Month: February 2006

Extracting video from baby ultrasound scans

When my wife has an ultrasound to check that our baby is still going well, we get a copy of the imaging that the radiologist sees, which is nice (this is pretty standard, I believe). However, what we get is an SVCD. This plays fine on our DVD player (I’m not sure about the PS2), and when it’s put in a Windows machine, there’s a data track that has a player.

However, I really want this data as a video file on the mac. Going straight from the disk, nothing seemed to want to read it (which surprises me somewhat; perhaps I’m just missing how to do it).

The first scan (03/02/06) I managed to get the data out with a couple of different tools and ended up with an avi file that worked fine. However, that didn’t go so smoothly this time (17/02/06).

Eventually, I found a page that explained how I can do this, using a tool called IsoBuster.

I then used Ultra MPEG Converter to convert the extracted MPEG (2?) to MPEG 1 (resize, preserving aspect ratio), which Quicktime (and therefore iMovie) was able to work with.

Possibly I’ll figure out a better way to do this next time (about 7 weeks away), but in case I don’t, at least I’ll be able to remember what I did this time 🙂

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Gmail and SpamCop

My now lengthy email discussion with SkyTV about my MySky problems hit a new snag today: I have been using my gmail account for this correspondence, and my last message failed to be delivered:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

skyweb@skytv.co.nz

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 Rule imposed as tony.meyer@gmail.com is blacklisted on SpamCop or SpamHaus

Searching, I see a couple of articles ([1], [2]) that indicate this isn’t anything new. I’m not sure why all the previous messages made it through – perhaps SpamCop just made an update, or some sort of load-sharing at gmail switched me to a different SMTP server.

What a PITA. Back to regular mail for now, I guess. Please, anyone who can decide, don’t use SpamCop. Blacklisting is such a stupid system, especially blacklisting one of the world’s most popular webmail systems.

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On the subject of MySky…

While I’m pointing out MySky flaws – it continually bounces back to the preview channel. Why?

It also comes up with the ‘conflict’ screen fairly regularly, with a program that is recording or set to recording and a “searching…” ‘recording’.  Cancelling the “searching…” ‘recording’ seems to fix the problem.  I think this is the series link system trying to find new episodes, but that shouldn’t cause a conflict.

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Another MySky Failure

Another program failed tonight. MySky was set to record Shortland Street from 7pm to 7:30pm. My wife watched last night’s episode while tonight’s was on; the red light was on the whole time, and nothing else was being recorded.

After finishing last night’s episode, she started to watch tonight’s. The planner showed that all 30 minutes had recorded. She managed to watch two and a half ads, and then the recording stopped. She went back to the planner, and it now says that 0 minutes were taped. In other words, the program is lost.

I sent yet another email to Sky. This is really unacceptable, and clearly a faulty product.

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NZ Herald MySky Endorsement

A few days ago (I don’t get the paper copy, so only just saw it), the New Zealand Herald ran basically an ad for MySky disguised as an article.

The author, Richard Thorne, praises the unit without mentioning any of the flaws (see any of my previous entries), or that this technology was all available in the US in 1999 (six years ago!) and we’re getting a buggy out-of-date system.

He also says:

Deletion, you’ll be pleased to know, is just as easy with clear screen prompts, but not so simple as to be done accidentally.

This is something I’ve been meaning to mention. Deletion is far too simple, and easy to be done accidentally. All you need to do is push the button between the “Series Link” and “Keep” buttons and the program is gone for good. No “this is not undoable, are you sure” dialog or anything sensible like that.

If it has to be a single button push, why put it there right next to buttons that are frequently used, so it’s so easy to mispush? Whoever’s working on UI design for Sky really needs to learn a few of the basic lessons.

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Serious MySky problems

Things have not been going well with MySky recently. Badly enough, in fact, for me to contact Sky about the problems.

I’ve posted before about the recording failing to add the ‘buffer’, so that the ends of programs are missed. I’ve mistakenly said 3 minutes in the past when it’s meant to be 2 minutes (either side), but that doesn’t change the problem. This just isn’t happening, regardless of what channel, date, time, whether something else is before/after the program, or anything else. It’s clear that it’s not happening, because the planner tells you how long the recorded program is. If the recording is 28 minutes for a 30 minute program, there’s no way that there’s a two minute buffer on either side. It should be at least 33 minutes, if not 34.

The response from Sky was that I should look at the manual (I’ve already done that, thanks), and that the problem is that it’s set to ‘automatic’. But the manual says that automatic means 2 minutes. If that isn’t the case, then they either have a documentation bug or a software bug.

There is much worse to come, however. Continue reading “Serious MySky problems” →

Honeypot Success

Nearly exactly a year after I donated an MX entry to Project Honeypot, it was used to catch a previously unknown harvester (Project Honeypot sends an email out to let you know that this has happened). The MX is public, so it could have been harvested from my site (not this one, or the Massey one, or the ihug one) or from anyone else’s that participates in Project Honeypot.

It’s interesting that it took a year (and two days) for this to happen. Does that mean that Project Honeypot has a really large number of MX’s compared to the number of new harvesters arriving? I like that theory more than the one that suggests that there are so few harvesters caught that it takes this long. Of course, it could just have been a fluke, and maybe other people’s MXs are successful more quickly.

The number of harvesters for the site seems pretty low, especially considering the amount of spam that must (because the addresses aren’t anywhere else) come from harvesting it. Perhaps I should adjust where the honeypot links are, to try and make them more appealing.

If you’re not already part of Project Honeypot, and you have a website (on which you can use custom cgi scripts), I strongly encourage you to join. You don’t have to donate an MX entry if you don’t have the ability to do that.

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MySky “Recorded” changing to “Viewed”

MySky suffers from the same problem as iTunes podcasts: they are marked as viewed (played) as soon as they start playing, instead of when they finish.

This is more of a problem with MySky – the automatic space management will delete any programs that are viewed before it deletes ones that are not.

While marking as viewed only when the program was viewed to the very end would not be ideal (with the (at least theoretical) extra three minutes at the end of a program, as well as the habit people have of skipping the credits, the end would often never be reached), something smarter than the existing system could be designed.  Something like when 95% of the program (57 minutes of a hour-long show, 28.5 minutes of a half-hour-long show) is reached, it is marked as viewed.

Not viewing from the start complicates this slightly, but I think the rule should still apply – if the program hasn’t already been watched, then probably the main reason for starting part-way through is because the rest was watched live or elsewhere.

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