Google has released source for the VP8 codec as the WebM project. The WebM project will be an open alternative in the HTML5 video tag codec space and being backed by Google, who will use it for YouTube, will give it a fighting chance. WebM is starting to be integrated into FFMpeg but there are still some patches that need to be applied. While there are some guides to how to build FFMpeg for Linux with VP8 WebM support I wanted to get it compiled for Windows.

First off this won't be done using a Windows install but instead using Virtual Box with a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 desktop. It is just faster and easier that way. So go ahead and grab Virtual Box and get Ubuntu installed on it before you continue.

I used this cross compiling X264 using Ubuntu as a base for part of my script. The entire script follows but if you want to make sure you get a good copy you can download it:

mkdir ffmpeg
cd ffmpeg

BASEDIR=`pwd`
MINGBASE=$BASEDIR/win32-webm

sudo apt-get install pkg-config yasm subversion cvs git-core gcc-mingw32

cat > mingw32-setup.sh << EOF
#!/bin/sh
export CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc
export CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++
export CPP=i586-mingw32msvc-cpp
export AR=i586-mingw32msvc-ar
export RANLIB=i586-mingw32msvc-ranlib
export ADD2LINE=i586-mingw32msvc-addr2line
export AS=i586-mingw32msvc-as
export LD=i586-mingw32msvc-ld
export NM=i586-mingw32msvc-nm
export STRIP=i586-mingw32msvc-strip

export PATH="/usr/i586-mingw32msvc/bin:$PATH"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$MINGBASE/lib/pkgconfig/"
exec "\$@"
EOF
chmod +x mingw32-setup.sh

mkdir $MINGBASE $MINGBASE/src $MINGBASE/lib $MINGBASE/include $MINGBASE/share $MINGBASE/bin

cd $MINGBASE/src

wget -qO - http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/libogg-1.2.0.tar.gz | tar xzf -
cd libogg-1.2.0
$BASEDIR/mingw32-setup.sh ./configure --enable-static --disable-shared --host=mingw32
make
DESTDIR=$MINGBASE make install prefix=
cd ..

wget -qO - http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/libvorbis-1.3.1.tar.gz | tar xzf -
cd libvorbis-1.3.1
LDFLAGS="-L$MINGBASE/lib" CFLAGS="-I$MINGBASE/include" $BASEDIR/mingw32-setup.sh ./configure --enable-static --disable-shared --host=mingw32
make
DESTDIR=$MINGBASE make install prefix=
cd ..

wget -qO - ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/pthreads-w32-2-8-0-release.tar.gz | tar xzf -
cd pthreads-w32-2-8-0-release
make GC-static CROSS=i586-mingw32msvc-
cp libpthreadGC2.a $MINGBASE/lib
cp *.h $MINGBASE/include
cd ..

wget -qO - http://zlib.net/zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz | tar xzf -
cd zlib-1.2.5/
$BASEDIR/mingw32-setup.sh ./configure
sed -i"" -e 's/-lc//' Makefile
make
DESTDIR=$MINGBASE make install prefix=
cd ..

git clone git://review.webmproject.org/libvpx.git
cd libvpx/
git checkout fd0d7ff4c155b94d3f322addc7b66234b6908cc6
cat > /tmp/libvpx.x.patch << EOP
diff -rupN libvpx.orig/configure libvpx/configure
--- libvpx.orig/configure	2010-07-11 14:49:18.703230816 -0400
+++ libvpx/configure	2010-07-11 14:50:33.747300030 -0400
@@ -436,9 +436,9 @@ process_detect() {
         }
     fi
     check_header stdio.h || die "Unable to invoke compiler: \${CC} \${CFLAGS}"
-    check_ld <<EOF || die "Toolchain is unable to link executables"
-int main(void) {return 0;}
-EOF
+#    check_ld <<EOF || die "Toolchain is unable to link executables"
+#int main(void) {return 0;}
+#EOF
     # check system headers
     check_header stdint.h
     check_header pthread.h
diff -rupN libvpx.orig/vp8/common/postproc.c libvpx/vp8/common/postproc.c
--- libvpx.orig/vp8/common/postproc.c	2010-07-11 14:49:18.939266476 -0400
+++ libvpx/vp8/common/postproc.c	2010-07-11 14:51:03.855300662 -0400
@@ -481,7 +481,7 @@ int vp8_post_proc_frame(VP8_COMMON *oci,
     }

 #if ARCH_X86||ARCH_X86_64
-    vpx_reset_mmx_state();
+//    vpx_reset_mmx_state();
 #endif

     if (flags & VP8D_DEMACROBLOCK)
diff -rupN libvpx.orig/vp8/common/systemdependent.h libvpx/vp8/common/systemdependent.h
--- libvpx.orig/vp8/common/systemdependent.h	2010-07-11 14:49:18.947263304 -0400
+++ libvpx/vp8/common/systemdependent.h	2010-07-11 14:51:25.019253115 -0400
@@ -10,12 +10,12 @@

 #include "vpx_ports/config.h"
-#if ARCH_X86 || ARCH_X86_64
-void vpx_reset_mmx_state(void);
-#define vp8_clear_system_state() vpx_reset_mmx_state()
-#else
+//#if ARCH_X86 || ARCH_X86_64
+//void vpx_reset_mmx_state(void);
+//#define vp8_clear_system_state() vpx_reset_mmx_state()
+//#else
 #define vp8_clear_system_state()
-#endif
+//#endif

 struct VP8Common;
 void vp8_machine_specific_config(struct VP8Common *);
EOP
patch -p1 < /tmp/libvpx.x.patch
$BASEDIR/mingw32-setup.sh ./configure --disable-examples --disable-mmx --disable-sse --disable-sse2 --disable-sse3 --disable-ssse3
$BASEDIR/mingw32-setup.sh make
DESTDIR=$MINGBASE make install prefix=/
cd ../..
mv usr/local/lib/* lib
mv usr/local/include/vpx/ include/
cd src

wget -qO - http://webm.googlecode.com/files/ffmpeg-0.6_libvpx-0.9.1.diff.gz | zcat - > /tmp/ffmpeg-0.6_libvpx-0.9.1.diff
wget -qO - http://www.ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-0.6.tar.gz | tar xzf -
cd ffmpeg-0.6
patch -p0 < /tmp/ffmpeg-0.6_libvpx-0.9.1.diff

LDFLAGS="-L$MINGBASE/lib" CFLAGS="-I$MINGBASE/include" ./configure --target-os=mingw32 --cross-prefix=i586-mingw32msvc- --arch=x86 --prefix=$MINGBASE --enable-memalign-hack --enable-gpl --enable-avisynth --enable-version3 --enable-postproc --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --disable-network --disable-devices --disable-encoder=vorbis --enable-libvorbis
make

cp ffmpeg.exe $BASEDIR

Just transfer that script to the user you create when you installed Ubuntu and run it. You will need to provide your password once so that the system can install a few tools but after that everything is done automatically. At the end you will have exe files in the directory you ran the script from.

Transfer the exe files that are created to a windows machine and then transcode a video like this:

Please note that you need to include the audio codec information above to correctly encode the video. If you don't include rate values you will get an error telling you the libvorbis can't be initialized.

When the transcoding is done you will have a WebM video. Grab your closest HTML5 video player like VideoJS and you are ready to go.

For a demo video encoded using FFMpeg created with the above script check out this WebM demo video. You will need to use one of the following browsers to view the demo (all of these are as of July 13 2010, support will eventually be added to the main build):

• Chromium dev channel build
• Firefox 4 beta
• Opera
• IE 9 when the user has the Direct Show DLLs installed

I have tested the demo video on each of the above, except for IE9 that doesn't have WebM support as of yet, and it seems to work pretty well.

• iPad-4×3.plist – A 4×3 aspect ratio at 640×480
• iPad-16×9.plist – A 16×9 aspect ratio at 640×360
• iPad-Full.plist – A 4×3 aspect ratio at 1024×576

Note that when you import videos using iTunes the iPad puts them in their own Videos app unlike the iPhone where they show up under the iPod app. You will want to find the Videos icon if you don't already know where it is:

After verifying that the above 4×3 version worked for the iTunes University video I went about testing it on a couple other video formats. I tested the Big Buck Bunny video that I also used for my post on iPad video streaming in both 640×360 and 1024×576 output formats. Both resolutions looked great. I also tried converting a DVD. If you decide to convert a DVD you will probably want to turn on de-interlacing in HandBrake. You do that by first selecting the "Picture Settings" option:

Then the filters tab and then select the type of de-interlace you want (fast, slow, slowest):

If you want to use FFMpeg to do all this you can. The following is a slightly modified version of the streaming command I'm using that will output a high bitrate version of the input video:

So the major changes I have added are:

• Yaml based configuration file. See the project page for a complete list of options.
• Ability to transfer segments via copy, ftp, scp and s3.
• Added the ability to do variable bitrate streams.
• Added re-streaming support.
• Added logging to a file and better debug output.

The variable bitrate streams where done by using pipes. I haven't done a large amount of testing but it seems to work fairly well. I am able to stream a live HD video source into 3 different bitrates on a fairly old PC. Here are a couple clips I created to show the progressive enhancement in action, you probably want to switch to the HD version of the video and watch it full screen to get the bet view:

The configuration file will allow for any number of encoding options or transfer options and they can be put together in a number of different ways. Here are a couple examples of both, see the example configuration files for more.

An encoder example:

Transfer configuration example:

As a final note on changes, you are no longer able to use the segmenter without the script now really. If you want to do that you should use the original version of the segmenter source.

Please note that there is still some work to be done on the script to be complete. If I have time my next enhancement will be to add encryption and I will probably try to test builds on other distributions (maybe attempt to create segmenter binaries).

This is what the complete iPhone UI template set looks like:

As you can see it has all of the standard UI elements of the iPhone.

Using the stencils is easy. Open the SVG file with Inkscape and then create a new empty project. Select the UI element you want and copy it into your project:

Knowing some of the Inkscape shortcut keys helps a lot in creating your wireframe. Being able to align and move elements in z-ordering is much easier if you know the correct shortcut keys to use.

Here are a few example images that I made using Inkscape for a demo application:

If you are new to wireframing it is worth reading the 20 steps to better wireframing post by Think Vitamin. One of the 20 steps is not to worry about making your wireframes look exactly like the final product. If you need it to look perfect then using Interface Builder is probably going to work out better.

As a side note I wish Inkscape had a resource for stencils like OmniGraffle does. There are any number of people who publish stencils on their blogs and there is even a site specifically for OmniGraffle stencils. I would add stencils to my list of tips for creating diagrams using Inkscape if it existed. Right now it is seems like the best option is to look for SVG formatted stencils. The gstencil format doesn't seem too complicated so maybe someone will eventually find a way to convert the contents into SVG where they could then be used in Inkscape.

Update: If you have Adobe Fireworks or have money to spend on doing this you should check out this video on building mockups for the iphone using Adobe Fireworks.

This data comes from the BlackBerry devices page.

Here is the script I came up with to convert a video:

One thing to notice is that I have the file format hard coded in the basename argument. I did this because I didn't need the script to be that generic and I just change it when I move from one format to another. For some reason I found that converting the video with the first statement works best. Without that I had a number of audio sync issues as well as some outright conversion failures .

The options for the first command are

• -ofps output frames per second
• -ovc lavc output codec is lavc
• -oac copy output audio is a copy of the input
• -o the output file

The options for the second command are

• -o the output file
• -vf scale=480:-10,harddup video filter that scales to 480 width and rounds the height to the closest 10/16th width as well as forcing duplicate frames to be encoded in the output
• -lavfopts format=mp4 set the video format options to mp4
• -faacopts mpeg=4:object=2:raw:br=128 set the audio options to mp4
• -oac faac set the audio output format to faac
• -ovc x264 set the output to x264 encoding
• -sws 9 set the scaler options to lanczos
• -x264encopts nocabac:level_idc=30:bframes=0:global_header:threads=auto:subq=5:frameref=6:partitions=all:trellis=1:chroma_me:me=umh:bitrate=500 sets the 265 enocoding options
• -of lavf set the output video format

After converting the video all you need to to do is drag it onto the iTunes Library bar and it will then import it and make it available to sync to your iPhone, touch or iPod.

My first attempt was to use this large international timezone map, this wikipedia map or the list of US states by time zone and then trace and outline over the states. This turned out to be a non-starter because the maps aren't detailed enough and the list of states doesn't give you enough information.

I figured I would end up looking for ESRI shape files at some point and that is where I turned next. An initial google search got me to a post that led to a link to what should have been a set of shape files. Of course the link was dead so I turned to archive.org and found that the archive was incomplete.

I reverted back to looking for another source and found a set of shapes that ended up being just a bunch of squares. At this point I had gone over a lot of random links that didn't get me anything and I was about to give up for good when I finally found the USGS atlas site's time zone data. This was the jackpot, not only do they have time zone shapefiles but they have a large number of other shapefiles that could come in handy some day. This quest has made it apparent to me that the government doesn't do a great job of getting their data found.

One helpful tool in my shapefile search was ESRI's free Arc Explorer. It was a quick way to validate the shapefiles where or where not what I was looking for before landing on a set of files that would work.

Now that I had a valid set of time zone shapes I created a simple java application using geotools to read the files in and generate a resulting map graphic that I could overlay in the project. The shapefiles are easily converted to lat/lon polygons so using this data to overlay on something like a google map would be even easier.

Google released Maplets, a mashup editor, and Google Gears

Mapquest released an updated mapquest API that uses actionscript.

The one thing I note in all of these new releases is the lack of SOAP or enterprise related. Maybe it is just the current wave but most people seem to be embracing the less complicated API infrastructure.

• REST vs HTTP+POX vs SOAP – A simple explanation of REST and SOAP.
• How I Explained REST to My Wife – Another simple explication of what REST is.
• The S Stands for Simple – A conversation that expresses the issues with using SOAP.
• REST for Web Services – The outline for a new REST for web services book.
• The REST Dialogues – A set of fictional dialogs on REST vs SOAP.
• The REST Dialogues, A Real eBay Architect – A response to "The REST Dialogues" by a real eBay architect.
• 85% of Amazon calls are to REST version of their API
• Google turns off SOAP API
• Why SOAP sucks

After looking over the above references you may be interested in looking at Programmable Web's API list and see what others are using. The majority of the public services listed offer REST interfaces with some offering both REST and SOAP and very few offer just SOAP. Even though REST seems to be in favor now I believe there are still plenty of areas where SOAP makes sense when you have resources to devote to feeding and caring for it.

Tags: SOAP, REST, web services