If you try to view a video in Windows media player you can run into a few common problems.
The video doesn’t play at all.
You can see the video but not hear any sound.
You can hear the video but not see it.

In most of the cases the problem is that you don’t have the correct codec installed on your computer. Not all video files are the same, especially those with a .avi extension. A codec is a special bit of software that tells your computer how to play a video file.

The easiest solution is to use another video player. I recommend VLC media player which you can download here. There’s no spyware or anything like that and it can play just about any type of file you throw at it.

Here is how I am able to use a mp3 file as a ringtone on my Verizon Envy cell phone.

First you need to crop the mp3 file down to less than 200kb. You can use Audacity (free) to do this.

I won’t go into the gritty details but you will need to open the file in audacity, crop it down to about 20 seconds and then save it as an mp3 at a bit rate of about 80kbs. Remember the new file need to be less than 200kb. You can be a little clever and crop the file in such a way that it will sound good looping.

Find the file on your hard drive in windows file explorer and make sure the size is less than 200kb. You may need to crop the file further and save it again. Change the extension of the saved mp3 file to .mid and copy it to your microSD card and place the card back into your cell phone.

On your phone browse to the new .mid file, it will be in your sounds directory,and select the option to send it. Send it to yourself. When you receive the call there is an option to save the file as your ringtone. That’s it!

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Now’s a great time to upgrade your current Sony software or give one of their products a try. All of the Sony software I use is rock solid. I use Vegas Studio and Acid Studio on almost a daily basis.

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I came across a little trick which lets you hear youtube videos is stereo. All you do is add &fmt=18 to the end of the url for the video.

So instead of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu2xW-CXz04

The url will look like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu2xW-CXz04&fmt=18

I’m not sure if this works for all videos or just newer ones that have been uploaded since Youtube changed their encoding methods.

There isn’t a way to directly import a DVD into Windows Movie Maker. DVD usually contain two folders. AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. Don’t worry about AUDIO_TS. All the files are in VIDEO_TS. Inside VIDEO_TS are VOB files. VOB files are essentially MPEG2 files. Sometimes you can just rename the extension to MPG and you can import them.
Most of the time it takes a few extra steps to import a DVD into movie maker.

There is a fre program called VOBTOMPG which can convert VOB to MPG files.

Once the VOBS are converted to MPG they can be imported into Windows Movie Maker

This quick guide is how to convert a DIVX file to a DVD. We will be using a simple but powerful tool called DVD Flick. DVD flick is is free and open source. I usually do this if I’m trying to catch up on a TV series and i want to atch it on my TV> I really don’t get fancy with the menus and I use rewritable DVD discs.

The first step is to download and install DVD Flick

Next click on the “Add Title” button to browse to your DIVX file.

Next are some optional steps to edit the title. I like to at least change the name to something I can read easily. YOu may need to change the targte aspect ratio as well for your TV. You can also choose to add chapters if you’d like.

Next You may want to edit the menu settings for the DVD

Next you will want to open th eproject settings. I usually burn straight to disc. Place your blank DVD in your burner and select the burn speed. I selected 2X since I use rewritable DVD’s and mine are only 2.4x speed. All the other options can be left to their default settings.

Now select the “Burn DVD” button. Click through the confirmation screens. At this point it may take a while to convert the DIVX file to a DVD. The time depends on how powerful your computer processor is.

You can minimize the screen or click the “Entertain Me” button for some fun.

Most of the time you just can’t open 3G2 or 3GP in windows movie maker. The best thing to do is convert the 3G2 or 3GP files to something WMM does understand. I use Super to convert the files to WMV so Windows Movie Maker can understand it. If your going to be doing major editing you may want to convert the 3GP file to AVI.

You can download Super here. Look for the link at the bottom of the page.

Here is a screen shot of my settings in Super to convert to WMV.

“High quality” and Youtube are an oxymoron. No matter how great your video looks on your computer Youtube will compress the snot out of it and convert your sound to mono.

YouTube accepts most common video formats including WMV, MPEG, MOV and AVI.

I created a test clip and then encoded in different formats and rates.

You can see the clips here
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=03E42D05F3584B4A

Everything looks pretty good at 640×480 or higher. I think the AVI clips looks the best but it was almost a 200meg file for a 53 second video. Depending on your software I would likely choose the 3Mbs WMV or MOV format. Also if you create a file in H.264 format I’m pretty sure Youtube will still re-encode it anyways.

If your like most people you probably have boxes or albums with photos laying around that you have been meaning to scan into your computer someday. You quickly realize that it is a major pain in the ass and push off the project for some other time.

I did a little research and found that the HP ScanJet 5530 Scanner had an autofeed feature, but the reviews are kind of crappy.

I went to the Epson web site saw they have a photo feeder that can be adapted to fit on a scanner. You simply remove the cover of the scanner and replace it with the auto feeder. It works with the Epson Perfection 2480 or 2580 scanners. I think it may also work with the 3490 & 3590 Scanners.

These scanners are no longer in retail stores but they can be found on ebay.

So for about $240 I was able to assemble an automatic photo scanner.

It works really well ! You can load about 25 pictures into the tray. It takes about 15-20 minutes to scan 25 pics. It isn’t terribly fast but you can do other things while the pics are scanning. You can scan hundreds of pictures in a day no problem.

Sometimes video files are sent having the RAR extension. RAR is not video format. It is a compression technology to shrink and archive files. If the file is very large it is sometimes broken up into multiple files which make up a multi-volume archive.

A multi-volume archive will come with extensions like .rar, .r00, .r01, .r02 etc.

To play the video files on your computer you will need to reconstruct the archive into one video file.

A popular choice to decompress RAR files is WinRAR. However I’m going to show you how to decompress RAR files with one of my favorite tools 7-Zip.

You can download and install 7-Zip from here. One thing I really like about 7-Zip is that’s it’s FREE and open source software. It is incredibly easy to use and handles just about any type of compressed files you can throw at it including ZIP, GZIP, TAR, RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS.

Locate the video files on your computer. In the case of multi-volume archive all you really care about is the file with the .rar extension.

Right click on the .rar file and select 7-zip\Extract Here. 7-Zip will begin to combine all of the smaller files into one large video file and place it into the current folder.

You can then play the video file with your favorite video player.