HowTo: Rip a DVD video title into an x264 and Ogg encoded MKV video file
Many people like myself jumped aboard the revolution that was the DVD ten years ago (has it already been that long??) and collected a vast library of discs that now take up space on several shelves in the corner of your lounge room. In this day and age of the PVR and DVR, even I myself find it frustrating to go to the shelf, find the movie I want to watch, take the disc out, make sure it’s free of fingerprints, stick it in the drive, skip all the blasted “mandatory” ads and trailers before you can actually get to the movie itself. At least with YouTube and downloaded AVI and MPEG files, you can simply double-click and watch what you want, when you want, on demand, 24/7 – no mess, no fuss.
So here I present a guide on how to rip your DVD collection into convenient, tidy x264-encoded MKV files. You may find that you can store your entire collection of DVD’s onto a single external hard-drive to carry with you, and will certainly serve as a useful backup the day that some inconsiderate soul scratches or steals your DVD’s! This HowTo is based on The Smorgasbord HowTo, but with modifications to bring it up to date with current implementations of x264 and MEncoder.
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HowTo: Utilise the RAM disk
Those of you who are Amiga veterans from the 80′s and early 90′s will be familiar with the oh-so-useful RAM: disk. A virtual device that treated your unused system RAM as a disk device that you could extract temporary files to and make a general mess of without worrying about cleaning it up later, because when you rebooted, the content of the RAM disk would be cleared. The amount of data you could put in it was simply limited to how much physical RAM you had. The RAM disk was always 100% full because it was dynamic in nature. If you had 10MB of data in there, then the RAM disk consumed 10MB of system RAM. If you only had 2MB of data in there, then it only consumed 2MB of system RAM – the RAM disk never impacted on the rest of system memory in a prejudiced fashion.
Microsoft DOS and Windows have tried to replicate this feature with limited success, and the RAM disk was always a fixed size and pre-allocated from the rest of the system as well, which made it somewhat useless. If you had a 512MB RAM system and allocated 50MB for the RAM disk, then you only had 462MB left for the rest of the system, and this also meant that you could not put more than 50MB of data into the RAM disk.
Ubuntu Linux (and pretty much every other distro) has its own RAM disk feature as well and is just as flexible as the Amiga’s RAM disk in its use. Here’s a guide on how to use it.
Mini-Review: Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000
Well, it’s post-Xmas sales time again and vendors everywhere are struggling to get rid of their stock in readiness for 2009. Whilst I wasn’t in any specific need for something, I found JB Hi-Fi selling Microsoft’s Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 series for AUD$45. This isn’t the cheapest I’ve seen it, mind you, only a few months ago Officeworks sold them for a brief period for only $35 in conjunction with a Microsoft promo, but I digress – I decided to purchase one of these mice for my EeePC 701 since they’re some 35% cheaper than its nearest rivals such as Logitech. But does that cheaper price come at a cost?
HowTo: Eliminate the Green Bar on video playback in Totem (and other media players)
Some people, including myself, have experienced an annoying issue whereby some videos you playback, particularly those encoded with the Xvid codec, have an apparent corruption of video represented by a thick Green Bar(TM) somewhere on the image. Generally the colours are askew as well and sometimes sections of the image are blurred. You might assume that the original video is corrupt in some way, but this is not the case as the video will typically run fine through media players on other platforms.
Virtualbox 2.1
Sun’s ubiquitous virtualisation application Virtualbox has been updated to version 2.1 and brings with it a number of new additions to warrant a major update, with two of the most interesting new features being 3D acceleration support and Networking changes that negate the need for bridging the host adapter to the guest.
Subtitle Downloader
I’m a big fan of simple applications that fill a big void or annoyance in life, and one of those annoyances is finding suitable subtitle files (.srt files) for your movie rips. To fill this void is a simple application called SubDownloader that does its best to crawl the ‘net for suitable subtitle files for whatever movie you select in the file browser.
Red Hat for Mature Audiences Only
| I almost fell off my chair when I saw this pic posted on Overclockers Australia. Most Australians know how draconian the ratings system in Australia is, but this is getting ridiculous! |  (Click for full-size) |
HowTo: Pair your Bluetooth mobile phone with Ubuntu Intrepid for file transfers etc.
While connecting a Bluetooth mobile phone to Ubuntu was not terribly difficult, Ubuntu Intrepid brings with it a new Wizard for connecting all manner of Bluetooth devices without the user having to touch the command line at all.
So, to that end, here is an update to my previous HowTo for connecting a Bluetooth mobile phone to Ubuntu Gusty or Ubuntu Hardy.
