Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 October 20

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October 20

What Can I Use to Convert .VOB Files to .MOV files?

I have some .VOB files on my hard drive but I want to be able to edit the video. What program can I use to convert the .VOB files to .MOV or .AVI files? Can I use VLC Media Player? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.218.228 (talk) 01:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

VLC can transcode VOB files to a number of formats. So can ffmpeg and Handbrake. I'm not sure they can all do MOV (ffmpeg probably can), but they can make lots of other formats (like MP4). --Mr.98 (talk) 01:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

For just converting to .avi, avidemux and AutoGK are good. Avidemux can even edit the vob files directly without need to convert —Preceding unsigned comment added by .isika (talk • contribs) 17:13, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I personally use SUPER to encode my VOB files into MP4 (iPod) files. It can do a TON of other formats including AVI. I'm pretty sure it can do MOVs as well, but I haven't used it in a while, so I'm not sure.  Buffered Input Output 18:14, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Also check out DVDREmaster... i love it! --70.167.58.6 (talk) 19:25, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

WinFF (along with HandBrake and SUPER), is yet another front end to ffmpeg. ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:17, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

computer sound effects

I noticed that newer computers can still make their sound effects OUT LOUD even when I've plugged an earphone jack in! (One example is the stickykeys freaky sound effect.) How do I stop that? Is there a separate speaker that needs to be disabled? --198.163.150.5 (talk) 02:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Some computers have a speaker inside the tower. You can easily open the computer and unplug it if you don't like it. -- kainaw™ 03:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm not very good at this. How do I do that? --198.163.150.5 (talk) 03:13, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Inside there must be 2 wires going from motherboard to small speaker (usually smaller than 1cm). You can unplug them from motherboard. This however might not solve the problem, because there usually is another speaker directly on the motherboard. It is hard to disable. -Yyy (talk) 08:54, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

If you're using XP, give this a try: Open the Control Panel, then System. On the Hardware tab, click on Device Manager. In Device Manager, under the View menu, click "Show hidden devices". You should now get a category in the list called "Non-Plug and Play Drivers". Open that, and find the Beep device. Disable that device and restart your computer. Credit: [1]. I hope that helps. –RHolton≡– 09:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Another method that should do the trick (both in Vista and XP) is to go to the run command (in the start menu) type cmd and hit enter. then type net stop beep. In Vista, you will probably have to open the command line as the administrator. To do that, type cmd into the search bar that pops up when you click on the stark menu, and when cmd.exe comes up as a result right click on that and choose to run it as the admin. - Akamad (talk) 04:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What's the URL for this webcam image?

I want to use images from this webcam as a wallpaper on my HTC Magic mobile. I have an app "WorldTour" that allows you to specify a custom URL instead of their listed ones, but I can't work out what the required URL is for the images. The URL http://195.235.198.107:3344/view/index.shtml doesn't work, and the app says it expects it to end with .jpg, .png or .gif. I've hunted around in the page source but I can't see what I should use.--A bit iffy (talk) 06:48, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The the image appears to be just http://195.235.198.107:3344/mjpg/video.mjpg. It appears to be the rare and elusive Motion JPEG. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:09, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks for that, Mr.98.--A bit iffy (talk) 06:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Help the disabled

Hey. I am a differently abled administrator. My disabilities are two: I am colorblind, and I am clueless in CSS. Can someone pretty please help me modify my monobook? For years now I've been editing and not being able to find the bold red text on diffs (but only now realized that you don't have to suffer, dumbass). Can someone please help me fix my monobook? I'd like to change the background coloring on both sides of the diff from yellow and green (? whatever.) to light blue on both sides, and to add yellow highlighting to the bold red text (like in some other skins). This should be really simple, right? -- Y not? 19:53, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Huh, I didn't know WP had user-customizable css, but it's a nice feature. Try this:

td.diff-deletedline td.diff-addedline {
background:#CCCCFF;
}

.diffchange {
background-color: #FFFFAA;
}

The first one should change both the diff backgrounds to a light blue color, and the second one adds a yellow background to the bold red text. I haven't tried it, so let me know how that works. Indeterminate (talk) 21:20, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Cool! Thanks! Do I add it to the regular stuff in my monobook.css, or put it into my monobook on its own? -- Y not? 22:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Yep, the second thing worked, I am now playing around with it. Thanks. -- Y not? 22:21, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I've posted a note at the Village Pump, which is the first step in fixing this for everyone. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:51, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

ColorBlindnExt

"This extension helps color blinds while browsing the web, by processing images and text on the page according to the type of user's color blindness. Color Blindness detection test is included for creating awareness among people."

¦ Reisio (talk) 11:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Game CDs as audio CDs

Hi all,

I had a few (old) game CDs back in the days which were oddly enough playable on CD players except that one track couldn't be listened to (presumably the rest of the data was on that "track"). Indeed they could also be ripped too. They were music tracks in the game. Sometimes the format was different - sometimes I got each individual track as a single song from the game; sometimes I got all the tracks joined together as one long song.

Does anyone know how these are manufactured/burnt to do so, and whether it was likely unintentional? Bear in mind I'm talking about games in the early-1990s to the early-2000s. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

It was most likely done on purpose as only a very few games that allowed this, if it were something they had done by accident (something that is unlikely) you would not get the songs or you'd get like two or three then you'd probably get a locked CD player as it tried to read the game's data. In addition the music for a PSX game is usually stored in a .bin file or something similar and not in any CD playable format. So they had to intentionally burn the music into it's own little area in the CD in some music format. 72.224.127.117 (talk) 23:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I imagine the reason this was done in days of yore is that the data for the games was not all that much compared to the volume of the CD, and that the ability to play back CD audio was probably easier and less process intensive than playing back compressed audio. As for how to do so, I believe the data is kept in track one, the audio in the other tracks. There are, if I recall, ways you can tell a CD player to skip the first track. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:53, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Mr.98 is almost entirely correct. Audio CDs use a data format known as the Red Book. The standard for CD-ROMs is known as the Yellow Book. The discs you're referring to are Yellow Book discs with Red Book audio tracks. Any audio CD player can play them; track 1 is all of the Yellow Book data (which was High Sierra or ISO 9660 data), and tracks 2+ are audio tracks. As Mr.98 says, it was easier back in the day to just send a "play redbook track 2" command to the driver, because Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions and Windows 3.1 didn't have a nice debugged reliable streaming audio solution that worked on all the sound cards that were out there, even those that were allegedly MPC compatible. It would have been nice to have such a thing because redbook audio is uncompressed 44.1KHz and really eats up disc space. Anyway, no it was not by accident that you could play the tracks. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:22, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

So how easy would it be for me to perhaps make one of these of my own? I haven't seen anything on, say, Nero, which would allow me to do it although I'm happy to be proved wrong. x42bn6 Talk Mess 01:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I just found the Enhanced CD article, which appears to be the relevant term. If you Google for it with that name, you can find some how-tos. (Mixed Mode CD is also relevant, and even lists a bunch of the games in question!) I haven't tried to make Mixed-Mode CDs myself, but Mixed-Mode DVDs (that play DVDs and have data files) are very easy to make with, say, iDVD. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:08, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Any version of Roxio Toast made in the last ten years allow creation of mixed mode CDs. It's hidden under the 'legacy formats' in the latest version. You basically dragged data files to the track 1 and music files to the other tracks. Pretty easy. Most DVD authoring software (iDVD, Encore, DVD Studio Pro) allows the same thing -- the ability to add computer data to the video disc directory. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Quake was one of the games that had this feature. The game installation software plus 10 music tracks by Trent Reznor were on the CD (track 1 is the data track). The installation CD will also play in any CD player just like a regular audio CD, and the CD players I've tried are sensible enough to ignore the data track.

Reznor's music was ideal for the game's atmosphere, but once installed, the game could be played with any audio CD playing in the background. Astronaut (talk) 15:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Attaching a process to screen

This is beyond the screen documentation, so I'm not surprised that it isn't there. Here's the situation... I run a process on a server. It is taking forever. I would like to attach it screen so I can disconnect from the server and come back later. I tried sleeping the process, starting screen, and then waking the process. That wouldn't work. You can only wake processes put to sleep inside the screen. Is there some trick I can use to sleep a process and then grab control of it inside screen? -- kainaw™ 22:53, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no easy way to change stdout of a running process, but this article is a good read on the subject if you're interested in how it all works. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:39, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I don't believe so. When a process is created its stdin/stout/stderr file descriptors are filled using data from the process-creation-block. A process itself can change what these (often by calling freopen) but changing another process' (p)ttys isn't easy; there isn't a kernel call to do this (but more later). GNU screen generally doesn't need to; it starts new processes with ptys of its own invention, and joining and unjoining them is done by it (not by the kernel, or by the managed process) - it just streams one managed pty into another. Now it is possible (but haaaard) to change another process' ptys - this is what the retty program does. Retty does it by attaching to the victim process with ptrace and then messing around in the victim process' memory and injecting binary code into the victim's process and running it, to do the necessary ioctl's (etc.) to neatly close the old descriptors and open the new ones; it's pretty much an apt lesson in unix badassery. A check of the screen code doesn't find any call to ptrace(), so while someone could chose to implement a "screen -hijack" function, I don't think anyone has. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:48, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I was already fiddling with retty. No luck. I did get a fix though. I added screen to my bashrc. So, when I connect to that specific server, I get shoved into screen. Then, I know I can close it and leave without losing any query I started running. -- kainaw™ 16:23, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really optimistic, but you might check if there's a way to do it with tmux, too. Worth checking out regardless. ¦ Reisio (talk)