I had some flash videos I wanted play on my MythTV box. I had tried just about every method of converting and playing the videos with unsatisfactory results. Until now the best I had found was VLC. I could at least watch some of the videos. Unfortunately the other videos were unwatchable because of the lines through the video or bad color rendering. I never was able to install VLC on my Mythbox anyway. Riva FLV Encoder would not install properly on my XP box. Media Coder gave me videos with the audio out of sync. Normally I could have set an audio offset, but the amount of time the audio was out of sync changed with the progression of the video.
Then a few days ago, I found this site. I tried using ffmpeg to convert my flv videos to mpeg4 , borrowing from his command line. For some reason the -bf option did not work on my linux box. I tried transcoding with out it. It worked perfectly. This was the command I used.
ffmpeg -i video.flv -target ntsc-dvd -s 320×240 video.mpg
After transcoding all my flash to ntsc-dvd format, I discovered some video are out of sync by maybe a tenth to a quarter of a second. No big deal for now, I am just thrilled to watch the videos on my big screen from the comfort of my couch.
Posted by benjamenjohnson as computer, dvd, linux, mythtv at 7:16 PM UTC
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I am in the process of moving from GoDaddy's Quick Blog to wordpress. http://blog.electronsmith.com now points to the Wordpress blog. http://oldblog/electronsmith.com points to the old Quick Blog blog.
I have not moved all of my posts from the old blog yet because I can find no good way to import Quick Blog into Wordpress. So, I am doing each post manually, trying to improve the formatting and correcting any spelling or grammar mistakes in the process. I won't change any content without highlighting the changes.
Posted by benjamenjohnson as blog at 1:36 PM UTC
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After five years of listening to my wife complain about our dingy, dirty vinyl kitchen floor, I decided that I should install a new floor. With a 2 year old daughter and my wife's work schedule, my free time comes at a premium. As it was, I had only one weekend in September that I could put down a floor. We really wanted ceramic or stone tile, but I did not feel I had enough time or patience at this point. I knew laminate flooring had come a long way, so we decided to check it out. We finally decided on Armstrong Armalock natural limestone biscuit tiles.
After having struggled all weekend installing the floor, I have a few tips and things I would do differently.
1) Do not install laminate flooring in the kitchen, especially locking glue-less laminate. In kitchens and bathrooms the manufacturer recommends gluing the floor. At Lowe's they recommended only gluing the spots where water might pool. Well, obviously this sales person had neither dog nor two year old. Everywhere in the kitchen has a potential for water pooling. I tried gluing the entire floor. This is a mistake. No matter what anybody says, locking laminate is not designed to be glued. The tolerances are too tight. I ended up having to bang really hard on some pieces to get them to fit together properly. This ruined the tongue and grooves which made installing the next piece or row more difficult.
Also kitchen have cabinets to cut around; laminate is easy to install in a nice rectangular living room. It adds about 3x the amount of time it takes to do a living room of the same square footage. Not to mention cutting the tongue on pieces you don't have clearance to lift up to lock.
2) Buy the right tools: an 18" tapping block, the pull bar with the widest tongue you can find, and a rubber mallet. Do not use a waste piece of flooring to tap flooring tiles into place, which is what I have always done installing hardwood floors. The laminate shatters and makes a mess. The wider tongue on the pull bar will mar the locking grooves less. Plus you can twist the bar, using the wall or cabinet as a fulcrum to lever the tiles together. A rubber mallet is an ear saver. Have you ever beat on a piece of metal with a hammer?
3) When cutting floor vents, don't cut out the entire opening, only cut out a small hole so you know where the vent is. Only when you are finished laying the floor, come back and cut out the final opening. The floor will shift as you add rows. If you cut a precise opening with 1/4" extra margin, you may find the cutout is no longer centered after you have installed the rest of the floor.
4) Use spacers at the edge of every row of flooring and every two to three feet along he first row. As you lay the floor, the whole floor will move if it can, especially if you have to do some tapping to get pieces to fit. If the whole floor can't move it will move along the joints. For instance if you are tapping at the end of an unsupported row, that row will move in relation to the whole floor, leaving too small of an expansion gap.
5) Undercut all door jams and remove all trim in the room. It just makes the job easier and look more professional.
6) Use the spacers when measuring the piece for the end of a row.
7) Unless somebody trimmed the door bottoms incorrectly, cut all the doors by the same amount of thickness that the floor adds. Especially for doors with thresholds.
8) Be very careful no to chip the tiles, especially if you are using a custom ordered product. Armstrong had no matching repair kit. The sales person told me to use caulk that matched the color. I now have to find some pigment to mix with an epoxy to patch the chips in the simulated grout, with no help from Lowe's or Armstrong.
Addendum 2006.10.20
After working on the trim in the kitchen, I have discovered why it is called a floating floor. They are not kidding, the floor really moves! The hole I cut for the vent in list item 3 has now moved enough to show a gap. Putting up the trim has been like trying to hit a moving target. One day the gap between the floor and the wall is 3/8" a few days later it is 1/2".
Laminate is tough on blades. I had to buy new blades for both my table saw and my miterbox. I am going to have the old blades sharpened, but every place I have called taked at least a week. I can not be without my tools for that long. Good blades are a long term investment.
Posted by benjamenjohnson as diy, home improvement at 1:17 PM UTC
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