Strawberryland Forum

I'm having a new niece in June!

(01-09-2021, 05:04 AM)Stella Grapes Wrote: [ -> ]I'm having a new niece in June!

Congratulations! ? It's always great to her wonderful news during this awful week.

Happy Birthday Prue! Saw it on Facebook today. This forum is rather dead, but I try to keep things moving here with my rants and occasional life posts, such as the one below.

I think it may be time to pass my Dell gaming PC on to someone else. Ever since re-installing a vanilla Windows 10 image, I have never encountered the strange freezing bug that plagued the factory Dell OS. It's a nice computer tower for sure, but in the last few months, I haven't been using it at all other than watching videos or using that YTP+ app. My Steam library isn't that big, and the games I do play on occasion are also on Switch. The graphics aren't as good as PC, but it still looks very nice for a handheld/console hybrid.

Since I could use a little extra money along with the Dell PC working very well now, I'm considering selling it on to another gamer who could get great use out of it. It's barely used as it is, and I have a hunch the original owner sold it off because of the freezing issues the original Dell factory image had. It would also free up an HDMI port on the TV, which I may use with one of those inexpensive Android HDMI media boxes, or a vintage Mac Mini. The latter is extremely cheap to acquire and doesn't need to be very powerful to just play DVDs or MP4 files. I don't even have to run the latest macOS, and the Mini is rather easy to disassemble and upgrade with the proper tools. The Android HDMI box is even cheaper, but there is greater variation of devices and as with off-brand tablets, some may contain malware pre-installed. They also don't play DVDs either. Or I may just cave and get that BluRay player I occasionally want.

I will definitely keep the Gateway laptop, as it's getting far too old to get any sort of resale value. Ubuntu Mate works extremely well so far. As for YTP+, if I can't get it running in either Linux or MacOS, I will just run it in a Windows 8 VM on one of my computers.

Yeah, the bug must have accounted for why the Dell was sold for that cheap. That being said, are you still considering a rig for encoding videos swiftly or is your setup enough for your use case?

(01-18-2021, 05:01 PM)huckleberrypie Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, the bug must have accounted for why the Dell was sold for that cheap. That being said, are you still considering a rig for encoding videos swiftly or is your setup enough for your use case?

I doubt this will be the case since I choose the "slow" preset when exporting the final MP4s with AviDemux. It takes a really long time for TV shows for more than an hour, and from my (admittedly brief) observations, there isn't that much difference in encoding time between the Dell and the iMac. I think the Dell may encode a bit faster in "slow" mode, but AviDemux uses software x264 encoding with no hardware acceleration of any kind. There are hardware accelerated encoders in AviDemux, but the options for those are far more limited than the standard x264 option. Speed isn't a priority since I'm trying to maintain a rather compressed MP4 without sacrificing too much quality.

I should be able to run DaVinci Resolve on the iMac as well for more advanced editing. Obviously I would want something like Final Cut Pro, but that comes at $299 USD while Resolve is free to use. AviDemux is okay for basic edits, but it's still in beta and sometimes it doesn't like some kinds of MKV or MP4 files you import, resulting in the dreaded audio sync problems.

(01-19-2021, 08:27 AM)cpd2009 Wrote: [ -> ]

(01-18-2021, 05:01 PM)huckleberrypie Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, the bug must have accounted for why the Dell was sold for that cheap. That being said, are you still considering a rig for encoding videos swiftly or is your setup enough for your use case?

I doubt this will be the case since I choose the "slow" preset when exporting the final MP4s with AviDemux. It takes a really long time for TV shows for more than an hour, and from my (admittedly brief) observations, there isn't that much difference in encoding time between the Dell and the iMac. I think the Dell may encode a bit faster in "slow" mode, but AviDemux uses software x264 encoding with no hardware acceleration of any kind. There are hardware accelerated encoders in AviDemux, but the options for those are far more limited than the standard x264 option. Speed isn't a priority since I'm trying to maintain a rather compressed MP4 without sacrificing too much quality.

I should be able to run DaVinci Resolve on the iMac as well for more advanced editing. Obviously I would want something like Final Cut Pro, but that comes at $299 USD while Resolve is free to use. AviDemux is okay for basic edits, but it's still in beta and sometimes it doesn't like some kinds of MKV or MP4 files you import, resulting in the dreaded audio sync problems.

I see. Shame about how messed up the Dell is though considering its capabilities.

tfw Lamar thanked the fairest one of all for helping him roast Franklin:

(01-19-2021, 04:25 PM)huckleberrypie Wrote: [ -> ]I see. Shame about how messed up the Dell is though considering its capabilities.

About that... ever since I reinstalled a vanilla Windows 10 on that Dell, I have not experienced that odd system freezing bug that occurred either after a reboot, or waking from sleep. That bug persisted with the original factory Windows 10 image provided by Dell even after updating to newer Windows 10 revisions. Once I refreshed using a vanilla ISO image, the bug has vanished. I have no idea what caused the original issue with the Dell image, but it could be driver or bloatware related. With Linux, it's a different story. Every distro I have tried ends up glitching out with a bad AMD driver bug that causes system freezes. I could give it another shot with a newer distro which could have updated drivers, but I'm a bit focused on my artwork and VHS conversion at the moment.

And I've backed off on selling the Dell. Despite not using it very much at all, I can't muster up the motivation to sell it off yet again. One idea that I have floating around is acquiring a BluRay disc burner, which would allow me to make those BD-R archive discs I want, along with finally being able to watch BluRay movies. It's also an excellent video player when using either VLC or Media Player Classic HC.

Also, check out the Entertainment & Lifestyle thread later today. I'm going to write up a very fun post after this.

(02-01-2021, 01:00 PM)cpd2009 Wrote: [ -> ]

(01-19-2021, 04:25 PM)huckleberrypie Wrote: [ -> ]I see. Shame about how messed up the Dell is though considering its capabilities.

About that... ever since I reinstalled a vanilla Windows 10 on that Dell, I have not experienced that odd system freezing bug that occurred either after a reboot, or waking from sleep. That bug persisted with the original factory Windows 10 image provided by Dell even after updating to newer Windows 10 revisions. Once I refreshed using a vanilla ISO image, the bug has vanished. I have no idea what caused the original issue with the Dell image, but it could be driver or bloatware related. With Linux, it's a different story. Every distro I have tried ends up glitching out with a bad AMD driver bug that causes system freezes. I could give it another shot with a newer distro which could have updated drivers, but I'm a bit focused on my artwork and VHS conversion at the moment.

And I've backed off on selling the Dell. Despite not using it very much at all, I can't muster up the motivation to sell it off yet again. One idea that I have floating around is acquiring a BluRay disc burner, which would allow me to make those BD-R archive discs I want, along with finally being able to watch BluRay movies. It's also an excellent video player when using either VLC or Media Player Classic HC.

Also, check out the Entertainment & Lifestyle thread later today. I'm going to write up a very fun post after this.

Glad you decided to balk on selling the Dell too. Considering how powerful the Ryzen chip on it is, not to mention that you may have to encode the odd HD clip from time to time.

As for Snow White, I'm still laughing at the fact that her current voice actress liked the roast video made of her character (whose lines I kanged off the Kinect Disneyland game no less) when I mirrored the video on Instagram.

Just saw your video posted above, and LOLed. The Snow White model is well done.

My taxes are done, and I should get my refund toward the end of the month as per usual. This is in addition to whatever stimulus amount the US government decides to release to citizens, if they can figure out just how much. And with my recent new job, personal expenses are already covered.

I'm all good with my computer setup right now, so I'll focus on re-acquiring more of my game collection and getting that BluRay disc burner for Rusty (Dell rig) and the associated BD-R media. I'll also need to get software for reading HFS+ volumes under Windows. Paragon software does have a utility for Windows for such a situation, and they offer a similar solution for NTFS volumes on Mac. I formatted my main 1TB external SSD as HFS+ and it contains my current video archive. I need to get most of that archived on disc since the drive is beginning to get rather full.

As for the iPad Air, I still need time to think about that. Procreate is appealing, and while I do enjoy using my Huion tablet with Affinity Designer, Procreate could offer the ability to do more daily sketching in addition to whatever finished art I put on my Instagram/Facebook.