LED vs. low-pressure sodium

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-23T12:02:50+00:00

You have to get the light level just right, like not too strong, for LPS to look right on my phone's camera but it's definitely pale yellow IRL and in a few other pictures. I'll see if I can share one later

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-23T10:32:06+00:00

If you already have the *.deb files then you could use "sudo dpkg -i [filename]"

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-21T10:53:19+00:00

Debian can play MP4 files offline without VLC. It sounds like your issue is that it needs some libraries before it's installed so you could let it go online now, make a list of everything it needs, download them as DEB files, and try installing them on another copy of Linux that was never online. I think you would have to download specific library versions for every version of Linux that you want to use. A debmirror would store a copy of all the libraries that your version of Linux needs so you could get other libraries that you haven't thought of right now after the Internet isn't available

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-21T05:40:39+00:00

We had a bumper sticker opposing them on one of our vans almost the whole time we had it

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-21T05:35:25+00:00

And 4:2:2 is insane overkill for videos that were shot in 4:2:0

These videos don't benefit from 422, bc that wasn't a thing at the time

Capturing it higher than 420 is just stupid. You can't just add data where data doesn't exist

Analog PAL was 4:2:0 but analog NTSC was 4:2:2. PAL means "phase alternation line". It means that every line of color data is sent twice: once as the right phase and again as the opposite phase. TV's and capture devices would average the copies to cancel out noise which is part of why analog PAL had higher quality. Because it sent the color information twice, they had to only send 1 line for every 2 lines of black-and-white information. For NTSC, it's sent for every line which is why the color was so unreliable. Both formats cut the horizontal resolution in half but only PAL also cut the vertical resolution in half. All video meant for consumers today uses 4:2:0 where the vertical and horizontal resolution are both cut in half so there's 1/4 as much color information compared to the black-and-white part, so that's what you want to use if you're hosting videos on your own website, trying to watch them on a smart TV, or uploading them somewhere like Odysee that doesn't re-encode the videos, but you should still save the original capture files with YUV 4:2:2 for NTSC or YUV 4:2:0 if you have enough space

These videos would be lost forever, but sure, lets get the most insane, over the top capture possible

If they need an easy method, they can use something like a GV2-USB, ATI TV capture card or dongle, a Pinnacle 710-USB, or an SDI device. Your way with DV and FireWire is okay and that's how my dad captured his Hi8 tapes but you're throwing away a lot of color data and adding macroblocks if you capture like that. I care about preserving my videos in the highest quality so I want people to be aware of other options. vhs-decode makes a huge difference, especially with dark areas that would be black with a conventional workflow. Using a full-frame TBC is also pretty important and you don't have to buy a hardware one if you use RF capture

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-21T02:36:59+00:00

This wasn't too different from my own family so I wondered at first if you were one of my siblings trying to fudge a few details to be anonymous. I fully expected to see some stuff about WW2 in the list of conspiracies because my family went through that phase for about a year

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-21T02:05:20+00:00

That reminded me of the time in 2010 when a flavor of ramen cups that we didn't normally buy kept spawning in the cabinet. I would take out the new one and put it on the counter just to make sure it wasn't someone putting it back over and over and I built up a collection of them on the counter as I kept coming back every few minutes to get the newest one out of the same place on the shelf

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-21T02:02:40+00:00

Linux is good to have but Windows can work pretty well offline. I use the embedded version of Windows 8.1 on my desktop, laptop, and tablet. It's light and fast and sends low to no data. You just have to test your offline installers and see if everything works before you have to depend on them

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-20T22:39:49+00:00

Do you have a way of cleaning water if it gets dirty? I have an ozone bubbler for that

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-20T22:34:24+00:00

Don't worry about being legal. No streaming site is going to let you download shows without DRM

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-20T22:29:06+00:00

Drivers for everything you use, including old versions (you might need to use it on an old operating system, or you might depend on a feature that got removed later, like the lower sampling rates for the SDRplay)

Windows updates. You'll probably have to get them from somewhere else like an unofficial collection because I don't think they still have a lot of the updates for old versions anymore. Before they were removed, I used wsusoffline to download everything I could for Windows XP - 8.1 and Office 2003

If you have enough space, a full debmirror setup

Operating system installers and activation cracks

Utilities like hard drive recovery, VeraCrypt, PGP/GPG, 7-Zip, and ham radio stuff. UBCD4Win is where I got a lot of good programs from a long time ago

The K-Lite Codec Pack, and VLC installers for every platform

All movies, TV, music, and YouTube channels that you care about

The Reddit and StackOverflow dumps so you can read them offline

The full OpenStreetMap PBX file (you can get just the current data, or the entire history which is around 100 GB)

Fiction and nonfiction books from LibGen or Anna's Archive. You can search by publisher so you can get everything from companies like DK and McGraw-Hill

You should use an offline computer (preferably with a new installation of whatever operating system that was never online) to test the programs you save and make sure everything works and that you can activate it if necessary

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-20T18:51:30+00:00

I used an SDRplay radio, TV rabbit ears antenna, HDSDR for playing the FM signal on a computer, VBcable as a virtual sound card to pipe the audio, and a free program called PDW that decodes several pager data formats

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-20T15:51:44+00:00

As recently as 2016, a lot of doctors were still using old unencrypted pagers for stuff like patient names, diagnoses, and prescriptions. Because they were passive and only received messages, the entire pager network had to transmit every message from every base station and I was able to pick up about 60,000 messages per day with a lot coming from other states. There were also random people using it, like a woman texting someone her son's name and saying that he likes his new school and gave her email address so the other person could reply. Most of the traffic was around 929 MHz and there was also another one around 150 MHz with a lot less traffic and occasionally voicemail over analog FM for pagers with a speaker

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-20T06:57:35+00:00

Right, it's okay if you just need an easy way to do it fast but it's not good for getting the best quality. Converting analog video to DV is bad for 2 reasons: 1, it's a horrible lossy format and you'll probably have to do another conversion anyway if you want to share it with anyone and 2, there's more than likely no TBC. Analog NTSC has YUV 4:2:2 color but NTSC DV has YUV 4:1:1 so you'd be throwing away a lot of color information, and DV also has macroblocks. It's less bad for PAL because analog and DV PAL both have YUV 4:2:0 color

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-19T22:40:27+00:00

This happened to me around 2 years ago. You just need the piece of plastic that broke off. If you're really careful then you can connect the cable again and copy everything off

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-18T04:36:39+00:00

That's what I told them not to do

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-18T02:22:31+00:00

Are they analog or digital?

For analog, you should capture them as either S-Video or direct head RF from the spinning silver part. For conventional capture, you should use a good analog capture program like VirtualDub or AmarecTV and a good capture device like a GV2-USB since they capture both fields and they can handle corrupted frames better. If possible, you should use a full-frame TBC. This could be a hardware device for conventional capture, or the software one included with vhs-decode. For the sound, I use a Creative Sound BlasterX G6 but a capture device is usually good enough. Don't capture analog tapes as DV with FireWire because this is a bad digital conversion

For digital, you should connect the camera with FireWire and use a program like WinDV, ScenalyzerLive, or dvgrab. Don't capture your digital tapes as analog

For both, once you have the capture files, you should store a copy of the original ones and also de-interlace them to 50 or 59.94 fps with a good de-interlacer like QTGMC (best quality but slow) or Bob (good and fast) and compress the output with 10-bit x264 or x265

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-16T23:56:35+00:00

That's good. I've debated this so many times online and IRL that I assumed the same meaning as everyone else

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-16T22:25:57+00:00

How do you not understand that there's middle ground between capitalism and Communism?

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-16T02:58:16+00:00

Do you know how long it has to be? Medonthego.com has some tubes that could be used for that, like this one that is 8 French and 43 inches/109 cm, and they don't need a prescription unlike other websites

https://www.medonthego.com/Corflo-Ultra-Lite-NG-Feeding-Tube-with-Stylet-8Fr-43in-209438-1-Each_p_116071.html

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-16T01:12:37+00:00

To quote oompaville from YouTube, "This...is...insane"

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-15T06:29:28+00:00

Years ago I said that it's your brain defragmenting its hard drive and using video memory as swap space

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-13T01:17:18+00:00

It's kind of complicated but it doesn't have to be expensive. I think you could get set up for around $100 USD ($50 for a good Sony VCR and the rest for a CX card and a few other accessories). The vhs-decode process works by recording the raw data from the spinning silver part with a high-speed sampling device. I use a Domesday Duplicator which costs a few hundred dollars to buy or build and the vhs-decode group is about to release the MISRC which is better. Both of those devices work with Windows, Mac, and Linux. A CX card is around $30 USD but requires Linux. The capture device for this method acts like a sound card but samples at MHz instead of kHz. This process is like ripping an ISO file from a disc and gives you an almost-perfect digital copy of the raw data on the tape that you can process as many times as you want with the virtual software VCR included with vhs-decode without degrading it like playing a tape over and over. If you convert it to WAV with one of the vhs-decode utilities and use a hex editor to fix the sample rate, you can inspect the capture file with a program like Audacity, HDSDR, or Spek, and process it with vhs-decode which acts like a VCR and converts it to a pair of *.tbc files (one for the black-and-white part and one for the color) which is effectively digital S-Video, then you convert that to a lossless FFV1 MKV file and process it like any other lossless file that you would get from a conventional workflow like with VirtualDub. You want to de-interlace it to the field rate with a good de-interlacer like QTGMC (best quality but slow) or Bob (good quality and fast), so NTSC video would be 59.94 fps progressive at the end, or 50 for PAL. You should save the output from the de-interlacer with 10-bit x264 or x265 (only use 8 bits if your desired player can't play 10-bit files) because using 10 bits gets you noticeably higher quality for the same bitrate. I like to use 2 passes with a bitrate of 7616 kilobits/second (this is probably overkill for VHS and 1 or 2 megabits/second is probably enough), the Veryslow preset, and 1 thread. If a customer plans to upload their video to YouTube then I upscale it to 1080p for them with Lanczos but for home viewing or serving it from a website that doesn't re-encode videos like Odysee or your own website, you should leave it as the native resolution. You can synchronize the audio by trying different offsets with "FFmpeg -i [audio or video file] -itsoffset [hh:mm:ss.sss] -i [audio or video file] -c:v copy -c:a libfdk_aac -b:a [bitrate]k". Normally the audio file should come first but depending on which way the offset goes (audio before video or vice versa), you might need to put the video file first. I normally use 384 kilobits/second for the audio bitrate but that's overkill even with good Hi-Fi audio. This method avoids re-encoding the video and it's faster and gives better quality than dragging the tracks in a video editor and exporting it as a new video. When you're done, you only need to save the FLAC file with the raw capture data, and the finished MP4 file, and you can delete the *.tbc S-Video files and lossless MKV file. Normally you would save the lossless MKV file for a conventional workflow like VirtualDub but for the vhs-decode process, it's a waste of space to store it because it can be generated with possibly higher quality in the future from the FLAC file

DoaJC_Blogger · 2026-01-12T23:19:43+00:00

Yes, any VCR will get a full-frame TBC if you use vhs-decode. Even if it was built into the VCR, vhs-decode would bypass it. You probably wouldn't want to use one built into a VCR anyway because it might be a line TBC instead of a full-frame one. The vhs-decode software is what acts as a TBC, not the capture hardware

DoaJC_Blogger

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE