|
Post by RacerX on Jul 24, 2002 17:05:05 GMT -5
Thanks Wyc, I just noticed the change...Karting looks great! Man, how do you keep up with ALL of this...and work too! ;-)
Take care, and thanks again!
Later, RacerX
P.S. I hope you're thinking up some good wagers...maybe we could even squeez a few out of this year, no? LOL!
|
|
|
Post by Wycco on Jul 25, 2002 7:53:52 GMT -5
X,
I'm not keeping up with all this! LOL- I spend very little time online- work keeps me too busy now!
I usually spend 30-40 mins in the morning before work- and take a couple of 5 min breaks through the day to check whats new!
I've got stacks I want to do- which I'll have to do after work someday... I need to update the smiley's- I need to update WyccoF1 (majorly)... I need to update FPOTM web page to reflect the recent changes... I need to update the chat program I was writting...
LOL- plus there was another "secret" project I was working on that I only got half way through
|
|
|
Post by RacerX on Jul 25, 2002 11:57:20 GMT -5
No prob Wyc, I think it's a great place...take your time, we aren't going anywhere, and it'll give us plenty to look forward to!
Thanks again, and good luck with your job search...if you're still looking. Australia or New Zealand both sound terrific! I have some contacts in S.A., and they'd tell you to stick with those two choices...LOL! It's becoming a little dangerous to walk the streets in alot of S.A., crazy stuff going on there. Of course, I could be getting only ONE side of the story.
Have a great week race week-end and enjoy Hockenheim, RacerX
|
|
|
Post by pabs on Aug 3, 2002 15:23:28 GMT -5
Wyc,
Can you add this smiley please?
Nevermind...I already found it in the smileys topic.
|
|
|
Post by Cine_Man on Aug 19, 2002 20:42:20 GMT -5
Funny avatar if I can get it to reproduce... How I feel most of the time. Cine_...
|
|
|
Post by Henrik on Aug 20, 2002 1:16:06 GMT -5
That's a good one Cine!
I take it you have not sorted out all your computer problems then yet. Upgrading can be a bitch!
|
|
|
Post by Cine_Man on Aug 20, 2002 19:59:32 GMT -5
I'm almost there, but most of my old apps that ran fine on my Celeron/3dfxVoodoo, like GP3, TestDrive, and Need ForSpeed have bizarre rendering issues... and then crash. Good old EASports F1-2000 would run, but if you had a spin or an off, the program would freeze, then crash. The main issue that I had in regard to upgrading, however, was to make sure that I could digitize and edit video on my PC... and it, in fact, does that really well. So my last PC was a good game unit that didn't do video, and my new P4 is a not very good gamer, but it does all the core business... So now I'm in the process of trying to catch up with the season with all the little charts I had been compiling like the DNF Derby and Distance Driver... I'm going to have to give up on the overtaking chart until I can figure out how to come up with a meaningful statistic -- all the backfield guys get too much benefit from the midfield retirees -- and the guys at the front get no credit at all. Or maybe there just isn't enough real overtaking going on to bother about! Looking forward to seeing how the ChampCars do at Montreal this weekend.... Cine_...
|
|
|
Post by Henrik on Aug 21, 2002 1:11:24 GMT -5
Hey Cine,
I have been considering digitizing and editing video on my PC, but am a bit lost with the capture cards and software available.
Could you give some pointers as to what would be a good solution. I'm not looking for some professional solution mind you.
Thanks!
|
|
|
Post by Cine_Man on Aug 21, 2002 20:34:12 GMT -5
It depends a bit on what your aim is, as to what is appropriate. You should read some articles in, say a DV magazine, like "Videomaker". Your approach in digitizing will be a bit different, depending on whether you will be outputing your finished projects back to tape, burning DVD's or VCD's, or streaming/posting material on the 'net. If your origination video is digital (DV), then a "Firewire" capture card is the only way to go. Quite a few manufacturers are getting involved in this, although I simply have a garden-variety IEEE1394 Texas Instruments card. Firewire, or "I-Link", as Sony refers to it, allows full control of your camcorder, and digitizes ALL the data-stream... that is audio, video, and the ancillary code like date, time, and time code on one cable. I started out using Media100's freeware "IntroDV" as a capture/edit package, but while it imports external files well, it doesn't have all the editing features that other apps, such as FinalCutPro, Premiere, and Pinnacle Studio do. I'm just in the midst of converting to Pinnacle Studio7... much better audio-editing features (at least on paper -- I haven't tried anything complicated yet! ) A pretty fast processor is required... but a 1.6 Gig P4 is probably a little bit of overkill. 512M Ram probably isn't a bad thing, you'll get faster renders of effects. Get a second, big, fast hard drive, in the neighborhood of 7200 RPM, and 60 to 80 GBytes... and definitely ATA100 UltraDMA capable. Most users recommend that your video be on a different drive than your app... usually a "D:" designation. Keep this in mind: a minute of "finished" video, (edited with music and effects) usually occupies just under a gigabyte, and you have to be able to shuffle that kind of data around your machine internally. Captured video is lightly compressed, and I've got about 7 hours sitting on my D: drive right now occupying about 48 GBytes! Also consider that it is your hard-earned, cherished family history.... and it makes it very hard to "toast" that material off the disk... so forget the idea that you will find it easy to delete video to make room for a new project. (Actually this is the same problem in the profession... as soon as you delete something, the client phones you up right away to make changes in that project... doh! ) Maybe a big monitor is an advantage, because a LOT of information is presented in a "production suite", and the video thumbnails start getting small. I've been at this desktop stuff for a little more than a year now, and even though it seems a bit of a busman's holiday... its still fun. Lets keep in touch... I intend to edit a small tour of our summer holiday in Jasper, Alberta to post on one of the "share" sites that the desktop world supports... I'll inform my fellow Croakers when that happens! Maybe someday there will be internet coverage of the next ShamuCroaks Karting Challenge! Cine_...
|
|
|
Post by Henrik on Aug 22, 2002 1:54:37 GMT -5
Hey Cine!
Thanks for the info! Okay, my camcorder is a recent Sony DV, and so yes I-Link is the way to go. Now I had been looking at a product by Pinnacle (I forget the name, and have all that info at home, not here in the office!). What I didn't realize is the hard drive requirement! That's a great tip, especially since hard drives are actually really cheap, so no use trying to save on that!
My processor should still be okay, PentiumIII and I think 1gig. Ram is set at 256, so maybe a boost would be in order there too...I'll have to think about this a bit. It might be worth waiting just a bit more, and consider a complete PC change. I suppose Christmas isn't that far off!!
Thanks again,
Henrik
|
|
|
Post by Cine_Man on Aug 22, 2002 11:34:23 GMT -5
On board RAM is a good thing to have plenty of, even if its just Windows XP or other. I was doing some work last night, and the other tip o' the day is to shut down all other applications... just the same way you would for an "install"... nothing else except "Explorer" and "Systray"... Editing video, and having it play smoothly is something that DEMANDS the undivided attention of the whole system. Something that took me quite a while to realize was that the PCI bus on my system was playing "Fast and Loose" (Arthur Anderson Accounting practice) with IRQ steering, and my network card was interfering with the FireWire card, so I had to sort out which card was arguing with which other card, uninstall that one, and physically move it to another slot! A lot of motherboard manufacturers advertise 6 PCI slots... but although there may be 6 physically, there are only 4 IRQ's assigned to the PCI buss -- so 4 of them are being "shared" -- needless to say, the FireWire card needs to be all by itself, with no interruptions. You need to look into the hardware configuration to see which slots are being shared... the first 2 are usually individuals, and the last 4 are usually "paired". There are some "upstream" memory sharing concerns that can have an effect... silly stuff like: NetMeeting, if its installed (even if it isn't running), reserves a portion of RAM just in case you might feel like having a multipoint teleconference. Aren't those guys helpful? And I have the impression that if you have a CREATIVE SoundBlaster-type card (Live!), that, in order to provide a work-around for some difficulties they had in providing back-compatibility, there is an app called SB16 that gets inserted into your autoexec.bat file (remember that?) that plugs a hidden TSR into memory to provide support for DOS-based games, in case you have a need for that -- but you get it whether you want it or not. I opted for an on-board sound resource provided by C-Media for the ASUS P4B-266 motherboard, anyway... and it saved me the PCI-bus squabble up-front. You have a point... in order to make this all work from the get-go, I probably should have abandoned my old Celeron right away... because, with the experience I had, my new machine worked correctly the first time. As a sidebar, my older motherboard wouldn't allow the ATA Ultra-DMA to be enabled to enjoy the high-speed D: drive that was paramount to the system being functional. So, like an idiot, I of course threw MORE money at it, and installed a "Promise" PCI E-IDE bridge card... and THAT is when the fecal particles really hit the fan with my IRQ- steering dificulties! Of course, I didn't realize that was what the problem was, because there were other issues, in that there are those among us who are convinced that the Promise card is fundamentally flawed in some way (possible on-board clocking incompatibility). First, the whole system would freeze on boot-up, yielding one of the famous BSOD's of DOS -- (Blue Screen of Death) -- which was solved by deleting STIMON from Windows... (Still Monitor) and no one knows why this was a cure, but it was. My particular system, after succesful booting, would labour away for hours, until... oops, if one of the hard drives went into hibernation... it could not be roused, and the system froze --- forcing a re-boot. So now you know why that head-pounding icon resonates for me... I'm hopeful that Pinnacle Studio7 is going to be right for me... we use quite a few of their high-end products in our digital post suite at work -- and for a PC-based solution, actually offered more, in a more convenient way than some of the turn-key dedicated manufacturers could, including providers like "Grass Valley", long considered the "Ferrari" of video equipment. Right now, I'm working on curing a glitch in a playback -- one frame "collapses" in a scene (looks letterboxed), so I'm thinking it was a digitization problem -- this is the way it is -- the better your final product becomes... the more glaring minor imperfections become. BTW, if you're at all interested, this is what I do for a living: studiopost.com, You'll find me under "Talent: Telecine: Senior Colourist" Cine_Man
|
|
|
Post by PK on Sept 17, 2002 9:19:40 GMT -5
i'm loving this new background - niiiiiiice work JWK!!!
but would it be possible to change the font colour of the links back to the previous sections once you go into a thread - the navy blue doesn't stand out well enough against Shamu - maybe i'm being painful and fickle but anyway lol
|
|
|
Post by PK on Sept 17, 2002 9:28:18 GMT -5
'Ask and ye shall receive'
LMAO - holy shit Wycco - thats fast work - THANKS!!!
|
|
|
Post by Wycco on Sept 17, 2002 9:29:29 GMT -5
Seeing what I can do- I may need to ask JWK to fade the background- it will take some playing around to get something that won't make the links look gaudy on the main page.
|
|
|
Post by PK on Sept 17, 2002 9:31:49 GMT -5
well thanks anyway Wycco - lol i was thinking maybe sometime eventually.... lol - thanks for looking into it ;D
|
|