Well, Guild Wars 2 is fun. Sadly, I haven't been playing it for a couple days because 1) I was trying to get video capture cards working on Windows Server 2008 R2 and 2) I can't log in because of, well, I don't know. My friends are able to log in, but I'm practically locked out of my account because authentication emails never arrive. I'd make a post on the forums or a support ticket but, ding ding ding, no authentication email. Awesome.
Sure, I could disable it, but I'm still hanging onto the idea of being able to see when my account is accessed and allowing/denying it. And I still get this odd feeling I'd have to authenticate the opting out of authentication.
-------
While I was trying to log in to GW2 for the past 2..wait...3 days, I was also getting frustrated with capture cards.
I've had this Pinnacle Dazzle DVC100 in my closet for maybe a year and haven't done anything with it. So, I dusted it off and installed it only to get constant "No valid input signals" for a day. Sometimes VLC, VirtualDub, or Media Player Classic would pickup audio, but I wouldn't have video. The rest of the time, nothing.
I spent a day reading 2-4 year old forum threads all dealing with the same problem. The bigger issue was all of the "solutions" consisted of making sure I selected the right capture card, unplugging the card, downloading drivers, and restarting the computer. Something I'd already done half a dozen times before turning to the net. Most of those threads were left unsolved as well. Great.
Solution? Use an internal capture card I removed from a machine to make room for a graphics card. And...the opposite of the problem happened. Video, no audio. Followed by flip flopping between one or the other with the occasional neither. So, I put the DVC100 back in and thought I'd try using both cards at once...then decided I really wanted only one to work since, well, they SHOULD work without resorting to this.
Now, I was running a server OS so, after getting frustrated with "solutions" online, I decided to see if I could dual boot the machine. Bad idea. I only have a copy of Vista Business I never got around to using and I'd probably wind up in the same "You're missing APIs and stuff" problem. So, I finally took a look at http://www.win2008r2workstation.com/, the site I used to Workstation-ize the OS. Lo and behold, there was an installer that added the missing components. I was rather dubious given how old the thread was, but the installer worked. Now, instead of only having audio and no video, I had video and no audio.
Several bluescreens, restarts, and settings windows later, I managed to get Pinnacle's software and VirtualDub to detect both audio and video AND record it. However, only Pinnacle's software would play both video and audio in realtime, but the video was halfsize because it was only a "preview". Virtualdub would show the video fullsize, detect the audio and show the volume level, but refused to play the audio in its Preview window. Seeing as how I wanted to be able to watch tapes in real time as well as record them, I was a bit upset. Sure, I could have a realtime stream with audio and video, but that was only if I wanted to a) put my face against the screen or b) use the Magnifier at 500% zoom and watch pixels talking.
Apparently, the Dazzle system doesn't like to work with anything but the software that came with it, *surprise surprise*. And, despite following a dozens "how to fix" tutorials, nothing worked. A bit of a letdown, but I had my fullsize transfers and decided to call it a day.
What really irked me about the tutorials was that the makers in all but one video already had their setup working and went "if you do this, it should work". No proof, just "Well this worked for me, see?" The one that didn't was solving some "no color" problem that I wasn't having. All of them were recounting the same or similar steps that I had already come up with on my own or followed. Ugh.
-------
So, I got back to work on my leather dusters for Skyrim. There isn't much to say about this. I followed the same Garment Maker tutorial series to form the duster on a male_0 body, weighted it, remade the texture since the UV maps weren't exactly the same as the female duster's, and spent a day trying to make a male_1 version. The physique change (not the modifier) is quite drastic from male_0 to male_1. You pretty much go from a twig to a walking mountain of meat.
In the end, I resorted to using the SoMuchMorpher plugin to get the duster to fit. Then I used a Skin Wrap on the male_0 duster to get the weights right. After that, some testing of each duster to make sure they worked and another test with the weight slider enabled before uploading to Steam.
I don't have a 1st person model for the dusters, yet. I tried plugging in the 3rd person model and that didn't work at all. So, I think I need to look at an existing 1st person model's nif structure. I also have Nightasy's tutorials to go through.
-------
Verb tenses are everywhere!
No comments:
Post a Comment