Merge Audio, Video, Subtitle, PPT

A friend of mine had a video.

He wanted to know how to include a background score to the video, then add subtitles, then prefix a few PowerPoint slides and suffix some more PPT sides.

I asked another friend of mine. She told me to use Camtasia software which call provides all the functionality that I needed. And that a .srt created by Camtasia stores the subtitles. The other output from Camtasia, presumably an mp4, along with the .srt file could be played together on VLC player to provide the necessary functionality that we are looking for.

Except that Camtasia is a licensed software and we could use the demo version. Usually a demo version has limited functionality and can be used for only a limited period of time. 

I searched for other ways to address this issue.

Google provided some solutions

Adding subtitles to videos:

Subtitles:

1. https://www.wikihow.com/Add-Subtitles-to-YouTube-Videos using YouTube
2. https://www.kapwing.com/subtitles - Free version leaves a watermark
3. https://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-add-subtitles-to-a-video/ - To be verified
4. https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/tips/add-subtitles-to-mp4.html - To be verified

Adding audio to videos:

Audio

1. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/94316?hl=en using YouTube

It seems like adding audio and subtitles are fairly straightforward. You just need to go to YouTube and follow some steps. The issue I found is that while audio stays added, subtitles are not displayed in the video. Though, in  the YouTube design studio I can see that the subtitles are in place. 

Now we come to the slides. Here the procedure a friend suggested is different. One of the easiest ways is to start from the PPT and then give the link to the video from within the PowerPoint.

https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/insert-or-link-to-a-video-on-youtube-8340ec69-4cee-4fe1-ab96-4849154bc6db.

Now the PPT presentation has to be converted to a video format.

1. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/publish-your-powerpoint-slide-show-as-a-video-to-youtube-ab3e03fd-a0fd-46aa-8d4d-4ac0bf62fd5b

The issue is that I have not been able to make the exported video, from such a PPT having an embedded link to an external video, to work. 


How to convert portrait video to landscape mode:

1. https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Convert-Portrait-Video-to-Landscape/
2. www.kapwing.com/pricing: This tool gives an option to change aspect ratio which solves the problem. Go to design studio and click Resize. The issue is that the free version of the tool leaves a watermark. The tool is very slow though. The online user interface is confusing.

How to Merge videos

1. https://mergevideo.online/merge-mp4 - upload file from computer. When I chose the use URL option, I was not able to find the button to merge!

As things stand now, the procedure sends to be to 

1. Add audio to the video
2. Convert video to landscape mode. This step and the audio step can be interchanged.
3. Convert PowerPoint slides into a video.
4. Merge all the videos.

The addition of subtitles, either in YouTube or in Kapwing is rendered ineffective when convince with the other steps.

When We Hear But Don't Listen

I have a subscribed to a newspaper. I had problems reading it on their app on Android.

Here is the issue raised with them.

Hi, 

I have a yearly subscription. I think the last payment was made in July 2018.

I have 2 android devices. In the first one (Motorola), the subscription details are shown correctly in the app and i have no issue reading the articles. In the 2nd device (Panasonic) the subscription is shown as inactive and I am unable to read the articles. The message shown is that I have to subscribe.

I wonder why I have an issue in the Panasonic phone (Android 7).

Can you help me pls?

Thanks in advance.

Their reply:

Thank you for contacting! I see you are trying to link your Google account with your subscription. To access content with your Google account please be sure you completed the full registration for the link up. Here are instructions to help guide you.

Once you have subscribed through Google Play, you will be prompted to create a profile which will allow you unlimited access to the website, in addition to the app you purchased through. If you do not link your in-app purchased subscription you will not receive full access to the website and mobile website.

If you missed this step when you purchased, please follow the directions below:

Open the app you purchased your subscription from 

Go to Settings

Select Log In or Create Account. Follow the instructions to create a profile 

If you are having trouble linking your Google Play purchased subscription to your sign in credentials, please let us know.

Thanks!

Unbelievable. I thought a bot had responded to the issue. The response above was a mail from the customer care.

Vividh Bharti Announcers

I listen to Vividh Bharti often. Some of the RJ's have terrific voices. Yunus Khan, Neha Paranjape, Neha Sharma (and of late Anuradha) to name a few. Apparently our voice carries more information than just sounds as per this link: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2016/03/10/properties-of-our-voice-encode-information-about-health-fertility-and-body-shape/

Here is a link about them: vividhbharti.org/the-team/. Look also here: http://airaphotos.blogspot.in/2011_09_01_archive.html

A friend sent me a link on vividh bharathi and lovely audio of Amin Sayani here: http://www.hindustantimes.com/music/air-s-80th-birthday-ameen-sayani-narrates-the-story-of-binaca-geetmala/story-DdBhtZad8J30QYNbBYkzsI.html



Additional reading:

1. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/10/sunheri-yaadein-days-of-vividh-bharati.html
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-music.html
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTX-s-lvHx8 - Anuradha

WhatsApp From 2 Phones Simultaneously - Same Number

How do you access wa from two smartphones - for the same number? I do it all the time btw.

For example, one of your phones where was is installed is getting charged and you want to continue chatting (and there is no extension card and you don't want to stand next to the wall forever) or you and your husband want to chat with your son from different phones.

Phone/Internet Location / IP Used in A Legal Case

https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiEC24XTnV1GfoBd5IXieTm0IqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowzrL9CjDC7vQCMK2y1gU

I always used to wonder about phone location being used in legal cases to prove / disprove the presence of a person at a location. 

Now in the link above, a person was proved to be online and hence acquitted from a murder rap. Since the person was online as per the Google's IP records. Now he could have 

1. been online on a computer / phone and taken a break and committed murder. Especially on a phone. Even from a laptop with a mobile wifi or Jiofi (or its equivalent).
2. Someone else could have been using his phone from a phone or even from computer and accessing stuff online. 

That my user id was online from 4PM to 11PM - does it necessarily mean I wasn't doing anything else offline?

Indian Rail Guide

I downloaded this app and I was going through its features. Quite a cute little app. 

The menu options (there are few more if you scroll below in the app. They didn't fit into the screen): 

What I didn't like about the app:

• It would not install on the SD card.
• I could not find the list of trains between two places.. Every menu option assumes you have the train number. This is inconvenient. I use another app to find the train number and then use it here. I hope I got it wrong. 
• I couldn't make sense of some of the menu options.
• "My Favorite Trains (PRS)" shows timetable (TT) only from among those trains in which user has reservations. "My Favorite Trains (All)" potentially shows timetable (TT) of all trains. Why does someone need the former (PRS)?
• Similarly there is a "Trains Between Stations (PRS)" and "Trains Between Stations (All)". I wonder what the difference between the two is.
• Unfortunately there is no option to show where the various compartments are in a train rake - meaning where S12, for example, is between the engine and guard compartments.

What I loved about it:

• Doesn't seem to consume too much internet data -  remember you will not be on broadband when you are traveling. I still am kinda doubtful about the app behavior when the data connection is not good as in 2G/3G mobile data.
• It has a feature "Current seat availability" you specify a station - the app shows you all the trains departing in the next 4 hours and ticket available by class and train number. I selected the station RJY (Rajahmundry) it showed about 6 trains in which tickets were not available in any class (and I guess to any intermediate station or final  destination in each of the trains). Only one 1st AC ticket was available on the Garib Rath to Hyderabad. See picture to the right.. I chose Rajahmundry because I wanted to see how the feature works on a station that is not a terminus. I checked availability of 3AC ticket in IRCTC.co.in and found that no tickets were available. I checked back on the app. True enough, all trains now showed red. The lone Garib Rath ticket must have been booked in the meanwhile. Of course I have not checked this feature exhaustively. This feature is very useful for people like me who tend to plan a trip on the fly based largely on tickets that are available. It might also be useful for couples that plan to elope. For example, Kareena and Shahid could have used this feature in Jab We Met. See right.
• The menu item "My Train Tickets" allows you to enter your PNR numbers and then all the train, seat etc details are displayed for each of your PNR. And the PNR details are listed one below the other sorted by date of travel which is very nice. You can then click on a train, you are taken to train schedule.
• Arrival/Departures Live: You choose a station (I chose Chennai Central). The tool shows you expected departures and arrivals for the next few hours sorted on time. I would have like departures and arrivals to be color coded differently. What is available is still nice. See below.
  
• There are couple more interesting menu items. "Special Trains" and "Rescheduled/Canceled/Diverted Trains" See below.
  
  
  
• The "Coach Layout/Seat Map" option shows where the seats are in a compartment. It is dependent on the train number but depends only on the class of the compartment (such as CC, 3A, SL etc). See below.

• I checked "Automatic PNR tracking". Whenever PNR status got updated I got notified. I have not yet checked "Automatic Train Tracking". These options are very nice.. But I wonder what the impact will be on battery and data usage. 

Additional reading:

• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2014/04/going-on-trip-tips.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2014/12/premium-tatkal.html

Cloud And The Heart

I was explaining to someone what cloud storage was. I used a metaphor. I said, let's say we have our cupboard full of our things - dresses, books etc. I cannot use those when I am in some other place because they remain in that cupboard in our house. What if, by magic, we could store that cupboard out there where it's safe and still outs and be able to access from anywhere in the world?

Even if we go to America we could access the stuff in our cupboard. The cupboard is still ours except it's not in our house. It's out there in the cloud. The stuff has to be uploaded to  the cloud once and retrieved from wherever we are. Of course courier charges apply to send it and retrieve it (that's the amount charged for data by your ISP). There are storage charges (companies charge us some amount per month or year for any storage beyond the free limit) as well.

And then I went back to the mythological stories I had read in my childhood days. Where a king's heart is stored external to him in some special place and he couldn't be killed unless someone could destroy that secret place (may be a tree). Well imagine storing your heart in the "cloud". And this was thousands of years ago. We have now only evolved to keeping electronic files "out there". 

Additional reading:

A friend sent me this: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1085035504886112&set=p.1085035504886112&type=3 (It is about culture but I  recommend that you don't watch it if you a puritan. My friend isn't one.) Read also the comments.

Money For Nothing And Bits For (Almost) Free

I was reading this article (http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=767954867&ids=0Rd3kTejsUdzsIdPkRcPkMe3oTb38TdzkPdPsSdOMNcz8NcjkUdzsIdPoUd3kVdPoT&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-4&ut=2XTzpsSK6NG4U1) now.

Almost unlimited storage on the cloud for almost no money. Only thing is one has to send and receive the files to and from the cloud which can kill you in bandwidth costs or time for up/downloading.

But assume there comes a time in 2014 when network is reliable and dirt cheap like this company is making hard disk space out to be, then what? Portable hard disks will become extinct or limited to usage inside planes or deep in the jungles of Amazon.

Further along I was thinking of the mobile phone. It comes with a SIM that carries your number and a very little amount of storage space. If you want to move stuff in and out from your phone, you need to have a separate removable storage card. 

Then what is the SIM for? Perhaps as an ID card for the phone. To tell the phone and hence the network provider where the ID (mobile number owner) is currently. Why can't this be software controlled. All it needs is to enter the ID (phone number) on booting the phone, with some password/control mechanism. One can do away with the useless thing called the SIM card.

And if this company's idea (store on the cloud) works and if the network becomes reliable and cheap, one can get rid of the storage disk also on phones. Unless of course one is a no network coverage area and one wants to use non-phone related data such as ebooks, music etc.

Let's wait for 2014. (How am I guessing the year 2014? Just a crystal ball.)

Microsoft And Skype

I read this
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/10/microsoft_skype_buy_near/ and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/06/who_should_buy_skype/) today.

Microsoft plans to purchase Skype for $8billion. Skype's annual revenues are approximately $1b and profits are about $30m (http://gigaom.com/2011/05/06/facebook-skype/, http://www.businessinsider.com/skype-ipo-analysis-rebtel-2010-8, http://gigaom.com/2010/08/29/is-skype-up-for-sale/). They have 124 million active users, about 25m concurrent users and 8m paying users.

Note:

Annual profits have been extrapolated from 6 month data given in the article above. This value could be off by about 10%.

This means that the average revenue per user (ARPU) is about $8 per year, considering only active users. ARPU for Bharti Airtel, a leading telecom company in India is about $8 per month. While Airtel and Skype address different (types of) markets this data would be good to have in mind.

As per the article above, Skype has 8m paying users. This is 6% of their active user base. 

ARPU of paying users is about $125 per year or $10 per month. This sounds reasonable.

But a valuation of $8b for an annual revenue of $1b and profits of 30m seems too high. We seem to be chasing paper money again.

Let history remember this day that I said MS is making a colossal mistake.
Related reading:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576315501698635160.html
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/cloud-computing2/microsoft-skype-136128
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/idINIndia-56917620110514

A Simple Way To Track Expenses, Incomes And Accounts

A friend of mine asked me for some help to help track expenses at home. And to keep track of money given by her boss towards his expenses which she makes (meaning stuff for his house or the office that she buys for her boss). While her boss trusts her implicitly she still likes to keep track of money that he pays her and settle accounts. Every once in a while she gives him an account of where the money was spent. 

Then she has a running account with a cousin for whom similarly she makes purchases.

Sounds familiar? 

On top of it if you have a need for keeping track of future expenses and know how much balance you are likely to have in each account (so that your cheques don't bounce, you have to make sure that a minimum amount is in the account)?

Well there is a simple solution. All you need is Microsoft Excel. A spreadsheet that I have does all this and more. So if you need to know where you spent money, what your balance will be in future, who owes you how much or how much do people owe you, this spreadsheet will help you.

And it takes 5 minutes each day to update your transactions on the spreadsheet. You don't have to depend on your memory or write in pieces of paper. You get to track all the information that I mentioned above in one spreadsheet.

Note: This is not a spreadsheet meant for investment planning. This is meant for tracking your expenses, account balances.

Eloping With Performance Tuning

Today I met some old friends of mine. They were colleagues about 10 years back when I used to be in the performance management field. I was almost thrown into this field. The job was to benchmark the performance (response times) of web applications when they were used by hundreds (or thousands) of concurrent users.

Now the fun was to not only test the applications but also to tune the applications.

Now the applications were often slow, no matter how best of breed the hardware was, the software vendors were or the tools (like database) used were. And each one would point a finger at the other. A good performance tester would find out whether there was a problem and where the problem was and recommend what needed to be done to fix it. The most elementary recommendation would be to throw more RAM / processor / server into the configuration. In many cases this would not solve the problem.

And here I was asked to handle a project to test and tune the website of a well known bank in India. Sure, enough it was a disaster. Meaning I did not know how to tune it.

Finding out that the website was slow was easy enough. But I could not digest the fact that an external entity like my team (meaning people who had not written the software) could find out why the site was slow and what specifically needed to be done to fix the problem.

Two of the colleagues I met today were people whom I had recruited. The first person was not employed when he had applied for a job. He was very talented, very quiet, very competent. I picked him up immediately.

The second person was a database specialist. He was also out of a job when he applied for a job. At that time we were going through a tricky performance problem in a database. I said he could have the job only if he could fix the problem. He took up the challenge, postponed his trip down south to the village to be with his family. And fixed our problem and got the job.

In the initial days, we were all learning how to tune a software. It's much like being a doctor or mechanic. You have to know what to look out for. And to be able to zoom into where the problem is. And find a solution to fix the problem.

Over a period of a year, I learnt what not to do. And that was to NEVER to give good practices as recommendations.

Let me explain.

When you go to a doctor and say you have cancer, would you like it if the doctor looked at all the reports and said "go eat an apple everyday"? Good practices are useful before a problem occurs. After a problem occurs you are interested in doing few specific things to fix the problem and not in following good practices.

A good doctor is one who conducts the fewest number of tests and fixes your problem fast. A bad doctor is one who gets umpteen tests done and finally tells you to pray.

These colleagues and others in the team and I got to be better over a period of a year by which time we were cocky enough to say that we could improve the performance of any application by 2x factor (meaning twice).

During that time another guy whom I met today was in love with a girl. The girl's parents were dead against him. We helped our colleague to go to the town where the girl was and pick her up and whisk her back to the big city. Even now I cannot believe it. It was almost like in a movie.

Today I asked him how the girl was whom he stole from her parents. He blushed and said she was going good and that they have a daughter. And that he keeps telling his daughter to not ever run away with a boy.

Yeah right.

Old memories.

On Liners

I was talking to a friend of mine about people having online friends. I guess the reason why people make friends online (than offline or in the real world) could be because:

They are people who:

• Don't have a social life in real life. They are lonely. Single/divorced/or if married, not much of a connect existing with the spouse.
• Cant go out and have a social life for reasons that are social (for example, already married), financial (cant afford to go out).
• Have a need for some warmth/stimulation in their lives.

As my friend aptly put it, these are people who need the "illusion of a rich social life".


My friend then asked me to evaluate the depth of a relationship. So I came up with a definition. A relationship can be measured on these dimensions:

• Longevity (fly by night friend as against life long friend). This dimension is perhaps a result of the other dimensions mentioned below.
• Quality of emotions/relationship (How much can I do for you.. Will I avoid you the moment I sense a problem or will I let you cry on my shoulder as long as you want.. Do I provide "Unlimited shoulder time" and/or also fix your problems?
• My availability (how much of the 24 / 7 hrs am I available).
• Another friend later added a vital point which is sharing a wavelength.

I realized later that there are other softer factors which also are relevant. How much do I expect from you in return? Do I suffocate you by needing your presence or by having high expectations (of exclusivity, attention expensive gifts etc) from you all the time?


This other friend also explained one thing to me. That when people come online, it's like going to a bar or to a movie. You are not going to be serious there. You want some instant fun, light banter. Not serious stuff. Hence good friendships usually aren't formed online.


Hmm. Interesting. Never thought so much about relationships. 

Google Search And Mobiles - How Our Lives Have Changed

Back, when I was in my early teens, I used to wonder why we have to carry money in our pocket. Money always belongs to an individual. What if each person had some way to identify the (amount of) money that belonged to him (like his fingerprint)? All that was needed was a way of transferring money from one person (A) to another (B). A would "say" I give $5 to B and voila... A's balance would decrease by $5 and B's would increase by the same amount. This was my thought in those days when I had not heard of ATM (debit) card / credit cards etc. Money nowadays has become fungible and transfers can be made in a variety of ways other than giving a currency note (or bill).

So much has changed in the last 40 years.  What else do I feel has made a drastic change in our lives? I am amazed by two things. Search (as in Google search) and mobile (telephony).

If we take Google (search), the idea of searching based on words/phrases and not having to know where the information is is fantastic. It has created a paradigm shift in the way we do things. We don't need to remember things. We don't need to remember where things are to be found. We have moved from facing difficulties in searching to making good use of the information that is now readily available. 

Mobiles, in the same way, have made a big change in the way we interact and communicate. Gone are the days when we had to wait 10 years (in India) to get a landline telephone installed. And so also the days of waiting for the postman to deliver letters from friends and relatives. We communicate instantly. Information about friends/relatives is immediately available. Now the question is: what do we with the information? 

But there are a few things I find irritating about Google search. I find that searches at the same time:

1. Give different number and ranking of results with the same keywords by two different people.
2. Give different number and ranking of results in the same computer in two different browsers (for example Internet Explorer and Chrome).
3. Give more results when more words are given in the search (I intuitively expect fewer results when I give more words in the search).

Another issue is that the number of results mentioned by Google is usually higher than the actual number of results (if we browse through each of the pages of the results we can observe this). All these make me feel that a more appropriate name for Google would be Googlantika OR Googlee OR Googlea.

Each of this is an irritant and causes me to wonder whether the search results are accurate. Of course I don't mean to say that bing or yahoo search are any better. I don't use them so I can't say how they behave. Google search is amazing but for these irritants.

Notwithstanding these irritants, Google search and mobile telephony have made a big impact in our lives. This makes me wonder how life will be 40 years hence, say in 2050. Will our travel be cut down drastically? Will we do most things through video telephony? (This is what my brother says will happen in the next few years).

Will we have an enhanced "google earth" which can show streaming video if we were to give the latitude/longitude and altitude of any location? How would life be then?

Want to know how your grandmom is? Sure, specify her location and see for yourself (provided you are given security sufficient access by her). Maybe the tool that exists then won't even need her location. She (like any mobile today) may inform her whereabouts and the tool can find out where she is.

Will the world become like European Union where there is free movement of people? And maybe we will have fewer currencies and languages spoken?

Will information search become hierarchical instead of flat meaning an automatic ability to search deeper in a restricted area and make information available from sites that require further levels of authentication?

Maybe our daily diet will be available as a concentrate/tablet (so many calories of proteins, so many of carbohydrate etc). Maybe there will be another tablet which will extract so many calories from our body obviating the need for exercising.

Maybe we can charge our mobiles through wireless. No need to be connected to an electrical outlet. Computers will become the size and shape of an ebook reader (with no separate mouse or keyboard). And may perhaps look a normal telephone when earphone is hooked to it. Videocalls can then make sense. Imagine having a videocall when you have the mobile right next to your ear? What does the other person see?

And maybe our homes will be standardized so we won't always come back or stay in the same home. Maybe we will decide which "home" to get back to. Nor which office to go to.

Maybe we could tailor make our babies. Just provide the specification. An enhanced IVF will do the rest.

And perhaps we will find a way to transmit smell. And color of our dress, furniture can be changed at will ("personalized any time").

How does all this sound!!

My Music

I have always been a music enthusiast, well hmmmm, let me rephrase it.. I can't stand new songs in any language. I love the music of 1950's 60's and to a lesser extent that of 70's. In my school and college days I would have music playing in a tape recorder. Even when I started working, I would have with me a small transistor (used to look like a cell phone of these days).

For a long time I have been looking for radio stations on the internet which would play continuous music of the variety that I like.

I found some.

• Hindi Oldies: http://tunein.com/radio/Hindi-Desi-Bollywood-Evergreen-Hits-s129208/
• Tamil Oldies: http://www.tamiltubevid.com/2008/04/tamil-fm-internet-radio-old-songs-live.html
• Vividh Bharathi: http://www.listenradios.com/vividh-bharati-online/ (If you are in Chennai, tune in to 102.3 FM, 1323 Khz in Kolkata).

Today I did what I had been meaning to do for a long time. A friend encouraged me. I created a playlist of songs in my computer. Now I have music playing in the background and I dont have to choose and play songs one by one. Ooh la la la. Thank you (rain).


Additional reading:

• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/01/old-mostly-bollywood-videos-of-50s-and.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/12/old-indian-movies-songs-and-actors.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2011/04/piano-duets-in-hindi-movies.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2012/03/raha-gardishon-mein-hardum.html
• https://sunheriyaadein.wordpress.com/