If we need to go back to check something, simply click the icon next to the paragraph and that part of the interview plays. Audio indexing — how do they do that?
• We use OneNote for our Tech Support knowledge base
• Brainstorming on steroids, outlining, group reviews, archiving ideas and notes

I could go on, but you can see the versatility. 

It's centralizing, too. We've culled out many other software programs we used to use and replaced them all with OneNote: VIP Task Manager, InfoSelect, TreePad, Evernote, MindMap, Jarte, PassKeeper, and Maple. We almost never use Word anymore because we can do most simple word processing tasks right in OneNote.

If you work on a Windows-based computer, you simply must see what OneNote can do for you. Trust me on this one.

A scare, a rescue, a sigh of relief

Deadline week for LensWork #90. We're hours away from sending it off to the press. So, needless to say, I was just a bit panicked when my computer blew up. Poof, gone, locked up. I tried to three-finger reboot to no avail; I tried to restart through the start button, nothing. As much as I hated to do it, I had no alternative but to cut power.

This is never a good alternative. Sure enough, the little beastie this time decided to take revenge. Immediately after the Windows splash screen — blackness, more blackness, eternal blackness. I tried rebooting; I tried "safe mode" booting; I tried rebooting from my Recover Disc (aren't you impressed than I had one?); I tried repairing the Windows installation. Bupkis. I was just getting ready to sacrifice the goat and pray to the Gods of the Dynamic Link Library when a religious miracle took place. For reasons unknown, on the subsequent reboot, Windows started doing a check disc on my second hard drive. Huh? When it completed the task, Windows rebooted normally as though nothing had happened. I have no idea what I did — or what it did — to fix the situation. Sometimes I think I'm better off not knowing — and this is certainly one of those cases. Thank you DLL Gods. Back to the race to beat the deadline.