I’ll admit, I haven’t really been into the whole smart vehicle buzz that people have been interested in, but I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t want my own pet motorcycle. 😛
Technology
Microsoft is now a platinum member of the Linux Foundation
I’m starting to feel like I woke up in an alternate universe, especially after reading this.
SAN FRANCISCO – November 16, 2016 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, today announced that Microsoft has joined the organization at a Platinum member during Microsoft’s Connect(); developer event in New York.
Like most of Microsoft’s involvement in other projects I wonder how long till take for them to destroy Linux? 😛
The best way to carve a pumpkin
I want one of these. Think of what I could do with watermelons. O_o
Open Thread
I spent most of today working on a co-workers laptop. I forgot how much I hated Toshibas… This rectangular frisbee has only 2GB of RAM and a 2.16 Celeron, and yet it came with a 64bit version of Win 8.1. It left the poor thing running at 53% RAM usage at an idle…
Their website isn’t that much better, locating drivers is completely useless. I ended up having to look for the PCI/VEN codes to determine what I needed to download, got most of it hammered down too! However there are a couple of devices that I haven’t had much luck with. There are a couple more tricks that I can try, but if I fail it’s an upgrade to Win 64…
I also played around with a program called VSee, a HIPAA compliant webcam chat. It worked quite nicely! It was like using mumble, but people saw my face O_o and I saw theirs. It was a fun and awkward adventure.
OBS-Studio is becoming more and more awesome the more I play with it.
Played around more with OBS-Studio today. I’m getting myself familiar with scenes and playing with the new source types I never saw in classic. That way when I stream to Twitch or YouTube I can be fabulous. Now all I need to focus on is balancing audio which I’ll have to play by ear (no pun intended). I figure I might as well get a polish on things so that when I finally do have time to do a livestream I’ll be somewhat ready.
As far as Streaming goes I’ll probably be mainly streaming to YouTube until Twitch gets their shite together. Since my friends are giving up on Adobe Flash it would make sense to use a streaming service that accommodates those who want to give up that nasty trash.
Of course now I’ll have to ponder what my first public live stream should be.
What I’ve learned about the Elgato HD60 Pro
The Elgato HD60 Pro has been a bit of a learning curve. One of the reasons I haven’t been posting lately is due to my desire to get the best stream/recording combo up and running, and believe me when I say there have been some bugs that needed a good thwarting.
One issue I ran into prevented me from recording if I had flashback mode disabled. At first I thought it had to do with how I had the Elgato plugged into my GPU, when the entire time it was actually my audio.
I have a Creative XFi sound card with a ton of plugin options, and I noticed the software seemed a bit confused when it came to establishing which port was ok and what wasn’t. So I disabled everything but what I intended to use and all of a sudden the program started to let me record.
However my worries weren’t laid to rest as I encountered yet another bug was discovered while recording. The audio would have frequent skips throughout the final mp4 as though there was a buffering problem. After more intense experimentation I found a solution, record the game audio separately from the video. This gives me three different files:
- The Mp4 file
- Commentary Audio (if needed)
- Game Audio
For some reason recording separately vs mixed streams outputs a better quality result. Which I’m ok with since I can just compile the footage in premiere anyway as well as tweak each audio file to my liking if needed.
However…
After about 18 to 20 minutes in the video will suddenly have video/audio latency issues that cannot be fixed. So what I have to do is record in increments of about 15 minutes to play it safe, which honestly isn’t that big of a deal to me. In FRAPS and even in OBS I’ve always stopped and started to make shorter files as an old habit. If I have to continue this practice I don’t see a reason to rage.
Now onto streaming. Twitch has been rather fickle, but that’s before I even bought the card. YouTube on the other hand has been really seamless, whatever I throw at it will stick. I streamed Dead Island while recording a local copy with zero framerate loss. The only problem I had was when I went to stop and start recording the game capture HD program didn’t want to behave, but that seemed to be related to Dead Island from what I can tell, as I tried to interact with other applications on my 2nd monitor and it outright refused until I brought up my task manager (revealing an adorable Stewie Kitten on live stream to my audience of 1).
I think I finally have it figured out enough to get started on proper recording again. If things continue to go smoothly I’ll do a YouTube video review of the hardware and address on the issues I’ve had to lick, on the chance that someone might be in a similar position with audio issues.
The Elgato has arrived!
I’ve been playing with my new capture card since yesterday, it came a few days early! I finally have it all dialed in.
The software isn’t that difficult to use, if you’re familiar to OBS there will be some similarities. I think the bigger problem I had was figuring out what inputs to use since I have multiple options, mainly trying to get mumble chat into the recordings. I finally perfected it tonight. Now I can simultaneously stream and record footage at the same time. Works perfectly for what I want. I’ve been testing it with all kinds of games. From Skyrim to TF2 to Hard Reset Redux to Solus Project, it handles it all without stealing any of my framerate so I can record/broadcast and enjoy my game at the same time. It was never really bad with Skyrim, but sometimes with the other games OBS was a little more demanding. That and I always had to choose between streaming and recording. While I could do both it would make me lag considerably even on good hardware.
It was nice running a UE4 game and doing a capture without worrying about a performance decrease. I think when Obduction comes out I’ll be able to capture my finest moments of stupidity in glorious 1080p 60FPS for all to cry at. 😀
In pursuit of a streaming device
I’ve been getting more interested in streaming lately. My main problem though is that I want to Stream at one setup while recording a master copy at the same time in a higher framerate, and I don’t want to have two instances of OBS running, especially if the game is really GPU intensive. So I’ve been entertaining the idea of getting some external device so that I can record/stream at the same time while throwing all of my CPU/GPU power towards gaming… Hooray!
So I’ve been looking at a bunch of devices from companies like Elgato, Hauupauge, Pyle, Matrox, etc. The Matrox Monarch HD looked pretty nice, but with that I could only stream one source at a time. So far the Elgato HD60 pro looks to be up my alley, and the reviews I’ve been reading about them seem quite promising. I’m thinking after I do some more research I may purchase one. Then people can see how horrible I am at all kinds of games, at 1080p 60FPS!
XBox Fitness goes the way of the Zune dodo
It seems like the only real consistent thing about Microsoft is their ability to shut down games and programs that people use. This time XBox Fitness is the next target.
“Given the service relies on providing you with new and exciting content regularly, Microsoft has given much consideration to the reality of updating the service regularly in order to sustain it,” Microsoft’s Erica Bell wrote in the announcement. “Therefore, the decision has been made to scale back our support for Xbox Fitness over the next year… While our team is saddened by this news, we couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past two and a half years.”
I don’t know why people continue to support a company that has this sort of a track record, other than blind fanboyism and people who don’t know shit from shinola about Microsoft’s history. But as long as they continue to support such a flake of a company it’ll keep happening and happening.
Windows 10 upgrade prevents guy from checking out of hotel
I don’t know what’s more stupid, the IT’s at the hotel disabling Windows Update so this doesn’t happen, or Microsoft for not thinking of all the doom and gloom people have to put up with when having to deal with their pushy OS.
“My hotel can’t check me out because their computer decided to just go for it & is currently in the middle of updating itself to Windows 10,” he said.
It’s pretty bad when Hotel California has fewer restrictions. I mean you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Maybe Microsoft got the idea from The Eagles, but like every other idea they’ve stolen they got it bassackwards.