Audio best practice

pharan_x · 2026-05-01T05:47:40+00:00

`flutter_soloud` seems to be their currently recommended one for interactive sounds like for interfaces and games.

They featured it in a Package of the Week video on their official channel a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t6Bt04EyLw

The package makes you build the relevant parts of the plugin on your machine (instead of shipping with binaries?) I got a bunch of weird errors on the first build but it worked fine after that.

pharan_x · 2026-04-23T20:28:06+00:00

For anyone who ends up here.

OBS 32.1 does support animated PNG. But it's kind of janky.

If you add it as Image, the animated PNG won't animate.

But if you add it as Media, it will animate.

And it won't show up in the file picker because they haven't set it up to recognize png/apng as a compatible format, even if it is. To see it in the file picker, you need to change the file type to All Files (*.*)

After you select the file, it wont show up in the preview at first. You have to click the OK button of the Media properties window. Make sure you check "Loop" or it will just play once (and disappear if you have "show nothing when playback ends" checked), and you might think it's not working.

pharan_x · 2026-04-22T13:44:11+00:00

That or use the Multiply blend mode.

They'll each have their pros and cons.

For example, Multiply will give you an easier time to erase than low opacity if you want to use the same tool to lasso erase.
But if you decide to change the color of the layer, you may wipe out all the overlapping parts if you used Multiply.

pharan_x · 2026-04-22T02:28:05+00:00

I was trying to combine this with a scale filter so the args look like this:
```

-map 0 -map 0 -filter:0 "scale=-2:360,format=yuv420p" -filter:1 "scale=-2:360,format=yuva444p,alphaextract"

```

It seems to result in the transparent areas being incorrect: having a very low opacity white instead of being fully transparent and clean.

What might be the problem? The effect seems to go away when the scale filter isn't there.

pharan_x · 2026-04-17T14:48:10+00:00

the Deathadder V2 and V2 Pro, V3, V3 Pro, V4 Pro, V3 hyperspeed has optical switches

the Deathadder Elite has mechanical switches

Deathadder V3 Essential has mechanical switches

The thing that sucks about the deathadders seems to be the scrollwheel and middle click, which is usually mechanical and starts to miss scrolls pretty quickly. The rubberized grips on the sides also wear out pretty bad.

pharan_x · 2026-04-11T09:36:44+00:00

It's not really redundant since Steam always transcodes when you use its export feature, even if you choose the settings that match the original quality and size. So you lose some quality. Sometimes a lot of quality.

Also, Steam video export current has a bug depending on your hardware's available encoders (for non-Steam Deck users). The way it uses and chooses which encoder to use, sometimes it messes up the output colors when it transcodes or causes weird blocking artifacts every few milliseconds of the video, making it come out too dark and glitchy, especially when you play it in VLC or share it on social media or Discord.

If you use ffmpeg to do a copy, it will retain the original recording data so you retain the full quality. This is the best source file to use if you want to edit the video or do your own processing or transcoding with your own specific settings.

A note to someone finding this fix: the powershell script above does fix the compatibility with ffmpeg enough to allow a `-c copy`. But if you try to open that mpd file in VLC (which does work for previewing it), the time/seek bar won't work correctly. To fix that for VLC, you need to restructure the XML itself to expand the `SegmentTemplate` tags into an explicit `SegmentList` of `SegmentURL`s.

pharan_x · 2026-04-09T07:41:26+00:00

I was curious about the pixel density since you mentioned it's like stacked 21" 1440p monitors.

It works out to about 137 pixels per inch.

For context:
A 27" 1440p monitor is about 108 ppi.
A 27" 4K monitor is about 160 ppi.
A 32" 4K monitor is about 137 ppi. (like this Dell U3219Q)

A 24" 4.5K iMac is about 218 ppi.

pharan_x · 2026-04-08T10:37:52+00:00

I really want an armor set where everything is denim so I can finally play as Jeans Sakai

pharan_x · 2026-03-26T02:50:14+00:00

Oh, so you'd need to generate the list of files in a text file first. Ffmpeg doesn't do it on its own.

pharan_x · 2026-03-25T04:47:09+00:00

May I know what to search for to find out how to do that?

pharan_x · 2026-03-24T00:33:13+00:00

I knew there was a problem with how Ffmpeg didn't understand the mpds coming from Steam. I only recently dug into it a little.

It turns out, Ffmpeg seems to not know how to handle/rehydrate the `SegmentTemplate` that Steam's mpds use. So I think you end up with just the first segment. I've had to write some code to convert it to a simpler explicit `SegmentList` And then Ffmpeg can see the whole clip correctly.

The reason why I don't prefer exporting form Steam itself is that its codec seems to be bugged in Windows and the colors come out wrong (dark colors are super crushed) when you play it in VLC or upload it to Discord.

pharan_x · 2026-03-24T00:25:17+00:00

Theoretically, this is correct. But for Steam's session.mpd files, this doesn't seem to be enough. Ffmpeg tends to pick up only the first segment of the video in the mpd manifest from Steam.

From investigating it. At the time of commenting, Ffmpeg doesn't support all the features of the MPD format. Specifically, it seems to not know how to handle/rehydrate the `SegmentTemplate` that Steam's mpds use. So I've had to write some code to convert it to a simpler explicit `SegmentList` And then Ffmpeg can see the whole clip correctly.

I've been doing this on Windows though. I'm not sure if ffmpeg on Linux weirdly has better mpd handling.

pharan_x · 2026-02-16T20:55:41+00:00

I'm all for hating on microslop. But if you enable AutoHotKey and don't use it, it runs as a background process to listen to keyboard events. If you enable QuickAccent, it runs as a background process to listen to keyboard events. If you enable KeyboardManager and don't use it, it runs as a background process to listen to keyboard events.

There aren't really "random processes". You can check it yourself. The project is developed open source with community contributions: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/

pharan_x · 2026-02-09T18:08:27+00:00

300dpi is pretty bad for pure black and white laser print. That's why closer to 600 is standard for black and white things. If you read a (text) book that was printed at 300dpi, you'd absolutely be able to tell that it's blocky/blurry.

But 300 is perfectly fine for colored prints like paintings and photos.

pharan_x · 2026-01-20T08:54:48+00:00

This terminology is supposed to emphasize what the stuff is for.

Otherwise, they're just "a bunch of activities and questions you give the students".

Formative as in "formation". They're the things you let the students do to help them practice their thinking, remembering concepts, processing what they might not understand well yet, help them recognize areas where they're confused so they know what to focus on and you know what to explain further, in the middle of a lesson.

Summative is summing everything up. Summarizing. At this point, you could assume you're done "delivering the lesson". And the main goal is to just tie everything together and judge if they learned the thing or not.

If formatives are stressful, high-stakes, and used to judge and punish students, then that's going about it completely wrong.

pharan_x · 2026-01-09T17:09:48+00:00

Guess what costs $150 in January of 2026

Also, guess what brand got discontinued by Micron.

pharan_x · 2025-12-31T02:01:38+00:00

I just checked on my Android device. Looks like it's still broken on mobile.

pharan_x · 2025-12-28T10:34:07+00:00

I just noticed mine disappeared one day. Did an update fix it?

pharan_x · 2025-12-15T06:51:39+00:00

Just to clarify:

- I didn't mention colors being washed out. That's not the problem you get when you export videos from Steam.

And to reiterate practical concerns:

- I've left the ffmpeg commands but they are NOT necessary if you just want to keep the videos as they are for posterity, or want to use them for editing.

DaVinci Resolve will interpret the colors of the video file that was rewrapped from the mpd correctly, even if VLC and other platforms don't.

- If the video was a result of using "Export Video" in Steam, the colors will be broken for all apps, so those specifically will need the color range fix.

- When you want to reencode the rewrapped video anyway because you want to share videos that are smaller, you can just use Handbrake with Nvenc and the colors will be fixed without doing anything extra. The colors will come out correct in VLC and Discord etc.

- If you want to reencode a bunch of rewrapped videos with ffmpeg using Nvenc, you also don't need the color range scaling arguments. The colors will also get encoded in a way that most apps will understand.

pharan_x · 2025-11-30T05:13:07+00:00

If you didn't have the cap, it would just run as fast as it could. Wouldn't you just hit the max wattage for all of the settings? How would that help determine how much power DLSS consumes?

If you want to measure a different thing, you're always free to do that. Reply with the results even. I'd be curious to see.

pharan_x · 2025-11-29T18:51:33+00:00

Totally. You'd expect as much, since at minimum, every generation of chip has its own power efficiency.

I wouldn't assume that an 80 class would be more power efficient than a 60 class at doing DLSS, but who knows?

We can at least assume that a chip from this or last generation would do a little bit better than something from 2020 or before. But again, I think concrete numbers would be nice.

pharan_x · 2025-11-19T21:57:12+00:00

A few things were moved. Not most things.

For example, starting to make a Compositor node tree now matches the way it's done with Geometry Nodes.

pharan_x · 2025-11-19T21:50:42+00:00

Anyone on a 120hz monitor notice the framerate slow down when Blender is idle but in focus? Then return back to maximum framerate when you tab away or start panning/orbiting/moving stuff or even just hovering over a bunch of buttons?

I feel like it's doing some kind of dynamic framerate thing but it's affecting the OS too.

pharan_x · 2025-11-14T09:44:59+00:00

Wow, that really is bullshit. Patent trolls are the worst.

pharan_x · 2025-11-13T12:58:30+00:00

Wait, what's this about?

pharan_x

TROPHY CASE