Blogs

One day I'll wish I saved this tip somewhere I could find it... so here it is.

I had a video file which had a stereo audio stream in it, but there was only audio on the left channel of that stream. I wanted to convert that mono-in-left-channel-only stream to pseudo-mono-in-both-channels (ie, copy the left channel into both the left and right channels.

This is the sort of stuff that ffmpeg does before breakfast. What we are doing is "re-mux"ing (which is to say we re multiplex the video and audio streams together into a new container).

ffmpeg -i input-video.mp4 -map 0:0 -c:v copy -af "pan=stereo|c0<c0+c1|c1<c0+c1" -map 0:1 -c:a aac output-video.mkv

Yesterday (2021-07-21) I started having a problem with using git against some of my private github repositories. Trying to fetch updates would look like this:

$ git fetch upstream
ERROR: Repository not found.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

It turns out this was caused by my using an old 2048-bit rsa key for SSH. Perhaps github are rolling this change out across all private repos. You can create a new 4096-byte key with the command:

If you're having problems with Zoom not remembering your login or settings, check if your home directory as specified in $HOME actually points to a symlink rather than an actual directory.

Mine does, and zoom would always ask me to login (regardless of having ticked "remember me") and never retained settings between runs.

In the console output of zoom (in addition to a lot of binary guff - wtf zoom?) was:

Recorded during lockdown in 2020. I'm the hairy chap. Each performer recorded their part at home, and I combined them, using Ardour for the mixdown, ffmpeg for various processing tasks and kdenlive for the video edit. This is Paul Smith's setting of Nunc Dimittis.

A snippet of Il Bianco E Dolce Cigno (The Sweet, White Swan) by Arcadelt, one of the madrigals featured in our Love, Loss and Longing program. I recorded the audio at our Tugun performance in Queensland, July 2018.

A recording and preview clip I put together for our REST Programme, an hour-long meditative exploration of some of the most soul-touching music ever written:

The audio is a live recording of a performance in Tugun, Queensland in July 2018. I am performing the tenor part.

If you're using FreeAccountingSoftware (If you're running a fairly straight-forward operation then I'd suggest checking it out) and you get this error message when trying to retrieve SBR Activity Statements:

Error, CMN.ATO.AS.EM137, There are no activity statements matching your selection. Change your criteria.,

Then your issue might be an incorrect "Branch" code in your SBR Settings.

Our little group singing Are They Wearing Corsets?, a parody by Alison Mackay on Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus.

Ardour is an amazing piece of software, but sometimes it still crashes. This is not entirely its own fault - plugins have to run in the same process so ultimately Ardour has no control over some of the code it ends up running. I find it pretty stable, but when you are syncing it with MuseScore and/or video things get a bit twitchy.

Of course, we all know to save early, save often - but when you're in the creative flow it's easy to lose track of time and not save for quite some time.

I've had to work this out again since reinstalling my laptop so thought I might record the result here...

Typical issues found when trying to get Ardour and MuseScore to work together is that MuseScore jumps around in a BAD way when it hits tempo changes from JACK, or it locks up, spewing lovely digital detritus into your monitors.

The best method I've found thus far (although it still does that lockup thing from time to time) is: