Messages

Matt,

I've just finished authoring a DVD about monks, and another DVD about Hitler in the same week!

One for the CV How about authoring a CD-ROM called AGS Annual #2 ?

Done that, as the non-uk ags-ers can confirm.  Just haven't gotten around to distributing the copies to the rest of you!  What can I say, I've been too busy doing DVDs about frigging Monks!!!

We weren't lost, we were just enjoying a tour of the culture that Sunderland had to offer.

See, you never get lost when I'm navigating...

well, much...

I've just finished authoring a DVD about monks, and another DVD about Hitler in the same week!

I don't know if that's cultured (They had subtitles...), but seeing Ava Braun run off with Hitler's shoes was a bit of a shock.

Hey BaRoN,

I'm confirmed for the Mittens Bus, will be on the same flight as AGA and CJ.

Matt

Ok, flights booked, looks like we'll be landing at Pearson on 20 July at 14:50 after all, so hopefully we can get the AGS bus!

Booked, I think, on the same flight as CJ and AGA.

Looks like it could be fixed.

I went to show the problem to a mate at work and both google.com and google.co.uk seem to link to the site correctly now.

Matt

Ok, bit of a longshot, but here goes:

did a whois lookup on your domain, I saw you are hosted by ipowerweb.  Did a google search on them, added malware to the search term, came up with some interesting links.

http://spamwars.com/archives/2005/05/lost_weekendpar.html

http://groups.google.fr/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Tools/msg/8c97ac8c07244979

Nothing conclusive, but it could well be that Google are blanket flagging ip addresses known to be associated with IPowerWeb.  If you know anyone else who hosts with them, maybe worth googling their website.

http://www.canadianaffair.com/

Again, these guys can only do 21-27th July, but Heathrow to Pearson.

Matt

Hey, they're better than black socks. 

Here's me thinking that would have been the height of fashion 

Happy Days!

White Socks = teh Cool

:

No, I just have a mother who'll do anything tell ask her.

Sure you don't challenge her to a game of pool?

"If you beat me at pool mum, you can stay, otherwise pack yer bags!"

My family aren't an issue, they'll go whenever I ask them to. The dates can be decided when we know when will be most convenient for attendees.

I have to ask, do you just lock them in the cellar for the duration or actually change the locks on the house?

DVD = MPEG-2
VCD = MPEG-1

Normally the chip which does the decoding inside the player can handle both, it's just whether the manufacturer has turned it on in the 'firmware' as it were.

As Chris said, more players these days do Divx / Xvid files which are based around MPEG-4 ASP.

Samsung DVD Writer - £19.92

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/s/product?product=605732

Of course you can probably find cheaper, and personally I would go for a Pioneer or NEC drive, but you're looking at £20, which is very cheap these days!

IIRC VCD's use a very specific bitrate of about 1.1Mbps, with now room for adjustment.

They were designed to hold 74 minutes of Video, the same amount of 'content' as an AudioCD.

So disc 1 is probably 'just' fitting, but disc 2 at 2h05m is too long.  This is one reason why feature films on VCD are normally split over two discs.

HTH

Holiday booked.

I'm in!

(Avoids thinking about January's credit card bill...)

Just did a quick look on flights, and Lastminute.com lists all the 'majors' charging around £560 return (London Heathrow - Pearson / Hamilton)

Canadian Affair offers Air Transat (Any Good?) for between £100 & £170 each way, although they can't offer exactly 12th & 18 (which will change anyway?) (London Heathrow - Toronto)

Zoom Airlines offers flights from £100-110 each way (London Gatwick - Toronto).

If people want to fly from London Heathrow or Gatwick you can crash at my house, then get the bus to Heathrow - you can from there get a coach to Gatwick (That's what I did for Benidorme).

Thanks for posting these gary!

I'm still interested, and have no problem with the deposit, but until the boss puts a 2007 calender on the wall it's a bit tricky to start booking time off work.

I will give you a firm answer before the end of January, and that answer should be a yes 

On a semi related note, those of you who came to Mittens or Brittens this year and didn't recieve a copy of the annual, drop me a pm with your postal address so I card start sending them out next week.  I'll do a proper announcement and all at the weekend, but while it's on my mind...

No problem.

You could also look at the drives firmware, as updates normally increase capacity.

http://www.dvdinfopro.com/ is quite good at checking there are no errors on the burnt discs.

The only other thing could be the bitrate of the video might be going outside spec and choking the player.

http://www.visualdomain.net/bitrate.htm is quite good at showing the bitrate of the disc.  Ideally you want to be around 7-8Mbps, 9Mbps max.  Although the DVD Spec allows you to go to 9.8Mbps, you can run into problems while trying to achieve that on recordable discs due to the limits of the format.

If your audio is uncompressed (PCM or AIFF) that can take quite a hit on the bitrate (1.7 Mbps just for the audio, although you need to allocate 2Mbps just to be safe).  Try converting your audio to AC3 or MP2 (224-256kbps should be pretty good).

HTH

Hey Mark,

Verbatim is a good make, as is Sony which you mentioned.

Burning the discs slower can help avoid skipping - I try to never burn faster than 8x, although 4x would be extra cautious.

When you say it's cutting out do you mean recording or playing back?  If it's recording it could be that the disc is fading after the lead-in which is before it puts any data to the disc.

Check your PMs and I'll drop you my home address and we'll try and sort something out.

Matt

Sounds Good to me!