Scriblink es una aplicación que ofrece una “pizarra” en línea en donde los usuarios pueden escribir, dibujar, subir imágenes, conversar mediante chat y audio y compartir documentos. Puedes hasta añadir funciones matemáticas. Para comenzar a usar el servicio es cuestión de compartir el url único con los interesados. No requiere crear una cuenta para comenzar a usar los servicios.
Me parece una una herramienta muy útil para el aprendizaje en línea.
If you love watching movies and are willing to open your horizons a little bit, you should probably be aware that there are lives outside of Hollywood. Good movies come from all parts of the world.
But knowing is one thing and finding is another. Due to the concepts that we call marketing and profit, there are times when the only way to find good non-English movies is by doing treasure hunting on the net. Most of the time, the treasures will still be in their original language.
As good as the movie might be, there’s no way of enjoying it if you don”t understand a single word the character says. Especially if the movie is the kind that relies heavily on dialogue.
The easiest way to enjoy movies in a foreign language is by finding subtitles and then attach subtitles – in your language – to the movie. Even though there is no guarantee of the availability, subtitle files are surprisingly easy to find on the net. Just do some searching using “movie title” + “your preferred language” + “subtitle” as the search strings.
These subtitle files are actually text files with time codes. Basically, it tells the movie to display a certain text at a specified time. Two of the most common formats for subtitle files are “.srt” and “.sub”
There are already several articles about subtitles in MakeUseOf. You can read them here, here and here.
Using a common media player like Quicktime or VLC to play the movie, you can also display the subtitles simply by putting the subtitle file in the same folder with the movie. The only requirement is that both the movie and the subtitle files should go under the same name but with different extensions. Something like “title.avi” and “title.srt“.
Using this method, you can choose what language to display by changing the subtitle file inside the folder. But the method will not be effective if the movie file is edited as the subtitle will appear at the wrong time.
Another way to display subtitles is by making it a permanent part of the movie. This method is called hard-subbed and will guarantee the consistency of the subtitle even if the movie is edited. However, rendering subtitles on the movie will reduce video compression and it could not be turned off nor changed into another language.
The new version of Handbrake – the 64-bit build – that we discussed in the previous article comes with a feature called soft subtitles. This ability allows users to add subtitles as a part of the movie with the option to turn the subtitle on and off. Something like DVD movie subtitles.
If you already have both the movie file and the subtitle file, you can start adding soft subtitles to your movie.
After the conversion is finished, you can then enjoy the movie using any kind of media player. If you are using Quicktime, you can easily turn the subtitles on and off by going to the “View > Subtitles” menu.
Other players use slightly different names. Under Mac OS X, you can easily find the menu by going to the Help menu and typing “Subtitle“. You will be guided by the Help menu to find it.
Handbrake is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Do you know another alternative method to attach subtitles to a movie? Please share using the comments below.
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How do you check what is on TV?
A lot of people would say that they use something like TV Guide channel listings or even TV.com. But one – they probably do not watch international television and two they always have a data connection up and ready. I do find myself watching TV via many methods from other countries and parts of the world. And I often find myself in a rural location with no internet when I am on vacation.
Even when I can’t watch TV, I want to know what is on so I can grab the torrent at a later time. Or maybe your TV is up and running but your internet is not.
So by using TVBrowser I can download my TV guide channel listings for the week and have the data already in my laptop so when the internet outage hits, we are already prepared.
I downloaded a 2.63MB file from this link over here. Install it with the normal next, next next and a finish.
If you use a proxy server to get to the internet you will need to check the check box below in step 1 of 4. See the screen shot below if you have any doubts.
When everything is completed the application will test your connection. You’ll want to see this screen:
Click next and continue on and you will see a progress meter like so:
Then it will show you what it found and is trying to download:
Awesome – there are our channels. And here they come.
From the grid above, add channels that you want to the right hand side. You use the green arrows in the middle to actually transfer them to the right or left side. Hit next when you are finished adding channels. I added 4 for this example to speed up the download process.
You will then see this screen:
Now we can close the set up assistant and download our channel’s TV guide channel listings
Hit update now and let us configure what we want to download and how. Drop down the box for Update program for: to download more than one day of shows. This is great for downloading a week or more at a time to take away with you. When you are done configuring your options hit update now. You can also allow for automatic updates when the program is opened or even when it is not.
That’s it! Let’s see what we have accomplished. You should now see a TV grid like in my screenshot below:
Awesome. You can move left and right to see the different channels and programs. You can click on an individual listing for a TV show and display its properties or associated information like so:
You will find genre, description as well as actor and actress listings. There are hyperlinks which will take you to Wikipedia pages. I clicked on Kevin James and was taken to his Wikipedia page. Very very cool!
We have previously covered some other websites and apps for finding out television programme schedules -
Two Ways To Never Miss A Television Episode – David
Socialize Your Television Experience With TIOTI – Tina
The Best Sites For TV Show Episode Guides & More – Tina
Fancast – Get TV Listings & Watch TV Shows Online Legally – Jimmy
Do you have another favorite application that does all this? We would love to hear about it – share it with us in the comments!
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We have covered plenty of audio/video tools in the past, from mp3 joiner to freeware video converters. If you are an avid user of such tools, you will have a nice, albeit a little lengthy, collection in your start menu. Well here is one tool that can make that list a little shorter.
It is an all in one media player solution and lets you play audio & video files, cut them according to your needs or transcode them to other formats. In addition you get a photo cutter, resizer and much more. In short, it’s as complete a media package as you’re likely to get. It is called Media Cope (Windows only).
The tag line doesn’t overstate Media Cope’s capabilities, when it says: “It is all you need“. Media Cope combines the best open source software in the business to give you a killer application. It has mplayer for playing media files and uses ffmpeg for all the transcoding heavy lifting.
Let us take a deeper look on what Media Cope offers.
Media Cope supports all the major media file formats. It lets you play file formats mp3, avi, divx, mov, mkv, flac, rmvb, flv, vob, wma and mp4 to mention a few. In addition it also offers other mplayer functionality like speed change, ratio change, audio delay , framestep and screenshots etc.
Hop over to the next tab and you can now trim audio & video files to your liking. All the formats listed above and many more are supported. Open the file, you can use the slider to go the exact location you want to start the video clip from, click “Select Start” and the starting point will be set to the current slider position. You can choose the end point in similar fashion. Now choose the output file format and you are ready to save the trimmed file as an audio/video clip.
The next two tabs let you transcode your media files into a format of your choice. Queuing, output quality and transcoding to and from all major formats are supported. I missed default presets or the ability to create and save your presets. Such an option is extremely useful if you transcode files for playback on an iPod or any other device.
Media Cope lets you do common photo tasks like resizing and converting to different dimensions and formats. The photo tools do a fairly good job and are great for batch processing. That said, I would stick with image editors for such needs mainly because of the interface and greater control and visual feedback they offer.
Media Cope also lets view your photos as a slide show. You can specify a background music and basic slide show configuration options. There is no option to export your slide show as a video file which makes it seem as misfit as a mere photo-browser amongst other tools.
You can also use Media Cope when browsing the Internet. Media Cope offers text to speech functionality in Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers. You have to explicitly enable Internet tools from Media Cope’s settings.
Media Cope offers a number of tools to meet all your media needs. There are some glitches and the user interface could use some touch up. Even then the media player, cutter and transcoders are straightforward and easy to use. MPlayer and FFMPEG form a deadly combo and it would be interesting to see Media Cope develop further and iron out some of the shortcomings.
What do you think of the Media Cope all in one media player? Do you know of any other application that packs so much functionality?
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