Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Linux and movies at home - 1

As you can look up on the site search, I'm a big fan of Linux. One of the reasons is it's ability to handle multi-media. I do the editing of my videos on Linux, and process the results of my seismic analysis.

If ever the movie houses got a clue, they would distribute movies like zml.com. Right now, that must be Mafyosi operation, but wouldn't it be nice? Of course, if you are going to swim with the sharks, you need some better security than woosie XP. Even the virus checkers won't help here, because you are dipping right into the brand new stuff.

Even if zml.com were legit, there is the question of how to deliver movies at a decent download rate. PirateBay has torrents, but wouldn't have a means to charge for the service, and people seeding the files might not do so, for a commercial service. The Bay just makes money showing Spritzer-ladies. (sp. intentional!).

Thus, I have led my investigation into how to download movies, for the future, when they are legit. Actually the reason they can't do it now is that Walmart would yank off all the first one's DVD's! Without wanting to get anybody pissed off, I do my investigations with totally legal fare, such as hour-long infomercials!

When loading a movie length travel promotion, the first thing that has to be considered is the compression technique. This has caused me endless problems with my 'How to Make Expresso' collection, since there are so many formats, and some devices (such as the PS3) don't play them.

Usually a full-length movie can be compressed decently into 700 Mb, but a 'dvd quality' travelogue can be split into 2 files of 700 Mb each. This is the magic number to fit on a standard CD for the flea markets. I can't see this general limit being valid for future legit movies, and in fact it's being exceeded in a lot of cases. A current dvd has 4 to 6 Gb of data!

(more to come, if my ad revenues make me happy and nobody sues me! :)

Next: A Zillion Formats!

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