Wednesday, July 7, 2010

If You Have Something *Important* To Say, Set It Free!

If You Have Something *Important* To Say, Set It Free!

Creative Commons License
If You Have Something *Important* To Say, Set It Free! by drew Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.


If you have something important to say, set it Free using something like the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License or their Attribution License.

If you are unwilling to set it Free, don't expect me to think you think it is important. To me, you are saying that money is more important to you than your message. Forgive me if I don't spend my time, which I value, on your message.

all the best,

drew

License for this post: Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Saturday, May 22, 2010

EDL (edit decision list) Audio player functionality

EDL (edit decision list) Audio player functionality

Creative Commons License
EDL (edit decision list) Audio player functionality by drew Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What I started looking for is an audio player that can do for audio when mplayer can do for video as described here:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html

It would be so simple if mplayer would do this for audio as well as video but it does not seem to want to.

Cannot use EDL without video, disabling.

So. I have been on a twisty journey for a few days but it looks like I have found a workable if sub-optimal solution.

I can do the thing with ecasound and ewf files and ecaplay to play multiple ewf files one after the other.

Now, can I hack up a quick utility to take the edl file that I can create in mplayer even though I can't use it there and write multiple ewf files for ecaplay to play for me.

I really want something simpler and cross platform.

Why can't mplayer do this for audio only? Does anyone know of another Free Software player that can do this?

I will update this post as I get new info and include any script I come up with as well. (Or a link to the script)

all the best,

drew

Edit: here is a pastebin link to the code in case there are problems with cop and paste below.

Edit: (this is my first working demo, hopefully the formatting will not bork things)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# ecaedl.pl
# script to take an mplayer created edl file
# and the corresponding audio file and write
# a series of ecasound ewf files to match
# mplayer's edl file and then play them in
# sequence with ecaplayer

use strict;

use Getopt::Long;
use File::Basename;


my ($help, $edl, $audfile, $result, $line, @lines, @parts, $numfiles, $oom, $efw, $efwo, $outfile, $name, $dir, $ext, @args);

sub usage
{
print "Unknown option: @_\n" if ( @_ );
print "usage: program [--edl edlfilename ] [--audfile audfilename] [--help|-h|-?]\n";
exit;
}


usage() if ( ! GetOptions('help|h|?' => \$help, 'edl=s' => \$edl, 'audfile=s' => \$audfile) or defined $help or ! defined $edl or ! defined $audfile);

print "$edl\n";
print "$audfile\n";
($name,$dir,$ext) = fileparse($edl,'\..*');
print "dir is $dir, name is $name, extension is $ext\n";



open(EDLF, $edl);
@lines = <EDLF>;
close(EDLF);
$numfiles = scalar @lines;
$oom = length($numfiles);
print "The number of files is $numfiles, order of magnitude $oom\n";

$efw = 1;
$efwo = substr("00000000$efw",-$oom);
print "$efwo\n";

for $line (@lines) {
@parts = split(/ /, $line);
$outfile = $name.$efwo."."."ewf";
print "Outfile = $outfile\n";
open(EDWF, ">$outfile");
print EDWF "source = $audfile\n";
print EDWF "start-position = $parts[0]\n";
print EDWF "length = $parts[1]\n";
close(EDWF);
$efw = $efw + 1;
print "efw is now $efw\n";
$efwo = substr("00000000$efw",-$oom);
print "$efwo\n";
system("ecaplay $outfile");
}

Friday, May 21, 2010

Gated Punch In / Punch Out idea for ardour / traverso / qtractor / etc

Gated Punch In / Punch Out idea for ardour / traverso / qtractor / etc

Creative Commons License
Gated Punch In / Punch Out idea for ardour / traverso / qtractor / etc by drew Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

So, am I ignorant and does this idea already exist?

Or, is this a foolish idea and not worth considering?

Or... (hopefully this one if not the first) would this be a cool addition to the feature set of a Digital Audio Workstation?

What I have in mind is an auto punch in and punch out but rather being keyed off of predefined ranges, it will be controlled by a noise gate. When a threshold is exceeded we punch in and when we drop below the threshold, we punch out.

Thoughts?

all the best,

drew

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Advertising Flyer Idea

Advertising Flyer Idea

Creative Commons License
Advertising Flyer Idea by drew Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

OK, so the other day (you got me, the other week, I have been putting this write up off for too long now) I came down from work to find a flyer in my windshield. Now I really don't like getting these things but I have handed out a good amount in my younger days so, whatever...

This one was printed on both sides and so became instant garbage... What a waste. So I got to thinking and figured that printing it on both sides increased the chances of it being waste. Now, I can see the appeal of printing it on both sides as when placed under a wiper on a windshield (this is where I met the one in question) as the offer can be seen by those passing as well as the poor driver from the inside who got in before thinking to remove it.

The thing is, is this worth it if the things gets trashed right away. What a waste indeed.

So here is the idea:

Print only one side with you intended ad or offer. Print the other side with lines (think note paper) and your logo and phone number. Now instead of trashing your flyer, there is a decent chance I will take it home to use as note paper. Now your logo and contact info will be before me. Possible for a good while to come.

Just a thought for you Flyer Distributors. No Charge...

all the best,

drew

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Dirty Words

Dirty Words

Creative Commons License
Dirty Words by drew Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Hey advertisers. You want to sell me something? Well, I know you think when you use words like "proprietary" and "patented" or "patent pending" that it will enhance the image of what you are selling and make it seem more desirable to me. That such words will make me want your goods more and make me want to buy them but I have a little secret for you.

Those are "dirty words" to me. They are "turn off" words. They make me want to avoid your stuff. I do appreciate you telling me the facts though so that I can more easily avoid your stuff. I would hate for your stuff to be polluted with such stuff but you not tell me about it. That would make it harder to avoid your stuff.

So, do your best to leave such out of your products and tell me about *that* and I will be more likely to buy from you.

Just some food for thought.

all the best,

drew

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The GPL And Copyright Assignment

The GPL And Copyright Assignment

Creative Commons License
The GPL And Copyright Assignment by drew Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

So I was reading this post over at identica and decided to do this quick write up as I did not feel like fighting with the 140 character limit.

I have been pondering this issue for a long time now but somehow perhaps never got around to writing about it or if I did, I forget where.

My thought is that coders should require a binding covenant from the party being assigned the copyrights such that the rights will return to them should there be a breach of the covenant.

The covenant should stipulate that the part and anyone related can never maintain two code bases, one under the GPL and an "enhanced" one available under non-GPL terms only.

I have a feeling that there may be some dirty tricks that can be played to get around the intent of this so it bears some thinking through and discussion.

Now, one possibility to not making such an assignment is to put up patches hosted elsewhere by all coders who want this equality and see if a critical mass of patches is created as a result.

all the best,

drew

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Idea for free.domain.abc

Idea for free.domain.abc

Creative Commons License
Idea for free.domain.abc by drew Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This is an idea for sites hosting music, arr, software or whatever under a combination of Free and non-Free licenses.

Consider Jamendo as an example.

currently at http://www.jamendo.com/

my suggestion is to have the current URL but as well:

http://free.jamendo.com/
http://nonfree.jamendo.com/

so that if you go to free.jamendo.com the site will look and act the same except that all non-free content will be filtered out and if you go to nonfree.jamendo.com then all the free content will be filtered out.

Personally I only care for free.jamendo.com and can't see why anyone would want to visit nonfree.jamendo.com instead of www.jamendo.com but I include it here for completeness.

I would like to see kompoz, ccmixter, flickr, youtube and wherever function in this way as well. Kompoz possibly with some slight tweaks as it is a place for collaboratively making music together and may need a refined approach to this.

all the best,

drew