MP4Box MPEG-4 / h.264 Metadata, Cutting & Merging Tool

Posted by in Flash on Jun 6th, 2008 | 2 comments

If you are looking for something similar to flvtool2 or flvmdi, or you are a command line junky then I strongly encourage you to check out MP4Box. MP4Box has a ton of capabilities, but I’m just going to highlight 4 fundamentals:

  • Read file info (basic metadata).
  • Split or cut files.
  • Merge two or more files.
  • Convert to iPod.

Read basic file info from an MPEG-4 file:

mp4box_info.png

Split / extract / cut an MPEG-4 file:

mp4box_split.png

Read the info from one of our splices and make sure we’re getting what we expect:

mp4box_info_split file.png

Concatenate / merge multiple MPEG-4 files:

mp4box_concat.png

Merged file information:

mp4box_merged_info2.png

Convert to iPod file:

mp4box_ipod.png

MP4Box is a GPAC project, but they only distribute the source (no binary downloads). If you are like me and not keen to try and get Make to compile the source you can grab a binary from here. One last thing–read the docs–you’ll be amazed.

SWFObject 2 / Google Search Mystery

Posted by in Flash on Jun 5th, 2008 | 4 comments

I spent about 15 minutes in the Google Code twilight zone this morning. For some reason when hitting the SWFObject 2 Google Code repos (via a Google search) I wasn’t finding anything on the wiki, downloads page or any source in the repository.

An empty wiki page.

swfobject2.png

Downloads MIA.

swfobject2_downloads.png

I tried to hit the SWFFix dev blog to check for additional insights and found that if I tried to get to it via a google search (hitting the top link named ‘SWFFix Dev Blog’) it redirects to a domain parking page.

I hit the top link in the search results with a URL that matches what I want

swffix_redirect.png

I end up redirected someplace else.

swffix_blog.png

If I type the url (http://www.swffix.org) manually I get to the blog without issue. However, there’s no mention of any Google Code issues.

…Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I did another Google search for SWFObject 2 and this time the search results sent me the actual repository. It turns out my first search results had led me, (for some unknown reason) to a Google Code Project with a nearly identical URL.

The actual Google Code project.

swfobject_for_real-1.png

The incorrect Google Code project.

2008-06-05_1118.png

Easy mistake to make, but what the hell is up with Google giving me craptacular / inconsistent search results and the results resolving to different urls than they should be?

…I’ve got my eye on you Google.

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