I've seen countless tutorial web videos done by amatuers and they all have one thing in common. ANNOYING UNECESSARY LOUD MUSIC PLAYING IN BACKGROUND! Most of them are Rock N' Roll or Alternative, Heavy Metal. We don't care what kinda songs you're into, we don't care if it's your favorite song. Keep that crap off. You think you're cool? It's really pathetic, makes you look like a moron rather than a smart guy, teaching these tutorials.

Tip #1 Don't play music in your bedroom, bathroom or where ever you do your recording while your talking. We can't hear you. Do this and your video will become useless.

It seems that Apple disables the use of the serial codes found in blu-ray purchases for digital copy transfers when it's not time for the movie street date release.  I get the error code below when trying to transfer TFK movie to my iPhone. However, redeeming the code through Windows Media works.

UPDATE: I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THIS. I TRIED TO REDEEM THE CODE TODAY (9/9/2008) DAY OF TFK RELEASE DATE, AND IT WORKED. I NOW CAN WATCH THIS MOVIE ON THE IPHONE.

Many people have the PS3. But many do not know of it's many features and capability. One of the cool things it can do is streaming HD video from a computer hard drive to the PS3 and onto your HDTV/Surround sound system. To enjoy this fully you will need a decent computer with fast processor, an HDTV, a dolby digital surround system, a PS3 and the movie file. You can find HD movies for download on the internet/newsgroups. Most come as .mkv file. You'll need this program mkv2vob to convert this high quality movie file to .mpg. Choose .mpg because the PS3 easily supports it. The only limitation using mkv2vob is if the .mkv movie file has DTS, it'll be downgraded to dolby digital. Once you have the file converted to .mpg, if it's small enough, you can burn to a DVD5 or DVD9 and play it right on your PS3. If you prefer, you can keep the file in the hard drive and stream it to the PS3 with the help of this program Tversity. Install that and set it up by adding a media folder for streaming (your .mpg file). Then go to the PS3's internet browser and in the url, type in your computer IP address http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952. XXX referring to your computer IP that is running the Tversity program. You will see the movie file listed and just select it to play. Tversity is a diverse program, you can stream audio or video to almost and device such as PS3, Xbox 360, iPhones, portable media players..etc.

Vista's Windows Movie Maker does not come with a bitrate setting I needed for encoding small 320 x 240. Sometimes I could use the "Compress to:" setting and change the number to around 8-10 mb and the video size would change to 320 x 240 with a bitrate of around 330 - 440 kbps. That is an ideal spec for my web project. I was doing that for awhile but recently came to some videos which I could not use the "Compress to:" setting because at 320 x 240, the bitrate was 1003 kbps taking up 23 mb. I noticed the change when I was doing the encoding on the new fast computer I built. So Windows Movie Maker's "Custom setting:" is based on how fast or slow your computer is. Vs the old computer, which I still use, the new fast computer with overclocked Q6600, Windows Movie Maker's "Custom setting:" provided bitrate over 2x. It seems to think it's fast enough to play and encode at that bitrate for 320 x 240. I could not use that for my web project.

So I did some researching and found an article at Microsoft.com. It tells you how to make a custom movie maker profile setting for use with Windows Movie Maker. I followed the instructions in the article and it didn't work at first. The instruction they gave were wrong. The steps said to save the custom profile you make under Documents folder, I did that and WMM would not show my custom setting. I read more about this custom creation at another site and found that you have to create a folder called "Profile" under C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared. That's right, you gotta create the folder yourself, it isn't there already. I did this and it worked. After finding this out, I went back to the Microsoft article, and submitted the correct information to them via at the bottom of the article "Was this helpful?". And guess what, they updated their instructions!

Basic steps to creating your own custom setting for WMM.

1. Download and install Windows Media Encoder 9 Series from the Microsoft website.
2. Open Windows Media Profile Editor
3. Enter a name like "384 kbps", enter description, check Audio and Video, select CBR or Quality VBR for both, add a target bitrate, then edit your video and audio options
4. Save and close, save to C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\Profiles   (create Profiles folder)
5. Load Windows Movie Maker and to encode your videos with the custom setting, go to Publish Movie, and at the settings, Select More settings and select your profile (the name you entered in Windows Media Profile Editor)