Solved - Remote Desktop not working after tweaking services
December 29, 2009
I disable some of the service on my Windows XP machine which I though were not necessary. I did this in a "super tweak" hardware profile which I use only when I need the full power of my machine. That is for jobs like editing AVCHD files in Premiere Elements.
However, I was unable to use RDP (Remote Destop) or get network access to the files on that machine.
After some trial and error, I was able to figure out the service which was needed - "Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)"
The name of this service should have given me some clue. Hope this helps someone out there.
Posted by liveit at 2:30 AM
Video For The Web - Settings, Tips, H.264
December 13, 2009
If you plan to put up your video files on the web there is one thing that you absolutely need to consider - H.264 encoding. If you are putting your videos on Youtube or similar service, then you need not bother about this. Youtube takes care of the encoding.
However, if you are reading this article, it's very likely that you do the hosting of your videos on your own site. Since Adobe Flash has started supporting H.264 encoding, you can have high quality videos in small file sizes. This means that the people who see your videos can get enjoy quality at lower bandwidths.
I shot most of my videos in AVCHD (Sony HDR SR7). I used Adobe Premiere Elements for editing. When the time came to publish the videos on to the web, I had to do quite a bit research to find the optimal path. If you are using any other video editing software, get a high quality DV AVI or MPEG4 file and then proceed with using Handbrake.
Initially I considered publishing in 720p. However, the people who watch my videos do it on their computer monitor and it did not really warrant a HD format. So I decided to stick with NTSC DV.
First a warning - do not use Premiere Elements > Share > Online option. It gives you really bad quality.
After getting your video edited and ready for publishing go to Share > Personal Computer. Choose QuickTime. Select "Local Area Network" preset.
Now you need to modify this preset. Click on Advanced. Set your Frame Width and Height to the source resolution. Note that you need to have square PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) and so adjust the Frame Width appropriately. See next paragraph for a bit more explanation on this aspect.
If you had for example shot your videos in 1440x1080 with HD Anamorphic 1080 (1.333) PAR, then you should set the width to 1920 with square pixels. (That is 1440 * 1.333 = 1920)
Set the Video Codec to H.264, Quality to 100, Field Order to None (Progressive) and bit rate to 10,000 kbps. Set your audio settings to AAC Stereo 44KHz. Now save your file and you will get a huge .mov file.
Download and install Handbrake.
Open Hanbrake and choose Normal Profile under Regular in the pane on the left side of the window. Now open the .mov file by clicking on Source > Video File. Modify the settings under Video tab to select Constant Quality 50.98% RF 25 by moving the slider. I found this quality setting to be adequate. If you need better quality, you can go for a higher percentage value.
Modify the settings under Audio tab to AAC (faac) stereo, 48 kHz, 64 Kbps.
Change the settings under Advanced tab to that shown below.
Now click on start to get the .m4v file. Rename this file to .flv and you can publish this file on your site.
The above steps in my experience has given very good quality video at reasonable file sizes. Hope these instructions have helped you in getting the right settings for video publishing on the web.
Posted by liveit at 10:18 PM
Configuring VPN with Xincom Router (603) for Office Network
May 9, 2008
After setting up a small office, I needed to access the computers at the office while I am at home. The easiest way this can be accomplished is by implementing a VPN.
As I was already using a Xincom 603 Twin WAN Router (with VPN endpoint capabilities), I aimed to make use of the VPN functionality of the Xincom 603 for this purpose. For the client side, I used The Greenbow VPN client.
Setting up a VPN is a complicated task. There are many parameters that you need to get right. Essentially there are two phases of negotiation for IPSEC VPN. You need to make sure that the client and the router are configured correctly with the same parameters.
Xincom documentation for VPN set up is very minimal. So I was having a tough time setting it up. What came to my rescue was documentation for similar hardware from Syswan. This documentation does a very good job of describing the various steps involved in setting up the Xincom 603 router. As the underlying hardware of Xincom and Syswan is essentially the same, you will have no problem getting your VPN configured with this guide.
VPN configuration on Xincom consist of two pages - IKE Global Setup and IPSec Policy Setup. Do not get overwhelmed my the many options. Spend some time playing with these pages and the VPN client and you will figure out the essentials.
As for the configuration of the client, Syswan documentation comes to your aid too. It so happened that the VPN client that I chose - The Greenbow VPN client - is essentially the same as the client that Syswan provides to its users. So if you follow the guide for the client from Syswan, it is very easy to get your VPN up and running in not time.
Xincom has the "distinguished ID" in the IPSEC Policy setup page for Remote Security Gateway. This is what you need to use if you do not have a public static ip address for your client side. The corresponding entry for distinguished ID is "Local ID" -> Email on the P1 Advanced page of The Greenbow client. You also need to make sure that the "Aggressive Mode" under "Advanced Features" is checked.
I however had some issues with the VPN client running from my LAN network at home. The problems were caused by the Xincom box that I used at home - Xincom 602. Though I was able to establish a tunnel through the Greenbow client, I was not able to ping the remove endpoint or any computers in the remote network.
Xincom 602 supports VPN passthrough. However, its firewall has some strict rules and it detects the packets from the VPN router as "port scan" and drops them. So you need to configure some Firewall Exception rules in order to make the client work through Xincom 602.
I was able to get some guides by contacting Xincom support. These guides tell you to Sysfilter exceptions for UDP ports 192, 500 and for ESP and GRE protocols. For ESP and GRE protocols give port range as 0-0. You also need to do protocol binding for these UDP ports and ESP & GRE protocols. I also added UDP port 4500 to the list. You can find these guides from Xincom here - see "Advanced Configuration Guides" towards the bottom of the page.
The Greenbow VPN client costs money. So if you want a free VPN client, you may want to consider Shrew Soft VPN client. I have not tried the Shrew Soft VPN client but it looks promising.
Posted by liveit at 3:35 AM
