Sunday, September 12, 2021

October 2001: Kustom Kabinets in the Winfield Grove

Found another video of the Kustom Kabinets in the Winfield Pecan Grove. October 2001, captured from D8 tape, upscaled to 2K in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Loud stereo is loud. Be sure to Subscribe and hit the bell to be notified when I post more videos! Clicken to Enbiggen. 

Thursday, September 09, 2021

Review of "The Killer Collective" by Barry Eisler

 

The Killer Collective (John Rain, #10; Ben Treven #4; Livia Lone #3)The Killer Collective by Barry Eisler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A well-written spy / police thriller, made memorable mostly for the excellent characters. The story is at times secondary to the backgrounds and relationships between the protagonists. The antagonists are one-dimensional and essentially forgettable; you don't hate them you don't like them, they're just there to be an antagonist for the heroes to go after. I enjoyed the book, and am looking forward to reading the newest one out by Mr. Eisler.

View all my reviews

Saturday, September 04, 2021

Is it worth it to upgrade to DaVinci Resolve Studio?

 For years I've been using DaVinci Resolve free edition to edit and publish videos.  Worked great for me, but now I've found that more and more videos on the web are in 4K, and my capture hardware (Canon 90D, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra) can capture native 4K. Rendering 4K video, even on a 12 core, 24 thread AMD Ryzen 9 3900 CPU is slow.  20FPS slow. 

Upgrading to DaVinci Resolve Studio lets you use the GPU accelerated codecs to render your video. So, what does that mean?  Instead of using the 12 cores of the CPU to render your video, you get to use the thousands and thousands of video-optimized cores to render your video for publishing.  It also makes a much smaller file size.

In a short test, I found I went from 20FPS renders to 60+ (real-time or better) FPS renders after the upgrade.  And using the NVIDIA h.264 codec gave me smaller file size for the same quality!

As you see in this image - the top render was using the CPU; one minute of video took 2:43 to render. Using the GPU, the same video took just 56 seconds!

 

And - the NVidia h.264 codec cut the file size by more than half!

 

Granted, none of this was fancy multi-layered video; just a straight 4K60 video off of the Galaxy of the back yard and the dog.  But overall - it's brilliantly fast and well worth the small one-time expense to upgrade if you are doing any significant video at 4K! 

Oh? The video? Clicken to enbiggen.



Can't Unistall Davinci Resolve 17 from Windows

No DaVinci Resolve to uninstall!

 


So, you want to uninstall Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve 17 from your Windows computer, but you can't find DaVinci Resolve in the Add / Remove Programs control panel, and you can't find it in 'Apps' either.  I had the same problem; I was upgrading to DaVinci Resolve Studio, and it's recommended that you uninstall the free version before upgrading the the Studio version.

My setup has DaVinci Resolve installed on the C:\ drive and I am logged in as a 'standard' or non-administrator user.  When logged in as the standard user, DaVinci Resolve does not show up in the Add / Remove Programs control panel, nor does it show up when I searched for 'App' like you always do on Windows 10.

However, there's a simple solution - log out of your standard user account and log into your Administrator account.  Now, in Apps you'll find DaVinci Resolve right there to easily uninstall!  You don't need any third party software or dig through the registry to manually delete keys - just be sure you are logged into your Administrator account on your Windows 10 machine and you can easily uninstall DaVinci Resolve 17!

Hope this helps someone out!

- Will

Saturday, August 14, 2021

Tan Thing Gets Cleaned

After, uh, too many years, we're cleaning the inside as best as possible of the E250 van. Plastic washed and treated, carpets vacuumed, middle seat reinstalled. A run to the shop for a little electric warranty work and we'll see if we want to keep it or take advantage of the high used car prices and sell it. 

Sunday, January 10, 2021

The storming of the Capitol, Jan 6, 2021

 Davidnprogress, a fellow I've worked with for years, has a good take on the events of 6-JAN here in the US when tourists, insurrectionists, and the curious all ended up inside the nations Capitol during the ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes to confirm Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States:

This week was yet another historic moment for our country as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in what in essence was an attempted coup to keep the electoral college from certifying Biden as President. Five people died during the incident and there were many injuries to the police. There was even a Confederate flag brought into the house chambers and there were KKK flags at the demonstration.  

Read his thoughts and excellent conclusion at http://davidnprogress.com/the-storming-of-the-capital/

 

Namaskara!

Will

Saturday, January 09, 2021

Roll Call! Share your blog in the comments.

 Corporate Social Media is getting weird.  Communication and connection is still critical - even more so in this socially distanced locked down age.  Blogs started  the 'social media' thing before there was a Facebook or Youtube.  But for communication and connection to happen, folks have to share with others - so I'm encouraging you to share your blog in the comments; some I'll add to my blog roll over there on the right; others, I'll add to my Feedly RSS reader (feedly.com

The idea is to stay connected through distributed websites, not all under a central corporate control.  Yeah, this blog is hosted by Google, I know. Back in the way back days it was the only system that could process Sprint Picture Mail correctly and allow me to make mobile blog posts.  They were Mobile First before Mobile was even a thought in most platforms mind. 

Looking forward to the responses!

Namaskara!

Will