Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts

Monday, May 30, 2016

New Defrag Tool videos – does the fun never stop?!!!

Now that we are getting near the summer TV re-run doldrums, maybe now is a good time to start Chromecasting some technical videos.

Defrag Tools – Microsoft Channel 9

Media eXperience Analyzer – Microsoft Download Center

Cheers,

Claus Valca

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Saturday, April 30, 2016

Knife Shapening 101

My awesome family recently gave me a gift that was a set of J.A. Henckels Synergy 16-pc Knifes (Amazon link).

I passed our previous (still nice) knife block set to my in-laws who were discovered to be knife-less in the kitchen after their recent downsizing move.

I had also been gifted a set of high-grade japanese whetstones in four different grades along with a diamond-embedded whetstone leveling tool.

So, no more using the cheap little grindstone wheel kept in our cutlerly drawer; although it does do a great job on our “regular” kitchen knife.

My first attempt to use the new whetstones wasn’t a total failure. But as I learned from my pre-attempt studies, it takes a LOT of practice and patience to do right.

Here are some of the best links I found for my skill development.

I’m still refining my technique, though it is a surprisingly good exercise in stress reduction; especially since it is almost a ritual getting all the items prepared for the activity at hand.

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

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Sunday, November 15, 2015

Well that was unexpected: DVD stuck in slot-load drive

My otherwise cheer-filled weekend hit a snag Saturday.

After two weeks of smooth sailing on my Dell XPS laptop powerhouse running a Win10 installation, Win 10 totally blew out again. Really really bad.

I eventually gave up on the Windows 10 self-repair as that only led to a wheel of misfortune game of what will the new blue-screen ;( error message show this time. It was ugly.

I then bailed and decided to do a roll back to my Win 7 Ultimate OS which was still present.

Only that hung up and eventually got me a Windows 7 loading to blue-screen error loop.

I couldn’t find my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 setup disk so I popped a blank DVD in my Windows 7 x64 Dell Studio 1558 system and made a recovery disk to use.

Only the DVD appears to have gotten stuck in the drive slot.

It’s a slim slot-load DVD for this model so no paper-clip and tray tricks here.

Eventually I found my Win 7 Ultimate x64 setup disk after all and even though I got an error during reloading the last good System Restore point, the system booted up to my previous Win 7 OS pretty much intact. I had to install some Windows updates all over again, and reinstalled a few applications, but is is now back in order.

Windows 10 is now Verboten! on our Dell laptops for the foreseeable future.

With that crisis averted, I’ve turned to trying to extract the DVD from the slot load drive.

It isn’t pretty.

So I’ve been doing recon on how the slot-drive mechanisms work in the hope I can then extract the stuck DVD using a set of custom engineered extraction tools I’ll have to develop.  This seems to me to be the best hope right now.

The drive spins and the mechanism makes the ejection sounds. The DVD just won’t pop out. The system can read the disk fine so the reader and spindle are OK.  the little metal tab drops down that keeps the disk from falling out. Maybe the center hole on the disk is a bit small and jammed stuck on the spindle?  I’m hoping I can pop the DVD off the spindle then use double-stick tape with a thin piece of strong aluminum to pull it out.

Failing that I may have to pull the drive out of the laptop. I’m not bothered by the disassembly but would rather not have to.

If I go that way, do I want to get a replacement drive module? They aren’t too expensive…

Have anyone tried one of these kits? I could possibly not replace the DVD drive but buy a custom caddy to accept a 2nd HDD or SDD. The Studio 1558 only accepts a single drive bay but this would get me room for a 2nd drive. I’d probably go with a SSD based on heat/cooling concerns and power-draw. Is is worth the effort? I like the concept but have my worries.

Regardless, I might just end up having to go the simple route and leave the disk embedded in the system (which is otherwise fine) and just use a USB external DVD drive unit.  This one at least uses a tray…

I’m open to advice and suggestions to try!

Cheers

--Claus Valca

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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Portable Windows movie players

After I do a video file conversion I like to check how the conversion plays back.

I don’t really care for or use the stock Windows Media Player software.

For the longest time I have used VideoLAN VLC media player and found it adequate for the purpose. I prefer the VLC Media Player Portable package. However it seems to take a long time to load up and get started on all the systems I run it on. Maybe that’s me.

I was reading this TinyApps blog post Download Flash videos and I jumped and browsed around on the Grab Any media app/extension that was mentioned.

There I saw a recommendation for the MPC-HC open-source video player. It also comes in a Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC) Portable version over at PortableApps.com.

Me likey!  It is relatively small, launches much faster than VLC, and has so far been compatible with my favored video codecs.

So I’m keeping it around in my portable apps collection.

Another similar alternative to both VLC and MPC-HC is SMPlayer, another free media player for Windows systems also available in a SMPlayer Portable via PortableApps.com.

Always good to have alternatives!

Claus Valca

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Sunday, July 12, 2015

Summer’s On! Super Sysadmin Linkfest

Little Bro and I just wrapped up some Saturn Ion A/C system repairs in the driveway. Got the chill winds blowing in the cabin again. So with that resolved, time looks available for a summer’s on, super sysadmin linkfest dump to cover all the bases.  (And expect another Shade-tree Saturn Ion Mechanic tip post very soon, too.)

CryptoPrevent (Foolish IT) News

I personally use and recommend the awesome CryptoPrevent Malware Prevention utility from Foolish IT.

It is simple to use, hasn’t caused me any issue with the default security level settings, and gives me the comfort of having an additional layer of protection against ransomware threats. The free version works nicely on our home systems.

If you are using CryptoPrevent, this technical post may be useful: CryptoPrevent, ShadowExplorer, and VSSADMIN - Foolish IT.

Foolish IT has been hard at work on a new version and this post shows some of the new features and GUI - CryptoPrevent v8 Teaser.

Alternative remain thirdtier.net’s Cryptolocker Prevention Kit (updated) over at Spiceworks.

Considering the rash of ransomware infections at work lately, I’m surprised the AD and security team hasn’t gotten together to review the settings in the prevention kit noted above.  Just say’n…

Malwarebytes Tips and Updates

How-To’s

In my GSD post (mostly) Fast burn video file to DVD-playable format I ended up using DVDStyler Portable to burn some miscellaneous video files to a DVD. I really wanted to use DVD Flick (see this interesting comment thread and this one too regarding a portable version) but problems and a limited amount of time to solution the issue prevented a real trial. I had also found this Free Video to DVD Converter at DVDVideoSoft .

So it was with interest I spotted this post that looks like it could do the job as well.

The app mentioned was Freemake Video Converter. It is clearly stated in the post and in the comments that the application comes bundled with OpenCandy that may be tricky to decline installation thereof. A comment in the thread recommended running the installer from the command-line with the “/nocandy” switch. I tried that and it seemed to work. When you download the installer off the product web-site it is just a “stub downloaded” which then fetches and retrieves/installs the “full” package. In my case it was:

C:\Users\<PROFILEID>\Downloads\FreeVideoToDVDConverter.exe /nocandy

A follow-up scan with Malwarebytes Anti-malware come back clean (…well except where it found it embedded in the full app download package placed in the TEMP folder) and it always detects OpenCandy in installer packs (based on my personal experiences).

So here is a fourth option worth considering if you need a free utility to burn various video files into a single DVD compilation.

Passwords

I’m a hard-core user of the free KeePass Password Safe & MiniKeePass (iOS) utility. That said, I have to confess that it is very challenging keeping the core database synced between mine and Lavie’s various iDevices and laptops. Add to the fact that the master password datebase file is a hot target for hacking with all the keys to the kingdom I’m sincerely open to a new model for complex/random password management. And at work KeePass (and all password managers) are not approved software so I have to do a super-kludgy solution with using a Bitlocker volume file.

Master Password – project page.  Thanks to the TinyApps blogger I’m now very intrigued and will likely be seeing if I can incorporate this into my routine. There is lots of documentation available (both on TinyApps’ post and on the project page) and is is all very human-readable. The desktop version is a Java app so there is that “issue” if you are on Windows and have stripped Java from your system, though I guess you could go with jPortable and the jPortable Launcher from portable apps as a compromise. The developer also has a beta version of a Web app that could work.

Encrypting Windows Hard Drives - Schneier on Security

Network Nuggets

TraceWrangler – Jasper Bongertz’s awesome tool for sanitizing and anonymizing trace files was updated a while back to beta build 0.4.0 build 616 in x32/x64 flavors. ChangeLog. Sadly, I don’t (yet) do the twitter so there doesn’t seem to be an RSS alternative to watching for update releases without stopping by for a visit from time to time. Update! Jasper Bongertz has kindly now updated the project page to include a RSS feed! Awesome and many thanks! See also these recent posts by Jasper:

Link to test –> Speed test – DSLReports

Note to get the application to run successfully in Firefox (running NoScript) I had to temporarily do the following:

Adblock, or NOSCRIPT - is blocking access to remote IPs (not scripts).
Set NOSCRIPT>Options>Advanced>Trusted>Cascade top document.

Once testing was done, I disabled that option setting.

New or Interesting Utilities

SimpleWMIView reminded me a bit of WMI Explorer over at CodePlex. Probably would be complimentary apps.

SterJo NetStalker – SterJo Software – This is an interesting app. I particularly like that it comes in a portable version. As noted in the gHacks post, it is very similar to (but with some differences) to Nir Sofer’s CurrPorts utility.

At the church-house we run a program called Shelby Systems. It is a client/server based model and though most all of the systems have the client software on it, only one user in particular is constantly having issues connecting to the server unless we shut-down the (Windows) server’s firewall, allow the client communication to establish, then turn on the firewall again. So it looks like the server firewall has some not-yet-located firewall rule in play not set correctly. I’m hoping that this and/or CurrPorts can help us hone in on the specific issue. If I do solve it, I’ll post a troubleshooting guide.

SterJo Software – Products – SterJo offers a number of freeware utilities that may be of use to some sysadmins.

Troubleshooting Tips from the Pros

Windows SysAdmin Tips and Techniques

Microsoft Trainings and Infographics

Kali & Docker

McAfee & The Great Stinger “feature update” Debacle

So McAfee’s standalone Stinger AV tool is/has-been/was a great tool to run in an attempt to scan a system for specific threats and attempt to neutralize/remove them.  It is updated often with new definition patterns and has been a long-time tool in the GSD infection response toolkit.

However a while back an uproar occurred when it was found a new version upgrade with enhanced features left a running/persistent McAfee service (the 'McAfee Validation Trust Protection Service' mfevtps.exe) on your system afterward; even when the binary was removed, and with no clear way to remove it.

It seemed that the only way to really “clean” your system from McAfee after you tried to clean your system with McAfee’s Stinger was to follow these steps: How to uninstall or re-install supported McAfee products using the Consumer Products Removal tool

Only what I didn’t see in the aftermath were any notices that McAfee reported the persistent service module everyone was hollering about was due to a bug in the application. It was quickly fixed and now Stinger behaves the way it used to, fully cleaning itself up after run.

PortableApps McAfee Stinger news Comment thread post. From that comment..

John - thanks for reporting this issue.

The McAfee Validation Trust Protection Service is needed for Stinger to perform rootkit scanning of a system. This service is temporarily installed during a Stinger scan and is removed once the rootkit scanning portion is completed.

In a recent update to the Stinger's rootkit scanning engine, an issue was found where it wasn't getting uninstalled in certain conditions. We've fixed that in last week's release. The latest Stinger available for download should not leave behind any components post a scan.

Please let me know if you require any other clarification.

Best,
Vinoo Thomas
Product Manager, McAfee Labs

Possibly interesting (or conversational) but not related to McAfee Stinger debacle - Beware: Free Antivirus Isn’t Really Free Anymore – How-To Geek blog. I may come back to this post in more detail at a future time…

Microsoft Surface / Surface Pro News & Tips

iOS 9 Peeks & Misc Apple News

I’m really excited to see some dual-tasking coming to the iPad device in iOS 9!

Whew!

--Claus V.

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Sunday, May 03, 2015

(mostly) Fast burn video file to DVD-playable format

I had a request the other day at the church-house to get a short digital video file onto a DVD for a class so they could play it on an old-school DVD player. By that I mean it needed to be a playable DVD format and not a digital video file burned onto a DVD data-disk like some “modern” DVD/BluRay players can handle.

For whatever crazy reason, Microsoft’s DVD Maker application kept choking during the DVD creation process and I really didn’t have the time or energy late that night after work to troubleshoot the problem.

After some searching I found good comments for the Open Source program DVD Flick. I couldn’t find a portable version of it (see this interesting comment thread and this one too) so ended up installing it.

Unfortunately, what I should have done was to RTFM. In my choices I opted to burn the project to DVD rather than making an ISO of the DVD.

For whatever reason, it choked during the DVD writing process. Subsequent attempts to repeat the process or switch to the ISO method left me with a hung application launch of DVD Flick. Even after system reboots. I was tired and running out of time before the lights got turned off on me. So I uninstalled it. Then, my other ISO burning tools seemed to have problems detecting my R/W DVD drive as a writeable drive. It picked up the hardware and drive letter but they just seemed to stare blankly at the device being available for drive writing.

Sheesh.

Eventually--despite no effort on my part other than trying time after time to get the system to see it as a writeable drive, another failed attempt at Microsoft DVD Maker ended up with it recognizing the drive as writeable source. Then the others fell in line and agreed they would recognize it again too.

Anyway, I punted and used DVDStyler Portable over at PortableApps.com. I made a simple menu, copied the video file to the queue and ensured I selected the NTSC option for the video format and not the default PAL format. I left the remaining options as is.

Having learned my lesson I wrote out the resulting DVD as an ISO format, then used another app to burn the ISO to the DVD.

I tested the DVD in several different DVD players (the PC itself with VLC player), a DVD player connected to our projection system, and a bargain basement DVD player connected to a flat-panel display with S-video cable. It worked fine in all of them.

Project done.

I want to spend some more time with DVD Flick as the comments seem so positive and my issues may have been as much due to my tiredness and lack of patience rather than the software/system.

I also later found this Free Video to DVD Converter software over at DVDVideoSoft. I don’t know much about the company or the product but it looked positive and simple. To the developer’s credit, they do clearly note on the product page they do third-party bundles with their software but that you can opt-out of those products. That always makes me wary but to they seem to clearly let you know what to expect so props for that. If I do try it I’ll do an update to this post.

Do you have any other recommendations for free/open-source solutions to quickly get one (or more) video file formats ported over to a DVD for standard DVD player playback? I’m open to suggestions!

Cheers!

Claus Valca

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Sunday, February 08, 2015

Links for the Sysadmin crowd

Here is the last push linkfest for the day.

Mostly geared to system administrators but – hey – who knows, even you might find something useful here!

Have a brilliant week!

Cheers.

--Claus Valca

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New Software Finds – late edition

Honesty in blog titles here. Most of these finds came in late last month.

Turn ordinary photos into panoramas with Image Composite Editor updates from Microsoft - Next at Microsoft

The interface is seriously updated!

New ICE version 2.0.2 below

image

Old ICE version 1.4.4 below

image

If you do find you pine for the older version 1.4.4 version, Download.com has the older versions still available for now.

More fun tools and utilities

Note, I’ve long been a fan of and used eXpress FreshFiles Finder (XFFF) to accomplish the same thing. However Recent FIle Seeker seems to support some more advanced search options and is a more sophisticated utility.

Cheers,

--Claus Valca

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Saturday, May 31, 2014

Notes on EasyWorship and a Blue Yeti

Disclaimer: Please be aware that a Yeti has not been spotted in our church house. Nor does using EasyWorship presentation software in any way guarantee that you might attract a Yeti to your services.

This post is more of a collection of miscellaneous tips and paths traveled recently…for future reference.

We have been having sundry issues from time to time while playing video files through the Windows PC rig we use for media presentation in our church sanctuary.  Some of the issues involve

  • Frame-rate playback issues,
  • Frame dropout,
  • Loss of synchronization between video stream and audio track,
  • BSOD’s

We are using a pretty new Dell enterprise-class tower workstation (Dell Precision T1500) with an Intel i7 processor, 16 GB Crucial RAM (up from 4 GB), two video cards (Matrox M9120 PCIe x16 & Nvidea Quadro NVS 295 PCIe x1). The two cards allow us to drive a total of 4 video outputs (3 for monitors on the desk + 1 output to our video mixing board for projection of content to the (mirrored) video projectors behind the worship platform.  We are using the stock sound card and that gets sent into our sound mixing board. It is running Window7 Professional x64 bit. It is on a Microsoft domain.

We run EasyWorship 2009 presentation software.

We also concurrently use it to run Lightworks software with DMX controls via USB dongle to handle our lighting system.

Overall it has operated very smoothly and is pretty reliable and beefy. However, I have a few unresolved issues with the system I continue to explore and troubleshoot.

  • Despite all my best attempts (so far) I have been unable to get Internet Explorer upgraded to IE 11. It remains on IE 8.  For some reason it continues to fail with a “prerequisite” missing error. I’ve got all kinds of logs so lots to process though.
  • Random BSOD’s happen. I’ve not pulled the logs yet to do an analysis--probably a driver issue.
  • The video cards are a bit loose in their slots--extra weight from the attached cables--we’ve popped a card out of slot seating while running (not recommended!) by bumping the cables. Luckily no harm done.
  • Videos coded at a HiDef quality seem to cause the most issue with playback…so I often have to recode to standard def video quality. That seems to help a lot.
  • I don’t really like have two “mis-matched” video cards in the system…that’s a whole lot more video drivers to deal with. I’m on the lookout for a decent PCIe x16 quad-ouput card that can handle the thing. So far the best I’ve found is the Nvidea Quadro NVS 420.

Tip #1 - No sound when playing video files through EasyWorship.

A few Sunday’s ago, it was my “off” day and my counterpart was running the system for the service.  While getting things put into the system, they encountered an issue playing back video media though Easy Worship.

Video would play just fine, but no audio.  They tried at least two codec formats for the video file but nothing.

So they called me.

I was able to remote-attach to the system and begin troubleshooting.

EasyWorship would take (import) the files but no audio playback.

EasyWorship is a bit limited, out of the box, with supported video codec formats so I used some of the video recoding software I have on it to generate new versions. The issue remained the same if it was coded in WMV, MOV, MP4, etc. Video playback was fine. No audio.

Why was I focusing on EasyWorship as the issue? Well, because for a counterpoint test, I would replay the videos through VideoLAN on the system and the sound would play fine along with the video.

We had been troubleshooting for over an hour at this point and time was running out before the services were to kick off.

I started checking the EasyWorship forum and found the solution just like that. Doh!

EasyWorship Support Forum • View topic - No Audio

Yep. Seems “someone” had enabled the Mute button on the live playback window, causing the video to play but no audio output.

Simply clicking that icon enabled the audio again and all was well.  See below.

Mute “Activated” - You will get no audio output on Live display although video will play.

nhyj52kh.0vx

Mute “Off” - You will now get audio output on Live display along with video playback.

hdv3s4em.qak

Tip #2 - Not Enough Video Codec options in stock EasyWorship.

By default, EasyWorship 2009 supports only MPG1 and WMV video formats.

That generally should be “good enough” and most media houses (such as The Skit Guys) offer product download in WMV format.

However, sometimes you may want a bit more flexibility and don’t want to jump though the hoops of converting your other video file format into WMV. Or maybe you want to convert the video into another format for better video playback rendering on your own rig limitations.

Luckily, it is pretty easy to follow this official EasyWorship KB guide to get the K-Lite Codec pack loaded into EasyWorship.

That will allow you to play back MOV, MP4 and FLV files natively in EasyWorship.

It was a piece of cake to do…but please do read the instructions carefully as they do require some semi-technical tweaking for best performance.

K-Lite Codec Pack: Play MOV, MP4 and FLV Files In EasyWorship

Also, you will have to select “All Files (*.*)” from Windows Explorer filter selection at the bottom to see them as the default way file-open works in EasyWorship, it will “hide” them from your media library.

I followed these instructions quite a while ago and haven’t encountered any issues or playback problems (besides those already present that is).

Tip #3 - New EasyWorship version in works.

The EasyWorship team has a forum thread open with periodic news updates on a new version to be released in the near future.

EasyWorship Support Forum • View topic - New Version Weekly Update - EasyWorship 2013 news

EasyWorship Church Presentation Software / Whats-next - A few videos on the new EasyWorship 2013 product. Looks interesting. Especially support for layers with slide backgrounds.

Now about that Yeti

I’m asked periodically to do special audio recordings for the various church members,

I’ve been progressively capturing the sound “better” into my laptop using different microphones.

The first was a Logitech USB headphone set with microphone. That was pretty good but sound quality was pretty “hot” and the foam wind-cover left a lot to be desired.

From there I updated to a stick-style Logitech USB desktop microphone. It was much better quality and allowed me more control to deal with “breathiness” sounds.

However, none of these had the depth of quality that I was looking for. And since I have enough requests for help, I decided to jump into the semi-pro quality of microphones.

So two weeks ago I purchased a Blue Microphones | Yeti (black housing)

Price was in the $100 range. I’ve been watching tons of YouTube videos and online reviews and was very confident it would provide the quality of pickup that I was looking for.

I’m not disappointed!

Random thoughts & observations:

  • It is really heavy!
  • I liked the black body housing style better than the silver or platinum options…that’s just me.
  • It has a threaded stand mount so I could use it with the various mic stands we have for better positioning.
  • It has four different mic pickup patterns.
  • It is super big.
  • Playing around quality demonstrates it is way above the “toy” mics I had been using.
  • No “custom” drivers exist for it, Windows 7 eventually found and installed them…though it took longer than expected.
  • The device icon Windows used didn’t help me identify it from others on my system. However I was able to find a stand microphone device icon (ICO) on the Web that I liked better and swap it out.

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Next I need to see if I can get it working with my iPad (Gen4) and GarageBand for times I don’t want to haul my laptop out.

From what I have seen in Web reviews and YouTube videos, it does work just fine, although it seems a powered USB hub is the trick.

You will also need to find a USB-to-Lightning adapter.

There are even “teases” on the Web that indicate if you connect it a particular way and while the iPad is still powered off, you can sometimes get it to connect even without a powered USB hub.

I’ll let you know what I eventually am able to accomplish. And please, if you have any tips or feedback regarding EasyWorship or the Blue Yeti mic, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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Saturday, November 23, 2013

Chunking it all…and coming up roses

One of my side jobs is to help manage video-desk operations at the church-house.

Videos of the main services and special events are captured via several remote-operated Sony EVI type cameras, operated through a Sony RM-BR300 control board and then mixed via a Panasonic  AV-HS400 unit.

From there the the final video output is fed into a standard DVD player/recorder unit using base sound captured by the sound board.

And the generated output is a DVD-R optical master-disk from which copies may be made when requested by attendees/guests.

Not that big a deal…except when a request is made for just a digital portion of the DVD…say a special music performance or a sermon.

Unfortunately, because our rig isn’t (yet) set up for digital video capture to HDD, processing the request takes a few extra steps.

For DVD duplication, the process is pretty easy. I can use any of a number of fine freeware tools to rip an ISO of the master DVD we produced and then burn that ISO file to make copies at will of DVD copies. Works fine.

However, when I have to rip and convert a segment from the DVD, it has been a lot more dramatic.

Time being precious like it is around the Valca home lately, I prefer to take the DVD master disk home with me and then process it on my laptop.

It’s a Dell Studio 15 (1558) with an i7 quad-core processor, 8 GB RAM --maxed out :p --, and a 1024MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series graphics card driving the HD display. All that to say it is pretty beefy and should be able to handle just about any general video task I toss at it.

However, for the past year or so I’ve been battling choppy/stuttering video playback after I do my video re-encoding work.

DVD’s play fine, YouTube videos play fine, Vimeo plays awesome - particularly in 1080 HD.

But when I play back my own re-encoded rips…FLV/MOV/WMV/MP4/ETC…in anything, including KMPlayer or VLC Player, it is stutter city and very, very frustrating.

Houston, clearly there is a problem.

I don’t have the issue on our video-desk PC system up at the church house. It is a desktop system with less system RAM and  multiple video cards (4 displays baby!) but it does have a i7 quad-core processer as well.

The issue clearly was with my system, but what exactly.

I have more than a lot of video processing/recoding applications.

One thing I prefer is that the application can read the DVD directly and allow me to select a custom start/end segment to capture and convert. It make pulling the specific segment out much more time efficient.

However, it seemed that no matter which application I tried, and which video format/quality I chose, the stutters always occurred. Yuck.  Watching my CPU threads and memory during processing didn’t seem to show that I was pushing the limits of the system at all. And I’ve successfully done some seriously heavy video editing processing in Lightroom with nary a hitch.

I did some research and found a lot of Dell Studio 15 (1558) users also complaining about stuttering playback.

Naturally I first tried to download and install the latest AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 driver.  The AMD driver page is a bit kooky. If you follow the drop-down help it takes you to a new 13.11 Beta version available, but I wasn’t sure I was that desperate. However if you want the latest “stable” version, you won’t find it under the drop-downs, instead check the right-sidebar and look for the section with the Radeon HD 5000 series link in your Windows flavor. Currently it looks like the Catalyst Software Suite is at revision 13.9.

I did a full install but that didn’t help me one bit. Still the problem persisted.

Hmmm.

I did notice a bunch of options in the default install…do I really need those? Could those be causing an issue with the recoding software? I wonder…

I re-ran the installer again but this time chose the “Custom” option and noticed it actually contained a lot of additional options.  Ghacks has good post breaking them down.

I ended up uninstalling the following packages from my ATI driver package: AMD APP SDK Runtime, custom ATI codex, drag and drop transcoding, and some specialized video type playback support. All those specialized transcoding features that seemed to allow the graphics processor to assist with video decoding/encoding/processing seemed like they could potentially cause some issues with the software packages I was using.

Reboot and reattempt recoding.  Yea! Success!  Smooth video encoding results.

Since I was doing a lot of trial-and-error troubleshooting, I ended up finding that use of HandBrake to do my initial video selection edit rip-from-DVD and convert worked the fastest and best. From there it really didn’t seem to matter which other video-converter I used to change that file into another format, the final output played flawlessly regardless.

So, if you are using a AMD graphics card and using the ATI Catalyst software/drivers, but still experience issues with your video encoding/playback, you might want to try choosing a “Custom” install rather than the “Express” and then dumping (or uninstalling) those extra feature components that you think you really don’t need.

The Catalyst Control Center has a bunch more performance and feature tweaks you can make as well…and I made just a few but those were all for display picture quality rather than performance.

One awesome and unexpected benefit this brought me was being able to do additional tweaking of the display settings of my new’ish  HP Pavilion 22bw 21.5-inch Diagonal IPS LED Backlit Monitor(C4D29AA) display. I got super-frustrated with the HP driver-display management package and the quality (being output from my laptop on the free HDMI port) was pretty disappointingly sucky. Text was very muddy despite the best efforts to improve it, even with ClearType tweaking.  However, the Catalyst Control settings allowed me to adjust the overscan so it filled the frame and after a little playing with other display options the Catalyst Control Center offered me for it, the display now shows text and other content razor sharp! Hurrah!

Finally, here is one last “bonus tip” for you crazy (personal) video DVD rippers and editors and re-encoders out there.

I usually keep the ripped ISO imaged of our service DVD’s around for quite a while that way I don’t have to take the extra time to re-rip them (usually about 10-15 min per disk).  So when I want to make new copies I just burn the ISOs. Much faster.

So what I figured out was that when I am trying to rip a segment of video from of of our service DVDs, it’s a lot faster to mount the ripped DVD ISO as a virtual drive using ImDisk, OSFMount, or Virtual CloneDrive and use that as my source. The encoding software seems to access the data much faster than when reading it directly off the optical drive media.

I hope this helps some frustrated Studio 15 (1558) users out there who otherwise love their spiffy laptop.

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

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Saturday, November 02, 2013

Linkfest for the SysAdmins

Here is some assorted linkage from the past week or two that might be of interest to the system administrators lurking around.

Cheers,

Claus Valca

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Saturday, September 14, 2013

iPhone Traffic - ZAP’ed, Security, and Network Tap Tap Tapping

This week brought in a very interesting post from web security/developer Troy Hunt.

 Unearthing the hidden shortcomings in Aussie mobile app security - Troy Hunt’s blog

Please go read then come back.

Interesting isn’t it?

I know most GSD readers probably wouldn’t be surprised to find some of their favorite mobile-apps leak user ids and passwords in plain-text, but for those who don’t know, some do.

Case in point (that has now been reported as fixed!):  Zscaler Research: Mobile App Wall of Shame: ESPN ScoreCenter

Naturally that got me thinking about a common mantras in the For/Sec world; “know your tools” & “verify, verify, verify”.

What I want to do is some benchmarking and analysis of the mobile apps I use on my own iPhone to have a better understanding on what is happening with their network traffic. This would be valuable information to know for general usage, and critical knowledge in case you unknowingly encounter a Wi-Fi Pineapple in the wild or a more complex man-in-the-middle Wi-Fi attack and get your network traffic captured.

One super-easy (and lazy) way I have found is to use ZAP - Zscaler Application Profiler.  From the “About” page link:

About ZAP

Zscaler Application Profiler (ZAP) is web based tool designed to streamline the capture and analysis of HTTP(S) traffic from mobile applications. ZAP is capable of analyzing traffic from both iOS and Android applications and includes the following functionality:

  • Search: View summarized historical results for past scans.
  • Scan: Proxy traffic from a mobile device through the ZAP proxy and the mobile app traffic will be automatically captured and analyzed
  • iPCU: Upload your iOS device configuration file(.deviceinfo) to check risk score of installed application. It will give you overall risk score of your device. The information provided is based on out knowledge base.

ZAP classifies traffic into the following buckets and calculates an overall risk score for the application:

  • Authentication: Username/password sent in clear text or using weak encoding methods.
  • Device Metadata Leakage: Data that can identify an individual device, such as the Unique Device Identifier (UDID).
  • Personally Identifiable Information Leakage: Data that can identify an individual user, such as an email address, phone number or mailing address.
  • Exposed content: Communication with third parties such as advertising or analytics sites.

Zscaler also has a detailed video on this service on their blog: Zscaler Research: Introducing ZAP.

So you can either check their historical report data on apps already researched, you can connect your device to their proxy to do a scan on a new app/version not already captured historically, or even upload your own iOS device config file.

Wow.  Bookmark this resource link now!

However, there may be cases you want to do your own local network traffic capture and analysis…because you like pain and frustration (and hands-on learning perhaps).

Part I - In Which Hardware TAP Options are narrowed down

At work (when & where authorized) we can set up network packet captures either on a specific system or on the LAN using port-SPAN.

At home, I don’t have a managed switch (or dumb hub) that can do that.  I suppose I could buy a USB-NIC (so I can have two wired network ports on my laptop) and then capture traffic temporarily though one of these messy devices (home-built or purchased) but that isn’t quite as elegant as I would prefer.

Or (as the TinyApps bloggist kindly just reminded me) use Cain & Abel.

Instead I decided I'll pick up a specialized device that support a network TAP.  This way I can just hook it in line between my Wi-Fi router and the cable modem and capture everything that passes though. It may not be 100% on packet captures, but I think it will be good enough for my home testing.

So the next question is what device?

I’ve settled on the following options:

The DCSW-1005 model is an attractive basic option. It supports port-mirroring, is USB powered, and has 5-ports. (note only port #1 is mirrored to port #5).  The price is good.  The only “drawback” I see is that it only supports 10/100 speed on the network.  While I seriously doubt I would ever approach over 100 Mbps and cause a bottleneck on my home network…most all my other network equipment is 1000 Mbps capable.  So thinking forward, this could be slightly limiting down the road, or if I am asked by family/friends/associates to do some network troubleshooting on a “true” 1000 Mbps network, or tapping in between two network devices actually running at 1000 Mbps.  So there is that. Also, the buffer memory used by the device in the mirroring process is 256 KB. So if that gets saturated, there is the possibility of dropped packet captures.

The only difference between the DCGS-2005/2005L seems to be the “L” model has a metal cabinet while the other doesn’t. Of course, that option comes with a $20 markup as well.  I’m pretty sure the plastic cabinet would be just fine, but the vanity in me just likes the metal cabinet appearance a bit more. Probably just a bit more durable when tossed around in a go-bag and maybe it might dissipate heat a bit better? This model does support up to 1000 Mbps so there is that benefit since it is (at least $100 more expensive) but the buffer memory is just 104 KB. Hmmm. 

Should I be concerned about overloading either of the devices’ memory buffer when capturing home-network traffic? Probably not but what say you pros?

I did find these pretty basic and older reviews, including one from the guru of network security Richard Bejtlich.  I really didn’t find any more recent reviews of the device so if/when I get my hands on one, you can be assured I’ll have a write-up review.

Part II - In Which Other Alternatives are discovered

So let’s assume that you are already comfortable with network packet captures, installing network software, and making network configuration changes to Wi-Fi devices.

Are there any options to capture iPhone network traffic without going to the trouble and expense of picking up TAP hardware just for that task?

Yep.

First option is a tool called Paros. It is Java based (I know, I know..) and can assess web application vulnerabilities. The link has a Windows binary that appears back from August 2008.

Here is a nice walkthough on using Paros Sniff Your iPhone's Network Traffic by Jerod Santofrom to give you some introduction to it.

There was a comment on the Paros page providing information to a very current “fork” of Paros: ZAP

(Note: Not to be confused with the Zscaler ZAP service)

OWASP Zed Attack Proxy Project - OWASP - OWASP.org

There are tons of information on that page on this tool:

And here are some quick links on ZAP usage:

Next up, we have Fiddler, a free web debugging proxy from Telerik

Finally, if you are hard-core, just go use Wireshark.

Part III - Resources, References, & Pineapples

Here are some additional links related to all of the above discussions including the Dualcomm products, SPAN/TAP considerations, and the next network device I’m interested in picking up to play with; the Wi-Fi Pineapple.

SPAN Out of the Box (PDF Link) - John He’s Dualcomm Technology PowerPoint presentation at SharkFest 2010. Goes into details about SPAN/TAP considerations and specifics on what DualComm feels makes their product super special. SPAN out of the Box (Blip video)

B-7 (Battaglia) TAPS Demystified (PPT Link) - Samuel Battaglia’s Network Critical PowerPoint presentation at SharkFest 2010.

SPAN Port vs TAP (Video) - Betty DuBois- SharkFest 2009 presentation. PowerPoint presentation here (ZIP).

SPAN Port or TAP? CSO Beware - LoveMyTool blog - Tim O’Neill

Network Monitoring Madness: Poor Man’s Resource Linkfest - GSD blog post from 2010.

Let’s Get For/Sec-Motivated! - GSD blog post from 2011.

The beginners guide to breaking website security with nothing more than a Pineapple - Troy Hunt’s blog.

Your Mac, iPhone or iPad may have left the Apple store with a serious security risk - Troy Hunt’s blog.

Pineapple Surprise! Mixing trusting devices with sneaky Wi-Fi at #wdc13 - Troy Hunt’s blog.

Netgear DS104 4-Port 10/100 Dual Speed Hub with Uplink Button (Amazon link) - recommended to look into as well by TinyApps bloggist who reports he had good experience with it.

CaptureSetup/Ethernet - The Wireshark Wiki

CaptureSetup/WLAN - The Wireshark Wiki

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

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Sunday, July 28, 2013

ForSec “Value Package” Linkfest - No coupons required!

One last Linkfest from a now exhausted GSD blogger this weekend.

Cleaning out the “to-be-blogged” hopper is always rewarding, but I tend to get very behind on the weekend chores. My saving grace this weekend has been frequent scattered showers and an equally tired Lavie who hasn’t been interested in going out for shopping, groceries, or dining out. The kitchen has been cleaned. The laundry has been done for the week.

Next stop, a few hours of rest, post-blogging, then a wind-down with Endeavour on PBS Masterpiece.

Too Funny Not To Miss

Bloody galah scammers still not getting the message - Troy Hunt’s blog. Security guru Troy Hunt has had his fair share of “this is (not) Microsoft cold calling you…your PC is infected…let me remote control it” scams and has picked them all apart to the bone.

This time he takes a new angle…in a way that only an Aussie could pull off!  This is a classic! Troy, please offer us some of those sound files or link to where we can get them!  I need to put together a Texan sound-effect package for similar fun with unwanted callers. Brilliant!

Microsoft Security News

Microsoft Releases New Mitigation Guidance for Active Directory - Microsoft Security Blog

Overview of Microsoft`s "Best Practices for Securing Active Directory" - SANS Computer Forensics and Incident Response blog’s Mike Pilkington does a great summary and takeaway of the new AD mitigation guidance.

Security Awareness Training: Your First Line of Defense (Part 4) - WindowSecurity.com’s Deb Shinder discusses evaluating training effectiveness short and long-term.

See also these previous series posts:

Network Security, News and Techniques

Wireshark 1.8.9 and 1.10.1 Security Update - ISC Diary

Next up are some great and detailed video presentations from Sharkfest 2013

Recent Forensically Focused Posts

Physical (In)Security?

Duplicate house keys online - Keys Duplicated - This is either freaking amazing or super-scary. I just can’t decide! According to their Security page, precautions are taken.

The Keys Duplicated Blog - A couple really cool and technical posts on the behind the scenes things that make their keys pretty good.

…as spotted on Lifehacker’s post: Shloosl Copies Your House Keys Using a Smartphone Photograph

When 'Smart Homes' Get Hacked: I Haunted A Complete Stranger's House Via The Internet - Forbes

ForSec LiveCD Distro News

AV/AM Bits

Microsoft Security Essentials quietly released version 4.3.216.0 engine update for their free antivirus scanning program. If you use MSSE, you should get it via the automatic updates…if you have them turned on…you do have them turned on right?

Download Microsoft Security Essentials - Microsoft Download Center - Like most things MSSE, trying to figure out just what got updated is next to impossible so let’s just say for now that this one must be better than the previous version and move on.

I’m still using MSSE around the Valca home on all our home systems. I also continue to recommend it to friends and family (generally everyone non-work-related) who I provide friendly IT support to. I find it is pretty non-threatening to the non-technical users I know and though it loves to alert on many of my security programs (potentially unwanted programs) since they can also be used for 3vil, it seems to do a more than adequate job security the systems.

For my Windows 8 systems, I’m instead relying on Bitdefender Antivirus Free. In some ways it’s a bit different model in that you need to sign up with an email address to set up your account. Then you can download the client to the system. What is nice is that if you manage multiple systems in your home, you can log into your account at their site and then get a console feedback on the status of those systems. That’s something that I do at work with another vendor’s enterprise AV client health/status management console. That’s super cool for a free product. I’m seriously leaning to expanding it’s coverage to my main Windows 7 laptop at home. Performance has been outstanding on my Windows 8 systems.

Kaspersky tops real world protection test - BetaNews - this post does point out that Bitdefender tied Kaspersky with a 99.9 % protection level in AV-Comparatives Independent Tests of Anti-Virus Software for July 2013. While Microsoft Security Essentials rated a 92.5 % protection level. There are some additional disclaimers so read the short BetaNews article carefully. Then head over to AV-Comparatives to dig deeper and see the full findings.

Finally, we wrap up this segment with this interesting discussion:

The evolution of Ronvix: Private TCP/IP stacks - Microsoft Malware Protection Center

It’s a bootkit infection that has its own private TCP/IP stack. By doing so it can be extra stealthy and bypass personal firewall hooks and can lurk unseen in standard tools and utilities (such as nbtstat). Doing so, depending on packet/network monitor off the infected machine may be ineffective. However, it still must talk ON the network, so an independent network monitoring and forensics analysis approach using a network monitoring appliance or span port capture may detect the traffic. This may be why comparing outside network traffic captures from a system on the network to network traffic captured on the system may be a useful exercise for incident response and monitoring purposes.

Legally Focused

I’ve been reading a wider range of subjects, and a small part of those touch on our legal system. Mainly they apply to digital law and crime but some are more general. I’m just tossing them out there for the interested or curious. Generally they tend to analysis of current events or provide a more detailed lawyer’s review than the talking/shouting legal heads we encounter on mass-media “news-like” entertainment outlets these days.

  • CYB3RCRIM3 - Susan Brenner’s blog on cybercrime and cyberconflicts in technology and law.
  • Popehat - group blog with a mostly legal focus (though topics can range far afield!)
  • Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - group blog with mostly legal and law-in-today’s-culture focus. Pretty vibrant opinions. Alignments may vary.
  • Lowering the Bar - Sometimes lighthearted (though always serious at the core) look at some of the nonsense the legal system contains, or foists on others from time to time. Great site.
  • Massad Ayoob - legal, cultural, and educational postings primarily dealing with legal private firearm ownership issues. Also analysis of public media trends and news stories.

Have a great week!

--Claus Valca

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