The following programs have been encoded and uploaded to the VOD server thus far:
Frontiersmen of the Faith - 1951 - approx 25 minutes
Journey of Faith - 1950 - approx 20 minutes
Rome: The Sacred City - 1962 - approx 12 minutes
The Catholic Hour - Rome Eternal Pt. III - 1958 - approx 30 minutes
...and I have one ready for H.264 encoding:
Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary - The Resurrection - 1957 - approx 23 minutes
This has proven to be lengthy thus far, but so far well worth it. I did my color correction on Premiere after using Kino to transcode from DV files to AVI, then I used Ulead VideoStudio for titling. I'd very much like to take VideoStudio out of the equation at some point soon and hopefully use Kino for the bulk of the production engineering on these films. There's really no point in using something high level like Cinelerra for that, although I still want to play with that too as far as editing goes.
In fact, there's a good chance that Mater Dei Television will only have maybe one or two Windows machines and maybe one or two Macs and have the rest of everything all Linux, from file servers to desktop machines. Linux really does seem to be the most reliable OS out there right now, and you certainly can't beat the price. Not only that, but being able to get more out of older machines will also help save money that would be better used on either buying more films or hiring people to help with future productions. I have updated the page to include banner/button links to various open source and Linux projects. I honestly believe that this is the way things need to go, and will throw my support behind them 100%.
More later...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Have a Blessed Christmas, Everyone!
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." - John 1:14 (DRV)
Tonight, at midnight, we celebrate not merely a birthday, as some would like you to believe, but something so much more than that: We celebrate Salvation coming to the world. The day when we know that we wouldn't have to spend eternity separated from God (unless it was by our own hand - yes, folks, we can lose Salvation if we're not careful). Have a Blessed Christmas, for our family to yours!
A few more notes for the Christmas season...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Tonight, at midnight, we celebrate not merely a birthday, as some would like you to believe, but something so much more than that: We celebrate Salvation coming to the world. The day when we know that we wouldn't have to spend eternity separated from God (unless it was by our own hand - yes, folks, we can lose Salvation if we're not careful). Have a Blessed Christmas, for our family to yours!
A few more notes for the Christmas season...
- Some folks from Save St. Stephen's in Syracuse, New York are trying to buy the old Church building from the diocese. Please say a prayer that they are able to purchase their old building now that the parish is closed. Please ask St. Stephen on December 26 for intercession on their behalf.
- The MPEG 4 of the 1951 program "Frontiersmen of Faith" is rendering as we speak on my main editor. I was having problems with this for awhile because the man who transferred it used Final Cut Pro, which uses DV files, and I use Adobe Premiere Pro among others to edit. This was solved by transferring the DV files to my Linux box and running them through Kino first. One more problem solved by using Linux!
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Monday, December 17, 2007
Newest Acquisition: The Vatican of Pius XII
Thank God for eBay.
Yeah, it's got it's problems, but without it, Mater Dei Television likely wouldn't exist. I've found so many good films on there over the last three and a half years that it's unreal. Sometimes I'll hit a dry spell and what not, and not find any films on there at all. Last weekend, my problem was quite the opposite; I found about six that I thought would have been fantastic to add to the Mater Dei Television collection.
Unfortunately, due to limited personal funds (and that I'm not even going to attempt to ask for donations until we organize Mater Dei Television as a 501(c) 3), we were only able to walk away with one of them.
The film that we obtained tonight is called "The Vatican of Pius XII". I've seen this film advertised on another site for about the same as I paid for it on eBay, but I figured this was the time to pick it up. It looks like it's a silent film, but I'm going to offer it for free as a VoD when it gets transferred. It runs about 20 minutes long, so about the same as "Journey of Faith" does.
I do already have the Castle Films collection of Pope Pius XII, but that will eventually get released to DVD. The idea is to use it as a fundraiser to buy more films. That'll be a nice volume, too, since I've also got a silent film about Pope Pius XI as well. We have roughly eleven films total that I'd like to release to DVD for this purpose, though, and if I pick up one more ("The Byzantine Empire" from Enyclopedia Britannica Films to be exact), then we can have three DVDs that would be perfect for homeschoolers and people in general who may want to learn a little about our faith (or at the very least help out MDTV).
More later...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Yeah, it's got it's problems, but without it, Mater Dei Television likely wouldn't exist. I've found so many good films on there over the last three and a half years that it's unreal. Sometimes I'll hit a dry spell and what not, and not find any films on there at all. Last weekend, my problem was quite the opposite; I found about six that I thought would have been fantastic to add to the Mater Dei Television collection.
Unfortunately, due to limited personal funds (and that I'm not even going to attempt to ask for donations until we organize Mater Dei Television as a 501(c) 3), we were only able to walk away with one of them.
The film that we obtained tonight is called "The Vatican of Pius XII". I've seen this film advertised on another site for about the same as I paid for it on eBay, but I figured this was the time to pick it up. It looks like it's a silent film, but I'm going to offer it for free as a VoD when it gets transferred. It runs about 20 minutes long, so about the same as "Journey of Faith" does.
I do already have the Castle Films collection of Pope Pius XII, but that will eventually get released to DVD. The idea is to use it as a fundraiser to buy more films. That'll be a nice volume, too, since I've also got a silent film about Pope Pius XI as well. We have roughly eleven films total that I'd like to release to DVD for this purpose, though, and if I pick up one more ("The Byzantine Empire" from Enyclopedia Britannica Films to be exact), then we can have three DVDs that would be perfect for homeschoolers and people in general who may want to learn a little about our faith (or at the very least help out MDTV).
More later...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Pope: seminaries must teach Latin Mass
According to the London Telegraph, the Pope wants English seminaries to teach the Traditional Latin Mass. Granted, this came from the London Telegraph, so I won't get too excited about it yet, but if this is true, it certainly is encouraging. What stands out to me is this part:
"In America, some bishops have anticipated this situation. Two seminaries in Pennsylvania – St Vincent, Latrobe, and St Charles Borromeo, Philadelphia – have just announced that they will be teaching the “extraordinary form”, as it is now known."
My diocese, the Diocese of Lafayette in Indiana, sends seminarians to St. Charles Borromeo, which is an excellent seminary to begin with. It's nice to know that there are more places that will teach the TLM other than Our Lady of Guadalupe seminary and St. Thomas Aquinas up in Winona, MN (yeah, I know it's an SSPX seminary, but to be perfectly fair, they DO teach the TLM there).
I think the leadership on both the Society's side and the Magisterium's side are listening to each other more and progress can be made. Granted, a lot of progress still needs to be made, but I have faith that relations will warm further between the two sides.
More later...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
"In America, some bishops have anticipated this situation. Two seminaries in Pennsylvania – St Vincent, Latrobe, and St Charles Borromeo, Philadelphia – have just announced that they will be teaching the “extraordinary form”, as it is now known."
My diocese, the Diocese of Lafayette in Indiana, sends seminarians to St. Charles Borromeo, which is an excellent seminary to begin with. It's nice to know that there are more places that will teach the TLM other than Our Lady of Guadalupe seminary and St. Thomas Aquinas up in Winona, MN (yeah, I know it's an SSPX seminary, but to be perfectly fair, they DO teach the TLM there).
I think the leadership on both the Society's side and the Magisterium's side are listening to each other more and progress can be made. Granted, a lot of progress still needs to be made, but I have faith that relations will warm further between the two sides.
More later...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Thursday, December 13, 2007
A Technical Update, an Announcement, and an Observation
First, the technical update. Fedora Core 8 has been dumped in favor of Ubuntu 7.10. Believe it or not, my version of Fedora Core became unstable, so I was going to have to trash it anyway. Couple that with the fact that it wasn't seeing any of my Windows boxes on my network when it was working, and that it seemed to spend an awful lot of time downloading updates, it was for the better. A friend of mine on the Yahoo Mother of God group recommended Ubuntu to me months ago, but it seems that I couldn't get it working at the time. Probably a the PC that I was using. Well, it works now, and is nice and stable.
Second, my friend Colleen Hammond will be in Indy speaking at Holy Rosary on March 12 as part of their Lenten mission. I'm hoping we can meet for lunch, possibly tape something that day too. We've not worked together in a couple of years now, and I'm hoping we can make good on a video we've needed to re-shoot two years ago.
Third, you ever notice that anytime you absolutely need something, you can't find it, but after you go out and buy another one, you find about twelve of what you were looking for? I was looking for a simple cable splitter this evening. I know for a fact I've got at least three or four of them, but they were nowhere to be found tonight. If I were to go and buy one, though, I guarantee that I'll find them.
In any case, hope to have the linux box hooked up to it's own line this weekend and we can do some actual testing.
More later...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Second, my friend Colleen Hammond will be in Indy speaking at Holy Rosary on March 12 as part of their Lenten mission. I'm hoping we can meet for lunch, possibly tape something that day too. We've not worked together in a couple of years now, and I'm hoping we can make good on a video we've needed to re-shoot two years ago.
Third, you ever notice that anytime you absolutely need something, you can't find it, but after you go out and buy another one, you find about twelve of what you were looking for? I was looking for a simple cable splitter this evening. I know for a fact I've got at least three or four of them, but they were nowhere to be found tonight. If I were to go and buy one, though, I guarantee that I'll find them.
In any case, hope to have the linux box hooked up to it's own line this weekend and we can do some actual testing.
More later...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Update: Technical and Non-Technical
First, the technical update...
I transferred the program files that I transcoded last week over to the linux box and started playing around with VLC. They have a very nice little page that talks about setting up VLC for a VOD system. I couldn't quite get it to work as it was; I may need a dedicated line to do streaming (which is OK since I just happen to have one). The other question is this: Can I get more than one file to stream out? These are my tasks for the following week: To see if I can stream more than one file in a VOD configuration, and to hook up the other line to actually do the streaming.
Now, the non-technical update...
Una Voce now has a chapter in Carmel, IN, which is good since this is where I live. This is good news, but I've been kept in the loop since Summorum Pontificum was released. They now have a website, though. Go check it out.
More later....
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
I transferred the program files that I transcoded last week over to the linux box and started playing around with VLC. They have a very nice little page that talks about setting up VLC for a VOD system. I couldn't quite get it to work as it was; I may need a dedicated line to do streaming (which is OK since I just happen to have one). The other question is this: Can I get more than one file to stream out? These are my tasks for the following week: To see if I can stream more than one file in a VOD configuration, and to hook up the other line to actually do the streaming.
Now, the non-technical update...
Una Voce now has a chapter in Carmel, IN, which is good since this is where I live. This is good news, but I've been kept in the loop since Summorum Pontificum was released. They now have a website, though. Go check it out.
More later....
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
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