Capturing video from DV camcorder on Windows 7 (beta)

January 15, 2009

I’ve been Windows 7 beta user for some time now and recently I wanted to capture some video from our DV camcorder. Here is how well it worked in Windows 7 beta.

Attaching the camera

As I hadn’t used the video camera (Sony DCR-HC90E, SD-quality) since XP days, I didn’t exactly remember how I used to connect the camera to the computer previously. USB? Ah, firewire!

I rummaged my drawer until I found a cable and attached it to the camera and computer… and … nothing happened. Plug and play, indeed.

Power was on in the camera etc. I doubted that the firewire port in front of the case of this (self-built) computer wasn’t active, so I crawled under the desk and shoved the cable (we are still talking firewire here!) inside the port.

And… new device discovered!

Windows installed drivers for some time and after it finished, this window popped up automatically:

This popped up when I connected Sony DCR-HC90E to the firewire -port

Cool! I wasn’t expecting this, as I would have been glad just to get the device working with Windows. I was prepared to use Windows Live Movie Maker beta or WinDV for capturing the data, but seems like I could skip that step :)

The "More options" –link opens this dialog:

More Options -dialog for video capture

The "Import videos as multiple files" -setting uses similar (same?) algorithm as Windows Movie Maker to divide the video into parts where it thinks the scene changes. I chose it as the video is then easier to edit and manage.

Importing the video

After I was happy with the settings, I clicked Next in the first dialog and the capturing started:

Video capture happens in real time

The capturing happens in real time (it takes 60 minutes for 60 minutes of video), so be sure to reserve time for it. Plugin the camcorder to a power source, too.

Wrapping up

Finally the capture was complete and it didn’t drop any frames in the process:

The wallpaper changed a few times during the capture, if you are wondering about the green border

Finally, Windows splitted the captured video into smaller pieces:

In less than 5 minutes the video was splitted to smaller pieces

As a result, the folder shows bunch of videos that are ready for editing:

Sola loves to fetch toymice thrown down the stairs.

Closing thoughts

I was surprised how smoothly the whole process went, especially in this beta stage. Notice that I did not have to install any drivers or software for the camcorder, motherboard or firewire-port. It just worked like one would expect.

Like many previews have already stated, I agree that Windows 7 beta is already a solid operating system. It is nice to find all kinds of little things that feel right. Btw, if you haven’t read Tim Sneath’s The Bumber List of Windows 7 Secrets, I recommend you to do it now.

This desktop is relatively old – I bought the original parts in 2004 – and while Vista Ultimate worked about fine, Windows 7 works very smoothly with this. The specs are: single-core P4 3.60GHz, 3GB RAM, 256MB ATI 3650.

P4 3.60GHz, 3GB RAM, ATI 3650 256MB

Not suitable for modern gaming due to slow cpu and display adapter, but decent enough for .NET development and normal desktop use for few more years. If you have similar specs and wonder if your computer is fast enough for Windows 7.

Soon, I’ll install Windows 7 beta to my work laptop (Dell Latitude 830) :)

23 Comments | Beta, Tips, Video, Windows7 | Permalink
Posted by jemm

SQL Server 2008 Management Studio tip: Status bar Custom Colors

August 12, 2008

Here is a handy tip for those of you who work often with multiple SQL Server instances: Custom Colors for the connection status bar.

You have probably noticed the new status bar at the bottom of the Query windows in the new SSMS:

Khaki Status Bar

While exploring the new version, I just noticed this setting in the Connection Properties:

Sql2008 Mgmt Studio Connection Properties

Checking the box allows you to pick any color from a standard color –dialog after clicking the Select… –button.

Here is the status bar in red:

Red Status Bar

…and in green:

Green Status Bar

So what?

Now you are probably thinking: “Neat, but not a big deal. So the color can be changed. Whee! What does this guy want for this discovery? A medal? Front paged in DotNetKicks, Digg and Techmeme? 5000 2000 followers in Twitter and FriendFeed? Interview from the Louis Gray?”

Actually the point of this blog post was to tell how this feature could be used for avoiding human errors during daily administration & development.

If you are like me, you often have multiple connections open for several servers and you have to be careful to make sure you are working on the right one. Color coding the connections could help to avoid – possibly serious – mistakes.

For example, you could dedicate:

  • Green for development servers
  • Yellow for test servers
  • Red for production servers

This way you are more likely warned before accidentally executing that TRUNCATE TABLE on a production server instead of the test server you meant to…

Great thing about this feature is that SQL Server remembers your preferences per server, so you need to define the colors only once.

13 Comments | Microsoft, SqlServer, SqlServer2008, Tips | Permalink
Posted by jemm

Tip: How to keep unit tests up to date

May 30, 2008

I was reading Derik Whittakers post about Keeping your tests up to date and it gave me an idea: make a test that fails if the tests are not reviewed.

Let’s say tests should be reviewed every week. When there are huge amount of tests, it will get hard to track when they were last time reviewed.

In this idea the review date is updated among the tests after each review and if the date is not updated because of a missing review, it’ll show up in the test results:

Test Results 

Here is a code of the review test (MSTest):

[TestMethod]

public void SecurityTestReview()

{

    //Last time of review

    DateTime lastReview = new DateTime(2008, 5, 20);

    //Policy says that tests should be reviewed every week

    int expected = 7;

    //Days since last review

    int actual = new TimeSpan(DateTime.Today.Subtract(lastReview).Ticks).Days;

 

    Assert.IsTrue(expected > actual, "The security tests should be reviewed.");

}

After the reported "bug", reviewer/developer/tester goes through the tests and manually marks current date to the lastReview date. Each test class could have one of these review tests in the beginning or in the end of the test class.

Of course, it is up to the integrity of the reviewer to actually go through all the tests and not just update the review date, but so is writing good quality tests in the first place. This solution can’t guard the testers, but it can help them and managers to keep track when tests might get outdated.

Being relative new to unit tests I’m not sure if this is a new or even a good idea, but I think it could help maintaining the quality of the tests. What do you think?

2 Comments | .NET, C#, SDLC, Testing, Tips, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm

Myth: Keyboard can’t crash your computer

February 24, 2008

I recently upgraded my server to Windows Server 2008 and soon after that the problems started. No, not because of the greatest server operating system there is, but because of a hardware issue.

The symptom was always the same: computer would suddenly reboot, then turn off. Power led, fans etc were on and keyboard LEDs (caps lock, scroll lock and num lock) were flashing very fast. I couldn’t find many similar symptoms by searching the web, either.

The server started crashing after variable periods of time and it was difficult to find the reason. I had upgraded the memory to 2GB at the same time, so that’s where it was natural to start troubleshooting. I tried various memory tests, old memory DRAM’s etc, but still the computer kept crashing.

It could have been a heating issue, but it hadn’t been a problem before and the hardware monitor in BIOS showed low temperatures. By the way, crashed happened in CMOS-setup, too, so it had to be a hardware-related issue.

I also suspected faulty hard disk, motherboard or PSU, but luckily I found the reason: my old Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro that I had reserved for random uses like this.

I had attached the keyboard for the fresh install of the Windows Server 2008 as Remote Desktop can’t be used in the early phase of installation. After installation, I had left the keyboard attached, just in case there were problems and I needed to login directly. Never would I have thought that the keyboard could actually cause this severe problems. How ironic.

At one point I guessed that maybe the keyboard from 1999 could be the reason with the odd blinking after the crashes and because usually I don’t have any keyboard or mouse attached to the server.

So I detached the old PS/2-keyboard from the server and the server has been running fine ever since for several days. The PS/2 -connector could somehow be faulty, too, but either way, I’ll use only USB-keyboards from this century/millennium from now on.

Not sure if I should blame Microsoft or IBM (who invented PS/2-port) for my problems. Of course I’m not the one to blame for using too old hardware! ;) Hopefully this post helps someone with similar symptoms.

This time I really had to think outside the box to solve the problem :D

Another busted myth

3 Comments | Hardware, Keyboard, Server, Tips, Troubleshooting, Windows, WindowsServer2008 | Permalink
Posted by jemm

How to follow DotNetKicks.com efficiently

February 21, 2008

I’ll show here a little tip how I follow my favorite .NET-community, DotNetKicks.com (DNK). It is one of the best .NET-resources and it gets lot’s of quality content daily so staying up to speed with the site requires some effort.

Luckily, DotNetKicks offers RSS-feeds for almost every list so I fiddled around with Firefox and its nice Live Bookmarks to find an optimal way to follow what’s happening at the DotNetKicks.

The most interesting feeds or pages for me are:

  1. Published front page stories
  2. Upcoming, recently submitted stories
  3. Stories Kicked by me
  4. Stories submitted by me
  5. Kick Spy! that follows the activities in the site in almost real time.

When I put the Live Bookmarks in a folder in Bookmarks Toolbar, I can easily drag the mouse down to see with a glance if there’s anything new in any of the first three sections.

clip_image001

Works great with the del.icio.us, too

By the way, this works well with many other social bookmarking sites as well.

For example, the Latest deli in the screen capture refers to my feed at del.icio.us. Similarly the Daily Live Bookmark shows my links that I visit regularly. They are links that have “Daily”-tag in del.icio.us which is flexible with rss-feeds.

The advantage is that the links are centralized and I can access the same bookmarks from work and home. When I add new links, they are automatically synchronized wherever I use them. If I’m at public computer, I can still access my bookmarks through the del.icio.us -web site.

It’s really fast to setup the regular feeds as Live Bookmarks after fresh install of Firefox. del.icio.us Complete is my favorite extension for posting links to del.ico.us straight from the Firefox:

clip_image001[5]

I hope these tips helped you to get some ideas to boost your productivity. :)

kick it on DotNetKicks.com

Leave a Comment » | .NET, DotNetKicks, Firefox, RSS, Tips | Permalink
Posted by jemm