FeM e.V. is officially taking the last steps of the “journey to 23c3″. Expect us to arrive in Berlin about 1300.
Stay tuned for more pictures and text about the 23c3 streaming and recording setup/team/…
One more step forward: The 23c3 opening credit generator is done. It’s an application which reads the Fahrplan XML file and generates an opening credit movie file which we will use in the recording and encoding process.
And this is what it finally looks like:
After clicking the “generate” button it’ll create the animation on the fly with all the blending and font rendering and write it to a movie file in it’s own directory. I used the AForge which is GPL v2 which makes the whole thingy GNU v2. Damn, I hate this license crap B-)
Sourcecode: Vorspanngenerator_sourcecode.zip (2,17 MB)
We’re well on track achieving our high goals and today the Promise m500i storage array arrived. We are using it, equipped with 15x 400 Gbyte harddisks, to store all the downloadable recordings and the raw-material.
That’s the complete encoding and storage compartment
P.S.: I want to personally thank Promise for updating their in-Firmware SSL certificate to a be valid after 2005. Thank you very much!
Once again it’s update time – this time the Sharepoint Portal Server 2003, installed in April 2006, needs to be upgraded to the brand new “Office Sharepoint Server 2007“.
I think the best way to get a clean installment is to start from the beginning. So I’ve created a new virtual machine and installed the OS, using the newly available R2 release of Windows Server 2003. Since the whole authentication stuff is Activedirectory based I did not need to bother with local users and groups. I’ve installed the .NET Framework 3.0 right away and so everything starts after the OS installation and the mandatory windowsupdate.com visit.
First, ensure that you’re currently logged in with Administrator privileges. Then check if IIS 6 is actually configured to use ASP.NET 2.0.50727:
Enable ASP.NET 2.0
Install SQL Server 2005
When you’re planning to use the SQL Server Express Edition you can just ignore this step since Office Sharepoint Server 2007 comes with it. If you’re, like me, want to use SQL Server Standard Edition you just install it as you normally would.
The default configuration of SQL Server 2005 is that the local BUILTIN\Administrators usergroup also got the sysadmin role assigned. This is important for the next steps.
Install Office Sharepoint Server 2007
The first thing you have to enter is the product key. Just enter it and Continue…
Actually read and accept the license terms for Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and continue…
Choose “Advanced” installation type:
On the next screen you should choose “complete” which installes all components of the product.
You can now safely click the “Install Now” button which will start the automatic installation process.
After some seconds you should be seeing this:
And yes, of course we want to run the “Sharepoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard“. So click “Close” and the wizard opens (of course…)
Click “Next” to get rid of the welcome message and click “Yes” when you’re asked if it’s okay that things that need to be done are done (restart of services)…(why are they asking anyway?)
You are then asked if you want to connect to a currently existing server farm or if you would like to create a new one. Of course in my case I need to create a new one.
I’ve already created an user account in the AD domain called fem\sharepoint_admin2007 which I am going to use as the main administrator account for the sharepoint server. On the next page you’re asked for the configuration database settings.
Enter the database server, the desired database name and enter the user account name+passwort. You don’t actually need to add the fem\sharepoint_admin2007 account to the SQL Server 2005 logins since you’re currently logged in with a user with sysadmin role on the SQL Server 2005. That means: the new databases are created with the user account you are currently using and the username you entered is assigned administrator role for these databases.
After clicking on “Next” you’re asked which port you want the Central Administration Website to use. If you don’t choose something a random port number is chosen. We choose port 34474. You can also configure which authentication provider will be used for the Central Administration Website.
After clicking on “Next” you’re presented the whole settings you made. You just go on with “Next“.
And now the magic starts. Office Sharepoint 2007 Setup installs the server, configures the databases and web applications and starts/restarts the services that need a start/restart.
If everything worked (and it should) you’re once again shown the settings you’ve just made. Click “Finish” and your default browser should open http://moss2007:34474/. You should now see the “Office Sharepoint 2007 Central Administration“:
Now you should configure/check you’re browsers security settings to ensure everything will work in the next steps.
Add the SharePoint site to the list of trusted sites(Internet Explorer 7)
Since there is a copious amount of “Administrator tasks” which is Sharepoint speak for “you really really should work through that list“. Just click on “Administrator Tasks” headline on the homepage of the Central Administration website and you should get the complete list. Work through it, you’ll need everything to be properly set up to continue through this howto.
Since we’re working with just one single machine and not a complete server farm we read fast through the quickstart guide and ignore the server farm related stuff. We go directly to the “Services on Server” configuration screen which looks much like this:
So we select “Single Server or Web Server for small server farms” and take a closer look at the services listing on the bottom of that screen. You can start the services in the following order:
As a next step we need to configure the shared services of the new Office Sharepoint Server 2007. You can find the page here: “Central Administration > Application Management > Manage this Farm’s Shared Services > New Shared Services Provider”
Since we did not create a Webapplication yet we can do it now: just click on the “Create New Web Application” link and fill out the fields accordingly. You can choose the database name here. Just use the names you’ll remember.
For security reasons please create a new account which will be used for the IIS 6 application pool and the SQL Server 2005. This user must only have the permissions he needs for the job. (see Office Sharepoint Server 2007 security articles on MSDN) When you now click on the “Create” button your web application, database and application pool will be created.
After the successful creation you’ll be forwarded back to the “New Shared Services Provider” page. This time the web application fields are filled in with the web application data you just entered.
You now need to specify the credentials for the SSP Web services to use for inter-server communication and for running SSP-scoped timer jobs. Don’t use a local administrator or domain administrator account. This user must only have the permissions he needs for the job. (see Office Sharepoint Server 2007 security articles on MSDN). You could now click the “OK” button but you’ll end up with a warning telling you that it’s not recommended to host the MySite on the same web application as the Sharepoint Services Provider administration site. So I recommend creating another web application for the MySites.
I did this in my case using a new hostheader “http://mysites.moss2007“.
By clicking on the “OK” button you should get the already familiar “Operation in Progress” animation showing you that the magic happens now. After a short while you should see this:
Hurray! It seems that everything worked out. Now the only thing we should do is to restart the IIS 6 server to ensure every configuration change is actually propagated.
To do this right-click your IIS 6 server in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager select “All Tasks” and click on “Restart IIS…”. Click on “OK” and IIS 6 should restart.
When you now access “http://mysites.moss2007” you’ll asked for user credentials and since the only user for this moment that has access is the one you entered during the creation process, use this user. And you’ll end up with this:
And after a short waiting period you can browse through your brand new MySite. Last we need to create a new Site Collection. You can achieve this through the following path: “Central Administration > Application Management > Create Site Collection”.
Fill in the fields and select from the “Template Selection”: Enterprise -> Site Directory. After your click on “OK” once again you’ll see the “Operation in Progress” animation and after this you’re Site Directory is set up. Now you can access the your Top-Level Site in this case “http://moss2007“.
At this point we successfully installed and configured a Office Sharepoint Server 2007 on a brand new machine. And since we’re essentially done with the base Office Sharepoint Server 2007 installation process we’re now going to migrate the databases of the Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 version to our new installment. So stay tuned for Part 2 of this HowTo.
Source 1: Install Office Sharepoint Server 2007 on a stand-alone machine
For the upcoming 23. Chaos Communication Congress and for Virtual Machine testing purposes FeM bought a brand new DELL 2950 Server with impressive specs: 2x Dual Core Xeon 2.0 Ghz (5130) + 8 GB RAM + 2x 73 GB 10k upm + 4x 300 GB 10k upm (all SAS).
I spent the last day installing Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 on the machine which leads to the well known hardware driver issues. But everything solved, the RAID is up’n'running and the machine seems to be a seriously fast one.
Since it’s a DELL machine it’s tidy, which is great since I’ve seen enough machines from other manufacturers where something must have been seriously gone wrong in production phase.
Oh well, it’s time to update. The Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is available now. Grab your trial and install 
Source: Announcing MOSS 2007
At the moment I am writing the opening credit generator which will most likely be used (maybe not… who knows) at the 23. Chaos Communication Congress
As far as I am informed last year an Apple Keynote + DV Video export was used to create the openings and endings of each recording. This time hopefully most of this gets automated and way more comfortable for everyone involved.
Oh, I almost forgot: I am going to release the sourcecode(C#, .NET 2.0)+binaries as soon as possible. But don’t expect too much, in the end it’s just an application that lets you enter or import the lecture data and it then creates a MPEG-2 video file…that’s all folks.
ATTENTION: The information in this article are not final and are subject to be changed during the plannings.
In less than 2 months the 23c3 takes place in Berlin/Germany (December 27.-30th 2006). And the plannings are in full progress. We had several brainstorm sessions and I think that we finally do have a plan. First of all: We learned a lot from the 22c3 live streaming and recording work. And to give you an overview of the things we want to achieve this time:
To achieve these goals we’re going to need considerably more hardware than last year, which means:
So. The camera setup is almost identical to the last one. But this time we want to use a better FBAS signal instead of the in-house HF-cable-TV. The WMV encoding stays as it was last year. We plan to install an additional MPEG-2 hardware encoding machine which produces high-quality MPEG-2 data (which gets edited and compressed for download distribution as fast as possible).
Since we’re sill in planning stage we cannot speak about bitrates, live streams and such. Everything is subject to change, it’s just a draft. But stay tuned and read frequently. Oh… and comments are welcome.
Source 1: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2006/Home
Source 2: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2006/Angel_FAQ
Today I am releasing a current build of YAPS to give you the chance to take a look at it during the development process. There are a number of new features and bug fixes in this version, the most noticable enhancement is the brand new user interface:
One of the new features is the Space-Usage-Bar:
For a complete overview of all fixed and added things, take a look at the changelog below. Everyone who is waiting for some particular feature to be implemented: it’s on the list and soon in YAPS. Everyone who wants to see a feature in YAPS which isn’t there or planned, please comment this article and tell me what you would like to see.
changelog:
31.08.2006
30.08.2006
29.08.2006
25.08.2006
23.08.2006
22.08.2006
Download the current build: YAPS310806.zip (577,92 KB)
Read on: udp multicast to tcp unicast proxy extended to be a vcr
Some weeks ago I wrote about that UDP to TCP Proxy I wrote. And since I am mainly using it for DVB-S tv watching I always wanted it to be a VCR as well. So I extended YAPS to be a VCR.
At the moment I am redoing the Web-Interface of the VCR to give it a shiny and sleek finish, but in the meantime I want to give you the chance to take a look on YAPS+VCR in action, and of course an even deeper look into the sourcecode:
this is the home page of the vcr…showing one programmed timer..
So apparently some things happened the last days. I would appreciate any comments on the application and the sourcecode. So feel free to download and use. I am releasing it, as usual, under the BSD license.
You can download the sourcecode here: YAPS12.zip (375,35 KB)
Source: udp multicast to tcp unicast proxy YAPS revisited…and bugfixed
It starts fairly early this year: even FeM is already preparing and planning for this years live streaming and recording. The public wiki of 23c3 is online and even the Call for Participation screams: visit me!
So, remember: beside the official wiki pages, you can always come and check here for information about FeM activities on 23c3…(streaming, recording,…)
Source: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2006/cfp/
Source: FeM 23c3 recording and streaming project (no website, no link)
Hmm…did you ever wonder why your network access is so slow? Have you ever experienced some kind of “network-hickup”? Did your pc ever smell strange? Well you would like to check the cableing:
His Excuse was: “It was dark when I did this!”
We had a great campfire and I played again with my Powershot… here is the High Dynamic Range campfire:
UPDATE: I added the full resolution versions of the HDR pictures.
During FIWAK I had the chance to play a bit with a Canon EOS 20D. It’s proper DSLR and you can do many great things with it. All the pictures below where done without a tripod. As you can see there are a few ghost pictures but less than I expected in that mode. Nevertheless my Canon PowerShot A400 is better for panoramic views – the EOS is way to big and heavy, you surely need a tripod to do proper panoramic views whereas you can do quite good panoramic views with the A400 without a tripod.
After last years FIWAK, FeM is back in the forest. This year with even more hardware, even more people and even more tents.
The first lecture starts in just a few minutes so stay tuned for more news on the FIWAK 06.
Source: FeM FIWAK Homepage
A couple of months ago we got us a Canopus ProCoder 2.0 educational version. Because we, well had to convert a shitload of MPEG2 and DV movies into several different formats. And because Canopus is telling us that their product is by far the best you could probably get on this planet, we were in.
There is a free demo version available which does not require the red glowing, blue plastic HASP hardware USB dongle key’i thing we got with the full version. Those kind of dongle stuff is really nasty. First of all it bugs you right after you got your Windows started up with an error message, just because you probably haven’t plugged the dongle in. The point here is though: Why checking this at the system start, why not when ProCoder 2.0 is started. And heck! Why a dongle key’i thingy anyways?
ProCoder 2.0 has a neat little feature, the only feature why I would use ProCoder personally, which is called “Watch Folders”. You take a ProCoder 2.0, set it up to watch a folder on a network storage or anywhere you like, and after you setup’d some target movie formats it’ll start to convert everything that appears in those Watch Folders and transcodes it to whatever you configured as a target. Great feature!
But here comes the dongle right back in: You need to go to the server room, find your powerful number crunching server park and stick the… well dongle… into… great. After you recovered from the headache and tinnitus (dramatisation!) you got your ProCoder “server” up and running. The point here is: Why all that fuss with that dongle usb stuff. What’s wrong with serial numbers which are necessary anyway for ProCoder 2.0? Piracy can’t be the answer here. Maybe they want to pretend that it’s worth even a dongle, like AutoCad was back when we called our operating systems DOS.
So back to the Canopus ProCoder 2.0 test: After the setup it comes in two different flavours: The fast and the furious, called “Canopus ProCoder 2.0 Wizard” and the all-inklusive one, called…you get the idea.
So first of all let’s cover the Wizard because the workflow of the Wizard is likely the same as in the ProCoder 2.0.
Step 1: Welcome dude!
oh there it is…Watch Folder!… but we want to convert a single file…
Step 2: Load a Source
I used the current Halo 3 Trailer for demonstration…it’s a WMV HD.
Step 3: Set Source In and Out Point
You can specify where the movie starts and where it ends. So you have some kind of cut-editing capability…well not really. I flinch from calling it cut-editing actually.
Step 4: Advanced Settings
Well Canopus things that Crop-Settings are advanced. But hey, there is a “Select Settings” button which opens a dialog where you can specify alternat audio, specific aspect ratio and so on. Nothing to yell about there.
Step 5: the fantastic and well thought of… ProCoder 2 Wizard Wizard (!!!1!)
Why hasn’t anybody else thought of this before? Use a wizard for the wizard. A master to teach the apprentice. A … oh well, it’s nothing special really. Because if you choose to use it just another dialog box comes up:
Step 6: Select Target
Tricky decision here. We want it HD!
Step 7: a question of format.
[don't forget to put some text here]…
Step 8: High Definition Format…
Again the very tricky format decision. Rather than recommending a format you have to choose. I did not try what’s going to happen when my source has 29,97 fps and I select 25 fps here (or the other way around). Canopus says ProCoder can do a 3:2 pulldown. Great…
Step 9: Saving your file
Save the day.
Step 10: Job Summary
In the end the wizard sums everything up and you can press some more advanced output setting buttons. And if you’re done, you click “Convert”, finally.
Step 11:
And the evil boffins in your number crunching server park are starting to convert your source movie into whatever target you selected. If it doesn’t do this. Well you will never know why it didn’t do it. Because Canopus choosed to not use any error messages or logging. You can be lucky if you get a dialog box telling you that it just won’t do it. In 9 out of 10 cases it just wasn’t telling anything.
It’s not particularly slow. In fact, if you just transcode something and you’re not using any additional filtering it’s as fast as any other transcoding tool (which come sometimes without dongles, you might have heard that).
So that’s quite everything what’s to be told about the Canopus ProCoder Wizard. Finally let’s take a look at the one feature I love: Watch Folders.
So let’s fire up the ProCoder 2 (watch out to have the dongle plugged in!):
I just want to say something about the GUI of ProCoder 2. About GUI design in general. And I want to start with a simple question: What is wrong with standard system controls?
Why are many software companies are writing their own scrollbards, buttons, dialogboxes, tabs. Why can’t they just use the system wide available ones? The ones that actually work. The ones that draw correct on any machine. The ones that I’ve never seen blinking or be drawn incorrect. In case of Canopus ProCoder 2.0 the custom-made scrollbars sometimes even disappeared and you could see that they where just drawn above the system scrollbars. You software companies. If you take an advice from me: stick to doing the user software and leave the multi-purpose GUI elements to the operating system.
Back to ProCoder 2 and to the precious Watch-Folders. If you click on the “Watch” button you get this dialog box:
Nothing really to write more about than: Everything is intuitive and works out of the box. Select a folder. Select a target. And you’re done. It just works as promised. And if you’re in luck and your movies are in a format that ProCoder 2.0 can read without hassle it even will work with your movies.
The target in this case, if you are curious, is a pre-configured format specification. You can use the wide variety of available pre-configured targets, or you can configure your own. (this is quite tricky and not so intuitive)
Since there’s nothing to complain about the pre-configured formats you are certainly not going to have much fun setting up very very custom things. Like the time when I wanted to just setup my own MPEG-4 target. Which isn’t that easy because when you select the MPEG format you only can choose from MPEG-1/2 formats. Or the other time when I wanted to do it in H.264. That format is available, but you have to find it. It’s deeply burried into the third dialog-layer.
In the end you get quite a good transcoding application with this neat Watch-Folder feature. You also get an awfully rubbish GUI with no error messages at all. If something goes wrong you’ll never know why.
In our case everything went fine and in only one case in my testing I found something that the Windows DirectShow could decode but ProCoder 2.0 could not. I really recommend it for video encoding servers. It’s one of it’s kind when it comes to that discipline and the money is well spend.
Source: http://www.canopus.com
So our test-drive 6509 is setup-and-going in the local junk server room. As you can see the room is obviously used for two different purposes. On the one hand it’s a windowless central network service point…and on the other it’s… oh dear…take a look for yourself:
When you come closer…you see…:
TWO 6509!!!!..
an old one(in the rack) and the new one (on the ground)
And to raise some pulses -a module listing:
c6509-ng#sh module
Mod Ports Card Type Model Serial No.
— —– ————————————– —————— ———–
3 48 CEF720 48 port 10/100/1000mb Ethernet WS-X6748-GE-TX xxxxxxxxxxx
4 24 CEF720 24 port 1000mb SFP WS-X6724-SFP xxxxxxxxxxx
5 2 Supervisor Engine 720 (Active) WS-SUP720-3B xxxxxxxxxxx
7 6 Firewall Module WS-SVC-FWM-1 xxxxxxxxxxxMod MAC addresses Hw Fw Sw Status
— ———————————- —— ———— ———— ——-
3 0000.0000.0000 to 0000.0000.0000 1.0 12.2(14r)S5 12.2(18)SXD7 Ok
4 0000.0000.0000 to 0000.0000.0000 2.3 12.2(14r)S5 12.2(18)SXD7 Ok
5 0000.0000.0000 to 0000.0000.0000 4.4 8.1(3) 12.2(18)SXD7 Ok
7 0000.0000.0000 to 0000.0000.0000 3.0 7.2(1) 2.3(4) OkMod Sub-Module Model Serial Hw Status
— ————————— —————— ———— ——- ——-
3 Centralized Forwarding Card WS-F6700-CFC xxxxxxxxxxx 2.0 Ok
4 Centralized Forwarding Card WS-F6700-CFC xxxxxxxxxxx 2.0 Ok
5 Policy Feature Card 3 WS-F6K-PFC3B xxxxxxxxxxx 2.1 Ok
5 MSFC3 Daughterboard WS-SUP720 xxxxxxxxxxx 2.3 Ok
Oh…something that raised our pulses… a 6513 in one of the other Network Service Points…yummi:
At the moment the ahzf and cosrahn are playing with the machine…so more stuff is definitly to come soon.
Today the 6509 + the Firewall Service Module arrived at our office. Quite a heavy machine but we’re really excited to play with it
in all it’s beauty…
more pictures and infos to come…
German CISCO Expo 2006 is finally over and from our point of view it was truly a great success.
There were very interessting sometimes cool presentations and demos, a lot of food & snacks and
very colorful light at the party. Over all it was a much better event than all those cisco
CeBit exhibitions I’ve been to before… the new (cisco) economy seem to be back on stage 
Keynotes
CISCO’s new vision for next generation networking got a new name: “Intelligent Information Network”!
Now all the routers and switches should become more intelligent, be aware of the users actual location
and connection type (ethernet, wlan, UMTS, …) and voice, data, video are integrated services of
IIN. Doesn’t sound this familiar? Yes! In the days of web 2.0 I think German Telekom would call
this reinvention of the wheel just ISDN 2.0… let’s hope that it will work better this time
BTW: During the T-Systems keynote they showed us a _real hacker_ *huu-hoo* and demonstrated
the unbelievable security risks of unencrypted VoIP by using ARP Spoofing *hu-hoho*. So don’t
ask T-Systems if you have a _real_ security problem.
eLearning
There were several talks about eLearning, eEducation, about the CISCO networking academy, and
the Scottish Schools Digital Network. If we belive in the given facts and figures people with
deep knowledge in networking will have a great time to earn a lot of money during the next years.
But from our point of view there is still no real funding of university research (URP is not that
great). The NetAcad program might be good for people willing to learn how to configure cisco
switches, but not when you are more interessted in building next generation routers, switches, and
networking concepts. So for us this program is more or less just marketing…
Technology power sessions
WLAN is still a lot of fun… Much more interessing was the talk about the modular IOS, EEM, and
Gold. CISCO is rewritting their os from ground and the new one will have some really nice features…
For example a real filesystem with virtual files like /sys (*hu-hoo* think about this twice ,
embedded event management, processes for more or less every protocol in use and best: an TCL
scripting environment! If you send enough emails to the dev team embedded perl could also
become available. You can win a box of sparkling wine when you implement tetris within TCL *g*
RFID sponsored by German Telekom… great… :/
Burn venture capital, burn!
The party was really a great! Thanks to the orga team… but I still don’t like this “booooming”…
Source: http://www.ahzf.de
To give you an brief impression of the equipment that is necessary to stream and broadcast such a festival, here are some pictures:
Pictures made by der Andi.
Source: streaming.fem.tu-ilmenau.de
Today it’s once again time for the Ilmenau Newcomer Festival “Vorsicht Band! 2006″. And this time again there’s FeM involved. But first the facts:
16 Newcomer bands from all across germany are going to perform in the next two days. Since the 16 where chosen from 272 you can bet that there’s only the best the newcomer scene has to offer these days.
And now to the juicy facts from FeM: You can watch the whole Newcomer Festival “Vorsicht Band! 2006″ over the internet for free. Just connect to one of the following Windows Media livestreams:
Broadband Internet (1 Mbit and above): mms://streaming.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/vorsichtband2006
Narrowband Internet (below DSL): mms://streaming.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/vorsichtband2006_modem
To be precise:
And some facts for the nerds: 3 stages, 9 cameras, 30 people, 10.000m cableing,…
Source 1: http://streaming.fem.tu-ilmenau.de
Source 2: http://www.ilmenau-festival.de
After the last BBQ which I could not attend, there was a second one yesterday for all active FeM members.
Here are some impressions of the training in Dortmund. Quite many information and hopefully a brand new e-class test setup in the next months.
Impressingly enough: the 1.8l 4 cylinder engine of this Toyota made 100km with about 25l… the display even showed 90,9l/100km from time to time…quite frightening.
Oh and some words to the Toyota itself: bad gearbox, even worse the ride. The clutch: nightmare. To be fair: everything was brand new: the car only had 57km on the clock. Oh: It’s no SIXT rental car…I never got any japanese plastic-bombers from them… THANK GOD!
And small panoramic view of the training room:
I am on the road now. So watch out. See you after the jump…
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