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
3. VirtualDub 720p HD settings for YouTube! [Good quality, small file size]

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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How to enable it:

1. Go to google.com
2. Copy/Paste this into your web browser address field and hit enter:

   javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/;  domain=.google.com");

3. Reload google.com

Bear in mind, I have no idea how to revert this change. Still I like it this way much more!

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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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3. Fraps & VirtualDub: How to save disk space and enjoy good quality, small file size HD video clips

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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But no it wasn’t. The lag was caused by Firefox’s session saving feature. A simple and fast change in it and “poof” went the lag.

• Open Firefox and type in “about:config” (without the “) in the Address Bar and hit Enter.
• Type in “session” in the “Filter” line at the top of the list.
• Find “browser.sessionstore.interval” and double click it. The 10000 milliseconds (equals 10 seconds) is the interval in which Firefox keeps saving your session in case of a crash; same amount of time between video lags.
• Change it to something different. 120000 equals 2 minutes, 300000 equals 5 minutes or something else you desire. I went with 600000 (10 minutes), because I don’t particularly care about session saving.

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Over time it’s get filled up with unnecessary and old info if you want, and there’s a simple method to ditch those useless info and speed up your Firefox considerably, or like most of the guides say to “vacuum” it.

Use it once in a while, I’ve seen an improvement on my Firefox since I used it.

1. Go to “Tools” -> “Error Console”
2. Paste this in the “Code” text box:

   Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");

3. Press enter or click “evaluate”
4. Your Firefox will freeze for a short time, just wait
5. Enjoy your speed up Firefox!

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Anyway while surfing yesterday I stumbled on http://scr.im . A service which allows you to hide your email address until the person who wants to know it personally verifies  a given code. This way Spam Bots are closed out!

All you have to do is enter your email address and choose your own URL like http://scr.im/WHATEVER ! Then share it. The person who clicks http://scr.im/WHATEVER will get a code and has to match from 8 random, and 1 exact match given.

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net is a similar service, expect you have to manually enter a given captcha.

Now we can carry on debating whether such services are useful or not. I say to each his/her own! No more stupid  nocando(at)whateverservice dot com !

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