Jan – Page 3

Record audio and video with VLC

Step by step tutorial on how to record audio and video with VLC. This will enable you to make a screencast without special software. This has been tested with VLC 2.0.8 and VLC 2.1.3.

Required to record audio/video

http://www.videohelp.com/download/UScreenCapture2015.zip (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/UScreenCapture)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/screencapturer/files/

Procedure:

VLC > View > Advanced Controls
VLC > View > Status Bar
CTRL+C (open capture device)
Screen capture record (video device)
Virtual audio capture (audio device)
If applicable: go to advanced settings and change 4:3 into, 16:9. You can change the default 4:3 aspecto ratio:
If you want to set the default picture-aspect ratio n:m to 16:9, go to advanced preferences (CTRL+P), show all settings, Input / codecs > DirectShow > Picture aspect ratio n:m, and change 4:3 to 16:9.
Next to play button, click arrow and choose “convert”
Choose a destination filename, e.g. test.mp4
Start recording…

Step by step tutorial adapted from:

VLC stuck in a loop? Kill process seems like the only solution?

Video image freezes, audio rewinds 3 to 4 seconds and gets stuck in a loop.
A similar problem has been documented here: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/6600.
Unfortunately there seems to be no solution. It even happens in recent VLC distributions, like VLC Rincewind 2.1.3.

I have tried using Windows Media Player Classic (MPC), without any effect. At random intervals, with any kind of video format, video playback stops.

Quite out of the blue I found this behaviour tracing back to Intel Optimus Technology. I have two video cards: HD Graphics 4600 and NVIDIA Quadro K2100M controlled by Optimus. Optimus technology switches between these two GPU’s to ensure maximum battery autonomy.

When disabling Optimus in your BIOS settings, the video problem should belong to the past. This, however, isn’t an optimal solution when you rely on Optimus to get maximum battery autonomy. At this time, with the latest BIOS and Graphic drivers video playback keeps freezing with Optimus enabled. Hopefully, a driver update will fix this in the near future.

Feedback appreciated

Password protect a subsite in a WordPress network with .htaccess

A wordpress network / multisite setup uses virtual directories.

When you have a wordpress network setup on www.yourdomain.com, you can have multiple blogs with only one WordPress installation, for example:

www.yourdomain.com
www.yourdomain.com/johndoe
www.yourdomain.com/janedoe

Suppose you want to password protect only one subsite e.g. ‘janedoe’, you can’t just create a ‘janedoe’ folder on your webserver with a particular .htaccess in it.

You need to create a secured environment for the virtual folder in your main .htaccess (where all other WordPress rules reside) using the following code:

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI "^/janedoe/" SECURED
AuthType Basic
AuthName "restricted area"
AuthUserFile /home/mydomain/.htpasswd
require valid-user
Satisfy any
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=SECURED

Enable Apache Error Logging for Mod_Rewrite in Xampp

Mod_Rewrite enables you to do fancy stuff with URLs, but it isn’t always transparent when it comes to debugging. In a development environment it can be useful to enable apache error logging to see where a mod_rewrite line fails.

In XAMPP you can do this by opening httpd.conf (open control panel > config > Apache (httpd.conf)) and append mod_rewrite.c:trace3 to LogLevel.

LogLevel warn mod_rewrite.c:trace3

WordPress Admin Running Slow? Here’s How To Fix It!

I update my WordPress Network quite often. Especially to prevent security issues. Load time for typical WordPress pages is as good as perfect. However, I discovered on some of my WordPress Network setups the wp-admin pages suddenly took forever to load. I was waiting 2 minutes to load any wp-admin page. After a long search I discovered the problem was a faulty db_version value in the wp_options table.

I usually auto update my sites and found out this value was not updated (or could not be updated automatically).

WordPress Codex pages (http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.6) list this value for every WordPress version. For example: Version 3.6 has database version 24448. Thus, you should update this value manually in your mySQL database: change db_version (option_name) in wp_options to 24448 (for version 3.6). You should repeat this for every site in your wordpress network (wp_2_options, wp_3_options, …).

It’s as ‘simple’ as that!

Hardcover De Wind Door Het Sleutelgat (Donkere Toren, Stephen King)

Binnenkort is het dan toch zo ver! Er komt een hardcover versie uit van ‘De Wind Door Het Sleutelgat’ van de prachtige Donkere Toren reeks van Stephen King. Het achtste boek in die reeks was tot nu enkel beschikbaar in paperback en paste niet bij de bekende hardcover reeks van Uitgeverij Luitingh.

Bij BOL.com kan je nu al een pre-order plaatsen.

How to create a shortcut to a specific chrome user profile

Create a desktop shortcut to a specific user profile

Method 1

Go to settings
The user list shows all user profiles, click on a user profile
Click edit
Add desktop shortcut button will now show up

Method 2

Click on the user icon in the upper left corner of a Chrome instance.
Go to the user profile for which you want to create a desktop shortcut, and click to open that Chrome instance.
In the new Chrome instance click the icon again in the upper left corner. In the list with all user profiles go to the active user profile, and click ‘edit’. The ‘edit’ option only shows up for the active instance.
In the pop-up window you now see a button “add desktop shortcut”.

Afbeelding uitlijnen / positioneren in Microsoft Word 2010

Een afbeelding in een Word document toevoegen is kinderspel, maar meerdere afbeeldingen steeds op dezelfde plaats op één pagina houden (bijvoorbeeld verbonden met een bepaalde alinea) is wat anders. Vaak doet zich namelijk het probleem voor dat meerdere afbeeldingen in mekaar geschoven worden of plots allemaal bovenaan een pagina komen te staan.

De volgende stappen zorgen ervoor dat meerdere afbeeldingen steeds op de juiste positie blijft staan:

Rechtsklik op een ingevoegde afbeelding
Kies voor grootte en positie
In tabblad positie kies bij onderdeel Horizontaal bijvoorbeeld uitlijnen “rechts” ten opzichte van “Marge”
In hetzelfde tabblad kies bij onderdeel Verticaal voor absolute positie “0 cm” onder “alinea”
In hetzelfde tabblad kies bij onderdeel Opties eventueel voor “Anker vergrendelen” zodat je niet per ongeluk achteraf de afbeelding verplaatst

What Adobe Illustrator can do with text

Adobe Illustrator has several type creation tools and options. You can type straight text, text along a curved line or shape, confine text to a pre-drawn shape, link text from one place to another, and change text into objects which can be distorted, filled, etc.

You often see text wrapped around a shape. Here is an overview of the various options Illustrator has to offer you.