Back in June, I found a way to use ffmegX on a Mac to burn in subtitles. I have discovered 2 more ways to burn in subtitles (1 way Mac and 1 way in Windows). These are the few things that are important no matter what method you use:

1. You must use or convert to an AVI file

2. The subtitle file (.srt) must be named the same exact name as the video file (AVI)

3. The video file and the subtitle (.srt) file should reside in the same folder.

I will link to the first method I discovered in June: http://angelb.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/how-to-burn-subtitles-into-a-video-file/

The second method I used requires a Mac that has Toast Titanium. You will then have to download a free program called Perian: http://www.perian.org/ (make sure you have the latest version of both programs.

I just recently downloaded and installed writer2xhtml (http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/writer2xhtml) for my OpenOffice Writer. This extension installs in the same manner as a Firefox or Chrome extension for your browser (and there’s no need to restart OpenOffice after the install). I was converting Word document files into html and I was looking for a cleaner way to save HTML (from both OpenOffice and Word). This extension leaves minor HTML cleanup for the user (which you can use Dreamweaver or Kompozer). You can also customize the extension (like CSS behavior- you can find how to customize in the manual posted here: http://writer2latex.sourceforge.net/index15.html )

To find the extension, go to File–> Export–> you will now see XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHML 1.1 + MathML 2.0 (.xhtml), and XHTML 1.1 + MathML 2.0 (xsl, xml) as exporting options. Choose the appropriate setting for the file you want to save (first two work if you just want html).

I hope this helps!

Part 1: Creating Tables in Word with just Tabbed Data:

I just worked on a project where we had to convert Word documents that had a table of contents created by just using tabs into HTML tables for a webpage. The one problem with just converting the document into HTML is that you have extra HTML markup from MS Office. Also none of the data was in a table. Here I will break down how I saved the tabbed TOC data into a table in Word, how I cleaned up most of the HTML mark up (hint: I didn’t save the document as an HTML file in Word). Note: I am working in Office 2003, but these functions should be the same in the new Office 2007.

1. Highlight all the data in the documents (Control+A or Apple+A)

2. Go to Table–> Convert–> Table to Text

3. Now since I only wanted two columns, in the popup box, I actually  entered 1 in the text box that says Number of columns. If I entered 2, I sometimes got an extra column. Play around with this number because it might be effected by the way the document was created.

4. Under AutoFit Behavior, I used the defaults. Under Separate Text At: I chose the Tab radio button (since that how the TOC was laid out and created).

5. You will now have created a table around the data.  Save the file. (You can also clean up some of the data (like merging cells) while you are still in the document file format).

Part 2:  Saving as HTML File

1. Download OpenOffice (free open source suite)

2. File—>Save as HTML.

You will notice that there some extra HTML markup added by Open Office, but not as much if you saved it out of Microsoft Word.

Part 3: Further Clean Up of HTML

I used Dreamweaver and took out the font tags and extra Meta Data. You can do this with a text editor like TextEdit or Notepad (but you can use the find and replace features in Dreamweaver). Another HTML Editor called Kompozer (free and open source), has a Search and Replace feature where you can find and replace the font tag. I didn’t really need to do that much clean up though in Dreamweaver.

I hope this help!

Back in August, I used both Google Sketch Up (Pro edition) and Blender 3D to create a 3D environment. The issue with modeling my environment in just Blender 3D was that I needed exact measurements for my environment. Blender 3D does not have (so far in the latest version) the ability to dial in measurements when creating 3D models. Others have ran into this issue too, but it is a great 3D modeling and animation tool other than that draw back. So how did I manage to create the basic 3D environment with Google Sketch Up and then bring it into Blender 3D (finish textures and lighting)? Here’s a few things I had to do:

1. In Blender 3D, make sure your python is the correct version for the version of Blender you are running. There is a difference in releases and yes, there is a difference in 32bit vs. 64 bit. I ended up using 32 bit and using a slightly older version of python. How do you know if Python is  installed correctly? If the Blender window at start up says “Checking for installed Python…. got it!”, you’re in business.

2. To export your model out of Google SketchUp Pro  and into Blender, you need to save the file as an .OBJ. Some colors and textures might import into Blender and Blender can import that file format. Also, you will need the Pro version of Google SketchUp. You can also use the Pro version on an evaluation basis if you are not sure if want to purchase the program yet.

3. If you are bringing a model from Blender into SketchUp, make sure your model is grouped together as one model. If not, you may just be bringing over a piece of your model into SketchUp and not the whole model. With some of my models, I did a mesh join in Blender if the material was going to be simple and the same on all faces of the model (like a textured wall).

4. To bring models back and forth (from Blender into SketchUp and Sketchup in Blender) I always used the .OBJ file type. I did not have any issues when using a .OBJ.

These two programs can create powerful results with very little money (with Blender being free and SketchUp Pro being $495). If you’re not sure about spending the money on SketchUp Pro, try out the Trail version for SketchUp Pro with Blender to see if you want to make the investment. These tools are great together if you want to animate (Blender) a to scale 3D model (created in SketchUp Pro or edit model for measurements in SketchUp Pro). I hope this helps!

I recently received a Word Document (.docx) that had a series of .wav files embedded into it. I wanted to extract the audio wav files as separate files.  I tried to save the doc as an HTML file, hoping I would get the wav files, but that did not work. The way that I did extract the wav files out without having to script with VB is the following (this works in Open Office writer too):

1. Right click on the embedded file’s icon.

2. Choose Package Object, Edit Package.

3. The Object Packager window will appear outside Word (or Writer).

4. Click on File, Save Contents.

5. Name the file whatever it is named in the Object Packager window (example audio.wav), and choose where to save it.

6. Now test out the audio with an audio player installed on your computer. Repeat the steps for each file.  This could be time consuming if there are a lot of audio files embedded in the Word document.

I hope this helps!

I recently had to come up with a list of file names in a folder. Trying to highlight and copy and paste each text file name is way too time consuming. Instead,  I used the command line in Windows to copy all the file names and output them into one text file. Here’s a step by step on how to do that:

1. Click on the Start button and click Run (or if Vista or Win 7 user, press the Windows button and R button at the same time). A Run dialogue box will pop up.

2. In the Run box type “cmd”.

3. Now type “dir” to see which directory in your computer you are located.  If you want another drive letter type the drive letter after the prompt, like this  “d: “(* if you are not sure of the drive letter you can find it under My Computer, to go to another server/network, make sure it is mapped/mounted to your computer).

4. Now, to get to the folder with all the files, type” cd (name of directory)”. To move up a directory, just type “cd..”. To see all of the file names in that folder/directory type “dir”.

5. Once you have found the folder with the file names you want to copy, type “dir /b >filename.txt”. Filename will be what you want to call the text document with all the file names.

6. Now the text file will be saved in the same directory you just copied all the file names from.

I hope this helps!

I wrote this tutorial for the HRC blog:

“Did you ever record video that you wanted to rotate? Have you ever rotated a clip and you were left with extra space on the side you wanted to crop out? I recently worked on a project where we had to rotate video clips and crop out the extra space. The tool we used on the Mac was MPEG Streamclip (http://www.squared5.com/). It is a free video conversion software. Here’s how to rotate the clip and crop it in MPEG Streamclip.”

To view the rest of the tutorial, click on the following link: https://blogs.princeton.edu/hrc/2010/06/how_to_rotate_and_crop_a_video_clip.html

I wrote this tutorial for work. The original post can be found here: https://blogs.princeton.edu/hrc/2010/06/how_to_burn_subtitles_into_a_video_file.html

For this tutorial, you will need the video and an .srt file (text file that contains the subtitles). There are  programs that help you create .srt subtitle files from scratch if it’s a video you created yourself (or if a subtitle does not exist online). Subtitle workshop is a good tool to use: http://www.urusoft.net/products.php?cat=sw&lang=1

Once you created your .srt file, you will need a program to put the video file and the .srt file together. If you burned the file into a DVD format (menus and plays in DVD player), you will need to rip the DVD. Handbrake is a good tool for that task. The other software we used was FFMPEGX for Mac (there is a version for Windows). Here’s the steps we took to burn the subtitles (you can’t turn burned subtitles off) into the video.

I just wrote this tutorial for work  and I would like to share it on my blog. The original post can be found here: https://blogs.princeton.edu/hrc/2010/05/how_to_ocr_and_save_pdfs_as_text_files_using_batch_processing.html .  Here’s a walk through on how to OCR PDFs and save them as text files using the Batch Processing feature and ClearScan feature in Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro.

1. Open Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro

2. In the top Menu, choose Advanced–> Document Processing–> Batch Processing

3. In the Batch Sequences window, choose New Sequence

4. In the textbox, type in a name for the sequence. I chose OCR Text in PDF and Save as Text File. Click OK.

5. Click the Select Commands button.

6. In the Edit Sequence window, under the Docuemnt Folder, choose Recognize Text Using OCR.

7. Now the Add Button in the middle will highlight. Click the Add button. It will appear in the right side column.

8. Double click on the text in the right hand column ( Recognize Text Using OCR) or highlight Recognize Text Using OCR and click the Edit button in the middle bottom of the Edit Sequence window.

9. In the Recognize Text Settings window, choose the language you will be OCRing from the PDFs (we used English (US)).

10. Change PDF Output style to ClearScan.

11. Change Downsample Images to Low (300 dpi).

12. Click OK for the Recognize Text Settings window and Edit Sequence Video.

13. For the Edit Batch Sequence window under step 2, for Run Commands on, click the browse button and choose the folder that has the PDFs you want to OCR and save as text files.

14. For Select output type (step 3), click the browse button and choose the folder you want to save the OCRed text files. You can create a new folder while in the search window.

15. Under step 3, click the Output Options button.

16. Under File Naming Choose how you would like the files to be named (can be set to be same file name as original. You can also chose to overwrite existing files.

17. Under Output Format, choose Export File(s) to Alternate Format.  In the drop down menu, choose Text (Accessible).

18. Click OK for the Output Options and the Edit Batch Sequence windows.

19. In the Batch Sequences window, highlight the sequence you just created and click the Run Sequence button.

20. Click OK. Your batch process will now run on the folder you designated for that sequence. Any errors will be reported as the batch process runs in Acrobat.

Hi All,

Sorry I have not been tending to my blog as of late. I am planning a Blender 3D project soon that will include tutorials (screencasts and text) and simple animations. This project will have it’s own blog. What have I been up to recently? Presentations: https://blogs.princeton.edu/hrc/presentation/. If you want to see what I am up to, Twitter would be your best bet. I am really looking forward to my Blender 3D project. More details to come!