srmurphy.com

A new milkdrop appreciation

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Update 16/09/09 – Added link

OEM Power adaptors are complete and total rubbish! They generally come with routers and this is the 3rd one that has died on me. Look around your plugs, if you see one marked ‘OEM’ be warned!

Update 16/09/09 – Updated category

As I have mentioned a number of times previously I do gaming related videos providing real life and other computer issues are not getting in the way but I thought I would share a couple of things in case any of you also have issues like the ones I am going to talk about. As a further note, I am currently using Windows 7 RC 64bit with latest versions of all codecs and software at the time of typing this up so problems may or may not be present for you but at least you know of possible solutions.

Picked up the Blackmagic Intensity Pro capture hardware last year some time and is a lovely bit of hardware, in fact I think I made a post about it. My first problem came about with a slight limit on my hardware setup, HD capture would result in sound falling out of sync. A lovely bit of free software called Virtualdub is able to compensate for any momentary delays and so keep everything in sync and for the most part is not noticeable with how it compensates.

When I started capturing from my 360 I soon came against my first problem, when I would play back the video it would look like it had a bad interlacing problem and I would be capturing at 720p! Processing the videos even in this state resulted in some horrible results. I soon tracked down the issue to the mjpeg codec that ffdshow uses and a prompt disabling of these fixed it all up.

Before

Disabling MJPEG

After

Next up I started on some retro compilation projects which are now primarily known as ‘Mashups’, a lot of this is done via emulators and a lovely little program called ‘Fraps’, enter the next issue. Playback of the captured video would be very slooooooow, not a case of it couldn’t handle it, a case of the timing was completely gagged. Enter ffdshow again, it has a decoder for Fraps which I had to also disable, but this wasn’t to be the end of it all.

Fraps Disabling

So I sorted out ffdshow to stop it interfering in my work but when I came to importing the video’s into the editing software all was still not well. In the case of the Fraps video footage I would get no sound, no strange encoding or anything like that, even though it knew sound was present, it just wasn’t seeing it. Which is strange as it all worked in the 32 bit XP setup. Also some of my raw captured 360 video footage would also play with incorrect timings.

One very simple solution to these two issues and probably others that I have yet to encounter and I can only think the reason it fixes up might be down to something with the headers in the files themselves. Load the files into Virtualdub, make sure both video and audio options are selected to direct stream copy and just re-save. Sorted, both problems were solved and the videos imported fine into the editing software.

Another one to add to the mix…

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Next up in the appreciation of this fabulous plugin.

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Update 17/09/09 – Added link

First of a new series of videos.

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Update 17/09/09 – Added link

I’ve just uploaded a couple of tones I’ve put together…

Message Tone
Gauntlet Exit Sound - The well known exit sound effect from the classic game
Ringing Tone
Gauntlet Dying  Sound - The well known chime sound effect when you are dying from the classic game

Other tones avaliable on the Free Tones page

Also incase you missed it, over on the 4tfoi site the Mashups are now go, keep a watch out as I intend on upload regularly

As the title might suggest the computer is not quite to a point that I would prefer it but it is behaving a hell of a lot better than it previously has been, what with the banishing of that memory chip that proved to be such a misery! Currently tidying up a Win XP install on the system, I did have Win 7 RC 64 bit on prior to it but as usual I have some freak hardware configuration that causes problems.

All started out very good, got the OS installed, most of the drivers built in off the bat but still updated what I could of it. Got my usual essentials all set up and started to feel a love I hadn’t felt since I first started using XP all those years ago. Testing various aspects that I needed, fraps capture in various proggies, video playback (a bit of a no brainer that one but still had to be tested) and capture from the 360, that’s where it all started to go wrong. On the other hand I discovered I seem to have broken something on my Audigy card, the headphone socket on the front panel no longer seems to be working properly so at the same time there could be some connection there too.

At the moment I just want a stable computer so I can wrap up on a number of things and continue on with other things, I’ve had enough of computer problems for the present time no thanks to that memory chip and just want to get on with my little projects. Only potential problem at present is I’m a bit paranoid over the heat it’s kicking out but I do have a meaty Phenom 2 black edition now so probably just not properly accounting for it on the case cooling setup, all is fine in the mean time thanks to that wonderful cool ‘n quiet technology but will have to keep check when it comes to the more strenuous tasks.

Really wanted everything to work in Win 7, was starting to really like using and working in the environment.

Update 16/09/09 – Category change

Mashup? What ya on about? Well that is a very good question. To put it simply, at the time in my computer reduced state and with the prospect of no longer being able to work on my bigger video productions I had the thought of applying the ethics of ’12seconds’ to my Youtube videos. However the computer is all up and running again but I’m still going ahead with this idea.

It partially came about running through some ‘100 of’ videos (a number of them I have showcased on 4tfoi), it’s all well and good for the first couple of minutes but might get a bit tedious if, say, you are not doing something while watching the vid (eating or something like that) or if you are trawling through 99 other clips just to find the clip of the one thing that you so fondly remember. However at the same time I thought it could prove a good creative booster given my computer restriction at the time.

At the end, a video can’t be any longer than 1 minute, beyond that I’m not trying hard enough. The mashups will mostly consist of gaming related material but I do intend on exploring other areas… hence why this is being posted on both 4tfoi and srmurphy.com, gaming related ones on 4tfoi and the others on srmurphy.com. Will start off simple with compilation clips but… well who knows where the creativity will take me.

Let me start this by explaining a few little bits. Computing today is currently present in two main forms, 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need to go into the nitty gritty but I do need to explain a couple of differences between the two… well, just one really.

Due to technically restrictions in relation to the way computers work which I don’t need to go into, 32 bit Windows has a limitation on the amount of memory that you can use, 4 gig or more and it will generally only use a little bit above 3 gig, might report that it sees more but ultimately it doesn’t utilise it. Enter 64 bit Windows, allows you to use 4 gig and more (depending on any restrictions imposed within the software).

Now let me present some evidence, only recently 32 bit Windows xp started hanging solid on me, did have some occasional oddities prior but nothing major to threaten operations so to speak. Eager to try Windows 7 during it’s beta period I try installing the 64 bit version however it would display some bad instability which I put down to the test code. When the computer became inoperable I obtain a new motherboard and CPU, in the installation process the memory chips go in reverse order in comparison to how they where in the old board, major instability problem, so much so that even memtest hangs solid!

The verdict in all this is simple, the computer has been operating with a bad memory chip for possibly a long time, you see, I had it installed in the upper most slot so 32 bit Windows didn’t allocate all of it and of course when I tried the beta of 64 bit Windows 7 it was using all of it. The past few months the chip must have degraded to a point that it started effecting 32 bit Windows and when I swapped it into the new board in reverse order, it was the first chip to be used for memory, hence the instability increase.

So why did I not suspect the memory before hand? Well, I was going by prior experience in my judgement, I have experienced both motherboard and memory issues before. Motherboard issue had the symptoms of hard hangs like I had been experiencing and the memory issue produced very very random error messages.

What I have learned in all this, not everything is always as it seems and probably should be a little less quick to judge to which I should probably make an apology to Gigabyte for any bad mouthing that has been roughly aimed in their direction, may have been this memory chip all along and nothing to do with the motherboard.

This is the little bugger