Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 March 22

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March 22

HD camcorder with emphasis on microphone jack (and budget)

So I need a camcorder. I would like to record a singer/songwriter friend of mine for an upload to youtube in HD quality. The 720p video recommendation from youtube is very easy to find. Flip's minoHD, or Creative's vado HD, or Kodak's Zi6, are all compact, handsome options but none of them have a mic jack to emphasize sound quality (please correct me if I'm wrong!). Giant brains of the reference desk, I beseech thee: tell me of any low cost, 720p, compact camera with extremely high audio quality, or preferably a mic jack. And, of course, if I'm posting this in the wrong place, please flame me as I deserve. 96.255.205.141 (talk) 00:01, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Would you consider doing it in two pieces, then cutting it back together? I'm thinking the Zoom audio recorders. That said, I suspect getting the audio to sync back up will make you pull your hair out. --Mdwyer (talk) 01:55, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Zoom is an awesome option. I only wish it was a little more inexpensive. I'd like to plug in an inexpensive mic into an inexpensive 720p hd camera. I don't know if it's possible. Sappysap (talk) 02:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally - I'd record the audio with a separate digital recorder (you could use a laptop for this) and stereo mike and then sync up the video and audio in a post-production step. That way you can adjust the audio balance and do noise filtering and other adjustments using high quality audio tools (I recommend Audacity - it's a great tool and it's free) - then marry together audio and video using the crappy video recorder's sound track to help you get them in perfect sync at the end. It's more effort - but if you're serious about wanting a quality result - that's the only way to go. SteveBaker (talk) 21:20, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a random tip to the OP... I have found that if you disconnect your laptop from the power supply, it eliminates a lot of hum. If possible, run an unpowered mic through a battery-powered preamp if you're not getting enough gain from your line-ins on your soundcard. Plus don't overestimate the benefit of sinking money into hardware. If you are new, its tough to understand how setting mic levels and input levels and mic positioning and all those simple things make a huge difference. I even learned that different rooms of a house record better in, maybe something to do with electrical wiring (maybe the cheap wiring is in bedrooms?) or the way a house's electrical circuits are drawn. I've been waiting a long time for prices to come down in the HD cams. Last time I seriously studied them, they were over $1500. My biggest complaint was that you couldn't use an XLR jack, and that those inanely expensive cameras required you to use their $3 high pickup built-in mic. 71.54.173.193 (talk) 09:08, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Skype Data Consumption

A friend is considering purchasing a new laptop mainly for the purpose of communicating with friends overseas using Skype. The model in mind comes packaged with a 3G connection (Huawei E220, SIM Card Based, operating on the local mobile network) which is capped at 500mb per month. Question 1: Is a 3G connection suitable for Skype ... despite its high speeds would latency on the mobile network not degrade the Skype experience ? Question 2: How much data on average say per minute does Skype consume when making calls and will the 500mb cap be sufficient (answer obviously dependent on how long they actually talk for) ? Does it also consume data when not making calls due to its peer-to-peer model ? What other VOIP software would be better ? Thanks in advance !--41.16.218.139 (talk) 05:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

1) Latency on 3g networks varies a lot, from 100ms to 800+. Some people report 1 second delays in their skype calls, but for other people it works fine. Depends on where you are, I guess.

2) Skype uses 70kbps during a call according to this one guy [1], so 500mb will come out to about 1000 minutes. Although they say that the average is ~20kbps [2], which would be 3x as much. But yeah, skype can also use bandwidth while not actively calling (especially if you become a supernode), so watch out for that.

Maybe someone who actually uses Skype on 3g will know more. Indeterminate (talk) 05:16, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I've used skype on a 3g connection many, many times, and it almost always works just fine. A tiny bit of latency perhaps, but not much more than you'd get on a wired internet connection. 90.233.134.63 (talk) 02:31, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

While connected to your wired/wireless connection, make a call to a friend or echo123. When in the call, if you hover your mouse over call timer on the pop-out window, a tooltip will appear with call statistics. On the top 'paragraph,' the last line reads:

BW (avg/60 secs): upload =  2 kBps; download = 3 kBps

You can use this number to gauge how much you are using in real time as an average over a minute. Note that this shows the usage in bytes per second rather than bits per second.

Edit: If you do not have a tooltip popup, go to Options -> Advanced -> Connection. Check the box that says "Display technical information during calls" aszymanik speak! 06:18, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Scheduling/alert application in Windows Vista

Resolved

I want an application that will allow me to set up half-hourly reminders/alerts on my computer. Does anyone know of one that is both free and compatible with Windows Vista? 99.245.16.164 (talk) 06:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

It may not be what you want, but I remember a site from years ago: http://www.gregorybraun.com/ that had a nice little alarm thing called reminders. I haven't tried it with Vista, and I'm sure if you wait a little longer someone may be able to point you to something better - but I always liked Braun's stuff - small footprint, etc. — Ched ~ ^(yes?)/_© 09:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

That's quite good actually, thanks. 99.245.16.164 (talk) 15:02, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

IE8 vs. Chrome

Chrome has the function where if one tab crashes, freezes, or, malfunctions in some other way, it will not crash other tabs, or the whole Window, or other Chromewindows, or tabs in these other or the other Chromewindow(s). In other words, independent events is incorporated into the browser.

Does IE8 have this, or is IE8 like this?68.148.145.190 (talk) 07:43, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't have any refs to back me up on this, but I don't think IE8 does at the moment. I use Chrome, and Firefox (which is also sandboxing some processes, but not to the extent that Chrome does). So ... "No", but that's just "IMHO", "FWIW", "IIRC" stuff. — Ched ~ ^(yes?)/_© 09:20, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Again, I don't have the links, but apparently the newly-released... ehm... release version of IE8 does run tabs in separate processes... but only up to 3 tabs, after which they start sharing again and stop being independent. Microsoft decided people generally didn't use more than 3 tabs, so they "optimised" for this. Rawling4851 09:47, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't sound like they're optimizing for 3 or fewer tabs, it sounds more like they're optimizing for more than 3 tabs. I mean, people who have 3 or fewer tabs open will never encounter the limit, so it's not optimizing anything in that case... -- BenRG (talk) 16:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Geez, I have 10 tabs open in Firefox right now, and this is typical for me. StuRat (talk) 15:00, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I have 108 tabs open, all faviconized. Beat that! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 21:03, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft are engaged in this peculiar "we know how you work and we won't give you more things than we think you need" thing right now. Windows-7 will limit you to three user-tasks running at once in the most basic 'home' edition...why? Well, that's all they think you can get your tiny little heads around. Given a limit of only 3 user-tasks, it makes sense to optimise IE8 to deal with just 3 tasks and get people used to the idea before Windows-7 hits the streets. It's also possible that they are leading up to the IE8 'pro-edition' which allows more tab-threads but costs actual $$$. Who knows? They've gone quite off the rails in the last year or two since the Vista debacle. The worst part of all of this is that it shouldn't be necessary. The need to recover from crashed tabs shouldn't happen because tabs shouldn't crash. The problem is that we have flash plugins with bugs that the browser writers can't fix because it's in the hands of Adobe - who either can't or won't fix it. When the plugin crashes - it takes the browser with it. The obvious thing would be to fix the stupid flash plugin and leave it at that. SteveBaker (talk) 21:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

"Gone off the rails" = "gone nuts" ? As for making apps that never crash, it's a nice dream, but I'd also like to see a system that can minimize the damage if a crash occurs, just in case. StuRat (talk) 03:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The concept of "crashing" is nothing but a way of minimizing damage in the first place. What really happens is that the processor encounters a sequence of code bytes that doesn't represent a valid machine instruction, or a read or write to virtual memory that isn't mapped to physical RAM, or a write to memory that's marked as read-only, or an array access that's out of bounds, or something of that sort. The processor doesn't go crazy when that happens, it simply saves information about the problem and jumps to a predefined exception handler. The infamous "this application has performed an illegal operation" box isn't put up by the system, it's put up by the default exception handler in the process itself. An application can replace that with something else. NT allows a lot of versatility in this: you could make a read of unmapped memory return 0 instead of crashing, for example. The problem is that it's generally nearly impossible to figure out the right thing to do. The code that directly caused the problem is often not the code actually at fault. It might have been correctly dereferencing a pointer that was corrupted by some other piece of code much earlier. If you return 0 and pretend nothing happened you could be opening the way to further damage—for example, the user, oblivious to the trouble, could save a corrupted document, destroying the copy on disk. Immediately terminating the application is considered the least-worst default behavior. -- BenRG (talk) 16:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

The ideal situation would be if every app (or even every tab on a browser) had it's own chunk of memory allocated, and couldn't possibly write to any other memory. Basically every write to memory request should go through a control program that rejects any attempt to write beyond the allocated zone. In this case, any app that tries to do that could terminate, but there would be no need for it to take down any other applications with it. StuRat (talk) 05:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

You appear to be mistaken about Windows 7 Home Basic. According Windows 7 editions it doesn't have the limitation. I suspect you're thinking of Windows 7 Starter. But the Starter editions (both Vista and XP) have always have the limitation and I have never heard the explanation offered that they think it's all that people can manage. Even if this explaination has ever been offered, which I somehow doubt, I think it's quite clear this is not the reason. Starter has always been intended to be a very low cost option offered by Microsoft for developing countries so they limit it very severely (e.g. it only supports one core and I believe for a while something like 512mb RAM altho this may have changed with Windows 7 and IIRC 1024x768 was the resolution limit). Also given the sort of hardware it's intended to run on and the fact that it's still Windows with all the associated overhead, I personally wouldn't recommend trying to run more then 3 tasks anyway :-P Now whether it makes sense to use Starter as opposed to something else is of course an interesting issue but clearly one that is OT. Now the 3 tabs thing is I agree a dumb thing (and Microsoft does tend to do that we know better then you thing a lot) although I would expect it is in fact the case for perhaps 95+% of users. P.S. Ironically even though the 95+% thing was a number I made up as a random guess, Microsoft says exactly the same thing (See Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:25 PM by AndyZei [MSFT)] Nil Einne (talk) 11:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

They probably made it up, too. Nice round numbers like that always raise my suspicions. StuRat (talk) 15:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

While I would agree it's easily possible the number is made up (and it's also easily possible it's not, I'm pretty sure Microsoft does a hell of a lot of market research) I don't think it being a 'nice round number' is any indication. Obviously any research would have come up with a better figure, e.g. 3.15% of users use more then 3 tabs but it's normal practice when quoting numbers for a general audience to round them to 'nice round numbers'. That would presuambly why they said 95%+ not 95.00000000000000000% exactly. Nil Einne (talk) 06:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

To answer the OP, I would definitely go with Chrome. It's a lot faster than IE. But if I were to choose, I'd get Firefox over Chrome any day since every inch of the browser and websites are customizable. A few off the bat that make me love firefox so much are Ad blocks, speed enhancers, stylish, my list would continue for miles but I'll stop. -- penubag  (talk) 06:15, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

How is that answering the OP? The OP didn't ask whether to choose Chrome or IE nor didn't he/she ask which one is better (unless you count the header but that seems a bit of a stretch given that the post itself was rather clear about what was being asked). And Firefox was never brought up at all. The question simply pertained to whether one feature was available in IE8 which has already been answered more or less and your reply seems a case of needless advocacy that in no way pertains to the question or any discussion that has since started. Nor if you were saying Firefox had this feature, that might be relevant even if not specifically asked but as it stands I'm starting to understand why people are getting annoyed at the advocacy Nil Einne (talk) 11:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Where and How should I write this code?

where and how should i write the code in this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb760252(VS.85).aspx
I tried it with my VS2008 C# application but i cannot be compiled which compiler, language, libraries or tools do i need? thanks in advance Supersonic8 (talk) 12:42, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

The code that you have linked to is code for a native Windows application, which cannot be run in the .NET Framework. If you are looking for the .NET counterpart of what it does, that's here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.tooltip.aspx . If you still want to compile this code, you need a C or C++ compiler (such as VS2008 for C++, free Express edition available, I think) and the Windows SDK which provides the libraries needed (may be included in the IDE). 84.174.102.84 (talk) 13:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

That's C++, using the Win32 API. Visual C++ would work to compile it. Whether you could use those functions from C# I don't know, but it's definitely not worth it. If you have a C# .NET program then look for C# .NET examples. -- BenRG (talk) 13:06, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

"New mail" notifier for IMAP

Hi! I'm looking for a small application, that just connect to my IMAP mail account and print something if there is a new mail. I dont want any mail client or anything that run as a process in background, just check new mail and end. Do you know about something like that? Thanks! Lukipuk (talk) 13:05, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Googling for "IMAP notifier" finds a couple (for Windows), but I've not used them so I can't make recommendations; his is a Linux one (I've not used it either). You might find that "new mail" is a concept that doesn't quite map to IMAP as you might expect - IMAP knows the difference between read and unread mail, but "new" mail is generally "mail that's been received since you last checked", and "since you last checked" is something that a mail client knows about, but that a simple notifier doesn't. 87.114.147.43 (talk) 13:37, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Crysis sandbox2 Sound

How do I add sound from my own computer to the game editor?--81.227.64.85 (talk) 16:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Inkjet Printing onto Canvas (Epson Stylus Photo R2880)

I have recently purchased an Epson Stylus Photo R2880 and would like to print photos to canvas-style paper but have found it difficult finding an appropriate style of paper. I plan to print to the canvas then attach it around a wooden frame to achieve a canvas painting style photo. Specifically of course I need to know which paper, if any, will work with the R2880.

Many thanks. Lukerees1983 (talk) 22:39, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Epson.com lists two types of compatible "canvas" paper, both in roll format, 13 inches by 20 feet. --LarryMac | Talk 12:26, 24 March 2009 (UTC)