Looked for new, ended up with an old friend

My employer got this little video camera that takes HD videos, that he intends to use to post video blogs for his customers.   He shot his first little clip  on the road, and  when he went to edit it in Sony Vegas (7) found that sometimes the clips showed up with just a green screen in the time line, not video.  I had him send me a clip and it did the same, sometimes it would show in the time line, but most of the time it would just be a green screen.   I examined the format of the clips, they were MP4 AVC H.264 High-Profile files.   I searched for info on Vegas and this strange green screen, and found this to be a known issue with H.264 High-profile files (at least in Vegas 7).  The general consensus was that the Mainconcept H.264 decoder Vegas uses doesn’t fully support the High-Profile or has bugs.  I suspect the first, as on export the High-Profile is absent too.

I tried seeing if any tricks with mp4box or just changing metadata would work, but it didn’t help at all. it became clear that I would have convert the video.  No I hate converting video, not only because of the loss of quality, but because insane amount of video converts out there and the fact that none do a good job at all formats.  Insane amount of converters is actually and understatement here as the number of converters has gone way past the insane level to a more berserk one.  Free ones, pay ones, donation ware ones, ones not built for it but just happen to do it, old ones, abandoned ones, new ones, half built ones, commercial level, hardware, software,  a dizzying amount of converters are out there (and sadly many are based on the same unfinished open source codecs, but that is another story).   I’ve tried many of these in my time and have never found one that was good at all formats, worked consistently (many don’t work at all), and gave decent results. I’m not even going to touch on speed issues either.   Basically I’ve been disappointed time and time again with video conversion programs.    The other problem is that the ones the do actually work, usually have a dizzying amount of settings and configurations to get them to work.

Well I didn’t really want  to go down some long road of tial and error with this vast pile of converters, so I did some serious thinking about the situation.  ….Now this will probably draw some fire, I stuck to the notion that Apple is the clear leader in MP4 H.264 adoption. I mean its based on their wrapper tech even.  My first and major decision was to try out an old friend Quicktime (for Windows) which now handled H.264.  Quicktime can be a dirty word in Windows world, and it has lost the format wars on this side, but as it was one of the first into MP4 and some cameras I have shoot MOV and MP4,  I bought a Pro license a while back.

I used Quicktime as my first attempt to convert the problem files.  Quicktime did the job of converting the H.264 to regular MP4 Improved. Its quality was excellent a the process was smooth, easy, and pain free.  Quicktime really was an old friend, I already new how to work Quicktime and the results with it in the past had always been good.  I went through the process with no problems and no loss of pocket as my old Pro license worked just fine with the new version. The resulting files looked and worked great in Vegas.  Much time configuring and “trial and error” totally avoided.

The Taco side of this:

We have a toddler that really doesn’t like dark crowded restarounts, he can only last a few minutes in such a restaurant with out exploding into a fit, and once exploded there is no calming him down.   So in order to frequent such establishments we need to find someone to take care of him for the night (probably sounds easy to those that don’t have kids).

Anyway we usually have a bunch of restaurant suggestions from friends, that we have been unable to act on because of our sons dislike for such eating environments.  We had been told about a great place called Barrio Cafe for some time now, and now planned on actually going there.  So we dropped our son off at friends house and set out to the Barrio Cafe.

Unfortunately we found out that many had had the idea that night and the Barrio Cafe turned out to be one real small spot, and one with very little parking in an alley around the back.  We circled for parking several times, but it was apparent the hovering in this area long wasn’t going to get us a spot or a table in this small restaurant.  What to do know, we really didn’t have a backup plan and none of the other places we had on our list were even near here.  My wife and I definitely still wanted Mexican food as we had set out for it, and finally remembered a place we used to go to in an the area. This place is called Mi Patio, and we had always liked it.  We really weren’t sure why we hadn’t been there in some time, my wife thought it was because of a birthday we had planned there that had not gone well (not the restaurants fault).

I couldn’t even remember its exact intersection, so we just cruised 7th ave until we came to the right intersection.  There we found out old friend, Mi Patio.  Mi Patio didn’t disappoint. The warm friendly atmosphere got rid of the disappointment of not being able to try Barrio Cafe.  It’s crowded and dim lighting reminded us that this was our night, and the little one was safe with friends.   One look at the menu and I remembered another reason I liked this old friend, a few of the dishes are cross mexi-greek (middle eastern) namely dishes with Gyro meat though I actually went for more traditional fare on this return trip.  I got  a Chile Relleno, Cheese Enchilada,Beef Taco, Rice combo and stuffed myself silly and washed it all down with a couple Coronas.

The beef taco was of the hard shell authentic variety, a very thin corn tortia fried after the filling has been put in. the beef had been obviously slow cooked and was not really spiced, but rather flavored by a marinade.   The only thing tricky with these type of tacos is you need take a bite first to put hot sauce on, as there is no way to pry open these hard shells without ruining the taco.   The taco was perfectly done, not too greasy, easy to eat with hands, and didn’t come apart before the last bite.  The taco is firmly placed in the above average level on the merits of the slow cooked beef.  I personally like a little more initial heat and spice, but this was fixable with hot sauce. There salsa is very good there too, though it does appear to use canned tomatos.  This old friends satisfied, as was painless to park and get into.  It definitly won’t just be a fall back in the future.