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• Death of A Micro Center

  21 septembre 2012, par Multimedia Mike — History

  The Micro Center computer store located in Santa Clara, CA, USA closed recently :

  
  
  

  I liked Micro Center. I have liked Micro Center ever since I first visited their Denver, CO location 10 years ago. I would sometimes drive an hour in each direction just to visit that shop. I was excited to see that they had a location in the Bay Area when I moved here a few years ago (despite the preponderance of Fry’s stores).

  Now this location is gone. I wonder how much of the “we couldn’t come to favorable terms on a lease” was true (vs. an excuse to close a retail store at a time when more business is moving online, particularly in the heart of Silicon Valley). But that’s not what I wanted to discuss. I came here to discuss…

  The Micro Center Window Logos

  The craziest part about shopping the Santa Clara Micro Center location was the logos they displayed on the window outside. Every time I saw it, it made me sentimental for a time when some of these logos were current, or when some of these companies were still in business. Some of the logos on their front window were for companies I’ve never heard of. It reminds me of the nearby 7-11 convenience stores when I was growing up– their walls were decorated with people sporting embarrassingly 1970s styles long after the 1970s had transpired.

  I thought I would record what those front window logos were and try to pinpoint when the store launched exactly (assuming the logos have been their since the initial opening and never changed).

  
  
  Click for larger image
  

  Here we have Lotus, Hewlett Packard/HP, Corel, Fuji, Power Macintosh, NEC, and Fujitsu. Lotus was purchased by IBM in 1995 and still seems to be maintained as a separate brand. The Power Macintosh was introduced as a brand in 1994. Corel’s logo has seen a few mutations over the years but I don’t know when this one fell out of favor.

  Fuji (vs. Fujitsu) appears to refer to Fujifilm, though this logo is also obsolete.

  
  
  Click for larger image
  

  Hayes– I specifically remember reading the Slashdot post accouncing that Hayes is dead (followed by many comments reminiscing about the Hayes command set). Here is the post, from early 1999.

  From Googling, it doesn’t appear IBM still has a presence in the consumer computing space (though they do have something pertaining to software for consumer products). Then there’s the good old rainbow Apple logo, something that went away in 1997. I suspect 1997 was also the last hurrah of the name ‘Macintosh’ (though I remember mistakenly referring to Apple computer products as Macintoshes well into the mid-2000s and inadvertently angering some Apple enthusiasts).

  
  
  Click for larger image
  

  As for the next segment, obviously, both Sony and Toshiba are still very much alive. Iomega was acquired by EMC in 2008 but is still maintained as a separate brand. USRobotics is still around and making — what else ? — 56K modems (and their current logo is slightly different than the one seen here).

  Targus seems to be a case maker (“Leading Provider of Cases, Bags and Accessories for Laptops and Tablets”). I wonder if that’s just their current business or if they had more areas long ago ? It seems strange that they would get brand billing like this.

  Finally, searching for information about Practical Peripherals only produces sites about how they’re long dead (like this history lesson). It’s unclear when they died.

  The interior of this store was also decorated with more technology company logos near the ceiling (I didn’t really register that fact until I had visited many times). Regrettably, I now won’t be able to see how up to date those logos were.

  Based on the data points above, it’s safe to conclude that the store opened between 1995 or 1996 (again, assuming the logos were placed at opening and never changed).

  Epilogue

  Here’s one more curious item still visible from the outside :

  
  
  

  “See the world’s fastest PC !” Featuring an Intel Core 2 Extreme ? That CPU dates back to 2007 and was succeeded by Nehalem in late 2008. So even that sign, which is presumably easier and cleaner to replace than the window logos, was absurdly out of date.

• UVC webcam with ffplay outputs only noise ?

  1er mars 2024, par Abdulla Masud

  (My end goal is to use a UVC webcam with esp32 or raspberry pi. I was hoping to learn while doing some fun projects.)

  


  I have an old UVC webcam (Creative model ct6840) but I can't seem to get it to work with ffplay. I have tried looking through the documentation and other questions here but nothing is working for me. So far I have only been able to achieve a noisy-jittery output.

  


  Running ffplay -f rawvideo -video_size 670x480 /dev/video1, I get :

  


  

  


  Can someone help me understand how to make the camera work with ffplay ?

  


  The following is the information of my webcam :

  


  $ ffmpeg -f v4l2 -list_formats all -i /dev/video2

  


  [video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x17eb3c0] Compressed: Unsupported :          GSPCA OV511 : 320x240 640x480


  


  $ v4l-info /dev/video2

  


  ### v4l2 device info [/dev/video2] ###
general info
    VIDIOC_QUERYCAP
    driver                  : "ov519"
    card                    : "USB Camera (05a9:0511)"
    bus_info                : "usb-0000:00:14.0-8.2"
    version                 : 6.1.79
    capabilities            : 0x85200001 [VIDEO_CAPTURE,?,READWRITE,STREAMING,(null)]

standards

inputs
    VIDIOC_ENUMINPUT(0)
    index                   : 0
    name                    : "ov519"
    type                    : CAMERA
    audioset                : 0
    tuner                   : 0
    std                     : 0x0 []
    status                  : 0x0 []

video capture
    VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT(0,VIDEO_CAPTURE)
    index                   : 0
    type                    : VIDEO_CAPTURE
    flags                   : 1
    description             : "GSPCA OV511"
    pixelformat             : 0x3131354f [O511]
    VIDIOC_G_FMT(VIDEO_CAPTURE)
    type                    : VIDEO_CAPTURE
    fmt.pix.width           : 640
    fmt.pix.height          : 480
    fmt.pix.pixelformat     : 0x3131354f [O511]
    fmt.pix.field           : NONE
    fmt.pix.bytesperline    : 640
    fmt.pix.sizeimage       : 614400
    fmt.pix.colorspace      : JPEG
    fmt.pix.priv            : 4276996862

controls
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+0)
    id                      : 9963776
    type                    : INTEGER
    name                    : "Brightness"
    minimum                 : 0
    maximum                 : 255
    step                    : 1
    default_value           : 127
    flags                   : 48
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+1)
    id                      : 9963777
    type                    : INTEGER
    name                    : "Contrast"
    minimum                 : 0
    maximum                 : 255
    step                    : 1
    default_value           : 127
    flags                   : 32
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+2)
    id                      : 9963778
    type                    : INTEGER
    name                    : "Saturation"
    minimum                 : 0
    maximum                 : 255
    step                    : 1
    default_value           : 127
    flags                   : 32
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+24)
    id                      : 9963800
    type                    : MENU
    name                    : "Power Line Frequency"
    minimum                 : 0
    maximum                 : 2
    step                    : 1
    default_value           : 0
    flags                   : 0
    VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL(BASE+32)
    id                      : 9963808
    type                    : BOOLEAN
    name                    : "Brightness, Automatic"
    minimum                 : 0
    maximum                 : 1
    step                    : 1
    default_value           : 1
    flags                   : 8


  


  Can someone guide me here please ? Any advice will be greatly appreciated 

  


  (P.S. the camera works perfectly with "guvcview" gtk application but since I want to use the camera with raspberry pi, I want it to work with ffplay...)

  


• How to encode video with ffmpeg using AMD h264_amf

  10 novembre 2022, par Ivy Growing

  Given :

  


  

  • Win10

  


  • AMD CPU

  


  • Video capturing card Avermedia Live Gamer Extreme 3

  


  • ffmpeg versions and encoders :

  


  


  >ffmpeg.exe -encoders | find "264"
ffmpeg version 5.1-full_build-www.gyan.dev Copyright (c) 2000-2022 the FFmpeg developers
// cut
 V....D libx264              libx264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (codec h264)
 V....D libx264rgb           libx264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 RGB (codec h264)
 V....D h264_amf             AMD AMF H.264 Encoder (codec h264)
 V....D h264_mf              H264 via MediaFoundation (codec h264)
 V....D h264_nvenc           NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... h264_qsv             H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (Intel Quick Sync Video acceleration) (codec h264)


  


  Required to capture the video into H.264 encoded file using AMD's hardware accelerator in the CPU (AMF, or VCE).
Tried : ffmpeg -y -f dshow -rtbufsize 2002000k -framerate 30 -i video="Live Gamer EXTREME 3"  -t 00:00:10  -c:v h264_amf output.ts
Result :

  


  Input #0, dshow, from 'video=Live Gamer EXTREME 3':
  Duration: N/A, start: 88548.973998, bitrate: N/A
  Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo (YUY2 / 0x32595559), yuyv422(tv, bt709/bt709/unknown), 1280x720, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 10000k tbn
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (rawvideo (native) -> h264 (h264_amf))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[h264_amf @ 000002404328c700] DLL amfrt64.dll failed to open
Error initializing output stream 0:0 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
Conversion failed!


  


  For some reason ffmpeg uses resolution 1280x720... When trying to specifiy the capture card resolution the following error appears :

  


  >ffmpeg -y -f dshow -rtbufsize 2002000k -framerate 30 -video_size 3840x2160 -i video="Live Gamer EXTREME 3" -r 30 -t 00:00:10   -c:v h264_amf -f mpegts output.ts
//cut
[dshow @ 0000029d7c0f84c0] Could not set video options
video=Live Gamer EXTREME 3: I/O error


  


  This is not unique error for Avermedia card. The same error appears with Dell web cam and for Magewell.

  


  From this answer the extra flags to be used with h264_amf. I guessed the default values should be good enough. It seems something needs to be configured or initialized when using AMF/VCE.

  


  The video encoding in software (without AMF) works just fine but loads the CPU. The goal is using dedicated hardware module and release computational power of the CPU for the other apps.

  


  Command example will be appreciated.