Knowledgeable on tech things including but not limited to Linux, Windows, OS X, Xbox 360, Video Production (Linux Tech and Gaming Podcast), Console and PC Gaming, Graphics (GIMP), iDevices, Geo Caching, Networking (Consumer level), and Audio/Video setups.
I do it all and I do it with Open Source Software but I'm not against using proprietary solutions if they get the job done and done efficiently.
Some may yell at me for wanting to play PC games with a controller. They all say, "PC games are meant to be played with a keyboard and mouse." Well I grew up playing console games which always had a controller. It's not due to the lack of trying but when I play with keyboard and mouse my movement is less than adequate and my fingers don't have the buttons memorized yet so I end up dieing because I didn't move away from an enemy quick enough. W, S, D, and A are the buttons normally used in PC FPS games for moving forward, backward, and strafing side to side. The mouse is used for where your eyes are looking and or where your gun shoots. So until I get better with a keyboard and mouse I'd like to play my PC games with a controller at times.
I was happy to see that Serious Sam 3 BFE (a first person shooter) had controller support. Most Steam games will denote whether a game has controller support or not. Sometimes it may say "Partial Controller Support". I am not certain what that means but some controller support is better than none in my opinion. I took a chance and bought the game. When I fired it up my After Glow Xbox 360 Controller was supported immediately upon turning on the game. This is with a default Ubuntu 12.04.3 installation, it uses the xpad module (driver) and I didn't have to install the xboxdrv module (driver) which is a userspace driver. There are some advantages to using the xboxdrv module but I won't cover those in this post.
Other games I quickly found the same controller did NOT work in, notably all the Source Engine Games by Valve. The ones I tried were Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead 2 the controller did not work. I tried everything, from opening the console in game and entering "exce 360controller" and "exec 360controllerlinux" to allowing world readable permissions on the /dev/input/event11 device node which is what the controller was plugged into but nothing was working. Well after many hours of googling and trial and error I found what finally solved the controller issue for Valve's Source Engine Games. The original solution has to be credited back to a google post just to give credit where credit is due.
First open the Steam Client and you'll notice that there is a place to click to activate Big Picture Mode, it's located on the upper right side of your Steam Client.
Click that and it will activate Big Picture Mode which is basically Steam running in fullscreen. Use your mouse and click on the little gear symbol in the upper right corner which is where all the settings are. Now click on Controller. Next you'll see the following picture and hopefully it states that your controller is detected. If not, sorry I can't help any further, you'll have to investigate why Steam can't detect your controller.
Click on edit controls and you'll be taken to this screen.
You just go down the list, Steam shows the button on the screen in green and you click that corresponding button on your wire connected Xbox 360 controller. I am not sure whether this works with a wireless controller due to the Microsoft's wireless technology of the controller, you'll definitely need a wireless dongle from somewhere if they even make them. Once you have mapped each button then click save, you can choose to give it a name or overwrite the existing name that was there. Now you are all done.
You can now use your controller within Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead 2. One thing to note was that I did have to increase the sensitivity within TF2 because the movements were really slow but other than that I am very pleased I got the controller working.
Hello there fellow tech nerds. How has everyone been doing lately? I have been thrilled with life lately and I hope you as well.
Todays post is going to cover how to capture hd video (720p) from a component video source onto your Linux computer so that you can edit it with video editing software. I do this to capture my Xbox 360 gameplay. I use a microphone and audacity to record commentary separately. I then edit the video files captured from the HD-PVR and the audio commentary together using Kdenlive, then render it and upload the videos to YouTube. I do this to help others with certain parts of a game or just provide general tips about a particular game. So let's get right into it.
First you'll obviously need an Hauppauge HD-PVR but it has to be model number 1212 (the wiki states that model# 1445 is also supported but I don't see that as a model# on the Hauppauge Support page), the newer ones (HD-PVR2) don't have linux drivers so there is currently no way to capture from them. Luckily if you're using a recent Linux distribution the driver that allows this to work is built right into the Linux kernel. Any kernel 2.6.30 or above and the driver is included within the kernel. I am running Xubuntu 12.04.3 with kernel 3.7.0-030700-generic. You may possibly need a Windows computer to upgrade the firmware on the HD-PVR which is done by running a Windows executable file from Hauppauge's Support Page which installs the driver but it also updates the firmware within the HD-PVR. The latest firmware is preferred, it's all explained HERE.
Step 1 (determine current firmware on your HD-PVR)
Open a terminal window and plug in your HD-PVR preferably into a USB2.0 port (I don't think USB1.1 is fast enough. I had issues using a USB3.0 port in which it would stop recording by itself so try to avoid if you can or try it out and see for yourself), type in
dmesg
Mine returns the following information
[6307.550581] usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 13 using ehci_hcd
[ 6307.727776] usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=2040, idProduct=4903
[ 6307.727779] usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 6307.727781] usb 1-3: Product: Hauppauge HD PVR
[ 6307.727783] usb 1-3: Manufacturer: AMBA
[ 6307.727784] usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 00A49D0D
[ 6307.755504] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: firmware version 0x1e dated Mar 7 2012 08:25:15
[ 6307.755507] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: untested firmware, the driver might not work.
[ 6307.869496] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: magic request returned 8
[ 6307.878237] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x1700 returned 1
[ 6307.887215] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x1500 returned 1
[ 6307.922052] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x1200 returned 1
[ 6307.931548] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x1300 returned 1
[ 6307.940780] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x2900 returned 1
[ 6307.950518] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x2a00 returned 1
[ 6307.958510] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x2b00 returned 1
[ 6307.967748] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x2c00 returned 1
[ 6307.977615] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: config call request for value 0x2d00 returned 1
[ 6307.996731] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: control request returned 4
[ 6307.997589] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: no valid video signal or device init failed
[ 6308.007835] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: control request returned 1
[ 6308.025559] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: control request returned 1
[ 6308.025561] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: allocating 64 buffers
[ 6308.052476] hdpvr 1-3:1.0: device now attached to video1
[ 6308.052495] usbcore: registered new interface driver hdpvr
The hdpvr module should have autoloaded once you plugged in your HD-PVR, if it didn't we can load it manually by issuing
sudo modprobe hdpvr
Nothing will appear to happen if all went well but to verify it's loaded you can issue
If it didn't you'll have to figure out what's wrong with the hdpvr module within the kernel you're using and this tutorial won't cover that sorry.
So according to my dmesg output and the HD-PVR MythTV wiki I am running the latest firmware already. This is a good thing. If you're not running a firmware dated Mar 7 2012 then I suggest updating the HD-PVR firmware because it can fix various issues as well as fix color and saturation issues with previous firmwares. I am not sure this would work within a Virtual Machine so if you don't have a Windows computer see if you have any friends or family that would allow you to use it. You would just need to bring the HD-PVR with you, along with it's USB cable and if they had internet you could download the latest driver that linked to earlier, hook up the HD-PVR and run the .exe driver installer and it will update the HD-PVR with the latest firmware. If you can't for whatever reason update the firmware it's ok, you can still move forward with the tutorial just note that if issues arise it may be related to the old firmware on the HD-PVR. NOTE: Certain kernels (kernel lower than 3.3) and firmware combinations may also result in color and saturation issues as well, those issues can be read about HERE.
Step 2 (setting some sane defaults for the HD-PVR)
The way we set the module (a module is equivalent to a driver in Windows) defaults at least within Ubuntu is by creating a *.conf file and storing it within /etc/modprobe.d/. The *.conf file will be read by the kernel when it loads the hdpvr module. The settings that can be set are all listed HERE. Create the *.conf file
gksudo leafpad /etc/modprobe.d/hdpvr.conf
You can name it whatever you want but I named it hdpvr.conf so that I know what the conf file is for. I used leafpad but you can use whatever GUI text editor that's installed on your system. I run Xubuntu so the default editor is leafpad, yours may be gedit if you run straight Ubuntu.
within the file paste the following
I enabled the least log info possible while still showing some debug info (useful for troubleshooting). Since I have a webcam always connected I made the HD-PVR video device node 1 (will show up as /dev/video1). I want to capture the component input (versus composite-yellow, white, red) and finally I want to capture the audio from the rear RCA ports NOT the front ones. You can set those settings to match your system and situation. In order for the settings to take effect without having to reboot your machine you can issues the following to reload the hdpvr module which will then use your settings.
sudo rmmod hdpvr
That will unload the module
sudo modprobe hdpvr
That will load it again using the settings from the *.conf file you created.
Step 3 (capture some video)
Unfortunately for now there is no nice little GUI (Graphical User Interface) application that captures the HD-PVR video stream although I am in talks with the developer of SimpleScreenRecorder to see if he can incorporate capturing the HD-PVR with his application. So for now it's a pretty basic command in which we have to use the terminal. For this to work your user that you log in as needs to be part of the video group. I'm sure you can google how to achieve this as it's not hard but this tutorial won't cover that. So open a terminal window, then we want to change directories to where ever you want the recording to be saved. Ensure there is an ample space free within this folder since capturing HD video takes up a lot of space. It's around 500 megabytes (that's .5 gigabyte) of space for around a 10 minute video. That's done with
cd /home/username/Videos/
You obviously need to change the username to be YOUR username and ensure the full path is writable by you. So I have a Videos directory located in my home directory which I have write permissions to. Normally any folder within your entire home directory is writable by you. The command to capture the video is
cat /dev/video1 > video.ts
The Linux cat command concatenates and lists files. Basically we're using cat to spit out whatever is at /dev/video1 which in this case will be the video stream from the HD-PVR. The little forward pointing arrow ">" is the linux command called redirect. It redirects input somewhere else. So in this case it's taking the video stream from the cat command and redirecting it into a file called video.ts. That's pretty much it, whenever you want to stop recording you simply hit the control key plus the letter c (ctrl+c) which tells it to cancel the command.
Congrats, you now have a video file called video.ts which contains whatever was being displayed from your video device. In regards to the video and audio specifications the HD-PVR can record up to 1080i. Personally I prefer 720p over 1080i since the p means it's progressive which can lead to less flickering. It boils down to what resolution you're inputting into the HD-PVR, it has a passthrough, meaning whatever you're inputting in the HD-PVR that same signal will get passed out to a TV to view. At that same time the video is encoded within the device using h264 codec for the video and aac codec for the audio. The encoding information for the HD-PVR can be read about HERE, it's all in the 2nd and 3rd paragraph if you're interested in learning about the bitrate, resolutions, codec etc etc. So in my example I play my Xbox 360 as 720p so the video.ts file contains an hd video which is HD quality (720p). Now go and create some masterpiece videos and showcase them on YouTube for the world to view.
Here's a sample of my work all done using Xubuntu Linux
Skip to "Let the tutorial begin" if you don't want to read any back story.
First I'd like to say sorry to those that follow this Blog, I have not posted in a very long time. I've been really hip deep in my YouTube Channel and gaming (both in Linux and on Xbox 360) so I haven't had much to blog about in terms of technology goes. I am hoping to get a post up about SteamOS and other technology related stuff very soon but let's start with this post for now.
I was debating what to title this post exactly since theoretically it could be used to transfer other Linux distributions as well and heck, it may even work to transfer a Windows OS or even OS X installation to another hard drive but I figured I would only cover exactly what I did since I know it works. This post will go over the steps I took in order to successfully change from a small IDE 40GB hard drive to a larger SATA 160GB hard drive AND at the same time changing ALL my computer hardware as well.
A little backstory first. I built my 4th computer in 2007 and believe it or not I have been using that ever since. With my recent YouTube adventures and getting into more PC gaming the computer started to really show it's age as I couldn't play certain games and rendering videos for YouTube took forever and a day. So I finally decided I needed to upgrade everything. I was planning on saving my money for Black Friday or Cyber Monday but a deal for a used computer sprang up out of no where and for a really good price I might add. For a mere $200 I could get a completely new tower. The main specs of the tower are as follows:
Sentey Modtower case with 7 fans
AsRock Extreme6 FM1
AMD A8-3870k 3.00Ghz
G-Skill Sniper 2133Mhz DDR3 RAM (2x4GB totalling 8GB)
XFX HD5750 1GB DDR5
OCZ Synapse Cache SSD 64GB
400w PSU that powers the motherboard and GPU
380w PSU that powers everything else
My current Xubuntu 12.04.3 was currently on a 40GB IDE hard drive and since the new motherboard didn't have any IDE's ports I would need to figure out what to do to transfer my operating installation to my new used hardware. I found a 160GB SATA hard drive in another computer of mine, moved all the data of it onto my Western Digital My Book World Edition (a NAS basically) and I was ready to move my Xubuntu installation from the small 40GB drive to the larger 160GB drive.
Let the tutorial begin
Things needed
-A computer to create the live usb sticks
-You'll need a minimum of (2) 1GB flash drives (to run live usb versions of clonezilla and linux-secure-remix from) OR an optical disc such as cd-rom or a dvd....assuming your computer has an optical drive. You could use the same 1GB stick for both clonezilla and linux-secure-remix BUT it will take more time since you have to use linux-secure-remix in between using clonezilla.
-A storage location large enough to backup the images of your partitions (network storage OR local external hard drive)
-Clonezilla (I choose amd64 because the computer I was running the live usb stick from had a 64bit chip. If you aren't sure it's ok to choose the i686pae version)
-Linux-Secure-Remix (choose linux-secure-13.04-64bit if the OS you're moving is a 64bit OS or choose linux-secure-13.04-32bit if the OS you're moving is a 32bit OS)
Alright, so I trust you downloaded the software you'll be using from above and we're ready to get going.
Step 1 (install new hard drive)
Install your new hard drive (this is the hard drive you're transferring your currently installed Operating System TO) into the computer which will be your final computer hardware you're going to settle with. In my case it was a completely different computer tower BUT your may only be transferring your OS to a new hard drive and not changing any hardware so you would install the hard drive into your current computer that you want the larger drive in. Step 2 (live clonezilla media creation)
Using your current computer operating system, we'll use it to create the live usb or livecd of clonezilla. Clonezilla has some tips for creating it HERE. You can not simply copy the clonezilla ISO to a usb stick or to a cd-rom as data, that won't work. You need to use software that writes the ISO to the usb stick or the optical media as well as making the usb stick or optical media bootable. Meaning, the computer BIOS sees it as a bootable device and the computer boots the usb stick or optical media versus the internal hard drive that's in the computer you're using. Once your done creating your live media of clonezilla shut down your computer
Step 3 (backup partitions to image files)
If you made a live cd or live dvd, put it in the optical drive and then turn off the computer which contains the hard drive that you want to transfer FROM. If you created a live usb stick, plug it once the computer is off. Turn the computer on and activate a boot menu if you can (it was F11 on mine), this will allow you to choose which device to boot to, in the case of a live cd, choose the correct optical drive. In the case of a live usb stick, choose the applicable usb stick. It should boot into clonezilla, hit enter to choose the defaults, choose the proper language and hit enter, I clicked "don't touch keymap" for the keyboard setting and hit enter. Choose Start Clonezilla, hit enter. Choose the device-image option (first option), hit enter. The next screen is where you choose where you want to backup your images (what they refer to as being /home/partimag) (NOTE: do NOT choose the new hard drive to store your images onto because it's going to be formatted later on), in my case I was using a 200GB external usb hard drive so that option is local_dev, hit enter. Then choose the folder or directory where the image will be saved to. Click beginner mode as that's the easiest and worked just fine for me. The next screen I choose saveparts option because I had a / partition and a /home partition I need to backup. Then choose the partition you want to create an image of by arrowing onto it and hitting the space bar (it will put an asterisk to signify that's the partition you're backing up), name it appropriately and hit enter. I can't find any screenshots so I am not certain on the next few steps but it should just be hitting enter and then hitting "y" telling it to perform the backup image creation. After it's done, you have the option of powering off, rebooting, starting over from scratch or starting over keeping the same location for storing another image. I choose to start over fresh just in case. So perform the same steps to backup your next partition but obviously this time choose the next partition you want to backup and when it comes time to name it, ensure you choose a different name because the default name will be the same as your first image backup. Hit "y" a few times and it should now create another image but this time of the newly selected partition you choose to create an image of. I only had 2 partitions so I am done with this step but if you have more partitions than keep creating images of them until you're done. Reboot the computer so it boots to your current operating system that you're using. Pfffff, that was a long step. Sorry about that.
Step 4 (live linux-secure-remix creation)
If you don't have a second flash drive just use the same one you used for clonezilla. You'll use the same steps to write the linux-secure-remix ISO to the usb stick as you used during step 1. Remember, use a method that "burns the ISO image" onto the usb stick and makes it bootable as well. Step 5 (partition your new drive)
This step you can either boot into your current OS installation OR insert the live media which contains linux-secure-remix on it into the computer that has the new hard drive. In my case I had to boot the live media since this new computer didn't have a hard drive with any OS in it. If using your current OS installation, than use whatever method needed to partition your new hard drive. This step is important in that you need to partition your new drive the same way your old drive is partitioned, not in size, but the partition numbering. NOTE: the new partitions should be larger than what they are now that you're transferring FROM. Primary and logical partitions need to match. I choose to stick with msdos (MBR) style partitioning versus going to the new GPT partitioning scheme which is required for drives larger than 2TB. MBR works for 2TB drives and lower. Sorry this tutorial won't go into switching from MBR to GPT but I have read it can be done without data loss. In my case I had sda1 as my only primary partition, sda2 was an extended partition which contained sda5 and sda6 as logical partitions. I formatted sda1 and sda6 as ext4. If using a livecd or live usb, then boot the computer and enter the BIOS boot menu so you can choose either the livecd or the live usb stick to boot to. Once booted into linux-secure-remix (it's basically Ubuntu 13.04 with some pre-installed applications) you'll want to open the application called Gparted.
NOTE: If you have more than 1 disk within this computer, ensure you're on the correct one. Follow the steps above for partitioning and ensure the partitions are the same as your old drive you're transferring FROM. Now you're done partitioning the new drive and it's ready to accept the images of your partitions that you're transferring. If you made a livecd then put the clonezilla livecd into your optical drive prior to shutting down. You can shut down your computer as it's time to reboot into Clonezilla.
Step 6 (restore backup'd up images onto new hard drive)
If you created a live usb stick, plug it in. Turn the computer on and activate a boot menu if you can (it was F11 on mine), this will allow you to choose which device to boot to, in the case of a live cd, choose the correct optical drive. In the case of a live usb stick, choose the applicable usb stick. If you can't activate a BIOS boot menu, then go into the BIOS and change the boot order to the proper media, whether it's the livecd or the live usb stick. It should boot into clonezilla, hit enter to choose the defaults, choose the proper language and hit enter, I clicked "don't touch keymap" for the keyboard setting and hit enter. Choose Start Clonezilla, hit enter. Choose the device-image option (first option), hit enter. The next screen is where you choose where you stored your images (what they refer to as being /home/partimag), in my case it was the 200GB external usb hard drive so that option is local_dev, hit enter. Then choose the folder or directory where the images were saved to. Click beginner mode as that's the easiest and worked just fine for me. The next screen I choose the restoreparts option because now we're "restoring a partition" to the new hard drive. Choose the image you want to restore, this will be your first image you created of your first partition, hit enter. Now choose the destination, which should be your first partition on your new hard drive, most likely sda1 if the new hard drive is your only hard drive in the computer. NOTE: ensure you choose the correct hard drive and partition as this will overwrite whatever is there with your backed up image and hit enter. There may be a few more enters or it's asking you a couple times if you're 100% positive that you want to perform this action since it's going to overwrite whatever is on the "target partition" with what's in the image file. Hit "y" if you're sure and off you're running. Once done you have just restored your first partition from your old smaller drive to your new larger drive. Perform the same steps again for anymore partitions that you imaged and then you're done restoring images onto the new hard drive. We're almost DONE. You can attempt to reboot your computer removing the clonezilla live media but I am betting it doesn't boot into your OS, I had a flashing cursor in the upper right corner and that was it. No Xubuntu for me.......YET.
Step 7 (fixing your MBR/boot loader, most likely grub2)
I realized after the fact that if we had chosen advanced options when backing up the partitions to image files and the advanced options when restoring we may not have needed this step but I choose beginner so it is what it is and we need to install grub2 to the MBR so that the BIOS passes on the hardware to a bootloader which will then boot the installed OS. This is done using linux-secure-remix. So put it your linux-secure-remix livecd or livedvd in the optical drive OR plug in your live usb stick and boot the computer to one you created. Once inside linux-secure-remix we need to run the boot-repair application
Choose the recommended repair which is what fixed mine. When it shows you a URL for where it uploaded the boot-repair log file, write it down so in case this doesn't work, you can obtain help from others and point them to the boot-repair log file which will help others figure out why it's not working. You should now reboot your computer removing whatever live media you were using and it should now boot into your Operating System.
That's it, YOU DID IT! Congrats. I hope this was helpful to someone. Leave me a comment if I missed something somewhere or to say thank you if this helped you.
I was happy to see that Serious Sam 3 BFE (a first person shooter) had controller support. Most Steam games will denote whether a game has controller support or not. Sometimes it may say "Partial Controller Support". I am not certain what that means but some controller support is better than none in my opinion. I took a chance and bought the game. When I fired it up my After Glow Xbox 360 Controller was supported immediately upon turning on the game. This is with a default Ubuntu 12.04.3 installation, it uses the xpad module (driver) and I didn't have to install the xboxdrv module (driver) which is a userspace driver. There are some advantages to using the xboxdrv module but I won't cover those in this post.
