A buddy of mine (thanks Mike) showed me this today. There is a input Access module in the newer versions of VLC (0.8.6+) called “screen” which makes this possible. To stream your desktop to another machine (ip address: 192.168.1.2 in this case) just use the following command in Linux (sorry command line only):vlc screen:// :screen-fps=30 :screen-caching=100 --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=4096,acodec=mpga,ab=256,scale=1,width=1280,height=800}:rtp{dst=192.168.1.2,port=1234,access=udp,mux=ts}'or in Windows (slightly different syntax) use this command:vlc screen:// :screen-fps=30 :screen-caching=100 :sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=2048,scale=1,acodec=mpga,ab=192,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=rtp,mux=ts,dst=192.168.1.1:1234}}This is one massive command, so lets take a look at it in more detail:

• screen:// is our input module selection (if you just run vlc screen:// you’ll see your own screen on the server inside vlc….kinda cool)
• :screen-fps=30 specifies that we want to screengrab at 30 fps (from default 5 fps)
• :screen-caching=100 sets the internal caching to 100ms (from default 300 ms)
• –sout is our output chain.
• #transcode tells vlc that we first want to transcode the input using parameters to follow
• {} contains our transcoding parameters
• vcodec=mp4v sets the video codec to mpeg4 video
• vb=4096 sets the bitrate of the transcoded video (4Mb/s)
• acodec=mpga sets the audio codec to mpeg audio (mp3). Audio does not work yet, this is a place holder.
• ab=256 sets the bitrate of the transcoded audio (256 Kb/s)
• scale=1 sets the scaling value
• width=1280 sets the width of the transcoded video to 1280 pixels
• height=800 sets the height of the transcoded video to 800 pixels
• :rtp tells VLC that we want to use rtp protocol to send the encoder output to our receiver machine using Real Time Protocol.
• dst=192.168.1.2 is the ip address of our destination/playback machine
• port=1234 is the default port on the destination/playback machine
• access=udp specifies UDP protocol
• mux=ts sets multiplexing to mpeg-2 Transport stream

Now on the destination machine just open vlc, goto File/Open Network and by default the Media Resource Locator on top of the window should read udp:// and UDP/RTP with port 1234 should be selected. If it’s not select UDP/RTP (option 1) and put 1234 as the port number. Press Okay and you should see the video stream from the other machine (your server machine). That’s it….Opensource comes to rescue again

This one has been bugging me for so long that once I figured it out today I had to let other know as well. If you’ve been using Windows on your mac using bootcamp you’d know how frustrating it is not to have the right mouse button — you can remedy this with a mouse of course — and no DEL key. This makes deleting files/directories a pain in the ‘nads, let alone trying to right click with the single button on the pad.

I think I’ve found the solution. It’s a windows utility called AutoHotKey and it’s free. Grab it, reboot into WinXP (or whatever Windows) natively and continue on with the tutorial below:

1) Okay so assuming you’re in windows and have AutoHotKey downloaded, go ahead and install the application.
2) Once it’s finished, go to your menu and run the program. It will ask for your permission to create a default script under “My Documents”. Say Yes and let it do this.
3) Go to your “My Documents” folder and find the file AutoHotkey.ahk and edit it.
4) Comment out everything they have put in there using the semicolon “;” at the beginning of those lines.
5) Add the following three lines to the bottom of the script:
NumpadEnter::NumpadDel
LWin::RButton
RWin::RButton
6) Save the file in “My Documents”, go to your icon tray (bottom right), right click and reload the script. Now you should have a proper DEL (small Enter Key) and a proper right mouse click button (the Apple Keys).

You can tweak the script and reload it if you like. The script in the My Documents directory is the default script that gets loaded (you can have others saved in different folders). So now you can add AutoHotKey to your startup folder so it’s started everytime you boot into windows.

Well, I’ll leave this one to you. You can decide on it’s Kosherness. The application is called TED and it can find all sorts of TV episodes you might have missed. From the homepage:

ted can find episodes of any TV show you like to watch. Just add your favorite shows to ted and he will search for the newest episodes and downloads them for you. ted uses bittorrent and RSS technology to get you the newest episodes as fast as possible! ted comes with a huge list of shows, all waiting for you to be watched. ted even displays a summary of each show, to help you choose shows you like.

ted requires Java 5 and a bittorrent client and is available for all platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac). Download here.

You all know my dislike for Microsoft and their products. Whenever possible I’ve tried to get away from having to use their software. Here is another opensource product that allows us to do our thing without them. From their overview page:

OpenProj is a free, open source desktop alternative to Microsoft Project. The OpenProj solution is ideal for desktop project Click to enlarge in a new windowmanagement and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. OpenProj is a complete desktop replacement of Microsoft Project and even opens existing native Project files. OpenProj shares the most advanced scheduling engine in the industry with Project-ON-Demand. The OpenProj solution has Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more.

You can get more detailed information on OpenProj or download now!

Hot on the heels of AJA video’s NAB announcement of their IO HD box, MOTU has just announced their version of Portable Studio in a box, the MOTU V3HD. According to MOTU’s website “With one simple plug-and-play FireWire connection, the V3HD turns your Mac or PC desktop or laptop computer into a powerful HD/SD video production workstation equipped with all the video and audio I/O you need.” Both boxes seem — at first glance — to be very similar. AJA’s box works with Apple’s ProPres 422 (hardware), while V3HD seems to be hardwired for DVCPro HD (hardware). V3HD works with FinalCut Pro on Mac platform and supports Adobe Premiere Pro on Windows. All you need is a Workstation/Laptop with Firewire 400/800 connections. So go ahead and build that portable HD/SD studio you always wanted…..it’s easy.

Before I start this segment I just want to mention that you will need Parallel’s Desktop for Mac for this to work. A new feature in parallels which I just discovered is it’s ability to fuse the two OS’es (OSX and WinXP) together so that you can tell applications in one OS (ie: windows) to open files in the other (ie:OSX).

For example let’s say you have a “Beauty and the Beast” setup on your laptop and you have parallels installed. Someone sends you an excel spreadsheet via email (assume you read your email on OSX). Further, assume you have installed office 2007 on your WinXP partition. Well now with Parallel’s Smart Select feature, you can save the file onto your desktop, right click on it and go to “open with” submenu, there you’ll notice Excel in the list and if you choose it, parallels will open the file in excel 2007 (under Windows).

The same idea works in reverse. If you’re in windows (under parallels) and right click on a icon you’ll see additional mac application volunteering to open the file for you in OSX. I’m relatively sure it works in both Coherence mode and non-Coherence mode, although I’ve only tried it in Coherence mode.