Random Rants & Raves

I’ve become a fan of the Matroska video container. This is basically a video file that contains (usually) HD video content in a highly compressed size. The MKV files contain a HD video (in H.264 format), audio (in AAC or AC3 format) and optionally subtitles. The latter two can have multiple instances allowing for multi-language audio or subtitles.

I’ve been converting my DVDs and TV shows (from Divx AVIs) to MKVs that last few days after purchasing the WDTV. Based on some experimentation, I’ve figured out that HD content of about 1 hour can be easily stored in a MKV file of 300MB without any visible loss of quality! Conversions do take a while on my Core2Duo machine – approximately 30-45 minutes/hour of HD content.

I used to like a free tool called SUPER for performing this task. However, I found another tool that has a couple of additional options. This tool, AutoMKV, is yet another free software that lets you convert from any format to MKV (as well as others).

The best part about this is that there is an option where you can specify what the desired size is of the converted file and the software will get it as close as possible to that size. Another option is to upscale the content as well as convert it from letterbox to widescreen. You can also queue multiple jobs and let them all process sequentially. Take a look at the screenshots for some more tips.

1. Select the AUDIO code
2. Select the desired file size
3. Select the Container and VIDEO codec
4. Add to queue or Start Encoding 

You can also convert from letterbox to widescreen format 

All in all, AutoMKV is a great tool for both watching video and for archiving them. Make sure that the player connected to your TV recognizes this format though.

Windows 7 has a nice feature hidden away in it – something that I haven’t seen in any other version of Windows or any other OS. But before I tell you what it is and how to reach it, try this yourself.

Say, you need to move or copy a bunch of files from different drives and/or folders into a single destination. How would you go about doing this? Typically, you’d take each bunch of files from a single location and paste it into the final destination, right?

In Windows 7, you can now do this in one step - by using the Document Libraries feature. Simply create a new document library and add the folders from which you want to take the files. Open the library and select the files you want. These files can be in different folders and even different drives (network drives included).

Select files from different folders to cut/copy (click to enlarge)

Select these files and cut or copy them. Move to the destination folder and paste them in. Windows 7 will collate the list of files from all the different locations and copy/move them to the destination. Ain’t that cool!

I’ve been thinking of getting either a multi-format media player or a Windows Media Center PC for my house for a while. This is to play all the HD TV shows that we watch (Lost, Desperate Housewives, The Big Bang Theory, etc.) and all my archived movies and TV shows. The Media Center PC was working out to be a little too expensive and I really didn’t need the Pause-Play-Record TV feature anyway.

I suddenly came across the Western Digital WD-TV device. This is a tiny device that plugs into your LCD HDTV using composite or HDMI cables and plays media sitting in any USB based storage device that is connected to it. For a price of < $100 I went about looking to see if it was available in India.

I luckily found it in Nehru Place from the WD distributors themselves. Available currently at Rs. 7000+tax, it was a steal. I bought it yesterday and connected it up. I also got the latest firmware and upgraded the device. It not only recognized every single format I threw at it (AVI, WMV, MKV and more), it played them without even a hint of a stutter.

I’m now converting all my kid’s DVDs (Thomas & Friends, Tom & Jerry, Noddy, Mr. Bean, etc.) to a high compression MKV format that I can leave attached to the device. Any time he asks for a different thing to watch, we can quickly switch without requiring to physically change DVDs. Also, TV shows that I get from the Internet can also be easily watched without burning a DVD for it. The only thing missing is Wi-Fi connectivity – but it’s really not of much importance for what I need this for. A great buy if you are into a lot of digital media watching on your HDTV.

As a citizen of India, the constitution defines Voting as your Right as well as your Duty. We’ve got a very important election for the nation coming up and you should register to vote if you have not already done so. We (my wife and I) did this yesterday and this is what we did:

1. Browse over to the Jaago Re web site and register there.
2. Download the pre-filled Form 6
3. Print TWO copies of this form
4. Take THREE passport size photos
5. Take TWO copies of:
   1. An Age Proof (Class X Certificate, Passport etc.)
   2. A Residence Proof (Electricity Bill, Cooking Gas Bill, MTNL/BSNL Phone Bill, Bank Statement etc.)
6. Go to the ERO office as indicated in by the Jaago Re site for your location
7. In case you have an Election ID card of a different city that you wish to transfer to your current location, take it along. You will also need to ask the officials for FORM 001A or download it here. This form is required to apply for a new Voter ID card.
8. Attach the photographs to all forms. Sign across the form and photo for FORM 6 and don’t sign on the FORM 001A if you have it.
9. Staple all the forms, proofs and original election ID card together and submit it to the correct desk.
10. You will receive a slip stating that your forms have been accepted as well as the voting booth number. Keep this carefully.
11. Come back to the Jaago Re site and login. Update your profile to state that you’ve submitted the forms. This will ensure that they will inform you of any changes and alerts before your constituency’s election comes up.

Be a responsible citizen and go register for voting.

Windows 7 has a ton of new enhancements right there in the Taskbar itself. A quick list of them includes:

• Unified Launching and Switching
• Jump Lists
• Destinations
• Tasks
• Thumbnail Toolbars
• Icon Overlays
• Progress Bars
• Notification Area
• Interactive Thumbnails

Your applications too can start using these features’ in them if you want. The documentation for these are available at MSDN here. The only issue is that this is currently possible only with un-managed APIs – COM & Win32.

So what happens if you’re a .NET WinForms/WPF developer and want these features in your applications as well? Well, fear not there is a way out. There are two open source projects that allow you to use the Win7 taskbar enhancements in your managed code applications as well.

The first is a project on CodePlex called Windows 7 TaskBar Extensions. This is a new project with only a few things currently implemented but seems to be heading in the right direction for a small, lean implementation of the Taskbar features in .NET.

The second is a much more comprehensive project called very simply “Windows 7 Taskbar”. This is based upon the excellent Vista Bridge library and offers all the features that are currently possible. There are a number of sample applications as well that demonstrate many of the different features. The only part that didn’t work for me is creating Jump Lists.

So if you’re a Windows application developer and want to add the new features of Vista and Windows 7 into your application, Vista Bridge and these other two libraries are surely something that you will want to try out.