Random Tech Questions you want answered.

OBS is the the tool a lot of streamers use. It is not easy to setup, but it is free.

ManyCam is another option that is supposed to be more user friendly, but it isn't free.

Zoom and most other similar tools will let you show your desktop or a program, and also show your face, and can be recorded and saved.

Use OBS or try it first since it is free and popular. It will be easy to find tutorials for it. You basically will have two sources your pc screen and your web came You place the web cam over the pc screen and resize it to your liking. It is how people do video game videos with their face in a corner.

dejanzie wrote:

My wife's a teacher (2nd grade) and with the lockdown extending after the Easter break she's looking at new ways to shoot her video's.

Until now she just recorded herself through the webcam and holding up a piece of paper with exercises etc.

She would like to show her materials onscreen and her own face all while shooting the video ideally. A bit like YouTube streamers I guess?

Would anyone have any advice on how to best go about this, taking into account that my wife is not really tech savvy?

You've had some good answers on how to stream the video and put her face in with another computer window. If you want to computerize the paper part, I suggest something like Powerpoint or Keynote. Make a template that's got a frame for the webcam video, put the lesson material in the rest of the presentation, composite your video feed in, and stream that like you would a game.

Do note that if you use OBS for capture, its recordings might not play nicely with video editing software. I know when I try to use OBS-captured footage in Final Cut Pro... I mean, I can edit and export it without too much trouble, but if I hit play then the software locks up for about 20 minutes. I can work around that by exporting the footage and re-importing it, but I have to be very careful not to hit the space bar or L key while I'm doing that.

If you aren't streaming live it might be worth looking into... hang on, I just figured out how to do this if you're making something prerecorded.

Make the Powerpoint, leaving the area for the video like I said above. Then use the Camera app on Windows 10 or Photo Booth on a Mac to record the video. You can record a separate clip for each slide, or you can do a long recording and split it up with Video Editor or iMovie*. Once you have the video clips, embed them in the presentation. Then export the presentation as a movie and upload it to the appropriate host.

*Is it still iMovie? Yep, it's still iMovie. That's the only iApp that still has the "i." Weird.

Thanks everyone! My wife's been experimenting with OBS and it works great for recording her while showing something else on-screen. Which is all she needs right now! Just wait another few months, and she'll be editing and streaming like a pro

What's a good size for an ultrawide monitor? I'm working on some development projects, and for various reasons a 2 screen setup is not exactly practical.

Normally I'd go to Staples or Best Buy and see what they have on display to judge by myself, but...

bobbywatson wrote:

What's a good size for an ultrawide monitor? I'm working on some development projects, and for various reasons a 2 screen setup is not exactly practical.

Normally I'd go to Staples or Best Buy and see what they have on display to judge by myself, but...

My recommendation is for a 34 inch, which is a wide 27 inch monitor. Resolution-wise, I'd recommend 3440x1440 instead of 2560x1080; the lower resolution would probably look pixelated. (Save advice for non-widescreen: I'd recommend 1440p for 27 inch, not 1080p.)

My work monitor is exactly that, a 34" 1440p ultrawide. One with USB-C because my work machine is a MacBook Pro.

100hz too, which is nice.

Can anyone recommend a simple bandwidth monitor app for Windows 10?

All I want to do is see whether a system on my network is sucking up all the bandwidth and if so, which one.

I'd start with Glasswire. It monitors traffic, connections and that sort of thing. See if that does it for you.

Robear wrote:

I'd start with Glasswire. It monitors traffic, connections and that sort of thing. See if that does it for you.

Thanks. It has a nice UI, but unless I'm missing something it only shows traffic from my local pc? There is a list of network devices by ip (and it's nice you can label them), but it doesn't seem to show any activity from (for instance) my iPhone's ip address.

I don’t see how it could unless it is installed on the router. Your PC would have no idea what your phone is doing unless the phone traffic is routed through it.

It's a bit laborious, but you can install it on other devices and then use the Remote Access method to view their stats. It's free, though, so at least it won't cost anything.

You could also flash your router with DD-WRT or Gargoyle. Those have tools to monitor bandwidth and usage.

What type of router are you using?

The crappy FIOS one. I will likely be upgrading my service soon after which I’ll also upgrade my router which would give me more options.

Oh yeah, I turned that down when I switched over. I worked for Comcast long enough to know anything leased from an ISP is going to be locked down harder than a preacher's horny daughter. I bought an ASUS RT-AC66U and have been pretty happy with it. It's a little pricey, but it does come with a number of different apps, including a traffic analyzer.

lol FIOS lets you do what you want with your router. You break it, you handle it. If you ask them to pick up after you, they will remotely reload it to default, that's all.

Check technical gotchas carefully before messing with the Quantum one, however.

PaladinTom wrote:

The crappy FIOS one. I will likely be upgrading my service soon after which I’ll also upgrade my router which would give me more options.

I use my own router with FIOS. You still need the FIOS one to manage some other FIOS and cable box functions but it doesn't need to be your primary router. The only functionality I lost was being able to remotely program my DVR but it was worth it for WIFI that didn't constantly crash.

I'm looking for a RCA (yellow video, and red/white audio) to HDMI converter that isn't a Chinese knockoff/stealing a good design. Anyone have a legitimate product? There's a ton of the exact same looking thing on Amazon, but with minor branding / case print changes. I assume that this is similar to when I went looking for this small amp and there will be a bunch of pitfalls of the non-original. Any recommendations?

Trying to set up my old N64 for the kids on my newer TV that has 1 component in and I can either figure out an RCA->component solution (I have an old system selector with RCA and component, but IIRC it doesn't cross over from one type to the other) or go with the HDMI conversion.

Radio Shack sells one in their online store. $49US.

I doubt that it's anything complicated or weird. I'd worry about the quality of construction on cheap ones, but not the functionality, as far as that goes. And, most likely, they will all have at least some Chinese components. That's the nature of the business.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I'm looking for a RCA (yellow video, and red/white audio) to HDMI converter that isn't a Chinese knockoff/stealing a good design. Anyone have a legitimate product? There's a ton of the exact same looking thing on Amazon, but with minor branding / case print changes. I assume that this is similar to when I went looking for this small amp and there will be a bunch of pitfalls of the non-original. Any recommendations?

Trying to set up my old N64 for the kids on my newer TV that has 1 component in and I can either figure out an RCA->component solution (I have an old system selector with RCA and component, but IIRC it doesn't cross over from one type to the other) or go with the HDMI conversion.

We discuss stuff like this all the time over in the The Classic Video Game Players Thread. These HDMI cables are supposedly pretty good but I haven't tested them myself and they appear to be having supply chain issues. The Eon Super 64 is supposed to be pretty good, but it runs $150. For something a bit cheaper HyperKin makes a cable that will work with the SNES/N64/GameCube for $30. The colors are a bit off with it and picture quality is a little soft, but this might be the way to go for your usage.

General converters designed to just change the audio/video format often introduce a lot of lag so it is usually best to get one designed for use with gaming systems.

Thank you. I would not have thought to ask there as I checked out of that thread a long time ago since it gets way too into the weeds, but I guess that is exactly what I needed to be looking for in this instance.

Is PC gaming at 1080p using a HDMI-to-DVI adapter viable?

I'm looking at GPU upgrades and trying to figure out whether I need to budget for a new monitor at the same time. My current monitor works fine but is so old that its only inputs are DVI and VGA(!).

Yes. DVI carries the same signal as the video part of HDMI.

At 1080p, HDMI and DVI are identical; it's the same literal signal, just on different wires. At higher resolutions things get weird, and they may or may not be signal-compatible anymore.

edit: Specifically, DVI went to more wires, dual-link, and HDMI went to more bandwidth, better wires. Above 1080p, converting from one signal type to the other is kind of expensive, and typically adds at least a frame of lag. At 1080p or lower, though, it's just the same signal in a different form factor, so a simple gender-bender style cable is possible, where it simply connects specific wires to other specific wires, does nothing else, and adds no latency or incompatibility.

Why is HEIC format so slow to take off? I know Apple uses it and it has been an option on the last few Galaxy phones I have had. However I tried using it for the last couple of weeks and it's a crapshoot with apps. For example no photos that are saved in HEIC appear in the Imgur app when browsing my phone. Also, while Textra can send them, it can't manage to get the orientation right.

Putting game footage on YouTube. I'm currently using OBS to record and Filmora to edit. Is there a one stop solution that does both?

strangederby wrote:

Putting game footage on YouTube. I'm currently using OBS to record and Filmora to edit. Is there a one stop solution that does both?

I haven't found one yet. If you do, please let me know.

I think editing software and streaming software must handle video quite differently. Whenever I import video recorded with OBS into into Final Cut Pro I have a really rough time. It'll import, and I can step through it and kind of scrub back and forth, but if I try to play that footage it locks the software up for at least half an hour. I can kind of work around it by exporting the footage and then re-importing that. For this week's church recording I tried playing with the settings to get something that looked like it would be more FCP-friendly; all that did was make the playback lockup last indefinitely and stop it from exporting at all. I salvaged the footage by using VLC to convert it, but that's not what I want to be doing as part of my regular workflow.

(This is on a new 16" Macbook Pro with 64GB of RAM; computer power isn't the issue.)

Hmm. Not had that problem with filmora. If you have time might be worth trying the free version. (Has a watermark)