Ross Scott

Yes it is, they're all set to default settings. I recommend re-reading my post to better understand what's happening.

I did do the "clean install" check when I installed it, but I haven't tried the beta drivers, though I'm skeptical that fixes the problem, maybe I'll try it later. This doesn't seem to be the same issue since 1: I didn't use Windows update, I updated manually from SP1 with the Windows update service turned off via the services tab, THEN installed the Nvidia drivers and 2: the problem has existed before and after the Nvidia update. I may try it later, but rolling back the driver doesn't make much sense it if it's been giving me trouble the entire time. Well unfortunately "should" doesn't seem to make it happen. My next step (short of installing a virtual machine, I hadn't planned on doing that so soon), is to see if there's a way to strongarm custom codecs directly into Premiere since it seems to be ignoring the 64 bit huffyuv install.

I replied to another thread specifically asking about that, you can check it out here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1833

I've been at it for days, though I'm still trying to work a lot of stuff out. Finding software replacements for all the functions I was using under Litestep has been a real pain in the ass and still is incomplete. While I could try using Litestep as a shell replacement again, it seems kind of dated compared to some of the GUI improvements Windows has made since then. This in itself isn't bringing anything to a stop, but not having all these shortcuts and configurations I was using is slowing things down a ton. A lot of the slowdown is simply installing (or finding software replacements for) all the programs I was using. I use my computer for a lot of things. Video editing, encoding, audio editing, encoding, legacy gaming, GUI customization, office applications, internet communication, etc. The number of programs I use regularly (not counting games, which I haven't done much of lately) is probably close to around 50, with a larger number for those used less frequently in specific situations. Starting from scratch on all this stuff is an involved process. The biggest problem I'm facing at the moment is trying to get the HuffyUV codec to behave properly under the 64 bit version of windows 7. While I plan on moving to Lagarith for lossless encoding and editing since it seems to behave better under a 64 bit OS and offers better compression, I have a lot of older material still tied up in HuffyUV that I need to access. For the life of me, I can't get the HuffyUV codec to open up in the 64 bit version of Adobe Premiere, nor is it an encoding option in the 64 bit version of Virtualdub. While I initially tried just installing the 32 bit version of the HuffyUV codec (which is a somewhat involved process on Windows 7 64 bit), I do that only to find out that for the LIFE of me, I cannot get the 32 bit version of Avisynth working under Windows 7 64 bit. So I've been kind of screwed either way on this. I think what will have to happen is since I can read HuffyUV footage in the 64 bit virtualdub, I'll have to convert all my HuffyUV footage that I need to access over to Lagarith. However this is kind of a big deal because that's going to take up a substantial portion of space that I don't have at the moment because I'm still organizing my old files, which adds to the time there. It would be a lot easier if I could just leave the old HuffyUV footage alone and simply open it in Premiere. Installing the 64 bit version of HuffyUV is a snap, it just simply isn't recognized under several applications in Windows 7. While I think things will get easier in the long run, the transition process is still hell for me. For example, I recently did some tests to confirm that the colorspace wasn't getting distorted in the Lagarith codec and the new version of premiere (and I'm glad I did, because it WAS). Well on the old 32-bit version of Virtualdubmod, I could simply find a frame I wanted, and output the frame directly to PNG or TGA, allowing me to make good screenshot comparisons in a variety of situations to do an eye-check in addition to making sure the colorspace is being converted properly. Well lo and behold, Virtualdubmod doesn't even open some of the Lagarith clips, depending on how they're encoded, I can only use the updated version of simply Virtualdub for that. It's missing some conveniences like that where I can only copy the frame to the clipboard, so now I need to open up MSpaint, paste it there, then save it to another folder. This isn't a big deal, but I was taking dozens of screeenshots to do a comparison, so the time invested starts adding up for inefficiencies like this. Almost EVERYTHING on Windows 7 has been like this and probably will be until I get more familiar with new software and workarounds. If you want an easier problem to tackle, I have a couple other annoyances I wouldn't mind some help with: 1. Windows 7 is too bright for me for some reason. My videocard is a Geforce 9800 GTX. Nvidia has great color control options, so I opened up the Nvidia control panel and changed them. As soon as I even moved the slider, the brightness was IMMEDIATELY fixed, like this whole time it had been stuck on some incorrect value. However once I rebooted, it's back to the too-bright mode again. I looked up this problem online and only found people where their color settings in the Nvidia panel were getting reset. This isn't my case. If I set the brightness to 47% (the default is 50) and reboot, it still SAYS 47%, but it's still too bright again. I have to manually go and move the slider just a notch and suddenly everything is fixed again. Is there a way to fix this? Or if not, is there a way to run some sort of script to "wake up" the color controls every time I boot up? Also before people say "update the drivers", this is on a formatted drive with a fresh install of Windows 7 with drivers from Nvidia's site from about a week ago. 2a. The latest version of Adobe Audition has some nice improvements and a VERY big annoyance for me. When I seek and play through an an audio clip, I'm finding some problems. If I make a selection, then play it once, it works fine. If I press play again, it continues playing AFTER that. If I press play AGAIN, it plays from the beginning of the clip and completely ignores my selection afterwards. I want it so if I have part of the clip selected, IT ONLY PLAYS WHAT IS SELECTED. EVERY TIME. 2b. If I move the (scrubber?) time indicator to a specific point in the clip, then press play, it plays from that point. After it's done playing, it moves the scrubber to the end, completely resetting where I just had the scrubber. I want it so that if all I'm doing is playing a clip from a specific point, it keeps the time indicator where I left it. I'm hoping like hell these are just default options that can be changed somewhere, but I haven't had time to research if they exist or not. 3. Objectdock (a taskbar / systray / folder group replacement) has a bug where it sporadically ignores commands to bring some windows up to the front. Best I can tell there's no update for this, limitng its use as a replacement for how I was using Litestep. It also has a bug where it ignores icon changes for some programs, though I found a workaround fix for that, even if it's annoying. 4. Nexus dock (another taskbar / systray / folder group replacement) has a bug where trying to access menus from programs running in the system tray will cause it to IMMEDIATELY lose focus, limiting its use as a replacement for how I was using Litestep. This might be solvable, but I need to research it more. 5. Exporting uncompressed audio in the same format as the original project is WAY slower in the newest version of Premiere than before. This might be related to me using Lagarith encoded clips instead of HuffyUV though, since they require more processing and maybe the muxing process is different. I'm not sure and I can't test this until I can fix the HuffyUV problem. EDIT: I've now fixed part 2a and 2b, thankfully there was an option to disable the default control seeings

danielsangeo: I think it will be raised, but it's kind of scary we're getting to this point. Also I think whatever last minute solution will be made will just stall the problem rather than address it. The US government almost shut down in April until a compromise was reached with the budget at the 11th hour, but as I understand it, that whole scenario is due to repeat again in October unless we manage to fix things before then.

Well it's possible I may be wrong about an impending oil crisis with how our economy is being run. If America defaults on its debt, we could have a major economic crisis in just a few weeks, not years! Summary: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/25/us-investment-default-idUSTRE76O22I20110725 Summary by The Onion (seriously, it's not even a spoof, this is 100% true, except for the direct quotes of course): http://www.theonion.com/articles/congress-continues-debate-over-whether-or-not-nati,20977/ This is kind of insane and it's going to be an ongoing topic since something similar was happening months ago. It's essentially a game of chicken between the Republicans and the Democrats, with the consequences being an all-out economic disaster if no agreement is reached. I think in actuality there will be some sort of agreement because no president wants his name tied to what would be the biggest economic disaster in American history, even larger than the great depression. Anyway, I'm not exactly sure how to prepare in the event that the US DOES default (either in a week or else later), but I thought this was worth mentioning here. This is absolutely an issue with the ability to change our entire society for a long time. EDIT: Here's a good visualization of the kind of money we're talking about: http://www.wtfnoway.com/

I don't need much help finding games, I (try) to play a lot of abandonware games and since there are so many it can be tricky deciding if a game is worth playing. Some games simply require more time to get into or get better, but usually I get a good impression of them right away when that happens. I'm trying to see if there's any exceptions I haven't heard of. It obviously varies for everyone, but I'm trying to determine how much time is the right amount to invest in a game before you can write it off as not being very enjoyable (assuming it's not utter crap from the start). There are so many good cheap or free games out there now I'd rather just keep moving to another one if I feel like one is going to plateau and I'm not very drawn in by it. Every game I can think of has fallen into one of these categories: 1. I get a good impression of it initially and it stays as good or gets better 2. (somewhat rare) I get a good impression of it initially, but then it gets worse. 3. I think it's somewhat mediocre initially, and it stays that way the entire game. 4. (also rare) Everything about the game is garbage. I've never played one where it starts off mediocre for me, THEN really draws me in. In short, I'm trying to figure out what the best cutoff point is for declaring a game in category #3.

I've REALLY been wanting something like this, though it looks like it's currently only available to developers: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/07/18/nvidias_new_fxaa_antialiasing_technology There were some comments on hardocp that people have been able to get this to work on the driver level, but only in OpenGL games. I'm really hoping it becomes possible at the driver level for Direct3D ones. AA effectiveness has gotten quite spotty over the past decade with some shaders + deferred rendering, depending on the game, especially ones based on the Unreal 3 engine.

I think most people just have anecdotal evidence, but I've switched cards before and I've had plenty of driver issues on both sides. Before I upgraded to 7 I was having plenty of blue screens related to nv4_disp.dll and one game (Hinterland) absolutely refusing to run without blue screening in full screen mode on my 9800 GTX. I do find they have better options overall than AMD however, but really I don't see as one having better drivers than the other, I've seen too many problems on both sides. My experience has been ATI is more likely to have graphical glitches, Nvidia is more likely to blue screen. As for power consumption, for a while AMD was the clear winner, but with the 500 series it's a more level playing field. There's not really a general rule now, just look at the price range for the cards you're interested in and compare yourself: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/3D-Power-Draw,2678.html

Source engine games don't use PhysX for physics, it uses the Havok engine. Having an SLI setup will give you more speed period in games that support it, but only a minority of games will specifically offload physics work to the GPU like that, PhysX never really took off to the extent Nvidia was hoping. I believe most modern games try and use additional cores for physics now since most gaming machines are multi-core nowadays.

People can keep discussing the topic here, just don't resort to personal insults. If someone's wrong, you can explain why. Video formats are apparently a controversial topic, I'm trying to make sense of what's best myself. Regarding my opinion on VLC player: -Maybe 2-3 years ago I was using it and was obviously able to see some minor framerate drop on it when using MKV or MP4, I don't remember which format I was looking at. I remember the framerate drop being consistent and not only happening in certain situations. I didn't conduct any special tests on it to measure how much, I could just SEE it. I looked up the problem and tried every tweak available (determining GPU acceleration was on, making sure it wasn't hitting 100% cpu usage, etc.), nothing seemed to help. I ended up switching to MPC-HC with the right codecs installed and it fixed up the problem. -When I was doing subtitle tests a couple years ago, VLC player gave very poor results regarding subtitles where more than one would appear during the same time chunk, it simply handled them incorrectly. -I've recently upgraded to Windows 7 and now have a new copy of VLC player. It appears to be functioning better now. When I was on XP, it would lose audio sync after seeking in MOV versions of Freeman's Mind sent to Machinima. I don't remember which version of VLC player I was running at the time. So now that I've updated VLC player seems to be behaving more and may not cause the huge problems it once did. I still need to do more testing with the formats.

I was wondering if anyone has played games they were initially ready to give up on, that got MUCH better after sticking with it. And by "initially" I don't mean after 5 minutes, I mean after an hour or three of giving the game a real chance. I'm not sure I can think of any I've played that I was ready to bail on that ended up redeeming themselves later.

Even though the landscape is shifting, I generally don't care about mobile devices and am just interested in the desktop, where this makes the most difference. I don't think ARM processors are moving into desktop turf anytime soon.

Kain Has better dialogue than maybe 95% of the games I've played, very motivated, has a real can-do attitude, one of the few characters I've seen to have an existential crisis, kills multiple gods, takes over the world and rules it for thousands of years. Curtis Craig Lives a surprisingly interesting life for working as a technical writer, struggles with possible schizophrenia and psychosis, love triangles, homicide, alternate dimensions, paperwork.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+G850+%40+2.90GHz Beats an Athlon II X4 610e. $40 less. I usually ignore simulation benchmarks and just go for gaming ones, I think this is a fairer examination: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_4.html It looks like it's neck and neck (they exchange places in different benchmarks) with the X3 455, which is about $15 cheaper than the G850. For the G850's price range, the AMD equivalent would be either the Phenom II X2 560 or the Athlon II X3 460. Also the Athlon II X4 610e is a 2.4ghz processor, for gaming, I don't see how that's an equivalent option since even within AMD you can get faster CPUs for less money. I am surprised, since I think in maybe the past 10 years Intel has never had an equivalent or better performer as AMD for the same price range at the lower end until now. That's bad news for everyone if AMD can't compete in the CPU market, then Intel will turn back into a de facto monopoly.

This looks pretty cool, I like vertical shooters, plus the art style reminds me of Halloween Harry / Alien Carnage. Thanks for the post, stuff like this is why I made this section.

It really depends on the program you're using. I remember Cakewalk Studio (5, I think) tended to re-encode everything every time you exported something containing one or more original tracks that were already encoded, resulting in minor quality loss every time you saved the entire project into a single file. But it wasn't much of an issue for me, since I only had to deal with 10-12 tracks of raw wav and professional midi output. Only used it for video a couple of times, wedding footage and such. It wasn't a problem. The right answer is probably 'no preference', but if you aren't sure about your software I'd go for a raw, unencoded format. Processing speed or file volume aren't really an issue anymore in this day and age anyhow. No quality loss, that's what you'll want. You can always encode properly afterward. Well the advantage of compressed is a massive space savings. The video quality doesn't really matter provided you can see what's going on. When I set up the contest, I'll only want audio files back anyway, the video preview is for the editor's benefit to coordinate what's happening with the audio. The audio itself will be uncompressed .WAV files. Here's the story behind that: 1. The SEO guy for the person hosting the site wanted a small text ad placed on the site. While I was happy to have a (site hosted by... [link]) he wanted something more blatantly like an ad. 2. Around that same time Zach enabled Google Ads by accident. 3. I decided since I wanted to appease the host with his small text ad anyway, I may as well just leave the Google ads and maybe use the money for the videos or to give some kickbacks to people working on the site, I'll see. Regardless, this is as far as it goes. I want text-only ads in the bottom of the screen where they're not that noticeable. There will NOT be flash ads on the site, that's the last thing I want.

Well you're right in that I forgot about the heatsink and thermal grease, that skipped my mind. And dude, surely you realize the irony talking about future-proofing with an Intel chipset. Intel has changed its sockets god knows how many times now, whereas some AM2 motherboards from 2006 could run a modern AM3 processor today with a BIOS upgrade. Still, you make a point in that he may want to pay more for a motherboard that will support AM3+ as well as AM3. I'm willing to bet money AMD will still be making processors that work in present-day AM3+ motherboards longer than anything Intel will put out for LGA 1155. Aren't they already planning to move to LGA 2011 in a few months? Anyway, with this amount of cash, you can get the system running just about any game on HIGH settings, not medium. The point here is that with present day processors, for gaming, you're going to see MUCH more performance getting a mid to high-end videocard paired with a medium to lower-end CPU than vice-versa.

Windows XP mode is intended for business applications and doesn't support things like direct3D as I understand it. I'll be using an all-out virtual machine for some of the stuff I need. Also for those interested in sound editing, what format is good for you for matching sound to video previews? If there's no preference, Xvid AVI is easiest for me.

These parts will still give you pretty good performance in most games: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103652&Tpk=phenom%20ii%20720 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186188&cm_re=am3_motherboard-_-13-186-188-_-Product Despite being a slightly older processor, I've found it's almost exactly on par in performance with AMD's latest offering around the $120 mark (for gaming). So that's about $150 you could save with a relatively minor speed hit. If you take some of that money and get a faster GPU, I guarantee you'll have faster gaming than BTGbullseye's build.

If you want to a go with a midrange AMD processor and motherboard, you can shave about $100 off the price with maybe a 1-10% speed drop in most games.

This is true, though part of the reason I don't like Intel is because back when AMD was pummelling them with the first Athlon, they had faster CPUs for less money, but were gaining NO marketshare. Intel ended up engaging in a series of illegal business activites (like paying major vendors like Dell, HP, etc not to buy AMD processors, offering discounts below costs of manufacturing). This lasted for years and it's only just recently having some resolution (The European Union fined Intel 1 billion Euros, though it's kind of a slap on the wrist considering the damage). If Intel had actually obeyed the law over the past decade, the playing field could be much more even now with AMD perhaps having much better processors and both sides having more competitive pricing. That's not even true now, they've been leapfrogging ever since 2002. Case 1: In 2002, the Radeon 9700 blew away anything Nvidia had in every way imagineable, their Geforce 5 series was kind of a wash, and they didn't really come back until 2004 with the Geforce 6 series. Case 2: In 2009, the Radeon 5870 once again, blew away anything Nvidia had and it remained this way for a year and a half until Nvidia got the Geforce 400 series out the door. Case 3: RIGHT NOW, there's debate as to whether the Geforce 590 or the Radeon 6990 is the fastest card, so much so that AMD actually challenged Nvidia to a benchmarking throwdown between the two. The bottom line for these cards is it depends on the game, but the 6990 on average wins more game benchmarks than the 590 (though I believe the 590 gives better SLI results). Don't get me wrong, I prefer Nvidia hardware at the moment (I've gone back and forth on both sides), but to say they're simply faster at the top end just isn't true these days and hasn't been for a while.

This is pretty damn cool, I'm really curious how this will change things: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/intel%E2%80%99s_3d_transistor_faster_cooler_smaller Normal processors already are multi-layered, but only a few levels deep without as many interconnects as what this is. The difference here could be between a stack of pancakes on top of each other v. a Borg cube.

I think it depends on your price range. Show me an Intel CPU that outperforms a comparable AMD one in the $80 - 120 range. While everyone's needs are different, most games are less CPU-dependent than GPU nowadays. While Intel rules the top end (and with Sandy Bridge, now the midrange), it's difficult for me to justify higher costs on a component that depreciates so rapidly anyway. I'd argue unless the company has paid off a developer for special enhancements, ATI and Nvidia have equal video quality IF you don't enable antialiasing. With AA enabled, it's kind of give and take, though I think with Nvidia Inspector and some tweaking, Nvidia hands down beats ATI for AA options. ATI's MLAA mode is a good stopgap however, Nvidia needs a similar shader-based post processing AA method for games that just resist everything else. Really if you want the most performance for your money, I'd recommend ATI, but Nvidia has some goodies I prefer.

Hey everyone, I've received a couple emails asking about what I'm working on right now and I thought this would be a good news update in case people think I'm just twiddling my thumbs. If you don't want to read this, I've made an ADHD version at the bottom. Here's a breakdown of most things: * * * THE WEBSITE - While most of the actual work is being done by Zachary Reidell and Jexius, I'm trying to manage some changes to the website I hope to get implemented. In short, I want it easier to create new episode pages and have more information added to each of the episode pages as well, including some notes I have for some of the episodes. I also plan on updating the FAQ and make it easier to navigate. UPGRADING TO WINDOWS 7 - While this might be a simple procedure for some, I've been using Windows XP for a long time and I have a cornucopia of specialized software that I use, some of which is not compatible with 7 or at least the 64 bit version. I plan on setting up a virtual machine for the most incompatible stuff, but I'm trying to clean up all my files and determine everything I'll need to reconfigure or reinstall. I also already use a custom GUI I made via Litestep, so adapting to a new OS can be an involved process for me. VIDEO ENCODING TESTS - Since opinions are so divided on what format people want to download the videos in, I want to do some encoding tests on MKV and MP4 and see how they hold up, even when using VLC player. CIVIL PROTECTION - There are some important bugs to isolate with the engine that I encountered when making The Tunnel. Once I can have the reproduced reliably, I'll be looking for coding help to try and fix them, or else revert back to an earlier version of the source engine. FREEMAN'S MIND - I want to stay true to my intention of being more regular with releases. While I haven't decided on a new microphone to get yet, the next episode shouldn't have too much shouting, so I plan on starting on that in the next day or two. MOTION CAPTURE - I'm very interested in getting this up and running to see how much I can implement it into Civil Protection. I have the hardware I need, I just need more time to put into it. SUBTITLES - With the help of some volunteers, I'm reviewing some of the submitted subtitles for the different episodes and hope to get more up soon. SOUND EDITING MINI-CONTEST - I could use a backup sound editing person for future jobs that need extra help in the sound editing department. I plan to make an announcement on this later, but I have the perfect test in mind if people want to audition for this part. I don't have the files ready yet, but I plan to get them done soon. All I can say is if you enjoy sound editing, you should enjoy this test. If you're a sound editor and want to help out, let me know what video format for previews is most useful for you to work with when editing. COMPOSER SHOWCASES - I still plan on having some posts dedicated to different composers who contributed towards "The Tunnel," even if their music didn't make it into the episode. MICROPHONE RESEARCH - I've received lots of feedback on what microphones I should look into, which I need to sort through. I've also had at least one person claim that my problem lies with a lack of a compressor moreso than the mic, so I'm looking into that too. ENGINE RESEARCH - While I really have my hands full with Civil Protection and Freeman's Mind, I have tons of ideas for videos I want to work on, and one of which will be a very different format than anything I've done before (many different characters, continous storyline, longer content, etc.). It will still be comedy, but set in a medieval fantasy environment. Based on my research, I think the Dragon Age engine (Eclipse engine) will be the best choice for attempting this, even though the storyline won't be based on anything from the game itself. This means I'll have a new game engine to learn, which is likely to take a while. T-SHIRTS - This is a low priority for me, but I eventually hope to get some t-shirts made due to viewer request with the show logos and/or some quotes with Freeman's Mind along with accompanying artwork. EMAILS - While I've caught up on a bunch of them, I still have many to reply to. I should reiterate that if your email is asking questions that are in the FAQ, you may not get a reply. Also type "cl_drawhud 0" in the game console to get rid of the HUD in Source-based games, since about 5-10% of my emails seem to be about that question alone. GAMES - While this isn't consuming a large portion of my time, I am YEARS behind on games I've been interested in playing. I actually haven't had much downtime at all over the past several months. I went straight from finishing The Tunnel, to moving, to doing a series of Freeman's Mind videos. In addition to catching up on everything else, I'm trying to at least have some more fun in between. * * * ADHD version: Ross is working on lots of different things. He will start a new Freeman's Mind soon.