Mbah.Net

Automating renaming files

Stephen — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:43:21 +0000

Heres a frequent problem l encounter, and l’m sure a lot of others may encounter. You have a series of files, say animation sequence files or pictures, and you need to rename them all in some sort of order, sequence, file name format eg file_0001 to file_9999, but dont want to write a script or something like that to do it.

A good solution is the free, very fast, program File Renamer Basic – Found at this link from download.com

Below is an example of the program interface. Hope it helps you too!!!

Folder – before renaming look

Folder after renaming look:

Using this with 3dsmax RAM player for converting a sequence of Maya rendered animation sequence pictures below:

Newegg.com “Phishing” emails

Stephen — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:19:00 +0000

Got a couple of these today, all claiming l bought something through newegg, confirming an amount charged to “my visa” and also confirming “order has shipped”
If you browse carefully on the hyperlinks in the email [never a good idea to click on these as you may get directed to virus filled websites or worse – you’ll notice that all the links dont point to newegg.com but to the url http://putmeonthenet.net/1.html . The email senders address is set as info@newegg.com
Beware – all these emails are all fake and newegg is looking into these scams.

Getting Powershell Command-line Working on Windows 7

Stephen — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:18:45 +0000

If you try to run powershell initially from the command prompt and get:

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

File C:\Users\Steve\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1 cannot be loaded be
cause the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see “get-help
about_signing” for more details.
At line:1 char:2
+ . <<<< 'C:\Users\Steve\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1'
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], PSSecurityException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : RuntimeException

Run the commands below:
Notice l redirected the help text output from the console to a text file for easy reading using notepad:

You also want to delete or rename the file below:
C:\Users\Steve\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1

Next thing you probably want to install is Powershell Community Extensions which you can get from here.

Kenya prepares the way for a technology-based future

Stephen — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 06:11:22 +0000

In pictures: Nigeria’s colourful masquerades

Stephen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:50:10 +0000

You can always count on the BBC for excellent world news and photo journalism. Heres a link to a good set of pictures of masquerades in Nigeria/Enugu etc. My home town in Nigeria is Enugu State. Heres the Google map link.

Memories of Post Colonial Africa

Stephen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:31:27 +0000

Heres an interesting link to a webpage by Philip Emeagwali on Memories of Post Colonial Africa with very good pictures of past people, money etc.

HD Content Encoding

Stephen — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:20:26 +0000

Heres the process and tools l use for preparing HD content for uploading to youtube.

I copy the video file from my HD Canon camcorder’s internal 8Gb in-built flash memory to a folder on my PC as shown below – using standard usb connection as supported by the camcorder. The source file we are using for the example below is 00037.MTS – the original 1920×1080 1.6Gb AVCHD video file.

AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition)[1] is a format for the recording and playback of high definition video. Jointly developed by Sony and Panasonic, the format was announced in 2006 primarily for use in high definition consumer camcorders.[2] A wide range of file-based recording media choices is allowed, including DVD discs, hard disk drives and removable flash media such as SD/SDHC memory cards and “Memory Stick” cards.[3] Sony and Panasonic released the first AVCHD camcorders in autumn of 2006. Canon and JVC followed with their consumer models. Favorable comparisons of AVCHD against HDV and XDCAM EX[4][5] solidified perception of AVCHD as a format acceptable for professional usage. As the standard matured, Panasonic released the first professional AVCHD camcorder in autumn of 2008, followed by Sony in the first quarter of 2010. AVCHD has been designed to be compatible with Blu-ray Disc format[2] and can be used for authoring and distributing of high definition video on DVD media, though not all Blu-ray Disc players are compatible with AVCHD discs. AVCHD and its logo are trademarks of Panasonic corporation and Sony corporation.[6] – Source Wikipedia

I start Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, and create a simple sequence, and drag the file from the media browser to the sequence track as shown below. I keep the time to max 15mins as mandated by youtube. You can trim, delete, add/remove video transition effects and all that as you need – just keep the video time to say 14mins 30seconds at best.

To start the export, go to file/export/media. The goal is a 1080×720 HD file in h.264 format, with a maximum duration of 15 mins. You can also use the lead in/out small triangles at the bottom left of picture below to do some time re-sizing. I’ll rather not do a percentage reduction since this will involve video quality reduction.

Once you select Ok, Adobe Media Encoder starts and this CS4 component software does the encoding. Remember to click on ‘start queue’ or nothing will happen. Converting the source 1.6Gb file to the resulting 411Mb 720p file took 23mins on my Quad-core/8Gb/64bit Win7 workstation. This is cpu intensive – as shown below, its best not to be running other very cpu intensive task at the same time.

All thats left is uploading the file to youtube and we are done!

Heres the link to the uploaded content

External USB Drive

Stephen — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:14:01 +0000

Bought this compact external usb drive for media backup. The shock resistant, fast rpm, interfaces are an additional plus as the video link below shows, especially 320Gb for $44. Other backup drives l use/own for diffferent backup purposes are a 500Gb WD, 250GB seagate Freeagent Go and a eSata compatibile 1Tb Seagate Armour drive.
If you use/rely on computers for work/play etc and dont do regular backups, you’re simply asking for the inevitable agony and downtime. I frequently do a full windows 7 OS and data files backup, that way l can quickly return my laptop within about an hour to a known state and with data, once every couple of months. Its really a pain to spend a whole weekend, re-installing windows, going through all the service pack updates, and re-installation of all applications plus license verification needed. On a more frequent schedule, l do a backup of my documents folder, precious family digtal photos and videos to a home server and as well to an external usb drive.
Another useful backup strategy if you have windows 7 professional and above, is to sync your documents folder to another PC – say your laptop’s to your home workstation or a server based network folder. Remember to set this up as avaialble offline for the mobile/laptop device, that way a local copy is always made to your laptop hard drive, and this gets sync’ed once the laptop is connected to the sync partner – which will happen when say you join your home network on returning from work.

CG Graphics Card Review

Stephen — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:12:30 +0000

Interesting independent review of professional video cards vs. “gaming” cards from ATI, Nvidia. Click here for the review - CGarchitect Graphics Card Review Roundup by CGarchitect and Renderstream

Heres a link to the NVIDIA CPU Programming Guide in PDF format.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express

Stephen — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:13:42 +0000

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 now has a maximum database size limit of 10Gb as opposed to the former limit of 4Gb. Small organizations and Microsoft Access migration will find this useful.
Heres a link for downloading SQL 2008 R2 Express

Heres an easy installation guide link.