[RESOLVED] fps?

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Sharc
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Re: fps?

Post by Sharc »

Oh yes, you are perfectly right! The card is ancient as is the HP desktop as is its owner! But well maintained and regularly cleaned and lubricated, I promise! Still with the first original and slow harddisk, still running without a bad sector..... reliable stuff.
So far - for my purpose - I have not found a sound reason to replace the card or the PC - or its owner. I can step through video frames and fields, and play files at HD framerates, and even capture my old videotapes without glitches. No gaming or demanding simulations. It's only for this particular 18fps case (so far) that it returned the wrong framerate. And what I read about recent NVIDIA cards is not entirely convincing either......
But no excuse, you are right, it would do no harm to look occasionally for a newer card. So thanks for your kind offer, it's much appreciated, but I trust I will find something suitable and affordable on this side of the ocean. I'll report back once I have the new card (and it will be from NVIDIA just because DG...NV tools are so bloody useful) - or when I will run into another issue with the current one ... ;)
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admin
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Re: fps?

Post by admin »

Sounds fair. I like to keep my "good old stuff" too. But I also don't like to miss out on performance/functionality, especially when it can be had so cheaply nowadays. My needs are more stringent, though, as I need to support the latest HW for my users.

One thing I would warn you about. Hard disks do not last forever, and the death rate increases exponentially with age. I hope you make regular backups, and by regular I mean at least once a week to a disk not installed on the same PC. I backup every few days and have a rotating cycle of 3 full system backups (incremental is too dangerous). The current backup is in a docking station of my PC. The previous is in my car's glove compartment (off-site ha ha, I'm OK if the house burns down while I'm out or a burglar steals all my equipment, including the hidden backup). And the one before that is hidden in my house. I also keep Truecrypt backups of my important personal/financial data on my 980X machine. Call me paranoid but I sleep well at night wherever I am. Realize, I'm the kind of guy that goes on vacation and frets the whole time about whether I remembered to close the garage door, and whether I might have left the gas range on. :(

Suppose one day I have to announce that I have lost the source code to DGDecNV or all my quantum physics research. How stupid would I look? I never want to look stupid. :lol:

I have other absurd scenarios I play through in my brain, like what if I am away and lose my wallet. How do I prove who I am and how do I purchase anything to recover? Sure, sure, call a relative but they're all dying off and I prefer to be self-sufficient, so all my key information is memorized. What a way to go through life, eh? It's a form of OCD I suppose, but that is also good for writing robust code, so it's all OK.

If you do not have such a scheme, play a game in your mind where your entire house goes up in flames. Would you be able to recover or would you be effectively destroyed?

Macrium Reflect is my backup solution. It is free, fast, and works on all my platforms. I backup to external USB 3.0 disks, either standalone or internal drives in a docking station.

What are you doing for backup?
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Aleron Ives
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Re: fps?

Post by Aleron Ives »

I don't know, as someone who has had his car burgled more than once, I might be more inclined to put a backup disk inside a fireproof box, rather than in a car. :?
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Re: fps?

Post by admin »

Sure, Aleron, that is a risk too. It would have to get both my house and car, though, and when they are co-located I am always around, so hopefully can grab a disk or flee in my car. But now you have me thinking. :wow: I do have a fireproof safe with hard copies of my important stuff, so why not increase my cycle to 4, and put one in there? Done!

On all my backups, including on-line stuff on my main machine, my financial data and passwords are in Truecrypt containers. So even if a disk is stolen I am OK. One cannot be too paranoid.

The amazing thing to me is that so many people have no plan at all.
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Aleron Ives
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Re: fps?

Post by Aleron Ives »

Is your car in a garage most of the time? I would be worried about the strain on a HDD of the huge temperature swings that a car undergoes if it has to sit outside. Even so, I've been a bit worried about not having an "off-site" backup in the past, so perhaps I will start doing that, too. :lol: I will need to get another USB HDD and learn how to do full disk encryption with TrueCrypt, though.
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Re: fps?

Post by admin »

I knew you were smart, Aleron, now you confirm it. I have researched the environmental issues for my drives and it's OK for my garage. You have to wait for the drive to come near room temperature before trying to access it, that's all. Freezing is not a problem. Remember how people used to put their flaky drives in the freezer to try to get the data off them? What a world.

The temperature swings of turning a PC on and off are probably as extreme or more extreme than those due to weather. I leave my machine on all the time.

You do not have to have a full disk encryption. I only encrypt really sensitive stuff in a volume. That's what makes it easy to copy the sensitive stuff to all my machines. For the rest it is just the Windows password. Keep throwing things out though, I am obsessed with data safety. You can hide the volume in a multimedia file but I never went that far, as I trust the Truecrypt password against all but NSA-level attackers.

There is the possibility to do cloud backup but I do not trust it. I remember when att.home.net killed off their free web hosting without warning anyone. Fortunately I had a local copy (paranoid remember?) but lots of people lost their entire sites without backup and ATT said you should have read the terms of service. :evil:

In case you are wondering I have had three times in my life where my backups saved me from looking stupid.
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Re: fps?

Post by admin »

I'm going to mark this resolved but feel free to continue the discussion of data safety. No rule 3 here.
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Aleron Ives
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Re: fps?

Post by Aleron Ives »

admin wrote:I knew you were smart, Aleron, now you confirm it.
:ugeek: ;)
admin wrote:I have researched the environmental issues for my drives and it's OK for my garage. You have to wait for the drive to come near room temperature before trying to access it, that's all. Freezing is not a problem.
I'm more worried about heat, as my car has to sit outside. Leaving an HDD in there would be almost as bad (worse?) than putting it in an attic when it comes to extreme temperature swings between day and night. :shock:
admin wrote:You do not have to have a full disk encryption. I only encrypt really sensitive stuff in a volume. That's what makes it easy to copy the sensitive stuff to all my machines.
While it's true that it isn't necessary, I would rather have everything encrypted so that I wouldn't have to worry about a potential thief being able to find something important that I forgot to secure. I think it would also be easy to operate the backup drive this way, as once you plug it in and enter the password, it should show as a regular volume to the OS, so you can copy files to it freely. Once you dismount and disconnect it, everything will be secure again in the event somebody else gets his hands on the drive, and you wouldn't have to worry about deciding which files should be encrypted and which don't need to be.

I don't trust cloud backup either, especially because I would have to copy everything into a special TrueCrypt archive before uploading it in order to prevent Google/MS/Dropbox/whomever from sniffing around in my files, and that doesn't even consider the implications of having your cloud storage provider get hacked, which could then result in your files landing in the hands of criminals worldwide. Good grief. Every time somebody mentions "The Internet of Things", I shudder. Having every appliance in the world connected to the Internet is a security nightmare.
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Sharc
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Re: [RESOLVED] fps?

Post by Sharc »

OMG, coming back to the forum this morning just to find how this thread has developped. You guys have really frightened me, I am devastated. You just made me think how to secure my electricity supply. How to backup and restore data without electric power? Trust that the power will return? Have you read "The Dome"? But wait, another minor practical problem comes into my mind: I have some historic HP85 cassettes - including backups on similar media -, but no reader at hand anymore to read and transfer the data ..... what a shame.

Coming back to the graphics card replacement: I'm afraid there will probably not be many options with my motherboard supporting PCI Express version 1.1 only. So it looks like I am stuck with the 9600GS.
Edit: I just read that a PCIe 2.0 card should be compatible with a 1.1 motherboard, so there is hope. :-)

Now running off for a Diesel generator and finding a secure storage place for an adequate volume of petrol... or should I better switch to solar/wind infrastructure now, controlled by IoT technology?
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Re: [RESOLVED] fps?

Post by admin »

No IoT, we already ruled that out.
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Sharc
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Re: [RESOLVED] fps?

Post by Sharc »

Ok, I replaced the graphics card. Now the framerate for this clip is reported correctly by DGIndexNV as 18.000 fps (rather than 15.000 fps as before).
Problem definitely solved.
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Re: [RESOLVED] fps?

Post by admin »

Good move and good news, Sharc.

What card did you install? PCI 1.1 is a definite limiting factor. Maybe the later cards can fall back to 1.1, I'm not sure.

Do you think you should, maybe, if possible, one day, not meaning to be pushy, think about upgrading your system? Or do your finances totally rule it out? If so, we could take up a collection here. For a fine chap like you? Absolutely.

Also, what about your backup plan for that ancient hard disk?

EDIT: Apparently they can fall back to PCI 1.1, so it's all good as long as they can fit the slot.
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Sharc
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Re: [RESOLVED] fps?

Post by Sharc »

I got a GT 730. Really not a parade horse, but it serves my purpose. And it operates fan-less, means noise-free which I like. On the downside the heatsink occupies the width of 2 slots, so I had to remove my video capture card which I used for capturing my old VHS tapes. Well, actually I don't capture much anymore. Almost all done.

And yes, I am vaguely thinking about upgrading of my system - occasionally. But no urgency as it still serves my purpose. So no rush with initiating a collection, but principally I find your idea really brilliant and definitely worth some more thoughts ;-)

Backup strategy for my 8 years old HD: Despite no bad sectors or other alerting signs, I started to take measures about a year ago, which are:-
a. Synchronizing the current work to an external NAS with 2 HD (RAID)
b. Daily automatic backup of selected user folders to the NAS, with file versioning (3 versions)
c. About monthly manual backup of the User data to an exteran USB drive
d. Full HD image to a external HD, say every 6 ....8 months
e. Backup of pictures to a cloud, for internet access or sharing

So there is a reasonable chance that I will survive a HD crash. Risk is more that a. to d. are in my home (fire, theft ...). So I may adopt your strategy of storing d. in my car, as bank safes are just too costly (compared to the value of my data, I mean).
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Re: [RESOLVED] fps?

Post by admin »

That's all good and proper. GT 730 is a fine card and fanless is sweet. All the high-end cards are two-slot beasts anyway, so no worries about that. You want the airflow around the heatsink so it would be problematic to make it a one-slot card with another installed right next door. I saw one of those on Amazon for $57.00, close to my estimate. You have my blessing. :D

Good luck with your projects, thanks for your contributions, and kick some ass in 2017.
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Re: [RESOLVED] fps?

Post by Guest »

I would kick in a few dollars to help Sharc
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