Messages

1

Find And Run Robot / Re: Hang while "searching history"

« on: June 24, 2011, 12:15 PM »

Had this problem myself today. Interestingly, I went into launch history and simply un-checked all the entries and the problem was fixed. Going back to the history tab, everything is checked again and it still works fine.

2

Living Room / Re: amount of RAM in a netbook

« on: May 05, 2011, 08:07 PM »

I just recently picked up my first netbook:
Aspire One 522

Comes with 1GB RAM, but I dropped in a 4GB stick from Newegg and it works perfectly (with the anytime upgrade to Home Premium). The catch is that Win7 Starter is limited to 2GB max, and many older netbooks apparently are hardware-limited to 2GB. 

Performance is great. Internet, email, editing, etc. work as expected. Decoding 720p HD video (action scenes) averages about 25-30% CPU, 1080p around 50-60%. I've just started loading a few games, but I expect older/less graphics heavy titles to work very well. So far I'd say AMD has a clear winner with their Fusion APU tech.

3

Developer's Corner / Re: Introductory C# web-based tutorials

« on: March 26, 2011, 02:57 PM »

Thanks for the quick response, Mouser. Connection is still spotty on my end, but eventually I can get the files if I just let the dlm run a while.

4

Developer's Corner / Re: Introductory C# web-based tutorials

« on: March 23, 2011, 02:23 PM »

I'm getting serious connection problems trying to access the tutorials from this page:
http://kyrathaba.dcm.../onlinetutorials.htm

In Firefox or a standalone dlm the connection to the .swfs drops so often that they are essentially inaccessible.

Are there any other links I can use or some other means to address the problem? After reading this thread I'm really looking forward to viewing these tutorials.

Thanks.

5

General Software Discussion / Re: FileBox eXtender Alternatives

« on: August 20, 2009, 08:57 PM »

For those who really like FileBox eXtender and can live without its functionality within Openoffice, just add an exception for ...\openoffice.org 3\program\soffice.bin in the fbx settings screen and check "Do not handle this program at all". I did this since none of the fbx alternatives have persuaded me to switch. Calc works fine and I still get fbx for everything else.

6

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: VirtualDub Game Recording Guide

« on: October 09, 2008, 11:04 PM »

It's working flawless for almost every game I have but not for Urban Terror. Unfortunately: this game is something I want to record the most. I read about workarounds without success. It is blinking and the movie looks like having 10fps (it's ~70 during the game).

-fenixproductions (October 09, 2008, 06:00 PM)

Glad to hear the good news! Would you mind sharing a few details about how it worked for you? Such as which games? What graphics card? Which OS version? Could you record in fullscreen or did you have to use windowed mode? How was performance/framerate? I'm hoping to improve/expand the guide based on feedback, so any details would be helpful.

So Urban Terror played OK while recording, but the video came out bad? Have you tried windowed mode? I know it is based on the Q3 engine, so it might have that feature in the options menu, or it may be in a .cfg file entry like this: seta r_fullscreen "1". (change to "0" for windowed)


lanux128: fixed the quote tag

7

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: VirtualDub Game Recording Guide

« on: October 09, 2008, 05:52 PM »

2GeneralAdmission
I am really ashamed because I was in rush writing it. I am waiting for mouser to delete my post somehow.

It appeared that it was not the source of the problem. I am sorry once again.

PS The source was Typing Assistant. I forgot to add my games to exceptions.

-fenixproductions (October 09, 2008, 05:43 PM)

Don't worry...I took no offense to what you said.

So did Typing Assistant cause the flickering? Have you been able to record successfully now? If so I'd love to hear about how well it performed for you.

Thanks.

8

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: VirtualDub Game Recording Guide

« on: October 09, 2008, 05:40 PM »

Xfire's video compresses (I think?) if you choose to upload it to their servers, and leaves both original and compressed files on your hard drive. You can just start the upload and then cancel it after "Encoding" is complete for a small file, then delete the original (or, obviously, let it upload).

-wreckedcarzz (October 09, 2008, 03:53 PM)

Yeah, Xfire does have a handy auto-compress/upload feature which VirtualDub obviously lacks. I've never used them because I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to videos .

Those are some serious FPS hits you're getting with Xfire. I imagine racing games are essentially unplayable in the 10-15fps range.

I agree that the guide is rather daunting, but the majority of the work is in the first-time setup process. When I want to record a game these days it takes me less than a minute to have the apps open and configured. Of course, I'm the kind of guy who also writes batch files to launch multiple apps or simply uses a few keystokes in Launchy.

When you have time give it a shot. I'm very interested to see what kind of fps you can get with VirtualDub compared to Xfire.

I had tried descibed solution and found a problem with every game I have installed:
screen is blinking from time to time!

-fenixproductions (October 09, 2008, 05:14 PM)

Sorry it didn't work out for you.

Did you read through the guide section where I discuss hardware overlays? Since VirtualDub just records your screen and doesn't 'hook' into DirectX, it often captures the overlay's key color (black frames) instead of just the game's rendered frames. There are a few workarounds listed in the guide.

This is why I'm interested to find out if any of the coders around here have graphics programming knowledge. If someone could figure out or code a solution to disable overlays, the flickering frames should not be a problem. Any takers?

9

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: VirtualDub Game Recording Guide

« on: October 09, 2008, 01:52 PM »

Definitely! Wanted to record a game video yesterday, but was worried about Xfire Video lagging. I'll have to give this a go

-wreckedcarzz

I've used Xfire some. It does a good job of recording, but the performance hit is noticeable, especially at higher resolutions. Like Fraps, Xfire also uses lossless encoding, which means enormous video files. If you haven't looked at some of the sample footage yet, several of the clips have framecounters displayed to show how well game speed holds up while recording. I also posted a simple codec comparison to show how that variable by itself can have a significant impact on performance.

Let me know how it works out for you.

10

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / VirtualDub Game Recording Guide

« on: October 08, 2008, 01:25 PM »

Greetings everyone, (longtime lurker, first time poster)

I have recently published the first version of my guide for PC game recording with VirtualDub. This is a personal project, not a product or service.

I am sharing it here because there are a number of fellow gamers on the DC boards who might find it useful.

I also have a question for the coding gurus: Do any of you know how to disable hardware overlays? If you know how to do this it could potentially solve the primary drawback to this method of game recording (see the guide for details).

I welcome feedback, so please let me know what you think!

-GeneralAdmission (formerly GoldDragon)

Housekeeping:
-I believe this is the appropriate subforum for this thread. If not, mods please move it to where it should be.
-Thanks Mouser for the nick change.