Author Archives: Marco Barnig

Responsive javascript slideshows

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Last update : July 5, 2014

Early 2006, Lokesh Dhakar introduced Lightbox, a unobtrusive script used to display large images using modal dialogs over a black faded background. Six years later, there were hundred of scripts available to create slideshows, carousels, sliders and image galleries on the web. I evaluated the following responsive javascript slideshows for different projects:

Today, some of these scripts are outdated and I included them only for historical reasons. Some scripts are standalone, but most are based on jQuery, a fast, small and feature-rich JavaScript library. Most of them are also available as WordPress plugin.

My favorite script is the …

I use the following code :

...

See the demo

The following list provides links to websites with additional informations about slideshows and related topics :

Tools and utilities developed by Nir Sofer

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Last update : March 2, 2013

NirSoft USDDeview Tool

I recently discovered the unique collection of small and useful freeware utilities and tools, available on the website NirSoft, created in 2001. The name NirSoft is the combination of the developers first name Nir and the prefix of the word Software, respectively the last name of the developer, Sofer.

Nir Sofer is an experienced developer with extensive knowledge in C++, .NET Framework, Windows API, and Reverse Engineering of undocumented binary formats and encryption algorithms.

The domains covered by the more than 100 tools of NirSoft are various : Password Recovery, Network Monitoring, Web Browser, Video/Audio, Internet, Desktop, Outlook/Office, Programming, Disk, System, …

All of the utilities are fast, small, portable and effective. Most are developed in C++ and don’t require any installation.

My favorite Nirsoft tools are the following :

Nir Sofer provides also tips and tricks about computers and software as well as code samples.

MEDION Combirecorder DVD & Video

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Dernière mise à jour: 24 février 2020

Medion Combirecorder DVD – VHS

J’utilise l’enregistreur DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) & magnétoscope VHS (Video Home System) MD 83425 de MEDION pour copier des cassettes VHS sur un DVD et ensuite le convertir en format mpeg 4.

Le mode d’emploi est le suivant (avec télécommande) :

  1. Insertion de la cassette vidéo à copier
  2. Insertion d’un DVD-R vierge
  3. Position STOP en poussant 2 fois sur la touche Stop
  4. Ouverture du menu SETUP et sélection de l’option REGLAGES GENERAUX
  5. Sélection de l’option ENREGISTREMENT > MODE DUPLICATION > VCR -> DVD
  6. Fermeture du menu pricipal en poussant sur la touche Setup
  7. Sélection du mode VCR
  8. Position de la cassette avec Play, Forward ou Backward à l’endroit du début de la copie
  9. Position de la cassette en mode PAUSE
  10. Sélection du mode DVD
  11. Sélection de la qualité d’enregistrement avec REC SPEED (entre 1 heure et 8 heures, 2 heures est la durée standard DVD)
  12. Lancement de la copie en poussant sur la touche DUBBING
  13. Arrêt de l’enregistrement en poussant sur la touche Stop
  14. Répétition des actions 7 à 13 pour copier d’autres séquences
  15. Finalisation du DVD-R en sélectionnant l’option FINALISATION dans le menu SETUP > DVD (un DVD-RW n’a pas besoin d’être finalisé pour le lire sur un autre lecteur)

Pour parcourir une cassette VHS en vitesse, on peut activer F.FORWARD pendant le PLAY.

Media Centers (MC), Media Managers and online media databases

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Ember Media Manager

A Media center, also called Home Theater PC (HTPC) or Home Cinema, refers to a home entertainment system that seek to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood, with the help of video and audio equipment, in or outside a private home.

A list of some renowned media centers is shown hereafter :

A Media Manager is  an application that catalogs your media and writes images and metadata to the directory the media is stored in so that the media center can access that data in order to display the correct information for the media files. Most media centers do have some sort of scraper built in to look for media matches in Internet online media databases. Media Managers usually provide extended and more reliable tools to catalog your media.

A list of some renowned media managers is given below :

The most renowned online media databases usually scraped by media centers and by media managers are listed herafter :

 

Serviio DLNA media server

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Last update : May 8, 2013

Serviio is a free media server allowing you to stream media files (music, video or images) to DLNA renderer devices on your connected home network. Serviio is based on Java technology and therefore runs on most platforms. A pro version was launched in July 2012 when the 1.0 version was released.

The relevant features of Serviio are :

  • streams audio, video (SD & HD) and image files in their native format or transcoded in real-time
  • streams content from online sources (RSS feeds, live audio/video streams, web page content, …)
  • streams your PC desktop
  • includes a plugin system, based on the Groovy language, to support streaming from non-trivial online sources or to create playlists
  • supports different editable renderer profiles
  • supports external subtitles

Serviio uses a priority-based metadata extraction to describe your media files :

  • embedded metadata into the media files
  • locally stored metadata files (.nfo sidecar files)
  • scraped online metadata

The performance and high quality of the Serviio DLNA server has been documented by the fact that Sony UK first recommended Serviio for Sony devices and recently licensed Serviio to create their own customized Homestream server. Sony started the DLNA initiative in 2003.

Serviio is developed by the freelance Java consultant Petr Nejedly (alias ZIP). The current version 1.2.1 was released on March 22, 2013. Serviio is supported by a strong on-line community, active on the main forum and on the numerous sub-forums. There are also various third party tools available, for example a web user interface in php or AJAX, consoles (ServiiDroid, …), a database for storing information about online sources (ServiiDB).

Patters created a DSM package to install Serviio on a Synology NAS.

Here is a small list of some other DLNA servers to allow you to compare the Serviio features with other projects.

ID3 in MP3 metadata container

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Last update : August 25,2013
ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself.

There are two unrelated versions of ID3: ID3v1 and ID3v2. They are de facto standards, because no standardization body was involved in its creation nor has given it a formal approval status.

A tag editor is used to read or write ID3 metadata. Many media players, including the standard players iTunes and Windows Media Player, provide tagging features.

The most common fields displayed in a DLNA renderer are the following :

  • Artist Name
  • Album Name
  • Title
  • Genre
  • Year
  • Comments
  • Length
  • Picture of the artist or album (high resolution panoramic pictures, for example 640×480 pixels, are best suited)

Sometimes the track number is also shown. Less usual are the Album Artist, the Composer or the Disc Number.

Widely used tag editors are Mp3tag (current version 2.57 released on July 6, 2013, created by Florian Heidenreich) and Easytag (current version 2.1.8 released on February 10, 2013, created by Jerôme Couderc).

The ID3 standard is very flexible with regards to the type and number of images that can be embedded in a MP3 single file (21 types are specified : icons, leaflets, cover art, artist, composer, conductor, location, …). In practice only one picture is used and displayed by the player. More informations about embedding album art in MP3 files are available at the weblog of Richard Farrar.

Informations about metadata editors for image files are available in the following post.

 

Groovy : a dynamic language for the Java platform

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Groovy is an agile and dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine. It builds upon the strengths of Java but has additional power features inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk. Groovy seamlessly integrates with all existing Java classes and libraries and compiles straight to Java bytecode so you can use it anywhere you can use Java. A set of Eclipse plugins that provide Eclipse support for Groovy projects is available (Groovy-Eclipse).

The current stable version is 1.8. Groovy is used among others for the development of plugins for the DLNA media server Serviio.

3D character rigging and inverse kinematics

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Pinocchio 2007, by Ilya Baran and Jovan Popovic

Rigging (skeletal animation) is a process used in computer animation, particularly in the animation of characters, to efficiently mimic real world skeletal systems for animation purposes. Characters are represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character (called skin or mesh) and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones (called the skeleton or rig) used to animate (pose and keyframe) the mesh.

This rigging technique is used by creating a series of bones to form skeletons. Each bone in the skeleton is responsible for deforming and animating a part of the character mesh and has a three dimensional transformation (position, scale and orientation) The bones  form a hierarchy, the skeleton.

Usually the animator is assisted through inverse kinematics and other goal-oriented techniques. The benefit of rigging is that an animation can be defined by simple movements of the bones, instead of vertex by vertex changes. The drawback of rigging is that it does not provide realistic muscle movement and skin motion.

Manual rigging to specify its internal skeletal structure and to define how the input motion deforms its surface is a tedious process. Most 3D modeling & animation packages used by professionals provide inbuilt automatic rigging and skinning algorithms. An example is the BlenRig System for Blender.

An experimental auto rigging and animation tool called Pinocchio was presented in 2007 at SIGGRAPH by Ilya Baran and Jovan Popovic from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The corresponding paper “Automatic Rigging and Animation of 3D Characters” was published in the ACM proceedings of SIGGRAPH. The source files, binaries for Windows and test meshes are available from the Pinocchio project page at MIT.

A commercial standalone automatic rigging tool, called Jimmy|RIG, was created by Origami Digital LLC, to allow people to quickly apply motion capture data to their characters without the tedious process of painting weights and setting up a skeleton. Different software versions are available, a Lite version starts at 150 $US.

A web-based automatic rigging solution is offered by Mixamo which provides the first premium quality 3D character animation experience entirely online.

The following list shows some links to videos related to automatic rigging :

 

GPU Caps Viewer

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Last update : September 16, 2014

GPU Caps Viewer is a video card information utility that gives details about hardware (GPU) and software (OpenGL, OpenCL and CUDA API level support).

The current version of the program is 1.21.1.2 released on September 5, 2014. The following pictures show the informations displayed  for my desktop PC used for some tests with the outstanding ReconstructMe Project.

GPU Caps Viewer 1.16.0 : General View

GPU Caps Viewer 1.16.0 : CUDA View

GPU Caps Viewer 1.16.0 : OpenCL View

GPU Caps Viewer has been developed by Jérôme [JeGX] Guinot from Switzerland. He considers himself as OpenGL developer and GPU torturer. He is the owner of the blog Geeks3D providing informations about 3D tech news each and every day. He is also the founder of the website oZone3D.Net (“Heat up your graphics card”) and maintains the personal log JeGX’s Infamous Lab (former JeGX’s DevBlog). Some other creations of JeGX are GeeXLab, FurMark, TessMark, FluidMark, ShaderToyMark, GPU Shark, GLinspector, EVGA OC Scanner and MSI Kombustor.

The program  contains 11 OpenGL and 8 OpenCL demos.