Mass Converting Video Files changing Audio or Video Fromat

My family has a 12 volt projector that we take camping with us.  It's a "KickAss 12V Portable Outdoor Cinema Projector" and we have issues playing certain media types of USB flash drives because the projector often doesn't understand the audio codec (or sometimes even the video codec).

This is common with MKV files as they can have numerous audio codecs such as AC3, DTS, AAC  and so on.

I noticed that certain MKV files would not play with audio on the projector due to no support for the Audio Format.  If you open a file in VLC Media Player, you can press "CTRL + J" to view both the Video and Audio codecs being used as shown in the following screenshot.

I was able to work out quickly that it was A52 Audio (aka AC3) format that my projector didn't support.

Note: Many Smart TVs will also have issues with some codecs, this blog post will also help you with a TV, Projector or any smart device that you are looking to decode video / audio files.

Knowing its a codec issue, we needed to convert the video files to a format the projector could understand.

There are lots of tools on the Internet for converting codec's on video files however as I had a lot of videos, I wanted to automate this across numerous files.

I came across a free command-line based conversion tool called ffmpeg that you can download from the following link:

https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

Being open source and cross platform, it stood out from most of the paid software on the Internet.  This program also has a heavy community base behind it.

Like anything open source it comes with an awesome manual with all the syntax for the command line tool available here.

To automate the conversion, move all MKV files (or another video format) to a folder by itself.

Create a batch script as follows and name it something like convertffmpeg.bat placing it in the same folder as your MKV files.

set avidemux="C:\ffmpeg-5.1.2-full_build\bin\ffmpeg.exe"

set videocodec=copy

set audiocodec=aac

for %%f in (*.mkv) do %avidemux% -i "%%f" -c:v %videocodec% -c:a %audiocodec% -channel_layout "5.1" "converted %%f"

This batch script will does the following:

• Sets the location of ffmpeg.exe
• Tells ffmpeg.exe to keep the Video Codec "as is"
• Sets the Audio Codec to AAC format.
• Then for EACH MKV file type run ffmpeg.exe with the conversion.
• Name the converted files "converted + original filename.mkv"
  

This script will automatically convert all files to the new format as shown in the following screenshot.

Note: In my example I converted the audio from AC3 format to AAC.  During this conversion i had an issue with the 5.1 audio and VLC showed the channels as "ERROR".  Also the mapping of audio channels were incorrect during the conversion (Center to Center, Right Front to Right Front, Left Front to Left Front etc).  Telling ffmpeg.exe that it was a 5.1 channel audio with the channel_layout command fixed this issue.  This article was also amazing at showing you what type of Audio Channel Manipulation you can do https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/AudioChannelManipulation

I also tried setting audio codec to MP3 without the channel_layout set to 5.1, this fixed the audio problem but but MP3 is only stereo (to my understanding) so it would have stripped the additional channels of audio.  You may not need to specify the channel_layout if your going to other formats, I would try it without first!

This was also useful in understanding what audio codec types can go with what video formats.

After the script has processed all MKV files in the directory we can see the audio format has changed to MPEG AAC format.

Anyway hopefully this blog post was helpful - a quick way to convert your video files to a supported format for your TV / Projector to understand.

Pop and Crackling in Ableton 9.7.1 with Serum

 I was having many issues with crackling on Ableton 9.7.1 running the Serum VST even though my CPU usage was only 20-30%.  After extensive research I disabled the Intel SpeedStep and TurboMode technology which automatically increases the clock speed of the processor under heavy load.  Ableton was not able to detect the clock speed change of the processor and as the processor clock speed changed based on load, it interfered with my audio playback.

To fix this you need to enter your computers BIOS outside of Windows.

Here is a snapshot of my workstation where I disabled SpeedStep and TurboMode Tech.

 

Reduce your IT Support costs by purchasing quality hardware upfront

During my career in the IT Industry, I see many small business entities purchase cheap consumer grade hardware from a local computer store in order to reduce IT costs.  This is bad practice and almost always leads to significantly higher IT Support costs in the long term.

For more information, please see my article "The Importance of Quality Hardware to reduce IT Support Costs"

http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/the-importance-of-quality-hardware-to-reduce-it-support-costs-7457694.html

Reduce your IT Support Costs in Perth by talking to us now.

TechEd North America 2011

In case you missed TechEd North America 2011, or were there and missed some sessions, you can download slide decks and watch presentations from the following location:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011

Here are a list of all Exchange presentations:

EXL302 Archiving and Discovery in Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 and Exchange Online (Krish Sundaresan)
EXL305 Best Practices for Successfully Transitioning to Microsoft Exchange 2010 (Rand Morimoto)
EXL306 Best Practices for Virtualization of Microsoft Exchange 2010 (Jim Lucey, Jeff Mealiffe)
EXL307 Load Balancing with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (Andrew Ehrensing)
EXL309 Microsoft Exchange Online in Microsoft Office 365: Migration Case Study (John Logan, Danny Kim, Ann Vu)
EXL310 Microsoft Exchange Online in Microsoft Office 365: Simple Migration Live! (Ram Poornalingam)
EXL311 Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office 365: How to Set Up a Hybrid Deployment (Jim Lucey)
EXL312 Designing Microsoft Exchange 2010 Mailbox High Availability for Failure Domains (Ross Smith)
EXL313 Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Tips and Tricks (Scott Schnoll)
EXL322 Microsoft Exchange Online: Unified Messaging in Microsoft Office 365 (Michael Wilson)
EXL326 What’s New in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2: Featuring GAL Segmentation (Greg Taylor)
EXL327 Real-World Site Resilience Design in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (Robert Gillies)
EXL401 Exchange Server 2010 High Availability Management and Operations (Scott Schnoll)

My personal faverote was - Greg is always entertaining!

EXL326 What’s New in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2: Featuring GAL Segmentation (Greg Taylor)

Make Your Mobile Ring for Longer

I know this works for both Telstra and 3G. My phone is with Telstra and I was getting very frustrated because whenever I got a call it would ring like 4 times then go to message bank. Most of the time this would happen before I even had a chance to get to the phone.

To make the phone ring for twice as long simply type in:

**61*0430005333**30#

Then hit the call button. Some weird stuff will come up on the screen, just OK it. Then try calling the phone, it will ring much longer!