Sony and Apple Will Be the Death of Me
Argh. One of my recent tasks at work has been taking video recorded on a Sony Handycam HDR-XR200V (and HD Digital Video camera) and making the footage web-ready. Normally, the camera is a joy to work with. It's easy to get the recordings off of it, and the software provided with it converts it in to WMV and MPEG2 quite easily. In terms of web-readiness, though....
Normally we just convert everything to WMV format, as the video is only used in-house for a short period of time and then deleted. Files are stored on our local server, so size isn't really an issue. In this case, though, I need to put the final versions up our website so a few external people can access and download the clips. That means that 2GB+ files are completely impractical.
Digging around, I found that we had a Quicktime 7 Pro license, so I thought my problems were solved. Take the raw .MTS files, convert them to MPEG format using Sony's utility, then use Quicktime to export them to smaller, more web-ready MP4 format. But do things ever really work out that easily?
The first problem is that although Quicktime will play .MPG files, it doesn't have a built-in MPEG2 codec, which is the codec the Sony utility uses. Quicktime doesn't support WMV at all. If you want support for MPEG2, you need to buy the codec from Apple. That wouldn't be so bad (it's less than $30 CAD), however it doesn't recognize the audio track in the Sony-converted files. Crap.
After a few hours of near-hopeless searching through page after page of shareware and crap-ware, I finally found a solution. Take the Sony-converted MPEG2 files and convert them to .MOV format using MediaCoder, a truly free audio/video conversion suite (with a 64-bit Windows version). From there, I booted into OS X and fired them in to iMove to quickly splice a few segments together, and iMove spat out the .M4V files I needed. After that, it was a simple matter of using Quicktime Pro to make a few different versions of .MP4 files in varying levels of quality.
The system works, however it relies a lot on Apple products (not ideal if you don't have a license, a Mac, or just hate Apple products), and takes a lot of time. The result is that my bacon has been saved, and I'll be able to get the web-ready videos out to those who need them on time.
Dell Support: Hit or Miss
One of my users called me today to complain that her system has been running slowly for the last few days. I popped over to have a look, and found the computer wouldn't boot. Popping my Vista disc in the drive, I let chkdsk /r run and wandered off. When I got back, it had failed - chkdsk found unfixable errors. Great.
I ran the Dell Hard Drive Diagnostics next, as the system is in warranty (with next-business-day parts) and they always insist on doing that, but surprise surprise, it passed. Moving on, I ran the Western Digital test which failed quite quickly. Then the drive started clicking.
After I got back to my office I called Dell Support. Normally I use their online chat, but at first it told me that it wasn't available in Canada, and then it said that it was closed, despite still being in business hours. After navigating through their menus, I got an agent right away. As that almost never happens, I thought I'd have an easy time of it. Not so lucky. After giving the lady my Service Tag and confirming the company, the following conversation ensued:
Her: So what's the problem with the system?
Me: The hard drive is dead. I need a replacement.
Her: Okay, so how do you know the drive is dead?
Me: It was running slow for a few days, then today it wouldn't boot to Windows. I ran chkdsk and it failed, so I ran the Dell Diagnostics and those passed. Then I ran the Western Digital test, and it failed that.
Her: Okay. Do you have Gold Support on this system?
Me: No, just Next-Business-Day parts. Why?
Her: Oh, well, in that case we will need to troubleshoot the issue. I need an error code from the Dell Diagnostics before I can send a replacement part.
Me: What? The drive is obviously faulty, two other tests failed it, but the Dell one didn't. You're going to make me run it again, wait for it to finish and pass, then tell me you can't replace the drive?
Her: We need to troubleshoot, sir, or else--
Me: I'm hanging up now. -- Click --
I sat and steamed for a few minutes, then called back. I waded through the menu, and again got an agent right away. After going through the same greeting process (Service Tag and confirming contact information), we got down to business:
Him: What can we do for you today?
Me: Well, I've got a system with a failed hard drive and I'm not having a lot of luck trying to get it replaced. I -- Repeat my explanation from above --
Him: Oh, okay. Let me check the warranty. --pause-- Okay, you're still in warranty, and have Next-Business-Day parts. What time is it there right now?
Me: About 1:30pm.
Him: Okay, can I put you on hold for a few minutes?
Me: Sure.
--Five minutes--
Him: I'll just be a few more minutes.
Me: Okay.
--Five more minutes--
Him: Alright, the part is on it's way. Depending on the shipping guys, it may go out today or tomorrow. Anything else I can do for you?
Me: Nope! Thanks!
Him: No problem - sorry about the trouble on your last call in, and have a nice day!
Just goes to show. If you get someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, try-try-again!
Short: Java Blockage
While investigating a 'Low Disk Space' warning on a workstation, I discovered that the user had been very dilligent about updating Java whenever prompted. This perticular workstation had no fewer than fifteen different versions installed, the oldest being JRE 1.4.2.
That said: Sun should really consider chaning the auto-updater to remove the existing installation before dumping the new one in. ~1.5GB of wasted disk space speaks to that.
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