Tag Archives: Recording

[DVB-S2] Tips & Tricks for the Cloud IBox II

 

Abstract

The Cloud Ibox II is a cheap affordable satellite receiver running Linux. It is priced between 90 and 130€. It features:

  • 2 x USB (although the case shows otherwise, it seems this is 1x USB 1.0 and 1 x USB 2.0)
  • Ethernet connection
  • DVB-S2 tuner
  • 1 x card reader
  • linux based
  • dreambox plugin compatible
  • price tag is between 90 and 130€ (often including a USB Wi-Fi Antenna)

It mostly comes pre-installed with a special version of the OpenPli 4.0 frontend. This is due to the situation that OpenPLI at this moment not yet supports the Cloud Ibox II. But I strongly hope this will come soon.

After tinkering with this device the whole weekend, we have some tips and tricks for the other users of this device. Continue reading

[Ableton] Normalize Recorded Audio Samples

Situation:

You recorded a nice sample from an external source (name it a bass synthesizer or anything else). After recording you see that the sample’s gain is too low.

Solution 1:

  • copy that pattern from the pattern view to the arrangement view
  • consolidate that sample in the arrangement view (CTRL+ J on Windows or CMD + J on Apple)
  • increase the sample’s own gain to 0dB
  • the tiny downside: bass samples get often distorted. If you don’t like auto-distortion take Solution 2 ;-)

Solution 2:

  • get yourself Audacity
  • load that recorded sample from Ableton into Audacity
  • go to Effects -> Normalize
  • et voilà: gain set to 0dB and no distortion

Enjoy…

[Pre] WebOS 1.4 With Free Need 4 Speed, Sims, and Monopoly

It seems Palm has eventually understood that Germany might be an important market for their Pre. The Pre is the most sold smartphone on the carrier O2 Germany. O2 Germany yesterday started to distribute webOS 1.4. The update we’ve all been waiting for desperately.

Free commercial Games for german customers

Sadly Electronic Arts’ free download offer for:

  • Need for Speed
  • The Sims
  • Monopoly

is for german customers only. Sorry guys from whereever you are.

New features

WebOS comes with some minor ;-) feature additions:

  • Video recording and editing
  • Video uploading to Facebook and Youtube
  • Better performance when starting apps
  • Telephone app performs a lot faster
  • Longer battery runtime
  • Messaging software allows calling numbers directly
  • SMS/MMS can be forwarded via e-mail
  • Videos can be attached to MMS’
  • phone numbers can be called from the calendar
  • E-mails can be sorted by date, sender, and subject
  • Middle button blinks as notification
  • Wi-Fi can be deactivated again if in sleep (prolonged battery life about 30% in first test)
  • Adobe Flash 10.1 support (will be added to the App Catalog soon)

Find a lot more about the Pre’s latest update in this article on Golem.de (click here for autotranslated version).

[Pre] Video Recording with Precorder 0.2 Alpha

The long waiting is over. A team around the Precentral’s forum member Prenosicator has released an alpha version of a Palm Pre video recording application. It requires WebOS 1.3.1.

You will not find it in the know homebrew repositories as long as it is in alpha status. Anyway for all of you able to root into your beloved Palm Pre the installation is as simple as drinking beer.

Kudos fly out to Prenosicator and his dev team guys. This is a very nice app, many of us have been waiting for.

Features

Option Description Selections
Audio Format Select what format you would like the audio stream to be saved in. AAC, AMRNB, MP3
Video Format Select what format you would like the video stream to be saved in. Mpeg-4, H.263, H.264/AVC
Container Select what multimedia container the audio/video streams will be in. mp4, 3gp
Media Source Would would you like Precorder to capture. Audio only, Video only, Both
Flash Would you like to use the built in LED for illumination Off, On
  • Options in bold are defaults
  • Recordings land in /media/internal

Installation

  1. root into your Pre (weather via Novaterm or running the terminal installed from within Preware)
  2. go to Pre’s tmp folder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# cd /tmp
  3. download the alpha version of Precorder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# wget http://bit.ly/precorder-bootstrap
  4. install Precorder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# sh precorder-bootstrap

Links

» PreCentral Forums: Introducing Precorder, in Alpha testing form
» WebOS-Internals: Precorder – Version: Alpha 0.2.0

Screenshots

Courtesy of WebOS-Internals.org

[Pre] Palm Pre Hacked to Support Video Recording

PreCentral reports that some devs managed to run a video recording software on Palm’s new flagship Pre. The software currently only supports 320 x 480 as resolution with 30fps.

But as the Pre supports up to 720×480 there is hope that we will soon seen DVD like recordings just from the Pre. The video format seems currently only badly formatted, that is why people recommend using VLC to play it.

[MacOS] Recommended Apps: MacTubes

Abstract

Do you ever wanted to download some of the YouTube videos, simply to have them available when being on the road? Or say: you wanna archive them, because as we’ve seen in the past with several major media services: there will be a time when they don’t exist anymore.

But YouTube does not support downloading their videos anymore.

MacTubes’ Features

This is where MacTubes by mametunes comes into place. MacTubes is an open source project that is freely downloadable. Besides downloading MacTubes also supports just playing YouTube videos. You also can make custom playlists without having a YouTube account.

Tips and Tricks

MacTubes is straightforward, as most of those nice freeware Mac applications are.

The only hint we can give: don’t wonder if errors occur when trying to download HD videos. This is normal. Although YouTube may show that you are playing the video in HD quality, this is not true in all cases. You can see this quite obviously when comparing the video resolutions between the normal video and the HD video just with your eyes.

Links

» MacTubes Download

Screenshot