Windows DVD Maker Review

I recently needed to create a DVD of some camcorder footage.

I used to use software which came with my camcorder to pull the video from the camera, then various tools to edit, and finally Nero (which came with my DVD drive) to build the DVD with menus etc. It was a lot of messing around – but that’s what it’s like on PC (if you’re a cheapskate).

This time, I’m running on Windows 7, and my old Nero disc is incompatible. Never mind though – Windows 7 is all Mac-like and comes with ‘Windows Live Movie Maker’ and ‘Windows DVD Maker’.

Windows Live Movie Maker

Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 worked quite nicely. It imported my video from my camera (over firewire). It created a single AVI with several internal clips. Movie Maker has nice simple editing, though the location of the clips wasn’t highlighted. Movie Maker can ‘Save as -> Burn a DVD’. This first saves a WMV file, and then starts Windows DVD Maker.

Windows DVD Maker

DVD Maker takes one or more WMV files, allows you to configure the DVD menu, and then burns to DVD.

Pros:

• Has some nice menu templates, with animation and fun transitions. It’s not out of this world, but enough to make your amateur DVD making look quite nice.
• Simple to use.
• Automatically takes your clips and creates scene selections from them.

Cons:

• If you specify one WMV it will automatically create several ‘scene selection’ clips. However, if you specify more than one WMV it will just make each video its own selection. I didn’t like this either/or option – I’d prefer an options menu which allowed me to choose.
• For me it repeatedly failed to the burn DVD with no useful explanation. Looking online, it seems like a common problem, and driver related. It's disappointing that DVD Maker fails to burn when other programs can burn OK.
  
• It only burns directly to disc, not ISO file. This is very annoying, as it failed to burn to DVD on my machine. I ended up using the trial version of ‘Virtual CD 10’ to act as a virtual DVD burner. (After trying many other virtual drive related products.)
• The scene selections didn’t match the clips in my video – they just seem arbitrary. Pressing ‘skip’ results in jumping over one whole clip, and landing part way through the next. Very odd. The DVD is only useful in ‘play’ mode – skipping and scene selection are inaccurate. This really detracts from the usefulness of the DVD.
  
• The number of scene selections is limited to a fixed maximum imposed by the menu style you choose. The highest number of clips available appears to be 18. While this is enough for most uses, it's not hard to hit the limit.
  

Overall I was very disappointed by the experience. The gloss of Windows 7 seems very thin in the area of DVD creation. DVD Maker was superficially pretty, but then took hours of time to work around its lack of obvious features, and ultimately produced a poor quality DVD.

And finally, burning an ISO to a disc turned into another debacle of multiple programs being downloaded and tried. I eventually used ImgBurn to do it.

I like Windows 7, but I’m disappointed that DVD authoring hasn’t improved since XP. This one facet of Windows makes me wish I was on a Mac.

OpenSVN Review

UPDATE #2: Assembla is no longer free, so I looked for other options and I've switched to XP-Dev.com.

UPDATE #1: Following writing this review, and the suggestion in the posts below, I looked into using Assembla. I've now been using it for several months for version control for home. I find it very fast, and haven't seen it go down once. I highly recommend it!

ORIGINAL POST:

I recently bought a laptop, so that I don't have to be sat at a desk to ruin my eyes. I wanted to use my laptop for a bit of coding, but Perforce, the version control system I had been using, was installed on my desktop machine. This meant that my desktop had to be turned on, for my laptop to be able to check things in and out. This bugged me, so I started to look for solutions were my source could be hosted online.

There are lots of companies out there who will host your source code. They mostly use the open source systems CVS and Subversion (also known as SVN). Some companies charge monthly, with increasing fees for increasing server space and/or numbers of users. Some have a 'free' service, but the restrictions are pretty tight. If you're interested in open source development, and don't mind the world seeing your code, then there are other free hosting options out there too.

I found one SVN hosting site which was completely free, didn't have tight restrictions, and didn't require that your code is open source - OpenSVN (OpenSVN.csie.org). It's operated by some students at National Taiwan University. As I'm always interested in a bargain, I thought I'd give it a try. After 5 weeks of using it, here are my thoughts:

• The presentation on the OpenSVN site is poor. The other project hosting sites, with their art work and stock photos of people pointing at monitors, make you feel a lot more comfortable about putting your valuable source in their hands. Plus the OpenSVN site has some kind of bad certificate, which makes IE7 give dire warnings.
• After the initial setup of the account, you don't need to go back to their site. Just use TortoiseSVN (or a similar windows client) to manipulate your files. I chose TortoiseSVN, and after a short learning period, I really like it.
• The server has been down on four days of the 5 weeks that I've been using it. This hasn't caused big problems for me, as I just code on my own, for fun, and am OK waiting for them to fix it. If however I was working in a group, at a serious development company, this level of down-time would be unnacceptable.
• I've not needed tech support, but doubt that whatever they provide would be on a par with what a professional hosting company could provide.
• Initially I was a bit concerned about whether it would be too slow. I've found it to be fast enough for my needs - just checking in/out relatively small amounts of code. I'd say it takes about 15 seconds to either check in, or get latest, for an average amount of change. If however you were thinking of storing larger binary data (e.g. textures) then it may be worse.

Overall, OpenSVN is OK. I find the occasional down time acceptable, considering that it's free. If you use it, I recommend that you also make your own backup procedures, and not rely on theirs. For home development, when it comes to backing up a version control system, I'm of the belief that it's OK to just back up the last good version. If the history gets lost, then it's just tough turkey.

If you're new to SVN and hosted version control, then it's a good idea to use OpenSVN first so you can get a better feel for what your needs are before shopping for a commercial/reliable service.

What do you use?

Gateway T5450 Laptop M-6750 Review

I recently picked up this laptop on sale at Best Buy (of all places!) for $750.

Pros:

- 3GB of ram is great. (It means less disk thrashing, which means faster performance)

- 250 GB HDD (minus a bit for some fluff) is a good amount of storage.

- The 1.66 GHz Core 2 Duo seems good enough for my needs. The large memory helps keep it fed.

- Generally, I find performance in Vista to be fine, including with the fancy Aero interface running.

- It's lovely and shiny. The red lid, and wrist rest area look great. It's got a brushed steel look around the keyboard. The screen is one of those high gloss ones (which worried me at first, but I now like). Plus Vista looks pretty. All round, it's a lovely machine to look at.

- It's nice having the built-in webcam and microphone for Skype.

Cons:

- The 'Fn' key is in the corner of the keyboard, instead of the left 'Ctrl' key, as it is on most normal keyboards. This means I'm constantly messing up copy/paste type operations.

- The built in speakers are really weak, though this is true for most laptops.

- The integrated / shared memory graphics card won't be good for modern games, but it's fine for regular windows. Plus the extra large ram makes up for it using main memory.

- Comes with a bunch of trialware and other junk which takes a while to remove ('PC Decrapifier' got rid of about half).

- The volume slider touchpad doesn't work as well as I'd like.

- The webcam doesn't always work, sometimes requiring a reboot, though that might be due to something I've done.

- {EDIT} A quiet but slightly annoying whistling type noise sometimes comes through the sound card. I've found that it goes away when sounds are made (e.g. MP3 or windows noises), so I think the sound card drivers might be a little off. It annoyed me a little at first, but I'm used to it now.

Overall:

I'm really glad I bought it. The few niggles I list aren't a big deal for me.

{Edit - Wow, this post got a lot of hits. It seems some people have had a lot of problems with the machine. Mine's still fine 7 months on, but buyer beware...}

Mio C220 GPS First Impressions

I recently bought my first GPS for the car, a Mio C220. What first attracted me to it was that, at $199, it was the cheapest one :). I then read some reviews online, and people seemed pretty happy with it.

What you get
It’s a pocket sized device, with a color touch screen, and a 400MHz processor. The map comes loaded on a standard removable SD card. It’s pre-loaded with the map for North America, but it comes with a DVD with more maps. It comes with a car charger and a suction cup for sticking it to your windscreen. It’s also got a built in speaker for giving directions.

Impressions

• The UI was a bit confusing at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly.
• The touch screen works pretty well, though it’s best if you’re using your little finger and are not driving. Using fat fingers and driving at the same time is a recipe for surprise lane changes.
• The big thing I initially missed was a ‘text to speech’ function. Instead of saying ‘In 100 yards, take the 66 north’ it says ‘In 100 yards, turn right’. This can be frustrating as freeway turns are often on the same side of the road and close together. At first I had issues which would have been helped if it had said the name / direction of the road to take. However, you gradually improve about ‘seeing’ how far distances are, glancing at the map screen, and generally interpreting what it wants you to do.
• One of the things that a review said was that it had a quick screen update time. I’d say the screen updates at between 5-10 frames per second. The result is good. I wouldn’t want one which updated slower.
• The device is pretty small and lightweight, which is nice. Some other GPS devices have bigger screens. That would be nice, but I think the C220 is about big enough.
• Some other GPS devices can play MP3’s or show photos etc. Personally I’m not a big fan of cross over devices. I like phones which just call people, cameras which just take pictures, and fridges which don’t know when I’m out of yogurt. So I actually like that this GPS just serves one purpose. It means I’m not paying for more than I want, and the manufacturer didn’t have to compromise on the creation of the device, and could focus on its core task.
• It doesn’t come with a USB cable. Though, the USB socket is a standard small socket, which I already have a cable for. Also I don’t anticipate needing to plug it in to my PC very often; just when I want to swap in the UK map for a visit home.
• It also doesn’t come with a protective pouch. It’d be nice to have one for when you take it out of the car, as otherwise it just has an exposed screen.
• Overall, I like it very much. It takes a lot of the stress out of driving to new places.