Julia & Tania Online Blog

Looking for a video converter that can convert your favourite video content for the Sony Video Walkman?—Yes? No? Well, we were and it took surfing countless sites, downloading and testing countless video converters available for free download to finally find one that was compatible with the Sony Video Walkman.

    The video converter we’re referring to is called HandBrake. All other programs available for free download either produced poor video quality or the audio was horribly out-of-sync by the end of the clip—guess you can’t really expect too much for free stuff, eh?—but HandBrake proves you can get stuff that works for free. It compresses well, accepts pretty much any type of video as source (including DVD VOB files!), converts them to video formats compatible with the Video Walkman such as MPEG-4 and M4V, and most important of all, it is not a free-trial version, it’s free.

    We won’t go into the features here as you will be able to read all about them on HandBrake’s site (which we’ll provide a link following this entry). Just know that it creates good quality video with synced audio that will play on the Sony Video Walkman, allowing you take your favourite clips, episodes, films, etc anywhere you go.

    Testing the program, we decided to try it with an episode from our favourite TV series, Star Trek Voyager. We dropped in a 44-minute DVD VOB file into HandBrake and began converting it to MP4 (MPEG-4) format, using the XviD codec (and later the H.264 codec too), and for the audio, AAC codec, Stereo, 44.1kHz, 128Kbps. It took roughly 45 minutes to encode and came out to be about 175MB in size.

    The results were not bad at all. In fact we were very pleased. Unlike the other free video converters we tried where we encountered problem after problem—poor video quality, out of sync audio, and fluctuating audio levels—HandBrake presented us with clear video, great audio quality that did sync with the footage, and a file size we were happy with. Finally, our search for a good free video converter was over, leaving us free to convert and enjoy our Star Trek Voyager episodes on our Video Walkmans (we have E-series Walkmans if that’s any use)! Yay.

So if you’ve still yet to find a good video converter for your Sony Video Walkman, try HandBrake.

    Just a note about encoding video files using the H.264 (x264) codec to produce an MP4 file: for some reason the Sony Video Walkman does not recognise it. To solve this problem, go to the “Advanced” tab of the program and copy and paste in: ref=2:bframes=2:me=umh into the text box at the bottom. That should do the trick. We can’t remember the forum we found this piece of code from, but if we find it again, we will provide a link to it. The forum has some helpful threads.

    Another couple of tips: 1) In the “Audio & Subtitles” tab, click the drop down menu and select the source audio track (usually third in the list) instead of leaving the source as “Automatic” as we found that not selecting it sometimes produced out-of-sync audio; 2) make sure the video and audio specifications meet the ones listed in the device’s user manual because if they don’t, you’ll find an error message saying that the file cannot be played even when the file is in a format accepted by the Video Walkman.

Happy watching!

Useful Resources:

HandBrake

A fantastic free video converter that is compatible with the Sony Video Walkman. It is also good for general video converting. It takes in a range of video format as source: VOB, AVI, FLV, WMV, etc, and converts them to M4V, MP4, MKV, AVI, and OGM, as well as allowing one to set the file size limit (very handy).

Whilst searching for some examples of bus advertisements, we saved ourselves some of the most creative bus ads out there on our hard drive. Until we did our search online, we didn’t know how creative these ads can be. Some of these ads aren’t just paint jobs on the back or sides of the bus, but there’s some real thought put into advertising their product on this medium: these advertisers use the motion of doors, the fumes of the exhaust pipe, the wheels, the windows, and the lights to help tell a story and attract our attention.

    Below is our collection of these very cool bus ads. As these images were collected a while ago, we don’t have records of the sites we took them from. If you come across an image that belongs to you, please do contact us stating your name, site, and the image that belongs to you so we can credit you officially.

Creative Bus Ad Collection

A friend drew our attention to this recently: it seems after a successful music career in both the Japanese market and her native Korean market, BoA and her newly-formed, subsidiary label of SM Entertainment, SM Entertainment USA, have their eyes on the US market. With “Eat You Up”, the label plans to launch BoA across to the States.

    There are two versions of the “Eat You Up” music video. The one we saw initially, the one directed by Cha Eun-taek is one cool music video. It focuses around a dance audition whereby BoA and accompanying dancers barges onto the dance floor to bring down the roof, and blow the large panel of judges away with their routine (rather fitting don’t you think?—since it’s probably what BoA is hoping to do with her music in the US market). Having not really seen many of her music videos, we never knew she could dance so well. The mix of special effects in the video are really great to watch too, especially during the part when she brings down the chandelier above her… This video actually reminds us a little of Britney Spears and her style actually.

    The other version of the video is the U.S. version directed by Diane Martel. It’s rather different from the Korean version; it portrays a more sexualised image of BoA—the dancing is still there, but there’s more flying hair, short leather dresses, and suggestive shots relating to sex and sexual desire. In terms of matching imagery to the lyrics, it did make much more sense than a dance audition. Still, it’s curious to think why such a version had to be made for the US. Is her barging in the audition room, the special effects, and the dancing not enough to catch viewers’ attention—are they saying BoA can’t make it in the US market without sexualising and objectifying herself?

    As for the song itself it is quite catchy. Her voice reminds us of the Danish-Norwegian band, Aqua. They were quite a hit in the late nineties. Will she make it? With some good marketing, maybe. If only they’d air the Korean version; they’d get to see how great of a dancer she is and just how cool the overall look and theme of the video is.

    Another thing, the “Eat You Up” lyrics seem to have a bit of a demon/vampire-feel to it. Maybe BoA could find herself a demon/vampire television series or film and get herself on their soundtrack to get a bit of exposure there too.

    Well, guess it’s best of luck to BoA, eh? The song’s quite good and so is the Korean version of the video.

Ultrastar is like Singstar but better! Why?—Because it’s a free karaoke program (for PC) and unlike Singstar (at least on the PS2 console anyway) you aren’t limited to the songs in the game. It is totally customisable; you can grab the music off your CD collection and find the .txt file containing the lyrics and the timing of the piece. Before you know it, you have “Singstar” on your computer, ready for that karaoke night you’ve been meaning to plan for so long.

    A large collection of .txt files for the game can be downloaded online already, but if it’s not available, you can create the file for your favourite song. You simply find the midi (which is easily available online) and then use Ultrastar’s midi-to-txt converter (a help file is included when you download the game).

    If the midi you’re looking for isn’t available you can compose the score yourself—which may sound like you need quite a substantial bit of musical knowledge to do it, but really it is not as hard as it may appear. When you open the .txt file there are three columns of values: the first value is start-time of the note, the second column is the duration of the note, and the third column is the tone/pitch (Just a tip: it’ll be handy to have a piano or a keyboard here and if we’re correct, middle C is assigned the number 0 and the higher the number, the higher the pitch, and vice versa). So, with this last method, all you need is a good ear and some patience, but it’s worth it when you have your favourite song as a karaoke piece, ready for some fun.

    The only problem with the program is that it claims to support multi-player gameplay, but we’ve been having problems with it. It worked at the beginning, but it suddenly stopped working.

    Still, we’ll provide some links for the program below. Hope you all have a blast with the game!

USEFUL LINKS:

    Ultrastar
Has most of the features of Singstar it seems with the bonus of being able to input any song you like!

    FaKK Projects
Has a large collection of Ultrastar txt files for some of the most popular songs, including some of the more recent ones.
    Ultrastar Stuff
Another good place for Ultrastar txt files.

    Yass
This is a better editing program to do the syncing and timing of your music. It also has a converter which converts the midis to .txt. It’s preferable to use this program to do the syncing instead of using Ultrastar’s editing program. The levels written in some .txt files are sometimes out of range (usually much too high) and causes Ultrastar to crash. So with Yass, you are able to bring it back to a normal level.

    MixMeister BPM Analyzer
The BPM Analyzer works out the song’s beats per minute which is one of the pieces of information required in the .txt file’s header. This program is free, but you do have to provide a name and email to access the download.

    Audacity
This is a free sound editor and recorder program. It is not necessary to have, but if you’re quite picky in finding where the vocals start (which is a necessary piece of information of the .txt file’s header), having an audio editor helps find the gap between when the song starts and when the vocal starts.