1. enter “about:config” without the ” in your URL bar
2. search for “browser.privatebrowsing.autostart”
3. change false to true
4. ???
5. Profit

If browser.privatebrowsing.autostart doesn’t exist, then create a new boolean string called just that and set it to true!

Enjoy!

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Now I’ve been using mostly VirtualDub, a superawesomewtfbbqomgz application by the way, for encoding my recorded raw footage into acceptable size and quality. The guides I wrote can be found here and here.

But that’s it, VirtualDub, compared to Sony Vegas Movie Studio or even Adobe Premier it is relatively primitive in terms of effects, filters, etc. But that’s ok it was never VirtualDubs intention to be a full blown editing suite like the aforementioned applications.

Lately I’ve been watching user-made machinimas and clips and I’ve found some pearls amongst them on YouTube. I liked the movie effects, the text effects, and any other effects they implemented into their movies, and I set out to try some of mine.

I set out to do very simple text- and movie-effects in Sony Vegas Movie Studios. And I recorded the steps I’ve done until the final product. Enjoy!

The how-to’s:

Part 1/2:

Part 2/2:

and the final product:

Boy howdy, was I blown out of my shoes when I first started Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Dood, I tells ya, I haven’t seen this many options for that many options in a long, long time.

Now I’m by no means an amateur nor a professional, I’m a full blown newbie with almost absolutely none knowledge what-so-ever. The little knowledge I’ve got is through trying out hundreds of different options and reading up a few guides on the internet.

So my utmost respect goes to folks who know their stuff in Adobe Premier and Sony Vegas Movie Studio.

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2. Fraps & VirtualDub: How to save disk space and enjoy good quality, small file size HD video clips
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Well, to be honest not every add-on needs a huge code change, some of them simply need their compatibility status updated, most of them work with 3.6 anyway. At least mine do…

I wanted Identi.fox and Echofon running, which I way I turned of the Extension Compatibility Check! Here’s how to force your Add-ons to work with 3.6+ betas.

1. Type “about:config” in your Firefox url bar
2. Search for “extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6b”
3. If you have this entry change it from “true” to “false”
4. If this entry doesn’t exist, create it via:
5. Right click your mouse -> “new” -> “boolean”
6. Type in “extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6b” for the new entry and set it to false

This is how it looks finally:

Enjoy your add-ons, but bear in mind there’s a reason that the add-on compatibility check is there!

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Without it you can’t transfer your songs to your Sony NW-A3000 player,…or so I thought until yesterday! There are a few ways to transfer your songs to the player, let’s start with the easier one, shall we?

JSymphonic, an open source application (1 file!) written in Java, thus making it platform independent. It’s not fancy, it hasn’t the functionality of SonicStage, but that’s exactly what I did not want.

The biggest plus? JSymphonic supports up to Generation 7 of Sony’s portable music players!

You can transfer your songs from/to the player, delete them, erase the whole HDD, that’s it. You want more? Well, get SonicStage then. Since the whole application resembles only 1 file, you can easily place it inside the player thus being able to transfer songs from/to any computer anywhere anytime.

Note: In order to run JSymphonic you need to have Java Runtimes installed.

Now, the not so easy method!

1. Plugin your mp3-player
2. Backup your files by renaming your directory “OMGAUDIO” to something else like “OMGAUDIObackup” or copy them onto your HDD…
3. Create a new directory “OMGAUDIO”
4. If you have any mp3-player that is not protected: create a file named “nocode.txt”  inside the OMGAUDIO directory
5. If you have a protected mp3-player make sure you have at least ONE of the following:
   • MP3FM correctly installed with a MP3FM/DvId.dat file: see the official Sony page about MP3 File Manager
   • Make sure you have the decodeKey.dat from the keywizard in the directory “GYM” (Grab Your Music): more info at: http://clientes.netvisao.pt/~sonygym/index.htm
6. Download and copy ml_sony to your WinAMP-plugin folder

That’s it. Now run your WinAMP and start copying to/from your Sony’s mp3-player. I know a lot more work than JSymphonic, but there are folks out there using WinAMP.

Now least not last the Volume Limiter Hack!

Sony’s portable music players have, by standard, a volume limiter enabled to protect you from hearing impairment. Some of you couldn’t care less I presume or the normal volume is too low for you, so here’s how to hack it..

Enter the test mode, but ignore step 3:

Proceed to alter the settings according to

After that turn off the mp3-player, and voilá u hasz got moar volumez!

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1. Simple Text- and Movie-effects made easily with Sony Vegas Movie Studio
2. How to unassociate File Types in Windows 7!

No mater how much I turned my registry upside down, how much I deleted, something was missing. I just couldn’t find it. “F’k it!” I thought, and turned to google.

Lo and behold, I stumbled upon Unassoc. Simple, small, no installation! Oorah!

Simply search for the desired file type and click “remove file association (user)”, after that Windows 7 will use the global file association. If you still have the wrong application as your standard application then do “delete file type”.

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Especially the access algorithm seems to be doing exactly squat. Files which are being accessed all time aren’t moved at all, like they are supposed to. Anyway, I ditched the junk and set out to find me another defrag application.

I tried Defraggler, which was very nice but way too simple. I needed more. I tried PerfectDisk, it was better but not what I was looking for. I took a look at Auslogics Disk Defrag, something different, but still not what I wanted.

Until I stumbled upon MyDefrag…Why MyDefrag ROCKS:

My very first thought was “WTF is this piece of garbage?”, but trust me, this is, by far, the best defragmentation tool out there.

Why? Because you can write your own defragmentation algorithms. Yea, you read right, your own algorithms.

That is, when and if you’ve read yourself through some tutorials how to write defrag algorith scripts. All you do is write your script in Notepad, save it as yourscript.MyD, move it to your MyDefrag installation folder, start up MyDefrag, select script (algorithm) and off you go!

MyDefrag comes with a couple standard and most used scripts, such as Sort by Access, Sort by Size, Standard Defragmentation, Move to End of Disk, Optimize Daily/Weekly/Monthly, and many more. So you don’t have to worry to read tons of tutorials how to write ‘em.

There are also plenty of user made scripts on the official forums and the internet. Hit google.com, I guarantee you’ll find a script just for your needs!

Though I strongly suggest you learn how to write your own scripts, only then will you tap into MyDefrag’s true potential. Because let’s face it, nothing beats scripts tailored to your specific needs and only you know what they are!

On a practical note, I do see an increase in performance after using my own scripts, although not a very big one, but an increase nonetheless.

Example scripts that come with the installation are Sort By Last Access , Move To End Of Disk, Consolidate free space, or an user written one Full Optimize from the MyDefrag forums.

Related posts:

1. Simple Text- and Movie-effects made easily with Sony Vegas Movie Studio
2. How to unassociate File Types in Windows 7!
3. SpaceSniffer: Show disk space usage the graphical way

In its raw form, WordPress provides everything one needs to start blogging immediately. That’s the biggest plus! I’ve tested a few blog and CMSs and a lot of them were either very bloated or had almost no customization available.

Check out the 22 plugins I’m using…

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button (download):

Social media becomes increasingly popular and readers like to share what they read with their friends. To make it convenient for the reader, Add to Any provides a button with many popular social media sites. Sharing was never easier.

After The Deadline (download):

After The Deadline is an integrated spell/grammar/style-checker which operates externally. It uses a database with thousand of users linked to it. Think cloud and spell/grammar/style-checking.

All in One SEO Pack (download):

Optimizes your blog for Search Engines.

Configurable Tag Cloud (download):

The standard tag cloud provided by WordPress.org was not satisfactory and I was too lazy fiddling in the  PHP files to style and configure it to my liking. Configurable Tag Cloud is what I wanted. A customizable widget!

Contact Form 7 (download):

A highly customizable contact form. Check “contact” in the navigation bar to see it in action!

Cute Profiles (download):

I ran out of space when I was linking my social profiles in the navigation bar. Cute Profiles adds all your Social Profile icons vertically on left or right side of your pages, which will remain visible all the time though the page is scrolled and without consuming the sidebar space.

FancyBox for WordPress (download):

A fancy way to display images on your blog. Using jQuery it enables you to use animations for resized images. From thumbnail to full-image and back to thumbnail.

Fast Tube (download):

A fast and very easy way to embed YouTube videos into your blog.

GD Star Rating (download):

Giving the reader the ability to rate your posts, pages and/or comments via a very complex star-rating system. It takes some time to properly configure it. But default settings are good and ready to go.

Google XML Sitemaps (download):

Having XML Sitemaps is a must if you want your blog to be SOE friendly. Though the add-on says Google XML, it actually creates the XML Sitemaps for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu (download):

I didn’t like how all the admin menu links were left in a bar, so I got this one. The admin menu links are organized in a neat horizontal CSS driven drop down menu this way.

Quotes Collection (download):

A widget displaying your collected/favourite quotes.

Revision Control (download):

By default WordPress saves each post/page’s content each time you save as a revision, so you can go back to a specific revision. I don’t need it since I use external editors for that. Besides that it’s a waste of database space.

Search Everything (download):

WordPress default search is very limited, and I wanted to be able to search a lot more. Search Everything provides just that. I can search posts, tags, links, pages, comments, drafts, category names, and a lot more.

TinyMCE Advanced (download):

WordPress’ default editor has too few options for me, and I often had to manually enter my desired HTML-tag via the “HTML” editor. TinyMCE Advanced take care of that by providing you more options.

WordPress.com Stats (download):

Statistics, statistics and more statistics. If you want a lot of statistics, this is the plug-in for you. Though there are better statistics tools, like Piwik.

WP-DBManager (download):

Manage your WordPress database. Optimize, repair, back-up and more.

WP-PageNavi (download):

A fancier way to display page navigation. See at the bottom of the blog. Highly customizable via CSS.

WP-PostViews (download):

Providing a way to show the count of post-views. You can exclude bots, and restrict the counting to everybody, registered users, or guests only.

WP-SpamFree (download):

Comment-Spam is a problem! And WP-SpamFree takes care of that, I mean REALLY takes care of that!

WP Security Scan (download):

Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (download):

I wanted to be able to link my posts to other related posts. This plug-in uses, in my opinion, a very good algorithm linking related posts and showing them at the end of each post. Algorithm is to some extend customizable by allowing, excluding, adding extras, considering with extra weight, etc.

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2. WSCC: Windows System Control Center – A convenient collection of system applications!

Well, recently I stumbled upon what you may call an “application center”, KLS Soft’s WSCC aka Windows System Control Center.

Essentially, WSCC provides a convenient GUI and lists all of Sysinternals’, NirSoft’s and Window’s own utilities in a comfortable order. There are 2 ways to run WSCC, though.

You can choose not to download every application which results in longer starting times of each application. Because every time you start WSCC the application needs to be downloaded and cached. The cache is emptied upon closing WSCC and you have to re-download said application upon starting WSCC again.

Or you can choose to download every one of the applications via “Updates” in the upper right corner in a chosen folder resulting in shorter starting times.

WSCC is a must-have for everybody who likes to know what’s going on with their system! The sheer amount of utilities should satisfy almost any need!

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What it essentially does is, it scans the whole hard drive, renders different images depending on disk usage and assigns them to each single file and folder. There’s a way to show more details, meaning going deeper down to show the usage of each single file, or less details showing only the folders.

SpaceSniffer is more focused on clean graphical display than detailed information, like WinDirStat for example. You can directly manipulate the files/folders from inside the application. Double clicking a “block” will cause it to show you more detailed information (files) about it.

One use, suggested by Caschy, would be to delete unnecessary files if you plan to do backups. Saves time and disk space. I’m sure there are other uses for it, I personally use it to check usage by each application I have installed.

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The biggest problem most of us face while recording gameplay clips with Fraps is its disk space usage. Fraps records everything uncompressed, continuously (free version is limited to 30 sec.) and sequential. Meaning from start till stop the “whole” clip is split into single 4GB files (I believe due FAT32 filesize restrictions).

The length of a single 4 GB clip depends on the resolution and the in-game scene you record it in. For example, for me a 4 GB clip has about 90 sec. worth of gameplay in 1920×1200 resolution.

Because of this uncompressed real-time recording your frame-rates drops significantly while playing. There is NO way to keep up 40+fps with Fraps running unless you have one hell of a monster system.

Imagine what happens when you want to capture a 30+ min gameplay clip. Either you buy yourself a Terabyte HDD or you use a very simple trick: recording in half-size, upscaling and sharpening. Read the whole How-To guide!

Recording in Half-screen/size

Before we start with VirtualDub transcoding, upscaling and sharpening, we first have to record our gameplay. We do not record our gameplay in full-screen/size mode, as usual, but in half-screen/size:

This means if you have a game running at 1920×1200 resolution, Fraps will record it at 960×600, or if you run it at 1280×1024, Fraps will record 640×512, etc. Which in turn translates into much more gameplay time in each 4 GB file.

Another example: While recording in 1920×1200, I only got about 90 sec. (1:30 min) per 4 GB file, recording in half the resolution (i.e. 960×600) resulted in about 360 sec. (6 min) per 4 GB file. Whole 270 sec. more!

Upscaling and Sharpening

We want HD Quality, so we’re going to upscale and sharpen our recorded clip. Start up VirtualDub, open the uncompressed file, change in “Video” -> “Full Processing Mode” and “Audio” -> “Full Processing Mode”, then set your VirtualDub according to this screenshot:

Save your settings via “File” -> “Save processing settings” or Ctrl+S, so you can simply load them in the future. Saves a lot of time!

Addendum: Regarding “Threads”; QuadCores = 6, DualCores = 3.

You’ll need VirtualDub and a codec-pack which has the H.264 codec, like the “K-Lite Mega Codec Pack“. The settings in the screenshot are the same ones like in “VirtualDub 720p HD settings for YouTube! [Good quality, small file size]“, what differs, however, is that we are also going to use the “sharpen” filter.

We call the method to resize a lower resolution (960×600) to a higher resolution (1280×720, in this case), UPSCALING (sometimes also refereed to as up-converting). For your information, 1280×720 is the Standard HD (720p) resolution. The other is Ultra-HD or Full-HD (1080p, 1920×1080).

However due the upscaling method we lose quality, which is where the filter “sharpen” comes in. Upscaling from lower to higher resolutions causes the image to “blur”. Sharpen removes the blur and, well, sharpens the image.

You’ll have to experiment with the slider in preview mode around a bit, until you find the result best to your liking. I found myself settling down between 23-30, depending on each clip.

When everything is set, start transcoding via “File” -> “Save as AVI”.

Two important VirtualDub settings you should not forget:

“Options” -> “Preferences” -> “Threading”: Set the “Video Compression Threads” to 1. This is important if you have a multi-core CPU to make use of the multiple cores and in turn speed up the transcoding process.

Since VirtualDub Version 1.9.4 there’s an option to use your GPU as part of the transcoding process. Make use of it to additionally speed up your transcoding process. “Options” -> “Preferences” -> “3D accel”, hack in the box.

Addendum 16.05.2010:
I’ve been getting mixed messages. Apparently using “3d accel” causes it to render slower than usual on some systems. I can confirm that. With 3d accel turned on, a 10min video takes about 1 hour 10-20 minutes, while turned off it takes about 1 hour max. You’ll have to experiment on your system!

Addendum 23.10.2009:
There’s currently a problem causing VirtualDub 1.9.4/5/6/7, crashing under Windows 7. The culprit is 3D accel! Turn it off under “Preferences” -> “3D accel” and enjoy VirtualDub once again!

Update 22.03.2010:
Updated Setting Screenshots

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