Recent Posts

6001

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 05:34 PM »

What they say on AutoIt3 forum seems to indicate the command prompt and run box don't support unicode.

6002

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 05:30 PM »

Not sure if this would help, but is the batch file itself saved in Unicode or ANSI?

By the way, AutoIt3 has supported Unicode since version v3.2.4.0 but I too don't have much experience with trying to use it in DOS the command prompt. 

Nice workaround, majoMO!

-daddydave (June 11, 2010, 04:45 PM)

You're right. I confused this with an issue I had with ahk.  AutoIt3 no longer supports Win9x etc..

6003

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 05:27 PM »

As for the batch file, what kind of error do you get?

-MilesAhead (June 11, 2010, 01:40 PM)

No error at all. It just doesn't copy to recycle bin only.

• TestCmdLine

Bat file with:TestCmdLine.exe sike.exe "mçfilè.txt":



Bat file with:TestCmdLine.exe sike.exe "my.txt":

• All-round

If I use a .bat file I need to use this to work well:

@echo off
for /f "tokens=2 delims=:" %%a in ('2^>nul chcp') do set cp=%%a
>nul 2>&1 chcp 1252
sike.exe "mçfilè.txt"
>nul 2>&1 chcp%cp%
exit

If I use only «sike.exe "mçfilè.txt"» it doesn't work.

Hope this help.

-majoMO (June 11, 2010, 04:11 PM)

Ok so you are saying you have to use the batch file work-around no matter which program you use in the batch?  If that's the case then it looks like the UTF-8 directive is worthless.

6004

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 05:19 PM »

(delete please)

6005

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 03:21 PM »

If you are willing to try some test apps I can try a few things out.  To be honest though, unicode is new to me.  I've just done stuff for English language and ansi.

I compiled this test app with a unicode directive.  I'd like to see if it actually has any effect.  All it does is pop up a box with the command line arguments displayed.

TestCmdLine one two three

but with args that have unicode characters should test if this approach is feasible.

If run with no args it just pops up a MsgBox with Usage: msg.

The zip just contains the compiled AutoIt3 script(without any UPX compression)

(edit: actually the directive was to use UTF-8.)

6006

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 02:38 PM »

Hmmmm, I don't seem to be having much luck with the unicode.  I found some posts on AutoIt3 forum and it seems there's confusion if the command prompt or run box support unicode or what the issue is. There doesn't seem to be a simple way to accommodate it that I can find at present.

6007

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 01:40 PM »

Hi MilesAhead,

FYI, it doesn't work if the filename has some uncommon characters, like: á - ô - ü

E.g.: "mçfilè.txt"

EDIT: if  use it in a .bat file doesn't work - if I use it in a command prompt no annoyances...

-majoMO (June 11, 2010, 07:02 AM)

Thanks for reporting that info.  On the special characters I believe that is because AutoIt3 itself is ansi. It doesn't support unicode afaik. The command line parsing is a built in feature where you are presented with an array of the command line args: $CmdLine where the first element is the count and the rest of the elements correspond to an arg.  I don't know if there's any easy way to correct it. I'll see if I can find a fix on AutoIt3 forum.

As for the batch file, what kind of error do you get?

6008

General Software Discussion / Re: sike 1.0 - send file(s) to recycle bin via command line

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 11, 2010, 01:20 PM »

excellent idea

-justice (June 11, 2010, 03:51 AM)

Thank you.

6009

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me to understand .mp3 naming issue on a DVD player reading from a USB stick

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 10, 2010, 03:59 PM »

It sounds like it might be playing them in the order the files exist on the stick, rather than the filename order. I would try erasing the stick and copying a few files in the same sequence as want them played.  See what happens.  Likely the USB support is primative.  Also if you have a light small TV you might hook up to get the "menu output" and see if there's a variance.

I suspect it will play the audio files in whatever sequence they exist in the file system igoring the names altogether.

6010

Living Room / Re: The cost of free is emotional attachment

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 10, 2010, 03:51 PM »

The sense of humor must have gotten lost with the soldering iron.
Sheesh!

edit: btw my older brother did use a soldering iron, loved short wave that he listened to every night since he was a kid, did talk mostly about the rig and yadda yadda.  But there's likely a hobbyist/consumer divide here now also.  A lot of people just buy the gear instead of putting it together for the fun of it.  Everything gets commoditized.

6011

Find And Run Robot / Re: Remove toolbar from main window

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 10, 2010, 01:17 PM »

next youll want me to get rid of the results window and then the edit box... 

the toolbar is resizable by dragging - you should be able to drag it all the way to the right and thus make it invisible..

-mouser (October 07, 2005, 01:50 PM)

If I didn't see this old post I never would have figured it out!!  Totally lost the edit box and option thingies in the toolbar.  Whew!!

6012

Living Room / Re: The cost of free is emotional attachment

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 10, 2010, 12:01 PM »

Hobbyist v. Consumer is how I see it.  Ham Radio guys I think 98% of the conversation is about the rig, how they built it, what problems etc..  If you're not part of the soldering iron crowd, you prolly won't set one up in the first place or do what's required to get a ham license.

PC has a hobbyist heritage.  That's the exchange info, help each other out bit.  It's become a commodity. So Joe Sixpack just wants to download or watch sports online.  He doesn't really give a crap what a GigaByte is.

6013

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: TeraCopy Pro for $9.00 (only for another 9 hours or so though)

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 09, 2010, 10:58 PM »

...

And for those who procrastinated ...

-Innuendo (June 09, 2010, 07:40 PM)

That makes me think of a cool name for a calendar program that automatically puts things off for you.  Crastinator Pro. Or you could get the open source version Crastinator Free.

6014

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: HDMI Cables: $0.60

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 09, 2010, 05:03 PM »

I just received my $0.60 HDMI cables. They are indeed gold plated.

-Deozaan (June 09, 2010, 01:32 PM)

Dang! Now I wish I had a use for more HDMI cables!! But I don't want to buy a $30 switch so I can use a $.060 cable. 

For what it's worth, electro platers have mastered the art of gold plating using minuscule amounts of AU.  So it may be real gold but it's prolly plated a couple of nanometers thick. If the cable itself is fabricated well then you likely won't be able to discern the difference esp. with digital.

I guy I knew got one of these audiophile turntable systems with heavy nickel cables to carry the signal from the cartridge to the preamp. In that case it probably made an actual difference because the quality of all the other components was such that you'd notice anything that didn't seem like life like sound.  That stereo sounded fine!!

6015

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: TeraCopy Pro for $9.00 (only for another 9 hours or so though)

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 09, 2010, 01:28 AM »

I can agree that Explorer copy speeds under More Information are way too optimistic.  When I first put in a wired gigabit card I thought I was getting like 110 MB/sec in one direction.  It's more accurate to use a stopwatch on multi-GB files.

I thought KillCopy to be very accurate until I started to use it in various scenarios.  It wasn't always accurate about transfer rate either.  Strange.

TeraCopy has its quirks too. I was tempted to buy it many times but on the beta forum there always seemed to be one more big flaw to fix. It got to the point where I just don't need it.  If anything I was using KillCopy to copy slower using the bandwidth limiter so that my HD wasn't maxed out and I could run other apps.  Getting USB 3.0 docks obviated that feature.  So now it's pretty much vanilla drag & drop.

Wish FreeCommander would go 64 bit but it doesn't look like it's gonna' happen.
I suppose I should try some other file manager apps.  I tried Q-Dir for awhile since it has a free 64 bit version. But even though it seems like the developer is constantly working it, it just seems to never get really solid.  If I use it for a few operations it seems like it always wants to go semi-transparent and hang.

6016

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: New MakeMKV beta

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 09, 2010, 01:19 AM »

The salient phrase being "if one purchases a lifetime license" which implies there's a non lifetime licensed, which is what I'm talking about.

MakeMKV is a one shot registration fee.  Big difference.
Since you don't want to buy either I don't understand the nitpicking.

Whatever the pricing scheme it's likely to change now that there's competing products.
The point being, for one price MakeMKV does the decrypting, makes a backup, and also can produce titles as individual .mkv files where you can select the audio and subtitle streams you want to keep.  Does more for less is the point.

6017

General Software Discussion / BD Rebuilder 0.40.08 Beta

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 08, 2010, 03:51 PM »

If you have a set top box or compatible disc player and would like to compress your BluRay backups, BD Rebuilder Beta may be the way to go:

http://forum.doom9.o...wthread.php?t=143716

From what I've tried so far, it seems faster and less crash prone than Handbrake.  The main fly in the ointment at this point, as usual, is subtitles.  If your set top box doesn't support PGS subs and you cannot get a good conversion to .srt subs, there's no way at the moment to "burn in" idx/sub subtitles as you can with programs like Quick AVI Creator.  But it's on the to do list.

This program has the fastest x264 encoding I've seen with multi Mb bitrates.

At first I tried to output an .mkv file, but since my set top box actually likes .m2ts files better anyway, and the custom output size seemed easier to adjust, I started using Movie Only mode with the disc structure output instead.  Once complete I just rename the .m2ts file that's in the streams folder to the name of the movie and copy to my USB drive.

I'm getting good looking output in less than the play time of the film on my quad core.
It's definitely more convenient than using HC Enc 2 pass to convert .mkv to .m2v to procude a DVD.  That has the advantage it's playable on a standard DVD player and SD TV. Still may be worth doing in some cases.  But to fit more files on your USB drive looks like BD Rebuilder kicks ass!

I don't know what will be charged if it ever comes out of beta.  Or maybe it will be left as a voluntary donation thing.  But I see no registration mechanism on it currently.

6018

Living Room / Re: Death and the net: How to log off gracefully for the very last time

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 08, 2010, 03:24 PM »

I guess the service died before I did.

6019

General Software Discussion / Re: Quick AVI Creator

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 08, 2010, 03:11 PM »

Reducing the size of BluRay for my WD set top box the fastest way with good results seems to be BD Rebuilder.  However if you need to burn a subtitle into the video, Quick AVI Creator looks like the one to use.

A similar .avs editor facility is apparently on the to do list for BD Rebuilder. If you don't have to mess with subs and want good quality output in fast one pass mode, this app cranks.  I tried the same film in both QAC and BDRB. The QAC produced slightly better quality in one pass mode taking about 4 hours to process the film.  BDRB took about 2 hours.  I increased the custom output size and now the BDRB output quality is quite good.

If you have a wall size HDTV then you may want to use 2 pass with the high quality settings.  But for play on CRT type HDTV like I have, the one pass mode looks very good.  Probably because I don't have to size down the resolution, the conversion is faster than using say HC Enc 2 pass .m2v conversion.  The quality is comparable in about 1/2 the time using x264 one pass encoding.

edit: btw if you have a hard time getting BDRB to encode video go to the support thread on Doom9.  There the author has links to the particular media splitters and other files needed, known to work with it. I got an error it didn't like my version of FFDShow and some other complaints. I went to the thread, downloaded and installed, reran the conversion.  It saw it had already demuxed files and asked if I wanted to pick up where it left off!!  Very friendly.

6020

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: New MakeMKV beta

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 08, 2010, 01:37 PM »

btw another feature that's not in the forefront, this software can do a full backup of BluRay disc to your HD.  There are other dedicated programs like AnyDVDHD and DVDFab PassKey that are still in beta.  AnyDVDHD has a history of requiring renewed purchase after a period of time.  I have no way to know the price point of DVDFab PassKey when it goes out of beta.

The author of MakeMKV promises a one shot $50 registration fee that never expires.  Just something to consider. Plus it's still in beta and free for use for who knows how long.

edit: btw I already paid for my copy.  Can use on as many machines as I own personally. I don't get any brownie points, kickback or free anything for touting it. I guess I just like "one programmer" projects.  Nice to have something that works that isn't done by committee.

6021

Found Deals and Discounts / TeraCopy Pro for $9.00 (only for another 9 hours or so though)

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 08, 2010, 01:30 PM »

TeraCopy Pro for $9.00 for the next few hours:

http://www.bitsdujou...m/software/teracopy/


Whether TC Pro is helpful to you may vary with your flavor of Windows.  I used the free version on my Vista PC that had Home Premium pre service pack and had the "slow explorer copy" problem where the dialog would hang with "calculating..." for way too long.  On Vista64 SP1 or W7 32 bit though I don't really feel the need for a copy utility for everyday use.

Still for < $10 it may be worth grabbing a license.


edit: I actually pushed the button to go to the buy page and there it says $9.00 even.  That's why I changed the subject line and content.  For some reason BDJ says $9.50. Go figure.

6022

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommend disk imaging software?

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 07, 2010, 07:40 PM »

The most important thing is if the boot CD sees your disk controller. Before counting on it I would burn the boot CD and boot it.  Go through the motions as if you are going to do a restore from an image.  If you can't seem to find your HD then you probably need to look for another software.

I have 2 HP Pavilion desktops.  I was using Paragon Drive Backup on one for awhile so I just assumed the free 64 bit version would be fine for my new 64 bit quad core.  Turned out the new machine had some flaky software Raid controller that could only be seen in compatibility mode.  I managed to do a restore when I needed to, but I had to run it for 9 hours overnight instead of the usual 45 minutes to an hour.  After that I got the Macrium Trial version and did a backup and full restore.  It worked as expected so I bought it.  Since then the free version(4.2) has incorporated the same boot CD. Unless you need the WinPE to load a Windows driver you should be ok with the free version.  But try it before you need it.

6023

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Vista: tool for hiding program icons from the task bar wanted

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 07, 2010, 01:33 PM »

This little AutoIt3 freebie works well for me in Vista64.

http://www.autoitscr...h=1&#entry624466

It's not "automatic" though. You need to hold down the shift key when you click the minimize box.  Then it will minimize most any standard single window app to the system tray.

6024

General Software Discussion / Re: Few Question about C++ Express Edition n Winimage !

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 05, 2010, 05:15 PM »

I'm surprised there's not an online form to order the express DVD disc at a nominal fee.  At least I couldn't find it.  Seems like it would be a good PR move as not everyone has broadband.

6025

General Software Discussion / Re: Few Question about C++ Express Edition n Winimage !

« Last post by MilesAhead on June 05, 2010, 01:06 PM »

Esp. if you want to install on multiple PCs I would suggest you get the image containing with VS 2008 Express editions with SP1 integrated. If you search MS downloads you can find it.  I could not get C# express from 2008 to go on my machine until I installed from that disc.  It went on smoothly and stuff worked as expected once installed.

It may be a Vista quirk but chances are if it goes on Vista smoothly it will go on anything.