Posted by cpbotha on May 10th, 2008 in tech ·
Screencasts refer to video recordings of screen activity, often with narration. These can be used to demonstrate software or to serve as a kind of visual HOWTO. We often make screencasts of software we design in the Medical Visualisation group at the TU Delft to use in presentations at conferences or to distribute online.
On Windows, Camtasia Studio ($300) or Camtasia SnagIt ($40) are probably the best options your money can buy. Most of the free alternatives suck quite badly: This includes the Windows Media Encoder, thank you very much. In fact, the Windows Media 9 Screen Capture Codec has been fine-tuned to create the worst possible quality movies you can imagine. Another problem with the free options is that they often can’t sustain writing the video stream to disk, hence resulting in dropped frames and unusable screencasts. When they are able to sustain writing, it probably means that the compression is completely killing video quality.
Fortunately, it turns out that there is a free option which offers comparable performance to the Camtasia products, and for good reason. It’s called CamStudio, and it’s even open source! It’s terribly important that you also install the lossless CamStudio Screen Capture codec, it’s this that makes all the difference. This codec compresses all frames with the fast LZO lossless compression algorithm, so you get the highest possible quality without dropping frames due relatively slow disc writing.
Using CamStudio, I made a 3.5 minute screencast, with live audio recording, show-casing some of the new DICOM browsing functionality in the next DeVIDE release. After capture, I transcoded the CamStudio screen capture codec AVI to XVID using MediaCoder, and then uploaded to YouTube (play at your own risk!):
Posted by cpbotha on May 1st, 2008 in education ·
I am currently designing a new master-level course at the TU Delft, creatively named Medical Visualization, and it’s just been assigned an official course code: IN4307. Whooo!
Keep an eye out for IN4307: This 5 ECTS course will run in the 3d period (February to April) of the 2008/2009 academic year and it’s going to rule. I’m integrating more modern educational techniques (thank you TU Delft BKO for the inspiration) in that the whole course will be run as an interactive workshop (I lecture, you immediately try it out on your computer machine), and assessment will be based on weekly practice exercises as well as a more extensive project that will have to be orally defended at the end. In other words, there will be no written exam.
My goal is to produce frikking medical visualisation ninjas that will hit the ground running when deployed in any academic or industrial projects. I have the technology to make you harder, better, faster, stronger, and I’m not afraid to use it.
Posted by cpbotha on April 27th, 2008 in tech ·
I think I just might have found my next work laptop. Imagine the surprised and definitely jealous expressions as you plonk down your new Hello Kitty laptop at that next power meeting or important research discussion. Marvelous!
Click on the image for the accompanying site (found via engadget.com).
Posted by cpbotha on March 16th, 2008 in tech ·
I almost forgot to mention over here that the first open source release of DeVIDE is now available. See the relevant DeVIDE news blog posting for more information and links to yet more information!
Posted by cpbotha on March 10th, 2008 in life ·
… with Vienna.
As mentioned elsewhere, I’m in Vienna at the moment for ECR 2008. Tonight started with a heavenly dinner at the Vital Images party in the Sky Bar. By 22:00, my night was already more or less perfect, mostly due to great company and beautiful food. However, we (an intrepid group of Medical Delta scientists from Delft, Rotterdam and Leiden) decided to go to Der Roter Engel in the Bermuda Triangle, mostly because I insisted that the night would only be complete after some cocktails. Their Long Island Tea was delectable. All of them, as a matter of fact.
In any case, of course I missed the last underground from Schottenring to Schottentor, so I was more or less forced to go for a stroll all the way to Kochgasse in Der Josefstadt, where my apartment is situated, which, by the way, I very strongly recommend to anyone visiting this beautiful city. This wonderful stroll at 1 in the morning simply confirmed my already positive feeling with regards to Vienna: this is a fantastically beautiful city and it has a very mysterious although exceptionally pleasant vibe. I will now have to start plotting nefarious plans in order to be able to come back in the near future and spend a significant amount of time getting to know her better.
Posted by cpbotha on March 2nd, 2008 in tech ·
It’s really nice when it happens, it’s even nicer when you really don’t expect it. Our DeVIDE paper won the SimVis 2008 best paper award! Read all about it in the relevant DeVIDE News Blog posting.
Posted by cpbotha on January 8th, 2008 in tech ·
More or less every two years, I am overcome by uncontrollable lust.
Lust for some fresh computing hardware, that is. YEAH!
1.5 years ago it was the HP NC8430 laptop, 2 years before that my beloved HP NC6000, and slightly short of two years before that the infinitely heavy stoeptegel-1 (I still think there’s a mini-blackhole in there somewhere).
It’s almost that time again, so I have begun shopping around (in WAB time, of course) for an affordable yet absurdly fast desktop for use at home, in my secret laboratory. Oh wait, there’s no secret laboratory. Really.
I was planning to get something with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (4 cores at 2.4 GHz, 2 x MB L2 cache, 1066 MHz quad-clocked FSB), but Jorik fortunately recommended (thanks!) waiting for the soon-to-be-available Penryn 45nm quad cores. Seems Intel has announced the definite release of 16 new 45nm CPUs at the CES, including the similarly price-ranged but far more desirable Quad Q9450 (4 cores at 2.66 GHz, 2 x 6MB L2 cache, 1333 MHz quad-clocked FSB).
Throw 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, a Hitachi P7K500 half terabyte hard drive, a passively cooled GeForce 8600 GT 512MB and some 64-bit Ubuntu goodness at it, and you have some serious workstation action that doesn’t even leave you half-destitute!
Posted by cpbotha on January 8th, 2008 in entertainment and life ·
Last year I acquired this:
So I could go here:
… with some exceptionally cool individuals.
Thanks to one of these individuals who has developed the amazing ability to stop time in his close proximity and, as if that wasn’t enough, to possess a pair of the coolest spectacles this side of the equator, you should be able to find me on the photo to his left.
Take a whiff of Soulwax / 2 Many DJs live by clicking here (the ROCKET RIDING fun starts at 2:05), here or here.
Outraged
Posted by cpbotha on May 12th, 2008 in Commentary · 1 CommentThe year is 2008.
Read the full story here.