Jake Ludington

Google Video, iFilm, MySpace, Current TV, YouTube and all the hundreds of similar video sites all have one thing in common - making it difficult for you to archive the movies they host on your local machine for later playback. In some cases this is by design, but mostly it’s the nature of using Flash […]

Microsoft released the beta version of Windows Media Player 11 yesterday. I’ve seen it go through several iterations behind the scenes and overall I’m happy with the features they are showing off so far. It’s certainly stable enough to install in place of Windows Media Player 10 (although it’s always smart to set a restore […]

Solutions come and go for easily liberating iTunes Music Store purchases from their DRM shackles. The slow and tedious brute force method continues to work, requiring you to play back individual tracks one-at-a-time and recording them with software like Audacity. Saving the resulting files in your favorite DRM-free format, like MP3, WMA or even uncompressed […]

Related to my previous post on creating custom titles for home movies, CamcorderInfo found an awesome tool for auto generating your own church marquee. It saves all the time I took cleaning up a sign and creating a custom logo, although the downside is you don’t get the personalization of using a sign associated with […]

Adding titles to your home movies is among the most underrated components of visual storytelling. I’ve endured many home movies that could have easily used titles in place of a bad transition where the camera shakes as the videographer moved between rooms during a scene change from the family dinner preparation in the kitchen to […]

Everytime I run into Ajay Juneja, he’s talking about his voice controlled car computer. This is partly because the brains behind the voice recognition happens to be technology created by Ajay’s start-up company, Speak With Me. There’s not much you can throw at the computer that it can’t do. It’s got enough logic to prompt […]

The Windows version of Podcasting Starter Kit has been live in the Tutorials section for ages, but for some reason I completely spaced adding the Mac OS X edition to the library. I just made a minor update to the Windows version as well, so both guides received an up-to-the-minute makeover. If you’ve already purchased […]

A topic I see frequently is the subject of movie cataloging. How can catalog my movies? What’s the best application for cataloging my movies? Where can I find movie cataloging software? The list goes on and on.
There’s no perfect answer to this problem because everyone’s needs are slightly different. There are a number of apps […]

Once upon a time downloading video with a BitTorrent client meant you needed DivX, XviD or one of the other AVI wrapper codec combinations installed on your system for video playback to function properly. While DivX is still wildly popular for HD file sharing, particularly in the television show swapping space, a couple of unlikely […]

If you didn’t catch the recent conversation at Digital Media Thoughts on deleting digital photos, you might be missing out on some of the best reasons for dumping your duplicate photos. Chris weighed in with his opinion on the topic and I confessed to being something of a digital image packrat. As a result of […]

Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center Edition are fast taking over all the media tasks in my home. MCE was already the preferred PVR in my house, because it offers a combination of features that makes sense for my personal needs, but Xbox 360 integration pushes the whole package to the next level. One tricky […]

In spite of many third party solutions, Windows Media Center Edition remains my favorite way to marry my PC experience to my living room entertainment experience. The Xbox 360 as Media Center Extender is probably the biggest win in this arena, from my personal perspective, because I will likely have a game console in my […]

Windows Media Center Edition is fast becoming an optimal solution for connecting your home theater with your home computing experience. I stepped through the process of connecting an Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender with no significant issues during the install. If you already have Windows XP, it seems a little shortsighted for Microsoft […]

I love my Vonage service. I can call blast to my cell phone when I’m not at home. I could take the access point with me and have my phone number virtually anywhere there’s broadband.
I tied Vonage into the traditional phone lines in my walls to get a normal phone experience at home. One […]

One of the most complicated aspects of podcasting is getting great sounding recordings of people over phone lines or through a remote VoIP connection. Battling latency is a constant possibility with VoIP and landline services vary from house to house, to the point you may end up with some callers sounding great and others sounding […]

I just ran across the coolest Web service I’ve seen in ages. GotVoice automatically checks any landline or cell phone voicemail. I’m notorious for not checking my voicemail on my cell phone because I hate logging in. I use Vonage as my landline equivalent, which emails me new messages to my inbox never requiring me […]

The Xbox 360 remains the holiday season’s most elusive gift. If you’ve got one already, you know why. The games look and play better than any previous console. Integration with Windows Media Center is phenomenal, although you don’t need a Media Center to stream music and browse your digital photos, Windows Media Connect will handle […]

Over the course of the year I’ve made a ton of posts to the Lockergnome Media Center Channel. Some are warmly received, others achieve only passing interest. In theory, the cream rises to the top and the best stuff is what everyone is reading. In a very unscientific fashion, I’ve determined that of all the […]

I’m starting to see more instances of RMVB format files in places where DivX and XviD long dominated the download distribution space. Particularly among Anime and Chinese language movie sites, RMVB is replacing DivX as a low-bitrate small file size alternative to DivX, because it looks better and because the file sizes are smaller. Considering […]

While the vast majority of video recording is now digital, there are still plenty of recordings stored in analog formats and I know a handful of people who refuse to give up their Hi8 camcorder in favor of DV. If you still record in analog, or simply want to transfer your analog recordings to a […]