This guide is written with bash comments, so the whole text block below can be copied and pasted into an install.sh file if you’d rather not go through step by step. I wouldn’t recommend it though, as something could always go wrong, and it could be challenging hunting down the problem in that massive wall of output lines!

#!/bin/bash
# Mplayer Codecs
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the codec files needed 
wget http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-amd64-20071007.tar.bz2

# Extract the codec files 
bunzip2 essential-amd64-20071007.tar.bz2; tar xvf essential-amd64-20071007.tar

# Create a directory for the codecs & import them 
mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs/ 
mv essential-amd64-20071007/* /usr/local/lib/codecs/ 
chmod -R 755 /usr/local/lib/codecs

# FLVTool2
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/17497/flvtool2-1.0.6.tgz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf flvtool2-1.0.6.tgz 

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/flvtool2-1.0.6
ruby setup.rb config 
ruby setup.rb setup 
ruby setup.rb install

# LAME MP3 Encoder
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/lame/lame-398-2.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf lame-398-2.tar.gz 

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/lame-398-2
./configure 
make && make install

# libOGG
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/libogg-1.1.4rc1.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf libogg-1.1.4rc1.tar.gz 

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/libogg-1.1.4rc1
./configure 
make && make install

# libVorbis
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/libvorbis-1.2.3.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf libvorbis-1.2.3.tar.gz

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/libvorbis-1.2.3
./configure 
make && make install

# liba52
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://liba52.sourceforge.net/files/a52dec-0.7.4.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf a52dec-0.7.4.tar.gz

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/a52dec-0.7.4
./configure --enable-shared=PKGS
make && make install

# libFAAD2
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/faac/faad2-2.7.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf faad2-2.7.tar.gz

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/faad2-2.7
autoreconf -vif
./configure --disable-drm --disable-mpeg4ip
make && make install

# libFAAC
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/faac/faac-1.28.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf faac-1.28.tar.gz

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/faac-1.28
./bootstrap
./configure --disable-mp4v2
make && make install

# YASM (required by x264)
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/releases/yasm-0.7.0.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf yasm-0.7.0.tar.gz

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/yasm-0.7.0
./configure
make && make install

# x264 daily snapshot
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/x264/snapshots/x264-snapshot-20090901-2245.tar.bz2

# Extract the Source files 
bzip2 -d x264-snapshot-20090901-2245.tar.bz2; tar xvf x264-snapshot-20090901-2245.tar

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/x264-snapshot-20090901-2245
./configure --enable-mp4-output --enable-shared --enable-pthread
make && make install

# XVID
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://downloads.xvid.org/downloads/xvidcore-1.2.2.tar.gz

# Extract the Source files 
tar zxvf xvidcore-1.2.2.tar.gz

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/xvidcore/build/generic
./configure
make && make install

# Install SVN/Ruby 
yum install -y subversion ruby ncurses-devel

# Fix few Lib issues for next steps 
echo "/usr/local/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf 
ldconfig -v

# MPlayer Core
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Get the latest version from the subversion 
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/mplayer 
./configure 
make && make install

# FFMPEG 
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Get the latest version from the subversion 
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg 

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/ffmpeg 
./configure --enable-gpl  --enable-postproc --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-libfaad --enable-avfilter --enable-pthreads --enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libfaac --disable-ffserver --disable-ffplay --enable-shared
echo '#define HAVE_LRINTF 1' >> config.h 
make && make install

# Finalize the codec setups 
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavformat.so.50 /usr/lib/libavformat.so.50 
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavcodec.so.51 /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.51 
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavutil.so.49 /usr/lib/libavutil.so.49 
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.so.0 /usr/lib/libmp3lame.so.0 
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavformat.so.51 /usr/lib/libavformat.so.51

# Few tasks before compiling FFMPEG-PHP 
yum install -y automake autoconf libtool

# FFmpeg-php
# Switch to working directory
cd /usr/local/src

# Download the source files needed 
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ffmpeg-php/ffmpeg-php-0.6.0.tbz2

# Extract the Source files 
bunzip2 ffmpeg-php-0.6.0.tbz2; tar xvf ffmpeg-php-0.6.0.tar 

# Compile
cd /usr/local/src/ffmpeg-php-0.6.0 
phpize 
./configure 
make 
make install

# Add FFMPEG-PHP as an extension of PHP 
# Add this line to your php.ini file (Check the correct path of php.ini) 
echo "extension=ffmpeg.so" >> /etc/php.ini

# Restart Apache to load FFMPEG-PHP 
service httpd restart

# Cleanup
cd ..
rm -f -r ./ffmpeg-php

Wow! That was long…glad that’s over. Anyway, you should check and make sure it worked by running phpinfo() in php and searching for a block called ‘ffmpeg’. If anyone has any suggestions for improvements to the script or other encoders I should add let me know.

Have you been wondering what the small bit of inactivity lately was about? Well, here’s my answer–or part of it anyway–my new website project; sauceplz.org.

It is basically wikipedia for files. You load a file and will be presented with a page unique to that file where information about the file can be listed. You could, for example, load a page from a manga and add tags for the artist, manga name and page number.

That’s part of the inactivity, I’ll try and have some more posts up soon, but there’s a few other, as yet, unannounced projects I’m working. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about that soon.

For the longest time my MP3 Player was an iPod which, in all appreciation for how it changed the portable media market, is vastly inferior to some of the lesser known Portable Media Players to come out in recent years. The most significant, in my opinion, being the Cowon A3–the perfect portable media player for an anime lover such as myself. Why you ask? Format support–this thing can play just about -anything-. It can play H264 (unforunately it doesn’t yet support Main Profile) and XviD and most importantly; supports all sorts of container formats like OGM and MKV (Matroska Video). What does that all mean? Well, I’ll let you put two and two together; more than half of fansubbed anime is released in H264 format in an MKV container. Until now those have been unplayable on any form of portable media! That’s just the beginning of the A3′s awesomeness!

What makes this thing so great for an anime fan such as myself is that it has subtitle support! For now it’s not quite as comprehensive as I’d like, but Cowon appears to be working hard to make support better. As of now it doesn’t support internal subs, so they have to be extracted from MKVs with MKVExtract and it doesn’t support SubStation Alpha subtitles yet. Sadly SSA subs are the most popular among fansubbers, but fortunately many fansubbers are nice enough embed srt subs as well and for the ones that don’t there is always VobSub’s SubResync.

The A3 was designed to be an all-in-one multimedia device so it can do anything–even things you thought you’d never need. Audio and Video Recording for example; you can record lossless quality audio with the FLAC audio codec and record DVD resolution video up to 3Mbps! Expect to see lots of video captures of video games and such from this thing in the future. The recording system is quite good too; you can record audio and video from the line in, but you can also record it from the FM radio, the built-in microphone or even Wireless Television via DMB, 1SEG or DVB if you get a MobileTV tuner! It supports recurring schedules, so you can record daily or every weekday, or you could just schedule so specific date and time for a single recording.

It’s great to be able to just copy any media file over and not have to worry about converting it to something else first. The Cowon A3 doesn’t use any proprietary and confusing sorting system like most media players do; you can just copy any kind of media file anywhere on the hard drive by simply dragging and dropping files to a window on your computer. There is several default folders to sort things in, but it doesn’t actually restrict you to use of these folders. A good example of why this is good is music videos. Do you place them in the Movie folder or the Music folder? If you place them in the Music folder they will show up in the directory listing for the Movie Player, so you can place anything anywhere! What’s even greater is that it keeps track of what types of files are in each folder; if you go into the Music folder when browsing in the Movie Player you will only see folders listed that contain video files in them. It makes browsing for music videos much faster if you have a handful of music videos but have thousands of different albums from all sorts of different artists.

You’ll probably also love the Recent Files system it uses. The A3 keeps a list of the last 50 files you played without finishing them. Imagine you are on a trip somewhere and you decide to watch a movie; what if the movie is longer than the ride? You want to see how it ended don’t you? Well then, when you find the time to watch the rest, just turn on the A3 and go to Recent Files then select whatever it was you were watching and it will start back up right where you stopped it!

For audio there is full 10-band Equalization, BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance and 3D Surround. As you might assume; you can get some rather fantastic audio quality out of this thing–that’s what Cowon is known for; audiophile-pleasing quality.

I also really like the Boundary setting for playback; you can set playback to restrict to all files, one folder in from Music, two folders in from Music or Playlist. If you organize your music by Album folders in Artist folders it makes this system work great; you can listen to a specific album, everything from a certain artist or everything. My only complaint is the playlist support; it uses some built-in playlist that you only have one of and it doesn’t allow saving or loading of common playlist formats used on the PC such as M3U Playlists.

The greatest thing about this device though? The screen. It sports a very high resolution 800×480 resolution in the same size as a PSP screen–that’s almost twice the resolution of the PSP’s screen! You know what else it has twice the PSP in? Brightness. The screen on this thing can be turned up so bright you can see the vibrant colors perfectly even in direct sunlight! *_*

The Cowon A3 also has a line-out for viewing on a bigger screen–and component, s-video and composite even! You can watch gorgeous 720p High Definition video on your big LCD TV from such a tiny portable unit!

Overall this is a truly amazing device that’s a simple firmware update away from being perfect. If you like having some sort of portable entertainment then go buy this device RIGHT NOW. No seriously, do it; you won’t regret it.

For awhile I’ve been using a video service called Stage6 which was similar to YouTube except they offered High Definition video uploading…it wasn’t very ideal though as it needed a proprietary DivX Player to play the videos. Not long ago they closed up shop, so I decided to look around and see if I could find a better video service than YouTube. Well, in my travels I discovered this wonderous creation known as Vimeo! You can upload HD videos up to 720p and they are way, way faster than YouTube! Check the shiny HD video above to see just how awesome Vimeo is.

Some may have already heard of them, some may not have. Monkey Majik consists of Takuya “tax” Kikuchi (菊池拓哉, Kikuchi Takuya) on drums, DICK on bass and rather oddly Maynard Plant and Blaise Plant; two Canadian brothers who sing in both Japanese and English and play guitar. It is very unusual for a band with foreign members and foreign languages to attain such a level of popularity in Japan as they have.

Blaise had moved from Ottawa to Aomori in 1998 to work as an English teacher on the JET program and formed a band there to play a one-time gig at an international festival. Two of the members left Japan, so Blaise decided to contact his brother Maynard who had a moderate solo career already in Canada. He decided to move from Ottawa to Sendai where Blaise soon followed. Their first EP called TIRED, only had 1,000 copies available at Tower Records in Sendai. But their first single, “fly”, in 2006 was a great success and was quickly followed by their next single, “Around the World”, which reached number 4 in the Japanese Oricon top 200 singles chart. Pretty impressive for Gaijins, eh?

Anyway, the whole reason I’m making this post is so you can all watch this really awesome video–a collaboration of Monkey Majik and the ever-so-amazing Yoshida Brothers; Change.

Their music can be purchased at Play-Asia.

Final Fantasy: Spirits Within bombed pretty bad at the box office and I understand why, but it deserved better. Yes, I know that it wasn’t anything like the video games or anything from Square Enix really. However, in it’s own it is a very good movie. I think that if they had not included the Final Fantasy title at all and just called it The Spirits Within it would have been much more successful. It would have been viewed as it’s own stand-alone entity in the Square Enix lineup rather than constantly being compared with all the Final Fantasy video games.

Oh, why is Cid a bad guy? Why is there no Chocobos? Why is there no swords? It’s nothing like Final Fantasy at all. The only similarities are a few passing references in names and such. I’d say it more so resembles Halo; the story has a rather dystopian warzone atmosphere to it but it is very engaging and truly epic.

I found that the dream sequences were a clever way of creating suspense while at the same time building an attachment to the Phantoms. I also liked how the characters spirits were visible and still ‘alive’ in a sense after they were pulled from their bodies. It gave me the impression that they weren’t killed by the spirits, but rather; they joined with the spirits to create a stronger energy. Hironobu Sakaguchi’s flare for bringing out characters’ strengths and weaknesses certainly shined through in this movie; Aki was the hot-headed hero–always getting in trouble but never giving up, while General Hein was the coward–hiding behind his big gun out in space where the “invaders” couldn’t reach him and Gray is the level-headed knight–protecting his princess from the many perils of the world.

If you have avoided seeing this movie because of all the bad press and fanboys whining “ZOMG WHARZ TEH CHOCOBOS?!?!?!” I would very much sugegst you see it for yourself. Atleast give it a rent; if you don’t like it you don’t have to ever watch it again, but atleast you will have formed your own opinion on it. Everyone has different tastes, don’t let someone else tell you what to like and what not to.

Spirits Within likely isn’t available at Play-Asia, as it is somewhat old now–it might be out of print–but you can check if you like.