Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts

Thursday, September 26, 2013

MakeMKV + Handbrake

Handbrake is a great transcoding tool, but I've come across situations where it refuses to format shift some DVDs. To get around it, I installed MakeMKV which knows how to do such things.

The process is a little more drawn out though, here's how I did it:

  1. Download the MakeMKV binary and source as per the MakeMKV Linux wiki page.
  2. In a command prompt, execute the following commands (assuming version numbers are the same):
  3. $ tar xvf makemkv-bin-1.8.5.tar.gz $ tar xvf makemkv-oss-1.8.5.tar.gz $ cd makemkv-oss-1.8.5/ $ make -f makefile.linux $ sudo make -f makefile.linux install $ cd ../makemkv-bin-1.8.5/ $ make -f makefile.linux $ sudo make -f makefile.linux install $ makemkv

  4. The last command starts the newly installed makemkv GUI. The GUI is fairly easy to work through, but this guide for using it is pretty good. I didn't need to change any of the default settings, just let it do its thing.
  5. Once MakeMKV has ripped its stuff, it will create an MKV file. You can then load this file into Handbrake and transcode into any other format as normal. The MKV can be deleted after transcode if you don't want it anymore (it can be pretty big).

Update for MakeMKV 1.8.10 Beta (14 Jun 2014):

Current instructions on the wiki page work fine, not sure why I had slightly different process above. You also need to register a key to use the beta.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

New Linux Install -- Software List

Software and setup for a new distro install:

Setup/Config

  • /etc/fstab SSD tuning
  • Case insensitive bash
  • Copy over .fonts folder
  • Copy over .xsetwacom, .vimrc, .hgrc

Software

  • GPU drivers (if needed)
  • Firefox, plus add-ons:
    • AdBlockPlus
    • NoScript
    • FlashGot
  • Mercurial
  • Thunderbird
  • Gvim
  • KeepassX
  • ia32-libs
  • Handbrake
  • Unetbootin
  • Imagemagick
  • VLC
  • lm-sensors
  • Gimp
  • Krita
  • Eclipse

Optionals/As Needed

  • VirtualBox
  • Wine
  • Wallch
  • SimpleScan
  • k3b, xfburn (or some other DVD burner)

Experimentals

  • Tupi2D
  • recordMyDesktop
  • Vokoscreen

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Patent Killer

Very interesting post by Joel Spolsky on how to get a patent killed.

For anyone interested in writing software and not having to play Russian Roulette with the quagmire of bad patents out there, well worth a read.

(For any software developers out there: hands up who has actually read a patent to learn how to do something?)