Batch Transcoding with VLC 1.0.x

After I upgraded my VLC player to v1.0.x, I realised my batch transcoding script stopped working. After much tinkering with the syntax and googling, I've got it working again. Here is the updated script:

#!/bin/bash
vcodec="mp4v"
acodec="mp4a"
bitrate="3072"
arate="192"
ext="mp4"
mux="mp4"
# Modify the path to VLC on your machine accordingly
vlc="/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC"
fmt="MPG"
dst="/Dest/Path/"
for a in *$fmt; do
  echo $a
  $vlc -I dummy -vvv "./$a" --sout="#transcode{vcodec=$vcodec,\
  vb=$bitrate,acodec=$acodec,ab=$arate}:std{mux=$mux,\
  dst=\"$dst$a.$ext\",access=file}" vlc://quit
  touch -m -r $a $dst$a.$ext
done

Book Printed — Finally

Early this year I was asked to help compile a technical report/book for a grid computing research project that I'm involved in. Essentially it's a group of researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds (grid computing, medical imaging, animation, mathematics, natural language processing, software engineering, networking, ...) coming together to "grid-enable" their own existing applications so that the apps run faster etc.

"But not too technical, so that even lay-people can understand what we're doing. Make it look as professional as possible," I was told.

Look professional? Gee, great excuse for me to run wild with LaTeX. Whether it was the right decision might be debatable, and I haven't solved all issues to perfection (e.g. CMYK colour model with "true black")... but we managed it!

Book's Printed and Published!!

@BOOK{GridATUSM:Report,
  title = {Grid Computing Cluster:
           The Development and Integration of
           Grid Services and Applications},
  publisher = {Platform for Information
               Communication Technology Research,
               Universiti Sains Malaysia},
  year = {2009},
  editor = {Bahari Belaton and Lim, Lian Tze},
  address = {Penang, Malaysia},
  isbn = {978-983-3986-58-3},
}

Chasing after the chapter write-ups. Playing with design ideas. Lots and lots of experimenting with the memoir, tikz and various other packages. Searching for free stock photos. Adjusting the various margins and skips and spacing so that each chapter fill up each page just right. Writing to and calling the National Library to get an ISBN number and CIP data. Hiccups along the way due to requests in design changes, mismatches with the printing company's technical specs etc...

And finally all is done. We have now 200 copies of the thing. Not for sale (which would've been a nightmare with the royalties, we're not that gung-ho yet... maybe the next one. If there's a next time.) but for distribution.

Great, great thanks to the team members (principle investigators and research officers) for the write-ups, Pn Norliza for the proof-reading, Mr Tan for pointing us in the right directions every now and then, Hooi Leng for handling the liaising and PO procedures with the printing company. Couldn't have done any of this without any of you.