Thursday, January 19, 2012


Vinayagar Agaval sung by Seerkazhi Govindarajan.


My idea of creating the videos is not for the video sake, but to have
a song with subtitles so that people will be able to remember the lyrics
and also to be useful for Tamil learners (typical NRI children growing
abroad) and for even Tamil people who may not be familiar with
poetrical words in Tamil (and hence not sure about the spelling or
exact word in the lyrics while hearing).




Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Today I created my third youtube video:


ஸ்ரீ தொண்டரடிப்பொடியாழ்வார் அருளிச்செய்த திருமாலை


பச்சைமா மலைபோல் மேனி ...





Subtitling became the most difficult part in the videos since it is
not western characters. Keeping the line transparent to the background
video, yet, making the letters visible enough was challenging.
Youtube inbuilt subtitle features has font size problem.  For western
characters it is readable, but for Indic characters it is too small
and hence I avoided using that feature and went with my own way.  Some
of the free subtitling software has problems in handling Indian
languages.  Commercial ones for Indic language support is too
expensive.  Other free ones introduce video/subtitle syncing issues or
create difficulties in reading the rendered text and does not provide
an option to change the background color of the text etc. Thus after a
lot of trial and error experiments, now I use two step approach to render
the final version with my own ways. Slowly it is becoming better and
better.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

குறை ஒன்றும் இல்லை ... மறை மூர்த்தி கண்ணா!


Today, I created my 2nd video with Kurai Ondrum Illai song (written by
Rajaji and sung by M.S.Subbulakshmi).


Try to watch in full screen.


Photos: Taken by my cousin brother son Senthil at ISKCON temple in Phoenix.  Many thanks to him. 



Monday, December 12, 2011

English - "get our ducks in a row"


I encountered the following sentence today:
Please call me as soon as possible so I can work with you to equip the customer with questions and get our ducks in a row.
Meaning for "get our ducks in a row" from the dictionary:
Complete one's preparations, become efficient and well organised. This synonym for get one's act together probably alludes to lining up target ducks in a shooting gallery.
lang; 1970s