Monthly Archive for August, 2009

Play High Definition movie smoothly with VLC

Published on August 28, 2009 in mac. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

VLC is a wonderful player. It can almost play all kind of videos that I have. It’s lightweight and best of all… it’s free! I don’t know what else to ask.

Except this… for several months I have noticed that when I played a high definition movie, it kind of getting chobby. It seemed that I have a line in the video. It made my eyes sick and I almost always try to avoid a HD movie (and hoping the problem will be fixed with the next version of VLC or Mac OS).

Today I got my Snow Leopard and VLC has left its beta status but I still get the horizontal line when I watch an HD movie. This is an example of it.

nothing

I thought… this is it. Either I manage to fix the problem in VLC or I have to find a new video player.

It turned out finding a better video player was a harder task.

So I began searching the web for a fix of that problem. It’s not that hard to find a solution, but to get the correct keywords is the harder puzzle. So in VLC forum, people suggested to use the filtering capability in VLC. At least there are three suggestions.

  1. To turn on the scale filter and use a better algorithm for it.
  2. To turn on the post processing filter and maximize the number of the post processing.
  3. To turn on the deinterlace filter.

I tried all of them to get the best solution, and after a while, I got a conclusion that turning on the deinterlace filter is the best answer. This was the result of it:
deinterlace

As you can see, the horizontal line is gone, but the picture is still not that sharp.

Not so satisfied with the result, I searched further for better solution. This time I got a better answer quicker. By using an algorithm named ‘Bob’ for deinterlacing, I got a better result as can be seen in the following picture.
bob

Now I’m glad!

Step by step instructions

If you are a type of person who needs a complete step-by-step instructions, this is what I did:

  1. Open VLC
  2. Select Preferences from the Menu ‘VLC’
  3. Activate the ‘All’ check box in the left bottom of the dialog
  4. Go to Video->Filters, activate the checkbox ‘Deinterlacing video filter’
  5. Go to Video->Filters->Deinterlace
  6. Change the deinterlace mode to ‘Bob’
  7. Click save
  8. Restart the VLC
  9. Play the video, hopefully you will get a better video playback

Do you have more tips how to optimize the settings in VLC? Please share here! I’d be glad to have a better and sharper image for my video.

The most useful Google Mail Labs stuffs

Published on August 28, 2009 in google. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

For quite some time, Google Mail lets its users to activate several crazy experimental stuffs which they refer as Google Mail Labs. I’ve used some of then and this is the list of Google Mail Labs I activated.

Offline


Make Google Mail go where the Internet doesn’t. Access your inbox through your browser and use Google Mail’s familiar features when you’re offline. To get started, enable this lab and then click on the “Offline” link in the upper-right of your inbox.

YouTube previews in mail


Shows a video preview whenever you receive a YouTube link in an email. You can watch the video right inline!

Picasa previews in mail


Shows photos previews whenever you receive a Picasa link in an email.

Flickr previews in mail


Shows photos previews whenever you receive a Flickr link in an email.

Superstars


Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature:
(1) Go to the “General” Settings page to choose which superstars you wish to use.
(2) Use either the keyboard shortcut (’s’) or click to rotate through your selected superstars.
(3) Use the search operator “has:” to find all messages with your superstar (e.g. “has:red-bang”, “has:blue-star”). Learn the name of a superstar by hovering over its image in the “General” Settings page.

Pictures in chat


See your friends’ profile pictures when you chat with them.

Fixed width font


Adds an option to the reply dropdown menu that lets you view a message in fixed width font.

Signature tweaks


Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the “–” line that appears before signatures.

Forgotten Attachment Detector


Prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments. Prompts you if you mention attaching a file, but forgot to do so.

Custom Label Colors


Lets you create your own combination of colors for labels. Instead of choosing one of the standard colors from the label dropdown menu, click on Add custom colors. Pick your combination of colors, hit Apply, and enjoy.

Undo Send


Oops, hit “Send” too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button.

Title Tweaks


Changes order of elements in the browser title bar from “Google Mail – Inbox (20) – nxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com” to “Inbox (20) – nxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com – Google Mail”. This way you are able (most of the time) to see if a new mail has arrived even if Google Mail window is minimized.

Search Autocomplete


Provides search suggestions for contacts and operators as you type in the search box.

Don’t buy Snow Leopard’s MacBoxSet!

Published on August 27, 2009 in mac. 24 Comments Tags: , .

Seriously, if you are using Leopard and thinking of buying Snow Leopard’s MacBoxSet… don’t.

A little calculation in Amazon.de, you’ll get better deal by buying iWork09: 65,95 €, iLife09: 66,95 €, and Snow Leopard: 29 €. In total it costs only 161,45 €, better than the cost of MacBoxSet single: 169 €.

If you’re choosing the family pack, it’s even better. The total cost is 216,85 €: 89,45 € + 78,40 € + 49 €. Better than 229 €.

In the Amazon.com, it’s even better. Even if you don’t own Leopard, don’t buy the Snow Leopard’s MacBoxSet. You got better deal even if you buy the old MacBoxSet : $114.99 + $25 = $138.99 instead of $149.99. For family: $142.99 + $43.99 = $186.98 instead of $199.99.

I wonder why? :-?

Eclipse Tips: Debugging your multi thread application (2)

Published on August 26, 2009 in eclipse. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

This post is another tips of debugging your multi thread application. If you are interested on how to debugging a multi thread application, probably you will find my first post useful as well.

In a multi thread application, it’s still possible to use a certain class from different threads. The problem is if you try to set a breakpoint in this shared class, the breakpoint will be valid for all threads. This is typically just slowing our debugging session.

With Eclipse, you can set a breakpoint that only valid in certain threads. The catch is since there is no way that Eclipse knows what threads will be available, you can only set this on runtime.

To do this, you need to first set the breakpoint you want (remember, you probably need to Suspend the VM as well).

After that, you can start the debugging session and wait until the application is suspended. In this occasion, let open the breakpoint properties. In this window, there are two elements in the left tree: Breakpoint Properties and Filtering. Select Filtering and after that you can set to which thread the breakpoint should be valid for.

2009-08-26_1300

There are two more catches.

  • If the intended thread is not running yet, this method is not usable.
  • Every time the debugging session is restarted, you’ll need to filter it again.

Despite that catches, I think this is nice feature to know by multi-thread application developers and who know, it may be useful sometime in the future.

First impression of Google Wave

Published on August 24, 2009 in google. 4 Comments Tags: , .

2009-08-24_1616

So today at last I finally have time to play a little with the newest not-yet-released Google product – Google Wave. As far as I remember, I apply for the Developer Preview account several weeks ago and just got the account last Sunday.

So far I haven’t done anything particularly useful since I don’t have any friend with a wave account. If you have one and want to ‘wave’ with me, just let me know. My account is nanda@wavesandbox.com.

In my short use, I can share several things with you:

  • It’s slow! Maybe Goggle haven’t put the sandbox in its gigantic farm or my computer is just old to play with such trendy beast. But for me, it’s painfully slow.
  • AFAIK, there is no FAQ, no manual, no Help so help yourself to get along with the Wave. Maybe it’s just me, but I needed 15 minutes to add my first robot.
  • The robots are not that stable. I don’t know if this is Wave’s fault or the robots’ developer’s fault. The Syntaxy robot failed to beautify some of the message. The Tweety robots is just not working on Safari (I haven’t tried it on other browsers).

So far, that’s my experience. I’ll report it back if there is something unusually interesting to report.

Some screenshots:
2009-08-24_1629

2009-08-24_1628