For those interested in such matters, I’m proposing this little genealogical chart of the family. Any comments, corrections, etc will be gratefully acknowledged!

This was fine for live TV, but left the problem of iPlayer content. I can happily connect my laptop to the telly with an HDMI cable, but our internet connection is so rubbish that watching HD on iPlayer in real time is just a joke. And the claimed ‘download and watch later’ iPlayer feature just doesn’t do anything either.

I’ve blogged before about the wonderful get_iplayer, which lets you download iPlayer content for playback offline. But I really wanted to be able to copy the programme onto a memory stick, pop it in the USB port on the disc player, and watch it on the telly. The disc player has a USB port, so it should be easy.

I now entered that special portion of hell which is video and audio formats. Left to its own devices, get_iplayer creates .mp4 files. The disc player (a Panasonic DMP-BD75) only reads DivX and MKV files. A few half hearted attempts with ffmpeg such as ffmpeg -i myfile.mp4 myfile.mkv produced files which the disc player could read, but so compressed as to be useless. ffmpeg is a wonderfully powerful tool, but requires a doctorate in rocket science to produce anything useful.

A quick Google suggested that another open source project, HandBrake, might be more usable by mere humans. Unfortunately there isn’t a released version for the version of Ubuntu which I am running (11.10). There is however a developers snapshot, so taking I deep breath, I did:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-snapshots
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk

and it was installed, and I soon had my first MKV file. Of course, the disc player refused to read it. After a bit more Googling I tried changing the Video Encoding option from H.264 to MPEG-4, ran the conversion again, and to my pleasant surprise – the disc player could read it! The quality wasn’t brilliant, but once I discovered that under Video Options, setting QP:1 created the highest quality files – I had a very watchable programme.

So I’m now about to sit down and watch Heavenly Creatures, broadcast on BBC1 on Monday after I had gone to bed The BBC iPlayer page gave the URL of the broadcast, so it was just a matter of

get-iplayer --force --overwrite --raw --type tv --vmode flashhd,flashvhigh --url "http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00783p8/"

and then using HandBrake to convert the 1.1Gb flv file to a 1.8Gb mkv file. The only downside is that the elapsed time to do all this on my laptop is actually longer than the running time of the movie – but hey, there are plenty of other things to be getting on with!

So, kudos to the HandBrake developers. Thanks!

It doesn’t have to be like that. Many years ago I worked on computers running VAX/VMS. Every time you did ‘File -> Save’, the computer saved a new version of the file. So, your first attempt would be “War and Peace Revisited;1″; next time you saved, the computer created “War and Peace Revisited;2″ and so on. Most of the time, it was completely invisible. If you just did “File -> Open War and Peace Revisited”, you’d get latest version.

However, if you accidentally screwed up your working copy and saved it … all was not lost. “File -> Open War and Peace Revisited;-1″ would bring up the previous saved version; “War and Peace Revisited;-2″ the version before that, and so on. Or you could “File -> Open War and Peace Revisited;23″ to open a specific version.

This “versioning file system” was so fantastically useful, I can’t understand why it’s never caught on elsewhere, especially as disk storage is now so cheap.

These thoughts were triggered by a document I was working on today, where I wanted to show someone what had changed since I last sent them a copy some time ago. Fortunately, I’ve been running Back in Time on my laptop. This is a wonderful little utility. Every time I boot my laptop, it checks for any changed files, and takes a copy of them. Over the weeks it builds up a history, and can even restore a file which has been accidentally deleted. Today, it enabled me to get back a two week-old version of a file and compare it to the latest. Wonderful.

But why isn’t this built in to every computer operating system?

Indeed, the ASF has achieved two amazing success stories – it produces the world’s most popular webserver, despite competition from commercial giants likes Microsoft; and it has succeeded in straddling the gulf between the open source communities and commercial software houses without upsetting either camp. For this reason, the announcement yesterday by Oracle (with a little help from IBM) that it was putting forward OpenOffice.org for adoption by the ASF is a fascinating development.

History lesson: Oracle acquired the OpenOffice.org software as part of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Within a few months, the volunteer community (which had been such a feature of OpenOffice.org) upped sticks and announced the formation of The Document Foundation as a home for the continuing OpenOffice.org project – which they had to rebrand as LibreOffice as Oracle had hung on to the OpenOffice.org trademark. TDF has succeeded in establishing credibility, releasing new versions of LibreOffice, and raising substantial funds in an appeal to supporters.

So, this latest move by Oracle could be seen as a move to wrong foot the volunteers in TDF. Alternatively, it could be seen an eminently sensible step for them to take. If OpenOffice.org passes the ASF adoption process, then there will be no question about whether it is a ‘genuine open source project’. You can’t get much more open source street cred than ASF branding. Oracle and IBM can continue to release commercial derivatives of OOo for their customers (as they do with the Apache Web Server), and might even persuade Red Flag to join the party. And the ASF can make the leap from the world’s server rooms to the world’s desktops.

But what about the folks at The Document Foundation? they have invested huge amounts of time and energy in establishing their new baby. It would not be easy to get back into bed with Oracle and IBM, as their initial response suggests. But maybe it’s time to set aside history, set aside the personality issues on all sides, take a deep breath, and decide which route is most likely to create great software that can continue to challenge Microsoft on the desktops of the world.

Well, there’s nothing like asking people to put their hands in their wallets to find out what level of support you have. That’s what The Document Foundation guys did. They needed 50,000 Euro to set themselves up as a legal entity under German law. Not a trivial sum! So they set up a web site and asked people to contribute 50,000 Euro in four weeks.

And contribute they have. I was amazed to see they’ve reached their target in just eight days. That is pretty amazing – I guess The Document Foundation is now full of people pinching themselves in disbelief.

Well done folks.

Cyberbass contains a library of popular choral pieces in midi format, with the individual vocal parts ‘picked out’. However, it’s a one man site, so it’s quite limited in content, and it’s a bit hit and miss as to whether it will work on any given PC. The site owner also expects you always to play the midi files online, or buy them from him on CD. Playing online is a waste of bandwidth and isn’t always convenient. So nice idea, but poorly implemented.

ChoralWiki, home of the Choral Public Domain Library, is a library of scores which have been contributed by enthusiasts. As a wiki, it has attracted nearly 10,000 scores from nearly 1,000 contributors – far more than a one-man effort can ever achieve. For popular works (e.g. here’s the Vivaldi Gloria) it will contain scores in pdf format, midi format, and whatever the format used by the program used to write the score.

There lies the rub. If you happen to have bought the same software as the contributor (e.g. Encore – a cool USD 400, or Finale – a mere USD 600, or Sibelius – a snip at UKP 529, or Capella – only USD 250), you’re in luck. Alternatively, to be sure of being able to use all the scores on ChoralWiki, you could just buy all of these software packages, plus many more I haven’t listed.

However, for that amount of money, you could probably hire a decent accompanist whenever you needed one.

If ever there was a class of software crying out for an open file format which any program could use, it must be music. This is how music works! Imagine the chaos if the Halle and the Berlin Phil and all the other orchestras had their own proprietary way of writing down music, which no-one else could use. Musicians know the value of having common standards for music – why have software comapnies been allowed by musicians to inject their poisonous secrecy culture into music?

My way round this lunacy has been to use MuseScore, a wonderful piece of free software which has just done a creditable job of ‘reverse engineering’ scores from some midi files on ChoralWiki. Monteverdi’s Beatus Vir (possibly from a Sibelius original) worked really well, including lyrics – not sure how that works ; the same composer’s Christe, Adoramus te (possibly from Encore) required a bit more manual effort. But I now have a CD with both works, with the tenor part picked out nice and loud – the way I like it

Has the transition been successful? I’m about to download the software and try it out – why not do the same?

OpenOffice.org – the previous incarnation of LibreOffice – was proud of its adoption rate in Brazil (where – confusingly – for trademark reasons it was known as BrOffice). Unusually, take-up was particularly strong from commercial organisations, for example with tens of thousands of users reported in both Banco do Brasil and Petrobras.

So today’s news is a vote of confidence in the new Foundation, and shows that the transition from the corporate run OpenOffice.org to the community managed Document Foundation is still continuing. We can expect keen interest in the forthcoming release of LibreOffice 3.3, particularly as Oracle has decided to go it alone and continue development of OpenOffice.org under the Oracle badge.

The answer was of course they have. The imaginatively named get-iplayer provides a command line tool for downloading an iPlayer programme. It’s a two stage process, but very simple. Each programme has a unique reference number, so it’s a matter of using get-iplayer to search the online catalogue to find the reference number, and then using the reference number to download the programme. It looks like this:

$ get-iplayer | grep -i strictly
Added: 690: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 16, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
Added: 691: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 17, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
Added: 692: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 18, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
Added: 693: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 19, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
Added: 694: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 20, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
Added: 695: Strictly Come Dancing: Series 8 - 10. Week 5, BBC One, Entertainment,Highlights,Popular,TV,Talent Shows, default,
444: Me and My Monsters - 1. Strictly No Pets, CBBC, Children's,Drama,Entertainment & Comedy,TV, default
690: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 16, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
691: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 17, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
692: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 18, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
693: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 19, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
694: Strictly - It Takes Two: Series 8 - Episode 20, BBC Two, Entertainment,TV,Talent Shows, default
695: Strictly Come Dancing: Series 8 - 10. Week 5, BBC One, Entertainment,Highlights,Popular,TV,Talent Shows, default,
$

The one I want is 695, so:

$ cd /tmp
$ get-iplayer --get 695 --modes flashvhigh --force
get_iplayer v2.78, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; use --conditions for details.
Matches:
695: Strictly Come Dancing: Series 8 - 10. Week 5, BBC One, Entertainment,Highlights,Popular,TV,Talent Shows, default,
INFO: 1 Matching Programmes

and away it goes.

Once the programme is downloaded, it can be copied to a dvd. I’ve tried a number of DVD burning programmes, and the easiest to use and most reliable I’ve found so far is ManDVD. Just accept all the defaults – it works for me, but be warned it does take ages.

So, thanks to open source developers, problem solved, and one happy mum.