parallaxed.net

So I set myself a mission to overcome firewall restrictions for full ‘net access through the university campus connection. There’s nothing in the ToC that explicitly says you’re not allowed to tunnel out of their arsey setup. It first started to peev me off when I was unable to watch FLVs at a reasonable connection speed, due to some packet inspection and IP buckets placed to snare addicted YouTubers. I’m not partial to youtube overdoses, but I do like to see some online video without being transported back to the days of endless RealMedia-esque “buffering…”

Recent excursions into video conversion led me again to problems in the OSS codec world. In fine “lee-nooks” tradition, few things are arriving pre-packaged to suit everyone’s needs. In the special case that you happen to be converting MP4 video containing relatively new MPEG4 audio codecs, you may run into hazards described herein.

It’s a bit odd when you feel like writing a HOWTO on using help in a program, but given that it took a considerable amount of time for me to get the help I needed, I thought I might at least scribble a few tips for any similarly bemused users.