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Video Editing – 4K and Graphic Cards

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Movies - Videos

Video Editing – 4K

When I first started editing videos, I worked with 1K videos. The PC I built was adequate to that task and was a considerable upgrade to my off the shelf PC. When I built the PC, it was suggested that a graphics card like the GTX 1050 was fine for those sorts of videos.  Go Pro Studio worked OK but was prone to hang on occasion.

Later, I decided to upgrade my camera to 4K so I would have more pixels to work with when I zoomed in on more distant images.  I knew that 4K editing would be a challenge for the PC I built. It turned out that GoPro Studio was woefully inadequate so switched to Premiere Pro CC. I hoped that working with Premiere wouldn’t be that big a challenge but ran into issues almost immediately.

The 1st remedy I tried was to use proxies where I could work on videos as if they were 1K and then process them as 4K. That introduced another step into my editing which was prone to fail.

I had crashes with my PC with the newer versions of Premier Pro CC so started looking for solutions. One of the 1st solutions I tried was to drop my overclocking of my AMD 1600. That seemed to help a little, but I still had crashes when running Premier Pro. I went to the MSI boards in search of a suitable upgrade for my PC & ended up upgrading my power supply. I also dropped overclocking my memory and dropped back to an older version of Premier Pro.

At this juncture, I was mostly crashing when encoding for YouTube. Digging deeper into the encoding process, I realized that it used my graphics card for this task. Switching to software only helped since it took my relatively weak graphics card out of the equation but was slow and would still occasionally hang.

All the literature I reviewed said that the graphics card had little to do with video editing with Premier Pro but encoding seemed to be an exception. I upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 1070 and suddenly my encoding problems disappeared.  My encoding now goes by without any hangs running with the much more powerful graphics card.

I brought my overclocking back to my PC & memory but found that Premier Pro would still crash on occasion with the CPU overclock. Memory overclocking seems to be fine and my system runs much faster encoding with the latest version of Premier Pro.

Bottom line is that you do need a powerful graphics card for encoding 4K in Premier Pro. In addition, you may need an upgrade power supply to run the graphics card.

Pre-Paid Discounted Block Rates Versus Regular Rates

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Discounted Block Rates Versus Invoiced Regular Rates

Most of our customers prefer our pre-paid discounted block rates but some prefer our invoiced regular rates.

 
  Remote/Travel
Hourly		 On-Site
Hourly
Discounted Block Rates $35.00 $45.00
Regular Rates $38.50 $49.50

Rates

Discounted Block Rates Versus Regular Rates

Regular rates

Regular rates can be adjusted to a discounted rate when additional funds are deposited.   If you would rather not pre-pay, then you will receive an invoice with the regular rates.

Discounted rates

Discounted rates require a positive balance. You may be  switched to the higher regular rate if you don’t have funds available. The pre-paid amount eliminates numerous invoices for small jobs.  You will receive an accounting of what the jobs entail and how many hours were spent on each task.

Please consider these alternative methods of making payments:

  1. FAX both sides of the check (409-945-6553) and I will electronically deposit to my account.
  2. PayPal Account – number.1@comcast.net.
  3. PayPal via our webpage – http://downsconsultingservices.com/BlockHours.html. Calculator attempts to add fees in for target payment.
  4. Payment online via QuickBooks.

We credit the amount we receive for credit cards minus fees.

 QuickBooks: 3.4% + $.25

PayPal 2.9% + $.30

Square 3.5% + 15 cents

Why Network Troubleshooting Will Change Your Life

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Network Troubleshooting

Why Network Troubleshooting Will Change Your Life.

OK maybe it won’t change your life but it will demand a considerable amount of your time until you get it running properly.

Windows domain best practice is to use the domain server/s for DNS & DHCP. While these features are typically enabled on routers they cause a lot of grief on a Windows domain. Routers may know where the main DNS servers are on the Internet but they have no idea where your network servers are.

Consequently, the router will start looking for your server on the Internet 1st and then start interrogating your network. That yields an unnecessary lag time for searches for machines that are on your network.

This article primarily addresses a single server domain but the principles are similar for larger environments.

DNS – Domain Name System

If you are experiencing a lag time trying to find or connect to your server using a  Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) then your network may be misconfigured. Best practice is to have your DNS server reference itself and all the other PCs get their information from the local DNS server.

Since we are mainly focused on single-server domains then DNS will be on the domain controller.

Example:

domain – example.com

LAN – 192.168.0.xxx

gateway  – 192.168.0.1

server.example.com  – 192.168.0.2

DNS – 192.168.0.2

Once we setup the server static IP to use itself for DNS then the server won’t have any problems finding machines on the local network.

DHCP – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

The easy way to setup PCs on your network is to use DHCP. This tells the device where your DNS server, gateway are in addition to assigning an IP address from a pool.  For a home setup it’s easy enough to let the Internet router take care of these responsibilities. For a domain, however,  we want our server to handle DNS and DHCP too.

We will want to disable DNS & DHCP on the router (gateway) and add the roles to the server.

The DHCP server will issue is from our address pool and set the client PCs DNS to use the server ip for DNS.

Static ip Addresses

Machines like the server need static ips so that we always know what address it has. If you allow devices to use DHCP addresses then they may or may not get the same ip every time which can lead to more network problems for devices you connect to via an ip.

In our example, the server is at 192.168.0.2 on our Local Area Network (LAN). That means we had to assign an ip outside of the DHCP pool, subnet mask, gateway and DNS server (itself).

Best practice is to use a static ip for your server so we don’t end up with some sort of conflict. If other devices use static ips, then you will need to adjust the DNS on those devices if they are not set to your server.

 In Conclusion

Network troubleshooting may not change your life but it will definitely improve the quality of time you spend on your attached computers.

Local Printing Using Remote Desktop

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Trouble Local Printing Using Remote Desktop?

Windows 7 sometimes has issues with printing to a local printer using a Remote Desktop Connection (RDC).

The 1st step is to verify that printers are checked on the Local Resources tab of the Remote Desktop Connection. It is checked by default.

Local Printing Using Remote Desktop – Install the Same Driver

Local Resources – RDC

If you have the same printer model  at home as one at the office then Windows may be confused. It’s best if you install the same printer driver for office & home. The best bet is to check the manufacturer’s website for a driver that fits all of the Operating  Systems involved.

Example:

Scenario – Home & Office both have Gestetner P7325N printers. Office Print Server is 2003 Standard while the connecting remote PC & the Office PC is Windows 7.

Gestetner P7325N – Manufacturer Drivers

Common driver for most Operating Systems – PCL Mini Driver 2.16

32 bit Operating System/64 bit Operating System

32 bit & 64 bit machines may also complicate the process. If necessary install the driver 32 bit O/S on a 32 bit machine & the 64 bit driver on a 64 bit machine. Share both printers & PCs can then choose a matching printer.

You can ascertain if your PC is 64 bit by right clicking “My Computer” and selecting properties. In the System section you will see “64-bit Operating System” or something similar if it’s 64-bit. 32-bit Operating Systems may just list the Operating System without denoting it as 32-bit.

Add Printer Wizard

Also check to see if you can add a local printer on the remote PC.

Run the Add Printer Wizard for “Local Printer” & find any printer that has the PC Name attached to it. It may not look remotely like the printer you are searching for but there probably won’t be a lot of choices.

 

Block Hours

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Most of Downs Consulting Services’ (DCS) customers buy block hours or put cash on the books. This keeps us from invoicing for each individual service so we offer our discounted block rates.

 

Block Hours

Non-Block Hours

Remote

  $    35.00  $38.50

On-Site

  $    45.00  $49.50

Travel

  $    35.00  $38.50

Hourly Rates

The tax rate is 8.25% but Data Processing (e.g., websites) exempts 20%.
Reimbursements & some services are non-taxable.

Block rates are 10% lower than invoiced rates!

Save money by purchasing block hours.
You are credited the net amount that PayPal puts in our account.

Example: 10 hours of website work

Suppose we project 10 hours of web work. You have 2 options :

  1. Deposit $350 by check. There are no fees associated with a check but it takes longer to get into our account and get your project started. If a check is returned then we will add a fee of $30.
  2. Deposit $360.75 via PayPal or Credit Card to cover the PayPal fees. The net amount that we get from PayPal is credited to your account & we will draw from that as we spend time on your projects.

$350.00 (10 x $35)
$   10.75 PayPal fees (2.9% + .30)
$360.75

Note that Sales Tax will be added as required by law. 

Buy Block Hours

You can  buy block hours (Add to Cart Drop Down) or use the calculator Buy Now Button on the block hours page.

 

 

Example Using the Calculator & Buy Now:

Let’s assume we want to deposit $360.75 in our account so we will have enough for 10 hours of web work. That will cover the PayPal fees.

Login to PayPal

Please enter the item price you calculated & click update. You can use a credit card if you prefer.

 The Buy Now Button does not fill in the item price so enter the amount you calculated. Click update & login to PayPal. 

Here’s a example of how your money might be spent if you started with a net deposit of $373.10.

In this example, the .61 hours of web work on 5-31 was taxed but the rest of the work was not. The rest was not since maintaining network services is not taxable.

Date Services and Time:Description Credit Hours Rate Net Balance
w/o Tax
19-May new block $373.10 $373.10 $373.10
20-May new SSL for mail, check Outlook on PCs       1.50 $35.00 ($52.50) $320.60
21-May Investigate SPAM       0.50 $35.00 ($17.50) $303.10
24-May SEO – Google+       0.08 $35.00 ($2.80) $300.30
28-May update – blog, SPAM, backups       0.42 $35.00 ($14.60) $285.70
29-May SEO tactics – Buffer, social media       1.17 $35.00 ($40.85) $244.86
31-May Update  logo on-site 0.67 $35.00 ($23.35) $221.51
31-May status – emails 0.08 $35.00 ($2.91) $218.61
$218.61
$218.61
 Sales Tax  $ (1.54)
 Grand Total $217.07