Beyond HandBrake's defaults

If you're a Mac user interested in ripping your commercial DVDs to a format playable on an Apple TV, iPod, or iPhone, the free video transcoder, HandBrake 0.9.3, is one of the easiest ways to go about it. With a copy of the free VLC installed on your Mac, HandBrake can rip most DVDs made today, and the results it produces are quite watchable.

But suppose you want to go beyond the defaults-tweak HandBrake to produce videos that take up less room on your iPod, dispense with a movie's closing credits, or bear subtitles? It's all possible with HandBrake, but it takes some tweaking. And tweaking HandBrake is what this article is all about.

From the top

We'll work our way from the top of the HandBrake interface to the bottom, pointing out useful features along the way.

Title When you insert a DVD or load a Video_TS folder from a DVD that contains a feature-length movie, HandBrake will automatically choose the portion it believes to be the main feature. But click the Title pop-up menu and you'll likely see some other entries. Much of these reflect parts of the disc you're not interested in-FBI warnings or an opening logo, for example. But some of the longer entries might be previews or extra content. How to tell? From this menu choose an entry other than the one selected by HandBrake and click on the Picture Settings button near the bottom of the window. In the resulting sheet, you'll see a preview of the selected content. If that preview shows the FBI logo, you can safely move on to a different entry.

If, instead, you're ripping a DVD full of TV episodes, you'll want to rip more than just the single episode recommended by HandBrake. Before you begin, choose HandBrake -> Preferences and in the General preference enable the Use Auto Naming option. This ensures that each episode will have a unique name.

Now click on the Title pop-up menu and select an episode. Configure your settings, and click on the Add to Queue button. Repeat these steps for all episodes on the disc. Because you've enabled the Auto Naming option, each will have a unique name. (Without that option on, there's the danger that you'll overwrite one episode with another because they bear the same name.) Click on Start and HandBrake will encode each episode in the queue.

Chapters It's a good bet that a movie's credits will be found in its last chapter. If you'd like to do without these credits, choose the penultimate chapter from the second chapter pop-up menu. So, for example, if a movie has 32 chapter, choose 31 from the second pop-up menu. When you rip the disc, that last chapter won't be included in the final product.

Format HandBrake can output video in four different container formats-MP4, MKV, AVI, and OGM. For those using Apple's media players (QuickTime, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV) there isn't a good reason for using any container format other than MP4.

The Video tab

Select the Video tab and you find settings for controlling the encoding of a movie's video settings.

Video Codec Each container format supports its own collection of encoders. We'll concentrate on those offered with MP4. HandBrake supports three encoders for its MP4 files-MPEG-4 (FFmpeg), MPEG-4 (XviD), and H.264 (x264). FFmpeg is faster than XviD, but you pay for that speed with a slight compromise in quality. H.264-the default setting used for many of HandBrake's presets-produces good looking results at low bit rates. But it's slower to encode than the other two encoders and requires more processing power from the device that plays the video. If you're creating video for an old computer and find H.264 playback choppy, try FFmpeg or XviD.

Framerate You can reduce the size of your movie by cutting its framerate but you'll suffer some quality loss in the process as your video can be choppier than it would be at the original framerate. None of HandBrake's presets do this, but if you'd like to give it a go because you have very little storage space to work with, choose a different framerate from the Framerate (FPS) pop-up menu. For best results, choose a framerate that fits into the original neatly. For example, 15 fps for a 30 fps (29.97) source.

2-pass encoding When, in HandBrake's Quality area, you've chosen either the Target Size or Average Bit rate settings (discussed shortly), a 2-pass encoding option appears within the Video tab. Enable this setting and HandBrake will run through your movie twice. The first time, it records information about the density of information within the video's frames. On the second pass, it uses that information to better allocate bit rates during the encoding process, resulting in better-looking video. The downside is that 2-pass encoding takes twice as long. To speed it up (and lose a measure of quality), enable the Turbo First Pass option, that knocks 50 - 75-percent of the encoding time off the first pass.

Quality The settings in HandBrake's Quality area are where you can make a real difference in the size of your resulting movie and, of course, its quality. Enable Target Size and you can tell HandBrake how big you'd like the resulting movie to be. (The larger the file size, the better the quality.) The Average Bit rate (kbps) option works the other way around. You tell HandBrake what you'd like the average bit rate to be and it creates a movie whose bit rate hovers around that size. (Be sure to check the capabilities of the destination device in this regard. A bit rate of 2500kbps looks good on an Apple TV but is too much for an iPod.) Again, the higher the bit rate the better the quality and the larger the resulting movie.

The Constant Quality slider is your way of telling HandBrake, "I want the resulting movie to be X good." HandBrake then does everything it can to grant your wish, but "everything it can" may result in a movie that consumes a lot of storage if you've chosen a high quality setting or one that won't be compatible with a device such as an iPod because its bit rate is too high.

Picture Settings

Within the Picture Settings sheet (accessed by clicking the Pictures Settings button) you can preview frames from the video and change its look. These are your options.

Size You use this option to reduce the dimensions of your movie (you can't increase its size using the arrow buttons next to the Width and Height fields). For a widescreen movie, the Width will be 720. The Height number will vary, depending on the source. Enable the Keep Aspect Ratio option and reduce the Width or Height setting and the other setting will follow, maintaining the same aspect ratio as the source movie.

You also have the option to choose Anamorphic encoding. Choose Strict or Loose from the Anamorphic pop-up menu, and the dimensions of the movie increase. The Strict option ensures that the aspect ratio conforms exactly to the ratio of the original movie. A Loose setting alters the dimensions so they are more efficiently encoded.

Changing the dimensions of your video does very little to reduce the amount of storage it consumes. You'd use this setting specifically to meet the limitations of a particular player-one that can't play video larger than 640 x 480, for example.

Crop By default, HandBrake attempts to remove black bars by cropping them away. If you're unhappy with its performance in this regard, you can do it yourself by enabling the Custom option in the Crop area and then entering the values you like in the four fields below. If your source material is a DVD burned originally from a video tape and that video shows scan lines at the top or bottom of the video, you can use crop to remove them.

Filters Normally you shouldn't have to touch the settings found in the Filters area if you're working with a movie ripped from a commercial DVD. If your source material is made up of TV shows or animation, however, or comes from a disc you've created from movies you've shot, you might find some of these settings helpful.

The Detelicine option switches on an inverse telecine process. Telecining is the act of converting film to video and adding frames in the process (because film runs at 24 fps and NTSC video uses 30 fps). The detelicine process removes those extra frames so your video plays back smoothly. Generally, only animation and TV shows require this setting but there's no harm in leaving it on all the time as it will have no effect on content it can't work with.

Take a gander at your video's preview image. If you see jagged lines where hard edges should be (called "combing" or "teeth"), the video is interlaced. Interlacing is a technique used in standard-definition TV for painting images in a series of odd and even lines. Interlaced video displays these jagged lines on a computer screen and some high-definition TVs. To remove it, you must deinterlace the video. HandBrake offers a couple of options for doing this.

First, choose Fast from the Deinterlace pop-up menu. If the jagged lines go away, you may want to deinterlace your video. The Fast setting is indeed faster, but you lose quality. To produce better results (though you still lose some quality), choose Slow or Slower.

I used the word "may" in the paragraph above because HandBrake offers another option for dealing with these jagged lines-Decomb. This option searches your video and applies deinterlacing only to those frames where the lines are visible. This helps maintain better overall video quality because not everything is deinterlaced.

If your source video is really grainy, give the Denoise option a try. This filter is a trade-off. You may lose some of the grain but you also lose overall quality (gain some blocking in the Medium and Strong settings, for example). There are three settings-Weak, Medium, and Strong. Weak is the first to try on a sample (a chapter, for example). You have to try it on a sample because its effects aren't reflected in the preview image.

And finally, there's a Deblock slider that can get rid of blocky artifacts. Again, you won't need this setting if your source is clean. If the source is poor to begin with, this is something to try on a sample chapter.

Audio & Subtitles

The Audio & Subtitles tab is the means for choosing which audio tracks you'd like to encode as well as placing subtitles on your encoded movies.

Many commercial DVDs contain multiple language tracks-English, French, and Spanish, for example. You can reduce file size by stripping out the tracks you don't want. HandBrake will choose the English track by default and exclude others, but you can optionally add them back by selecting additional language tracks from the Track 2, Track 3, and Track 4 pop-up menus.

Within the Audio Codec pop-up menu you can choose the codec used for the movie's audio-the default is AAC, but you can maintain the source movie's existing audio encoding by choosing AC3 Passthrough from this menu. File size will be larger, but the sound will exactly match the quality of the original. Even if you go with the default AAC (faac) setting, you can choose the output format-Mono, Stereo, Dolby Surround, Dolby Pro Logic II, or 6-channel Discrete. Choose Dolby Pro Logic II and the audio will play on both stereo and surround-sound systems (though it's not true surround-sound). The setting you choose should match the gear you intend to play the movie on.

If you don't mind the larger file, you can add both Pro Logic II and AC3 pass-through tracks using the Track 1 and Track 2 pop-up menus so that you have a movie that will play in stereo on your iPod or in full surround-sound on a device such as an Apple TV.

With HandBrake you can add subtitles to your encoded movies if they're available on the original source DVD. Note, however, that you can't turn them off when viewing the movie-they're burned into the movie.

Chapters

HandBrake takes note of a source's chapters and, by default, adds chapter markers to videos it encodes. The default is to list them by number-Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. You're welcome to double-click on a chapter and type in a name of your own-Phase One: In Which Doris Gets Her Oats, for example. If you'd prefer to do without chapter markers you can turn off that option in this tab. Note, however, that chapters add no bulk to the file and make navigating through a movie far easier.

Advanced

HandBrake's Advanced tab is an area where many mortals fear to tread due to some pretty arcane options. While we don't fear it, the choices you might make here are meant for only the most hard-core tweaker. Should you wish to become one of those tweakers, I urge you to carefully read through x264 Options in HandBrake.

The risks

The advantage of using HandBrake's default settings is that they produce videos that absolutely will play on their intended destination-on your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV, for example. If you go the manual route and tweak your own settings, it's possible that you'll choose a bit rate or size too large for a particular device.

For this reason, you should pay careful attention to the video playback specifications for the device you wish to encode for. Apple publishes these specifications for the iPod and iPod touch, iPhone, and Apple TV on its Web site.

Spotify readies iPhone app for its streaming music service

On-demand music streaming company Spotify is readying an iPhone client for its service, and expects to release it in a matter of weeks.

The iPhone software should be available as a free download from Apple's iPhone App Store in a few weeks' time, but using it to stream music will require a Spotify Premium subscription, the company's communications manager Jim Butcher said Monday.

Users of Spotify's desktop client software for Windows or Mac OS X can choose between the Spotify Premium music-streaming service costing €9.99 (US$14) a month, or a free service supported by advertising. Paid subscribers can access higher quality music streams, download music while travelling outside their home country, and hear new albums before they are available to users of the free service.

Spotify's service streams music at around 160K bps (kilobits per second) using the Ogg Vorbis q5 codec, and is available in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.

On the iPhone, it will compete with Apple's own iTunes Store, where users are charged to download tunes but pay no ongoing subscription fees. The iTunes Store contains around 10 million tracks encoded at 256K bps in AAC format, most unencumbered by DRM (digital rights management) restrictions, at prices ranging from $0.69 to $1.29.

For Spotify mobile users, there may be other charges on top of the Premium subscription fee: iPhone owners would be well-advised to choose a flat-rate mobile data subscription, or use the Spotify software only within range of free Wi-Fi hotspots, if they want to avoid high usage charges from their network operator.

To further limit such download charges, and to allow users to continue listening even when out of range of the wireless network, the Spotify iPhone client includes an offline mode that stores music files on the device for later playback.

Spotify published a video demonstration of its iPhone software on YouTube Friday, showcasing the offline listening mode and the instantaneous sharing of playlists between PC and mobile clients.

After the iPhone client is released, the company plans to release Spotify clients for other mobile devices, Butcher said, although he did not say for which platforms. The company demonstrated a prototype client for Android phones, also featuring the offline listening mode, at the Google I/O developer conference in May.

The Internet Survives Michael Jackson's Memorial Service

When news of Michael Jackson's death hit the wire on June 25, the Web crumbled beneath its weight. AOL went down in flames. News sites were overloaded with page views. Twitter was smothered by the Fail Whale. So when Jackson's memorial service was announced, the Internet prepared itself for a massive influx of streaming video, tweets, status updates, and more. This time it survived.

As thousands upon thousands of mourners for the King of Pop gathered at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, millions more huddled around computer screens to catch a glimpse of an extravagant ceremony fit for an influential performer. Live streaming video proved to be the a popular method of viewing, with nearly 3 million video streams broadcast online, according to Akamai Technologies, a Massachusetts-based Web content delivery company. Traditional news sites clocked in at 3.9 million visitors per minute.

Overall, global traffic spiked 19 percent during the ceremony. CNN had 9.7 million people watching live video streams and Yahoo had 5 million. The BBC's live stream was tapped 410,000 times.

Twitter users went nuts during the performance, with the top ten most popular topics yesterday all relating to Jackson and his memorial service. The term "Michael Jackson" generated 80,000 tweets per hour. Over in Facebook country, there were 6000 Jackson-related updates per minute.

There was an ebb and flow in traffic during the event as people tuned in and out as the ceremony progressed. Speakers and performers sparked fluctuations in traffic based on who they were, how long they spoke, and their overall popularity. For instance, stream count dropped 20 points when the Reverend Al Sharpton took the stage, and hopped up 40 when John Mayer came to sing. Brooke Shields started with plus 10 but as her speech went on and on, dropped 20. Martin Luther King III clocked in at negative 80.

Though the event was massive and set records, it could not compare with President Obama's inauguration, which, in some cases, doubled Jackson's numbers.

Feds: IPv6 is a priority

For the last year, it's been all quiet on the IPv6 front in the United States. But now the U.S. government is making noise about this next-generation Internet technology, as it forges ahead with plans to deploy secure, IPv6-enabled network services.

In June 2008, all federal agencies met an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) deadline to demonstrate that their backbone networks were IPv6 capable. 

A few weeks ago, the Federal CIO Council issued a road map that disclosed the next steps agencies should be taking toward IPv6 deployment.

The road map says every federal CIO should develop a business case for IPv6 and integrate IPv6 into their agency's enterprise architecture and capital investment plans.

"Like other areas of strategic investment which lead to new levels of productivity, greater mission successes and citizen access to government, IPv6 integration must be prioritized at the agency level and executed in a well planned, phased approach with success criteria measurements and alignment with other key government [IT] initiatives," the report states.

Pete Tseronis, Federal IPv6 Working Group Chair and Deputy Associate CIO of the Department of Energy, says the road map is designed to keep federal CIOs, enterprise architects and policymakers focused on investing in Internet infrastructure. Tseronis helped develop the road map.

"We can't keep operating in an IPv4 world when we're talking about sensor networks, wireless communications and mobile networks," Tseronis says. "We need more IP addresses – globally unique IP addresses — and that's what IPv6 provides…We need a target network architecture that's scalable, secure and stable."

The road map says federal CIOs need to develop concrete plans to deploy IPv6 and that they will be required to provide quarterly progress reports that include IPv6 to OMB.

"For those who may think that IPv6 is on ice, it's anything but," Tseronis says. He adds that in order for an agency to receive a green light from OMB on its enterprise architecture, it will need a strategy for deploying secure IPv6-enabled network services followed by IPv6-enabled applications.

"Agencies are being assessed on their progression towards IPv6," Tseronis says. "Agencies are on the hook to deploy IPv6."

IPv6 is a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol, which is known as IPv4. IPv4 uses 32-bit IP addresses, which means it can support only 4.3 billion individually addressable devices on the Internet. In contrast, IPv6 uses 128-bit IP addresses to support an almost-limitless number of individually addressable devices. IPv6 also includes built-in IP security mechanisms, easier network configuration and enhanced support for mobile devices.

The U.S. government's pro-IPv6 report is coming out at a time when few carriers or network equipment vendors are talking about next-generation Internet technology. Because of a weak global economy, the issues of Internet scaling and enabling new services have taken a backseat to cutting costs, ekeing out profits and surviving the downturn.

"From the enterprise space, we're seeing very, very little activity around IPv6," says Maria Fire, product manager for Alcatel-Lucent's VitalQIP, an IPv6-enabled IP address management (IPAM) tool.

Fire says she recently gave a presentation to 65 VitalQIP customers in the United States, and none of them were migrating to IPv6.

"It's a question of who can afford to replace their existing infrastructure with IPv6-capable stuff," Fire says. "We're really not seeing a whole lot of new trends in IPv6. Interest is very, very minimal in terms of enterprises. There's a little bit of interest in higher education and a little bit of interest on the carrier side."

The U.S. federal government, however, is focused on migrating to IPv6 because of the anticipated depletion of IPv4 addresses in 2012. 

The road map is a "very, very good document," says Yanick Pouffary, an IPv6 Forum Fellow and Technology Director of the North American IPv6 Task Force. "Basically, they're putting a framework around what it means for agencies to use IPv6 and to deploy it. It's not a question of if IPv6 gets deployed; it's how IPv6 will get deployed. It gives guidance to CIOs, chief architects or other individuals who are responsible for IT so they can plan for IPv6 and understand how IPv6 fits in the vision of their agency."

Pouffary, who contributed to the road map, says the document shows that the U.S. federal government is "very serious" about IPv6 deployment.

According to the new road map, federal CIOs see IPv6 as "an integrating framework and organizing principal for the next generation of federal IT infrastructure."

Tseronis says having an IPv6-enabled infrastructure will be required for agencies to support social networking services that are a priority of the Obama administration. 

"The agency infrastructure-both internal to the data center and external to the service provider community-needs to be primed and ready for next-generation Web 2.0 or Gov 2.0 services," Tseronis says. "IPv6 is the Internet protocol that we're going to need to leverage for that."

The road map identifies two other drivers for federal agencies to deploy IPv6: cloud computing and peer-to-peer applications.

The road map predicts that by the end of 2011, there will be clients and servers that have no choice but to have an IPv6 address because IPv4 addresses will be used up. This means that operators of public-facing Web sites including federal agencies will need to serve IPv6 clients.

The report recommends that agencies adopt a dual-stack approach, running IPv4 and IPv6 side-by-side during the transition to the new Internet protocol.

The integration of IPv6 "should not be taken lightly," the report warns.

"When you read the Federal CIO document on IPv6, they are clearly giving direction that CIOs need to not take IPv6 lightly," says Scott Camarotti, vice president of federal markets for Global Crossing. "The federal agencies are starting to become a little more cognizant about IPv6…They're starting to realize the benefits of edge-to-edge communications and how supply chain management and CRM tools could benefit from an IPv6 addressing scheme."

The IPv6 road map "gives some pretty clear direction following up on the OMB mandate [from June 2008] about what these agencies should do and what their architectures should look like," Camarotti says. "Hopefully, it will give them a boost about taking this more seriously."

'Rigged' product demo in SAP suit goes missing

A presale product demonstration software package that is key to Waste Management's rancorous lawsuit against SAP has gone missing and both sides are claiming the other should have it, according to documents filed in a U.S. District Court.

Waste Management sued SAP in March 2008 in District Court of Harris County, Texas, 164th Judicial District, claiming more than US$100 million in damages in connection with an allegedly failed ERP (enterprise resource planning) project.

The trash hauler has said SAP used "rigged and manipulated" demonstrations during sales presentations. A motion Waste Management filed May 18 said the demos were a key element of the "false representations" SAP made to "induce Waste Management into entering a software licensing and implementation agreement."

Waste Management has been asking SAP for a copy of the demo since mid-2008, according to the motion.

But in a May 22 filing, SAP said it had the system until August or September 2006, but does not any longer.

SAP has "searched extensively" for the system and wants it "as much or more" as Waste Management, since it "will help SAP disprove WM's fraud claim," the filing states. In addition, SAP said it has produced ample discovery materials related to the demo, such as its scripts and hundreds of e-mails.

In fact, Waste Management should have the demo in its possession, as it was transferred to the trash hauler's system in late 2005 and early 2006, according to SAP, which demanded in a May 14 filing that Waste Management turn it over.

But Waste Management has filed an affidavit from a company IT manager who says that to his knowledge, Waste Management never installed or operated the demo.

But it is possible Waste Management simply hasn't looked extensively enough for the software, SAP said in a filing.

Neither company responded to requests for additional comment.

However the dispute plays out, it suggests that customers would be wise to preserve a copy of product demonstrations as they form new license agreements with vendors.

Indeed, contract language should seek to encompass all manner of pre-sales materials, according to a 2006 Forrester Research report, "An Enterprise Software Licensee's Bill of Rights."

"Instead of relying on the generic terms and conditions, vendors should include all of the proposals, sales-cycle presentations, demos, and promises in the entire agreement," it states.

Meanwhile, SAP and Waste Management's duel over the demo comes amid a series of back-and-forth filings related to pre-trial discovery, with no sign of settlement imminent.

In response to Waste Management's complaint, SAP has said in part that the company failed to "timely and accurately define its business requirements" and did not supply "sufficient, knowledgeable, decision-empowered users and managers" to work on the project.

The verbiage, as well as an SAP request for Waste Management documents related to a failed PeopleSoft implementation, may indicate the vendor plans to argue the trash company has a pattern of unsuccessful software projects.