When I started my studies in the Conservatoire (about three months ago), I thought that my Choir class would be quite a chore... but it has turned out to be quite enjoyable, actually. On Wednesday 22nd we took part in the yearly Christmas concert, and a video of our performance is at: http://vimeo.com/18144039
The quality of the video is horrible, but not bad given the circumstances: it was shot by a relative of mine with no prior experience with video cameras, from a bad back seat, and while she was taking care of three small children...
Friday, 24 December 2010
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Classical guitar progress logging (Dec'10)
The recording for this month is still quite rough on the edges, but here it goes: http://vimeo.com/17986724
The music is a guitar trio by Andrew Forrest: "Based on Basie", available at http://www.forrestguitarensembles.co.uk/trios.html (where you can also get the PDF of the score: http://www.forrestguitarensembles.co.uk/scores/trios/T0015BasedonBasie.pdf).
I used OMR software to get a MIDI file of the music. I play the first guitar, and the computer plays the rest. The web page says that this piece should be for grades 4-5, and I'm just starting grade 3, so there is still plenty of room for improvement...
Technical issue
I found an issue with my Jack+Rosegarden+Qsynth setting: I realized that the computer was out of tune (which could be easily seen by using the "Free Music Instrument Tuner", and playing the "concert A", which should be 440Hz.
With help from some guys at the Ubuntu Studio mailing list, I figured out that the problem was with sampling rates in Jack and Qsynth. When both were at the same sampling rate (I tried with 48000), then everything was OK.
Based on Basie by Andrew Forrest from Angel de Vicente on Vimeo.
The music is a guitar trio by Andrew Forrest: "Based on Basie", available at http://www.forrestguitarensembles.co.uk/trios.html (where you can also get the PDF of the score: http://www.forrestguitarensembles.co.uk/scores/trios/T0015BasedonBasie.pdf).
I used OMR software to get a MIDI file of the music. I play the first guitar, and the computer plays the rest. The web page says that this piece should be for grades 4-5, and I'm just starting grade 3, so there is still plenty of room for improvement...
Technical issue
I found an issue with my Jack+Rosegarden+Qsynth setting: I realized that the computer was out of tune (which could be easily seen by using the "Free Music Instrument Tuner", and playing the "concert A", which should be 440Hz.
With help from some guys at the Ubuntu Studio mailing list, I figured out that the problem was with sampling rates in Jack and Qsynth. When both were at the same sampling rate (I tried with 48000), then everything was OK.
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Recording anything that gets played in your computer
I knew it was possible, but I had forgotten the details, so here they go...
Sometimes you might want to record audio played by an application in your computer (system sounds, music in a webpage, etc... basically anything that the computer can output to speakers/headphones). Recording that is actually very easy... In Ubuntu 10.04 I got the instructions from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio
I decided to try recording a song from Spotify (which is running inside Wine in my PC) using Audacity. The only extra software that I needed was PulseAudio Volume Control, and that was also the only one that I needed to configure.
When you start playing a song in Spotify and start recording in Audacity, it probably does not record anything, because Audacity will try to record from the "wrong" source. To route the sound properly, you just need to open the PulseAudio Volume Control and (while recording, otherwise this option is not available) change the option "ALSA Capture from" to "Monitor of Internal Audio Analog Stereo", as shown below, and Audacity will record them properly:
Sometimes you might want to record audio played by an application in your computer (system sounds, music in a webpage, etc... basically anything that the computer can output to speakers/headphones). Recording that is actually very easy... In Ubuntu 10.04 I got the instructions from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio
I decided to try recording a song from Spotify (which is running inside Wine in my PC) using Audacity. The only extra software that I needed was PulseAudio Volume Control, and that was also the only one that I needed to configure.
When you start playing a song in Spotify and start recording in Audacity, it probably does not record anything, because Audacity will try to record from the "wrong" source. To route the sound properly, you just need to open the PulseAudio Volume Control and (while recording, otherwise this option is not available) change the option "ALSA Capture from" to "Monitor of Internal Audio Analog Stereo", as shown below, and Audacity will record them properly:
Monday, 15 November 2010
New Al Zimmermann's Programming Contest
Another one of the famous Al Zimmermann programming contests has just started. The contest runs until 12 Feb 2011, so there is plenty of time to compete. These contests are very competitive and the level is quite high, so it is difficult to stay in the top. Given that, and that I can only devote a limited amount of time to this, I will just try to compete "a little". For me, the goal will be to end within the first 10% of participants. Right now there are 125 contestants, so I should try to get in rank 12 or better. I quickly wrote a basic program and got in rank 33. Now it is time to improve it and see if I can do better than that over time. I will chart my progress below...
Update (14/2/2011): Oh well, the contest ended two days ago, and in the end I didn't get very far at all. My final position was 110, which with 362 contestants sets me at rank around 30.39%. I lost steam in the final weeks of the contest, when I realized that I had run out of easy ideas, and real work was not letting me try harder ones... Let's see if I can do better in the next contest (which is already set to start on Jul 9th).
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Editing videos from a Pentax Optio M40 camera
In a previous post I have a link to a Vimeo video, which was created by:
Today I decided to find a solution to this, so that I could edit the clip with Kdenlive, which is right now my preferred video editing software. The solution seems to use an intermediate software to create the clips to be imported to Kdenlive: Avidemux.
I just load the AVI file from the camera in Avidemux, select the starting and end points of the clip I want to use, and press the "Save" button. A screenshot can be seen here:
Then this clip can be imported into Kdenlive, without any synchronization problems. With Kdenlive we can now add a title, add effects, etc. and if we want a decent quality we can render it as the template MPEG-4 10000k 2-pass (which translates to:
f=mp4 acodec=libmp3lame ab=128k ar=44100 vcodec=mpeg4 minrate=0 b=10000k aspect=%dar mbd=2 trellis=1 mv4=1 pass=2).
The resulting file has perfect synchronization and can be uploaded to Vimeo without any problems and with much better quality than the one generated in my previous post. Here is the resulting video.
- recording a video with my Pentax Optio M40 camera
- cutting the beginning and the end of the video with the PiTiVi software
Today I decided to find a solution to this, so that I could edit the clip with Kdenlive, which is right now my preferred video editing software. The solution seems to use an intermediate software to create the clips to be imported to Kdenlive: Avidemux.
I just load the AVI file from the camera in Avidemux, select the starting and end points of the clip I want to use, and press the "Save" button. A screenshot can be seen here:
Then this clip can be imported into Kdenlive, without any synchronization problems. With Kdenlive we can now add a title, add effects, etc. and if we want a decent quality we can render it as the template MPEG-4 10000k 2-pass (which translates to:
f=mp4 acodec=libmp3lame ab=128k ar=44100 vcodec=mpeg4 minrate=0 b=10000k aspect=%dar mbd=2 trellis=1 mv4=1 pass=2).
The resulting file has perfect synchronization and can be uploaded to Vimeo without any problems and with much better quality than the one generated in my previous post. Here is the resulting video.
Friday, 12 November 2010
File Version Control
I'm a fan of version control systems, but for some reason I end up not using them as regularly as I should, and then I tend to forget how to do the most common operations, so this time I'm logging it here.
I do all my editing from inside Emacs, so I will be using VC, which allows me to use a version control system from within Emacs. VC works with many different version control systems, but for the moment I will use it with a very simple one: RCS. Later on, perhaps I will need a more sophisticated one, since RCS does not work over a network, and it only works at the level of individual files, but for the moment this is all I need.
The integration Emacs-RCS is very tight, and the basics for checking-in, checking-out are just performed with the same command: C-x v v. The first time we do this command, Emacs will offer to create the RCS directory, if it doesn't exist, and it will register (and unlock) the file as version 1.1. To edit the file again, just type C-x v v again to lock the file. When done and when we register the file again, the *VC-log* buffer will open, so that we can add a log entry. We continue this way, so that different versions of the file will be registered.
So now, some of the most common things that I need to do:
* Be able to see what has been changed in the file:
- When editing the file: C-x v =
- When writing the log entry: C-c C-d in the *VC-log* window (after saving the file being edited)
* Compare different versions:
Perhaps the most flexible one is just to type C-x v ~ REVISION, which allows us to view any previouos revision of the file, and then we can compare any two versions with something like ediff-buffers
* See history of changes:
C-x v l gives us the revision control change history. In a different buffer, we will have a list of all the revisions made to the file, together with the text of the log entries. This buffer is also very convenient to do some useful operations:
- With p and n, we can go the the lines corresponding to the previous or the next revision respectively.
- With e we can modify the log entry text.
- With f we can visit the revision indicated at the current line (like C-x v ~ above).
- With d see the diff between the revision at the current line and the next earlier revision.
* Undo changes:
C-x v u revert the file to the revision from which you started editing.
Later on I will add to my daily version control fix how to work with branches, but for the moment this is 90% of what I really need from a CVS.
I do all my editing from inside Emacs, so I will be using VC, which allows me to use a version control system from within Emacs. VC works with many different version control systems, but for the moment I will use it with a very simple one: RCS. Later on, perhaps I will need a more sophisticated one, since RCS does not work over a network, and it only works at the level of individual files, but for the moment this is all I need.
The integration Emacs-RCS is very tight, and the basics for checking-in, checking-out are just performed with the same command: C-x v v. The first time we do this command, Emacs will offer to create the RCS directory, if it doesn't exist, and it will register (and unlock) the file as version 1.1. To edit the file again, just type C-x v v again to lock the file. When done and when we register the file again, the *VC-log* buffer will open, so that we can add a log entry. We continue this way, so that different versions of the file will be registered.
So now, some of the most common things that I need to do:
* Be able to see what has been changed in the file:
- When editing the file: C-x v =
- When writing the log entry: C-c C-d in the *VC-log* window (after saving the file being edited)
* Compare different versions:
Perhaps the most flexible one is just to type C-x v ~ REVISION, which allows us to view any previouos revision of the file, and then we can compare any two versions with something like ediff-buffers
* See history of changes:
C-x v l gives us the revision control change history. In a different buffer, we will have a list of all the revisions made to the file, together with the text of the log entries. This buffer is also very convenient to do some useful operations:
- With p and n, we can go the the lines corresponding to the previous or the next revision respectively.
- With e we can modify the log entry text.
- With f we can visit the revision indicated at the current line (like C-x v ~ above).
- With d see the diff between the revision at the current line and the next earlier revision.
* Undo changes:
C-x v u revert the file to the revision from which you started editing.
Later on I will add to my daily version control fix how to work with branches, but for the moment this is 90% of what I really need from a CVS.
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Classical guitar progress logging (Nov'10)
Today I'm starting my guitar progress logging, my plan being to record and upload every month a piece that I'm learning, whatever its status, to keep a record of my progress, my struggles, etc.
We start with the Étude Simple n.VI by Leo Brouwer, which can be seen at http://vimeo.com/16656488
My camera doesn't have an input for an external microphone, so I have to rely in its poor quality built-in microphone. (Later on I hope I will be able to learn how to easily and accurately sinchronize video recorded with the camera and audio recorded directly to the computer via microphone, but until then...)
Technical stuff: after editing it with PiTiVi, I render it with the options: VGA(640x480), Audio Output: CD; Container: FFmpeg AVI format muxer; Audio Codec: TwoLAME mp2 encoder; Video Codec: FFmpeg MPEG-4 part 2 encoder
Other codecs gave me problems and the video could not be converted by the Vimeo Servers.
We start with the Étude Simple n.VI by Leo Brouwer, which can be seen at http://vimeo.com/16656488
Étude Simple n.VI by Leo Brouwer from Angel de Vicente on Vimeo.
My camera doesn't have an input for an external microphone, so I have to rely in its poor quality built-in microphone. (Later on I hope I will be able to learn how to easily and accurately sinchronize video recorded with the camera and audio recorded directly to the computer via microphone, but until then...)
Technical stuff: after editing it with PiTiVi, I render it with the options: VGA(640x480), Audio Output: CD; Container: FFmpeg AVI format muxer; Audio Codec: TwoLAME mp2 encoder; Video Codec: FFmpeg MPEG-4 part 2 encoder
Other codecs gave me problems and the video could not be converted by the Vimeo Servers.
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