Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Boraxman to Moondog on Mon Jul 18 2022 07:42 pm

Bo> DVD has multiple audio channels, so you should be able to find a tool
Bo> which wil let you extract that channel, or encode that additional channel
Bo> instead.

MakeMKV can extract videos from a DVD (and blu-ray) into a .mkv file, and then you could use something to extract the audio track (such as StaxRip, which can separate out all the video and audio tracks). I have a feeling there may be easier wasy to rip just the audio track though..

Nightfox

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Re: Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Moondog on Mon Jul 18 2022 07:09 am

PF> I went the other way once, took digital tracks and made a DVD out of them.
PF> It was a lot of fun, you could make your own title screen and menus,
PF> select what options and where they'd go on the screen, and lay out
PF> chapters on the disk.

I've done that before. I liked doing that kind of thing. A few years ago, I wanted to create some 4K blu-ray discs that way, but was having trouble finding good software to do it. I found one piece of software for blu-ray authoring, but it was fairly expensive (I think they wanted around $300 or so for a license).

Nightfox

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Ogg on Sun Jul 17 2022 09:31 pm

> Subject: "Highly profitable" Bay Street Video store n Toronto thrives
> @MSGID: <62D4E206.36135.dove.dove-ent@realitycheckbbs.org>
> @REPLY: <62D40D1E.37416.dove-ent@capitolcityonline.net>
> @TZ: c1e0
> Re: "Highly profitable" Bay Street Video store n Toronto thrives
> By: Ogg to Digital Man on Sun Jul 17 2022 09:18 am
>
> Og> The display packaging (to prevent shoplifting) for such SD
> Og> cards would have been a nightmare. The basic SD products are
> Og> all practically under lock and key at department/convenience
> Og> stores.
>
> Remember those big shrinkwrapped cardboard cartons for CDs, so they could fi
>

I figured they were for anti-theft. If they didn't have big cardboard
cartons, they had big long plastic caddies that required a tool to remove.
CD's were expensive until someone pointed out they don't cost any more in
production of media or manufacturing. I recall one record label insisted to
keep prices higher than cassettes just because they're "better."

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-=> Nightfox wrote to Kaelon <=-

Ka> Considering optical media starts to decay in around 20 years, this is no
Ka> longer a theoretical. Any DVD or Blu-Ray purchased at the start of the
Ka> millenium is nearing its end-of-life. Best to rip it soon before quality
Ka> begins to decline.

Ni> That's what people say, but I have some old discs that I still
Ni> haven't had any problem with. I have a DVD movie I purchased a
Ni> little over 20 years ago, and I just watched it again a couple
Ni> months ago and it didn't have any problems. I also have a CD-R
Ni> that I backed up my original 90s BBS onto in 2000, and I was
Ni> still able to read it recently.

I agree with this. I have 25 year old CDRs (and CDRWs!) that I recorded
myself, and I just checked a couple of them right now. Worked fine.

Ni> For those who have experienced optical media "decay", I have to
Ni> wonder if those discs were stored somewhere that was too warm or
Ni> perhaps in sunlight or something.

I'd almost be willing to put money on that being the case. I don't
think the life of a CD/DVD is *infinite*, but I do think it's a *LOT*
longer than 20-ish years.

.... So easy, a child could do it. Child sold separately.
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Re: Re: "Highly profitable" Bay Street Video store n Toronto thrives
By: Gamgee to Nightfox on Mon Jul 18 2022 02:39 pm

Ga> I'd almost be willing to put money on that being the case. I don't
Ga> think the life of a CD/DVD is *infinite*, but I do think it's a *LOT*
Ga> longer than 20-ish years.

When CDs were a relatively new medium, I remember hearing people say they should theoretically last hundreds of years. Maybe that's too optimistic, but I tend to think they should last quite a while.

I've also seen "M-Disc" recordsable optical discs that are supposedly made to last a lot longer than regular recordable discs.

Nightfox

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Mon Jul 18 2022 08:42 am

> So much data has already been lost. Think of the early internet, how much
> of that is still around? archive.org does a decent job, but good like
> finding some sites from the late 90's.

Complete agree. While archive.org does a decent job - of that I agree - they are only really capturing a miniscule fraction of all webpages. Think of the vast troves of really great sites (not to mention the countless crap-sites!) from Geocities, Lycos, HomeStead, etc. Gone. Completely.

Again, I channel a lot of the people that write about this sort of stuff and they beg, plead even, to just print everything out. Photos. Books. Posts. Whatever you care about, if you want it to survive for posterity, affix it to some physical format.

I cannot imagine that future generations will ever care to even try and unscramble the worthless ancient formats, even if they can get their hands on it. The Digital Detritus will be swept away by failed sites and unarchived flotsam.
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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Re: Enduring File Formats
By: Moondog to Kaelon on Sun Jul 17 2022 10:16 pm

> Caere Paperport scanners had their own format that it saved fiules in by
> default. Caere was bought up by Caldera, and I haven't seen a copy of their
> s oftware since the XP days.

Oh my god, talk about two names I haven't heard from in decades. Goes to further prove your point!
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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Re: Enduring File Formats
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Kaelon on Sun Jul 17 2022 09:35 pm

> Some of the early content created in Director, Shockwave and Flash were
> pretty amazing. I wish I'd saved some of it.
>
> The internet archive has some of it saved, including Radiskull and Devil
> Doll. Look it up. :)

I absolutely will! Thanks for the callout of some of your creations.

I remember fondly the countless flash games, many of which never were translated, but laid the foundation for other wonderful HTML5 successors. I'm still bewildered that Adobe just abandoned the format altogether, rather than find a way to partner with Apple for rendering on mobile devices, since it was, after all, Apple that ditched full support for Flash. Much like the entire web, the future (and the majoritarian present today) is purely mobile.
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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> I tend to watch a half hour episode of a particular series in the morning on m
> phone or iPad when having my breakfast before watching a single episode of
> something longer in the evening on returning home from work and having dinner.

Same here. There are a lot of days I don't feel like I have time to watch
too much.

* SLMR 2.1a * Tell me, is something eluding you, Sunshine?

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> Really? I assume you've tried the usual methods to remove the DRM and copy-pro
> ction schema? Handbreak + AnyDVD / Slyfox combination?

Handbrake could not find anything to pull off the DVD... well, except the
commercial tracks. Those don't have any protection on them I guess.

I am not familiar with the other two but, based on the order you have them
in, I am assuming that Handbrake has to do something first that it cannot
do if it cannot find anything?

* SLMR 2.1a * Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?

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> She was director over business services, and i cannot figure how she ranked
> so high. She tried to move further up the food chain by taking the senior rea
> ctor operator's licensing course. She got canned for cheating on the final
> exam.

You may have answered your own question there, assuming there were previous
tests to cheat on and she didn't get caught before.

The fact that she was in a position to possibly be a reactor operator (I am
assuming nuclear) should be enough to scare anyone.

* SLMR 2.1a * ....we came in?

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Dumas Walker to KAELON on Mon Jul 18 2022 04:04 pm

DW> Handbrake could not find anything to pull off the DVD... well, except the
DW> commercial tracks. Those don't have any protection on them I guess.

I've never used Handbrake for disc ripping, only transcoding.. I didn't even realize Handbrake could do that. Usually I rip discs with Makemkv, and then transcode the resulting video with Handbrake to make it smaller.

Nightfox

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Mon Jul 18 2022 11:29 am

> MakeMKV can extract videos from a DVD (and blu-ray) into a .mkv file, and
> then you could use something to extract the audio track (such as StaxRip,
> which can separate out all the video and audio tracks). I have a feeling
> there may be easier wasy to rip just the audio track though..
>
> Nightfox

ffmpeg can do this quite easily. I use it all the time to extract audio from a video file.

Just use ffmpeg to 'convert' the video to another file, using 'copy' as the audio codec and 'none' as the video codec.

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-=> Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

Ni> Re: Re: "Highly profitable" Bay Street Video store n Toronto
Ni> thrives
Ni> By: Gamgee to Nightfox on Mon Jul 18 2022 02:39 pm

Ga> I'd almost be willing to put money on that being the case. I don't
Ga> think the life of a CD/DVD is *infinite*, but I do think it's a *LOT*
Ga> longer than 20-ish years.

Ni> When CDs were a relatively new medium, I remember hearing people
Ni> say they should theoretically last hundreds of years. Maybe
Ni> that's too optimistic, but I tend to think they should last quite
Ni> a while.

Yes, I remember that too, and agree that (maybe) that's a little too
optimistic, but I think a hundred seems possible, assuming proper care
and storage.

Ni> I've also seen "M-Disc" recordsable optical discs that are
Ni> supposedly made to last a lot longer than regular recordable
Ni> discs.

Haven't heard of those, but might look for that the next time I buy a
spindle of something. I don't use many any more these days, but a
couple of times a year I'll burn my /SBBS directory to one, date it, and
add it to a pile.

.... Internal Error: The system has been taken over by sheep at line 19960
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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Mon Jul 18 2022 03:16 pm

>
> Complete agree. While archive.org does a decent job - of that I agree -
> they are only really capturing a miniscule fraction of all webpages. Think
> of the vast troves of really great sites (not to mention the countless
> crap-sites!) from Geocities, Lycos, HomeStead, etc. Gone. Completely.
>
> Again, I channel a lot of the people that write about this sort of stuff and
> they beg, plead even, to just print everything out. Photos. Books. Posts.
> Whatever you care about, if you want it to survive for posterity, affix it
> to some physical format.
>
> I cannot imagine that future generations will ever care to even try and
> unscramble the worthless ancient formats, even if they can get their hands
> on it. The Digital Detritus will be swept away by failed sites and
> unarchived flotsam.
> _____

I do that with photos which we take which matter to us, we print them into a book, though that is only a fraction of what we've taken.

I consider myself quite computer literate, having worked as IT support/co-admin, and even I worry about losing data that *I* handle, let alone others. People store their digital photo's on a laptop, one theft away from total loss. Someone I knew had theirs on a harddrive which they spilled liquid or or dropped. My wife had the only copies of many photos on her hard drive, which one day, decided to just die in a puff of smoke (luckily it somehow just worked again months later). Burned DVD's last, usually, but I've been stung by manufacturing defects. How many people use M-DISK? No one really. How many people have their photos managed by iPhoto or something, and have no idea where the files actually are on their drive, or how to access this outside of iPhoto/whatever-cloud-service?

If it is hard for me, what hope do others have?
So even if the information is around and not lost, how to find it? This was an issue in Medieval Europe too, old scrolls and books just laying in a jumble which no one knew, or cared, to know what they were.

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Re: Re: "Highly profitable" Bay Street Video store n Toronto thrives
By: Gamgee to Nightfox on Mon Jul 18 2022 08:58 pm

Ni>> I've also seen "M-Disc" recordsable optical discs that are
Ni>> supposedly made to last a lot longer than regular recordable
Ni>> discs.

Ga> Haven't heard of those, but might look for that the next time I buy a
Ga> spindle of something. I don't use many any more these days, but a
Ga> couple of times a year I'll burn my /SBBS directory to one, date it, and
Ga> add it to a pile.

Yeah, I often used to burn my BBS backups to a CD-R, but now, even compressed, my BBS backup file needs more space than a CD-R. I've been using a USB flash drive most of the time now.

Nightfox

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Dumas Walker to KAELON on Mon Jul 18 2022 04:04 pm

> I am not familiar with the other two but, based on the order you have them
> in, I am assuming that Handbrake has to do something first that it cannot
> do if it cannot find anything?

Admittedly, it's been a few years since I ripped off Blu-Rays and DVDs, but you use Slyfox's AnyDVD to remove the copyprotection (by actually writing the keys to your active memory and allowing decoding), and then Handbrake should be able to pull the video and audio streams off of the disc. That's the theory at any rate.
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Nightfox to Dumas Walker on Mon Jul 18 2022 06:14 pm

> I've never used Handbrake for disc ripping, only transcoding.. I didn't
> even realize Handbrake could do that. Usually I rip discs with Makemkv, and
> then transcode the resulting video with Handbrake to make it smaller.

I second MakeMKV. It's a solid utility and it can punch through most of the copy protection without the keys.
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Dumas Walker to MOONDOG on Mon Jul 18 2022 04:15 pm

> The fact that she was in a position to possibly be a reactor operator (I am
> assuming nuclear) should be enough to scare anyone.
>

they also have chemical reactor operators where you operatore pumps hoses, valves to xfer chemicals in liquid and powder form.

i've done that.

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Tue Jul 19 2022 12:16 pm

> I do that with photos which we take which matter to us, we print them into a
> book, though that is only a fraction of what we've taken.

I think this comes down to content value. When it was challenging to affix content to a physical format, authors, artists, writers, musicians, and creators throughout history exercised some degree of prioritization and restraint. "Is this important to me? Would it be important to others?" This was a critical viewpoint.

In the Age of Digital, no such question necessarily needs to be asked. For those of us who grew up around personal computers (I'm looking at you, fellow Gen-X'ers), we still took some degree of care with how we spent our time. But true "digital natives," namely, Millennials and now Gen-Z'ers, are engaged in total digital broadcasting (sometimes derivisively dismissed as 'narcissism'). Every thought, perspective, whisper, scribble, etc., gets "affixed" to a digital format - website, blog, forum, social media stream, photo site, etc.

TL;DR - Not everything is actually important. So the fact that most of it is lost is not, necessarily, a catastrophic loss for civilization. But it is lost, and future generations will know next to nothing about Geocities, let alone the early days of the Internet.

> I consider myself quite computer literate, having worked as IT
> support/co-admin, and even I worry about losing data that *I* handle, let
> alone others. People store their digital photo's on a laptop, one theft
> away from total loss. Someone I knew had theirs on a harddrive which they
> spilled liquid or or dropped. My wife had the only copies of many photos on
> her hard drive, which one day, decided to just die in a puff of smoke
> (luckily it somehow just worked again months later). Burned DVD's last,
> usually, but I've been stung by manufacturing defects. How many people use
> M-DISK? No one really. How many people have their photos managed by iPhoto
> or something, and have no idea where the files actually are on their drive,
> or how to access this outside of iPhoto/whatever-cloud-service?

Great point.

> If it is hard for me, what hope do others have?

Totally.

> So even if the information is around and not lost, how to find it? This was
> an issue in Medieval Europe too, old scrolls and books just laying in a
> jumble which no one knew, or cared, to know what they were.

During the Renaissance, this problem was tackled programmatically through a variety of specialized roles:

* ARCHIVISTS were responsible for determining how content would be stored for the long-haul, and built upon the ancient library science and started creating standards for preservation, categorization, and reference.

* CHRONICLERS reviewed all of the news of the ages and built abridged histories, or Chronicles, of the time, including extentive reference to content that had been archived for future generations to conduct follow-up research.

* HISTORIANS became the scholars that reviewed the chronicles and cross-referenced with what archivists, and lesser librarians, had stored, in order to produce more 'modern' retrospectives and studies on what really happened and what the impact of what happened was.

We need similar roles for the new digital age. And I am not really convinced that the Internet Archive has a true archival, chronicling, and historiographic practice for their resspective domains.
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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-=> Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

Ni>> I've also seen "M-Disc" recordsable optical discs that are
Ni>> supposedly made to last a lot longer than regular recordable
Ni>> discs.

Ga> Haven't heard of those, but might look for that the next time I buy a
Ga> spindle of something. I don't use many any more these days, but a
Ga> couple of times a year I'll burn my /SBBS directory to one, date it, and
Ga> add it to a pile.

Ni> Yeah, I often used to burn my BBS backups to a CD-R, but now,
Ni> even compressed, my BBS backup file needs more space than a CD-R.
Ni> I've been using a USB flash drive most of the time now.

A USB drive would work fine too, although somewhat more susceptible to
damage/erasing, or even loss, I would think. I use a DVD-R these days.

I actually haven't done that (burn a disc) in quite a while now... I do
have an automated event that runs each night, doing an rsync "diff"
backup to a server box here in the house, and also doing that to a
remote/cloud server, (a Linode hosted VPS) that I have. Also every time
I do an SBBS update, I do a complete /sbbs directory copy to a local
server box, prior to starting the update. So I feel like I've got
enough safety nets. :-)

.... Daddy, what does "now formatting drive C:" mean?
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Hello Nightfox!

** On Monday 18.07.22 - 08:28, Nightfox wrote to Ogg:

N> [..] Years ago, I bought a CD from a pawn shop [..] I took
N> the CD back to the store where I bought it, and they took
N> the CD out of the case and brought me another copy of the
N> CD they had and put it in the same case and gave that back
N> to me. For some reason I thought that seemed a bit sketchy
N> at the time, but I guess in the end I still ended up with a
N> good copy of the CD album along with its case and the
N> booklet in the case.

Why sketchy? Did you get a home-burned CD-R version? It would
be very easy to tell the difference between a commercial CD and
a CD-R.

Speaking of CD displays, I remember seeing a really clever
"artistic" approach for home use. Instead of storing CDs in
cabinets or towers, the mechanism permitted snapping a CD case
in a matrix/grid on the wall. And depending on one's takes at
the time, the mix/match of the cases would change over time
too. I thought that was a beautiful way to enjoy favourite CD
art either while it's playing or "just because".

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Kaelon to Dumas Walker on Mon Jul 18 2022 08:06 pm

Ka> Admittedly, it's been a few years since I ripped off Blu-Rays and DVDs,
Ka> but you use Slyfox's AnyDVD to remove the copyprotection (by actually
Ka> writing the keys to your active memory and allowing decoding), and then
Ka> Handbrake should be able to pull the video and audio streams off of the
Ka> disc. That's the theory at any rate.

MakeMKV is simpler, as you don't need any other programs in order to rip from the disc. MakeMKV must have the the necessary keys.. Also, in the past, if I wanted a DVD ISO, I'd use DVD Shrink - That's also self-contained, so you don't need any other programs to rip DVD ISOs with that. (And despite the name, shrinking is optional - You could rip a DVD to 9.5GB, or it could shrink it to 4.7GB).

Nightfox

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay Street Video store n Toronto thrives
By: Ogg to Nightfox on Mon Jul 18 2022 09:49 pm

N>> [..] Years ago, I bought a CD from a pawn shop [..] I took
N>> the CD back to the store where I bought it, and they took
N>> the CD out of the case and brought me another copy of the
N>> CD they had and put it in the same case and gave that back
N>> to me. For some reason I thought that seemed a bit sketchy
N>> at the time, but I guess in the end I still ended up with a
N>> good copy of the CD album along with its case and the
N>> booklet in the case.

Og> Why sketchy? Did you get a home-burned CD-R version? It would
Og> be very easy to tell the difference between a commercial CD and
Og> a CD-R.

It was a commercially produced copy. I guess it seemed sketchy because they seemed to have other copies of the CD by itself (without the case) that they could give to customers to replace the one they had bought.. For a pawn shop, I wouldn't have expected that at the time, I guess.

Nightfox

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Re: "Highly profitable" Bay S
By: Nightfox to Kaelon on Mon Jul 18 2022 08:05 am

> Re: "Highly profitable" Bay Street Video store n Toronto thrives
> By: Kaelon to Nightfox on Sat Jul 16 2022 06:23 pm
>
> Ka> We're the same person. ;) And I, too, assumed that flash-disks or USB
> Ka> drives would have gone mainstream and replaced optical drives, but the
> Ka> entertainment industry is obsessed with digital rights management and
> Ka> getting all of the TV manufacturers to align on the same proprietary
> Ka> format would be madness. So, today, pretty much every TV can decode eve
> Ka> format via USB inserted media, but if a publisher or distributor wants
> Ka> DMR, they're fresh out of luck.
>
> Recently I was thinking that if they did start to distribute movies on USB f
> tanding is that blu-ray and optical drives have a set of keys stored inside
>
> Ka> Considering optical media starts to decay in around 20 years, this is n
> Ka> longer a theoretical. Any DVD or Blu-Ray purchased at the start of the
> Ka> millenium is nearing its end-of-life. Best to rip it soon before qualit
> Ka> begins to decline.
>
> That's what people say, but I have some old discs that I still haven't had a
> hat I backed up my original 90s BBS onto in 2000, and I was still able to re
>
> For those who have experienced optical media "decay", I have to wonder if th
>
> Nightfox
>

I have some CD's burnt from around 98-2000 that only can be read by a slower
speed cd drive. i have had some real cheap discs delaminate though

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