Engineering

Video info links

(a manageable) collection of links to video codec info and plugins for avisynth.

http://neuron2.net/library/library.html

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 Engineering, Video Tools No Comments

Doxygen Graphviz DOT problem in Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid

The graphviz version graphviz 2.20.2-8 from Ubuntu’s repository seems to have some bug in DOT that causes it to hang.

The latest from http://www.graphviz.org/Download_linux_ubuntu.php is 2.26.3. However there’s maybe a funny in the dependencies as I needed the base and the lib packages graphviz_2.26.3-1_i386.deb & libgraphviz4_2.26.3-1_i386.deb as otherwise tryign to run DOT without the lib package you get:

dot: error while loading shared libraries: libgvc.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 Engineering, Linux No Comments

Makefile debugging article

Makefiles are pure evil.  The concept was nice but working with them is awful. I have wasted more hours/days/weeks chasing down makefile problems because the #@$#*$ idjiots that came up with the idea must have assumed nobody would use more than one makefile and build nothing more complicated than ‘hello world’. I put this right up their with Microsoft’s  Windows Registry as one of the top 10 dumbest implementations of a good idea ever.

Now I feel better…

http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/197003338
Debugging Makefiles By John Graham Cumming, February 05, 2007

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 Engineering, Linux No Comments

Educational materials site

Good place to look for a range of primary/secondary lessons (not just science):

http://www.curriki.org/

From which I found a link to here:

http://phet.colorado.edu/ which has various simulation programs available (java mostly)

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 Astronomy, Engineering, Uncategorized No Comments

Video Tools list

Things for analyzing/processing video files (excludes editing unless it happens to do that too)

Players

VLC – everything player/streamer

SMPlayer – player, IMHO better than VLC if it’s just playback needed (which is weird since they’re both based on ffmpeg, etc)

MPEG tools

(mostly free ones, get Elecard StreamEye for any real work).

Tsviatko Jongov’s tools page (multiple useful utilities that he developed)

Mediainfo Just like the name says, Media info…

tsMuxeR (was tsMuxRGUI) – split combine media

StaxRip – another muxer/converter

AVIDemux – more of an editor but can do a lot of useful conversions too

meGUI – an encoder front end

MKVToolNix – Matroska tools

Cypheros – assortment of TS related tools – purchased TSDoctor (was cheap) to have some sort of error checker, but it doesn’t do much in terms of displaying ‘decoded’ h264 fields, etc.

VirtualDub no explanation needed?

w6rz.net –  test clips raw and mpeg2

Stuff looked at but really don’t use

TSReaderLite – freebie version to look at mpeg2 TS (need full version to be useful for h264)

MPEG TS Stream analyzer – shareware – have not tried it

Maybe someday this will be something: http://code.google.com/p/ts-mpeg2-analyzer/

Not quite software

http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Main_Page

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 Engineering, Video Tools No Comments

Nice DSP/FFT interactive site

Aimed at the basics, but what a huge improvement over illustrations in a text book.

http://www.fourier-series.com/

Friday, September 25th, 2009 Engineering No Comments

Gullibility and the audio biz…

I’m always forgetting links to the true weirdos of the audio biz, luckily someone else maintains a great list:

http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html

And an excellent collection of  “no BS” commentary on speaker wires but also illustrates how the audio industry has fallen into a death spiral of promoting woo-woo instead of actual value. And then we’re all shocked that people think MP3 at 64 kbits/sec sounds good…

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

Another analysis – wish there was a bit more info on the ABX tests

http://andreconsulting.com/Audio%20Equipment%20Snake%20Oil.pdf

Yet another good set of links to materials on the silliness that pervades the consumer (high-end) audio business:

http://www.bruce.coppola.name/audio/wisdom.html

Friday, February 6th, 2009 Audio, Engineering, Frustration, Uncategorized No Comments

online EE book

Looks like a lot of effort is going in to these to create a comprehesive book http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/index.htm

Sunday, January 25th, 2009 Engineering No Comments

Good page for old (mostly) tube audio

lots of old books too. http://www.pmillett.com/index.html

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 Engineering No Comments

Series excerpt Bob Pease (edited) book an analog

More stuff for my reading list

http://www.industrialcontroldesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212501261&cid=NL_icdl

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 Engineering No Comments