2.25.2003
RENDERING
I've had the pleasure of working with video again, taking me back to my undergrad roots - only now it's all digital. The project specifically is a 3 hour video put together some time ago by high school students from the Zuni Publo, about 30 miles south of Gallup. The real pain was getting in all the video from VHS into my PC. Much trial and error was had, but I finally completed that task, made the required edits, and set it to render. This is the funny part. 3 hours of video, at 30frames per second (the standard for broadcast TV), at a resolution of 320x240 (less than broadcast quality) with CD quality sound - will take about 2 days. That's right 48 hours or so of the computer doing nothing else, save building a completed digital AVI file. so much for the power of the Pentium4 2.0 Ghz. I've been checking on it off and on, since as it is a Windows machine, I half expect it to crash before the task is complete. So far so good though, and the progress bar tells me I have only about 18 hours of waiting left. Let's hope that I don't have to make any major changes. It's kind of amusing, because for all of the power of these machines, it's rare that any of us ever gives it a task so intensive that it ties the thing up for such an extended period of time.
My other technical endeavour of the week has involved reprogramming a Cisco DSL router for use with my DSL connection at home. See, the fine folks at MSN supply you with a crappy DSL router that among other things, makes it a nightmare to run multiple machines on it (to share the connection), and also has a built in Firewall so evil, that even many MS products will not work correctly with it (including MS games, MS netmeeting, and other network based appplications). MSN has been promising an updated firmware release to adress the issue for months now, but the supposed release dates come and go, and the tech support staff are oblivious to when (if) it will ever be released to the hordes of grouchy yMSN users. SO taking the proverbial bull by the horns, I bought a used Cisco ROuter from a co-worker. and set upon the task of re-flashing it's firmwar so that it was compatible with the type of DSL line running into my home (DMT vs. CAP) and then, using a standard modem, I had to dial into MSN with PPP loging turned on so that I could recover my login Keycodes to program into the Cisco (depending on how patient you are, I understand that you can actually get a tech support person to give them to you over the phone, but I tried and failed, so this method seemed more promising. After getting all the required info from several non-MSN websites, I set upon reprogramming the modem, using *gasp* HYPERTERMINAL - a program that I have not used since I was running Win 3.1 it was a strange but liberating experience, kind of one of those "I'm smarter than you" moments, and it's working wonderfully. My pings still suck when playing Unreal Tournament though, but that has more to do with my physical location (Middle Nowhere), than with the quality of MSN's service
go and tell me all about it
I've had the pleasure of working with video again, taking me back to my undergrad roots - only now it's all digital. The project specifically is a 3 hour video put together some time ago by high school students from the Zuni Publo, about 30 miles south of Gallup. The real pain was getting in all the video from VHS into my PC. Much trial and error was had, but I finally completed that task, made the required edits, and set it to render. This is the funny part. 3 hours of video, at 30frames per second (the standard for broadcast TV), at a resolution of 320x240 (less than broadcast quality) with CD quality sound - will take about 2 days. That's right 48 hours or so of the computer doing nothing else, save building a completed digital AVI file. so much for the power of the Pentium4 2.0 Ghz. I've been checking on it off and on, since as it is a Windows machine, I half expect it to crash before the task is complete. So far so good though, and the progress bar tells me I have only about 18 hours of waiting left. Let's hope that I don't have to make any major changes. It's kind of amusing, because for all of the power of these machines, it's rare that any of us ever gives it a task so intensive that it ties the thing up for such an extended period of time.
My other technical endeavour of the week has involved reprogramming a Cisco DSL router for use with my DSL connection at home. See, the fine folks at MSN supply you with a crappy DSL router that among other things, makes it a nightmare to run multiple machines on it (to share the connection), and also has a built in Firewall so evil, that even many MS products will not work correctly with it (including MS games, MS netmeeting, and other network based appplications). MSN has been promising an updated firmware release to adress the issue for months now, but the supposed release dates come and go, and the tech support staff are oblivious to when (if) it will ever be released to the hordes of grouchy yMSN users. SO taking the proverbial bull by the horns, I bought a used Cisco ROuter from a co-worker. and set upon the task of re-flashing it's firmwar so that it was compatible with the type of DSL line running into my home (DMT vs. CAP) and then, using a standard modem, I had to dial into MSN with PPP loging turned on so that I could recover my login Keycodes to program into the Cisco (depending on how patient you are, I understand that you can actually get a tech support person to give them to you over the phone, but I tried and failed, so this method seemed more promising. After getting all the required info from several non-MSN websites, I set upon reprogramming the modem, using *gasp* HYPERTERMINAL - a program that I have not used since I was running Win 3.1 it was a strange but liberating experience, kind of one of those "I'm smarter than you" moments, and it's working wonderfully. My pings still suck when playing Unreal Tournament though, but that has more to do with my physical location (Middle Nowhere), than with the quality of MSN's service
go and tell me all about it
Comments:
Post a Comment
