Just a thought

First off, another killer issue!  Just terrific.

As I was reading though this issue I got one of those thoughts that started to build as I got further and further into this great issue.  The thought was that it might be kind of cool for some of your vendors to run an article style ad instead of just a splash page and a link.  What do I mean by an article style?  As an example, suppose that one of the laser building vendors ran an article on how they design that terrific new building, and then the documentation and packaging stage, etc,.  In the end there is the new building, another nice article for MRH and of course all about the vendor.  Anyhow just a thought.

I love this magazine, thanks to all of your dedicated staff and to the authors who create all of these great projects.

Russ (having a heat wave, 22 today)!

Bookmarking trick in Opera

Since you tested 4 of the Big5 browsers for your bookmarking trick, I tried the other one (Opera). The trick almost works, but as the Sponsors page now exists the link in the favourites is created with a blank description. It can easily be fixed, though: all you need to do is edit the code of the Sponsors page and put a title element in the < a> tag, for example:

Current:
< a href="http://www.model-trains-universe.com/cheker/cheker.php?idmk=SPONSORID" target="_blank"> < img src="/sites/default/files/users/_site_admin/logos/SPONSOR.jpg" alt="SPONSOR - support MRH - click to visit this sponsor!" width="120" height="80"> < /a>

Fixed:
< a href="http://www.model-trains-universe.com/cheker/cheker.php?idmk=SPONSORID" target="_blank" title="Sponsor Name" < /a>

If you make that small change then it works perfectly in Opera too (for the small percentage of people who use it).

Just a thought

Russ's idea is a good one. It is well practiced by our company's marketing communications department. We call them advertorials. The articles are written about a customer or customer's process, by the magazine staff in the public's eye, but of course feature how our products play a role in the customer's success. Advertorials tend to generate much higher quantities of serious inquiries than conventional ads although they are considerably more difficult and expensive to produce. We have a three part one running in an industry rag right now.

Better method for downloading extras

I'd really like to see a more robust way for downloading large files (possibly the issue PDFs themselves, but more needed for the downloadable extras). Some of us are unfortunate enough to have flaky and/or intermittant internet connections that result in incomplete or corrupted downloads (nobody wants to download the same 300MB file 5 times in a row and it still doesn't work). Something with integrated hashing that can validate what chunks of the file have been downloaded correctly and only redownload the invalid pieces. Something like bittorrent would work well with little effort, or a custom downloader app (à la Microsoft, Adobe, etc) would work too.

Submitted by James Heinrich

James,

Check out this help entry on recommendations for slow dial up:

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/help/slow-dialup

Even if you're not on dial up, getting an internet download manager package like this link suggets is a good idea. A download manager lets you schedule downloads to happen while you're sleeping (for example) and if the download fails, they allow restarting where it left off.

I think that will ease the pain of large downloads greatly.

Download managers are great (but not for everything)

Hi Joe,

Your suggestion is appreciated, and certainly meritorious for dial-up users, but download managers have no way of verifying the integrity of the download (other than bytesize). I personally have no problem with download speed, but (through several ISPs over the years) I have occasionally come across a large HTTP download that comes across with the right number of bytes, and 99.99999% are right, but a few bits flipped here or there renders the file useless, and a dedicated download manager would fare no better than a browser-handled download in that case. Whereas an integrity-checking download manager (of whatever form) would hash each chunk and only need to redownload a few kB to repair the whole file.

Bookmarking Made Easy

Thank you. This is a very helpful tip. I often visit sites that are referred to on web pages but I usually do this after the fact by noting their address. Then I buy something from the site and again wonder how the original web site will get credit for sending me there. I mention where I saw the ad in a comments column (if there is one). This will take the guess work out of the scenario and ensure credit where credit is due. Thanks again for making it easy.

Ian Kennedy

Video as medium

Joe,

I agree with you that for many tasks, video is a more effective medium for communicating approaches. The one thing to keep in mind is that not everyone has a reliable, high bandwidth, internet connection. That means that streaming videos can be almost unwatchable (Netflix, for example). Flash seems to work reasonably well and can be downloaded (unless this is explicitly blocked). But high compression video seems to work best -- things like Divx and MKV.

It is also helpful if the downloads can be restartable and go through a download manager. It is a real drag to watch a slow download get dumped if there is a service flaw. And I have found that trying to download the extra videos you post is pretty chancey. So far I have tried eight times to download the January material and had it bomb or claim it was ok but unreadable to zip.

So I agree with the medium but suggest that incorporating a download manager would make it more accessible for us folks out in the boonies (rural Ontario).

Greg Latiak

Content idea

Joe:

     One of the things I've always missed from one of the paper magazines is an old feature known as "Kinks". Although the meaning of the word in common use has changed a bit these days, perhaps "Tips and Tricks" might be more appropriate today.  Readers could submit their kinks monthly, and the best ones were published.  These were usually no more than a 3 or 4 line comment, sometimes with a small sketch.  It might be something to include if you're looking for more content.  One advantage you have is you could assemble and index them all online for ready reference.

Joe Berger

Great Northern Railway (HO)

Cascade Division

MRH 2011-01 - January 2011

As always a great issue, and even better now it's monthly, grateful thanks Joe, to you, your team, and your contributors.

Pete Williams, Uxbridge, UK

MRH Q - A - T

@gnryfan - Perhaps you are not aware of a section already a standard part of MRH titled Q - A - T (Questions, Answers and Tips) like on page 39 of the current issue. There is also an invitation in that section to submit tips.

Video encoding

Video encoding is an extremely complex topic; there are any number of tradeoffs regarding filesize vs quality vs compatability. I understand the need here to balance those issues, with a primary emphasis on compatability, and a secondary concern for quality, but I think even the high-quality downloadable versions could easily stand to lose a bunch of filesize with minimal impact on quality. Taking the 10-Mile Creek video from this month, for example, is a 395MB download, with a 4Mbps (average) video stream. That's just overkill. As an experiment, I reencoded the video using the same AVC/h.264 compression but using a high-quality constant-quality preset (x264 --preset slower --tune film --crf 20 for the curious) which gave a 1Mbps video stream (of quality essentially indistinguishable from the original). Admittedly, some of these optimizations decrease compatability, but a 3x reduction in bitrate is (in my opinion) certainly viable with negligible loss of quality or compatability. And smaller files are a win for both the end user and those paying for hosting.

Short list of recommendations for video encoding:
* encode progressive, make sure to deinterlace, especially for resized encodes (e.g. embedded videos)
* encode with constant-quality rather than a specific average bitrate
* if the camera supports it, shoot the videos at 24fps progressive, rather than 29.97fps interlaced (NTSC). Both the progressiveness and lower framerate will make high-quality output encoding and lower filesizes easier.

Bookmarking Sponsors

Another great issue!

But I think there may be a problem with these bookmarking directions.

I download the expanded version and then read it in Adobe Reader 9.4.1 - I imagine a lot of your other readers do the same.

The drag/drop operation doesn't seem to work from Adobe Reader to Opera 11.0, Firefox 3.0.19, or IE 6.0. I suspect it will only work if you're actually reading the magazine online, from within your browser.

Any thoughts?
 

Bookmarking

Maybe I missed something, but I just assumed the instructions were for dragging and dropping links from the sponsors page on the website, not from the magazine.

Yep, the video shows the website sponsors page

Love the magazine

I am loving the magazine, especially on my iPad. I like having all the issues right there and being able to browse through them at my leisure. Only problem is that some of the functions, like this comment form, don't work on the iPad. I know we are a small percentage of the readers, but I would welcome the day when all features work on the iPad.

And congratulations on going to monthly! I will be honest - you are now my only model rail magazine subscription. I will continue to pick up other mags at the news stand as the articles warrant, but you are the only one that I can promise I will read cover to cover each month.

Thanks!

Thanks Joe

Great idea for the bookmarks and I'll try that in a couple minutes. The phone idea is timely for me as I just bought an IPhone and now I'll be able to take the magazine along with me when my wife is shopping and I have to tag along

Well I tried but for some reason I cannot download the magazine to the phone. When I go to the download page I get a flash player error and there is no flash player  available for the IPhone....so it says. I'm a GreenHorn when it comes to this stuff so maybe I'm missing something or not understanding it. Maybe I have to download on my PC and use Itunes to put it on the phone?

Check our help section

Allan:

Check our help section ... we have specific how-to's for all manner of iOS devices - iPads, iPhones, iTouch ...

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/help/ipad-ipod

The key is to use the "Other options ..." download and then pick the Mac standard edition - works great on an iOS device!

There's lotsa goodies hiding under the help menu!

Thanks Again Joe!!!   After 4

Thanks Again Joe!!!

After 4 freezups I finally got it to download. The only thing I did different the last time was to leave the Iphone docked to my computer. Maybe it help, maybe it was just luck, none the less it worked!!! Now I can read it anywhere I go WooooHoooo!!!

Later

Reading on MRH on the iPad

 I enjoy your your magazine on my iPad.  I have been using iBooks with success.  I own GoodReader and the works well as you have suggested.  Thanks for all your hard work.  

Tony

iBooks has become practical with multi-tasking

I've found the new multi-tasking OS on the iPad now makes iBooks a practical MRH reader as well.

Before multi-tasking, using iBooks would lose your place whenever you clicked on a link to media or an advertiser's site.

Now, multi-tasking just swaps the apps on the screen, bringing up the browser to the desired web page. Once you're done, all you have to do is swap back to iBooks and viola! You're still on the page you left.

Much better.

....

I discovered I had Auto-Sub turned off this month.

I have Re-upped and we're good for another year - Thank You!