Yet another blog for JBKempf - Tag - Vista

Evaluation of Google Summer of Code 2008 for VideoLAN

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:17:00 -0800

This is a post to summarize and evaluate the work that we did this year, compared to last year too.

This was our second year of the Google Summer of Code project.

Google Summer of Code 2008

For the second time, VideoLAN was an association mentor for the Google Summer of Code project.

The 2008 edition of GSoC had a few improvements and change in the way Google and we handled it. Let's detail ours:

VideoLAN, VLC && x264

This year, we decided that VideoLAN would be a mentoring association for BOTH VLC and x264, instead of doing the same confusion as usual between VLC and VideoLAN.

This meant that we had to work with the x264 team to find ideas, mentors and define common rules. This was an extra amount of time, but for a good reason!

VideoLAN rules

After the last year Google Summer of Code summit, we learned quite a few things, and I decided to be a bit more strict during the summer of code. This is Google money, what about using it correctly? Here we go for the major changes:

More publicity,
Qualification tasks. I cannot emphasize more on the goods this brought to us,
Better reviewing from developers, with common rules to follow on how to give points,
More involvements of students in the community (presentation mail on mailing list, mandatory public wiki page),
Mandatory commit and status mail every week to mentor+admin,
A more active special mailing list!

Results

Those changes were great...

Selection

We received many candidacies, with higher quality and we had the possibility to chose 14 students!

One of them stopped before even beginning, because he had found a new job. So we started with 13 students:

9 for VLC media player
4 for x264

Detailed results on VLC:

Just going to review every students and whether their code was merged or not.

Please keep in mind that coding on VLC is not as easy as it might seem. And the code is evolving quite fast, so sometimes, it is difficult to keep stuffs up-to-date.

Lukas Durfina

Lukas was my student and was working on the Fullscreen Controller and Phonon work. The Qt fullscreen controller was in VLC release 0.9.0 and the Phonon work is almost merged in 1.0.

Geoffroy Couprie

Geoffroy had the difficult task to rework on the WinCE/Windows Mobile port of VLC. Most of the work has been merged in the upcoming VLC 1.0.

Antoine Lejeune

Antoine was working on the Maemo port of VLC. The code has been merged in VLC 1.0.

Kaarlo Henrik Räihä

Kaarlo is a very very active member of our community and was working on very difficult aspects of Vista integration, namely DXVA. The project was very difficult and successful for the most part, but it isn't merged yet in VLC.

Fabio Ritrovato

Fabio was working on MTP device integration. The code is good and the project is successful and the merge is pending (hopefully for 1.0)

Mirsal Ennaime

Mirsal is a long time coder in the community and was rewritting the UPnp client and hopefully the server for DLNA. The project was also successful, but the merge is pending because of some services discovery changes in our code. It should happen for 1.0

Dylan Yudaken

Dylan was working on PVR improvements and on timeshifting. The project was also very successful and Dylan was a delight working with. Some things have been merged, some are going to.

Eric Dudiak

Eric reworked our very bad MacOS X interface This was very difficult but the outcome was quite good. The mergins is still pending too.

Vladimir Belousov

This project was a failure.

Google Summer of Code Summit

This summer of code summit was great, because it was 2 days and we had way more time to discuss with other people.

I, however, have found it not enough focused on the GSoC, but maybe this was because I didn't choose the right discussions.

Conclusion

This Google Summer of Code was a HUGE success for VideoLAN and we had some very very good output, some of which you already have on your Computer!

Thank you Leslie!

New Machine

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:10:00 -0800

In order to do some Windows development for VLC, I just bought myself a new machine:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Noctua NH-U12P
2x2GB G.Skill RAM
Asus P5Q-E
Radeon HD4670
Pioneer DVD-Drive
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB
Sonata 3 Case

Issues

I had huge issues to make this working correctly.

Motherboard

First, my Asus board controller was completely broken... I couldn't boot ANY install CD and memtest was screaming so much...

I went back to the store to change it...

Graphic Card

I initially had the gigabyte HD4670, with a native HDMI output.

The fan was so load (100%) all the time that this was such a pain, I couldn't deal with it.

I went back to the store, and they changed it to another Gigabyte that had the same problem. Therefore, they gave me a Sapphire and the card has been working great so far.

ATAPI CD-ROM

Finally, I couldn't boot the Vista 64bits CD because of some issue that made the installer crash. In fact, when trying to load a driver to run the CD, the Vista64bit installer from the CD was just crashing...

I tried different stuffs, but my old DVD writer could get an improvement with the rest of the machine...

Impressions

The computer is very fast and Vista64 is not that bad... Windows still crashes way too much (one BSOD every 2 days or so, usually in USB driver or NTFS driver), but well, what did I expect?

Update to Vista SP1 (follow up) Failure 0x800F0826

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:36:00 -0800

Here I am, updating some old posts, that I had forgotten about...

Vista Update post

The first one is an update to a one-year-old post about a problem: during Vista SP1 update

Remembering the Issue

The issue was that:

And then Vista tells me it couldn't install my computer because error 0x800F0826.

And I was thinking of waiting for final release to fix it... Of course, it didn't work.

This happens when Vista Ultimate is used on a multiboot machine.

Solution

The solution was to give back the bootloader to Vista Bootloader and not Grub. So, configure again the Vista Bootloader and write changes to disk.

Then reboot and update to Vista SP1.

Reinstore Grub as your main Bootloader using the usual tools :D

Update from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows Vista Ultimate SP1

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:55:00 +0100

This blogpost will be linear, following my progress of installation:

I did download the SP1 RC from Microsoft Website. This package is around 440MB. It took the French Version because my Vista Version is in French.

As I don't really use Vista at all, this is almost a clean installation of Vista.

Start

Once launched, the exe warns you that you need at least 7Gb of disk (sigh!) and that it can take up to one hour!

After a problem-less process and 15minutes of slider progression, the system reboots.

1st reboot

The start of the computer is a bit longer than usual. The usual 'Updates configuration' screen is shown. And it reboots another time without letting me log in.

2nd reboot

The system reboots for another long start, and yet another 'Updates configuration' screen instead of the login is shown. But then I can log without any problem.

Failure 0x800F0826

And then Vista tells me it couldn't install my computer because error 0x800F0826.

Googling it didn't really helped...

Let's try again. Re-check that my Vista is up to date. Reboot.

Try again

So I restarted the whole process. Reboot. update. Reboot automatically. Updates. Same error.

Conclusion.

I am not a computer illiterate, I have a legit Vista Ultimate Version, I fully made the updates before and follow the process like documented, but it still fails. I could try to read the logs or anything, but I won't. I'll wait for the official release.

Update

Solution can be found here:

Setup a thinkpad T61p: part 1, dual boot XP/Vista

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:17:00 +0200

Introduction

I will here and in a few future posts explain how to set your computer up. And how to do it correctly.

First part is about using Vista and XP at the same time.

Rescue Disk

Run the thinkvantage Rescue System:

Start, All programs, Thinkvantage, Create Recovery Media.
Do the rescue disk creation. You will need 1 CD-ROM and 2 DVD-ROM

Reinstall

Use the rescue disks to reinstall it, to avoid some crap and to be sure you will be able to do it again, in case you screw something up.

It'll also able you to resize a bit better your NTFS partitions.

Resize the NTFS partition

When you seem to have done the most of the process,

Use gparted or its liveCD to resize your main NTFS partition. I shrinked it to 25GB, but you can do otherwise. You might have some problems rebooting after that resizing. Using a Vista DVD, repairing the computer will fix this.

Vista Boot

Boot your Vista, update Windows, update the Thinkvantage System Update, reboot, reboot, and reboot again. And once more, if you want. :D

In your Management console, that you can find on "Computer>Right click>Manage>Disk Management", create a new NTFS disk for Windows XP. I have given it 10 GB.

There, insert a CD-ROM, and rename the letters of your CD-ROM to E:, and give the D: to your Windows XP partition.

Reboot twice.

Vista steps

Deactivate the message center in your taskbar, Uninstall Norton crap if it is back again, and maybe Diskeeper. Reboot.

Install XP

Enter the BIOS with the F key at boot time. Go to Configuration -> SATA. Change the option from AHCI to Compatibility.

Save. Reboot.

Do it as you do it normally (but way faster than you used to...).

Install the ethernet drivers that you did download previously on lenovo website. Update windows, reboot. Reboot and reboot. Install Graphic drivers. Reboot.

Install Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, VLC media player, 7-zip. Remove MSN, Outlook express. Reboots...

Boot finish

Install VistaBootPro and set it up correctly. Then profit of your computer

Review of Thinkpad T61p

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:19:00 +0200

Introduction

I have just bought a new computer, a Thinkpad T61p, and I will review it here and a bit more on this blog.

I have dealt with T series for some time now, working in Dassault Systemes in Tokyo in an internship where I repaired Thinkpad that were out-of-warranty; but also, when working in VIA Centrale Réseaux, where I negociated Thinkpad contracts for Centrale Paris Students and dealt with all the selling, and some repairing. Therefore I am not a newbie concerning Thinkpad laptops.

Specifications

Core 2 Duo 7500
2 GB of RAM
15,4" WUXGA non-glossy screen (1920x1200)
Geforce Quadro FX570 256MB (Can use up to 1 GB)
HD, DVD writer, keyboard, etc...
Fingerprint reader
Media Card reader.
Bluetooth, Wifi a/b/g/n. Ethernet 1000
Windows Vista Ultimate ( yeah, I know... :'( )

First hardware impressions.

External

The 16/10 screen make the laptop more wide than usual, but thinner.
The quality of the whole computer is good, even if there is more plastic than before, and it seems still very resistant :D
The link between the screen and the laptop is still in metal, and not in plastic like other computers...

News (for me)

Older thinkpad used to have 2USB, they got a third one !
The Firewire port is very discrete.
The on/off wifi button is quite nice.
The card reader is very discrete too, compared to other laptops and external card readers... However, I am not sure it reads my old SD Cards, yet
Fingerprint is a gadget to me, but might be cool to geek it on Linux :D

Cons

Still no DVI, but a VGA port...

First Start

Woaouw effect

Gosh, the screen is not great, it is awesome, I have hardly seen a higher quality screen. It is the LG/Philips version, and not the Samsung one, for those who wander (Two different screens exists on T61p, the samsung one is supposed to suxx). There are no light leaking, and the precision of 1920x1200 is great. And no, it is NOT too small...

Under Vista, it shows in a very good shape and the graphic card has some good results in games.

Moreover the screen seems to be very well calibrated.

Windows Vista.

Well, windows Vista seems prettier than XP. But slow as hell. I guess I will reinstall it soon.

There is not so much crap on it, except some Norton and Office trial. Some thinkvantage applications might go away, but that is fine.

The computer did not need many restarts to be usable and I had a 4.8 Score in the Vista Performance Center. The graphic card scored a 5.9 under the performance thing. Woauw. Too bad I won't play games. :D

Rescue

There is a lot of rescue and save your data programs in the thinkvantage thing. I'll see what I will remove, because of the hidden partition, when I will install Linux. And I did recreate the rescue Disks.

Next time, I'll install GNU/Linux on it.

How to use VLC media player under Vista

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:11:00 +0200

As some of you know, there are a lot of problems to make VLC run under Vista if you have Aero enabled.

UPDATE: Use VLC 0.8.6c to solve the problems and disregard the old fix.

However, there might be an easy fix:

Clear your preferences and cache (remove %appdata%/vlc folder)
Open VLC media player, go to preferences.
Tick advanced in the bottom right,
Go to Advanced > CPU on the left,
Untick MMX accelerations.
Restart VLC.

I hope it will work for you too :D