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The Chatterbox => Computing => Topic started by: Bobbias on September 18, 2008, 05:53:20 PM
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Yeah, it seems to like randomly resizing itself to be as large as it can be, forcing my windows to a tiny little area on the right, basically right beside my Google Desktop gadgets button. It starts off locked when that happens as well, so I unlock it, move it back, and lock it again. It doesn't seem to be happening every time I reboot, but occasionally it will.
It's not like it's a big problem, but what the hell is up with that?
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I've never had that happen here.
It's probably a conflict with another bar that you have on there. Maybe something in Google Desktop is causing the problem?
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I dunno, I don't have Google Desktop on right now and sometimes it still happens when I reboot.
The only other issue I'm having with Vista is winamp. Apparently winamp likes to crash fairly randomly. It doesn't descriminate between ogg and mp3, and turning on compatibility for XP SP2 and turning off visual themes doesn't help either.
I'd go ask on the winamp boards, but they require listings of every damn plugin installed and crap. This is an out of the box install, nothing different.
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Winamp has pretty much been unusable for me since Justin Frankel left Nullsoft.
I've had numerous issues with it on XP. Its instability and wealth of bugs is what got me to switch to foobar2000 in the first place.
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I never had any problems at all with it recently in XP, but since I've begun using Vista as my primary OS, because of my laptop, winamp has been a gigantic pile of bugs. I might even have to switch players (though to be honest, I can't stand foobar's interface.)
If I do switch, I'll probably just use zoom player (I may even make it my default video player too, though it's hard to beat MPC for videos.) I'd use MPC for music, except that it's playlist pane SUCKS.
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Unless you have a ton of OGGs and/or FLACs I'd give WMP11 a shot. I used it for a while on my old work laptop and really liked what they did with the interface.
I dunno, I ran into a ton of bugs with Winamp even when I was running XP (haven't tried it on Vista, to be honest). It seems like ever since the v5.0 line came out (which, incidentally, is when Justin Frankel left) it's been getting buggier and buggier. There was a particularly annoying playlist issue that I kept running into (occasionally, enqueueing items would wipe the playlist) that remained unfixed for about 10 releases. That happened on multiple machines, too, so I know it wasn't just me.
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I don't think I ever had that issue. And I'm kinda trying to avoid MP3 as much as possible. I prefer OGG and FLAC for my music whenever possible, and have set EAC to rip my music in OGG format.
I also have a collection of TTA files in my 1TB NAS.
So yeah, compatibility is an issue for me. Not to mention I am way too used to winamp's interface (and I love being able to set it so that it appears only as an icon on my system try, as opposed to the taskbar.)
So yeah, it's kinda hard for me to switch, since I really don't have a second favourite. None of the other players jump out at me like winamp does, but I'm beginning to get really bothered by winamp's general extreme buggieness in Vista. I honestly never had any problems with it in XP, at all.
The thing that bugs me most about foobar's interface (other than the fact that it seems designed to take up my whole screen, when I like the modular and collapsible aspects of winamp's interface) is the fact that I'm not a fan of the generic white/OS color setup for my music players. I like a nice clean interface that is based on black, or another really dark color :/
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The Windows-esque interface doesn't bother me on foobar at all because I very rarely see the player. Different folks, different strokes and all.
I'm the type that just keeps it in the system tray and change tracks and what-not with my multimedia buttons. Another reason that I kind of like foobar 1.9's interface is because it reminds me a lot of Amarok (I can configure it to basically act the same way), not to mention that it's light as a feather and very fast.
The interface of foobar is plugin-based (just like Winamp, except that Winamp 5.0's default interface engine is Winamp 2's, not a simple window) so if someone works up the drive to make a skinned interface for it (they do exist, they're just built for older versions of foobar) it can definitely happen.
The enqueueing issue seems to be a pretty elusive one. I've had it happen on both my old desktop and current laptop systems, my dad had it happen on one of his systems, and as far as I know my cousin hasn't had an issue with it on either of his systems. Let me tell you, for somebody who's experienced it, it's terribly annoying. Nothing like spending five minutes constructing a playlist only to have to do it again.
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Yeah, I can definitely understand how annoying that can be (considering I have way more music than I should and occasionally construct playlists involving an entire genre of music, sometimes amounting to over a day's worth of music.)
For some reason I've always liked the winamp 2 skin. I do rarely see it, but when I do, I appreciate the green on black color scheme it has. It's one of the few times I've seen that color combo pulled off well.
And yeah, I like that foobar is plugin based and all that, but zoom player can play anything that I can get DirectShow to support, which covers a good portion of my music collection (though TTAs are difficult to play, especially when used in conjunction with CUE sheets).
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From what I've seen of Zoom Player it's far more bling-y than I need in a music player.
I'm also feeling the need to continue my foobarvangelism right now. :) It has built-in support for CUE sheets and, of course, a TTA component (http://pelit.koillismaa.fi/plugins/show.php?id=181). There's even a component that lets you play back files using DirectShow filters (http://www.fb2k.org/show.php?id=244).
It is kind of a shame that the author of foo_ui_gfx seemed to fall off the face of the earth. From what I've read about it that's a pretty extensible component.
And yes, the old Winamp 2 skin was quite lovely. Simple, fast, effective. Brings back a lot of memories, too.
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I did look into Foobar, because of that built in cue sheet stuff, and support for TTAs. Actually, I think I was using that to listen to the TTA/CUE stuff for a while.
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Sweet, so you're already about a quarter of the way into your eventual foobar conversion. :P
I don't really use CUE sheets a whole hell of a lot, but I do have a few live sets contained in a single, CUE'd file. I was pretty impressed with how foobar handled it, overall.
It also does a fine job on the few extraordinarily large 24-bit 96KHz FLACs that I have. I think foobar is the only player that I have that can actually play those.
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Heh, well, most of the cue plugins in winamp are rather limited/buggy anyway, so whenever I want to play something with cues, I think foobar is generally the best bet. I do believe that zoom player has some support, but I forget how well it works. Foobar basically treats cues like you just opened a bunch of separate files, but most other players aren't quite so supportive of that system, and tend to do things a bit weirder.
I may yet make the switch, but old habits die hard, and I absolutely refuse to use WMP unless I absolutely need to (It eats up more processor time and RAM than winamp, and probably a good portion of other players as well).
Oh, and on the subject of processor time, is there any way I can speed up decoding H264 videos on here? My system tends to desynch on anything above 720p :/ I'd like to be able to watch those without large gaps of video dropped every so often due to the desynch.
The only other option for the Zero no Tsukaima release I'm watching is 704x400 Xvid, which looks a lot worse than the 720p H264 encode...
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I've actually found WMP11 to be very light on memory usage when you minimize it (it seems to work similarly to how Winamp 5 does -- very light player, slightly heavier interface). It's not like the monstrosities that were WMP7, and 8 at all. The only reason that I wouldn't consider using it is because it obviously doesn't handle tags on OGGs, FLACs, and other formats. It'll play them with the appropriate DirectShow filters but, sadly, that's about it. There might be a plugin to enable OGG metadata tagging, etc, but I haven't looked. The main reason I even use it at all is to stream media to my 360.
I think the only way to improve performance with HD H264 videos would, unfortunately, be to upgrade your system. 1080p requires a fuckload of bandwidth and, from the sound of it, your system can't keep up with it. You'll probably just have to reencode the clips you want to watch to 720p for now. 720p still looks damn nice (my parents have a 720p LCD TV); it'll definitely be an improvement over a DVD rip or a 704x400 XviD.
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That's still not cool. That is the exact situation where having a laptop can make things a pain. I can't just pop the video card out and toss a new one in like I can with a desktop. Well, I'll try to overclock it and see if I can get anywhere with that (mind you I do need to find a way to cool this thing a bit better, they placed the intake fan on the lower part of the bottom, which means it's completely covered when this thing is sitting flat on something.)
FAKE EDIT: that was including 720p, though the desynch isn't THAT bad at that size. Oddly, Dennou Coil is also encoded at 720p and has no desynch at all.
If all else fails, I'll download all of the ZnT episodes and re-encode them in a batch to something that I can watch without any desynch.
I would have just gotten the Xvid encodes, but the guy who encoded them obviously knew nothing about how to optimize the encode for anime, so even for that size, they look like crap (not to mention the color loss is very noticeable.) I've seen some nice Xvid encodes, but these are not nice at all.
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Erm, yeah, you can replace the video card on laptops. I know for a fact that I can upgrade my laptop at least a GF7800 (which wasn't even available for my model from the factory, might I add). I could even replace the CPU if I wanted to.
It definitely depends on the manufacturer, but pretty much all of them make their devices in a modular fashion to save money (that way they can use, say, the same RADEON X300 board in several different notebook models, rather than having to make a different for each GPU).
Well, I'll try to overclock it and see if I can get anywhere with that (mind you I do need to find a way to cool this thing a bit better, they placed the intake fan on the lower part of the bottom, which means it's completely covered when this thing is sitting flat on something.)
I kind of doubt overclocking is going to make it work smoothly unless your components have a ton of OC potential.
Also, bear in mind that with HD stuff like this, the bottleneck could be just about anything, your RAM, your video card, your CPU, your disk controller, or your bus.
I would have just gotten the Xvid encodes, but the guy who encoded them obviously knew nothing about how to optimize the encode for anime, so even for that size, they look like crap (not to mention the color loss is very noticeable.) I've seen some nice Xvid encodes, but these are not nice at all.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I swear some people just open up VirtualDub and drag the slider as far to the left as it goes.
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I'm really appalled that anyone is allowed to sign up as an encoder in some of these groups. Because I've seen a number of subs wrecked by terrible encodes.
Well, the video card in here isn't the greatest, it's an ATI RADEON 3100. It is responsible for the lowest ratings on my "vista performance index.".
I mean, the system is a dual core system running with 2 GB of DDR2 ram, so at the moment, I'm not inclined to think that the problem is that either of those are choking on it (and it doesn't run my system at 100%). It could be a bus though.
But anyway, I might as well see how much I can overclock this thing and see if it makes any impact. My desktop IS running a 23% OC on stock cooling perfectly fine, lol, so this should be able to manage some OC.
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I kind of doubt it's the video card, really. Pretty much anything in the last few generations should be able to handle an accelerated surface that large without a problem. Though, have you tried disabling Aero? I'm not sure where the RADEON 3100 really fits in on ATI's model line-up (mainly because I find ATI's branding to be even more screwy than NVIDIA's) but maybe tossing all of that video onto a 3D accelerated surface is killing it?
I've had kind of odd luck with overclocking things, so I generally prefer to do whatever I can to avoid doing that. My old Preshott overclocks fairly well (I never really pushed it at all, but it seemed to stably handle 3.2GHz -- a 400MHz jump -- without a problem) but my old Northwood P4 and my dad's Athlon XP can barely manage 0.2GHz.
I am kind of tempted to try and overclock at least the video card on my current system (maybe even the CPU if I ever upgrade the cooler). I've heard that the 9800GTX OCs really well. I should let the NVIDIA Monitor run on my second monitor while I play games to see how hot the card gets with its stock clock rates.
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Well, my desktop has a RADEON X550 and overclocking it managed to get 5-10 FPS extra on WoW, and I definitely saw a increase in overall speed as far as 3D was concerned.
My desktop is also running a Venice core AMD Athlon 64 3800+ overclocked 23% (from 2.0 GHz to 2.46) and it barely runs any hotter, even just with stock cooling (and the Venice core is the worse core out of the 2 that the 3800+ comes in, lol).
I still haven't touched this system as far as clock speeds go, because I'm a little more concerned about the cooling and such, considering it's a laptop.
Also, the weird thing is that I also have some other 720p video (Dennou Coil) that is H264/AAC encoded in MKVs and runs just fine (well, I had a couple times in the last 2 episodes that it desynched, but it wasn't the same as what was happening with Zero no Tsukaima).