Mater Dei Television

What HAVE I been doing, anyway?

2009-10-28T00:42:00.004-04:00

Yeah, it's probably time for an update. While it doesn't seem like there's been much going on, there has. Believe me.

First and foremost is the documentary I'm researching on the incompatibilities of Catholicism and Socialism. Lots of heavy reading has been going in on that one, but three encyclicals from Pope Leo XIII and one from Pope Pius XI, as well as one from Pope John Paul II I'm not through with yet, I'd say that things are coming along well. Questions for interviews are being formulated and ideas for who and what I want to videotape are beginning to come to mind. It's beginning to come together, although slowly, but it will be well worth it and very timely when all is said and done.
The idea for putting together some scola programs are beginning to also be formulated, along with more general devotionals like rosaries and whatnot. The equipment is being purchased or obtained via Freecycle, Craigslist, or thrift shops and a program of this nature with a very basic stereo audio setup can be produced very soon. Ideally, a new audio board would be purchased so more channels of audio and more mics can be used to produce these kind of programs, especially those which are more musical in nature.
A projector has been purchased secondhanded and some replacement belts and tires have been ordered, but this one is a little more of a risk since it's not a true telecine projector. In order to get a flicker free transfer, it will need to be plugged into a variac so the voltage can be varied and thus the speed of the projector tweaked so that the camera won't pick up the flicker from the projector while the film is being transferred. While this can work for silent films, whether or not it will work with sound films still remains to be seen. Fortunately, speed can be varied with software if necessary and what we need to have done may be able to be accomplished. Either way, the investment is minimal, so if it doesn't work we're not out that much.

So, that's where we stand for the time being. While it might not look like it we have been busy. I'll keep you posted on further updates as they happen.

Stay Tuned!

Playing with 480i

2009-09-09T17:19:00.002-04:00

This shouldn't be that big of a deal for me to start playing with 480i at this point, since standard definition television is about as basic as it gets when you're talking about digital television. On the surface, it doesn't seem like it's much different than the old NTSC format we just converted from but in reality, since 480i exists in the ATSC digital standards, even NTSC would have to be converted to 480i digital. In any case, at some point I'd rather be doing Mater Dei Television as a VoD (video on demand) channel through a server as opposed to what we have now. That way, you can watch through a set top box from your easy chair instead of in front of your computer.

Can you already watch MDTV on your regular TV? Yes, but...

The problem is that we've only got X amount of bandwidth available, and while the programs are already encoded for optimal performance at minimal bandwidth and are viewable on a TV if you're hooked up to a media center computer, they'd still look much better at higher resolution and bandwidth. Thus, we start playing with 480i. It's by no means perfect, but perhaps as things progress, we'll get up to high definition 1080i yet!

Stay Tuned!

TLM Clip Posted August 23, 2009

2009-08-23T09:47:00.002-04:00

Well, first off Praise Be to God that it's up. I was hoping at some point to start having TLMs viewable on the MDTV website. Here are some notes and tips to keep in mind while viewing it...

1) This is a big file. I mean BIG. I'd start and pause the video for a few minutes first just to make sure that more of it loads and it looks smoother and not quite so choppy. I would love to have this hooked up to a dedicated server I control complete with a fiber connection to the internet. Seeing that's not going to happen anytime soon, this will have to suffice.

2) Yes, I do understand that it's not the 3rd Sunday After Pentecost. This was shot in June of 2008, and was the first TLM celebrated by Fr. Christopher Roberts of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana. The St. John Bosco Latin Mass Community asked me to tape this, and seeing that at the time I was on the board, it made sense to do so.

3) This was shot with one camera and no audio support. I basically flew in at the last minute, set up the camera and tripod, and that was it. No professional audio support (which has since changed) and no second camera (which has also changed). Also, Fr. Roberts wasn't followed proceeding into Mass very well because my daughter ran up the side isle when she saw me up there when Mass was starting, which leads me to...

4) Yes, those noisy children were mine. A reminder to all those who browbeat, criticize, and in one lady's case, tell people with noisy children to "JUST LEAVE!" Mass: Children screamed, cried and were noisy BEFORE Vatican II also, and there weren't crying rooms to send them to, and many didn't have nurseries, either, to send them to "go play" when they should be learning about Mass instead. Not accepting ALL children during Mass is neither traditional nor Catholic, and if you get set off this much by noisy children, perhaps a generic protestant "church" would be a better fit for you.

And to the woman (I will NOT refer to her as a "lady") who told my kids to "JUST LEAVE!" during this Mass, I hope you are plagued with screaming children in your ears during every single Mass, regardless of which liturgy you attend, for the rest of your life. Remember: One of those screamers may someday be the very priest who absolves your sins, brings you the Eucharist at the hospital, and annoints you when you're ill.

Special thanks goes to Richard Pettys for giving me the idea of "just doing it" when it comes to putting the TLM up on the website, and Mr. Pettys may also be the source for a few more TLMs on MDTV in the future, so a hats off to Richard is certainly in order!

Streaming locally from a local (Ft. Collins, Colorado?) parish is on the programming agenda for MDTV, and in the long term, perhaps touring for several weeks in the summer to various parishes to produce TLMs and other programs for air, but in the meantime, this is what we have to work with, and we'll go with it (the rallying cry for everyone in TV who has to make executive programming decisions, either planned or on the fly).

Finally...

2009-07-15T12:57:00.002-04:00

Two new programs up...

The first is an episode of The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, in particular the episode called "The Resurrection". Fr. Patrick Peyton, a Holy Cross Father and same man behind The Family Theater, brought this series to the United States from Europe. While there are a few technical issues with this particular program that will need to be addressed, it's able to be viewed as it is.

The other is the 20 minute long featurette entitled Journey of Faith. This chronicles the pilgrimage of Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and members of his flock who accompanied him to the Vatican to see Pope Pius XII during the Holy Year of 1950. It's a nice look at a man who signed off as the Imprimatur on our old missals as he visits the man who was pontiff during a critical time in the history of the world.

Enjoy!

Update

2009-06-03T21:28:00.002-04:00

All,

I'm going through some changes in family life right now that's caused MDTV to take a back burner for the time being. Don't worry, though; details are getting worked out and MDTV will have some new programs up before too long.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

AJPM,
Chuck, MI

Well...Obviously it's now up...

2009-04-04T12:59:00.002-04:00

We're online.

Of course, that's probably abundantly clear by now, unless you read the blog first, in which case, you probably didn't know (because I'm not very good at updating this blog admittedly), but we went online on March 30, 2009. Our first two programs are from the show from the 1950s called "The Catholic Hour", this particular episode called "Exploring New Horizons" from 1956, and a short from 1941 called "The Trail of Fr. Kino".

So, thanks for all the prayers and support, and now we just keep moving forward. We have some great ideas for projects in the works as we speak, but as per usual, these generally take money to actually do them. I mean, I could get a second job or something, but then it'd be harder for me to get out and produce these programs. In the short term, we'd like to do some rosary clips, some devotionals, and the basic stuff that one would expect from a Catholic TV network. We're also thinking perhaps some children's programming, perhaps a series on various scholas around the country, and some special programming as well. We'll also be in touch with the Wyoming Carmelites and the Clear Creek Benedictines before too long so that we can develop some programming with them as well.

If you feel called to donate, please do so. We can accept PayPal with this address:

donate@mater-dei-television.org

If nothing else, please pray that we receive the resources to keep this online and chugging along. That's actually first and foremost, to be quite honest with you, but all the synapses aren't quite firing yet as I've not had my morning coffee as of yet (and it's 11:07am. Yikes!).

Stay Tuned!

Chuck, MI

Final Testing Stages

2009-03-27T02:01:00.003-04:00

We've successfully migrated over to Bluehost from CHS Webmaster and so far, things are looking good. I've asked some friends to do a final quality test that goes over things like bandwidth, quality, and the like, and the great majority of the friends I asked to help on the final test are those who've been with me through the talking ("I'm gonna do this..."), the planning, the testing, and just being there, so I thank all of them profusely for being there for me while I got this thing off the ground.

I'd like to add special thanks to Michelle Grunkemeyer from CHS Webmaster and Catholic Homeschool website, who was instrumental in getting the MDTV webpage off the ground from a technical standpoint and even found Bluehost when it was realized we were going to need a ton more bandwidth. Colleen Hammond, a wonderful traditional Catholic and TV person herself who I've been able to bounce ideas off of and get another perspective from a professional standpoint. Paul Nichols from Catholic Cartoon Blog who's been extremely supportive of this concept throughout the years that I know him, and the fact that he's a hockey fan is cool too (Alexander Ovechkin rocks, man!), and there are many, many others who've been praying for this to finally come up, and to all those who I know I've talked to but are too numerous to list, thank you for everything. It's really meant a lot to me.

Stay tuned! Almost there!

Bringing you up to speed...

2009-02-24T16:24:00.002-05:00

The beta tests for quality and bandwidth have concluded and went well. The only thing I have yet to do is check and see how well they work on an actual TV, as these videos are set up more for a Media Center computer in the first place. They might look a little muddy on fullscreen TV, but they still look pretty good for this being web video.

We will be transferring service from CHS Webmaster to Bluehost at the end of this week, so we will be up and flying shortly. CHS Webmaster is a great, inexpensive service with a LOT of bandwidth for those needing average websites. MDTV, unfortunately, is not average in terms of bandwidth consumption and thus we'll be moving to a hosting service that has no bandwidth limitations.

We can make this grow, though, with your support (prayer, financial, old equipment, whatever), and perhaps move to our own T1 where we host it all ourselves. Keep praying for this to grow, and who knows; perhaps we'll even be on satellite.

Stay tuned!

Potential Disaster Averted, But...

2009-02-16T16:27:00.002-05:00

...the problem is simply this: The bandwidth charges would financially devestate us.

What we're in the process of doing now is finding ways to host these videos much cheaper than we could otherwise do so at the present. Ultimately, a T1 line with our own server would be the best, but in the short term, we need something else to insure that we have the best possible product delivered in the least expensive possible way.

We're almost there! Keep praying!

Stand By...

2009-02-16T13:51:00.003-05:00

Barring disaster, Mater Dei Television will begin programming on Feb 17, 2009.

Donations can be accepted through PayPal at this address: donate@mater-dei-television.org

Keep checking back to this blog for programming updates and other pertinent information regarding Mater Dei Television.

I sincerely hope that MDTV will inspire, inform and educate all who view it.

Progress!

2009-02-12T01:41:00.003-05:00

OK, I've taken a template that was downloaded from the Open Source Web Design website and am molding it (finally) into something that will be Mater Dei Television's first website.

Well, first usable one anyway.

I have also embedded the JW FLV Player into the website, complete with sample video that came bundled with it, and it worked...to a point. The player I embedded was actually in the place I wanted it to be (seeing that I've had about 3 weeks of coding experience up to this point - remember? I'm using a TEMPLATE), but I need to find out how to get more than one window embedded. When we can figure that much out, we are SO in business!

So, while my Adventures in Coding are put on hold, I wait and I blog.

Stay Tuned!

JW FLV Player

2009-01-29T12:18:00.002-05:00

The JW FLV Player has been uploaded to the website today and Quanta Plus was installed on the Ubuntu box on Tuesday, so now it's just a matter of playing with the latter and learning how to use it well enough to get the former to work with it.

The JW FLV Player seems to work the best, from what I can see anyway, with playing back embedded MP4 files fullscreen. There is a newer version of the software but I'll go ahead and use this first while I'm playing with it.

We shall see what comes up soon. In the meantime, we're sitting on a test pattern...

KVM Installed

2009-01-25T02:41:00.002-05:00

By and large, this generally isn't that big of a deal to report, but today it is and here's why...

By now, if you follow this blog at all, you no doubt have seen the website for Mater Dei Television. Our test pattern page is a very basic page done on KompoZer that was put up there to let people know that we're going to start broadcasting soon.

I was not, nor I'm still not, impressed with it.

I wanted something with DreamWeaver type quality to it, but I don't have that kind of cash right now (and since we don't have any programming up quite yet, we're not exactly getting donations yet). I decided to look open source and came up with Quanta Plus. It looks nice from the screenshots, but it's only for Mac and Linux.

Enter the KVM.

The KVM will allow me to hook one of my Ubuntu boxes up that I've not had online since we left Indiana. It's downloading right now. I'm trying to set one goal per day at this point, regardless of how big or small, that I can get done that will advance Mater Dei Television and get us on air quicker. My goal was to get the KVM up yesterday, so I briefly fell behind. Now that I'm installing Quanta Plus, I'm back on track.

Goal for tomorrow: Commence work on permanent webpage. ETA to completion: One week.

Test Pattern

2009-01-23T03:44:00.002-05:00

It's up.

Over three months since my last post (I'm horrible in that department), a move from Indiana to Wyoming, and an old DVCAM camcorder later, and we have our website up, complete with the test pattern like you would have seen in the "Golden Age of Television" from the 1950s.

I'm going to start this out by saying this is NOT the way that I wanted to do this. I would still very much like to go IPTV or even consider satellite delivery, whichever turns out to be the best way to do it based on cost and the ability to reach the audience. That said, even if we had all the money we needed to and could feasibly do both, we have a different problem...

We don't have enough programming.

So, while I'm in the process of aquiring more old films on eBay and various other sources, and producing our own new programs, we'll have to deliver our content this way. This solution will get us up and rolling, but it's only temporary. I know my computer stuff, but I'm not a computer guy. I'm a TV man and that's how I think. My opinion is that the great majority of the viewing public, while with the ability to watch TV on their computers, would prefer to sit in their family room and watch it on a TV as opposed to sitting in their office or den and watching it on their PC.

Producing these programs will be an ongoing task, but ultimately a labor of love. The next step is to incorporate in the State of Wyoming with the intention of filing as a non-profit. We will also be doing everything we can to get to the ultimate goal of satellite or IPTV delivery as quickly as possible, while providing the best quality viewing experience that we are able to in the meantime.

Things are rolling! Thanks for the prayers, but by all means, keep them up!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Another Three Months...

2008-10-06T08:12:00.002-04:00

I've got to do better in the "updating the blog" department. Three months is just a wee bit too long, but it's been a busy three months, although, not busy for Mater Dei Television. Well, not too busy...

I've come to a crossroads at the fledgling TV apostolate. I needed to have this up like last year, and it's not up yet. I know the direction with VoD is the right way to go, at least for now and probably in some form in the future as well. I just don't have the bandwidth to use the streaming servers like I'd like to. If I want to have more than three or four viewers at a time, that bandwidth is going to need to be somewhere around, well, T3 speed. At least two T1s, which is not one less than a T3 (for those non-techs reading this, a T3 actually has the same bandwidth as 27 T1 lines).

I figured maybe embedding video is going to be the best option, at least for now, but I don't want YouTube. I'm not thrilled with the quality of flash video in general and YouTube's quality in particular. If I could get an MP4 to play back, especially one with the H.264 compression, that wouldn't be bad...as long as the player could go full screen without that annoying navigation bar.

Well, after consulting with a friend who does webhosting and web development, I found out that embedding MP4 video is, in fact, possible. I had to find a good player, though, and I may have. The JW FLV Media Player plays MP4 format with the H.264 compression. If you follow the link and look at the quality full screen, you'll notice it's fantastic quality for embedded video, and I believe that's because when you look at that demo clip, that is AVC/AAC that you're looking at. When you choose full screen, the navigation bar comes up, but disappears with a slick fade after a few seconds. That wouldn't be bad, because it looks cheap when it stays up there. Having it up there initially and then letting it fade out would be the best of both words. It also does playlists too, so I can actually have some clips on a loop on the menu screen that people could be watching while looking over the programs.

By the way, if you download this player and try to use it without embedding it, it's not going to work. It's written to be uploaded to a website and then coded to use on a website. It IS a slick player though. I can wait to try it out.

It's not so much that I'm admitting defeat by using embedded video; I'm just starting out a little more within my means. Perhaps someday we'll have the IPTV VoD setup, but let's learn to crawl before we run.

Stay Tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

OK...another change for the web server...

2008-07-01T23:21:00.002-04:00

When I was still racing mountain bikes in the mid 90s, the term that comes to mind was "retro-grouch"...

I was being a retro-grouch myself when I was trying to force the issue of using an old 486 (also from the mid 90s) as a web server, largely because I could. When that didn't work, I decided to use a Pentium 1 instead (likely from the mid to late 90s).

And I DID get that to work, but...

I started thinking about something I read about Freesco. One of the limitations of it was that there was no way that it'd ever take a gigabit ethernet card. This may not be an extreme problem for the time being, but it could be in the future (especially if I used the 486, since I couldn't even find a 10/100Mbps card for an ISA bus - I'd have to stick with a 10Mbps card). The other limitation that was standing out was the version of the Linux kernel it uses. It was so old that even it'd only run the first version of the Apache web server.

These things stuck in my head, and I started reasoning things this way...

1) I would like a more up to date version of Apache web server running.
2) I just installed Absolute Linux on a spare PC. Why couldn't I run something Slackware based to run the web server?
3) The PC I just got from my Freecycle list was already running Ubuntu. Why not just run Ubuntu instead of Slackware or Freesco and make my life simpler for the time being.
4) I can always go back and play with Slackware later.
5) I'm getting about three old Pentium III grade computers from someone else on my Freecycle list tomorrow. Why not build the web server from that?

So with that reasoning, I took the wife and kids to my favorite electronics store (also known as the Happiest Place on Earth - sorry Walt, not THAT place) and picked up another gigabit ethernet card and three Cat-6 cables to start the infrastructure of Mater Dei Television's future connection. I almost bought a gigabit router, too, but the salesman talked me out of it, saying that we'll get "bottlenecked at our ISP". He has no idea I intend on running this on a T1, perhaps even in the short term, and a much thicker pipeline in the longer term.

Keep praying. We're close!

Stay Tuned...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Web Server

2008-06-28T22:23:00.003-04:00

OK...so the web server isn't going to be an old 486...

It looks like I'll be building it up with an old Pentium 233 MMX instead.

Granted, the older computer would have been nicer to use, and I got it to boot Freesco and post and whatnot, but nevertheless, those old IDE controller cards are next to impossible to come by, and if you do have any (I have two), they're near impossible to configure.

So, I'm using an old PC that was freecycled to me. I just need to get a larger hard drive now so I don't have to mess with it for awhile. Ideally, when I get another computer to use as a web server, I'm going to load Absolute Linux on it and stick it in my office.

Waste not, want not.

Stay Tuned...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

PS - Someday, after MDTV actually has a signal going out over the internet, I will return to actual Catholic content on this blog and move the tech talk over to another one. In the meantime, though, one blog is sufficient.

Quick Update

2008-06-25T15:28:00.002-04:00

The MDTV Darwin Streaming Server has been up for almost a total of ten days now, running nice and steady. I've not gotten a chance to do much more on that due to a few other projects that have been in the works. My old server that was being used for DSS was decommissioned when I put the new one online, but I will be recommissioning it soon to be used as an FTP server. It makes too much sense to have one of those, especially if I'm out in the field editing video and I need to get some programming back to the "station" (if that's what you want to call it - Facing facts, it's the server in my basement).

I'm also working on a web server that is based around a (get this) 66Mhz 486...

Scary, isn't it?

The nice thing is that I'll be using Freesco on that, and I upgraded the RAM in the box so it can do all the nifty things Freesco will do. 64MB RAM is nothing these days, but in a 486 running Freesco, that's almost overkill! I plan on running the Apache Web Server with this, and since that's all this box is doing (holding web pages that will ultimately redirect the user to the videos on the VoD server, which is on a considerably faster server), I really wouldn't think that I'd need anything faster.

Besides, if this works well and keeps costs down, it helps because that would be more money to put towards either the production of new programming or the cost of obtaining old programming. And besides, the Freecycler in me says that it's best not to stick another PC in the landfill. Even the Vatican is trying to "Go Green" these days.

Stay Tuned...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Latest Progress

2008-06-15T23:35:00.002-04:00

Seeing that I wound up having to usher at our TLM this evening, I was only able to figure out two things today, one by default and one by research...

1) I now know how to restart Darwin Streaming Server after a reboot. This is by merely starting the Perl script in the directory to which it was installed. I had to figure this out after I came home from said TLM and there was my server sitting on the login screen...

2) I may have found the settings to use in MediaCoder for use in transcoding material to use on Darwin. This is good since I've failed pretty consistently in this regard recently. I will test this tomorrow.

Now, I just have to find that serial mouse for my son's laptop and a way to raise about $150,000 to obtain a house for my family and ample office and studio space to continue Mater Dei Television in a way that would allow me to do this full time. Please pray...

Stay Tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

New Server Installed But...

2008-06-14T22:54:00.002-04:00

The new server is up and running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and has Darwin Streaming Server running on it as we speak, but I still can't seem to stream anything out if it was transcoded with MediaCoder (which is too bad, seeing that's a nice little program - at least as far as Windows standards go). I'm going to have to fix the transcoder issues tomorrow, as it's late and the wife wants to spend a little time with me tonight.

The good night is that I did find out that you can actually get DSS installed and running in "root" but then switch back to the user to run it. That's a good sign.

In any case, I'm tired. The new server is going and the old server will likely be made into a web server soon.

Stay Tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

New Server

2008-06-13T09:28:00.002-04:00

Well, the new server seemed to be pretty stable overnight. It's not the fastest thing that I've ever built, and certainly not the prettiest, but it's faster and has more memory than what the streaming video is currently running on. I've not yet installed the OS. I'm still running Ubuntu live. Nevertheless, I'm happy thus far. Before I install anything, though, I'm going to put a gigabit ethernet card in it first, so it looks like a trip to my favorite electronics/computer store is in my foreseeable future...

Stay Tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Crossing My Fingers...

2008-06-12T22:59:00.002-04:00

OK. I just built a server with a PC motherboard that had been giving me all sorts of fits the last time I used it. I had different memory in it back then, and that's since been changed.

I'm going to run Ubuntu on it on the live distro all night and see if I can move the mouse in the morning. If I was able to, then that's telling me the memory was the problem the first time. If it freezes, it's probably a bad motherboard and I'm going to be launching a barrage of obscenities that would make Ralphie's Dad blush...

I'd name this server Jude, after St. Jude, but believe it or not, saints aren't in my naming scheme. I can't tell you what my naming scheme is because then I'm easier to hack.

Stay Tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Servers

2008-06-10T23:24:00.002-04:00

Deciding to do some much overdue cleaning (due to the necessity of needing to swap out TVs and I couldn't get to the one I needed until I moved a bunch of stuff), I decided to put together another server.

This should come as no surprise, as what I currently have Darwin running on right now is an older, somewhat slower, but certainly very reliable Ubuntu box. I figured at some point I'm going to need about three servers to start with: One to run Darwin, one to run a web server (likely Apache), and one as an FTP server. I thought of actually getting the FTP server done first, but decided to build another streaming server instead because I have the parts for it and if it works, then it's going to be a much faster box. Even if it's slightly faster, we'll be money ahead.

I've heard that the new Celerons are so poor compared to the Pentium 4 that it's as much as a 60% drop in performance compared to a P4 of the same speed. The old Celerons are only 10% from what I understand. We'll find out. It might wind up a total wash for all I know seeing that the current streaming server is running on an 866MHz PIII in a Dell Precision 420 and I'm about to build up an old eMachines box with a 2.2GHz Celeron. 60% of 2.2GHz comes out to 880MHz, which would only be slightly faster but with faster RAM and much more of it (the old server RAM is kind of slow and pricey in comparison).

So if it works, and I've got about three more eMachine motherboards if it doesn't (one of which is rumored to work but needing a video card), then I'll build it up with Ubuntu and Darwin and the old Dell will run Apache. The FTP server will likely be an older box that will run something more utilitarian that I can set up and access from the other computers on the network. I don't need a fancy GUI with that one.

In any case, it's late, it's been a long day, and I'll write more tomorrow...

Stay Tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

OK...So that's a good sign...

2008-06-09T23:19:00.003-04:00

OK. I have my wife's FluxBuntu laptop hooked into the same local network which is running my Darwin Streaming Server, and currently, I can actually stream the test clips from the server to the laptop, which again is within the network. This is a positive thing. This means that Darwin is, in fact, working.

However, I can't seem to stream anything I've actually transcoded myself, nor can I stream to my other internet circuit.

While I think streaming outside the network is a port forwarding issue that I need to look at deeper tomorrow, I'm still not sure why I can't stream anything that I've encoded with MediaCoder. What I've done was sent myself a couple of the sample files so I can pull them down and open them up with MediaCoder to see what the settings are, then I can use those settings to transcode my clips.

I'm not thrilled with reverse engineering, but whatever works, right?

Either way, another victory tonight. I'm happy that the DSS is at least talking with another computer inside the network.

"I said WOO! HOO!" - Homer Simpson

Stay Tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

The Switch to Darwin

2008-06-09T00:48:00.002-04:00

No, I'm not opening up THAT can of worms...

I'm talking about Apple's open-source project, the Darwin Streaming Server. I finally got it running on Ubuntu. It's currently been up for about the last 15 minutes or so, and I don't have any videos on there as of yet, but I got the sucker running.

This should be an improvement over VLC as far as a VoD server goes. VLC, while a virtual Swiss Army knife of media programs, just doesn't quite have the bugs worked out of their server portion yet and as a result, I've went ahead and switched it over to DSS. DSS is supposed to be a Red Hat/Fedora Core thing, but after searching through the Ubuntu forums, I found that someone actually came up with a way to get this thing going on Ubuntu.

So now we know what the next two things to do are...

1) Move the videos into the movies folder.
2) Read how to configure it for VoD.

After those two things happen, we'll worry about the port forwarding if it's necessary at all (which it may be) and firewall issues (again, if it's necessary at all). After that we may actually have a worthwhile beta test to do...

Also, I've finally found a good banner to use for Ubuntu, so I've added that to this blog too. Check it out. Ubuntu is free and easy to use and stable. It beats the hell out of spending $99.00 on an operating system, and even that's on the cheap.

Stay Tuned! I think we're finally close...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

I'm Not Dead Yet...

2008-06-06T21:51:00.002-04:00

...although this is where Terry Jones of Monty Python fame would say "...but I was coughing up blood this morning" in a falsetto voice meant to be imitating a female...

So anyway, I've spent the last couple of months in rediscernment of my calling to this apostolate (that and kind of busy with a multitude of other things, such as job hunting, getting the TLM going with my Una Voce chapter, now known as the St. John Bosco Latin Mass Community, and other things not to be discussed here). Anywho, I was getting frustrated and asked God to give me a sign. Afterwards, I went on eBay and saw that someone was selling another reel of "The Catholic Hour".

This was too easy, so I asked Him again for one more film, JUST to be sure...

No more episodes of "The Catholic Hour", but there were THREE films there that would be of use to MDTV.

I guess that answers my question. The answer was simply God saying "Back to work, Dummy..."

In addition to that, we have our first videotaped TLM in the can! The only issue with it, however, is that the lighting was awful and I only used one camera on it. Actually, the lighting was alright as long as I didn't zoom in to where Fr. Roberts was giving his homily. The lighting from my position wasn't good. If I had a camera in the back of the chapel where I was taping, it would have been better. Perhaps next time...

Also, I may have come up with another theory as to why VLC isn't working well as a VoD server. I've got my wife's laptop (with FluxBuntu loaded on it) hooked up to the same router. I thought I'd read on the VLC forums that there was no problem using it with intranet, but it didn't work well over the internet. I'm going to test this to see if it's true. If it is true, I'm going to look at possibly using a VPN in order to connect outside the network. If we use something like OpenVPN, then people just connect to the network and view videos that way. At least for the time being, that might be the best way to go.

Stay tuned...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Good Old Forums...

2008-03-18T22:51:00.002-04:00

Seeing that I'm still having the same trouble that I had during my last post, I decided to post it on VLC's forum page and see what actually happens. These open source forums are generally pretty good, so I figured it'd be a good idea. I checked it with an MPEG1 file also, and it's still doing essentially the same thing. I think the linux firewall needs to be tweaked, so I may be asking for some help on that one from a friend of mine.

Stay tuned...AND KEEP PRAYING!!!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

SOME Progress...

2008-03-13T22:40:00.002-04:00

Well, that was fruitful...

After setting the port forwarding and whatnot, I started VLC up with at nice little test clip (in the case, I used "The Trail of Fr. Kino"), and it was actually coming through to my other internet circuit and I could see action on the terminal window of the Linux box. On the Windows box, VLC even started up with 9:06 on the clip duration time.

It just didn't play.

It's frustrating in some ways, but I have to admit: We're further along than we were yesterday. This is good news in some ways. Now, I'll just have to get into the forums and figure out why...

Stay tuned! We'll get this up and going yet!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Port Forwarding Finished

2008-03-10T22:51:00.003-04:00

While still not at 100% health with the cold that I had after my flu subsided at the beginning of February, I finally got a chance to get down here and get the port forwarding done on the main VoD server. In other words, what I did should allow people to access the video files up there. Now, we'll just have to see if it works.

I'll write something more with Catholic content one of these days! I promise! I'll have to write about the little recon we did down in downtown Indy where there's an old Catholic Church that's basically been sitting abandoned since 1949. I wish we could get in and save it, but I think it's about to be turned into some apartments. Never know, though; the guy who owns it is planning on selling a bunch of the items inside, so perhaps my local Una Voce chapter will be able to pick some up and restore them. We may have to buy a few of them for MDTV too.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

I'm Not Dead!

2008-02-27T22:06:00.001-05:00

It has been awhile since I've posted, but I got busy at the end of January and then have been sick (or attending to sick people) most of February. I have the information needed to go live. I'm just waiting on being reasonably well enough to sit in my basement some night and work on it (it's cold down here in the winter).

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

100th Post!

2008-01-12T23:36:00.000-05:00

Too bad it's going to be technical... :)

I sat down here the other day and got the other internet circuit hooked up, but I had to go through another router. I'm beginning to think that's my caveat. What's happening now is that I can actually use VLC's web interface and actually set up VLC for VoD. It's taking successfully taking my MPEG-4 files to which the videos are encoded, and it looks like everything is behaving the way it's supposed to, except for ONE detail...

I can't get it to stream to my Windows box on a different internet circuit.

In a word, grumble.

I think I'll post the question to the VLC forum tomorrow. I'm kind tired, and not extremely happy that I wound up missing the Una Voce meeting in my neck of the woods today. Not that it could be avoided today, but it happened.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Columbia Magazine and the Tridentine Mass

2008-01-06T09:38:00.000-05:00

Like most other members of the Knights of Columbus, I got my copy of Columbia magazine late last week. There was an article in this issue about Summorum Pontificum and the Traditional Latin Mass called "What's Old Is New Again", written by former Our Sunday Visitor editor Gerald Korson. It was actually a good article, even referencing Sts. Philomenia and Cecilia Catholic Church in Oak Forest, IN (for which, unfortunately, I don't have a working link), which offers only the Tridentine Mass and is served by the FSSP, going over the recent history with the initial indult granted by Pope John Paul II in 1984 and his call for a greater use of the 1962 Roman Missal in 1988's Ecclesia Dei, and various other smaller items in the article that were either informative or in favor of the Tridentine Mass.

One part of the article that was problematic for me, though, was when they interviewed Msgr. M. Francis Mannon, a founding director of the Liturgical Institute in Chicago. He said training for the extraordinary rite would be difficult to institute in many seminaries.

"Liturgical formation in seminaries already consumes a good deal of time. How can an additional curriculum be incorporated?" He then goes on to say "(Formation programs) will have to ensure that the current liturgy is not in any way compromised."

While I can understand where Msgr. Mannon is coming from, I think the problem that we have today in this regard is the disappearance of Latin from the curriculum in many seminaries across the country. While being fluent in Latin would be ideal, at the very least Church Latin needs to be taught. And that's regardless whether or not programs for learning the extraordinary form would be implemented in a seminary. We, as Latin Rite Catholics, need to get back to Latin. It's still the official language of the Church and according to Sacrosanctum Consilium 36 (The Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), is still the primary language of the Latin Rite liturgy, and so much gets lost in the translation between the Magisterium and the people here in the United States. The ICEL has not given a good translation of even the Novus Ordo. When Latin is once again taught in seminaries in the United States, it'll be easier for a priest to learn the Tridentine Mass, and likely help the Novus Ordo with a more faithful understanding of the liturgy, which would improve translation to any other language as well.

Regardless, Latin must return to the seminaries, if not for the Old Mass, for the good of the whole Church.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Technical and Film Notes

2008-01-03T21:34:00.000-05:00

Well, thanks to a person on one of my local freecycle lists, I now have a router that I can hook up the extra internet circuit to. This will be handy. Although I fully intend, at least at first, to hook the linux box directly up to the modem, the router will be needed when I hook up a web server for the front end of the VOD system. Now, all I have to do is figure out a few details on NATting and routing and I think we'll be in business. I mean, I think we'll be in business from a functional standpoint before that, but having the front end would be nice too...

The copy of "The Vatican of Pius XII" came in today. This is good; I was beginning to wonder about it. I haven't gotten a chance to preview it yet. I do have a 16mm projector that I can't use for telecine but is good for just watching films on. I just can't really bring it out until I have room to set it up. I did look at what was written on the leader though. Someone put "The VACATION of Pius XII" on there. That would have been interesting. Shots of Castel Gandolfo...taking in a football (soccer) match between Juventus and AC Milan...just kinda hanging out...

Of course, as rare as that film would be, I think someone accidently wrote "vacation" instead of "Vatican". I'm not sure if Pope Pius XII was a football (soccer) fan. I know our current Holy Father, Benedict XVI, and Pope John Paul II both are/were fans of the game. I'm really becoming a fan myself, but I generally prefer the English Premiership over Serie A in Italy, and I'm a supporter for East London side West Ham United and not AS Roma or Juventus.

But I digress. I have to admit, between daily prayer and watching football (soccer), I've been able to maintain sanity in an otherwise hectic and stressful life. Mater Dei Television is closer than it ever was before of going up permanently, but our family finances are still pretty tight. My daily prayer, at this point, consists of my Militia Immaculata daily consecration prayer, the Miraculous Medal prayer, and sometimes an act of contrition in the morning, a Hail Mary and a St. Michael exorcism prayer before I start work, and an Our Father, Hail Mary, Angel of God, Glory Be, and another St. Michael before bed with my two older sons. It's good, but it can always be better. Watching the football (soccer) helps my brain relax like the prayers help my soul relax.

In any case, I've droned on enough. More later...

ICTM,
Chuck,MI

Programs Encoded and Uploaded

2007-12-27T23:13:00.000-05:00

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

Have a Blessed Christmas, Everyone!

2007-12-24T07:51:00.000-05:00

"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...

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!

Have a Blessed Christmas!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Newest Acquisition: The Vatican of Pius XII

2007-12-17T21:06:00.000-05:00

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

Pope: seminaries must teach Latin Mass

2007-12-15T10:46:00.000-05:00

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

A Technical Update, an Announcement, and an Observation

2007-12-13T22:53:00.000-05:00

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

Update: Technical and Non-Technical

2007-12-02T12:34:00.000-05:00

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

Test Clips

2007-11-29T21:49:00.001-05:00

Over the last week or so (I've been either busy or sick - and I missed a local Una Voce meeting also), whenever I can get a spare moment, I've been encoding that episode of "The Catholic Hour" at different bit rates to see how well it performed. Tests were done at 500kb, 800kb, 1800kb, 2000kb, and 3000kb. Obviously, the higher the bit rate, the better it looked. The thing that stuck out to me most, though, is that the difference between 500kb, 800kb, and 1800kb was just about negligible. This is good, at least in the interim. I'm not going to have near the bandwidth that I will need to do 3000kb or even 2000kb bit rates, even though that ultimately, MDTV will be on it's own line (it's actually waiting - we have had DSL for a while now, and cable internet came with my day job, so like, two lines). I know what kind of bandwidth will be needed, but it's going to take a little time to get there. In the meantime, I'm hoping a dedicated cable line will do the trick.

And the only way it can do the trick, if what I'm thinking is correct, is to stream out at 500kb. That way, the bandwidth won't be eaten up too much and the file size will still remain small; roughly 120MB for a 30 minute program, compared to 189MB for the 800kb stream, 342MB for the 1800kb stream, 450MB for the 2000kb stream, and 667 for the 3000kb stream.

Next, we move the file over to the linux server and set VLC up to stream MPEG-4 on VOD.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Right size...

2007-11-24T14:20:00.000-05:00

...wrong container. I think. What I was trying to do was put an MPEG-TS container around an H.264 file. MediaCoder didn't seem to like that too much. I think when I'm done with capturing footage for tonight, I may just go ahead and try again, but this time with a simple MPEG-4 container on it. The size was good, though; a 30 minute program that's normally about 2GB in size was only 209 MB. Perfect.

Oh, and I found some more footage from that friend for whom we're transferring films, this time a parish's 50th Anniversary Celebration complete with 4th Degree Knights of Columbus and everything. And they're going to allow us to use them for MDTV too! It's so cool to have some good stock footage of various things Catholic.

Now, what to do with them...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Transcoding and Transferring

2007-11-24T12:15:00.000-05:00

The results of last night's transcoding test are in....

Don't ever, EVER transcode from one MPEG format to another.

I did this last night, taking a copy of "Our Lady's Shrine" from MPEG-2 to H.264 (MPEG-4 basically) in an MPEG-TS container, and I got the same problems I had when trying to transcode from .mov files to .avi files back in about March or so. Really choppy, really jittery, and just not good.

So, I'm taking an .avi file and seeing how it comes out. This time, it's my episode of "The Catholic Hour: Rome Eternal Part III". Hopefully, taking it from uncompressed video to compressed will be better.

Oh, and in the midst of transferring my next client's videos, I found some footage of an old Mexican cathedral (the name eludes me right now - I saw a picture of the same cathedral up in the old La Hacienda restaurant in Fishers, IN before they moved, though), and equally as important, a few seconds of a memento mori. Since this footage belongs to some friends of ours, they may be willing to "donate" the clips that I need.

I'm pretty sure we can work something out.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Update/Progress

2007-11-23T21:39:00.000-05:00

While the crack team of professionals at Red Hat have, in fact, patched Samba, I'm still trying to figure out how to configure it. There hasn't been much time in that regard, as I had a huge job of film transfer to do for someone else that was due the day before Thanksgiving. In any case, the linux box is still working (obviously - I'm typing this up on it) and I will figure out Samba as I'm down here working on my next film transfer job.

In the meantime, I think I found the answer to my previous question: Yes, I can transcode MPEG-4 to an MPEG-TS. What I'm doing now with MediaCoder is taking the film of "Our Lady's Shrine", at least the MPEG-2 file, and changing it to an H.264 file in an MPEG2-TS stream container. I'm not sure exactly how it's going to turn out yet, but VLC should be able to play it. If I see no difference in quality between the MPEG-2, the MPEG-TS, and the H.264 files, yet see a much smaller file with the H.264, then I'm in business. The next step after transcoding will be to load them up on the server and set up VLC for VOD.

Oh, and as far as new films go, I just got a short of Pope Pius XII shutting the door after the Holy Year of 1950 was officially closed. I'll have to take a look at it all the way through, but it looks like it came from Off-Network Productions. I'm not sure if it's public domain or not, but for five bucks it was worth the risk.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

OK...Next Question...

2007-11-14T06:52:00.000-05:00

As I wait for the crack team of experts at Red Hat to help me work on my Samba problem, the next question remains in my head: Now that I know I can encode MPEG-TS files from MPEG-2 files, can I do it with MPEG-4? The reason why I wonder this is simple: Bandwidth. MPEG-4 files are much smaller and less likely to clog up bandwidth for a high number of users.

Looks like I've got my next MDTV project.

In any case, I'm sorry there's little to no Catholic content on this blog right now. That will eventually change. At this point, though, this blog is helping me keep track of the whole troubleshooting record so I can refer back to whatever I may need in the future. The other plus side is that I'm transferring a large number of films right now, and I've discovered some nuances that are making them look better, so I'm getting better in that realm too.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Another Nice Step Forward

2007-11-12T23:00:00.000-05:00

While taking a small break from transferring client films, I took the MPEG of "Trail of Fr. Kino" and decided to make it into an MPEG Transport Stream file so as to get started on setting up Mater Dei Television on a VoD platform, and it worked fantastically! I used MPEG Streamclip to do the job, and am watching it currently on VLC. Now, just getting the Fedora and Windows boxes to talk to one another is going to be another step, but I'm happy with finding out what I found out tonight.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Great Steps Forward

2007-11-10T21:22:00.000-05:00

OK. While I didn't wind up going with Darwin Streaming Server, I did get a couple of alternatives together and downloaded them and installed them on the linux box. They are simply VLC and Mplayer. They're both great media players (at least VLC is - I've not tried Mplayer yet), but I've not used them in setting up a VoD server yet. As soon as I figure that out, I think we're off to the races. Still, what has been accomplished today have been great steps forward.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Success! I think...

2007-11-10T12:30:00.000-05:00

OK...I finally got an OS successfully installed on what I hope is the video server. I wound up using Fedora Core 8. Now, anyone out there who knows anything about linux who would like to help me get this box networked to my Windows network, I'd be grateful.

Phase two: Getting the Darwin Streaming Server installed.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Not Jinxing It

2007-11-10T11:27:00.000-05:00

OK. I'm sick of jinxing it.

I know, I know. I'm not supposed to believe in jinxes, but it never seems to fail; every single time I say I'm going to use a particular OS, I can't get it to install for some reason or another, or if I can, the GUI doesn't work, or the computer falls over and starts smoking or whatever.

So, I'm going to just say this much: I've got an OS loading on what I hope is eventually going to be my Darwin Streaming Server (at least until I get a faster computer to install this stuff on, then it can either be a backup or my web server). I'm not going to say which one it is. I'm not going to say I was successful. Not until I get the doggone thing to work.

In the meantime, back to work on film transfer.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Grumble..

2007-11-07T22:08:00.000-05:00

OK...for some reason, that Debian distro wasn't bootable. No clue as to why. Perhaps it needs a bootloader or something. Don't know. I got frustrated enough that I downloaded the BitTorrent client to get a copy of Slackware. I would rather have my Darwin Streaming Server linux based if at all possible, and Slackware is actually the way I wanted to go to begin with this time around.

We shall see.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Back to the Drawing Board

2007-11-06T23:31:00.000-05:00

OK. Tonight, in lieu of a dead KVM switch, I hooked up another monitor, keyboard and mouse to what I think is going to be my Darwin server. No, not THAT Darwin. I was talking about Apple's open source Darwin server that is used in an MPEG-4 based IPTV VOD system. I'm leaning towards Debian as my distro on this box, as the most success I've had with linux has been with a Debian based distro, so why not?

The idea at this point is to get a box running Debian, install the Darwin server on it, and then start playing with it. We'll see where things go from there.

It's late and I'm tired. I better bugger off.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Long Awaited Update - No, I'm Not Dead

2007-11-05T20:23:00.000-05:00

Yeah...it's been awhile.

There's been a lot going on in our neck of the woods. We've had our struggles with a multitude of different things, and I went through a job change to a company that I didn't realize is diametrically opposed to both my Faith and my morals. The good news, though, is that we have a new baby boy, named Nigel and he's healthy and reasonably happy (although he's trying to get the jist of having siblings, and noisy siblings at that).

The one good thing that came out of my job change is that it gave me some better ideas to make Mater Dei Television more effective. We are now looking at an IPTV based VOD (Video On Demand) system that will allow people to view MDTV with either their computer or an after market set top box on their regular TV. Video on Demand seems like the way to go, but I just don't like the vlog look too much; being a TV man by trade, I like TV to look like, well, TV.

I'll write more later. There's much work to be done.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Testing...

2007-08-08T15:52:00.001-04:00

Let's see how this works. Allegedly, in order for the Sopcast web player to work, you need Microsoft Internet Explorer. Seeing that I generally use Mozilla Firefox, I'm not sure how well this is going to work. Either way, I believe you still need the Sopcast client installed for it to work.

Here we go...

Sancta Missa Website

2007-08-08T14:58:00.000-04:00

From the the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius...

http://www.sanctamissa.org/EN/index.html

Why wasn't something like this done a long time ago? A website tutorial on how to pray the Traditional Latin Mass seems like a good idea to me...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

OK...Need a Beta Tester or Two...

2007-08-06T17:12:00.000-04:00

Setting up the Sopcast was not too hard; it was actually quite easier than Peercast, and easier to change my IP address without having to change the link constantly. It's running at home, but now I need some people to help me test it, since we apparently have new firewalls at my day job (for the next couple of weeks, anyway, before I start my new job) that don't like peer-to-peer anything, let alone broadcasting, it may be better for me to get some beta testers from my friends.

Here's what you do...

Download the Sopcast client at http://www.sopcast.org/download/

Then follow this link: sop://broker1.sopcast.com:3912/29085

Let me know if this works. I may have to tweak the firewall.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

That Was Quick...

2007-08-05T22:06:00.000-04:00

We've been on Sopcast for a total of 23 minutes, and we've already have a viewer! I guess that answers my question...

There's apparently a way to embed my live feed into the blog, so it'll be considerably easier to watch...

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Feed Will Drop Shortly...

2007-08-05T21:00:00.000-04:00

Just giving a head's up (to our two or three viewers) that the feed will be dropping shortly as we make the transition from Peercast to Sopcast. Oh...and if you're reading this, say a little prayer that the computer I picked up today from Jack's Computers will work. He gives away old computers, monitors, and printers he can't sell due to obsolescence, and this looks like at least a Pentium II, which will work with the MPEG-2 encoder card that I have.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Sopcast?

2007-08-02T16:00:00.000-04:00

Three weeks into netcasting, and Peercast has not been nearly as impressive as I originally thought. It seems as if you have to jump through way too many hoops in order to get things to work correctly. A colleague of mine suggested to go out with Sopcast. Sopcast apparently is based on the BitTorrent system. I think I'll be taking the feed down here this week sometime and installing Sopcast instead, just to see how well it goes out. I'll be bugging some of you to help out, so if you're interested, drop me a line.

Or I'll be in contact with you...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

One More Day!

2007-07-30T21:17:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note: The programs I listed yesterday were more or less "still cooking" when I went to my day job today, so the new programming loop of the programs listed in the last post will be up by tomorrow morning.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Update

2007-07-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

I apologize for there being this long without an update. The feed is going again, and I'm working on the next batch of films to air. The one going right now on the editor is "Journey of Faith", which chronicles Francis Cardinal Spellman leading a pilgrimage of Catholics from the Archdiocese of New York to Rome for the Holy Year of 1950. Spellman gives a short message in the beginning, and then off to sea. It's in color, too.

There will probably be another episode of "The Catholic Hour", this time it's "Rome Eternal - Pt. III". For the record, no, I don't have the other three parts of this series yet. If anybody has them (or any other Catholic Hour film reels), please get in touch with me. The other film will be a short called "The Trail of Fr. Kino", and it tells the story of a Jesuit priest who helped settle the American Southwest. They mention him briefly in the episode of "The Catholic Hour" which is playing right now. Still, his story is important, especially as you see just how much Catholics have contributed to the founding and exploring of America (but who generally don't get credit for it due to anti-Catholic sentiment).

More later...stay tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Feed News

2007-07-23T19:40:00.000-04:00

OK. I got the encoder going again before going back to my day job. Got the KVM going again too (which is good, because I didn't really want to buy another KVM). Now, the reason why the feed isn't up is because I didn't start my return feed at home. While it was kind of a stupid mistake, it's good to know. I'll probably set up an old Mac or something as a dummy computer that just handles the feed so I don't tie up my laptop. Don't worry; it'll be back online by 23:00 ET or so. I'm trying to make a relay at my day job, as I know it's got some good bandwidth there too.

In any case, more later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Feed Down for Maintanence

2007-07-23T08:34:00.000-04:00

Otherwise titled "Why is my KVM freaking out?" I think I'm going to need to take the wires off the KVM and reseat everything. So, in the meantime, we'll be down for a little while...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

We Had A Viewer!!!

2007-07-22T08:07:00.000-04:00

To quote Homer Simpson..."I said 'Woo Hoo'..."

Now, all I have to do is hope that I didn't do anything to limit that. If you read this blog and you were the viewer last night, please drop me a line. Click on the picture to the right to see the stats...

Yes, I know that it's a little shaky right now. One flaky motherboard and the lack of equipment limited me severely, but as I get new equipment, we'll be upgrading things. In the meantime, as G.K. Chesterton once said "If something is really worth doing...it's worth doing badly!"

Update: We had two (2) viewers today! I can't count it as three because one of them is my return feed that apparently helps stabilize the feed. Nevertheless, we had two viewers today!

Until next time...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

OK...I'm Back...

2007-07-21T23:23:00.000-04:00

I'm back from vacation, and it's been a hellish week. Especially last Thursday...

I wound up having to take care of three sick people (two little ones and one big one) pretty much most of Thursday afternoon and all evening. Fortunately, the boys were pretty much OK after Grandma and Grandpa came back from dinner. This was a good thing, because I came down with the same flu they had right after everyone got back. The drive back here was nasty, and mostly had to have my wife drive. I was laid up most of yesterday and all last night. It started to break this afternoon, so I'm back up to where I need to be, but wow, getting sick on vacation isn't fun.

Sorry for the digression, but that explains why I didn't come straight home and fix my feed. That's an even better story.

One of our friends who was taking the mail in for us said that she couldn't get through on the phone. My wife called AT&T (the root of all evil) and they said that "it was probably the computer equipment shorting out the phone." When I got better, I went downstairs and took a look. The computer equipment was fine. The encoder had stopped, and my IP address had changed (probably signifying I lost phone connection at some point while we were gone), but I was able to get online and everything. So I unplugged it and tried to call our land line again. Not really any better. Bypassed the answering machine. No go. Bypassed the filter for the DSL service. No luck. My wife called AT&T back and told them we did all the troubleshooting we could and we're pretty sure it's not the computer equipment. They'll send someone out by Tuesday at the earliest. Tuesday. Ugh!

This is also a reminder for me to spend the extra five bucks a month and get a static IP address. That way, I don't have to worry about losing power and changing IP addresses. That will make keeping a stable feed up that much easier.

So anyway, if you want to follow the directions from a couple of posts ago (I believe the post was for July 15), the feed is up if you want to check it out. I'm going to go check on it now. Now that I'm home, I should be able to keep a better eye on it.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Obvious Feed Problems

2007-07-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

OK. This obviously needs to be troubleshot, because as soon as I went to log into my feed, it wasn't there. I'm wondering if that encoder rebooted itself while I was gone. It'll have to be fixed on Friday. I have to admit; I'm still new to this Peercasting thing. Hopefully, it'll be an easy fix...

More later. It's been a long day, and I'm beat.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Breaking News: We Have a Feed

2007-07-15T23:10:00.000-04:00

I'm very pleased to report that we are now webcasting through the Peercast network. Here's what you need to do...

Go to Peercast and download the appropriate software for your operating system and install it.
Go over to the Peercast Address Book and use the drop down menu to select "WMV."
Find Mater Dei Television and click on "Play."

That should be it. Things to keep in mind...

You need to be running the Peercast software in order to watch Mater Dei Television.
You can help out by configuring your Peercast software as a relay, and remember, since it's peer to peer streaming, the more people logged in means a better signal.
There is only going to be one hour of programming per week, although on a continuous loop, at least to start. When we get more programming, we'll air it. Gradually, this will be increased to two hours, three hours, etc, until we are actually airing different programming every day (although probably repeating itself for awhile on a 12 hour loop, but changed out every day).

We're not going to just air old Catholic programming. We do intend on producing new programs, and ideas are welcome. Things to keep in mind with programming...

Programs should have some relevance to the Traditional Latin Mass crowd and/or the Catholic Homeschooling crowd.
We don't quite have the means to do a Mass yet, although frighteningly enough, I know how to build the PC that would allow me to do live switching between two cameras (and I can make it portable, too). In the meantime, we need to focus on programs that would be easy to produce and edit with one or two cameras, but not done live. Rosaries, Angeluses, speakers, and other programs that don't have to be aired live (or have a quick turnaround) would be ideal.
Focusing on Summorum Pontificum would be ideal. It seems as if many bishops are not thrilled with this not because of going backwards necessarily but due to the lack of resources. I'd love to produce a program that helps both priests and laity learn enough Latin to get through the Tridentine Mass every day. Or even a program to help train altar boys. There seems to be endless possibilities as far as programming goes.
Histories on how the Church influenced society in various parts of the world would also be welcome. Ideas are always good.
If you want to produce for Mater Dei Television, sit tight and stay tuned. We have standards. When I talk this over with the board (or soon to be board), we'll post exactly what these standards are. I'd like a little diversity in this department, because while everything that comes from in house will likely have the same feel, the out of house programming probably won't, and that's ok (MEANING: I use Adobe Premeire Pro 1.5 on my main editor and my portable runs Premiere 5.1. That doesn't mean we won't take anything made with Final Cut Pro, Avid, or Cinelerra among others. Just make it relevant to what we normally air, and don't make it look bad.

Now, having said all this, we've both got a learning curve right now. I'll try to answer any questions the best I possibly can, but bear with me as I get used to this too. These beginnings are truly humble, but together, we'll make this into the first TV network geared for Traditional Catholics.

Here we go!

ICTM,

Chuck, MI

Gotta Love Forward Progress

2007-07-15T00:35:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I got the Windows Media Encoder working, and I was able to get both sound and video from the capture card, so that's configured correctly. It was kind of cool, actually, because I think there's one thing in between that and Peercast that will need to be done for me to start transmitting.

Now, of course, the bad news (which, granted, isn't so much bad as it was frustrating, but hopefully easily fixed).

I can't seem to get that Cyberhome DVD player (the one that plays everything, including TDK discs, which apparently NO other DVD player likes to play) to loop the whole disc. Fortunately, there's a Sony DVD player sitting upstairs being unused at the present time (long story). It doesn't matter, though, because with any luck, this will be temporary.

Getting closer!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Caught Up

2007-07-11T22:28:00.000-04:00

I took today off to catch up on some projects that were getting to be long overdue; none of which were related to MDTV per se. Mainly client film and video transfers. Nevertheless, I checked my former MPEG player/current encoder, and it is seeing the capture card. That's always a good sign. In any case, it looks like until I get another working computer, I'm going to be encoding the Cyberhome DVD player I took out of service in favor of my Panasonic from the parish rummage sale. $1000 brand new in 2000; part of a $5 bag in a bag sale in a parish rummage sale in 2007. Sounds great. Looks great. No remote. Not quite as friendly to all formats like the Cyberhome is. I tell clients with expensive DVD players that I have an easier time playing DVDs on a $40 Cyberhome than I do on a much more expensive name brand. And the Cyberhome can be Region-Free too. And it plays NTSC and PAL. Not bad for forty bucks.

In any case, that's going to be my temporary video source. I so wanted this up this week. I'm now looking at this weekend. It WILL be done by July 16.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Good News/Bad News

2007-07-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

Well, as you've already guessed, the bad news is basically this: I need to computers to run MDTV the way I'd like to, and I have one. I've tried every option, but it didn't look promising that three computers later, I still didn't have something that worked. The plan is now to turn the MPEG-2 player into an encoder and hook up a DVD player to it with the first week's programming burned onto a DVD-R and loop it. At least for the time being.

The good news, however, and I say this cautiously, is that I may have found a free tool to convert from .DV files to .AVI files. This is good because the guy transferring my 16mm film uses a Mac, and I use a PC. Needless to say, the files come to me as .DV files.

I'm using MPEG Streamclip 1.1 to transcode. Hopefully, this will work. I want to re-encode all the MPEG-2 files I did a few years ago with a watermark, but I kind of want to do this on the clip itself as opposed to while encoding the stream, as some of these films will be going to DVD at some point. In any case, first one is started. Hopefully, it'll turn out like I plan...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Prayer Request

2007-07-07T22:41:00.000-04:00

I don't know who's out there reading this, or how many of you there are, but please pray for this apostolate. Technical issues have plagued me all day. I don't have the SCSI drives for the NEC server, my trusty old Dell Dimension L400c wouldn't post, and a Compaq Deskpro I had sitting in storage would post but then the drive would keep failing.

In a strange twist of events, I'm out of computers.

I know of someone who may be able to help me (the guy who I made the 3Ghz P4 for earlier this week). He may be able to help. The idea is at this point is to either get a slower computer than my Dell Precision 420 to use as my MPEG-2 player and let the Precision handle the encoding, or find a fast computer to use as my encoder. A new motherboard and power supply would help (preferably micro ATX to fit into one of those old eMachine cases).

We're so close!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

EXPLANATORY NOTE ON MOTU PROPRIO "SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM"

2007-07-07T07:39:00.001-04:00

EXPLANATORY NOTE ON MOTU PROPRIO "SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM"

VATICAN CITY, JUL 7, 2007 (VIS) - The Holy See Press Office today issued an explanatory note concerning the Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum". The most important paragraphs of the note are given below:

"The Motu Proprio 'Summorum Pontificum' lays down new rules for the use of the Roman liturgy that preceded the reform of 1970. The reasons for such provisions are clearly explained in the Holy Father's letter to bishops which accompanies the Motu Proprio (the two documents have been sent to all the presidents of episcopal conferences and to all nuncios, who have arranged to distribute them to all bishops).

"The fundamental provision is as follows: the Roman liturgy will have two forms ('usus'):

"a) The ordinary form is the one that follows the liturgical reform undertaken by Pope Paul VI in the year 1970, as it appears in the liturgical books promulgated at that time. There is an official edition in Latin which may be used always and everywhere, and translations in divers languages published by the various episcopal conferences.

"b) The extraordinary form: which is that celebrated in accordance with the liturgical books published by Blessed Pope John XXIII in 1962."

In paragraph 8 the note reads: "The bishop of a particular place may erect a personal parish, wherever there is to be found a very substantial number of faithful who wish to follow the earlier liturgy. It would be appropriate for the numbers of faithful to be substantial, even if not comparable to those of other parishes."

The explanatory note also highlights some of the characteristics of the 1962 Missal:

"It is a 'complete' or 'integral' Missal in the Latin language, that is, it also contains the readings for the celebrations (it is not distinct from the 'Lectionary' as the later 1970 Missal is).

"It contains just one Eucharistic prayer, the 'Roman Canon' (corresponding to the first Eucharist Prayer of the later Missal, which includes a choice of various Eucharistic Prayers).

"Various prayers (including a large part of the Canon) are recited by the priest in a low voice inaudible to the people.

"Other differences include the reading of the beginning of the Gospel of John at the end of Mass.

"The 1962 Missal does not provide for concelebration. It says nothing concerning the direction of the altar or of the celebrant (whether facing the people or not).

"The Pope's Letter envisages the possibility of future enrichment of the 1962 Missal (inclusion of new saints, new prefaces, etc.)."
OP/MOTU PROPRIO/SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM VIS 070707 (430)

LETTER FROM POPE TO BISHOPS ON "SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM"

2007-07-07T07:37:00.000-04:00

LETTER FROM POPE TO BISHOPS ON "SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM"

VATICAN CITY, JUL 7, 2007 (VIS) - Given below is the text of the English-language version of Benedict XVI's Letter to all the bishops of the world concerning his Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum," which was published today:

"With great trust and hope, I am consigning to you as pastors the text of a new Apostolic Letter 'Motu Proprio data' on the use of the Roman liturgy prior to the reform of 1970. The document is the fruit of much reflection, numerous consultations and prayer.

"News reports and judgments made without sufficient information have created no little confusion. There have been very divergent reactions ranging from joyful acceptance to harsh opposition, about a plan whose contents were in reality unknown.

"This document was most directly opposed on account of two fears, which I would like to address somewhat more closely in this letter.

"In the first place, there is the fear that the document detracts from the authority of the Second Vatican Council, one of whose essential decisions - the liturgical reform - is being called into question.

"This fear is unfounded. In this regard, it must first be said that the Missal published by Paul VI and then republished in two subsequent editions by John Paul II, obviously is and continues to be the normal form - the 'Forma ordinaria' - of the Eucharistic liturgy. The last version of the 'Missale Romanum' prior to the Council, which was published with the authority of Pope John XXIII in 1962 and used during the Council, will now be able to be used as a 'Forma extraordinaria' of the liturgical celebration. It is not appropriate to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were 'two rites.' Rather, it is a matter of a twofold use of one and the same rite.

"As for the use of the 1962 Missal as a 'Forma extraordinaria' of the liturgy of the Mass, I would like to draw attention to the fact that this Missal was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted. At the time of the introduction of the new Missal, it did not seem necessary to issue specific norms for the possible use of the earlier Missal. Probably it was thought that it would be a matter of a few individual cases which would be resolved, case by case, on the local level. Afterwards, however, it soon became apparent that a good number of people remained strongly attached to this usage of the Roman Rite, which had been familiar to them from childhood. This was especially the case in countries where the liturgical movement had provided many people with a notable liturgical formation and a deep, personal familiarity with the earlier Form of the liturgical celebration. We all know that, in the movement led by Archbishop Lefebvre, fidelity to the old Missal became an external mark of identity; the reasons for the break which arose over this, however, were at a deeper level. Many people who clearly accepted the binding character of the Second Vatican Council, and were faithful to the Pope and the bishops, nonetheless also desired to recover the form of the sacred liturgy that was dear to them. This occurred above all because in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church.

"Pope John Paul II thus felt obliged to provide, in his Motu Proprio 'Ecclesia Dei' (July 2, 1988), guidelines for the use of the 1962 Missal; that document, however, did not contain detailed prescriptions but appealed in a general way to the generous response of bishops towards the 'legitimate aspirations' of those members of the faithful who requested this usage of the Roman Rite. At the time, the Pope primarily wanted to assist the Society of St. Pius X to recover full unity with the Successor of Peter, and sought to heal a wound experienced ever more painfully. Unfortunately this reconciliation has not yet come about. Nonetheless, a number of communities have gratefully made use of the possibilities provided by the Motu Proprio. On the other hand, difficulties remain concerning the use of the 1962 Missal outside of these groups, because of the lack of precise juridical norms, particularly because bishops, in such cases, frequently feared that the authority of the Council would be called into question. Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them. Thus the need has arisen for a clearer juridical regulation which had not been foreseen at the time of the 1988 Motu Proprio. The present norms are also meant to free bishops from constantly having to evaluate anew how they are to respond to various situations.

"In the second place, the fear was expressed in discussions about the awaited Motu Proprio, that the possibility of a wider use of the 1962 Missal would lead to disarray or even divisions within parish communities. This fear also strikes me as quite unfounded. The use of the old Missal presupposes a certain degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language; neither of these is found very often. Already from these concrete presuppositions, it is clearly seen that the new Missal will certainly remain the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, not only on account of the juridical norms, but also because of the actual situation of the communities of the faithful.

"It is true that there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. Your charity and pastoral prudence will be an incentive and guide for improving these. For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. The 'Ecclesia Dei' Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the 'usus antiquior,' will study the practical possibilities in this regard. The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal.

"I now come to the positive reason which motivated my decision to issue this Motu Proprio updating that of 1988. It is a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church. Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to unable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew. I think of a sentence in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes: "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return ... widen your hearts also!" (2 Cor 6:11-13). Paul was certainly speaking in another context, but his exhortation can and must touch us too, precisely on this subject. Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows.

"There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church's faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness.

"In conclusion, dear brothers, I very much wish to stress that these new norms do not in any way lessen your own authority and responsibility, either for the liturgy or for the pastoral care of your faithful. Each bishop, in fact, is the moderator of the liturgy in his own diocese.

"Nothing is taken away, then, from the authority of the bishop, whose role remains that of being watchful that all is done in peace and serenity. Should some problem arise which the parish priest cannot resolve, the local ordinary will always be able to intervene, in full harmony, however, with all that has been laid down by the new norms of the Motu Proprio.

"Furthermore, I invite you, dear brothers, to send to the Holy See an account of your experiences, three years after this Motu Proprio has taken effect. If truly serious difficulties come to light, ways to remedy them can be sought.

"Dear brothers, with gratitude and trust, I entrust to your hearts as pastors these pages and the norms of the Motu Proprio. Let us always be mindful of the words of the Apostle Paul addressed to the presbyters of Ephesus: 'Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the Church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son.'

"I entrust these norms to the powerful intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church, and I cordially impart my apostolic blessing to you, dear Brothers, to the parish priests of your dioceses, and to all the priests, your co-workers, as well as to all your faithful."
BXVI-LETTER/MOTU PROPRIO/SUMMORUM VIS 070707 (1860)

MOTU PROPRIO "SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM"

2007-07-07T07:34:00.000-04:00

MOTU PROPRIO "SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM"

VATICAN CITY, JUL 7, 2007 (VIS) - Given below is a non-official English-language translation of the Apostolic Letter "Motu Proprio data" of Pope Benedict XVI, "Summorum Pontificum," concerning the use of the Roman liturgy prior to the reform of 1970. The original text is written in Latin.

"Up to our own times, it has been the constant concern of supreme pontiffs to ensure that the Church of Christ offers a worthy ritual to the Divine Majesty, 'to the praise and glory of His name,' and 'to the benefit of all His Holy Church.'

"Since time immemorial it has been necessary - as it is also for the future - to maintain the principle according to which 'each particular Church must concur with the universal Church, not only as regards the doctrine of the faith and the sacramental signs, but also as regards the usages universally accepted by uninterrupted apostolic tradition, which must be observed not only to avoid errors but also to transmit the integrity of the faith, because the Church's law of prayer corresponds to her law of faith.' (1)

"Among the pontiffs who showed that requisite concern, particularly outstanding is the name of St. Gregory the Great, who made every effort to ensure that the new peoples of Europe received both the Catholic faith and the treasures of worship and culture that had been accumulated by the Romans in preceding centuries. He commanded that the form of the sacred liturgy as celebrated in Rome (concerning both the Sacrifice of Mass and the Divine Office) be conserved. He took great concern to ensure the dissemination of monks and nuns who, following the Rule of St. Benedict, together with the announcement of the Gospel illustrated with their lives the wise provision of their Rule that 'nothing should be placed before the work of God.' In this way the sacred liturgy, celebrated according to the Roman use, enriched not only the faith and piety but also the culture of many peoples. It is known, in fact, that the Latin liturgy of the Church in its various forms, in each century of the Christian era, has been a spur to the spiritual life of many saints, has reinforced many peoples in the virtue of religion and fecundated their piety.

"Many other Roman pontiffs, in the course of the centuries, showed particular solicitude in ensuring that the sacred liturgy accomplished this task more effectively. Outstanding among them is St. Pius V who, sustained by great pastoral zeal and following the exhortations of the Council of Trent, renewed the entire liturgy of the Church, oversaw the publication of liturgical books amended and 'renewed in accordance with the norms of the Fathers,' and provided them for the use of the Latin Church.

"One of the liturgical books of the Roman rite is the Roman Missal, which developed in the city of Rome and, with the passing of the centuries, little by little took forms very similar to that it has had in recent times.

"'It was towards this same goal that succeeding Roman Pontiffs directed their energies during the subsequent centuries in order to ensure that the rites and liturgical books were brought up to date and when necessary clarified. From the beginning of this century they undertook a more general reform.' (2) Thus our predecessors Clement VIII, Urban VIII, St. Pius X (3), Benedict XV, Pius XII and Blessed John XXIII all played a part.

"In more recent times, Vatican Council II expressed a desire that the respectful reverence due to divine worship should be renewed and adapted to the needs of our time. Moved by this desire our predecessor, the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI, approved, in 1970, reformed and partly renewed liturgical books for the Latin Church. These, translated into the various languages of the world, were willingly accepted by bishops, priests and faithful. John Paul II amended the third typical edition of the Roman Missal. Thus Roman pontiffs have operated to ensure that 'this kind of liturgical edifice ... should again appear resplendent for its dignity and harmony.' (4)

"But in some regions, no small numbers of faithful adhered and continue to adhere with great love and affection to the earlier liturgical forms. These had so deeply marked their culture and their spirit that in 1984 the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, moved by a concern for the pastoral care of these faithful, with the special indult 'Quattuor abhinc anno," issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship, granted permission to use the Roman Missal published by Blessed John XXIII in the year 1962. Later, in the year 1988, John Paul II with the Apostolic Letter given as Motu Proprio, 'Ecclesia Dei,' exhorted bishops to make generous use of this power in favor of all the faithful who so desired.

"Following the insistent prayers of these faithful, long deliberated upon by our predecessor John Paul II, and after having listened to the views of the Cardinal Fathers of the Consistory of 22 March 2006, having reflected deeply upon all aspects of the question, invoked the Holy Spirit and trusting in the help of God, with these Apostolic Letters we establish the following:

"Art 1. The Roman Missal promulgated by Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the 'Lex orandi' (Law of prayer) of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite. Nonetheless, the Roman Missal promulgated by St. Pius V and reissued by Bl. John XXIII is to be considered as an extraordinary expression of that same 'Lex orandi,' and must be given due honour for its venerable and ancient usage. These two expressions of the Church's Lex orandi will in no any way lead to a division in the Church's 'Lex credendi' (Law of belief). They are, in fact two usages of the one Roman rite.

"It is, therefore, permissible to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass following the typical edition of the Roman Missal promulgated by Bl. John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated, as an extraordinary form of the Liturgy of the Church. The conditions for the use of this Missal as laid down by earlier documents 'Quattuor abhinc annis' and 'Ecclesia Dei,' are substituted as follows:

"Art. 2. In Masses celebrated without the people, each Catholic priest of the Latin rite, whether secular or regular, may use the Roman Missal published by Bl. Pope John XXIII in 1962, or the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970, and may do so on any day with the exception of the Easter Triduum. For such celebrations, with either one Missal or the other, the priest has no need for permission from the Apostolic See or from his Ordinary.

"Art. 3. Communities of Institutes of consecrated life and of Societies of apostolic life, of either pontifical or diocesan right, wishing to celebrate Mass in accordance with the edition of the Roman Missal promulgated in 1962, for conventual or "community" celebration in their oratories, may do so. If an individual community or an entire Institute or Society wishes to undertake such celebrations often, habitually or permanently, the decision must be taken by the Superiors Major, in accordance with the law and following their own specific decrees and statues.

"Art. 4. Celebrations of Mass as mentioned above in art. 2 may - observing all the norms of law - also be attended by faithful who, of their own free will, ask to be admitted.

"Art. 5. § 1 In parishes, where there is a stable group of faithful who adhere to the earlier liturgical tradition, the pastor should willingly accept their requests to celebrate the Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962, and ensure that the welfare of these faithful harmonises with the ordinary pastoral care of the parish, under the guidance of the bishop in accordance with canon 392, avoiding discord and favouring the unity of the whole Church.
§ 2 Celebration in accordance with the Missal of Bl. John XXIII may take place on working days; while on Sundays and feast days one such celebration may also be held.
§ 3 For faithful and priests who request it, the pastor should also allow celebrations in this extraordinary form for special circumstances such as marriages, funerals or occasional celebrations, e.g. pilgrimages.
§ 4 Priests who use the Missal of Bl. John XXIII must be qualified to do so and not juridically impeded.
§ 5 In churches that are not parish or conventual churches, it is the duty of the Rector of the church to grant the above permission.

Art. 6. In Masses celebrated in the presence of the people in accordance with the Missal of Bl. John XXIII, the readings may be given in the vernacular, using editions recognised by the Apostolic See.

"Art. 7. If a group of lay faithful, as mentioned in art. 5 § 1, has not obtained satisfaction to their requests from the pastor, they should inform the diocesan bishop. The bishop is strongly requested to satisfy their wishes. If he cannot arrange for such celebration to take place, the matter should be referred to the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei".

"Art. 8. A bishop who, desirous of satisfying such requests, but who for various reasons is unable to do so, may refer the problem to the Commission "Ecclesia Dei" to obtain counsel and assistance.

"Art. 9. § 1 The pastor, having attentively examined all aspects, may also grant permission to use the earlier ritual for the administration of the Sacraments of Baptism, Marriage, Penance, and the Anointing of the Sick, if the good of souls would seem to require it.
§ 2 Ordinaries are given the right to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation using the earlier Roman Pontifical, if the good of souls would seem to require it.
§ 2 Clerics ordained "in sacris constitutis" may use the Roman Breviary promulgated by Bl. John XXIII in 1962.

"Art. 10. The ordinary of a particular place, if he feels it appropriate, may erect a personal parish in accordance with can. 518 for celebrations following the ancient form of the Roman rite, or appoint a chaplain, while observing all the norms of law.

"Art. 11. The Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei", erected by John Paul II in 1988 (5), continues to exercise its function. Said Commission will have the form, duties and norms that the Roman Pontiff wishes to assign it.

"Art. 12. This Commission, apart from the powers it enjoys, will exercise the authority of the Holy See, supervising the observance and application of these dispositions.

"We order that everything We have established with these Apostolic Letters issued as Motu Proprio be considered as "established and decreed", and to be observed from 14 September of this year, Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, whatever there may be to the contrary.

" From Rome, at St. Peter's, 7 July 2007, third year of Our Pontificate."
(1) General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 3rd ed., 2002, no. 397.
(2) John Paul II, Apostolic Letter "Vicesimus quintus annus," 4 December 1988, 3: AAS 81 (1989), 899.
(3) Ibid.
(4) St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Motu propio data, "Abhinc duos annos," 23 October 1913: AAS 5 (1913), 449-450; cf John Paul II, Apostolic Letter "Vicesimus quintus annus," no. 3: AAS 81 (1989), 899.
(5) Cf John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Motu proprio data "Ecclesia Dei," 2 July 1988, 6: AAS 80 (1988), 1498.
BXVI-MP/.../SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM VIS 070707 (1900)

Nuns in Spokane Break With CMRI

2007-07-07T00:49:00.000-04:00

This is interesting. Some nuns in Spokane just broke with the CMRI sedevacantist group and are forming a religious community of their own.

Bishop Skylstad of Spokane by and large never seemed to be very Traditionalist friendly. With the motu proprio just hours away now, I'm wondering if these nuns will be allowed to assist at the Tridentine Mass. This could be a very good thing, but it would be nice for the nuns to have the option of being able to still pray the Traditional Latin Mass.

Getting Closer

2007-07-06T23:43:00.000-04:00

I might be making just one more hardware change with my setup. I'm going to try to use an old Dell Dimension L400c (my very first editor and my first PC in the post-486 era) to play back the MPEG-2 files now. I say this for a few reasons...

The NEC server that I have is going to need a lot more work than I first anticipated. Not an unreasonable amount of work, but enough that, should I want to use it for Mater Dei Television, it'll push things back even further, which is no longer an option.
The CenDyne/Real Magic MPEG-2 decoder card will do a few very good things, not the least of which play back a movie full screen through the video out to a TV, which is what I wanted to do all along, and still allow me to manipulate the playlist on the VGA monitor. It also is older technology and was made to run on a slower machine, thus the old Dell. It's not XP compatible, but I don't mind using an old Windows 2000 license hanging around here somewhere.
It beats buying a new computer right now when I can't afford it and time is of the essence.

I can turn the Dell Precision 420, what was to be the MPEG-2 player, into a Windows Media Encoder of some sort, and probably not have to even reinstall Windows. That way, I'd have everything set and ready to go.

It figures there'd be some last minute thing to deal with. Especially with the motu proprio hours away.

More later, and start praying...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Summorum Pontificum

2007-07-04T21:44:00.000-04:00

Summorum Pontificum is the name of the Motu Proprio that will be released on July 7 calling for a greater use of the Tridentine Mass.

When it becomes available, I'll try to put the text to it or link to it up and online. I'm shooting for that to also be the date which the feed will be up. Again, I hope to have it online before I go on vacation...

In the meantime, I'm putting together a computer for a client/friend that's going to be a media box. This is the best PC I've ever put together. Perhaps not the most important, but easily the best; 3.0 GHz Pentium 4, 2GB RAM, and a GeForce 256MB video card, with an NTSC capture card. I'm going to find a nice Media-Center front end on it and have a nice PC. The cool thing is that this will eventually be his backup; the uber-comptuer I'm going to build for him in a few months is going to have HDMI ports, probably Core-Duo processor, similar motherboard, and at least 4GB RAM, with at least a terrabyte of hard drive space. I want to put an HDTV/ATSC card in it too. If this works well, might have to build one up for MDTV as well...

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

FSSP Parish in the Southern Indiana

2007-07-03T08:59:00.000-04:00

I knew there was another parish in the southern part of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis that had the Indult Mass, but I had no idea that it was totally an FSSP parish. Sts. Philomena and Cecila Catholic Chuch is all Tridentine, all the time. Looks like there's another possible parish to partner with. There are a few I already have in mind, really; the Basilica down in Covington, KY, Sacred Heart in Cincinnati, and Holy Rosary in Indianapolis are all possibilities at this point. I want to work with all of them in some way shape, or form, even if it's a Rosary or an Angelus.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Motu Proprio Meeting

2007-06-28T18:58:00.001-04:00

This came directly from the Vatican Information Service. NOW it's imminent...

MEETING DISCUSSES "MOTU PROPRIO" ON USE JOHN XXIII'S MISSAL

VATICAN CITY, JUN 28, 2007 (VIS) - Given below is the text of a communique released today by the Holy See Press Office concerning Benedict XVI's forthcoming "Motu Proprio" on the use of the Missal promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.

"Yesterday afternoon in the Vatican, a meeting was held under the presidency of the Cardinal Secretary of State in which the content and spirit of the Holy Father's forthcoming 'Motu Proprio' on the use of the Missal promulgated by John XXIII in 1962 was explained to representatives from various episcopal conferences. The Holy Father also arrived to greet those present, spending nearly an hour in deep conversation with them.

"The publication of the document - which will be accompanied by an extensive personal letter from the Holy Father to individual bishops - is expected within a few days, once the document itself has been sent to all the bishops with an indication of when it will come into effect."

OP/MOTU PROPRIO/... VIS 070628 (180)

Up All Night...

2007-06-28T02:31:00.000-04:00

Once again, I find myself up all night doing some sort of work on a client video, so while it's rendering, I decided to do some Mater Dei Television work in my downtime. Technically, it's not downtime, but seeing the editor is working right now and it doesn't seem to need me for awhile, I can do some other things...

The video feed is still up and going after two days. I saw a little stutter earlier during "The Catholic Hour", but that doesn't seem to have repeated since. I'd say all and all it's doing well. I also but an old 9.1 GB SCSI hard drive into the NEC server, although I don't have it connected up yet. There are a few articles of junk on top of that server that need to go into the trash first, as well as a guitar amp to move, and some VGA F-F connectors to pick up for my KVM switch. Nevertheless, it looks like the encoder is going to be up soon. Looking at the encoder, however, it does seem like it can be done more efficiently. A LOT more efficiently, but it'll have to do until we get something better.

Looks like I pulled some cables on the KVM by mistake. More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

This Just In: Motu Proprio to be Released on July 7

2007-06-27T14:54:00.000-04:00

From Gerald over at The Cafeteria is Closed...

"My Austrian friends just emailed me. Kath.net/Die Welt (Klaus Badde) report (my translation:) that the motu proprio liberating the Tridentine Mass for the entire Catholic Church has been given to about 30 bishops from all over the world in the Sala Bologna of the Apostolic Palace by Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone. The bishops had been invited to Rome for that purpose.

At the end of the meeting, in which the motu proprio was introduced together with a letter of explanation by Pope Benedict XVI., Pope Benedict met with the bishops. The document is about three pages long, the accompanying letter about four. From Germany, Cardinal Lehmann (the head of the German bishops conference) had been invited. The circumstances of the procedure make clear that the Pope was very interested to personally inform the bishops, in collegial manner, of the content rather than have them learn about it from the media.

The publication of both documents will take place on July 7th. It emphasizes the unity of the Roman Rite which will consist of an ordinary and an extraordinary form which are supposed to inspire each other. The ordinary/regular form will continue to be the new rite of 1969. The extraordinary form will be the Missal of Bl. John XXIII. of 1962."

Interesting to say the least. This means I need to talk to someone out in California soon. He's not only a diocesan priest who prays the Tridentine Mass, but he's also a video guy like me. And as of July 7, we don't have to have permission to do this stuff anymore (per se).

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Testing is underway...

2007-06-26T14:41:00.000-04:00

Well, the stress testing of the MPEG-2 player is finally underway. I started a playlist last night that runs approximately one hour and put it into a loop. I decided to try VLC Player again, and oddly enough, it worked without any stuttering or freezing. In fact, I've decided that I'm going with it again, at least for the time being, in the MPEG-2 player. I hope to be stress testing it for over the next several days to see how it's going to hold up.

I think the reason it didn't seem to be working properly the first time was that I may have had Windows configured to download and install updates as they became available. This, of course, is problematic. I've now got this configured to be done once a week, when the feed will be taken off-line anyway due to maintenance, like how a regular TV station would operate. As a result, VLC runs nice and smooth right now. The films I'm using with the testing, my first episode of ironically titled "The Catholic Hour" (Total Running Time: 30 min), "Our Lady's Shrine", and "Rome: The Sacred City" among others, so far have looked like I was running these straight off of a DVD player.

Testing will continue, and the next step is building the Windows Media Encoder. If everything goes right, I won't have to use Windows Media Encoder or Windows.

One can hope.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

MPEG-2 Player UP!!!

2007-06-25T15:13:00.000-04:00

This should really be titled "A Productive Weekend In Spite of Myself", but that would be way too long...

Here's what went on. This is going to be mostly technical, so if you don't want to be inundated with another geek-post, then feel free to skip this and wait for the next post which will be less geeky in nature.

I spent a lot of time in the office this weekend cleaning it out, and taking my old Dell Precision 420, which used to serve as my main video editor, and turning it into a working MPEG-2 player. It started basically by trying to decide which flavor of linux I was going to use for this, and then I decided to go with Windows instead. You already know that part, since that was the gist of my previous post.

I found out a lot about the nature of AGP cards this weekend. It figures, since the best cards now are PCI-E cards, but if you have to use older technology, then it's good to know these things.

Anywho, here's what happened: A few weeks ago, we went to a garage sale in an eastern suburb of Indianapolis, and I picked up an Nvidia GeForce 6200oc with 256MB RAM onboard. Not a bad deal for ten bucks. I stuck it in my wife's computer a few weeks ago, actually. My editor runs an ATI Radeon 9250, also with 256MB RAM onboard. Last year, someone freecycled to me an ATI Radeon 9600SE with 128MB RAM onboard. The lady who gave it to me said that her kid "didn't like it", so she gave it to me.

Well, I now know why.

I stuck that 9600 in my Dell while building this MPEG-2 player, and after I'd installed the drivers for it and got it to a point where it was ready to go, or so I thought, the video came out black and white. I checked the monitor with one of my cameras. Nope, got color there. Swapped out S-Video cables, but that didn't work either. So I got online and found out that this problem was not unheard of. This kind of frustrated me, so I went ahead swapped it out with the GeForce card that I just had put into the wife's computer. She is only using one monitor, and won't be using the S-Video anytime soon, so it seemed to make sense. When I stuck that GeForce into my Dell, though, all I had to do was reinstall XP and away we went. I'd tried VLC Player to playback source video, but the video looked real choppy. I wound up using Ulead DVD player to play it back, and it looked real nice; not choppy and very stable.

I plan on the official stress test on this tonight and tomorrow (I'm going to get an hour of programming on a loop and see how it looks), but I have every reason to believe that we just took a gigantic step to getting Mater Dei Television on the air. It's not quite the way I wanted to do it, as I want to use a professional video card that will allow output independent of the AGP card (a Blackmagic Intensity HDMI card would be nice), but this will get us going.

The Windows Media Encoder will be next, and I may try it in my NEC server, for which I need an Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drive. I don't need a large one, since I'm just running the encoder, but I need something. Even an adapter which would allow me to use an existing SCSI drive that I already have would work. The downside is that it's an old server; Pentium Pro grade. The upside is that it's a quad-processor and it's got approximately 320MB RAM already installed, and it's the older style RAM, so coming across it via freecycle shouldn't be a problem. It can go upto 4GB RAM, which in this day and age is still high-end, although when this server was built, it was unheard of. This server may wind up running VLC Player to capture and stream video out to Peercast. Ideally, we can still use a linux distribution that will do that, with VideoLinux, Absolute, Slackware, and Dyne:Bolic being at the top of the list.

Sorry for such a long and technical post, but it is good news nevertheless.

One quick program note: I was actually thinking about doing a program on some of the older Church buildings here in Indianapolis. I'm going to run this by some friends of mine to see what they think.

Until next time...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

An Epiphany of Sorts...

2007-06-24T08:33:00.000-04:00

This morning, I had an epiphany of sorts (thus the title of this entry)...

I came to the conclusion that, while I'd like to use linux in some way, shape or form, it seems like every time I try to use it, at least in the early stages, something goes wrong and it doesn't work right. One installed fine, then unmounted the DVD-ROM drive when you put something in, others installed fine but then were next to impossible to upgrade (aka find the correct software to run MPEG-2), others wouldn't even install all the way. I came to this painful conclusion...

Install Windows.

At least in the playback stage. When I have my MPEG-2 player going, I'm sure I'm going to need linux for the MPEG-TS encoder and perhaps even use it for Windows Media, forgoing Windows in that stage. In this stage, though (the MPEG-2 player), I don't think I was supposed to use linux. Maybe the MPEG-2 decoder card I have wouldn't take it anyway. There's got to be some reason...

We'll find out soon enough; after I tore everything apart to put this desk up in the last week or two, I couldn't get the video monitor to extend my desktop on my editor for some reason. Maybe this monitor is supposed to be what I monitor the MPEG-2 box with.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Technical and Production Notes

2007-06-23T00:31:00.000-04:00

Since my last update, I've been playing some with Slackware Linux, largely because of it's ability to be configured and it's ability to run multi-processor servers. Yes, I know Windows has been doing that since NT, but this is reasonably current, and of course, free. I also moved the server down into my office last night so I can commence work on on it.

I also pickup my satellite dish today. Please pray that all goes well in the move.

I also have decided that, due to gas prices and whatnot, I really need to start finding out the cool things about our faith that are already close to me, and I've found some good ones. St. Francis Xavier in Vincennes, IN is one (I wish there was a better picture in this link). Back in the day, before the Diocese (and eventually Archdiocese) of Indianapolis was HQed in Indianapolis, it was actually the Diocese of Vincennes. Now, all that territory has since been ceded to ArchIndy and the Diocese of Evansville (and probably quite a few other dioceses, for that matter). This particular parish is of note because it actually is the first parish in the entire state of Indiana, predating every current diocese within the state. Indiana used to be part of the Dioceses of Quebec, Baltimore, and Bardstown, KY before the Diocese of Vincennes was erected with Bishop Simon Brute as the first ordinary. His cause for sainthood is currently being investigated by ArchIndy. In any case, there's an interesting museum that's attached to St. Francis Xavier and it really looks like a good source of footage.

There are other things, too; Society for the Preservation of Roman Catholic Heritage in Dayton, OH and the Chapel in the Meadow down at Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh, IN, just to name a couple, but the point is that I should be getting as much footage from around me as I can first, then exhausting that, move on as I can. There are a few Indult parishes to which to travel not far away either, and I can guarantee that shooting footage around them will happen soon. I don't rule out trips to Cincinnati, Covington, KY, or Lexington either. There are plenty of places to get footage for good Traditional Catholic programs within a day's drive from here, and I'm going to make sure I hit each one.

Until then, though, I get to get this server up. Pray that all goes well.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Technical Update

2007-06-19T01:45:00.000-04:00

I trust all the fathers out there had a good Father's Day. It was an interesting Father's Day from a technical standpoint. I got a satellite dish.

Not one of those trite DSS dishes. I mean a real satellite dish.

What a lot of people don't realize, thanks to the digital satellite and cable providers, is that there is still free unscrambled programming up on "the birds" as TV engineers like to call them. If you get onto eBay and check for "Free To Air DVB", you'll see listings for the equipment pop up, and it's reasonably cheap, too.

There are two main kinds of satellite frequencies, C-Band and Ku-Band. There are some differences in the two, but if you're not a TV guy, these will be of no interest to you. The bottom line is this: Ku-Band Free to Air equipment is cheaper, but the only Catholic TV station you can get on that is TV-TRWAM, which will do you no good unless you speak Polish. C-Band is where the Free to Air signals for both EWTN and Familyland TV both reside, and you can use the same receiver as you can with the KU-Band signal. The caveat is this: You need a big dish.

So I got one. A nine foot Winegard dish from someone from my Freecycle list...

Don't worry - the neighbors have been warned. Never know - perhaps Mater Dei Television can earn a little money on the side in the downlinking business...

In other news, as the office is coming along fantastically now, I started working more on the playlist computer, and I've been playing with a few linux distros to see what they can do. I've decided for the time being I'm going with Fedora Core. That way, I can get used to it and use it as a basis for my very own distro...

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Breaking News: Motu Proprio Has Been Signed

2007-06-15T20:11:00.000-04:00

Wow! Three entries within a 24 hour period...

According to the Catholic World News, the Motu Proprio has been signed and is being translated...

"A papal document calling for broader use of the Tridentine liturgy has been completed and signed, and is now being translated and prepared for publication, according to two different Roman news agencies."

It beats the news that says "OK, any day now..."

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Lefebvre a Modern Athanasius?

2007-06-15T15:35:00.000-04:00

I was listening to Traditional Catholic Radio last night when a program came on about St. Athanasius and the Arian Heresy. It went into history and talked about how St. Athanasius bravely fought the Arian Heresy when 80% or so of the bishops in the world bought into it. The speaker (I believe it was a Society priest) went on to say that Archbishop Lefebvre was a modern day St. Athanasius, bravely fighting the Modernist Heresy after Vatican II was promulgated. I tend to disagree with this assessment. Here's my thinking...

St. Athanasius DID stand up to the Arian Heresy, but it needs to be remembered that he was defending what the Pope was teaching, even though 80% of the bishops at that time went against what was being taught.
Archbishop Lefebvre ordained three bishops against the wishes of Pope John Paul II.
So you have defending the Pope (St. Athansius) against disobeying the Pope (Archbishop Lefebvre).

The conclusion I come to is therefore this: Nope.

Archbishop Lefebvre had some good ideas, though; any Indult Catholic needs to admit that without Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of St. Pius X, there would be no Tridentine Indult Mass at all, let alone a Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. And facing facts, like it or not, he was also right about Modernists running amuck in the Church after the Second Vatican Council. This was not the fault of the Council itself but mainly the fault of a poor implementation of it afterwards. Latin was never supposed to be completely eliminated from the liturgy, and Gregorian Chants were still supposed to be used as well. If you are truly supposed to give your best to God, why on Earth would anybody choose Marty Haugen or David Haas to represent that musically?

I just wish that Archbishop Lefebvre wouldn't have went off and gotten himself excommunicated and gotten the Society suppressed/suspended/whatever. There are people in various places thirsting for a Mass that's celebrated in a holy and sacred manner. And the Society could have provided that, within the confines of the Church, had this whole fiasco not happened. If confronted with "saying even one Novus Ordo Mass", it should have been pointed out that the Eastern Rites aren't bound to the Novus Ordo, nor are various religious orders in the Western Rite (these orders weren't even bound by Quo Primum), and it would have made sense to allow the Tridentine Mass for all those who wanted it. I honestly believe that had Archbishop Lefebvre worked with the Church instead of against it, there would be no Pontifical Commision Ecclesia Dei but rather a Ponitifical Commission Quo Primum, overseen by Archbishop Lefebvre himself. And he wouldn't have had to sell out. Not one bit.

I think that in time, things will be patched up between the Society and Rome, and Archbishop Lefebvre will be in some way vindicated. However, I don't think a comparison to St. Athanasius would be appropriate; let Archbishop Lefebvre's work stand by itself, and time will tell whether or not he's vindicated.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

This is a good sign...

2007-06-15T01:50:00.000-04:00

Seeing that I'm typing this upstairs right now, that means that the wireless is working. Not a huge feat by any means, but an important one nevertheless. I should have my office cleaned up this weekend and my NEC server moved in. Then I can start my playlist computer...

And I also found my copy of Evil Entity Linux. It wasn't working, of course, and it seems as if the project has been abandoned altogether, but at least SourceForge had a copy of it. Evil Entity was a very minimal linux distro that was multimedia friendly. The concept behind it was great, but I could do without much of the dark imagery. Perhaps I can get into it someday and change it to something a little more, well, Catholic. Perhaps instead reverse engineer it to be a tribute to the League of Evil Traditionalists...

Time to go to bed...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Minor Technical Update

2007-06-14T20:14:00.000-04:00

I finally got the "new" desk put into place. This will not only help in the organization of my office but also mean that I won't have something that was literally collapsing around me. Also, I installed a new router that I've had for a few months, and while I need to get a few things straightened out with the wireless on that, it works. Also, I put a newer eMachines monitor online. One more thing I got from Freecycle.

I hate to cut this short, but for some reason, there is some serious lag while updating this log, and I don't know if it's my laptop, the connection at my day job, or Blogger itself. In closing, say a quick prayer that we're able to find the resources to purchase a couple of films I'm tracking on eBay. They'd both be fantastic to add to the Mater Dei Television collection!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

This Just In from St. Stephen's in Syracuse

2007-06-12T05:32:00.000-04:00

Two Rosary Rallies for Bishop James M. Moynihan
When: June 21, 2007 at noon and June 24, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Where: Outside the Cathedral, 259 East Onondaga St, Syracuse, NY

Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jim Reilly
(315) 682-9366

Those in the Diocese of Syracuse To Hold a Rosary Rally on the Feast of John the Baptist to Aid Bishop. 100's Expected for grass roots Marian Event In Syracuse

At the Cathedral - 259 East Onondaga St., Syracuse, NY 13202; Sunday June 21 th Noon
At the Cathedral - 259 East Onondaga St., Syracuse, NY 13202; Sunday June 24 th 4:30 PM

Concerned our Bishop is moving in the wrong direction? PRAY FOR HIM !

● When Massive church closings are hailed as a solution not a tragedy
● He an expert in Canon Law, saying there is no appeal to church suppression!
● Support for Openly Gay Priests and acceptance of lifestyle. Call Sin a Sin!
● Replaced Religious Education with an awful Sex Education Class.
● Stifles and limits legitimate sacraments to the faithful.
● Homosexual priest scandal and attempts to reassign them.
● Closes growing healthy parishes.

Sidewalk procession around block of Bishops residence while saying the full 15 decades of the rosary.

We pray our Bishop will reconsider his actions in the light of long standing traditions of Holy Mother Church. Renounce his support of ill-formed homosexual priests. Rethink church closings. Accept offered help from priests and help from outside the diocese. For more information on the Rosary Rally or to register an organization for the events, contact Jim Reilly (315) 682-9366

Pius XII and the Jews

2007-06-06T15:38:00.000-04:00

Looks like Cardinal Bertone is finally setting the record straight on Pope Pius XII...

The part that stuck out was this:

"Cardinal Bertone said the legend about Pope Pius' supposed "silence" during the war had its roots in the postwar period, specifically 1946-48, a time when the state of Israel was being formed and when the pope was calling for respect and justice for Palestinian residents of the Holy Land."

I'm surprised nothing was said about the propaganda that Radio Moscow was sending out about the Vatican shortly after the war. The Catholic League brings up a few good points about the relationship of the Vatican and the Third Reich during World War II.

Of course, I'm sure Abe Foxman will have a problem with this.

I don't have a problem with Jewish people. I've got good friends who are Jewish. I respect Judaism on the whole. But Foxman telling the Vatican to hold off on the canonization of a man who really was pontiff during a difficult time in the world, in a difficult place is just wrong. The ADL, like it or not, has no say in who the Catholic Church canonizes, and while I understand their concerns, perhaps Mr. Foxman needs to read the documents that have already been released before making any comments on a Faith about which he has no vested interest.

The Catholic League won't start making demands to the Jewish people on how to practice their Faith. What makes Mr. Foxman think he can do that to Catholics?

The bottom line is this: Many died during the Nazi Holocaust during World War II; Jews, Catholics, Polish dissidents, Gypsies, and many, many others were brutalized by an evil ideology, and nobody but nobody should have to ever deal with that kind of evil. But to have facts in front of you and to reject them based on your own prejudice is wrong too. Venerable Pius XII did everything he could to help the Jews during World War II, and had to do it on the down-low because it was critical to their survival.

I'm just kind of surprised that Mr. Foxman is going to take the word of Radio Moscow over the word of the Catholic Church herself.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Couple of quick things...

2007-06-05T17:41:00.000-04:00

First, check out the nifty new banner. It only took me having this blog up for almost three months to figure out that Blogger would take my own banner and that using the MDTV logo would make things look so much better. I guess Gerald did it on The Cafeteria is Closed, but for some reason, things just didn't click until now...

Second, once again, thanks to Paul Nichols from the Catholic Cartoon Blogspot for not only the plug, but the custom cartoon!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Catholic Cartoons

2007-06-01T16:09:00.000-04:00

Most of you already have seen Paul Nichols' cartoons satirizing the state of some dioceses around the country. Paul's now got his own blog where he keeps his cartoons...

http://www.catholiccartoonblog.blogspot.com/

Worth your time to check it out. Paul and I were on several email discussion groups together and knows what we're trying to do with Mater Dei Television. He's a good guy. Go check out his blog.

Now.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Quick Acknowledgement

2007-05-30T14:56:00.001-04:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my wife, Diana, for her help with Mater Dei Television. No, I'm not online yet, but as I work to get the signal up and going, Diana is very busy not only as a photographer but also as a stay-at-home-mom as we raise our three and a half young children. All of our children are under four years old. I don't know how she does it, but does it she does it and she does it well. Sometimes, while I'm working on a server or updating this blog or something, she handles the children by herself. This is no easy task, and thus I just wanted to take the time and say that I love her and appreciate all she does.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Save St. Stephen's

2007-05-29T14:52:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, I got onto the Una Voce website to get caught up on recent news when I came across a link to The Bernadette Fund, which was started to help defray the funeral costs of a little girl from St. Stephen's parish in Syracuse, NY who died suddenly from leukemia. I decided to follow this story for some unbeknownst reason and keep checking back to see what was going on. Last night, while finishing up some projects, I decided to do a search on St. Stephen's to see whether or not it was an Indult parish or a SSPX chapel.

It was an Indult parish, and it will soon be closing.

I started thinking that here is a family who is suffering so much; they just lost their daughter, the wife and mother is battling cancer herself, and now they get word that they'll be losing their parish and and the place they can go to the Traditional Latin Mass because the diocese has decided to close the parish altogether.

What gives?

I know bishops have a hard job to do; they basically are running a non-profit organization when they have to run a diocese of any size. But surely the bishop knows that when you see a Traditional Latin Mass community, you normally see a very, very tight-knit group of people. To just pull the rug out from underneath them and tell them they have to go somewhere else for the Traditional Latin Mass without giving them a place to go isn't even pastoral. There are some options, according to the commentary in the link above, but these people who are St. Stephen's parishioners are at St. Stephen's and not the "SSPX chapel across the street" for a reason...

It's their parish. It's their family. It's their home.

I'm sure some of them will wind up at a Novus Ordo, some of them may go to the Traditional Latin Mass down the road in Utica, and some might wind up over at the SSPX chapel across the street. But it won't be the same. It won't be St. Stephen's.

If some of these bishops were truly concerned about Traditional Catholics going to SSPX chapels and whatnot, they'd make it easier to go to the Traditional Latin Mass and not more difficult. Yes, I know there are always going to be times where it's not going to matter how often an Indult is offered and that you're not going to please everyone, and some people are just itching to have a reason to avoid an Indult Mass and go to a non-diocesan chapel to attend the Traditional Latin Mass, but to say that's the case across the board is just wrong. And if you're going to close a parish where there is an Indult Mass being offered, at least move it to another parish so the faithful to which Pope John Paul II was referring to in Ecclesia Dei would have a place to go. I think our beloved Holy Father of happy memory said "wide and generous" support for the Traditional Latin Mass.

In any case, they have started a Yahoo Group to join. If you have been able to save their Traditional Latin Mass from diocesan extinction in your neck-of-the-woods, sign up and give them some insight. Myself, I'm just a sympathizer, as I can only get to the Traditional Latin Mass once in awhile myself due to family commitments, and while I don't believe the Indult Mass in Indianapolis is going away anytime soon, I miss it so when I can't go. I'd go every day if I could (and during Lent in 2006, I went to Low Mass anywhere from three to five times a week - I miss it so).

And to have that opportunity taken away altogether would be devastating.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

It's Been Awhile...

2007-05-28T09:46:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been so long since an actual update. I got swamped with film transfer work. I'm working on the last little bit of it right now; the Russian guy at my day job who gave me a couple of reels to transfer a few weeks ago found three more fairly large reels to do, so add that to the 56 reels I did for a former colleague of mine, and that turns into a lot of work! That's OK...we need the money...

In any case, after one more job that I need to call someone on, I get to start getting this office/basement straightened up, swap my old desk for my new desk, and then I can bring the NEC server in here to start making the playlist server for Mater Dei Television.

Finally.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Latest...

2007-05-15T17:29:00.000-04:00

Good day! Just thought I'd touch base with anyone who's reading...

I got another batch of films to transfer the other day. This ought to be good, since there are a bunch of them and the friend I'm transferring them for is Catholic. I've not been able to actually view any of them yet, but they are all very well marked (which I'm finding out is quite rare into and of itself). Still, I'm going to ask him if I can use some of this footage for Mater Dei Television. The one that intrigued me was an ordination film of a relative. In any case, this will be a good gig. He works at a production company himself, and will be lending me a DVCAM deck to transfer all these films to so he can edit them himself. No editing. No authoring. Just transferring them and sending them to DVCAM tape. Nice!

I'm slowly but surely working on the garage now too. I got some things moved out of there today when I got somewhat mad about the fact that I can't seem to find anything in the garage anymore, and I know for a fact that we kind of need to get this converted to the new office space before the baby comes anyway. I found some sweet new connectors on eBay yesterday from a company called RapidRun. The cool thing about it is that I can run one particular kind of cable and connect up whichever connectors will be needed. For instance, if I decide after running the cable and hooking it up to BNC that I want component video instead, I change each end to component video, plug them into where I had the BNC connectors were before, and I'm good to go. This was exactly what I was looking for!

The idea is to actually have Mater Dei Television and DCA Multimedia working in the same space, albeit separately, to start with. Ideally, there'll also be a separate place to work on computers as well, plus my wife's workstation will be there too. The cool thing is that my wife also picked up a Mary statue for outside, and after some minor gardening (and renovation to the house), that statue will be just outside the door to the business! It doesn't get any better than that.

Gotta get that garage cleaned out first, though. Stay tuned!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

New Clips!

2007-05-10T17:33:00.000-04:00

I've been transferring a lot of film and a few videotapes over the last week. Much of this was to catch up after taking some classes on whatnot. In any case, after dubbing the U-Matic of my friend's pastor's ordination in 1975 (which had the upside of seeing this happen in a beautiful old cathedral but had the downside of realizing that guitar Mass was beginning to happen that early), I did some films for a guy on the southside of town, and two more films for a Russian friend of mine at my day job. Interesting stuff...

But then I got to delve into a project that I've been dying to do for quite awhile: The old family films of my dad's cousin. These have my dad on there at a very young age, and I believe there are some on there that have my great grandfather on them, too. Well worth it for this alone.

But the first one that I transferred from this group, I believe, had my great aunt on it. Sr. Petrona was a nun in the Congregation of St. Agnes, and she passed away in 2001. There were so many qualities about her that reminded me of my grandmother, but equally as important, she was always an excellent example for me in my faith. I've told people on more than one occasion, that while I listen to a lot of harder music, my "main influences" were my parents, both grandmothers, Sr. Petrona, Msgr. Tim Doody, and Fr. Joseph Hammes (and to a lesser extent, Fr. Matthew Spebar - I was about seven or eight when he passed away). These were the people who formed me in my faith, and helped me become the person I am today. Don't get me wrong; I love bands like Motorhead, but Lemmy (bassist/vocalist) never once gave me good advice. Granted I didn't actually know him, but still, the other people I listed really helped me to become the person I am today.

But I digress...

In any case, I found some footage of Sr. Petrona, and I hope to be able to work in into a clip or two. I mean, it's going to be transferred either way, but why not use it for something more?

The other thing that I found were a bunch of commercially made films. I haven't went through all of them, but I did go through the Castle Films Newsreel from 1946. There's some nice footage of Venerable Pius XII holding a consistory to elevate 32 archbishops to Cardinal. Among them, I believe, was Cardinal Spellman of New York, a man for whom I hold in high regard with much admiration. There's not much film of it, but enough to make a small clip to play in between shows. There are a few other of these commercial films I need to go through, and not all of them will be worthwhile I'm sure, but whatever else I can find I will transfer and edit into something useful for Mater Dei Television.

Until next time...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Jesus said some were born Gay?!?!?!?

2007-05-04T15:39:00.000-04:00

Today, after picking up something just south of town from someone on my Freecycle list, I was driving to my job and passed a billboard with a picture of Jesus on it. The message said "Jesus said that some where born Gay" and gave the Scriptural reference of Matthew 19:10-12. That puzzled me, so when I got into work and fired up my laptop, I decided to look it up on VulSearch. Sure enough, someone at the church must have been smoking crack. Here's the verse...

"10 His disciples say unto him: If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry. 11 Who said to them: All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it." (DRV)

How in the hell can someone get that some people were born gay out of this passage? If anything, this clearly backs up Catholic teaching on celibacy more than makes a case for some being "born gay." Let's take a look at some inferior translations...

"10The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." 11Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage^[a]because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it." (NIV)

Footnotes:

Matthew 19:12 Or have made themselves eunuchs

Nope. Not seeing anything about people being born gay there, either. Let's check another bad translation of the Bible...

"10 Jesus’ disciples then said to him, “If this is the case, it is better not to marry!” 11 “Not everyone can accept this statement,” Jesus said. “Only those whom God helps. 12 Some are born as eunuchs, some have been made eunuchs by others, and some choose not to marry^[a]for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”

Footnotes:

Matthew 19:12 Greek and some make themselves eunuchs. (NLV - New Living Version)

OK, so let me get this straight...even the whacked out Living Bible doesn't seem to say anything about people being born gay. Last one. Let's try the Granddaddy of all bad Bible translations...

"10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. 11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. 12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." (KJV)

Even the error-ridden King James Version of the Bible doesn't make this claim. How are they making the jump in between the Church's age-old teaching on celibacy and being born gay? It's not the same!!!

And thus it comes back to my original question: Was someone smoking crack when they made that jump?

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Finals are over...

2007-05-01T21:02:00.000-04:00

...for the old man known as "Chuck, MI." I'm pretty sure that I got an A in my Computer Science course (since I only missed 15 points the entire semester and there were things in the class I did roughly 10 years ago). My Journalism class was a little harder. I'm hoping I got an A on that one. I really enjoyed it. I didn't enjoy school nearly as much the first go around I had at Purdue back in '89 to '94. I felt that learning journalism, even just how to interview people, was well worth the whole semester, and is going to make Mater Dei Television in the long run.

My professor was a guy named Hank Nuwer, and he's a well known expert on hazing. Hank, if you're reading this, thanks for everything.

Now, to get this signal up and online. The decoder card for the playlist server is on the way, along with the capture card for the video streamer. Hopefully, I'm right about that ECS motherboard with the ATI Radeon 9250SE AGP card, and the only reason it's freezing up is because I don't have the apature set correctly in the BIOS. I hope. Still haven't figured out whether the quad-processor server is going to handle the playlist, the Windows Media Encoder, or the MPEG-2 transport stream.

Stay tuned! We're close!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

The Flying Buttress

2007-04-27T16:38:00.000-04:00

Just a couple of points to cover right now...

First off, this is a shout out to Tomas at The Flying Buttress, who we just added to our blogroll. Tomas is down the road from me in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. I'd call ArchNati the "L.A. of the Midwest", but to be perfectly fair, the Diocese of Gary and the Diocese of Evansville might already have that designation. Either way, Tom is bringing up issues that seem to be problematic down there in the 'Nati, and thus is welcome here. I hope to be making my way down there soon to tape a Rosary and/or perhaps an Angelus, or anything else that can be thought of. Old films are cool, but new material is good, too.

In technical news, the upgrade to my editor from a 2.2GHz Celeron to a 2.6GHz Celeron is complete. While messing around in the BIOS, I also found out that I was under utilizing my AGP card, and set that from 128MB to 256MB like it should have been. That's more of a "DOH!" moment. Either way, this will be good. I should have an extra processor laying around now, so likely that's going to be used for either the wife's next computer or another encoder.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI