The Internet, the Web and an Old Book

Not long ago, I was explaining to a translator the difference between the Internet and the Web. Understandably they thought they were the same thing, as most people do. Jump forward a few weeks and I’m packing boxes ready to move house, wondering what I can throw out. A dusty edition of Running Linux from 1996 — … Continue reading The Internet, the Web and an Old Book →

How to Convert Videos to WebM With FFmpeg/AVConv

After lots of trial and error each time I convert a video to WebM, I finally got around to posting this so I don’t forget next time. In a nutshell, here’s the conversion command that works for me: avconv -i myvideo.mp4 -acodec libvorbis -aq 5 -ac 2 -qmax 25 -threads 2 myvideo.webm What is this … Continue reading How to Convert Videos to WebM With FFmpeg/AVConv →

How to Create a DVD-Compatible Video in PiTiVi

I wanted to edit one of my geeky songs in PiTiVi and burn it to DVD. After searching around and trying a few things it seemed to work, so for reference, here’s how I did it. Important: Save the PiTiVi project before you start, as I’ve found it to be prone to crashing. Once the video and audio are ready, … Continue reading How to Create a DVD-Compatible Video in PiTiVi →

How to Show Japanese Text in Evince

A quick tip that might help others (or me, the next time I forget)… I found that Evince, Ubuntu’s default PDF viewer, doesn’t display Japanese characters, at least on my non-Japanese system. After a quick search it seems the answer is nice and simple – install the poppler-data package. So, either use the Synaptic Package Manager or … Continue reading How to Show Japanese Text in Evince →

Opera Update: “Requires installation of untrusted packages”

On two separate installations of Ubuntu 10.10 I got the following message when trying to update Opera using Ubuntu’s Update Manager:“Requires installation of untrusted packages” Unfortunately, the only option available was to click the Close button with no help to fix the problem. Fortunately, there’s a solution, also on My Opera, that worked for me: my.opera.com/vinhphuc121583/blog/fix-error-requires-installation-of-untrusted-packages … Continue reading Opera Update: “Requires installation of untrusted packages” →

How to create Ogg videos in Linux (with GUI)

Following up on my previous post about converting videos to Ogg Theora, there’s also an easy way for those who like a GUI. Although it’s possible to use VLC for Ogg encoding, I had problems with the audio and video being out of sync. Fortunately I found another way – enter OggConvert. Written in Python by Tristan Brindle, … Continue reading How to create Ogg videos in Linux (with GUI) →

How to create Ogg videos in Linux

Ogg Theora is the codec most supported by modern HTML5-capable browsers, so how can you convert your videos to it? Pretty easily, it seems. There’s a cross-platform command-line application called ffmpeg2theora which does a good job of converting videos to Ogg Theora. Usage couldn’t be simpler: ffmpeg2theora input.mpeg If the audio is out of sync with the video, … Continue reading How to create Ogg videos in Linux →