Early last year, my cable was out for a few weeks, and I can't remember the exact dates, so I had a friend record some shows for me. I usually rip something I want to watch down to divx, and discard the raw file after a few weeks. With my friend helping me out, he would put them on DVD, then I would rip them down to mpeg, then to divx. Now, here is the problem - one of the files, near the end of the month, is without sound. I don't know whether it's one that I ripped at home, or my friend recorded at his place. I have a time stamp for the file, but that doesn't help much when you don't know the date you are looking for (I had to create a new cable account during the outage, so I have no way for ringing the cable co. and asking about an invoice - tried that)! Let me see if I can explain the problem more simply:
Had a cable outage for about 3 weeks-1 month, from about the middle of 1 month to the middle of the next
Had my friend record some shows for me while I had the outage
Normally I delete them once they're watched, but since he was recording them onto dvd (instead of onto pc like me), the discs would be back home somewhere
Sound is missing in one of the shows, I want to know if I am screwed or not (screwed=if its one I did myself and goofed with the sound, not screwed=searching for 3-12 hrs for the disc my friend did for me, since his definately had sound and would have just been my putting it on the hard drive that made it lose the sound)
Compound this with the fact I'm overseas, getting over culture shock, and you can see how my figuring this out with rational thinking might be compromised.
He has a pretty screwed dvd recorder, so I looked for artifacts, different resolution, anything that might tell whether or not it came direct from my cable box, or if it went friends' cable>dvd>my player>computer.
You may think this is the last thing one would think about when working overseas, but trust me, there is very little for a single male to do over here after work and on (thursday/friday) weekends, other than the occasional compound party (sometimes with forbidden alcohol) or a neighbor putting a western movie onto their mini-cinema.
If anyone is a lateral thinker, thinks outside the box, any way to solve this "problem", Then you can call on me for a fairly big favor!
Had a cable outage for about 3 weeks-1 month, from about the middle of 1 month to the middle of the next
Had my friend record some shows for me while I had the outage
Normally I delete them once they're watched, but since he was recording them onto dvd (instead of onto pc like me), the discs would be back home somewhere
Sound is missing in one of the shows, I want to know if I am screwed or not (screwed=if its one I did myself and goofed with the sound, not screwed=searching for 3-12 hrs for the disc my friend did for me, since his definately had sound and would have just been my putting it on the hard drive that made it lose the sound)
Compound this with the fact I'm overseas, getting over culture shock, and you can see how my figuring this out with rational thinking might be compromised.
He has a pretty screwed dvd recorder, so I looked for artifacts, different resolution, anything that might tell whether or not it came direct from my cable box, or if it went friends' cable>dvd>my player>computer.
You may think this is the last thing one would think about when working overseas, but trust me, there is very little for a single male to do over here after work and on (thursday/friday) weekends, other than the occasional compound party (sometimes with forbidden alcohol) or a neighbor putting a western movie onto their mini-cinema.
If anyone is a lateral thinker, thinks outside the box, any way to solve this "problem", Then you can call on me for a fairly big favor!
