I had something in mind for my library of gameplay footage, at least in the past few years. Why not give users the option to visually see inputs? Not only am I curious about my own inputs sometimes (especially in a rhythm game or FPS), but it could also be quite satisfying to see keys light up alongside the video. It's something extra. But it's cool.

It does have some practical use though. When I was teaching online due to COVID, I did something like this to help students see what I was doing in VIM and TMUX. Here's what I mean:

I'll be brief on this post. MWIII requires a prior launch of MWII to run. Since these games are coded specifically to not run via clicking their EXE files, a few extra steps are taken to force execution. I'll provide two ways: an automated batch file, and a manual way if you don't trust me. 😉

This is for the Steam version of the game. And it relies on a steam.exe to boot up the game in the end. Given this blog post was written before the final release of the game came out, I may have to edit it to account for multiplayer layer on.

Recently, I wanted to record some Nintendo Switch gameplay. Since the built-in 720p recording feature is garbage for anything other than immediate highlights, I figured I'd sink some money into a device that can capture a full 1080p feed and record it.

I looked at some options. A close friend of mine uses an Elgato HD60 S+ to record gameplay and stream it over Discord. So it was an appealing choice after seeing it in action. But I wanted to future-proof myself. So I decided to get the Elgato 4K60 S+. The appeal here is that it can act like the HD60 S+, but can handle 4K HDR. It also is capable of operating on its own via recording to an SD card. This makes it a very convenient choice if you want to record something without having a PC around. Also, I don't have a free PCIe slot for some of the other choices Elgato offers.

Since 2020, I got into HDR10 video production. I got an HDR10 monitor and started playing games and even recording them in HDR10. It's nice. But I've been wondering, if I can record videos in HDR10, why not take HDR10 images?

Well, turns out, images in true HDR10 hasn't been looked into a lot until recently. Formats like JPG and PNG do support higher bit depths than 8bpc (bits per channel). The idea is there for at least storing the colour information. But what about the HDR10 metadata? How will the monitor know how to calibrate the content to the monitor? Maybe HEIC can store the metadata just like HEVC in a video container? Let's look into it a little.

I used to be an iPhone user back in the days of the iPhone 4S. Back in those days, I would jailbreak my phone, which gave me full file system access. Backing up my device was very simple, without even needing iTunes. Since then, I've moved to Android. I've just used microSD cards to store everything, as well as have a script to run rsync to copy my data to my personal server. It's nice. But that's just my own backup solution.

I thought I never had to deal with iPhones again. Not like they were a problem. I just enjoy Android much more. The rest of my family uses iPhone. Yes, in our family group chat, I'm the sole reason they have green text message bubbles instead of blue. It's funny. Well, now that the iPhone 13 is out, they are upgrading to that and want to have their data backed up.

Side note, this is a bit more of a rant or silly story than an actual post. It's almost straight from my diary. It'll be shorter than a usual post, and more dramatic. Gotta make it fun somehow.

I wrote a post before regarding how I archive Zoom lecture recordings, whether I am teaching or someone else is. However, post-recording, those files sit in the vault unedited. It took a few months, but I discovered an issue with the audio in them. Funny. The times that I don't check audio prior to recording are the times it always goes wrong. It's Sod's law. With the audio messed up, and no chance to re-record, is recovery possible?

Let's analyse the situation. They are MKV files with a single video stream encoded via h264_nvenc. Ok, nothing wrong there. There's 3 audio streams saved as lossless FLAC. Here's the ffmpeg stderr output (yes, it goes to stderr) for one of the files:

Recently, a group of friends wanted to replay the Mega Man Star Force series. The Japanese version of the first game has some accessories that you can purchase to enhance your stats. One in particular, the Wave Scanner, caught my attention. So, I bought two of them. What does it do though?

It's a cute little device that lets you swipe real life battle cards in. Every battle card has a barcode at the bottom of it, so this device has a barcode scanner embedded. Battle cards may be used for the minigames that are on the device. However, the feature that caught my eye was that it can connect to your Nintendo DS/DS Lite/DSi via microphone jack and send battle card data over that. Now that's pretty cool.

My 42 TB storage is running out and Black Friday is around the corner. Deals are already out online. This sounds like a pretty good time for an upgrade. I need something that can last for a few more years. The plan? Same as the last time. Shuck external drives to get high capacity drives for cheap. Can't be a data hoarder without the capacity to store data, right?

Let's take a trip back for a sec, so we can compare past to present. Those WD (Western Digital) easystore drives have consistently been a nice way to get high capacity drives for cheap. Back in 2017, I needed more storage because some external 2 and 3 TB drives weren't enough. I wanted something overkill. Something that will last me for a few years. So I bought 4 of the 8 TB models for $160 each. That's just a bit above $20/TB when tax is considered. I have tweets with pictures covering these and what shucking them looks like. You can see those below:

As a University graduate student and teaching assistant, I have to attend and teach classes. Due to the events of the COVID-19 pandemic, classes have now moved mostly online. Zoom just happened to be the platform of choice where most classes are being hosted.

Back when I physically attended classes, I was that one student who sat in the front row and recorded every lecture. I don't really go back and listen to them, but they are useful if you forgot details about an assignment or if you wanted to double check the due date on an assignment being changed. Though, to me, the main reason was data. I wanted data... and I wanted as much as possible. When I teach, I also record everything. No matter the perspective, online classes make this much much easier.

So, what did I do? My usual. Made a completely overkill setup to preserve as much data as possible and accomplish the ultimate Zoom lecture recording. Speaking dramatically aside... Before I get to discussing the details on the setup, let's talk about Zoom and some technical details about it. This'll be important for later on.

On Black Friday last year, I got a pretty nice deal on an ultrawide HDR10 supported monitor by LG... so I bought two of them. One for my office at work, and one for home. It's definitely not a monitor used for mastering content, but it's a nice way to get into the world of HDR content creation. So, what can we do?

Well, as it turns out, there isn't a real way to record HDR at the moment via software (EDIT: Ok, maybe "Action!" can do it. I'll test that later). Content creators out there resort to using high quality capture cards to capture HDR10 gameplay. But why is there no software solution? Well, there is... sorta. But you have to get creative with it and manually do everything. For me, this is fine. I prefer being in full control in post. Let's experiment.