I recently posted about SensorLogic receiving another round of funding.  I was led to believe this from the following Dallas BizJournal article:

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/01/09/story6.html

It turns out that the article is completely inaccurate and that the initial round was completed at $11 million.  Thanks to Ray for clearing that up.

After much trial and error I’ve finally figured out how to extract a specfic frame from a video file using FFmpeg. The command to accomplish this looks like:

ffmpeg -i swing.avi -ss 6.0 -t 0.001 -y -f singlejpeg swing.jpg

While I’m not sure how to specify an exact frame number, you can specify a start time offset (-ss). You also need to specify the duration (-t), which in most cases will be 0.001.

I’ve received a few emails from FFmpeg users that can’t seem to get this to work. Give this a try and please let me know if you run into any problems.

I recently posted abut pulling PNGs from video files using FFmpeg. Since then I’ve received a few emails about doing the same for JPGs as well as exporting files at a certain frame. While I’ve figured out to achieve the former, I’m completely baffled with the latter. To extract the jpg frame you can use the following command:

ffmpeg -i swing.avi -s 320×240 -vframes 1 -f singlejpeg swing.jpg

This is fairly straightforward. The next hurdle is to figure out how to export an image at a certain frame or time. The command above exports the first frame of the movie, yet it would be nice to specify frame nnn and have it exported. I’m working on several parameter combinations and will hopefully post a winner over the weekend.

If you haven’t seen one of the new Mac Intel ads then check it out:
http://www.apple.com/intel/ads/

The new MacBook Pro looks nice and almost makes me regret getting my PowerBook earlier this year.  I figure I’ll be do for an upgrade in about a year.  In the meantime it will be interesting to see if the new MacBooks really outperform the PowerBooks.

PLEASE READ HERE FIRST TO GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT

A former co-worker sent me a link today informing me that SensorLogic (the company I work for) received an additional $4.67 million in funding. You know you’re growing when people outside the company are more in touch with what’s going on than those inside….I guess that’s a good thing.

At any rate, I get a lot of questions from friends and family about what it is we actually do. Check out the following link to learn more about SensorLogic and the M2M space we play in:

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/01/09/story6.html

PCWorld has a great article covering the 50 coolest gadgets over the last half century:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123950,pg,1,00.asp

This is one of those articles that definitely makes me feel old since I remember quite a few of these gadgets. Among my favorite are:

2. Apple iPod
7. Atari
16. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell
26. Nintendo Game Boy
37. Commodore 64

While the ranking of certain items might be up for debate, the list provides a great trip down memory lane.