I’ve found people using the following settings
I’m using the following at the moment
So i bought all the parts for my PC (internals) and setup everything in my old case. Everything seemed OK at first, but then i noticed it was getting hot without even doing much. I found running realtemp and doing an encode got up to 99c, way to hot. So i went to the pc shop and got 2 x 80mm thermal take fans for the back of the case, and better after market heatsink (Zalman 7000cps), that got the temps down to about 80, with the front off the case, using prime95. Part of the problem was the case, just not enough airflow with the good video card and hot cpu, and as i wanted to overclock the cpu, the Zalman cooler just wasnt cutting it either.
I tossed up between the Aztec 902 case, and the Coolmaster Sniper, i decided to go with the Sniper in the end, got good reviews, and has good airflow, plus it looks nice too.
The CPU Heatsink was a daunting prospect, there are so many on the market, but one that always came up was the Prolima Megahalems, then the next consideration was the fans for the CPU, as noise tends to be an issue on the high end heatsinks, and there were a number of posts on the web about higher static pressure on the fans is better. I decided to go with the Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850 rpm x 2, in a push/pull config, noise isnt too bad.
I’ve gone from 81c at full load stock speeds on the old case and Zalman heatsink, to 77c on the new case and heatsink, overclocked from 2.8 to 3.6Ghz, not bad, and since the encoding doesnt stress the cpu as much as prime95, my normal running temps will be heaps lower.
Vista / Windows 7 UAC is a pain, OpenVpn is poping up a UAC prompt every time i boot windows, one way to get around it is turn off UAC, however thats not a great solution. Another way around it, is to create a scheduled task at logon to run the program with elevated privlidges. Script Guys has a few articles on using WMI and COM objects, really i need the scheduled.service for the scheduler api, the old WMI is for AT commands. There is a AutiIT Scheduler UDF, but it uses the old at method.
Looking at using Intel i7 Core processor for faster encoding, there is a good article comparing the i5-750 and i7-860 with the i7-920, looks like the 860 is just as good as the 920, and the 750 isnt far behind.
I finally found website that compares x264 encoding (mkv’s) this article is on i7-975 and this article is on i5-750 and i7-860/870 with comparison to the i7-920 and i7-940. The review suggests that x264 encoding prefers muti-core as well as hyper-threading, therefore the i7-860 is a good choice and value for money when it comes to encoding.
Parts List:
UPDATE: Bought them Friday, time for an upgrade 🙂
Found a good code snippet on displaying a CSV file in a table, using Text::CSV. There is a small tutorial also. I was trying to use this example, but found it didnt handle the csv very well, its prone to errors.
I’ve created a new category for Film, since I’ve been doing a bit of work trying to do some stuff for the kids. I’ve found the kids have good idea’s (better than me, i lack that sort of imagination), but to get them into a project, i need to have a story board, something to work to otherwise its too wishy-washy.
So i started looking for a program to do story boarding, there is a list of programs for Hobby Filmmakers, which includes celtx, although that may be overboard for what i want. I did find a post that mentions Springboard, which does look promising, you do need a tablet however, which suits me, i haven’t used mine much since i bought it. There is also Frame Forge 3D Core, that has a number of life like characters, and can do nice story boarding, but takes a bit to learn it. I should also mention that Project Durian uses MyPaint to do concept art for the pre-production pipeline.
Another note-worth app is Googles Sketchup, of particular interest is the 3D-Warehouse with a ton of models you can download. You can then use Sketchup to export to .DAE format, then import that into Blender.
I’ve also downloaded a few 3D programs, these are different to blender, basically the program’s are free, but the models have to be bought, you cant really make your own. Daz Studio 3 which does look nice (life-like), and Xtranormal‘s State, Which uses character Paks, which are more cartoon-like, in a sort of scripted environment. It uses Text to speech for the voices, and has a number of poses the characters can do.
