Torsten Curdt’s weblog

Argh! So many video editing/encoding software out there but none of them does all I want. I don’t care whether the audio has a constant or variable bitrate. What’s the deal handling AC3 streams? Is cutting AVIs really that hard to implement? Of course I want to normalize the audio stream while encoding! Yeah, sometimes I also want to create a mpeg1 stream to create a VCD. Wait …I need a specific audio format? I want to convert while encoding. Now I wanna rip from a DVD encoding to DivX or XVid. I am really getting sick having to use different tools. Please …doesn’t anybody know a tool that does all this?

So far I only found VirtualDub, VirtualDubMod, NanDub, TMPGEnc, DVDx and Xmpeg

Wondering what is out there for linux…

Finally Intel announced Linux support for Centrino Laptops. I signed the petition the day I got my laptop. I already wondered whether it’s possible to replace the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 mini-PCI card with one that’s well supported on Linux. (I heard it’s a crappy chipset anyway) So hopefully I can resurrect my Debian installation soon.

Thanks to Marcus pointing me on that.

Ok it was our fault we missed the first train from Gent. …but then it started: “No, you cannot use this ticket on the Thalys train” ..alright! So I asked for an upgrade to the Thalys – doesn’t work that way. So they wanted to charge me an additional amount of 40 EUR for a single way ticket from Brüssel to Köln. Unbelievable! Maybe the person behind the counter finally felt sorry for me traveling about 12 hours from Gent to Göttingen if I don’t get the ticket. Anyway she got me an “admission ticket” without claim on a seat for around 5 EUR. Fair enough – I was happy. Then we got on the train and arrived in Brüssel …just after the Thalys left. Right! Well, the thing about the Thalys is – your ticket is only valid for that particular train! (How stupid is that?!) So we needed to get our reservations changed. (At least that was possible!) Unfortunately that “fast” person behind the desk did not know about any train connections. So we needed to go somewhere else. Done – but what’s this for a machine? …I needed to take a ticket(!) and wait to be called. (I always thought German bureaucracy would be bad but that’s….) After a few minutes of waiting I got the new connection. Alright, we catched the Thalys a hour later. Too bad that we had a delay of 25 minutes when we arrived in Köln. So we hopped off in Köln instead of Köln-Deutz and catched the next train to Frankfurt. Which was also delayed when we arrived in Frankfurt. Anyway I said bye to the guys and got onto the next train to Göttingen. It was also delayed when I arrived at about 21:40 in Göttingen. But whatever – I was at home!

Gosh, sometimes I hate going by train!

That’s what I like about this events. It’s good to see there are also non-geek topics where you are one the same page – where you connect. It’s no problem to talk for hours without mentioning cocoon – but if you do you have a stimulating discussion like this one about blocks

After the presentations of the GT 2003 we went to the restaurant next door. They served us really delicious food. But some people (no names here;) where still quite hungry afterwards: “Now let’s go the ribs place” :-)