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Martin

Convert Sony HD422 MXF files to MOV

This one had me stumped for a while…

A Pro Sony HD422 camcorder was purchased by one of our newspaper titles for interviews, shoots etc – problem was no one knew how to export the proprietary MXF format videos the camcorder records to a format that’s compatible with Final Cut Pro as nobody on site had any pro video camera experience…

I’m sure a lot of first time videographers have had trouble with this particular camera so here’s the absolute minimum requirements you need to get those MXF files into Final Cut Pro for editing:

I went with FCP 6 (updated to 6.0.6) as we already had a licensed copy of it available, I just wasn’t sure if FCP 6 could handle wrapping the MXF files as MOV until I found the FCP 6.0.3 release notes

The prerequisites are:

1. Final Cut Pro 6.0.6 (FCP6 is available as part of Final Cut Studio 2.0 once that’s installed an update using Apple software takes FCP up to 6.0.6)

or Final Cut Pro 7 (Install all latest updates available)

2. XDCAM Transfer 2.16. Available from the Sony website (PDZK-P1_XDCAM_Transfer_v2_13_0.zip)

The Final Cut Pro update from 6.0 to 6.0.6 installs the codecs necessary for XDCAM Transfer to read the XDCAM/HD266/MXF files the Sony HD422 creates. Once the codecs are installed XDCAM Transfer can wrap the MXF files as MOV for Final Cut Pro to read and edit if you so wish. At that point you can then export to whatever video format you want.

Once the above has been installed launch XDCAM Transfer and open up the MXF files stored on your SXS card or stored locally on your Mac and click on the “Import” button down the bottom right side of the app.

From there browse to “\Users\<username\Movies\Sony XDCAM Transfer” and you’ll find sub-folders containing the MOV wrapped MXF files which can then be opened in FCP. The only caveat we have here is that FCP6 will not install on OSX 10.8 but you’ll be fine on 10.6

Make sure Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is correctly configured

We had some issues at work recently with intermittent e-mail’s from a third party not arriving in our Google App’s mailboxes (we’ve now migrated to using Google App’s for Business as opposed to using Exchange exclusively).

This was a big problem for us as these e-mail’s are an important source for news stories.

I immediately suspected spam/DNS server issues due to my previous experience trouble-shooting our Ironport issue two years ago.

This time however the problem lay with the third parties DNS not ours.

Here are the steps I took to troubleshoot then fix the problem:

Symptoms:

The issue was first reported when one of our news reporters noted some e-mails were not arriving – sent in from this news sources distribution list.

Some e-mail not all were being dropped – this is an important factor as we’ll see below.

Troubleshooting steps:

1. I realised straight away the problem wasn’t related to any e-mail filters in the reporters inbox or SMTP blacklists since approx only 20% of the mails were not arriving. Nonetheless I ran the check’s necessary and found nothing causing mail to be filtering into the users bin.

2. I checked in on another colleague who’s mail domain address is different from the news reporter that detected the problem (We use multiple domain names for separate titles and business teams). That colleague indicated they were missing the exact same e-mails that the first reporter detected missing.

3. The distribution list in question is used by a number of other news organisations so I sent a mail out to another news organisation’s IT dept to ask if they’d noticed those particular e-mails missing – they hadn’t.

4. I then asked an ordinary user at the news sources site, (I’m calling her [email protected] here) to send me an e-mail so I could evaluate the incoming e-mail headers for anything out of place. The e-mail she sent arrived fine but the information I found in her mail header provided the light bulb moment when taken into account with the rest of the information gathered. I found two key entries in [email protected]‘s mail header:

Received-SPF: fail (google.com: domain of [email protected] does not designate 137.191.225.35 as permitted sender) client-ip=137.191.225.35

Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; 

spf=hardfail (google.com: domain of [email protected] does not designate 137.191.225.35 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=137.191.225.35;

It was time to brush up on SPF or Sender Policy Framework

SPF basically boils down to a DNS entry that indicates which SMTP servers are permitted to send e-mail on behalf of a mail domain. This prevents spammers from getting e-mail’s into a users inbox since spam prevention e-mail gateways like Ironport and Postini will perform a DNS verification check each time a particular SMTP server tries to deliver an e-mail purporting to be from a particular e-mail address (domain).

As an example say a spammer tried to deliver an e-mail to [email protected], by spoofing an innocent individuals e-mail address (let’s say [email protected]) and used their spamming SMTP server to try to send [email protected] a spam e-mail. The Ironport/Postini/Spam Gateway when it’s first contacted examines the mailing domain indicated in the e-mail address of the message – say “hotmail.com” and the accompanying IP address of the spamming SMTP server.

Ironport/Postini will then contact the DNS server (which should always be accessible on the internet) for hotmail.com  to check that DNS Server’s SPF record. If it see’s that the IP addresses listed in the SPF record doesn’t match the IP address of the SMTP server that just tried to deliver an e-mail purporting to be from [email protected] it will drop that e-mail delivery attempt to [email protected], thereby preventing the spam reaching [email protected]‘s inbox. According to hotmail.com‘s DNS SPF record the spamming SMTP server trying to deliver a message purporting to be from [email protected] is not authorized…

Now back to our problem – So our news organisations Postini gateway was designating the IP address of our third parties SMTP server 137.191.225.35 as not being permitted to send e-mail on behalf of that user.

I had two problems with that –

1. First why did the SPF fail?

2. The SPF failed but [email protected]‘s e-mail got through anyway.

It was time to probe our news sources (xxxx.ie‘s) DNS configuration. In the process of doing so I discovered it was possible to expose the SPF configuration for DNS server’s available on the internet using this tool

So I plugged in the IP Address of the 137.191.225.35 SMTP server designated not authorized in [email protected]‘s e-mail header.

The Beveridge SPF Test tool then exposed the following SPF configuration for the xxxx.ie domain (some IP addresses changed for security purposes):

v=spf1 mx ip4:137.191.xxx.x1 ip4:137.191.xxx.x2 ip4:137.191.xxx.x3 -all [TTL=86400]

But I also noticed subsequent SPF test’s also returned a different SPF configuration below:

v=spf1 mx ip4:137.191.xxx.x1 ip4:137.191.xxx.x2 ip4:137.191.xxx.x3 ip4:137.191.225.35 ip4:137.191.xxx.x5 -all

So what was I looking at?

Basically one of more DNS servers for the domain xxxx.ie which our Postini gateway was performing SPF checks against had an incorrect/out of date SPF configuration. The second SPF configuration was the correct one as it listed 5 SMTP servers that were authorized to send mail on behalf of the xxxx.ie domain

The first incorrect SPF also should not have contained the  “[TTL=86400]” reference, as this doesn’t conform to SPF standards.

Cross-referencing the IP address of the 137.191.225.35 SMTP Server in the e-mail header I found that 137.191.225.35 matched a missing IP address in the incorrect SPF record. 137.191.225.35 was present in the second SPF record but not the first.

So our Postini was hitting the DNS server with the incorrect SPF configuration about 20% of the time and therefore dropping 20% of the e-mails sent because it was determining that 137.191.225.35 wasn’t authorized to send e-mail on behalf of xxxx.ie 20% of the time.

I’d figured out the issue was was due to an incomplete SPF record on one xxxx.ie DNS server but why did the e-mail from [email protected] deliver though it was given an SPF failure while some e-mails from the distribution list [email protected] were not being at all delivered?

My guess is that our Postini gateway even though it flagged [email protected] as being an SPF failure – SPF checking for Google/Postini is evidently not that strict. There must be additional spam filtering criteria in place on our Postini that flags the [email protected] e-mails based on message content, that together with the results returned from the problem DNS server flagged the [email protected] as being spam 20% of the time. Our Postini services are provided by an outsourced company so I don’t have access to the specific spam filtering criteria to verify this.

Fix:

I contacted the IT Security department manager for the xxxx.ie, who confirmed my findings and isolated the problem DNS server. The DNS server in question was not under his dept’s direct control but was managed by another dept – I’m guessing for redundancy purposes.

He logged a change to have the SPF details applied to the problem DNS server which should eliminate our problems receiving mail from any @xxxx.ie addresses in the future.

Hopefully this has given you an insight to the complex world of spam filtering….

Building my first Mobile Application with Tiggzi

 

Tiggzi

I decided to look into how easy it would be to build an app.

Bearing in mind that I’ve no experience programming mobile applications I had a look to see if there were any drag and drop based code design environments.

I discovered Tiggzy and right away I could see it contained some powerful design features. Here’s a list of the highlights.

  1. Cross compatibility with Android, Windows Phone, iOS so you can build the app once and it can run on all three platforms
  2. Completely online design environment – no need to install Eclipse, XCode etc on your PC/Mac
  3. Drag and drop UI design features

You can access my very first Android app here

Who’s best for WordPress hosting GoDaddy Vs Bluehost

Well – I’d finally had enough of GoDaddy’s incessant time outs which they’d attributed to common run of the mill plugins like JetPack and others.

I’d installed their recommended caching plugins to try and improve page load times and even installed their own proprietary P3 profiler plugin to measure my blog stats but it didn’t tell me anything I already knew, that my tiny wordpress blog was responding like a fly stuck in a jar of honey. Granted I’m on a shared plan and I take it as a given that the page load times won’t be instant on a shared host – but page time out’s and ultra slow load times I will not stand for.

So it was time to up sticks and move to another provider.

My main criteria for moving was that the host have great performance and support for WordPress.

There’s a ton of conflicting advice on the internet about the best WordPress host – believe me, I’ve researched this for a long time so I decided to go with the advice from the horses mouth – WordPress itself, and Bluehost it was. Look they’re right up the top, like the gold winning champ they are and it’s been a huge improvement – the time outs and slow page opening times have been eliminated, even though I’m still using Jetpack, – isn’t that strange GoDaddy?

I’ve also found out the reason GoDaddy’s shared hosting can’t cut the cheese – they don’t throttle down “abusive” users like Bluehost do with their shared hosting users.

My advice – go with Bluehost for your WordPress blog, it’ll save the hair pulling and back pain of transferring your blog from GoDaddy when you realise they’re not up to the task. It was a great learning experience, but not something I’d recommend if you don’t have a technical background.

Bluehost

WiDi and Android (Miracast) wireless streaming in one device

I’m a big fan of WiDi.

If you don’t know what that is check out my previous posts here and here

Wirelessly streaming your laptop screen (or desktop screen for that matter) to your TV – amazing you say? Well now it get’s even better…

Netgear have updated their PTV3000 device firmware to also support some Android devices via Miracast. Now you can display your laptop and Android screens wirelessly on your big screen, with one device!

Kudos to Netgear by adding value to their PTV3000.

If the inclusion of Android wireless support has made you decide to pull the trigger on the PTV3000  – just make sure whatever Android device you’re using is supported by the PTV3000. Netgear seems to have gone through a couple of firmware revisions already so I’m sure the supported device list will increase as time goes. If your device isn’t on the list check back to the support page every couple of weeks.


PTV3000

JetPack disappears after installing version 1.9.2

I has some problems updating to the latest version of Jetpack today – version 1.9.2. Normally the automatic install from within the Dashboard carries off without a hitch but today I had to dig into my GoDaddy FTP host storage to resurrect my Jetpack statistics.

I started off the automatic install but at the point where the new Jetpack files are downloaded and unzipped the installation looks like it goes nowhere.

I attempted to kick off the install again and left it over night to see if that would jump start Jetpack but when I checked my Dashboard this morning I found the admin GUI and all my stats had been erased from the Dashboard like it had never been installed – not good.

So I decided to launch my GoDaddy Account Admin FTP Manager – that wasn’t playing ball either, returning a spinning circle when attempting to read the wp-admin wp-includes and wp-content folders.

Time to break out the big guns – luckily I’d already installed Filezilla and knew the in’s and outs of connecting to GoDaddy’s FTP, what I found when I connected to my shared FTP was a jetpack.tmp folder located within wp-contentupgrade. I was wary of deleting this folder but there were no config files lower down in any of this folders sub-folders so I guessed the update process aborted itself for whatever reason and went ahead deleting jetpack.tmp

All Jetpack stats are stored at wordpress.org so after another Jetpack 1.9.2 automatic install from the Dashboard, I got them all back – job well done.

Nifty Minidrive

Here’s a smart little device you can use to backup your files in OSX without having to revert to buying an external HD or a “Time capsule”

I’s not going to back up all your files but if you only have a small subset of files you think are really important 64GB may be fine for what you need.

Saves carrying around those extra external drives, if you need to do a restore.

Cross OS keyboard sharing with Synergy

I’ve tested Synergy at work for some time now but the current release is the only one I’ve found to be stable enough to recommend which is why I’m posting a blog update now.

What does Synergy do?

Quite simply it shares one mouse and one keyboard so they can be used across up to three computers simultaneously.

Say you have a PC, Mac and Linux computer sitting side by side, Synergy will allow you to control all of these using a single mouse and keyboard.

Synergy also allows you to copy clipboard text from one computer to the other. Very useful for those times you have a website url open on one computer and need to open the same on another.

Copying and pasting of files isn’t possible yet – but you never know what the future may bring.

I’ve tested Synergy on Windows 7 and OSX 10.6 using the following 1.4.10 Beta releases:

Windows7

OSX 10.6

I use my PC as the Synergy server (the keyboard and mouse I want to use is attached to this computer) and the Mac as Synergy client (the computer I want to control with the server keyboard and mouse).

Of course it’s possible to swap so it’s the other way around but this is the way I have it configured at the moment so I’ve written my config instructions to reflect that. If you manage to configure your PC/Mac in the setup I’ve outlined you should have no problem getting Synergy re-configured the way you prefer further down the road.

Ok so once you get Synergy installed on your PC you’ll get a dialog box similar to the below:

Synergy PC Server Setup

Choose the “Server (new setup)” radio button then click on “Finish”

You’ll then see the main Synergy admin window:

Synergy PC (Server) Config

At which point you’ll click on the “Configure Server” button to get access to the “Server Configuration” window:

PC (Server) Config 2

Drag the monitor icon to the relevant space the Mac occupies on your desk then double-click on it to add a screen name and alias for the Mac (the Synergy client) using your current Mac host name. I’ve given an example from my configuration below.

For “Screen name”: MyMac

For “Aliases”: MyMac.local

Once you’ve populated both fields, click on “Add” first then “OK” to save your changes.

PC (Server) Config

Once changes are saved and you’re back at the Synergy admin dialog click on the “Start” button to start the Synergy server service making it ready to accept a connection from the Mac (client).

If you want the Synergy server service to start each time you restart your PC (I know I do) select “Edit – Settings” in the Synergy admin dialog and enable both “Start Synergy after logging in” and “Automatically start server/client” followed by “OK” and “Apply” back in the Synergy admin window.

Synergy-PC-Auto-Start

Now swap to your Mac and install Synergy on that. Immediately after installing you’ll see a “Setup Synergy” dialog like the one you got on your PC.

Mac (Client) Setup

Select “Client (Add to Setup)” in that dialog box and click on the “Done” button. You’ll then see the Macs Synergy admin dialog:

At which point you need to add the name of your PC (the Synergy Server) – Mine is called “MyPC” then I clicked on the “Start” button to initiate the Mac client connection.

If you’ve successfully configured Synergy you should now be able to move the mouse between your PC and Mac screens seamlessly. You should also be able to copy and paste text between both computers.

Don’t forget to drag the Synergy icon into your dock on your Mac to make it easily accessible.

Press the CTRL button on your keyboard and mouse click on the Synergy icon then enable “Keep in Dock” and “Open at Login” to make sure the Synergy client auto starts once you next login to your Mac.

Synergy Auto Launch

Hope you have some success with it – and don’t forget to donate if you’d like to support Synergy.

* Update – I indicated above that you should be able to swap your Synergy client/server configuration so that the Mac is the Server and PC is the client but I’ve since found out that this is not possible (at least not on the OS version’s I’ve tried above). So you’ll need to try Synergy on a newer version of OSX or swap your Mac keyboard and mouse to your PC if you prefer using them to your PC’s keyboard and mouse.

Skydrive – A great way to sync your files across all devices

I’ve had a hotmail account since the service first came out in 1996 – it was the “fashionable” web mail client to use until G-Mail landed at which point my hotmail account started gathering internet dust bunnies.

I’ve now found a reason to go back though thanks to SkyDrive – Hotmail’s Cloud service.

SkyDrive has seen many iteration’s and re-incarnations with names such as Live Mesh, Live Sync etc but this version seems to do exactly what it says on the tin. For a free service (with 7GB of cloud storage) the performance is great (compared to how it used to be under the Live Sync name) and it’s compatible with iPhone and iPad via a free app, so you can sync your files across Win7, OSX, iOS and  WP7.

There’s no official Microsoft app for Android yet but there is a 3rd party Browser for Skydrive app available for the Android platform.

I’ve had no problems with the service at work either. Our proxy server hasn’t interrupted the service or prevented me accessing my Skydrive files at any time during the past month I’ve had the application installed on my Win7 PC so it’s a thumbs up all round.

Try it out

Latest posts will not appear on my WordPress blog

I had some problems with my WordPress blog not displaying new posts unless I was logged in as an admin.

Fine for me but a major problem for readers of my blog – since they all can’t be logged in as admin’s 😉

I found the problem started once I updated to WordPress 3.4.0.

If you use WP Super Cache 1.1 try de-activating it as the new posts showed up straight after.

Don’t get me wrong – I love  WP Super Cache as it vastly improved my blogs performance (hosted with GoDaddy) by eliminating a lots of page time-out errors a few months ago (I’m on a shared plan and performance isn’t a priority for me yet).

I’m not going to say the above is specifically an incompatibility between WordPress 3.4 and WP Super Cache 1.1 as I don’t have a very common hosting configuration (so another factor could be involved) but for me – that’s what worked.

If it works for you please get in touch with Donncha the plugin developer.

I’m going to leave WP Super Cache disabled for now as I’m not seeing as many page time out problems with GoDaddy as I did a couple of months ago but I’ll certainly be looking at WP Super Cache 1.2 when it gets released.

The Blog of Martin Birrane