)Last year, I found a howto for scraping recordings off the Comcast cable tuner/dvr via firewire and succeeded to make a similar dvd project of a news story about a high school acquaintance who had won the lottery, made a developmental success for himself in the nearby Sierra foothills town of Murphys. I recall that one of my clients (Songbird developer, btw) recommended Handbrake, that it worked for me and that I was impressed.
Now, I suspect it might help with my current project and am pleased that the 64-bit Fedora rpms of the latest release install, currently doing a trial encoding @~ 180% cpu, had to crank up the side case fan to hold the core temperatures down!
I have recorded several half-hour weekend airings of that channel's news program, where they typically re-run stuff from during the week. I am hopeful this story will be included, that I can cut it out from the 30 minutes of video, and make the target optical disk.While I welcome any intel on this project, I was impressed by the intelligence that permeates the website and a bit of insight from a developer that clarifies OS/Linux philosophy, so I post it here.
HandBrake Wiki wrote:HandBrake and Open Source ¶
an essay by rhester
As the number of new feature requests for HandBrake has risen dramatically in the past few weeks, I consider it prudent to remind end-users of what open source is - and isn't.
Open source is:
* A means to encourage software innovation among diverse groups of programmers
* A policy of open inspection and analysis of source code, both to educate and provide a means for constructive criticism
* A means by which programmers can "scratch their itch" for mental stimulation while at the same time solving computing problems that are frequently applicable even to non-technical users
* Free, both intellectually and in terms of cost
Open source is not:
* A way to get commercial-quality support at no charge
* A free-for-all forum to ask for pie-in-the-sky software features and expect them to be implemented as requested and with no delay
* An invitation to harass and otherwise frustrate a small and dedicated development staff because they didn't do what you wanted
Open source software is exactly what it sounds like: It's software written by a (usually small) group of highly-dedicated people that solved particular problems they themselves had and thought others might find useful as well. Like most things that are free, it comes with no warranty: If it does what you want, that's great - that's exactly why it was offered to you. If not, you have the freedom of choice to either modify it to suit your desires or find another software package that more closely meets your needs.
As I stated in another thread (and alluded to again here), the features you find in any open source software package are there because at least one programmer needed them and implemented them to meet their needs (more forward-thinking programmers often at least attempt to make them flexible enough to work for others with similar needs as well).
I am aware of no open source software either currently or previously available that catered to the needs, whims, or desires of end-users. That isn't what it's about. If you want the freedom to tell someone what you want and expect them to do it, that's called commercial software, where you make your intentions known with your purchasing decisions and vote with your wallet. That is not open source.
. No pannakaker today due to bad behavior - you get vann og brød. 
