ffmpeg with vhooks built under Windows ! Using Cygwin .

All the DLLs can be downloaded from here.(download watermark.dll for ffmpeg)

Ok, so I have been able to build ffmpeg with vhooks on Windows.
As I mentioned in my previous post, vhooks couldn't be built
with Mingw, I needed Cygwin.

Still I couldn't build imlib2.dll,
only null.dll, fish.dll and watermark.dll.

That means I can use only images as watermarks.

Ok now, to build it on Cygwin, you need to have certain cygwin packages.

ust install your Cygwin with all the "Base" packages, plus the following "Devel" ones:

binutils, gcc-core, make, subversion

Do not install binutils-20060709-1 (they are buggy on shared builds); use binutils-20050610-1 instead.

Source for this cygwin info.

Then get the latest svn snapshot from ffmpeg site, that means
the latest ffmpeg source code.

Unzip it, and go inside it using Cygwin prompt.
and type this :

$ ./configure --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-memalign-hack --enable-vhook

Now I got an error that I don't have cmp.exe.
So I searched and found the solution here.
Solution is that you have to install diffutils on cygwin.

then
$ make


Next, I got two errors :

1. rtsp.c:1097: error: 'EPROTONOSUPPORT' undeclared (first use in this function)

Solutions are here.

What I did was replaced EPROTONOSUPPORT in rtsp.c with AVERROR_NOTSUPP
and it worked.

2. version.h:2: error: missing terminating " character.
I looked up version.h, it had a strange ^M character in it, which
I deleted and again

$ make

$make install

After building vhooks, now I had problems with using the watermark.
You can find the discussion that ensued on Experts-exchange here.

ffmpeg vhooks on Windows

To watermark one's videos, there is a library called
vhooks, which can be used with ffmpeg.

But I could not locate precompiled vhooks for windows
(vhooks.dll) on net, so I decided to build it.

So I built ffmpeg on Windows using Mingw and following
the step-by-step guide here.

There was one problem though. That problem and its
solutions are listed here.

But it turned out that vhooks can't be built using Mingw.

Some links suggested that it might be built using Cygwin.
So, will try that next.

True Google Rank

Download

What it does is this :

Give as inputs a keyword or keywords, and a domain name or a web page
and the range in google results to search for. It will tell you where does your page/domain
appear in the search results in the 100 results starting from that result number. For e.g. if your domain name www.example.com is the
fifth result on 2nd page of google results for keyword=example, and 3rd result
on 4th page, output would be :

Found at these ranks : 15 33

There are two ways to use it :

Browser :
open first.html
for multiple keywords, simply enter them separated by spaces.
no support for phrases yet.
enter a url and result range to search

Command line :
Usage :

php.exe true_google_rank.php <keyword> < url >
< start result num between 0 and 999> 

for e.g.
php.exe true_google_rank.php dogra wikipedia 10


multiple keywords need to be entered inside " and ".
no support for phrases yet.

You will need php.exe and php5ts.dll for that, bundled
with this zip file .(on linux, I haven't tried yet)




Download


Warning : If you use this script too often(may be 5-6 times a minute),
you might get the dreaded sorry.google.com page. Google decides what
is too often.

License : GPL.

If you like this, contribute by clicking on the Donate button below :

Confesses Walley Rhines - Everything is Broken

Thus wrote Steve Leibson on EDN :

Rhines always gives a good speech. Good because he infuses what he says with history and facts, not just opinions, slogans, and sales pitches. When Rhines says he’s a student of EDA history, you can believe him. When he says that the EDA tool that breaks most frequently is place and route, you can believe him. And that’s exactly what he said in his keynote speech, which focused on what’s broken in EDA as we move into the 45nm era.

Read on for more here.

Useful communities for Flex/FMS developers/enthusiasts

Flash Media Server Developers group on LinkedIn
Flex India on Google Groups

One Pro and One Con for Php

Con : Each integer in a PHP array takes 68 bytes of storage


Pro : Java is losing the battle for the modern Web.

Excerpts :
Java EE (then called J2EE) was not built with the Web in mind but rather focused on enterprise integration, transaction management and other back-end processing. While Java EE has long supported Web development with servlets and JSP the companies driving the standards ignored the RESTful nature of the Web and rather continued to drive a general purpose platform.

In two separate surveys of one of the most popular Ajax Web sites, the Ajaxian.com, around 50% of Rich Internet Applications developers are using PHP.

Project Zero's Chief Architect is one of the first IBMers to admit in public that Java today can be considered as a system language and is not desirable for building RESTful Web applications which is Project Zero's goal.

Sorry.google.com

I wrote a script to send requests to google and fetch results.
I executed the script a bit too many times(around 30 requests per minute
for 3 minutes),
and I got this :

Sorry.google.com

Cool..

Also, google does not display more than 1000 results per query,
i.e. if you keep clicking next, next..., once you have reached the 100th
page, that's it. You can't go further.

JavaScript

A fantastic primer here.

More here.