Digital Insights: Computer Tips & Tricks

FRAPS is a state of the art program to view how many FPS (frames per second) your graphics card displays a game. Aditionally you can record gameplay and save it on your hard disk as a video file for later viewing or uploading to Youtube.

Hovewer, FRAPS makes huge files while recording gameplay because there is no time for processor to compress video. So even not long 1 minute video can take up to 700 Mb space on your HDD not to mention lagging while recording.

Today my example will be a short “Alone in the dark” gameplay clip, which takes 48 seconds and originally used a bit more than 451Mb of space. Keeping such huge files on your computer will certainly clog the entire hard drive so you need to shrink videos to a more manageable size.

Basically you will need 1  program and 1 codec: VirtualDub as video editor and XviD Codec for encoding Fraps AVIs.

• At first install Koepi’s Xvid Codec;
  
• Then start Virtual Dub and open your video file (File->Open video file…);
• Set compression ( Video->Compression) to Xvid MPEG-4 Codec:
  
  
• Now to start video conversion you need to go to File->Save as Avi (shortcut F7) and select the file save location.

This codec converts videos REALLY fast and the quality is simply superb. To make you believe below I added actual screenshots from 2 converted videos using some ffdshow codec that was installed probably by some codec pack earlier and the Koepi’s codec:

ORIGINAL VERSION: 451Mb

FFDSHOW CODEC: 15Mb

Koepi’s codec: 22Mb

Koepi’s codec did just the right quality and video size without any further adjustments. I think it’ll be my codec of choice for a long time.

As you may already experienced, one of the most powerfull password managers Roboform doesn’t offer simple export/import feature to transfer all paswords (Passcards) to another computer or just backup temporarily when you maybe want to reinstall windows.

You can make an html file (Logins->Print List->Save as html) with all your passcards gathered in a list but this is very time consuming to transfer passwords manually one by one.

Hovewer the solution to transfer Roboform passwords is quite simple. Just go to ../My Documents/My RoboForm Data/Default Profile and save this folder to a safe location for later use. You may notice that every passcard has its own file created in that folder so the backup proccess is to simply copy “Default Profile” folder over the new installation and you’re done.

Recently I got email from them telling that Geocities closing date is October 26, 2009. Although I’m not using their servic anymore for a long time they still sent me an email informing about these changes. However, you may download your files this way [excerpt from Yahoo email]:

“To quickly download your published files, visit your GeoCities web site, right-click on each page, and choose Save Page As… from the menu that appears. Choose a location on your computer to save your files, then click OK or Save.”

Anyone familiar with hosting would laugh reading this suggestion. Seriously, I can’t imagine who was so smart enough to come up with this idea of back up a website. If you’re looking for really outstanding hosting provider, check this one.

When you try to open .pps file it instantly goes to presentation mode without allowing you to make any editing. Even if you try to load that document into PowerPoint program, it still runs in presentation mode.

This can be easily bypassed by renaming the extension from .pps to .ppt. Now PowerPoint thinks that it is simple PPT presentation which you coul edit like you want.

I don’t know if .pps is different from .ppt file format only in the extension but it works.

This tip came me while listening to new Moby song called “Shot in the back of the head”, which is available to download for free here.

The song starts with swinging sounds from left to right speaker but I listened with my old headphones that has no marks of R (right) and L (side) left,  so I couldn’t determine if the song starts on the right side or on the left.

So to quickly solve this problem use simple trick. Open your computer’s volume control panel and move “Volume Control” or “Wave” slider to the left or right direction while listening to some music. If you hear the sound on your right when the slider is  moved to the right, then it means you have put headphones correctly. If not, just switch the sides and you’ll be fine.

Here is a nice trick to bypass Youtube comment filter and insert links into comments. As you know, commenters are not allowed to post links on the comments because of possible spamming. Hovewer not every link is a spam and sometimes your link on Youtube comments could be appropriate. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are building new websites, like setting up new blogs, you probably don’t want to show Google or other visitors it before everything (templates, links, descriptions, meta tags, etc.) is completely set up.

For example, when you install WordPress, there is a default Hello World post displayed on the front page and Google also indexes your important login page. This is all the stuff you don’t need to show to anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Finally there is a solid Youtube MP3 player available to play songs directly from Youtube. As you may know, Youtube is the largest song database in the world.

For example if you search for Beatles, you will get 137,938 results. Quite impressive. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re learning english, you could sometimes come across a word with unclear pronunciation. And if your english learning program doesn’t provide pronunciation for words you can instead use Youtube. Read the rest of this entry »

February 24 was a black Tuesday for Gmail addicts. The panic that Gmail was down spread everywhere from IRC to Twitter back and forth.

Some of Gmail users were so desperate that you could feel their desperation from tearfull words on the computer screen.

One of them was even convinced that Google went down intentionally for him to ruin his life:

Twitter was also pumping messages with “Gmail own” in every 3 words.

This Gmail blackout demonstrates how we are all dependent on one service provider.

Some tips how to prevent future downs of Gmail.

1. Have an alternate email account where you can forward emails to. You can set up to forward your emails automatically and even if the front-end doesn’t work there is a chance that some services are still functioning.
2. Do not use Gmail for business. If you have a website, you must have your own domain email address. You can forward emails, but the opposite way: from @yourdomain.com to @gmail.com