How can GIMP save older version of xcf file format - version

GIMP's native file format has evolved during the years. If there is an external tool that is capable to read *.xcf files then it still can happen that the tool cannot read the file, complaining about unknown file format, or something like this:
read XCF: unsupported file version: v011
How can I save the image into the older version of the *.xcf format?

GIMP is smart enough and alerts you when you save the file.
This alert is displayed when your image contains something that GIMP cannot save into the old format, therefore the new version is needed. If you want to save the old format then you need to remove everything from your image that is too modern and impossible to store in an older format of *.xcf.
GIMP also tells what feature in the image is/are exactly the one/ones that make GIMP to use the newer version.
In the above picture, you can see that the layer mode setting is not compatible with the old format, therefore GIMP will use the new one.
In order to get rid of this message, you need to change the layer mode by right-clicking each layer, and change them in the Edit Layer Attributes -> Mode drop-down from Normal to Normal (l) or similar. The drop-down shows only the Default layer modes by default but if you click the little icon on the right side of the drop-down then you can switch to the Legacy layer modes.
If you try to save the *.xcf again then the above message disappears and the older version of *.xcf format will be used.
Maybe you still have some other settings in your image that are not compatible with the old file format. You need to hunt them down one-by-one but sooner or later you will be able to save in the older format.

Related

Create a binary file extension reader for mobile

It is an ancient binary file extension, actually a video file created by Inter-Tel Web Conference software. It contains a screen recording video and voice audio, and also can capture the keyboard chat log, attendees and the document manager window during a conference. It can be played with Inter-Tel Collaboration Player, a standalone application included with the Web Conference software package.
What I am trying to do now is finding a way to play these files on mobile, although Inter-Tel Collaboration Player offers exporting the files in AVI format, I want to know how to make a command line script for that because the application have lots of problems with Windows 7,8,10 and don't have a Mac OS version.
What is the way to create a new player for that kind of extensions?
"Linktivity stopped support on this app, http://linktivity.com even disappeared from the web..."
It seems they were bought out by Mitel Software so now everything is under the Mitel brand name.
"I just want to find a way to manipulate this file extension, a new good player for mobile and computer"
To open/edit those .lrec files with modern software you'll have to look at their :
Collaboration products.
Unified Communication products.
I tried :
To contact them just to double-check facts but they expect a realtime phone conversation with a salesperson so it wasn't an option. I'd be a fake potential customer, but you can provide a real-world issue (with background details) to see if they can solve it.
Also downloaded for Android the MiCollab app but it needs login details before even starting anything (so no progress to just check if an .lrec file from PC would open within Android).
Export videos for mobile playback :
I've tried the desktop software. Unfortunately it does not accept external commands so there is no way to make a script that takes multiple lrecs and gives back multiple AVI.
The only option is to extract frames from .lrec bytes and use a tool like FFmpeg to combine the images (since appears to do image grabs as frames) into one .MP4 video. MP4 is then playable on mobile devices.
Also any of your existing AVI files should be converted with FFmpeg to MP4.
You can download FFmpeg for Windows here (just the big blue button, ignore other options).
Copy the ffmpeg.exe file to some folder like c:\ffmpeg and put your avi's there.
Now open Command prompt and do cd C:\ffmpeg to reach folder, then type : ffmpeg -i filename.avi filename.mp4 (replace filename with preferred for input and output)
If you know how, just include ffmpeg.exe path to Control Panel PATH settings so that FFmpeg can be accessed from any folder (no need to move files to its own folder).
PS:
I am still researching how to get the frames it's an akward format without the specs (bytes order is Big Endian but then entry values are filled as Little Endian, then also not sure whether to reverse every two or four bytes cos it's mixed up like that etc and the pixel bytes themselves seem to have compression but it's not JPEG more like ZIP or whatever). Only confirmed bytes so far are for video width and video height. It seems doable though if the .lrec only contains screen recordings.
After some research, I found that Media Player Classic can play .lrec files. I don't know, if this helps you a bit.
For a own video player for your company, you would need the encoding infos or a decoder directly from Inter-Tel since they own the licences, without it you can't create one.
Edit: Deprecated info see comments.

Opening .pkt (Omnipeek capture) file in C

I would like to open an omnipeek (.pkt) file in a C program. How do I do it? Conversion to .pcap and opening via pcap library results in loss of important radio information. Can I have a sample program which reads a .pkt file offline?
Thanks!
Well, Wireshark is a sample program that does that, albeit a large one. See the wiretap/peekclassic.c file for the "classic" Peek format (used in older versions of WildPacket's software) and wiretap/peektagged.c for the "tagged" Peek format (used in current versions of their software).
You might want to handle more radio information in the "tagged" format than Wireshark currently handles.
WildPackets tech support can provide you with documentation of the file format. Also, recent versions of OmniPeek will include the radio information when saving in pcap format.

Read omni.jar archive file with MiniZip library

Firefox store its default configuration information in omni.jar (older version) or omni.ja (later versions). Both omni.jar and omni.ja just are zip file format. So we can use many programs/libraries to compress or decompress them.
I want to get some default information of Firefox. So I must read some file in those omni file. I have used 7zip program to see the content of omni or MiniZip/Zlib library to read omni in my program.
With later version, omni.ja, it is read well. But with older versions, MiniZip cannot open the omni.jar file. Then I use 7zip to open those file: omni.ja was ok, omni.jar was fail. But with some other program, ex: WinRar, WinZip, ... both omni file is opened well.
I was google and get some information: with older version, Firefox has created the omni.jar file (a zip file format) with no zip standard. blah blah. But why WinRar or WinZip can read.
Anyone can help me to get MiniZip read omni.jar file with no error?
Thank you very much.
The solution is pretty simple: Your "old" omni.jar is broken. My omni.jar starts with PK.
I suggest to download Firefox from the official archive once more.
[EDIT] It seems that different builds of Firefox use different tools to built the ZIP archive. The en-US version uses a ZIP-like format which doesn't start with PK. While in theory the file format is valid (it contains data followed by the list of entries), almost no tool really supports this format (so WinZIP and WinRAR are the exceptions).
This intention is reflected by the rename of omni.jar to omni.ja: It's not encrypted, it's just a ZIP format that isn't widely supported and the US Firefox developers don't want to change this.
The other developers (for example for the de version) use official tools to build the omni archive so those versions can be modified with any tool.
You will need to find a way to update the archive using WinZIP / WinRAR or you need to download the original firefox sources and add your patches to the build process.

Converting a .cptx file to an .swf file

I have a college project and I have a presentation almost done using adobe captivate. It saved as a .cptx file. My lecturer left a message online saying that it has to be an .swf file. There is no option on captivate to convert it to an .swf. When I export it to flash and play it, it is completely blank and none of my work appears.
Any ideas as to how I can convert my .cptx to .swf? (With the presentation coming out as it did on captivate)
Thanks.
To convert a cptx file to a SWF you need to 'publish' your project. Go to File > Publish and choose the SWF option (this may be different depending on which version of Captivate you're using).
Hope this helps.
-Sean

Signable, streamable, "readable" archive format?

Is there any archive format that offers the following:
be digitally sign-able with a digital certificate from a trusted source like Verisign - for preventing changes to the file (I am not referring to read only, but in case the file was changed it should no longer be signed telling the user this is not the original file)
be stream-able - be able to be opened even if not all of the content has been transferred (also not strictly linearly)
be "readable" - be able to read the data without extracting to a temporary folder (AFAIK if you open a file in a zip archive it is extracted first, and this stays true even for zip based formats like OOXML. This is not what I want)
be portable - support on at least Windows, Linux and Mac OS X is a must, or at least future support
be free of patents - Be open source - also preferably a license that allows commercial use(as far as i know GPL a share-alike license so it doesn't allow commercial use, BSD on the other hand allows it)
Note: Though it may come in handy eventually I can not think right now of a scenario that would require both point 1 and point 2 simultaneously. Or lets leave it a be able to check the signature only when the whole file was downloaded.
I am not interested in:
being able to be compressed
being supported on legacy systems
Does any existing archive format fit this description (tar evolutions like DAR and pax come to mind) ?
If there is, are there programing libraries available for the above mentioned OSs?
If not, would it be hard to create such a thing?
Usage scenario:
I want to use this to create a new media container.
Current media containers contain the audio, video and subtitle streams directly.
Matroska, currently the most advanced container, has supplementary features like attachments and menus.
The menu functionality however is not implemented and very limited.
What I want to create is one level higher.
I want to create a file similar in a way to OOXML.
Also all of the menuing should be done in web technologies like HTML5 (as it is now the tag allows for any kind of codec to be used) and CSS.
Also just like you have holograms on dvds to prove the authenticity I want to create a sign-able file
Research notes:
Before asking this question I stumbled uppon this:
Whats the best way digitally sign a zip file for download using .Net
While detached signing would be feasable for the individual files contained in this archive it is not an ellegant solution for the archive file. Not end user friendly.End users should be able to doubleclick the file to open it in a media player like VLC, and see a message that the file is legit (just like you see in a browser if the page is transmitted with SSL through HTTPS or not)
EDIT: clarified point 5
EDIT 2: added a note to clarify point 1 and 2
EDIT 3: added usage scenario
EDIT 4: added research notes section
P.S.: This is my first question on StackOverflow
I doubt that you find such format out of the box. I understand how such solution can be built with help of our SolFS, but SolFS doesn't have built-in signing (you can add signing easily).

Resources