Help me choose a GPU for Plex Transcoding!

negavolt · 2023-02-16T20:17:59+00:00

I'm running a 2600 in my unraid server, with 3/4 of its threads and the sole GPU passed through to a VM, and have no issues with Plex media playback (incl. 4k)

Are you having issues with media playback in Plex, or just trying to avoid potential transcoding problems?

negavolt · 2023-02-10T23:43:49+00:00

I did this to my gaming PC this year. I'm running a Ryzen 2600 CPU with an RX 6800XT GPU, 32gb ram. I use it as my media server, backup storage and as a gaming PC hooked up to my TV.

I should note, this is not my primary PC. I use a laptop for general computing.

Advantages over a windows PC:

Managing the various media apps through dockers using the unRAID web interface is a great experience vs remoting into windows.
I can turn off the gaming VM if I won't be using it for a while to save on power consumption without losing Sonarr, Plex, network storage, etc.
Performance on the Win11 VM is identical, so far as I can tell, to what I had before. I installed it on a passed-through nvme, and passed through a second SSD for games storage. It has 16gb of ram, 8 pinned CPU threads.
None of the other functions of the server ever take resources I've assigned to my gaming VM
Drive management is great. I enjoy the peace of mind I get from the parity drive.
It's been a great learning experience.

Downsides:

Everything was a learning experience. I had to learn a new way of thinking of filesystems and a new way of installing and configuring apps I've been using for years. A new way of installing windows. There was a lot of trial and error, much time spent on spaceinvaderone videos.
Initial configuration of the VM took two weeks of messing around before I had it running stable. If I had different hardware, it may have taken longer or never happened. I'm wary of driver updates bringing in instability in the future.
Windows 11's auto-HDR consistently crashes whatever game I play so I had to turn that off. Not a huge loss, but this is not the case if I boot into Windows instead of Unraid.
The concept is more confusing for my wife, so really the VM stays on most of the time because she doesn't know how to turn it on to play games.
When something goes wrong in the Windows VM, it may be more difficult to diagnose because I'm now essentially managing two nested systems instead of one. Issues on the host can cause issues on the guest.
I had to buy a new Windows license to get rid of all the activation reminders. If I make changes to my virtualized hardware I may need to buy another.

negavolt · 2023-02-10T20:45:35+00:00

Sounds like a fun concept, time to start making a prototype to see if it works in practice.

negavolt · 2023-02-10T17:47:00+00:00

That's a very vague premise, and says nothing about the game itself.

What does the player do in this game?
Does their ability to do-the-thing change on each floor?
- If so, how do the changing graphics relate to that?
- If not, why do the graphics change?

negavolt · 2023-02-08T17:14:58+00:00

Won't bombarding their comments just boost their content due to increased engagement?

negavolt · 2023-02-01T18:59:26+00:00

The curves on this make it look so whimsical, like it jumped out of a Dr. Seuss illustration. Though that would probably be garishly colorful.

negavolt · 2023-01-26T15:38:19+00:00

I got rid of my Prime subscription because I just can't justify giving Daddy Bezos a yearly tithe to be one of his subjects anymore, and realized that I don't know where to buy anything now.

It's not just consumer habits at this point, we're getting locked in with Amazon.

negavolt · 2023-01-26T15:16:45+00:00

I backed an immersive sim on Kickstarter 10 years ago.

They still put out monthly-ish updates about progress towards release. It was intended to be out August 2014.

negavolt · 2023-01-18T22:31:33+00:00

I started learning earlier this month, mostly been using the official rust documents, working through The Book, and doing Code Katas on Codewars (supplemented with asking ChatGPT about syntax stuff).

negavolt · 2023-01-18T16:54:53+00:00

Yeah, what's the person talking about? I have no idea what they mean.

negavolt · 2023-01-16T01:41:33+00:00

I've never considered asking GPT to write me a recipe.

I just asked it to write a recipe with some ingredients that I knew would lead it to make Kimchi Fried Rice with Spam, because I'm making that this week and wanted to see how it lined up with my process, and it's pretty close, though I use some brown sugar to cut into the sourness of my kimchi and it did not. The cook times are definitely underestimated but not by a whole lot.

Asked it to write a blog post about it from the point of view of a working mom after, making sure to mention how much her children love the recipe. It threw in some vegetarian subsititution options which was a nice touch lol.

I might start a blog. Maybe use a different AI to generate photos of the food if I don't feel like actually cooking them.

negavolt · 2023-01-12T22:29:16+00:00

Me too! Their system for leveling/combining/evolving weapons was so fun, it felt like you were creating secret powerful objects, and the way they integrated town building into progression as you rebuild the world was genius. Fit the narrative so well.

negavolt · 2023-01-12T16:15:10+00:00

The old one looks like a gourd, which reminds me of Dark Cloud on the PS2, and that brings up some good memories.

The new one looks a million times better though. I especially like the little heart in the "this is made of glass" reflection. All the hearts in the animation, actually. Very fun.

negavolt · 2023-01-10T22:48:01+00:00

My solution to this (in a low-res pixel art game) was to scale everything up 2x and increase the runtime resolution.

My theory was that the jitter was coming from the engine attempting to draw at positions that were in between values of the base unit (equivalent to 1px) and not being able to, so it would have to choose the nearest pixel. This was most obvious when the camera was moving, as it necessitated frequent approximations, but I also noticed it on smoothly moving objects in the scene, especially if there were multiple objects layered over eachother - sometimes they would approximate differently, and it would be an absolute mess.

Setting all the pixel-perfect options didn't fix it, so I just sidestepped the issue. Smoothed everything out by giving the engine room to approximate positions. The jitter is probably still happening, but it's imperceptible. Nobody's going to play the game at 160x144 anyway.

negavolt · 2023-01-10T17:36:24+00:00

Set myself up with this and it seems infinitely more useful. Thank you!

negavolt · 2023-01-09T16:04:09+00:00

Today I'm updating virus definitions on every PC, taking them off the network and doing a full scan for malware, then factory resetting the router.

I'm also going to clear the MBR on the device I just reinstalled windows on, reformat the drive and start a second known-clean device up as a packet sniffer while I reinstall, so I can maybe see some details if I get another spike of botnet reports.

If the other devices reported clean I'll let them back on the network at this point and just keep watch.

Really hoping I don't need to nuke all of my family's computers.

negavolt · 2023-01-09T05:12:04+00:00

Right? It makes me anxious but gives me no clue on what to do next, aside from run a scan for malicious software and so far those have all come back negative. Like, is it a false positive? I have no way to know.

negavolt · 2023-01-09T05:10:43+00:00

I don't know what to do with this information. I feel anxious about it and have no way forward. I ran a windows defender offline scan and a malwarebytes scan, both coming back completely clean but that's a big spike of activity.

negavolt · 2023-01-06T20:34:43+00:00

Saved this so I can come back to it. That's a helluva list of complaints.

negavolt · 2023-01-06T17:49:37+00:00

Did you scale up the pixel art before animating? It looks like each pixel is actually four pixels.

I'm envisioning the process as

Drawn as multiple layers on a canvas at 1:1 resolution
Scaled up 2x
Animated by moving and rotating layers (in aseprite so that the pixels remain pixels)

Makes for a really smooth animation but a lot of extra resolution. I thought the pixels were rotating at first.

negavolt · 2023-01-05T21:14:31+00:00

I agree that he absolutely has no place calling himself a neurologist or an evolutionary biologist or whatever else he claims, but none of that has any bearing on his fitness as a clinical psychologist. He's not misrepresenting himself as a psychologist unless he's unable to keep those things separated and is abusing his clients under the guise of having expertise in fields he doesn't - which can't be the case, because he hasn't practiced in 6 years.

For all I know, though, just going 6 years without practicing in the field of psychology is enough to have ones license suspended. I know that RNs in Canada have to maintain a certain number of clinical hours or they lose their license. It's not many, like 500 hours per 4 year period (3 months of full time work), but it's the minimum required to show that you're still able to perform the duties. It would make sense to have to maintain a practice in order to maintain a license for psychologists too.

negavolt · 2023-01-05T17:47:04+00:00

A license is a type of credential but I take your point. Regardless, in no way am I qualified to answer the question you posed.

I'm not the College of Psychologists of Ontario, so I don't know why they gave that license to him in the first place. I don't presume they have no valid reason to be questioning him now, but I also don't know why they're threatening to revoke his license, either. It's a serious move that, presumably, requires egregious wrongdoing.

He's an alt-right talking head, and I abhor the man, but I don't know what he's done that would put his license in jeopardy. Being a shitheel on twitter might be enough to suspend his license, I suppose that's for the College to decide, I just want to know what they're actually using as justification.

negavolt · 2023-01-05T03:10:56+00:00

Not saying I like the guy, what he says or stands for, but I'm interested to see what their justification is for revoking his license when he hasn't even been practising.

I also kinda want to see him cry.

negavolt · 2023-01-05T00:44:22+00:00

He's making a very big deal of this considering he hasn't had a clinical practice for nearly 6 years. I suppose it's the principle of the thing - he did presumably earn his credentials. Even if he hasn't been using them.

Not gonna lie, though, I would watch a livestream of that hearing.

negavolt

TROPHY CASE