The problem in my case had to do with embedding videos into the slideshow. You see, when Picasa exports a slideshow it takes advantage of some of the more esoteric specs of the MPEG-4 container, saving video clips, unmodified, with their accompanying audio alongside the photo slideshow, which includes your music track, captions, etc. So you get multiple video and audio streams “neatly” packaged into a single MPEG-4 container. Cool, right?

Right…as long as you have something that won’t roll over and die when it sees a multi-stream, multi-resolution container file coming down the pike.

Yes, I said multi-resolution; the camera that I used to take the videos built into the slideshow shoots at 720p. THe slideshow itself was outputted at 640×480. Add to that multiple audio stream formats (the music track was one thing, the videos were another) and you get a rather fragile system if your player doesn’t support the whole MPEG-4 container spec to a tee.

QuickTime took the whole thing in stride, though of course deciding 720p video on a 1.6 GHz Pentium M laptop is not as easy as dishing out 640×480. However every other application, transcoder (e.g. ffmpeg) or player (e.g. VLC…yes, even VLC didn’t get the clip right) either couldn’t deal with the video at all (ffmpeg) or was missing one or more of the audio or video tracks (YouTube and Vimeo…neither service transcoded the clip correctly).

Yes, YouTube butchered a video that was exported from Google’s own photo management software. They need to work on fixing that. I thought the issue was with the copyrighted music I had playing in the background (MercyMe’s All of Creation), but they’re actually perfectly fine with that, as I would expect Google to be. After I uploaded the video in a format the YouTube transcoder could parse correctly.

What was that format, and how did I get the darned thing to transcode correctly? Wait for it…MPEG-4…from QuickTime, via iMovie.

I imported my slideshow output file into iMovie (the new version, ’09 I believe), then used the Export to QuickTime option to get some fine-grained control on exactly what I was doing. The specific settings I used were as follows, though minor changes shouldn’t mess anything up…

• Video compression type: MPEG-4
• Frame rate: current
• Key frames: automatic
• Data rate: restrict to 1500 kbps (for quicker uploads over my 384k up DSL connection in TX; quality is still fine)
• Compressor quality: best
• VIdeo filter and size: no changes
• Sound format: AAC
• Channels: Mono
• Rate: 22.050 kHz
• Quality (under advanced settings): Best
• Bit rate: 64 kbps
• Encoding Strategy: Average Bit Rate
• Prepare for Internet Streaming: unchecked

The above settings got me a video that uploaded perfectly to YouTube, though it wouldn’t work right on this site’s (brand new) FlowPlayer install. Can’t win ‘em all I guess, though I’m sure for people exporting their slideshows from Picasa to YouTube their service is plenty.

When will Google fix Picasa’s multi-res MPEG-4 export issue, or tweak YouTube to import the videos without making scrambled eggs of the lot? Not sure. Maybe a few dozen retweets and a Digg posting will do the job.

Comment if you’ve run into this issue as well, and let me know if this fix worked. Also, if Picasa on Windows has this issue, let me know; I can test the process on a Windows box but haven’t done so yet. Unfortunately though, if the same issue exists, I know of no Windows application that can transcode its way out of this situation. Unless Apple still does the whole QuickTime Pro thing for Windows, post-OS X 10.6.

I should also note that I ran for Student Body President here at Mines. This isn’t the first time I’ve run for such a position; I ran last year for Junior Class Treasurer (a friend was running for Junior Class President and I didn’t want to split the ticket), and in fall 2007 I ran for Freshman Class President. This is the first time I was soundly defeated; the other two positions were won by a handful of votes by my opponent.

To be clear, I’m not bitter, just solidified in the supposition that the whole thing’s just a popularity contest; people vote for their friends, not on issues. For what it’s worth, I’ll probably end up doing nearly as much this coming year through <non-presidential ASCSM position> by saying “yes” to tasks that the guy who won wants to delegate. Or that I think up.

Sorry for the broken links in the tweet; didn’t see any use keeping up the Facebook campaign page that I had up. If you want to see the campaign poster I had, comment (Openness, Efficiency, Free Bagels were my three legged stool of stumping prowess).

…because of this and this.

First, if Apple is going to lift a commercial from the US that states something quantifiable (twice as fast [as the original iPhone]) on their iPhone 3G commercial, which is focused on speed, they had better quantify it better than “really fast”, especially when the only quantifiable thing in the ad is the (simulared) screenhot video of the phone…going much faster than it would in real life.

For all the fanboys out there, I know that, in theory, the phone could pull down a PDF file as fast as it did on the commercial over HSDPA. In reality, however, such speed would never happen on a consumer network. Surpise: Apple is selling the iPhones to consumers on a consumer 3G network, and the ad cites the iPhone’s 3G speeds. I’ll hand it to you, WiFi may be able to download at the speeds shown for Google Maps and the attachment download, but definitely not HSDPA. The reason? HSDPA (the iPhone doesn’t have HSUPA to my knowledge) has latencies in excess of 300 ms on average, so tack that on to anything you want to download. Think of it as halfway between low-end DSL and a high-quality satellite connection. Or what you get on your normal, non-super-3G cell phone.

Honestly, WiFi on the iphone isn’t much better than the practical limits of 3G. Assuming that you have a big enough pipe coming into your WiFi network, the iPhone tests out at only about 4.5 megabits per second…and this test was made via a special speedtest app on my Comcast connection, which bursts above 20 Mbps, sometimes above 30 Mbps. Certainly above 4.5 Mbps.

Random: is it just me, or did anyone else see an earlier version of this “twice as fast” commercial where the disembodied hand was downloading a QuickTime movie? It may have just been me, but if that ad was aired, let loose all the dogs of Truth In Advertising…there’s no way a phone could download a file that fast with current technology, even over WiFi.

Back to the 3G: web browsing involves rendering of the page. The only way for the iPhone to load and render like was seen on the ad? Cacheing. Possible, but not a showcase of the phone’s 3G abiity. Strike…three?

Enough with that rant…

My second point of contention: Google had to break Apple’s software development rules in order to create what’s arguably one of the most compelling apps available on the iphone right now. When you hear a hacker whining about this it’s one thing; when Google speaks, it’s quite anotherr. Hopefully Apple doesn’t go ballistic and shoo Google’s Mobile App out of the iTunes store for their infraction, but on the other hand Google did step outside Apple’s rather obsessive little box for developers (no background processes, no turn-by-turn directions, do crossing the yellow tape), and the company tends to be rather draconian when it comes to punishment for such things. But in all seriousness this would only hurt Apple’s cause, so they probably won’t do it; Google has its own mobile platform now, and the more Apple takes, the more Google will pay attention to Android.

Lastly, a potshot at Apple smugness: their Black Friday deals were unappealing. The smattering of discounts on hardware basically said “Yeah, it’s a sale day, whaddya gonna do about it?”, nothing more. Apple fanboys were doubtless pleased, but the discounts were in most cases less than what educational buyers get 24x7x365. Keep in mind that we’re talking about the biggest shopping, biggest discount, day of the year, where 42″ HDTVs are sold for well under $800, and retailers both online and on the ground slash prices by a few dozen percent to get stocks moving. But, if I may say so, typical Apple…I’m sure their products sold well enough anyway…

That is all. Good night and good luck.