“Guys who can touch us in multiple places probably matter more than guys who can touch us in any one place.”
“I want to squirt you a picture of my kids. You want to squirt me back a video of your vacation. That’s a software experience.”
This man should probably think more carefully about his word choice…
From the fine print in the back of the Decemberists “the Crane Wife” album:
This recording and artwork are protected by copyright law. Using Internet services to distribute copyrighted music, giving away illegal copies of discs or lending discs to others for them to copy is illegal and does not support those involved in making this piece of music – especially the artist. By carrying out any of these actions it has the same effect as stealing music.
I was impressed with their usage of “the same effect as,” which is a subtly different statement than simply “you are stealing music.” I would contend that the only difference between file sharing and actually stealing music is that file sharing still doesn’t involve stealing a physical CD.
Minus points for them implying that the artist still benefits the most from a CD purchase.
I still buy CDs cause I like having my lossless, physical copy 
So, there’s the really amazing program out for OS X called Handbrake. Basically, it simplifies the DVD ripping process all the way down to about a 5-step process, and you do it all within one app instead of running around between MEGui, BeSweet, YAMB, etc. Combined with a really fast computer (say, the Intel Core Duo ®, or even more absurd, the newest dual core Intel Xeons in the Mac Pro), and this thing can fly.
There’s just one problem though: the version available at the Handbrake homepage uses an ancient version of x264 (the codec used to create H.264/MPEG-4 AVC). The build is marked as 401. Considering that the build available today is marked 584, 401 is old.
Handbrake also uses FAAC to create its AACs. While not an amazing AAC encoder (my looking around suggests that Nero AAC and iTunes/QT AAC are the best, not FAAC), it was also updated in August to 1.25. While I have no idea what version of FAAC is in Handbrake, I’m pretty sure I want the latest version.
In light of all of this, I’ve taken it upon myself to fix this! I’ve recompiled Handbrake using the 0.7.1 sources, but replaced x264 and FAAC using the latest versions available. I’ve tried it out on a movie already, and it works great. Note that I did not replace ffmpeg, which is used for other formats (MPEG-4 SP, probably divx too), or xvid, or anything else. This is a build purely targeted at the latest in open-source H.264.
Tired of reading my drivel? Clicky.
Bad Behavior has blocked 1 access attempts in the last 7 days.