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• Saying Goodbye To Old Machines

  1er décembre 2014, par Multimedia Mike — General, powerpc, via

  I recently sent a few old machines off for recycling. Both had relevance to the early days of the FATE testing effort. As is my custom, I photographed them (poorly, of course).

  First, there’s the PowerPC-based Mac Mini I procured thanks to a Craigslist ad in late 2006. I had plans to develop automated FFmpeg building and testing and was already looking ahead toward testing multiple CPU architectures. Again, this was 2006 and PowerPC wasn’t completely on the outs yet– although Apple’s MacTel transition was in full swing, the entire new generation of video game consoles was based on PowerPC.

  
  

  

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  I remember trying to find a Mac Mini PPC on Craigslist. Many were to be found, but all asked more than the price of even a new Mac Mini Intel, always because the seller was leaving all of last year’s applications and perhaps including a monitor, neither of which I needed. Fortunately, I found this bare Mac Mini. Also fortunate was the fact that it was far easier to install Linux on it than the first PowerPC machine I owned.

  After FATE operation transitioned away from me, I still kept the machine in service as an edge server and automated backup machine. That is, until the hard drive failed on reboot one day. Thus, when it was finally time to recycle the computer, I felt it necessary to disassemble the machine and remove the hard drive for possible salvage and then for destruction.
  

  If you’ve ever attempted to upgrade or otherwise service this style of Mac Mini, you will no doubt recognize the pictured paint scraper tool as standard kit. I have had that tool since I first endeavored to upgrade the RAM to 1 GB from the standard 1/2 GB. Performing such activities on a Mac Mini is tedious, but only if you care about putting it back together afterwards.

  The next machine is a bit older. I put it together nearly a decade ago, early in 2005. This machine’s original duty was “download agent”– this would be more specifically called a BitTorrent machine in modern tech parlance. Back then, I placed it on someone else’s woefully underutilized home broadband connection (with their permission, of course) when I was too cheap to upgrade from dialup.

  
  

  

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  This is a small form factor system from VIA that was clearly designed with home theater PC (HTPC) use cases in mind. It has a VIA C3 x86-compatible CPU (according to my notes, Centaur VIA Samuel 2 stepping 03, flags : fpu de tsc msr cx8 mtrr pge mmx 3dnow) and 128 MB of RAM (initially ; I upgraded it to 512 MB some years later, just for the sake of doing it). And then there was the 120 GB PATA HD for all that downloaded goodness.

  
  

  

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  I have specific memories of a time when my main computer at home wasn’t working correctly for one reason or another. Instead, I logged into this machine remotely via SSH to make several optimizations and fixes on FFmpeg’s VP3/Theora video decoder, all from the terminal, without being able to see the decoded images with my own eyes (which is why I insist that even blind people could work on video codecs).

  By the time I got my own broadband, I had become inspired to attempt the automated build and test system for FFmpeg. This was the machine I used for prototyping early brainstorms of FATE. By the time I put a basic build/test system into place in early 2008, I had much faster computers that could build and test the project– obvious limitation of this machine is that it could take at least 1/2 hour to build the entire codebase, and that was the project from 8 years ago.

  So the machine got stuffed in a closet somewhere along the line. The next time I pulled it out was in 2010 when I wanted to toy with Dreamcast programming once more (the machine appears in one of the photos in this post). This was the only machine I still owned which still had an RS-232 serial port (I didn’t know much about USB serial converters yet), plus it still had a bunch of pre-compiled DC homebrew binaries (I was having trouble getting the toolchain to work right).

  The next time I dusted off this machine was late last year when I was trying some experiments with the Microsoft Xbox’s IDE drive (a photo in that post also shows the machine ; this thing shows up a lot on this blog). The VIA machine was the only machine I still owned which had 40-pin IDE connectors which was crucial to my experiment.

  At this point, I was trying to make the machine more useful which meant replacing the ancient Gentoo Linux distribution as well as simply interacting with it via a keyboard and mouse. I have a long Evernote entry documenting a comedy of errors revolving around this little box. The interaction troubles were due to the fact that I didn’t have any PS/2 keyboards left and I couldn’t make a USB keyboard work with it. Diego was able to explain that I needed to flip a bit in the BIOS to address this which worked. As for upgrading the OS, I tried numerous Linux distributions large and small, mostly focusing on the small. None worked. I eventually learned that, while I was trying to use i686 distributions, this machine did not actually qualify as an i686 CPU ; installations usually booted but failed because the default kernel required the cmov instruction. I was advised to try i386 distros instead. My notes don’t indicate whether I had any luck on this front before I gave up and moved on.

  I just made the connection that this VIA machine has two 40-pin IDE connectors which means that the thing was technically capable of supporting up to 4 IDE devices. Obviously, the computer couldn’t really accommodate that in terms of space or power. When I wanted to try installing a new OS, I needed take off the top and connect a rather bulky IDE CD-ROM drive. This computer’s casing was supposed to be able to support a slimline optical drive (perhaps like the type found in laptops), but I could never quite visualize how that was supposed to work, space-wise. When I disassembled the PowerPC Mac Mini, I realized I might be able to repurpose that machines optical drive for this computer. Obviously, I thought better of trying since both machines are off to the recycle pile.

  I would still like to work on the Xbox project a bit more, but I procured a different, unused, much more powerful yet still old computer that has a motherboard with 1 PATA connector in addition to 6 SATA connectors. If I ever get around to toying with Linux kernel development, this should be a much more appropriate platform to use.

  I thought about turning this machine into an old Windows XP (and lower, down to Windows 3.1) gaming platform ; the capabilities of the machine would probably be perfect for a huge portion of my Windows game collection. But I think the lack of an optical drive renders this idea intractable. External USB drives are likely out of the question since there is very little chance that this motherboard featured USB 2.0 (the specs don’t mention 2.0, so the USB ports are probably 1.1).

  So it is with fond memories that I send off both machines, sans hard drives, to the recycle pile. I’m still deciding on an appropriate course of action for failed hard drives, though.

• 11 ways Piwik Analytics helps you to protect your visitors privacy

  11 janvier 2017, par InnoCraft — Community

  At Piwik and at InnoCraft, we think Privacy matters. From the beginning, Piwik has had a strong focus on privacy and ensures the privacy of your visitors and analytics data. As a result, Piwik has been recommended as a privacy-compliant analytics tool for example by the Independent Center for Privacy Protection in Germany (ULD) and by the Center for Data Privacy Protection in France (CNIL). In France, Piwik is the only web analytics tool that does not require Cookie Consent.

  Here are some ways how you can ensure your users and visitors privacy by using Piwik.

  1. You own the data

  Whether you host Piwik on premise yourself, managed on premise by InnoCraft, or whether you use our Piwik cloud, when you use Piwik, YOU keep control of your data and nobody else. This also means you can decide where your data should be located physically.

  2. Anonymized IP addresses

  For better privacy by default, Piwik will not record the full IP address of your visitors because otherwise the browsing history could be easily tracked across several days and even across websites within the same Piwik server. Some countries even require to anonymize the IP address, considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

  To change the IP anonymization settings go to “Administration > Privacy”. Optionally, you can use the full IP to still get for example accurate location data.

  

  3. Delete old visitor logs

  The visitor logs contain information all the collected raw data about every visitor and every action. You can configure Piwik to automatically delete logs from the database. When you delete old logs, only the real time and visitor log reports will no longer work for this old time period, all other aggregated reports will still work.

  For privacy reasons, we highly recommend that you keep the detailed Piwik logs for only 3 to 6 months and delete older log data. This has one other nice side effect : it will free significant database space, which will, in turn, slightly increase performance !

  

  4. Support Do Not Track preference

  Do Not Track enables users to opt out of any tracking by websites they do not visit, including analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms. By default, Piwik respects users preference and will not track visitors which have specified “I do not want to be tracked” in their web browsers. Get more information about DoNotTrack.

  To make sure Do Not Track is respected, go to “Administration => Privacy”.

  5. Include an Opt-Out Feature on your website or app

  By embedding the Opt-Out feature in your website, you give your visitors the possibility to opt-out of the tracking. When you go to “Administration > Privacy”, you will be able to copy and paste an HTML Iframe code to embed the opt-out feature for example into your privacy policy page or in your ‘Legal’ page. Your users can then click on a link to opt-out.

  On the Piwik Marketplace there are also some plugins available to customize the Opt-Out experience. For example AjaxOptOut and CustomOptOut.

  

  6. Disable Live features

  The Real-Time, Visitor Log and Visitor Profile features give you insights into the tracked raw data by showing you details about every visitor and every action they performed. To protect the privacy of your visitors you may decide to prevent access to such features by disabling the “Live” plugin in “Administration => Plugins”. This way only aggregated reports will be shown in your Piwik.

  7. Disable fingerprinting across websites

  By default, when one of your visitors visits several of your websites, Piwik will create a fingerprint for this user that will be different across the websites to increase the visitors’ privacy. You can make sure that this feature is disabled by going to “Administration => Config file” and verifying that the value of “enable_fingerprinting_across_websites” is set to zero.

  8. Disable tracking cookies

  Piwik uses cookies to store some information about visitors between visits. In some countries, the legislation requires websites to provide a way for users to opt-out of all tracking, in particular tracking cookies. You can disable cookies by adding one line in the Piwik Javascript code.

  9. Custom development

  Piwik is an open platform that lets you extend and customize the tracking, the reporting and the Piwik user interface to your needs and to protect your visitors’ privacy the way you want or need it. Learn more in the Piwik Developer Zone. You may also have a look at our Piwik Marketplace where you can find several free and premium features to extend your Piwik.

  10. Transparency

  By default, all information and all collected data in your Piwik server are protected and nobody can access it. However, Piwik allows you to optionally make your collected data public and you can export any Piwik report including the whole dashboard to embed it into your website. This way you can show your users exactly which information you track. When you decide to make reports public, we do our best to protect privacy and automatically hide any Personally Identifiable Information such as the Visitor Profile and we make sure to not show any Visitor IP address and the Visitor ID.

  11. Privacy policy

  When you use Piwik to track your visitors, we recommend to update your Privacy Policy to explain how Piwik is used and what data it gathers. We provide a Privacy Policy template for Piwik users that you can copy on your site.

  Continuous privacy improvements

  We are always interested in improving the privacy. If you miss any feature or have an idea on how to improve the privacy, please let us know.

  More information about all the Piwik features

  If you want to learn more about all the features in Piwik, have a look at our User Guides and FAQ entries.

• how can I transform 6 audio channels into one 5.1 channel with ffmpeg ?

  3 février 2014, par user2216280

  I have a pro-res file which has 6 mono audio channels.
  here's the ffmpeg console :

      :\test-remapping>ffmpeg -i MelleParadis_PART1_CONSTANTE.mov
  
  ffmpeg version N-60106-ge6d1c66 Copyright (c) 2000-2014 the FFmpeg developers
  
    built on Jan 22 2014 22:01:26 with gcc 4.8.2 (GCC)
  
    configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --disable-w32threads --enable-av
  
  isynth --enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enab
  
  le-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libcaca --enable-libfreetyp
  
  e --enable-libgsm --enable-libilbc --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --ena
  
  ble-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-l
  
  ibopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libsoxr --enable-libsp
  
  eex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-aa
  
  cenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavp
  
  ack --enable-libx264 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib
  
    libavutil      52. 63.100 / 52. 63.100
  
    libavcodec     55. 49.100 / 55. 49.100
  
    libavformat    55. 25.101 / 55. 25.101
  
    libavdevice    55.  5.102 / 55.  5.102
  
    libavfilter     4.  1.100 /  4.  1.100
  
    libswscale      2.  5.101 /  2.  5.101
  
    libswresample   0. 17.104 /  0. 17.104
  
    libpostproc    52.  3.100 / 52.  3.100
  
  Guessed Channel Layout for  Input Stream #0.1 : mono
  
  Guessed Channel Layout for  Input Stream #0.2 : mono
  
  Guessed Channel Layout for  Input Stream #0.3 : mono
  
  Guessed Channel Layout for  Input Stream #0.4 : mono
  
  Guessed Channel Layout for  Input Stream #0.5 : mono
  
  Guessed Channel Layout for  Input Stream #0.6 : mono
  
  Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'MelleParadis_PART1_CONSTANTE.mov':
  
    Metadata:
  
      major_brand     : qt
  
      minor_version   : 537199360
  
      compatible_brands: qt
  
      creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
    Duration: 00:07:34.32, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 117742 kb/s
  
      Stream #0:0(eng): Video: prores (apcn / 0x6E637061), yuv422p10le, 1920x1080,
  
   113098 kb/s, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
        timecode        : 01:00:00:00
  
      Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, mono, s16,
  
   768 kb/s (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
      Stream #0:2(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, mono, s16,
  
   768 kb/s (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
      Stream #0:3(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, mono, s16,
  
   768 kb/s (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
      Stream #0:4(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, mono, s16,
  
   768 kb/s (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
      Stream #0:5(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, mono, s16,
  
   768 kb/s (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
      Stream #0:6(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 48000 Hz, mono, s16,
  
   768 kb/s (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 18:58:26
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
      Stream #0:7(eng): Data: none (tmcd / 0x64636D74) (default)
  
      Metadata:
  
        creation_time   : 2013-11-27 19:03:46
  
        handler_name    : Gestionnaire dıalias Apple
  
        timecode        : 01:00:00:00``

  I would like to transform them into one 5.1 audio channel

  I try this line of code :

  D:\test-remapping>ffmpeg -i "MelleParadis_PART1_CONSTANTE.mov" -c copy -c:a ac3 -map 0 mlle5.1.mov

  the console replies "NOT ENOUGH SPACE" and stop...
  of course there's still some space in my hard drive...
  How could I map all the 6 mono streams into 5.1 ?
  thanks in advance.
  pauline