Tag: blogtalk

Why your Youtube videos may look terrible

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After fruitlessly spending 2 days trying different video editors (DaVinci, Shotcut) and test uploading videos to YouTube over and over (with zero success at bettering YT play quality), I finally noticed something within the “Stats for Nerds” you can see by r-clicking on YT player. Then I found some videos explaining the meaning of what I’d noticed.

Basically, YouTube uses two different codecs when re-processing your uploaded file. So if your channel/videos get a lot of average views (you’re popular, in other words), YT will use the better quality codec (vp9) by default. If you don’t get a lot of average views, they use the lesser quality one. They might even later switch it to a vp9 version without you realizing, if the video becomes popular. Now that’s only a theory – I say that because I’m sure I wouldn’t have qualified for vp9 when I uploaded that Ignis vs. Turtle video, but for some reason it’s vp9 codec’d. Regardless, if you’re someone who rarely gets many video views, the only current reliable way around this is to always upload in 1440 (“2k”), which seems to default to vp9 no matter what.

I don’t know how long they’ve been doing this, but years ago all my pc gaming vids used the avc1 codec – I checked – and still looked good to decent at 720 and 1080. Newer videos using it now look like muddy crap (imo), particularly with fast action motion, no matter what bitrate/compression you use.  So they must have reduced quality settings of that codec as well.

From YT’s point of view it may be logical in some way but it sure is annoying to the uploader. I wish they’d at least allow low-view accounts to have the vp9 codec if the video is very short (like under a minute)  or relatively small upload (less than 50MB) which wouldn’t take tooo long to re-process regardless.

Oh well, at least I know the reason now and can stop obsessing over editors, compression techniques and the like. If you now want better looking videos on YouTube, record and upload in 1440. Got it.   Edit: I tried upsizing a 1080 to 1440 and uploading, doesn’t seem to work, YT won’t recognize it as 1440.

I mean put both of these at 1080 and then full-screen, and see the difference. It’s not only motion, look at the weapon selector text/graphic and such. No these videos aren’t special, they were just good fast-motion tests.  I still think below 1080 looks like crap on anything but small resized windows or mobile phone screens, even with uploading 1440. 😛

Testing WP media players

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I was wondering how well the built-in WordPress media players fare. Seems to work with Win7, Win10, and Firefox 61+ but I have no clue about other or older browsers. If you r-click on video while it’s playing, you can pick things like Loop, playspeed, etc. The audio player doesn’t seem to have those options.  For really short video snippets – like that V drinking coffee one – it might be nice to not have to use YouTube, but I don’t have 200,001TB of server storage to be able to often upload lots of long/large videos. Plus I’m not sure how much the media containers affect load time of the website. So this is mostly curiosity/testing. There’s probably some free/paid WP plugins that work better, of course, but not sure I want to go that route unless I was going to devote a site to videos.

Uploading audio occasionally is more likely. For testing laughs, here is a stupid song mix I made years ago, using Boone’s voice lines (Boone is from Fallout:New Vegas). I recall liking it when I made it but now it sounds overbearing and silly. lol.

But I wouldn’t mind making silly projects again, using voice files,  with FFXV stuff.  I’m that bored lately, yup. The problem is converting all the audio files into mp3’s vs. their original uncommon format. I don’t currently have a tool that can do them all wholesale. Last time I looked at them I only converted a handful of Ignis’ lines then gave up. 😛  Need to look around again.

To record in 1080 or 1440

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…that is the question.

Since I now have 8TB of HDD storage space, I feel more inclined to video record more. I have two choices: play on the 4k TV and record at half-size for 1080/60fps videos, or play on the pc monitor and record full-size 1440/60fps videos. 1080 is normally fine for videos in my book, but the thing is, if I want to grab frame by frame stills from a video, like I’m doing in the picture above, 1080 images feel too tiny now. Sadly trying to record smooth 4k/60fps at high game settings, with performance-hitting Fraps, isn’t quite doable even for this new rig of mine. No I don’t want to use Shadowplay (Nvidia Experience is ICK).

With 1440 videos I can grab pretty decent stills from them, like this one of Cindy during that early photo cutscene (yup that really is a video still grab – Fraps raw file format quality is awesome which is why I still use it). Meaning I can get any cutscene or combat frame without having to time pushing of any buttons, and thus I can focus on actually playing uninterrupted more often. I mean it’s not as good as Ansel, but for some things video grabs are just fine. But I so much prefer playing on the 4k TV. Guess I’ll have to keep swapping back and forth … no I don’t expect anyone to care. I’m just “blogging.”  Pfft. 😉final fantasy ffxv cindy

Still obsessing over double-spacing (rant)

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My complaint about adding double-spacing directly underneath posted images seems to be a combo of WordPress AND Theme related. I can’t even hit Enter (does nothing) in the Visual Editor if I try to put the cursor right “under” the image. It’s a WP obsession with using Paragraph maybe. If I make the image “center aligned” (using WP’s default media/image options) it places text double-spaced underneath. But if it’s Left Aligned, like I prefer, it does not. I’ve also tried inserting coding in the theme’s CSS box to increase empty space “padding” around an image to create space that way,  and it still didn’t stick – probably because you have to change something else in 10 different code places or some such and if you aren’t the creator of a theme/software (and not a current expert at web coding) it’s like hunt and peck typing trying to figure out what controls what in order to try and change it.

The one thing I haven’t tried is creating my own simple  (and outdated in terms of web creating) table to contain and pad the image but it wouldn’t surprise me if the theme I’m using would defeat that somewhere, too. TEST:

EDIT: Hah, table seems to work. I added the background color to the table so you can see the top and bottom padding effect. But then I’d have to do this for every posted image. And run the risk of a future software update making it NOT work and then all past entries might look borked.

I’ve also had issues re:  text wanting to “wrap” to the side of an image vs. appearing below the image, even if you hit Enter in the Text-Editor so it looks like there’s a spacing. You can force it to not do that but the point is, in my opinion, there’s definitely such a thing as too much “idiot-proofing” with auto-applied features…

F— this WYSIWIG/modern website/themes stuff.  Maybe I’m missing/not understanding something, I make no claims at being a webpage coding person (stopped paying attention to this stuff years ago), but the whole point of using something like WordPress is to make it easier for people who don’t want to be code experts – but the sacrifice is such often takes too much control away from the user, and I mean basic control. Making the “break” code not function , for example, WTF.  My question is why do companies like to remove basic stuff like that?

I’m half-tempted to go back to doing everything manually in HTML to create simple pages. I could be like the  Greatest Page in the Universe. Or using a forum instead and making new threads/posts instead of “blog entries.” I spent an hour and a half trying to find a workaround for something as basic as double-spacing after an image. I’m an old fashioned, control freak, cranky old woman and things like this annoy me. I’m going to run off and pout now.   😛

Final Edit: for a bit of brevity’s sake. .

New PC part2

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Finished building it Wed. evening. The top 2 fans are part of the CPU cooler. Case front has  2 large fans.

Put it on my desk and then entered DisplayPort KVM switchbox hell. The box wasn’t working properly so had new rig hooked up to a different monitor at first and … well, it got messy. Did finally get switchbox working but the amount of wires you need hanging out the back is hilarious. Good thing my desk is 3 feet deep, too.

I was sure I was going to hate Win10, and I was right. I hate Win10 – its stupid (to me) interface/UI especially (at least the “God” folder trick still works). But the rig itself is super fast, FFXV and other games run sweet, I still have the Win7 rig for non-game, and it’s easy to transfer files back and forth whenever I want, so whatever. I wish I had room for a 3rd monitor but as you can see, even on a six foot long desk, I really don’t…because I insist on the 43″ 4k TV being there. Although if the PC’s were behind the monitors – but then I couldn’t reach the front USB ports very well. Maybe I’ll figure out something later.

Room/desk setup isn’t pretty, especially that ugly deskchair, but it functions well enough and that’s all I care about. Oh, and I hate RGB/neon in PC’s. Glad I can’t see it from my chair.  😛

Off topic: the new PC rig

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All the main parts are here and we’re starting to put it together. But may not get it finished in one evening. I may still need to purchase an internal soundcard because onboard sound is something I usually can’t stand no matter how much they “improve” it. I wasn’t feeling too “excited” until now, but I’m starting to feel it. As long as nothing is defective I should be a happy camper by the weekend, once the irritation of having to install tons of software is over.

The EVGA 2080ti FTW3 Ultra … thing must weight six pounds and it’s ginormous in length, height, depth. Makes my old 980ti look positively tiny. Crazy. I haven’t built a whole new rig in maybe 9-10 years, so there have been all kinds of little things I’ve had to buy on top of the pc parts themselves, including a display port KVM switch that supports 4k/60 display. Good times! … for Amazon, at least. 😛

What was I up to/am I really back?

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…like I said in another post … maybe. I was originally going to wait until I’d at least decided if I was going to purchase the Ardyn DLC on or near release. No point in maybe burning myself out on the game again if I’m going to buy/play that DLC, I figure. But I’ve been kind of “bored” the past couple of weeks so I keep turning FFXV on for a few minutes here and there to remind myself of things. I already barely remember half the combat controls, haha. I still haven’t updated the game to the latest patch because I don’t want to lose the difficulty cheat table, and because I care nothing about Comrades. (EDIT – ahhh screw it, I’m updating the game now, can’t use Workshop if I don’t sigh)

Games I’ve been playing off and on the past couple months: Diablo3 on PS4 and 7 Days to Die-Alpha17 on PC. Mostly have not been gaming very much however.

Anyway, as much as I like Ansel and this game for screenshots, I’m sure I’ll keep posting some now and then, but it’ll still be unpredictable. 😛

 

Off-topic: anime megane chrs + Hakuoki VN

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(if you’re here for FFXV screenshots, feel free to skip this post. I’ll get back to screenshots in another week or two, most likely. Hobby phases. 😛 )


…when I started watching anime, after a while I noticed most (male) chrs. I like in anime/manga/games wear glasses – wearing glasses represents tropes like super intelligence/arrogance and certain other personality/character-arc types. Hollywood does this as well, of course, but it’s less prominent and typically they only use “computer/science geek” or “loser nerd”. Note I don’t have a serious eyewear fetish per se , but if I see male chrs. with eyeglasses it’s an immediate and initial strong pull.

Anyway, I bring it up because I’ve been spending all my time watching animes and running through a huge Japanese visual novel, which brings to mind how 75% of the time I end up hooked on the megane chr. My husband has started to tease me that he never knew I had a thing for eyeglasses and I tell him to put on his readers more often. lol.

If you’re interested, the visual novel (Steam version, that is, it’s had many versions over some years) comes split into two parts (money grab, basically) – Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds and Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms. It’s an otome game but the longer Winds has very little actual romance (Blossoms covers that ground more after Winds very slowly sets it in motion). I actually prefer Winds and the historical-fantasy setting focus of the end of the Edo period/civil war. Blossoms, during most routes, focuses more on the fantasy element of the Furies (sorta-vampires)+romance, which I find less involving. Just me tho.

For an otome, most of Hakuoki feels like an actual story/world, not just some limp excuse to hop into the virtual sack with some dude. The Japanese voice actors are most excellent (some are well known for anime series work), enough so that I rarely skip past the text because I want to hear the vocal tones – maybe that’s part of why it feels so much better than most VN’s I’ve tried. They are expensive tho, so I waited (and waited) until it was on sale. They also created an anime series based on it, which is awesome as well.

It’s one case however, where the one character (out of 12) who wears glasses ends up not my favorite at all. Although he is very good looking. 😉