Category Archives: Diary

Learning Kdenlive: Audio Normalization

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I’m slowly learning how to use my video production tools.

Yesterday I discovered the 2 pass audio normalization feature in kdenlive.

You seem to need to apply this effect to each clip separately.

This 2 pass effect is much easier to configure than the other normalization option, which requires more configuration settings.

With the 2 pass audio normalization you just nominate your desired volume, click Analyze, and you’re done. You need to do that for each clip.

Now that I know how to do this the audio on my videos shouldn’t be as terrible as it has been. Getting better. Slowly.

Old Book Teardown #3: Vest Pocket Guide To Electrical Testing And Troubleshooting (1987)

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This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

Silly Job Title: Charge Charmer

This video is part of the Old Book feature of my video blog.

In this video we take a quick look at Vest Pocket Guide To Electrical Testing And Troubleshooting by John E. Traister published in 1987 with 130 pages.

In the video I also wish everyone a happy new year, talk a little about upcoming Xin1 projects, and mention how expensive it will be to upgrade my scope to 350 MHz.

And if you’re interested the Wikipedia page for Logic Analyzer says that the first commercially available instrument to be called a “Logic Analyzer” was the HP 5000A Logic Analyzer, introduced in October 1973.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!

Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Victorinox Swiss Champ Red Swiss Army KnifeThis is an image of the product.notes

Let’s go shopping!

How to Remove Old and Useless Drivers in Windows

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I had a problem where I needed to delete a device driver that had been installed so that I could install a replacement. I found How to Remove Old and Useless Drivers in Windows and the process was roughly:

  • Win + X: Windows PowerShell (Admin)
  • SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
  • Win + X: Device Manager
  • View -> Show hidden devices

You can then look for the old driver and remove it.

BIOS settings for ‘verve’

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I went hunting in the BIOS for ‘verve‘ which has a ASUS PRIME B550M-A motherboard and I found I needed to change two settings.

The first setting was Advanced -> CPU Configuration -> SVM Mode = Enabled. This enables AMD-V and allows the CPU to function in a hypervisor.

The second setting was Advanced -> Onboard Devices Configuration -> USB power delivery in Soft Off state (SS) = Disabled. This fixes the problem with the power button not working as discussed here: Earth leakage hack.

Running notepad.exe as Administrator

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Man, back on Windows for my new studio computer ‘verve‘. Needed to figure out how to edit C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and that was certainly more difficult than it needed to be.

In the end I used “Method 3” over here to add an “Open in Notepad (Admin)” item to my shell context menu:

  • Open regedit
  • Navigate to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell
  • Add a new key ‘runas’ under ‘shell’
  • Change (Default) to: Open with Notepad (Admin)
  • Add a new key ‘command’ under ‘runas’
  • Change (Default) to: notepad %1

Setting Konsole title to $USER@$HOSTNAME

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First: Settings -> Configure Konsole -> General -> Show window title on the titlebar (checked)

Then: System -> Configure Konsole -> Profiles -> [Default] -> Edit… -> Tabs:

  • Tab title format: %w
  • Remote table title format: %w

Then you need this config and these two shell functions in your .bashrc:

# 2023-12-29 jj5 - if not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in
    *i*) ;;
      *) return;;
esac

# 2023-12-29 jj5 - set the Konsole window title
echo -ne "\033]2;$USER@$HOSTNAME\007" >&2

# 2023-12-29 jj5 - intercept ssh and sudo commands to reset window title on exit:
ssh() {
    /usr/bin/ssh "$@"
    echo -ne "\033]2;$USER@$HOSTNAME\007" >&2
}
sudo() {
    /usr/bin/sudo "$@"
    echo -ne "\033]2;$USER@$HOSTNAME\007" >&2
}

Transferring large files with Salt file.managed

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Well, this took me a few hours to figure out.

If you’re going to be transferring large files using file.managed in your salt state, make sure you specify show_changes: False, otherwise salt will start trying to boil the ocean and calculate the unified diff of your enormous files.

The clue that this is the problem you're having is if one of your CPU cores pegs at 100% and your state doesn't apply in a reasonable amount of time (minutes, I guess).

Also you probably want to make sure you're not trying to use your large file as any sort of template. By default file.managed will assume no template, which is what you want for large files that aren't templates. I've never used large files which are templates, but I suspect if you tried that you'd have a bad time.