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Post by GiGaBiTe on Apr 3, 2007 16:37:43 GMT -5
Someone has far too much time on their hands..
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 4, 2007 15:51:59 GMT -5
Time: you always want more of it ;D Yet another PROJECT Spica update: I've traced the source of all evil things that happened to the MPEG2-encoded episodes (black lines, and unusually low quality): it was Jahshaka MPEG4 encoder I needed another editor program, and quick! Several hours later, i've found the answer: Avisynth! It's not a video editor "per-se", but it houses a powerful scripting engine that does everything that you can do with fancy and expensive GUI-based editors. Now not i only save 20 minutes of pre-encoding, but i get high-quality media (simply feed the script into TMPGEnc and wait for your HQ DVD to be generated). Jahshaka can go to the hell now...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 9, 2007 9:30:20 GMT -5
Back to school again... the pain is back and never ends However, all boxes are still running, despite the dust. I've got an old PCCHIPS M810 with an "onboard" Duron (wtf?). It seems to be dead, but since i have not tested it yet... it could give me a surprise (and a new testbench if i can get DDR266 RAM DIMMs). I've ripped the northbridge heatsink and put it into my VX northbridge of my M535, it's not needed at all, but looks cool While fixing some Pita-Ten recordings, i've noticed something that seems to be very common on most LA spanish anime dubs: dialogs appear with a very slight desynch (approx. 0.1-0.2 secs). I've thinked "how about a satellite fault?", but sound effects are OK, in the right places at the right moment! So my recordings are not bad, but the dub studios are losing some quality. Poor dubbing? (and yes, i've measured the offsets!) Sometimes i struggle by two hours to fix a simple SFX, but i've found the reason and the fix: do nothing, it is "by design" At least my DVDs will feature a better dubbing work than the TV episodes (oddly enough, most Animax shows are dubbed in Venezuela, including the two ones in my project! Now it's my task to fix something done by a compatriot!?)
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Apr 12, 2007 2:29:09 GMT -5
I've fixed sound timing issues in the past by inserting a delay in the sound track at the very beginning, though this will only work if the entire sound track is off. It won't work if the encoder screws up the sound in the middle.
As for that board, it was probably thrown out in the first place because of it. If the CPU is bad, you can probably de-solder it if it's not a surface mount and put a new chip in it. Else just trash it again.
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Apr 12, 2007 7:31:33 GMT -5
Even if the cpu is SMT it can be removed with a heat gun, silver foil and some effort... ...not sure if it would be worth it though!
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 12, 2007 17:29:26 GMT -5
GiGaBiTe: The problem with the dubs of my current projects are screwed voices, everything else is in place. (this also shows that there are no edit jobs in the video, that's good because everybody knows that video edition is a expensive pain ). The list of series with this "disease" is quickly growing... and most of these dubs are done in Venezuela Mexican dubs are good (masterpiece-quality dubbing jobs), but too much localized (not neutral). So you have either a bad dub or a bad dub @paul: This Duron is an standard Socket-A, but soldered to the motherboard (think "socketless"?). It COULD be desoldered, an socket installed in place (if you can find one...), and if the CPU was bad, at least the mobo could be recovered. The chipset is a SiS 730 with everything integrated, so this would be a nice board for everything but gaming and video edition.
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 20, 2007 14:34:10 GMT -5
Time for the "Not-so-weekly News Update(tm)"... - I just ran out of space into the recording box... a single 26-episode series can eat no less than 15 GB in raws and HQ audio recordings. Now it's time to hunt for a bigger HD (i could get a spare Samsung SV4012H in the lab, but that's another story... Is either that or save my cents for a FASTER SP0411N)... BTW: the M535 don't like HDs bigger than 32GB - I haven't done more experiments yet, but i've done some homework with my home LAN: if i plugged my laptop to the recording box and booted Fedora Core 6, it will freeze a bit during booting and runtime. After some fiddling with Wireshark (F.K.A. Ethereal), i've traced the problem down to DNS timeouts. Solution: run your own DNS server ;D Now i have a domain in my own room - Project status: Pita-Ten is almost done... one episode more and it will be finished (final recording scheduled for next Wed. 25/04, EP07). Twin Spica is another story... no raws, highly bugged recordings, and NO HD space for backups
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Apr 21, 2007 1:20:49 GMT -5
I bought a 300G Seagate drive not too long ago for $110, though I don't know what they go for down there, but that's pretty cheap.
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 21, 2007 14:33:03 GMT -5
Thanks, but i love my data, so i will stick to Hitachi/Samsung drives. Since the "suicide MBR/media degradation" issue on Momentus 4.2 drives, i will NEVER use another Seagate on this life. Same goes for Maxtor (now integrated into Seagate, who already ate Conner, and with Maxtor, they finished to ate Quantum too) and WDs. PS: Since there are less brands now, it's time for Fujitsu to return to the "mainstream" HD arena, the one that they left in 2001 due to unknown reasons... I would like to see a 1TB SATA drive from them... Samsung is slow to launch new designs (they're stuck with their ancient 250GB designs), but they prefer reliability than "ooooh, big!". And Hitachi... they seems to not love their 1TB monster, because the deployment of it has been awfully slooooow. And, it's pretty expensive too ($479 in Japan right now, expected to cost $399 in US coming soon). It will be a very interesting year in the HD industry: less players, the race for the terabyte, and those Solid State Disks that are getting cheapear everyday. Ah, the new hot spot is located on notebook HDs... And while this happens, i will see shitloads of fuxored Maxtors raining over the world
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Post by jlf65 on Apr 22, 2007 16:23:06 GMT -5
Lately, all I've been getting are Samsung Spinpoint drives. They've been reliable, and nearly silent.
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Apr 23, 2007 14:16:18 GMT -5
I prefer Western Digital drives. I have one of them in ALL of my PC's and have NEVER EVER had any issues with them at all! (Heck, I even use W.D. in my XBOX and PS2 consoles!) ;D Samsung Spinpoint are nice due to silence - but they are incompatible with 'some' BIOS types...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 24, 2007 17:22:15 GMT -5
I prefer Western Digital drives. I have one of them in ALL of my PC's and have NEVER EVER had any issues with them at all! (Heck, I even use W.D. in my XBOX and PS2 consoles!) ;D Samsung Spinpoint are nice due to silence - but they are incompatible with 'some' BIOS types... Well, the guys at WD S&H dept seems like they whack the boxes containing the Caviars for Venezuela... because they're very unreliable there The only reliable model that i have seen EVER was the AC2850 (yes, an OLD 850MB disk, from the age where WD Caviar was equal to say "the best thing since the sliced bread"). Spinpoints are quite slow sometimes, but very, VERY reliable! My recording box has a Voyager 6 (SV0432A, even earlier than Spinpoints!) that refuses to work as slave... odd?. Confirmed, i will add that SV4002H to the recording box this week, although i will need a new BIOS for use the entire 40 gig space (M535/8 BIOS is limited to 32GB, but there hacks available for support up to 64GB, and i have plenity of spare flashable BIOS chips). As for the Seagate Momentus 4.2 line (models ST94019A and relatives), add them to the "Drives that can cause nightmares" list, along with the MaxCrap Fireball 541DX (2B0xxH1 series) And for CD/DVD drives: if it says "Lite-On" or "Designed by Toshiba Samsung Storage Technologies": trash'em! Even my brand-new TSST drive on my Insipiron 6400 do odd things sometimes (recently, i had to remove the battery from my laptop because the drive REFUSED to work! It's a TS-L632D). Why, Samsung, why! I loved these drives before the TSST age...
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Apr 26, 2007 15:23:38 GMT -5
I don't see why you like Hitachi drives so much, they are essentially the old shitty IBM drives that fail about 6 weeks after you buy them. I had 6 IBM drives and they all failed like that with massive data corruption.
I personally have not tried Samsung drives, but I have never had a problem with Quantum / Conner / Seagate or WD drives. I had one WD drive fail before, but it was expected after running for about 6 years non-stop (it was at least 2 times over the MTBF as rated by the manufacturer.)
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 26, 2007 17:44:48 GMT -5
I can answer that by quoting myself:
The reliability seems to be specific per zone. Here, Hitachi and IBM drives are quite rare, but to date, i've seen only really old IBM drives dead. Our labs use lots of Deskstars 60GXP and 120GXP, and they're used to maintain big loads without crashing (lots of stupid students filling them with crap until blowing Windows 2000). The worst ones there are from WD and Seagate: WDs are cheap, but they're disposable (i've seen truckloads of dead Caviars and Proteges over there), and, fortunately, Seagates are qute rare. Did i mentioned that my current TravelStar 5K160 is a very tough drive! In 4 months of life, it has survived serious whacks (lots of accidental bumps, crazy bus trips over bad roads, and, once, a race to catch the school bus while the poor HD was bumping like a kid in a bouncing castle!)
Now, back to business: An important part of PROJECT Spica is done: all Pita-Ten dubs are complete, with no errors! Now it's time to finish audio editing, make some nice DVD menus, and burn some HQ DVDs. The target for this series are 4 discs (up to 7 episodes per disc), and, with current TMPGEnc settings, i can fit every episode in less than 650MB while mantaining an (almost) crystal-clear picture and clean audio, so there is lot of spare room for deal with menus and such things.
Now i can rest in peace: i have sucessfully archived a very good series with a good dubbing job... No need to learn japanase for this one ;D
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oompa loompa
I AM THE GOVERNATOR
"Git 'Er Dun!"
Posts: 1,301
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Post by oompa loompa on Apr 26, 2007 22:39:09 GMT -5
devster's thoughts: 1) devster doesn't like ibm laptop drives 2) devster will never buy anymore hard drives from ebay (unless brand spanking new ) 3) devster doesn't abuse his drives, so all his drives last forever 4) when devster hears whining from a hard drive (from the bearings), it's time to make a back up!
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