Possible Project: iPad + Canon camera

This is a wild idea and I don't know if its possible, but I'm putting it up here mostly so I remember to try this if I ever get some free time.

The idea is to write an iPad app that can connect to a Canon camera directly through the Apple camera connection kit USB interface. You'd have to reverse engineer the Canon USB control protocol, but these guys seem to have already done so and reimplemented the protocol for use on Arduino microcontrollers:

http://www.circuitsathome.com/camera-control/arduino-based-controller-for-canon-eos-cameras

https://github.com/felis/Arduino_Camera_Control

http://www.circuitsathome.com/ptpusb-control-camera-data

So I think this would be a matter of porting the USB control code to run on iPad, and then working on a GUI to control the camera with.

I'm not saying this will be easy, or if I'll ever have time to look into it. Add this to my pile of "DIY projects I would do if I had the time".

Tutorial: Vevo to iTunes on Mac OS X, Video and Audio (Youtube and others too)

Vevo offers HD videos of your favorite music. Here is how to download them on Mac OS X. This procedure probably works for other sites too like youtube, and tons and tons more.

Getting the Video

1. In Firefox, get the Video DownloadHelper add-on.
2. Go to Vevo (or youtube or most any other tube site), and start watching your video in the resolution you want.
3. Click the arrow next to the rotating DownloadHelper icon at the top of the browserBe careful of downloading the advertisement that plays. It should be pretty obvious (i.e. if an ad plays, don't click on the top file in the list, wait for the video to load and check the list again. Same goes for changing resolutions.)
4. Choose the file you want. For high quality stuff on Vevo, you'll most often get the Apple-ish MP4 version (AAC+h264). For older or lower quality stuff, you'll have to get the flash format (FLV file). I'll assume MP4 video from here on out.
5. If it was 720p (or lower) MP4, this should immediately drop into iTunes and be syncable on AppleTV2/iPhone4/iPad. Enjoy your video!
6. If it was 1080p MP4 or FLV, use Handbrake to convert to iTunes friendly format.

Converting the Audio for iTunes

If you want just the audio ripped from such a file, you just have to remux the audio to the appropriate Apple container. I tried using Quicktime to make a MP4 movie with audio only in it; while that plays correctly in iTunes, its recognized as a video file, which annoys me. So use ffmpeg to remux just the audio to the right container.

1. Get remux. This is a ffmpeg gui, but ships with a current build of ffmpeg, which is easier than installing it from source, fink, or macports, and is more up-to-date than ffmpegX which hasn't been updated in 3 years.
2. Make a symlink to the ffmpeg that lives inside the remux application so you can call it from the command line. I called the link remux_ffmpeg to avoid potential naming conflicts with other tools on my system:

   sudo ln -s /Applications/remux.app/Contents/Resources/ffmpeg /usr/local/bin/remux_ffmpeg

3. Use ffmpeg to get the audio out and remux to the right container. I had to RTFM to figure out exactly how to call it:

   remux_ffmpeg -i in_video.mp4 -vn -acodec copy out_music.m4a

   Just so you know, -vn says no video output, -acodec copy specifies the audio codec should be a passthrough/no re-encode.
4. Now drop into iTunes, and there you go!

Rip Blu-rays with MakeMKV for Mac OS X

There is this cool multiplatform program called MakeMKV that strips DRM off of your Blu-ray collection, and it works natively for Mac. Its currently in beta, so you can use the following beta key (though I'm not sure how this is really different from the 30 day trial, since the beta seems to be running out soon):

T-1kXI22tN1leidXUU8rW81qqCvCyckQQgOJ4W7XB6n6eEfXwRK6K5UEOIVNNflFq87K

It takes whatever is present on the disk and muxes it all into an MKV container without changing codecs. By default, it will copy the video, multiple audio tracks, and subtitles. There are a few problems with this kind of rip though:

• The file size is HUGE, barely smaller than the original Blu-ray.
• Only PCs or certain dedicated media streamers can play 1080p, MKV, or recognize multiple/multichannel audio and subtitles.

Re-encoding the video to 720p h264 and the audio to 2 channel AAC in an MP4 container simultaneously fixes all issues; this format is about 1/4 the file-size of the original video, and is supported on AppleTV2/iPad/iPhone4, and pretty much everything else. Here is my workflow for this process.

Use MakeMKV on a Blu-ray.

Use Handbrake on the resulting files.

Start with the high profile.

1280 x 720 resolution.

Turn off decomb and deinterlace

RF of 20

Check large file size

Remove extra audio passthrough

Drop into iTunes and sync with devices.

Of course, if you have terabytes upon terabytes of storage, forget the Handbrake re-encode, and just watch on your streaming/media box. Enjoy!

Jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 on iPhone 4 (with links)

Update 1: Bluetooth doesn't work as of this release, and neither does Skype. New redsn0w should fix it when it leaves beta status.

Update 2: Betas 5 and 6 have been released since I wrote this, which fix bluetooth and skype, respectively. The link to redsn0w has been updated. The Dev team also says on twitter that they are working on porting the untether to work with a 4.1 IPSW, instead of the 4.2b3 beta firmware only available to developers.

This link has the instructions you need. But the short of it is:

1. Jailbreak with redsn0w.

2. Boot tethered.

3. Update Cydia.

4. Boot tethered again.

5. Install openssh in Cydia.

6. Use jailbreak monte in redsn0w. Note that this requires the 4.2b3 restore file

Here are the files you'll need:

official 4.2.1 restore

4.2b3

Don't pirate this. You should have joined Apple as a developer and downloaded it legitimately.

iphone3,1.4.2.8c5115c.restore.ipsw

redsnow 0.9.7b6

Enjoy! I'll probably be doing this with iPad, so I'll post another one of these when I do.

Galaxy S Tab: the (real) big iPod Touch?

Giz has a very unfavorable review of the Galaxy S tablet. But I point your attention to this image from that article:

That's an iPhone on top of a Galaxy S tablet on top of an iPad. For those saying the iPad was just a large iPod touch, I ask you to reconsider. Its a really good thing that Apple decided to get close to notebook proportions with the iPad and eschew the 7-inch form-factor, because otherwise you'd end up with what really is a big iPod touch in terms of use-cases / user-interaction.

Giz's review even points out that the UI of apps don't have to be changed at all to be usable instantly on the Galaxy S. Perhaps this class of devices (7-inch Android tablets) will be the iPod touch competitors Gruber keeps asking for. Maybe not though, since the media player type of device he wants would be sub $300.

Ars on HDCP Hack Implementation: "Pointless"

From Ars:

The software implementation should be able to decrypt a 1080p30 stream given a suitably fast dual-core processor and about 1.6GB of RAM. The poor performance is due to the nature of the algorithm. HDCP was designed to be cheap and fast for hardware manufacturers, but operations that are quick and easy in hardware are often slow and inefficient in software. In spite of this, the developers believe they have opportunities for further optimization and improvement, making real-time decryption on more modest hardware feasible.

Just wait until someone ports this to FPGA or custom ASIC, bearing in mind that Altera dev boards start at $200. Instant HDCP cracking. What's at stake here is pixel-for-pixel rips of ANY content that plays on your TV.

HDCP Utterly Broken, Intel Doesn't Care

I've been following this story for days now, and it appears Intel has responded saying that the master key that has been released is the real deal. From Ars:

Intel, unsurprisingly, said that it expected HDCP to remain effective. The spokesman told CNET, "There's a large install base of licensed devices including several hundred licensees that will continue to use it and in any case, were a [circumvention] device to appear that attempts to take advantage of this particular hack there are legal remedies, particularly under the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act]."

In other words, Intel and the media companies don't care that their encryption systems offer only token protection and consumer inconvenience; all that matters is that the encryption systems are sufficient to meet the DMCA threshold for a content protection system: the threat of legal action, rather than cryptography, is their real tool against unapproved uses of digital content.

My thoughts exactly; by using an encryption scheme they knew was easily breakable and easy to implement, they can still claim they tried to protect copyrights with this technology so the DMCA applies.

They are wrong about being protected though; its only a matter of time before someone programs a little custom microcontroller or FPGA to use the key to make perfect digital copies of any content over HDMI. Then of course, they make all the code and PCB designs available for free. Hobyists and grey market peddlers alike will start making these things, and probably selling them on eBay. In other words, once something like this gets out, legal action won't be enough to stop its proliferation.

iTunes formats converge on 720p, and why aspect ratio matters

While reading some forums about MP4 authoring, I came to the realization that Apple has finally converged on one video resolution for all of its devices. This is pretty nice, since there will be no more iTunes video downloads that are two files, one for your iPods/iPhones, and one for your AppleTV; now, the ENTIRE video playing mobile line (iPod touches, iPhones, iPad) plus AppleTV support H264 MP4 at 720p.

Now, the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad all don't ACTUALLY have this many pixels on the screen, so your video format is always downscaled for viewing on these devices, but the format convergence is a huge enough of a benefit to offset this effect.

But the pixel mismatch is pretty huge too. In fact, the iPhone's/iPod's 960x640 display is two thrids the pixels of 720p, and after you scale a true 720p video to fit on the screen and take the aspect ratio mismatch (black bars) into account, your screen shows "540p" video, for only 56.25% of the pixels of 720p. The iPad isn't much better; it has about 85% of the pixels of 720p, but a 720p video on the screen shows up as "576p" with 64% of the pixels of 720p.

The point here is that aspect ratio really matters when you talk about video formats and video playback devices. Although Apple has converged on a format, they haven't converged on an aspect ratio, and it really makes a difference to your viewing experience. Now, whether or not they CAN do so is a hard question, but it makes for interesting food for thought. With several different film formats, SDTV, HDTV, DVD, recording equipment, etc. all having slightly different resolutions and aspect ratios, and with all the converting that goes on in the media authoring process, its still a big open question. For my two cents, the HDTV standards of 720 or 1080 lines in a 16:9 aspect ratio seem to be driving the digital video revolution we're seeing. Like Steve said the other day, people want to see TV shows, and they want them cheaply. Clearly ABC and FOX are on board for this 99c rental thing, and all of their shows are authored in 16:9 because HDTV standards are 16:9, and so this seems to be a reasonable aspect ratio to pick for the latest and greatest hardware platform. As another example, the majority of Netflix use I hear about is for watching TV shows, which are all 16:9. This aspect ratio also seems to kind of be smack dab in the middle of common formats. Its the least "wide" of the formats we consider widescreen, so its still okay for 4:3 SDTV content, and "anamorphic widescreen" formats don't have TOO much screen real estate wasted.

The problem with this reasoning is that its a tradeoff. Any aspect ratio a company picks for its hardware is a tradeoff between watching different types of content, and its really a sorry situation. What's truly necessary is for the film and TV and camera people to all get together on an aspect ratio; here's hoping that happens with 16:9, driven by the current HDTV zeitgeist.

Netflix comes to iPhone (officially)

Well, my previous tutorial was all for nothing: its been officially released! Hit up iTunes for the download.

Update: Netflix for iPhone with only iPhone and iPad!

I did something similar to the previous post, and it works! I did it without unzipping the IPA file; instead I transferred Netflix.app straight off the iPad onto the iPhone, and installed a user agent switcher so that the Netflix website would think I was an iPad. It just works! Jump after the break for better instructions. Enjoy!

1. Prereqs: jailbroken iPhone and iPad, with ssh running on both. This is in Cydia as "OpenSSH". Both devices should be on the same WiFi network.
2. On my jailbroken iPad, I used SSH Terminal to log into the iPad (from the iPad). Login as root (Note: if this is your first time ssh-ing into the iPad, the password is dottie or alpine; make sure you change it to something you'll remember using the passwd command). This is necessary because as far as I know MobileTerminal doesn't work on the newer iOS, it just crashes.
3. cd into "/var/mobile/Applications", then run a "find . | grep Netflix" to find the location of the Netflix.app folder. It'll be stashed in a directory with a long name.
4. cd into the long directory name from here, and then use scp to copy over this folder into "/var/stash/Applications" iPhone, something like: "scp -r Netflix.app root@IPHONE.IP.ADDY.HERE:/var/stash/Applications". You can find your iPhone IP address in the wifi Settings.
5. When it finished, reboot the phone.
6. Go into Cydia on the iPhone and install "User Agent Faker" from BigBoss repo (Tweaks).
7. Go into "Settings->User Agent Faker->User Agent->Apple iPad"
8. Go into "Settings->User Agent Faker->Applications" and toggle on Safari.
9. Log into Netflix.com in Safari and try and play an instant movie. Safari should go to the background and the Netflix app will come up and start playing the movie!

Netflix on iPhone

This is worth a link and quote so I remember how to do this in the future. From Lifehacker:

1. Download the Netflix app for iPad to iTunes.
2. Right click on the Netflix app you just downloaded and select ‘Show in Windows Explorer' if you're on a PC, or ‘Show in Finder' if you're on a Mac.
3. Rename Netflix 1.0.4.ipa to Netflix 1.0.4.zip and extract the zip file to your desktop.
4. Look for the Payload folder inside the extracted folder. In there you will find the Netflix.app folder.
5. SSH into your iPhone and copy the Netflix.app folder to either /Applications/ or /private/var/stash/Applications/.
6. Change the permission on the Netflix.app folder to 755. You can do this by typing chmod 755 Netflix.app, which worked for me, but it looks like some are having trouble. If that doesn't work for you, try: chmod -r 755 Netflx.app instead.
7. Reboot your iPhone.
8. Now go to the App Store from your iPhone and download a non-Safari browser with identification options, such as Atomic Web ($0.99) or Perfect Browser ($1.99). In Atomic Web, go to Settings and select Safari - iPad under Identify Browser As. In Perfect Browser, go to Settings and select Safari iPad under Desktop Rendering.
9. Still in Atomic Web or Perfect Browser, navigate to Netflix.com, log in, and find a movie to watch instantly. Perfect Browser will close and Netflix.app will start playing your movie.

Also from modmyi and vimeo!

Jailbreak for the Lulz

From USA Today:

For the moment, the most visible concern for Apple has been pranksters going into Apple and Best Buy retail stores and jailbreaking display models, according to tech blog Engadget. Yet, the security and privacy issues are serious.

Serious indeed.

iSpot released by Clear WiMax; works with all devices!

Clear WiMax is offering a cheap $25 data plan that works only with Apple iOS devices. They sell you a device, and it acts as a WiFi hotspot only for Apple hardware. "How does it know what kind of device I'm using?" is the first question that popped into my mind, because there is nothing in the WiFi protocol that requires a device to identify itself. Well it turns out the hotspot knows which blocks of MAC addresses are issued by Apple. MAC addresses are easily spoofed though, as per the link below. I am considering getting this, I wonder if its available in Baltimore.

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2010-08/more-ispot-speeds-mac-spoofing/

Update: Engadget reports that hackers have figured out how to modify the settings on the device to prevent it from MAC filtering!

Jailbreakme.com blocked at the apple store

As you might know, @comex has released a userland jailbreak that exploits a bug in the iPhone PDF rendering code. He uses it to root your phone and then install Cydia, the alternative app store. Well, it turns out that the Apple WiFi networks in stores automatically redirect you to apple.com when you try and visit this site! Fortunately, all the phones in stores have AT&T plans, so you just have to disable the WiFi and hop on the 3G, which unlike the in-store WiFi, isn't controlled by Apple. And just like that, you can Jailbreak phones while the Apple employees watch helplessly.

Not really, they probably would kick you out of the store if they saw you doing it, but how much can they really blame you, the customer, for visiting a website. If anything, its Apple's fault for making a browser flaw that can be exploited in this way. I'll bet if I bricked my phone using this method, I could get Apple to take back the phone and refund me since its a faulty product with a security flaw. Visiting a specific website can't really void my warranty, can it?

iPhone 4: Impressions

It's a small iPad :-)

The screen resolution is ridiculous for this size.

Upgrading from an older iPhone makes it feel like my iPhone just got really fast overnight. By that I mean that since all of my contacts and settings were automatically applied to the new phone, the final user experience is like someone upgraded my hardware, but it's still MY phone. The experience is unlike any other phone upgrade.

The camera performs really well in good lighting. The video at 720p feels like cheap video but is still of a high resolution. By that, I mean that I was expecting a more film like quality, but it is still quite good. The film like aspect can probably be coaxed out by changing the frame rate down to 24 fps in post production.

The multitasking implementation is good enough if the apps support fast switching. They don't all yet.

The front facing camera will be useful once Skype updates to use the new hardware. I haven't made a facetime call yet, but I can certainly say that the camera quality is far cower than the back camera, according to my preliminary camera tests.

iPhone 3G for sale

If anyone is interested, I'm selling my old iPhone on eBay, since I've upgraded. Get it for cheap!

Ebay listing

iPhone 4 came in a day early

The last phone I got was the iPhone 3G two years ago; now I have got the iPhone 4! It came in a full day early. Its kind of an incremental compared to the 3GS, but coming from the 3G, its huge. As always, I'll try to post some impressions tomorrow.

Google TV: First Impressions

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-tv-tv-meets-web-web.html

Damn, looks cool. Doesn't blow me away, yet. I'll have to see the tech demo of one in action.

If it can integrate your regular TV option (Cable, OTA, or Satellite) with web, and make it all searchable, I'd say they have a winner. It seems like any old HTPC (or any PC for that matter) can give you web content on your TV; its the integration with the standard TV options that will make this thing awesome. And they'll have to get the UI really slick and seamless when going between TV and web. Maybe couple it with a DVR that records all your shows (maybe every show for the past few days?), make them all searchable too, so that everything is kind of "on demand". Otherwise, it seems like you'd have two classes of content, one that starts whenever you like (web), and one that is "live" and can only be accessed during broadcast.

iPad Jailbreak: What doesn't work

NES - a NES emulator crashes when you open it

iMobileCinema - Flash movie decoder doesn't seem to work with iPad Safari

This list will be updated as I find stuff.

Spirit Jailbreaks iPad (and all other iDevices)

New jailbreak is out for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touches. I think it works with all models and all new firmwaress. This appears to be a userland jailbreak, so its FAST; one click does it, and my iPad rebooted, jailbroken in about 30 seconds.

Get it here: www.spiritjb.com/

Now to test out what Cydia apps work, and which ones will make me crash hard :-)