With everything online rightly requiring a password to be chosen, stored, and entered, it’s getting increasingly difficult to manage these random collections of numbers, letters, and symbols. Difficult, but not impossible. With your help perhaps we can turn difficult to easy. If A Thief Has Your Key, Change The Locks We want to know, How Do You Manage Your Passwords? This question is asked in light of the Heartbleed bug recently discovered in OpenSSL. One simple programming error led, two years later, to the Internet being broken. And it will remain broken until all of the affected websites update OpenSSL...
Read the full article: How Do You Manage Your Passwords? [We Ask You]
Windows XP goes end-of-life in April 2014, after which Microsoft will no longer release bug fixes. If you’ve upgraded your PC then everything should be fine – but what about your bank? Have they upgraded? The Risk Isn’t Necessarily With You Have you upgraded from Windows XP yet? If not, you can choose from several different options, but don’t feel that the onus is completely on you to stay secure. While it is important to ensure your home computer system is as up to date as possible – thereby ensuring that your copy of Windows is equipped with all of...
Read the full article: Windows XP Running Your ATM Or Ticket Machine? Time To Buy Online!
From simple doodles to elaborate paintings, art can soothe, entertain, and inspire in equal measure. With the Web making geographical barriers disappear, you can delve into the works of various artists with ease. We have already featured some useful museum websites and online art galleries. Today we bring you a selection of three online visual art projects that you’ll fall in love with. They Draw & Travel What do you get when you bring together individuals who have a passion for drawing as well as for places? You get They Draw & Travel (TDAT). Set up by the brother-sister duo...
Read the full article: Creativity Unleashed: 3 Online Art Projects That You’ll Love
Microsoft wants nothing more to do with Windows XP, unless you’re willing to pay for the privilege of Custom Support. XP is still an option, but with Microsoft abandoning the past-its-sell-by-date operating system, most sensible people are looking for alternatives. Most have just one option in mind. Linux Breaks Microsoft’s Windows We asked you, Microsoft Has Killed Windows XP… Now What? This question was, rather self-explanatorily, asked as a result of Microsoft ending official support for Windows XP for the vast majority of users. Some bigger organizations, such as the IRS, have paid out for Custom Support, gifting them critical...
Read the full article: The Death Of XP: Advantage Linux [We Ask You Results]
Microsoft wants nothing more to do with Windows XP, unless you’re willing to pay for the privilege of Custom Support. XP is still an option, but with Microsoft abandoning the past-its-sell-by-date operating system, most sensible people are looking for alternatives. Most have just one option in mind. Linux Breaks Microsoft’s Windows We asked you, Microsoft Has Killed Windows XP… Now What? This question was, rather self-explanatorily, asked as a result of Microsoft ending official support for Windows XP for the vast majority of users. Some bigger organizations, such as the IRS, have paid out for Custom Support, gifting them critical...
Read the full article: The Death Of XP: Advantage Linux [We Ask You Results]
Linux has long lacked a good video editor, but that is no longer a problem. There are a few different video editors available for the operating system, ranging from simple home user editors to highly professional editors. PiTiVi, a video editor that has historically been in the “simple home user” category, has gained several features since its early days. So what has changed, and where is it headed? Let’s take a look. Features When you first launch PiTiVi, you’ll be presented with a welcome dialog that asks you whether you want to start a new project or open a recent...
Read the full article: Video Editing on Linux Just Got Better With PiTiVi
Read the full article: Making The Best Text Editor Better: 7 Great Sublime Text Packages
Today in Tech News Digest, Windows Phone 8.1 reviews, Gmail scanning practices, Android Heartbleed, American Airlines’ tweeting troubles, mini notebook chargers, overheating VAIOs, and a vending machine that tweets. Windows Phone 8.1 Review Roundup Windows Phone 8.1 is now available to developers, just two weeks after the update was detailed at Build 2014. This has enabled websites to review Windows Phone 8.1 before it’s released to the general public. The reaction has been generally positive, as can be seen in the reviews roundup posted below. The Verge states Windows Phone “feels finished now, really for the first time.” However, it...
Read the full article: Windows Phone 8.1 Reviews, Android Heartbleed, US Airways Tweets [Tech News Digest]
News from Cloudflare on Friday indicates that the debate is over regarding whether the new OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability could be utilized to obtain private encryption keys from vulnerable servers and websites. Cloudflare confirmed that third-party, independent testing revealed this is in fact true. Private encryption keys are at risk. MakeUseOf previously reported the OpenSSL bug last week, and indicated at that time that whether or not encryption keys were vulnerable was still in question, because Adam Langley, a Google security expert, could not confirm that as being the case. Cloudflare originally issued a “Heartbleed Challenge” on Friday, setting up a...
Read the full article: Danger Confirmed: Heartbleed Really Does Open Up Crypto Keys to Hackers
If there’s one thing that’s cooler than a new app that works, it’s an old app that works. Sprinkled throughout the Internet you will find some quiet utilities that have been going strong for years now, doing just one or two things exceptionally well. Today, I’m here to give one of these gems some much-deserved love: Winsplit Revolution is a tiny, free, and powerful utility that lets you tile your windows. If the concept of tiling your windows sounds foreign, take a look at your screen right now. How many windows do you have on the screen? Probably one or...
Read the full article: No Pixel Wasted: How a Classic Utility Helps You Make Use Of Your Screen
FFmpeg is an extremely powerful and versatile command line tool for converting audio and video files. It is free and available for Windows, Mac and Linux machines. Whether you want to join two video files, extract the audio component from a video file, convert your video into an animated GIF, FFmpeg can do it all and even more.
Extract the audio from a video file with this simple FFmpeg command.
FFmpeg supports all popular audio and video formats. Or you can running the command ./ffmpeg -formats to get a list of every format that is supported by your FFmpeg installation. If you are just getting started, here are some commands that will give you good idea of the capabilities of this tool.
You can use the time offset parameter (-ss) to specify the start time stamp in HH:MM:SS.ms format while the -t parameter is for specifying the actual duration of the clip in seconds.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:00:50.0 -codec copy -t 20 output.mp4
If you want to split a large video into multiple smaller clips without re-encoding, ffmpeg can help. This command will split the source video into 2 parts – one ending at 50s from the start and the other beginning at 50s and ending at the end of the input video.
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -t 00:00:50 -c copy small-1.mp4 -ss 00:00:50 -codec copy small-2.mp4
You can use the -vcodec parameter to specify the encoding format to be used for the output video. Encoding a video takes time but you can speed up the process by forcing a preset though it would degrade the quality of the output video.
ffmpeg -i youtube.flv -c:v libx264 filename.mp4
ffmpeg -i video.wmv -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast video.mp4
If you have multiple audio or video files encoded with the same codecs, you can join them into a single file using FFmpeg. Create a input file with a list of all source files that you wish to concatenate and then run this command.
ffmpeg -f concat -i file-list.txt -c copy output.mp4
Use the -an parameter to disable the audio portion of a video stream.
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -an mute-video.mp4
The -vn switch extracts the audio portion from a video and we are using the -ab switch to save the audio as a 256kbps MP3 audio file.
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -ab 256 audio.mp3
FFmpeg is an excellent tool for converting videos into animated GIFs and the quality isn’t bad either. Use the scale filter to specify the width of the GIF, the -t parameter specific the duration while -r specifies the frame rate (fps).
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf scale=500:-1 -t 10 -r 10 image.gif
This command will extract the video frame at the 15s mark and saves it as a 800px wide JPEG image. You can also use the -s switch (like -s 400×300) to specify the exact dimensions of the image file though it will probably create a stretched image if the image size doesn’t follow the aspect ratio of the original video file.
ffmpeg -ss 00:00:15 -i video.mp4 -vf scale=800:-1 -vframes 1 image.jpg
You can use FFmpeg to automatically extract image frames from a video every ‘n’ seconds and the images are saved in a sequence. This command saves image frame after every 4 seconds.
ffmpeg -i movie.mp4 -r 0.25 frames_%04d.png
You can also specify the -shortest switch to finish the encoding when the shortest clip ends.
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i audio.mp3 -c:v copy -c:a aac -strict experimental output.mp4
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i audio.mp3 -c:v copy -c:a aac -strict experimental -shortest output.mp4
Use the size (-s) switch with ffmpeg to resize a video while maintaining the aspect ratio.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -s 480x320 -c:a copy output.mp4
This command creates a video slideshow using a series of images that are named as img001.png, img002.png, etc. Each image will have a duration of 5 seconds (-r 1/5).
ffmpeg -r 1/5 -i img%03d.png -c:v libx264 -r 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p slideshow.mp4
You can add a cover image to an audio file and the length of the output video will be the same as that of the input audio stream. This may come handy for uploading MP3s to YouTube.
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.jpg -i audio.mp3 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -strict experimental -b:a 192k -shortest output.mp4
Use the -t parameter to specify the duration of the video.
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.png -c:v libx264 -t 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p video.mp4
This will take the subtitles from the .srt file. FFmpeg can decode most common subtitle formats.
ffmpeg -i movie.mp4 -i subtitles.srt -map 0 -map 1 -c copy -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset veryfast output.mkv
This will create a 30 second audio file starting at 90 seconds from the original audio file without transcoding.
ffmpeg -ss 00:01:30 -t 30 -acodec copy -i inputfile.mp3 outputfile.mp3
You can use the volume filter to alter the volume of a media file using FFmpeg. This command will half the volume of the audio file.
ffmpeg -i input.wav -af 'volume=0.5' output.wav
This command will rotate a video clip 90° clockwise. You can set transpose to 2 to rotate the video 90° anti-clockwise.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v 'transpose=1' rotated-video.mp4
This will rotate the video 180° counter-clockwise.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v 'transpose=2,transpose=2' rotated-video.mp4
You can change the speed of your video using the setpts (set presentation time stamp) filter of FFmpeg. This command will make the video 8x (1/8) faster or use setpts=4*PTS to make the video 4x slower.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "setpts=0.125*PTS" output.mp4
For changing the speed of audio, use the atempo audio filter. This command will double the speed of audio. You can use any value between 0.5 and 2.0 for audio.
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:a "atempo=2.0" -vn output.mkv
Stack Exchange has a good overview to get you started with FFmpeg. You should also check out the official documentation at ffmpeg.org or the wiki at trac.ffmpeg.org to know about all the possible things you can do with FFmpeg.
Also see: Essential Linux Commands
Today in Tech News Digest, exploiting the Internet, retaining Windows XP, Googling government waste, Glassing San Francisco, Real-time Twitter, trending subreddits, and an iPad concept circa 2004. The NSA Can Exploit Internet Flaws The NSA saying they had no knowledge of Heartbleed is like a kid with chocolate smeared all over his face saying he hasn’t heard of cookies. — Jacqui Cheng (@ejacqui) April 11, 2014 The NSA is retaining the right to exploit flaws in Internet security without passing on details of them to the general public. This is the takeaway from an examination of the rules governing NSA...
Read the full article: NSA Exploits Internet, IRS Retains XP, Google Glass Haters, iPad Concept [Tech News Digest]
Today in Tech News Digest, exploiting the Internet, retaining Windows XP, Googling government waste, Glassing San Francisco, Real-time Twitter, trending subreddits, and an iPad concept circa 2004. The NSA Can Exploit Internet Flaws The NSA saying they had no knowledge of Heartbleed is like a kid with chocolate smeared all over his face saying he hasn’t heard of cookies. — Jacqui Cheng (@ejacqui) April 11, 2014 The NSA is retaining the right to exploit flaws in Internet security without passing on details of them to the general public. This is the takeaway from an examination of the rules governing NSA...
Read the full article: NSA Exploits Internet, IRS Retains XP, Google Glass Haters, iPad Concept [Tech News Digest]
Install XBMC addons the easy way: use Fusion. This service gives you a quick way to browse, and install, XBMC repos from within the program itself. We’ve shown you some amazing XBMC add-ons, and they’re not hard to install – especially if they’re in XBMC’s default repo. For many of the best add-ons, however, you’re going to want access to third-party repositories. Installing these is straight forward: you need only download a ZIP file, then browse to it from within XBMC. But if you’d rather not close XBMC, open a browser and download a repo – or if you can’t,...
Read the full article: How To Set Up Fusion Installer On XBMC
Before we get into last week’s poll, I owe all of you an apology. It seemed that due to some script glitch, the poll itself disappeared from the page a day after it was published, meaning only a handful of you got to vote before it was gone. Therefore, the results we got for this poll are not as accurate or as representative of our readers as they usually are. What can I say, no one’s perfect! In the 24 hours the poll was around, over 200 of you managed to vote. Here is how you voted: 8% say they...
Read the full article: How Many Books Do You Have On Your eReader? [MakeUseOf Poll]
