Category Archives: Tech

Tech

Freeware MTS (AVCHD) Converter

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A few of my clients have Sony HD Cameras and are constantly asking for assistance on how to import video into Premiere or other video editing programs.

Most of the newer Sony\Panasonic Cameras (it seems) record to a transport stream format of AVCHD in a .MTS container. Adobe Premiere and other video editing applications cannot import this format so the easiest way I have found to import these types of videos is to convert it to an industry standard format that is supported by Premiere prior to importing.
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Tech

How to fix SQL Server when you have changed your computer name

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Sure every SQL Server wants to feel special.. But before you take it out on the town and give it a new name and a dinner, and a show.. Just keep in mind the SQL SERVER WILL CRASH AND BURN TO PIECES if you change your machine name..

You see there are tables in your SQL Server that explain what the machine is called that it resides on.. This is kinda important and if SQL Server can’t ‘find itself’ you start hitting all sorts of problems.
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Tech

VMWare & NFS for Windows (with a little iSCSI thrown in) for free(ish)

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Working in an environment where we have 100 or so Virtual Machines running across for a multitude of ESX Servers it becomes exponentially harder to maintain them as users begin to want to copy, backup, duplicate & migrate Virtual Machines from different ESXi Servers within our organisation. It was time to implement some additional, external, centrally managed storage to store and maintain the expanding collection of virtual machines we have.
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Tech

Running Media Player Classic with Microsoft Media Center

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As an avid Media Center User I have many many nice things to say about it.. Though I have always been a little annoyed and the poor video format support in Microsoft Media Center. When I found out the new version of MediaBrowser had the ability to user other applications to watch Videos, rather than the internal decoder, I jumped straight in and configured it to launch Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition to as it’s always been my favourite media player for Windows.
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Tech

“Compositing not enabled” message in Ubuntu 11 Natty Narwhal when using Unity-2D or Classic Desktop

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A quick one:

If anyone is expericning ‘compositing not enabled’ issues with their applications on Ubuntu 11 – even though you have Compiz installed and it’s saying that Compositing IS enabled try this application below from Mariano Chavero.

http://marianochavero.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/a-simple-gui-for-unity-2d-settings-ubuntu-11-04/

This worked perfectly for me to re-enable compositing after upgrading to Natty Narwhal..

Tech

Microsoft Threat Management Gateway (TMG) – Intermittent connection issues and timeouts

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After the installation of a brand new TMG Server (TMG stands for Threat Management Gateway which is the new name for Microsoft’s ISA Server Software of old) some of the internal clients complained of unusual connection issues – including web page dropouts, ftp access issues, IM applications connecting and disconnecting over and over etc. All these issues were sporadic, over time they would improve and then bam would return again..
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