Lexx Soundboard 0.3.2 Release

I’m happy to announce the release of this new version of the Lexx Soundboard containing sound clips from season 1 episode 2 “Super Nova” now available in the android market.  Now that the road is paved with all the content converted into individual video files, episode 3 “Eating Pattern” should be a much simpler task.

Onto the more technical side of thing, there  was able to fix a minor bug which with the method I was using to play the audio files which didn’t output any visible error message in the app, but it caught my eye in the development debugger.  This would only happen the first time a sound clip was played because of a missing check to make sure the media player was actually running before having it stop the previous clip.

Lexx DVDs Converted Successfully

I converted all four seasons of Lexx using the free and open source ripping tool HandBrake.  The whole process took slightly longer than I expected, but I added a step of backing up all the raw ISO files because I wasn’t sure what settings to use to optimize the quality/compression ratio.  These DVDs were unusual because instead of having dual audio tracks, they contain complete separate copies of each video.  The DVD video title numbers were not consistent throughout the entire collection, so for each disc I needed to make a note of which title went to which episode.  The most time consuming part was the actual ripping process.  My desktop has 6GB memory and an Intel i7 processor, and ripping season 4 (24 episodes) maxed our my CPU and took about 3 hours.

Lexx DVD Collection

To follow through with my promise of adding new sound clips to my Lexx SoundBoard app, as well as add to my digital collection, I began converting my Lexx DVD collection into DivV starting with Season 2.  Disc one and disc two ripped without a hitch, but I got stuck with the third.  This is extremely surprising to me because I’ve taken extreme care of them, and they haven’t been touched for at least a few years.  Fortunately it didn’t contain any of my favorite episodes.  I didn’t notice any obvious scratches that I could blame the problem on, but I will have to try and solve this problem.  This will also give me a chance to research the best techniques for DVD conversion.

Bridgekeeper Pitfalls and Progress

Coming back to a project I haven’t touched in six months was almost like looking at someone else’s code for the first time.  But after a some strategic archaeology, I was able to uncover the general idea of how everything was supposed to work, and remember my original basic plan.  While the app did run (somehow) there were a few major corrections to start off the resurrection.

  • The Player was walking in fast-forward speed  – The animation code was running in two places..
  • The Player sometimes continued to walk in place when it reached its destination time – the animation would only stop if the endpoint was an even pixel number.
  • The Player attacking animation wouldn’t repeat – the stop event was firing every frame the Player wasn’t in motion.

WordPress Themes