2008-05-22, 15:12 | Link #221 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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I've was a happy Kaffeine user on KDE, but because the xine engine doesn't support ASS/SSA subtitles, I've been looking for a new GUI that uses the mplayer engine. I tried KPlayer, but it wasn't nearly so full-featured as Kaffeine. I'm happy to report that there's a new player in town, smplayer. It has the best GUI support for multilingual, subtitled Matroska files that I've seen on any player running on the Linux platform. Maybe GNOME has one that's better than smplayer, but I'd be surprised.
Because smplayer is written in QT4, there's also a version available that runs on Windows. The program itself is "open-source" and is licensed under the GPL. There's not an officially supported port to OS X, however. An smplayer forum participant reports on compiling it from source on OS X. The poster could build a working binary, but mplayer itself was launched in a separate window rather than embedded in smplayer. The problem concerned calls made to X (MIT X Windows) functions that are not natively supported on OS X. I read here somewhere that you can add the X libraries to OS X and run X applications directly. If so that might resolve this remaining issue. If you're a Linux user, particularly a KDE user, please give smplayer a try. The website has links to source, a .deb, and an rpm for Suse. There's a build specifically for Ubuntu on the main download page. If you're using Fedora like me, you can install it via yum if you have the Livna repository enabled.
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2008-05-23, 07:21 | Link #222 |
You could say.....
Join Date: Apr 2007
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For those wishing to use a remote with either MPC, please see the solution below:
1. Download CheckScanCode (freeware) http://www.byremote.com.au/downloads...LASS=UTILITIES 2. Install and Run-you'll get a screen like this 3. press a function button on your remote ie play or stop or whatever 4. the software should show a keyboard shortcut for that function in the text field, make note also that there maybe CTRL or ALT combinations highlighted 5. open MPC, go to View ->options->keys 6. Map the desired function to the keys in the fields. 7. Create a boss key for mpc. using checkscancode find the keyboard shortcut for the button you wish to use Right CLick MPC icon -> properties -> Insert keyboard shortcut in "shortcut key" field Note: you're not going to get all of the more advanced function but you should still at least have volume, skip, rewind, next item, previous item, play, pause, fullscreen, audio/subtitle select at the very least, ie the basic functions. It differs with each remote, some remotes will be easier to do while others may not be so responsive. Also note that this pretty time consuming and it took me about half an hour.
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2008-05-23, 15:50 | Link #223 |
Sleepy Lurker
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Nun'yabiznehz
Age: 38
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Okay, people - I need some advice and suggestions...right now, I'd say.
I'm seriously thinking about creating a DVD-based image of my main partition (the one housing XP - the only OS on my machine) but as I'm pretty new to that field, I'd rather have a quick look around to try and weed out possible bloatwares or systems falsely advertised as the best next things since sliced bread. I'm looking for a program that's not only able to truncate a 10Gb+ image into several DVDs and make them bootable but also (if possible) able to either restore the main partition from the XP session (I've heard some of them can only restore other partitions or secondary drives, but not the one where the OS is running from) or from MS-DOS. Yes, I know it's possible to store an image on a different partition but for now I'm sticking to the DVD-only requirement for practical and personal reasons. Couple friends of mine already lent me a few 'heavyweights' but I'm lacking a little feedback right now so I'd rather rely on advice from experienced users...before attempting anything. They gave me Acronis True Image, Terabyte Unlimited Image for Windows (it has an Image for DOS included in its installer) and O&O DiskImage. Of course, there's also Ghost, but I only have the v10, whereas the other ones are more or less of the most recent builds/versions - and I'm trying to save a few bucks here. So...which one would be the best and is there anything even better out there? Of course, freeware would be best but I'm still open to sharewares or closed sources. Thanks in advance. ;-)
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Last edited by Renegade334; 2008-05-23 at 16:12. |
2008-05-23, 16:11 | Link #224 | |
Thinking outside the box
Graphic Designer
Join Date: May 2007
Location: The Netherlands
Age: 37
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Quote:
As for the size of image. The compression is fairly good. My windows partition is almost 12GB and the image it creates of it is only 5.5GB. So depending on your windows partition size you can fit it on a DVD. As for your question of bootable DVD. I'm not sure if Acronis can do a dvd that can boot on it's own and restore a partition. But atm i just store the image on a partition(not the one your gone recover) and insert acronis cd and from there on you can restore image and make images. Creating a image takes like 20min for my current partition. And restoring takes about the same amount of time. So far it hasn't failed me. The only problem i encountered is that you can't change your partition size or the image might not work. In other words if your windows image was from 30gb partition and you want it on a 20gb it won't work, atleast not for me. I found that out the hard way with a lot of swearing in the process. Overall, i'm fairly satisfied about it. Though it's the only image tool i have used so far.
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2008-05-23, 16:46 | Link #225 |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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I wonder... you can probably do something similar using some freeware tools and Linux (a LiveCD). For example, I know that with Mac OS X you can create an image using their own Disk Utility, although I use a third-party utility for that. From there you can either boot off of the Mac OS X disc to enter the Disk Utility and restore an image, or load the HD onto another system via Target Disk Mode (unique to Macs/SCSI devices and a life saver of a feature) and then do the image restore there (my preferred method). I don't know of any specific tools for Linux, though.
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2008-05-23, 17:26 | Link #226 | |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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Quote:
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2008-05-24, 00:40 | Link #227 |
Sleepy Lurker
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Nun'yabiznehz
Age: 38
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Ah. Thank you for the advice - I'll give Acronis a try, all the while keeping the Linux option in mind. If I have time I'll try and download the .iso image for the System Restore CD.
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2008-06-11, 15:35 | Link #228 |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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I'm looking for a bandwidth monitor/tracker for Mac OS X. On Windows I used DUMeter and was very satisfied with it. Aside from monitoring traffic and letting you know the current upload and download rates (system-wide, not program-specific) it tracked your usage. It kept track of how much was uploaded and downloaded per day, per week, and per month. I'd like software that could keep track in a similar fashion.
I currently use a program called MenuMeters to see real-time, system-wide upload and download rates. While it mentions how much has been uploaded and downloaded in total, it doesn't save the results and the amounts that are uploaded and downloaded only seem to reset when the user account is logged out or the system is reset. That makes bandwidth tracking relatively useless for me. I've Googled around for something like this but didn't have much luck in finding anything more than programs that do what MenuMeters' bandwidth meter does. Thanks in advance for any suggestions that can be offered.
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2008-06-11, 15:50 | Link #229 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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The best free tool for bandwidth monitoring I know of is mrtg. I found an OS X binary for it here. Follow the link on that page to download the binary for the gd package that's used to generate the graphs.
mrtg uses the SNMP protocol to query routers about their traffic loads. I've used it with commercial routers like Ciscos and with home-made Linux routers. If you want to monitor the traffic on a specific machine, you'll probably need to run the snmpd daemon so mrtg can query the machine it's running on. I would imagine there's an snmpd daemon already available for Macs since it's a very common protocol. I did a quick search at sourceforge.net and didn't see anything that ran on a Macintosh. It might be possible for someone to port code written for Linux, but I'm not that someone.
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2008-06-11, 19:52 | Link #230 |
Geek
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http://www.ntop.org/overview.html is what I'd use. It runs as a daemon so its running when users are logged out. Keeps quite detailed records.
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2008-06-12, 14:49 | Link #231 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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Wow, that's a nice piece of work. I installed ntop (using yum from rpmforge) onto my Linux firewall, ran it with "-d -L" to daemonize it and log to syslog, and now can see my network usage from a browser on another workstation. (I don't have the port open to the outside, of course!)
Thanks, Epyon. Have a cookie!
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2008-06-16, 06:46 | Link #232 |
Sleepy Lurker
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Nun'yabiznehz
Age: 38
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Just a follow-up of my previous post (at the middle of this very page) about backup and restoration programs. I tried Acronis True Image through a bootable CD and while it appeared to have more options (which had me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at first), it still managed to eff-up my main partition along with the MBR. After rearranging a few of my drive letters - which led me to a false case of erroneous boot settings and to reformat a 150Gb drive (for nothing), I turned to other options and among them I found a small gem that saved the day. I haven't tested it fully but so far I'm really satisfied.
My lifesaver is called StorageCraft Shadow Protect Desktop Edition v3.1.0.3 (yeah, quite a long name, but don't let it deter you) - and it does the same thing as Acronis, only that it's simpler and apparently more effective, more streamlined. What had me grinning, however, was the speed - between five and ten minutes to restore my partition (12Gb used). And afterwards everything was just fine (thanks to an embedded 'restore MBR' option). It's not freeware, but it's worth the try - I nevertheless suggest you buy the bootable CD instead of downloading it, as with the said item you don't need to install everything. You just need the CD to do whatever you want (restore, backup, etc). http://www.storagecraft.com/products...rotectDesktop/
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2008-06-16, 07:38 | Link #233 | |
Senior Member
Author
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Philippines
Age: 47
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Quote:
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2008-06-17, 15:07 | Link #234 |
Sleepy Lurker
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Nun'yabiznehz
Age: 38
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Well, I just backed up my main partition (C:\ Parallel ATA drive, 11.81 out of 58.44Gb used) and committed them to DVD-RWs (4x writing speed; I should've used the 6x disks I bought recently to reduce the speed). Using the 'normal' compression mode (the one that's recommended), it took exactly precisely 01h05m13s to write everything on three disks (saving the .spf image to a different partition would have taken between five and ten minutes as stated above).
I'm not sure how it fares against the latest Norton Ghost builds (the Ghost 12 I have doesn't allow me to back up a drive/partition from the bootable CD - I just have the restore option available), but it was fine by me. One nifty feature is that the v3.1.0.3 version I have supports Blu-Ray, which is quite nice if you want storage supports with more capacity than CD-RW or DVD-RW. The only problem I encountered was when I tried to shut down SP - for some reason it froze on me before terminating its processes. No harm done anyway - I just had to cut the power and reboot. But I only used the 'x' at the upper right corner, instead of going through the menu, so the blunder might be mine...which nevertheless doesn't excuse SP for such a simple (but eventually harmless) bug. Anyway, I'm really satisfied with this as it'll allow me to, once in a while, install other OSes on the main partition then return to XP SP2 Pro whenever I want. I'll just have to transfer a copy of the C:\ partition image to my secondary hard drive just in case I want a quick restore rather than go through the lengthy DVD-by-DVD process. Terabyte Unlimited Image for Windows (2.10a is the latest build IIRC) is apparently better than Acronis in that it's more down to business but the hitch is that to restore the main partition from a bootable CD you need either BartPE or a small add-on called Image for DOS. I wish they could've followed Ghost, ShadowProtect and Acronis True Image by making an all-in-one CD instead of using different programs to do what should be a single job. Aside from that, soul, I believe Acronis True Image's most infamous characteristic is that it's one hell of a pain in the arse when you try uninstalling it from your machine. From what I hear, not only the leftover files are a b**** to remove, but it also leaves permanent entries in your registry. The bootable CD (which you can create directly from the program you installed on your PC...unlike its counterparts) looked nice with all the available options, but the second it started messing with my MBR, well, nah, sorry, the flame died a quick, vicious death. EDIT: another small problem/drawback I encountered: it appears it is impossible (unless you have TWO CD-DVD drives) to insert a CD/DVD with the image as soon as the interface pops up. The only instance where the drive can be opened is if you're trying to write an image to a CD/DVD. Otherwise, it won't open op. Which means that if you intend to restore the main partition, you need to have the backup image already copied and pasted on a secondary partition/external storage point. It IS possible to fuse split images together from the bootable CD (thanks to the Backup Image Wizard), but you still need to transfer the image parts one by one on the hard drive before rebooting with ShadowProtect and initiating the restore procedure.
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Last edited by Renegade334; 2008-06-19 at 07:31. |
2008-06-17, 15:46 | Link #235 |
Kira_Naruto, the ecchi
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: http://www.exciting-tits.com/
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I need a free VCD maker for windowXP.. not DVD maker, VCD .. because my younger sister took my parent's VCD player and now demanding me my animes in VCD format -.-
Nero and Roxio recommendations is rejected beforehand ^^
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2008-06-20, 00:49 | Link #236 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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Diary Software?
Quote:
My question is a bit of an odd request. What I want can be done manually with relative ease, but I'd like to see if there's some software that anyone knows of that can do this. If not, I'd also like people's opinions on what the best way to go about it would be. What I would like to do is to keep an electronic diary of sorts. There are plenty of services like Xanga and Livejournal that fulfill this role, but I'd like to have an offline version of those services. In short, I'd like a free client that will let me write entries (ideally allowing text formatting as well, such as bold, italic, colors, etc.), include images, and mark each entry with their date and time. Ideally the software would exist for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, but if it only exists for two or even one of the three I'd be willing to look at it. I'd also like to be able to access my entries without the program, if necessary. I've found some nice-looking software through Google, but I'm a bit wary of it as all entries are enclosed in one database file. I'd like to be able to view the entries with a plain text editor in the event that the program were either no longer supported or could not be run. Does anyone know of software like that? If not, then I'll share a few ideas that I had for how to do this manually. The first would be to go with a document type that has wide support (I was thinking RTF, although ODF is also a possibility - Microsoft has shown that DOC and DOCX are bad choices), and write up the entries there. One could either put the date and time as the file name, or sort by the date that the document was modified. Those document types allow for rich text formattings and they should also allow for the insertion of images. Another possibility that crossed my mind is to run one's own server via virtualization. I already have a Wiki virtual machine ready, and theoretically could use that for diary usage. As neat as it sounds, I suppose it isn't very practical. It'd be more effort than it's worth to write and view entries, and if anything happened to the VM then that'd be the end of the journal entries. Any suggestions or thoughts would be much appreciated!
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2008-06-20, 01:23 | Link #237 |
the ancient biter
Join Date: Mar 2006
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@Ledgem: http://www.tiddlywiki.org/wiki/TiddlyWiki ... no virtual machine needed. A bit simple though.
or http://sites.google.com/
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2008-06-20, 06:02 | Link #238 | |
~Walking on the Milkyway~
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: 扉の向こう側に
Age: 41
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Quote:
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2008-08-30, 19:11 | Link #239 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Portugal
Age: 44
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Could anyone recommend a VM software that is freeware? I tested briefly Virtualbox and I didn't quite like some of it's aspects. So I am looking for other alternatives.
BTW, couldn't this thread be Sticky too? I had to do a search for it since I couldn't find it manually.
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