Add Your Logo To A Video File For FREE!

Many people like to add their logo or their URL to video files. I will show you how to add a professional looking transparent logo to your video files using a free program called VirtualDub which is the best free program to work with AVIs (like DIVX, XVID or any other AVI format). You can use the same technique to add a picture or a text using VirtualDub.

Prepare your logo by opening your favorite image editor and making a new image file, try to use a suitable dimensions and suitable color that will look good in the final video also make it as simple and as small as possible.

Fill all the areas that you want to be transparent with black.

Save the image as bmp, jpg or tga.

Open VirtualDub, Drag and Drop your video on it.

Click Video > Full processing mode.

Click Video > Filters or (Ctrl + F).

In the Filters window, click Add.

In the "Add Filter" window scroll down to logo and double click on it or choose it and click Ok.

In the "filter: logo" window click "Logo image" and browse to the logo image you have created.

Check the three check boxes: "Enable per-pixel alpha blending…", "Use premultiplied alpha…" and "Use gray channel…".

In the "Alpha image" browse to the same image file again.

Click the "Show preview" button, you should now see your logo on the video.

Change the "X offset" and "Y offset" to change the position of your logo.

You can also change the Opacity value if you like your logo to be semi transparent, you should see the results immediately in the "Filter preview" window.

Click Ok twice to return to the main window, press (Ctrl + P) or click Video > Compression to choose a video compression - like Divx - and press F7 to save the video file.Here is the final result:

Read more »

.NET Framework Cleanup Tool User's Guide

This .NET Framework cleanup tool is designed to automatically perform a set of steps to remove selected versions of the .NET Framework from a computer. It will remove files, directories, registry keys and values and Windows Installer product registration information for the .NET Framework. The tool is intended primarily to return your system to a known (relatively clean) state in case you are encountering .NET Framework installation, uninstallation, repair or patching errors so that you can try to install again.

There are a couple of very important caveats that you should review before using this tool to remove any version of the .NET Framework from your system:

• This tool is designed as a last resort for cases where install, uninstall, repair or patch installation did not succeed for unusual reasons. It is not a substitute for the standard uninstall procedure.
  
• This cleanup tool will delete shared files and registry keys used by other versions of the .NET Framework. If you run the cleanup tool, you will need to perform a repair/re-install for all other versions of the .NET Framework that are on your computer or they will not work correctly afterwards.

Download locations

The .NET Framework cleanup tool is available for download at the following locations:

• http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip
• http://cid-27e6a35d1a492af7.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Blog_Tools/dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip

The copy of the tool is the same at both locations. There are 2 locations so that the tool can still be downloaded even if one of the sites is temporarily unavailable.

The .zip file that contains the tool also contains a file named history.txt that lists when the most recent version of the tool was published and what changes have been made to the tool over time.

Supported products

The .NET Framework cleanup tool supports removing the following products:

• .NET Framework - All Versions
• .NET Framework - All Versions (Tablet PC and Media Center)
• .NET Framework - All Versions (Windows Server 2003)
• .NET Framework - All Versions (Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008)
• .NET Framework 1.0
• .NET Framework 1.1
• .NET Framework 2.0
• .NET Framework 3.0
• .NET Framework 3.5

Not all of the above products will appear in the UI for the .NET Framework cleanup tool on every operating system. The cleanup tool contains logic so that if it is run on an OS version that includes the .NET Framework as an OS component, it will not offer the option to clean it up. This means that running the cleanup tool on Windows XP Media Center Edition or Tablet PC Edition will not offer the option to clean up the .NET Framework 1.0, running it on Windows Server 2003 will not offer the option to clean up the .NET Framework 1.1 and running it on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 will not offer the option to clean up the .NET Framework 2.0 or the .NET Framework 3.0.

When choosing to remove any of the above versions of the .NET Framework, the cleanup tool will also remove any associated hotfixes and service packs. You do not need to run any separate steps to remove the service pack(s) for a version of the .NET Framework.

Silent installation mode

The .NET Framework cleanup tool supports running in silent mode. In this mode, the tool will run without showing any UI, and the user must pass in a version of the .NET Framework to remove as a command line parameter. To run the cleanup tool in silent mode, you need to download the cleanup tool, extract the file cleanup_tool.exe from the zip file, and then run it using syntax like the following:

cleanup_tool.exe /q:a /c:"cleanup.exe /p "

The value that you pass with the /p switch to replace in this example must exactly match one of the products listed in the Supported products section above. For example, if you would like to run the cleanup tool in silent mode and remove the .NET Framework 1.1, you would use a command line like the following:

cleanup_tool.exe /q:a /c:"cleanup.exe /p .NET Framework 1.1"

One important note – as indicated above, the cleanup tool will not allow you to remove a version of the .NET Framework that is installed as part of the OS it is running on. That means that even if you try this example command line on Windows Server 2003, the tool will exit with a failure return code and not allow you to remove the .NET Framework 1.1 because it is a part of that OS.

Similarly, you cannot use the cleanup tool to remove the .NET Framework 1.0 from Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition or remove the .NET Framework 2.0 or 3.0 from Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. In addition, if you run the cleanup tool on an OS that has any edition of the .NET Framework installed as a part of the OS, it will prevent you from using the .NET Framework - All Versions option because there is at least one version that it cannot remove.

If you are planning to run the cleanup tool in silent mode, you need to make sure to detect what OS it is running on and not pass in a version of the .NET Framework with the /p switch that is a part of the OS or make sure that you know how to handle the failure exit code that you will get back from the cleanup tool in that type of scenario.

Unattended installation mode

The .NET Framework cleanup tool supports running in silent mode. In this mode, the tool will run and only show a progress dialog during removal, but will require no user interaction. Unattended mode requires the user to pass in a version of the .NET Framework to remove as a command line parameter. To run the cleanup tool in unattended mode, you need to download the cleanup tool, extract the file cleanup_tool.exe from the zip file, and then run it using syntax like the following:

cleanup_tool.exe /q:a /c:"cleanup.exe /p /u"

For example, if you would like to run the cleanup tool in unattended mode and remove the .NET Framework 1.1, you would use a command line like the following:

cleanup_tool.exe /q:a /c:"cleanup.exe /p .NET Framework 1.1 /u"

Exit codes

The cleanup tool can returns the following exit codes:

• 0 - cleanup completed successfully for the specified product
• 3010 - cleanup completed successfully for the specified product and a reboot is required to complete the cleanup process
• 1 - cleanup tool requires administrative privileges on the machine
• 2 - the required file cleanup.ini was not found in the same path as cleanup.exe
• 3 - a product name was passed in that cannot be removed because it is a part of the OS on the system that the cleanup tool is running on
• 4 - a product name was passed in that does not exist in cleanup.ini
• 100 - cleanup was able to start but failed during the cleanup process
• 1602 - cleanup was cancelled

Log files

The cleanup tool creates the following log files:

• %temp%\cleanup_main.log - a log of all activity during each run of the cleanup tool; this is a superset of the logs listed below as well as some additional information
• %temp%\cleanup_actions.log - a log of actions taken during removal of each product; it will list files that it finds and removes, product codes it tries to remove, registry entries it tries to remove, etc.
• %temp%\cleanup_errors.log - a log of errors and warnings encountered druing each run of the cleanup tool

Read more »

How To Capture A Frame From Any Video File

To capture a screen of any window you have one of two options: either you press the Print Screen key on your key board (or Print Scrn) to capture the whole desktop or press (Alt + Print Scrn) to capture only the active window. Black area? Read how to fix this.

Open the video file using your favorite software.

Press (Alt + Print Scrn) together on your key board, now you have copied the active window to the clipboard.

Open Paint by going to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Paint.

Click on Edit -> Paste (Ctrl + V) to paste your captured window, now you should see the picture, go to File -> Save (Ctrl + S) to save the file.

Easy? yes. But what is that? you have the whole window but not the video! Instead you have a black area where the captured frame should be, why?

Because your video card doesn't use your computers memory for playing frames! (Sounds strange?) Instead it uses its own memory to speed things up for much better performance and only uses the area where you see the video as an empty window for the video to appear. When you pressed the (Alt + Print Scrn) keys, you copied the contents of the Ram of your computer assigned to the window, that is why you saw a black area instead of the video frame. Try moving the Paint window and you will see parts of the video frame while moving if you still have the video open (I told you it is just like an open window) but of course it will not be saved with a file, just black area instead of the video frame.
So what shall we do? I will tell you what to do without buying any additional software, just using Windows!
To do that, we have to stop our video card from using its memory and force it to use our computer's ram until we capture the video frames and set it back to normal again, here is how:

Right click on any empty place on your desktop and choose Properties from the popup menu.

The Display properties window will open, now choose the Settings tab (located at the top right).

Click on Advanced button.

A new window will open now choose Troubleshoot tab.

Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left (None).

Click on the Apply button for your changes to take effect without closing the window.

Open the video file and capture the frame by doing the above four steps again.

We now can see a video frame instead of this black area, now save the file.

Repeat the top four steps to capture as many frames as you like.

Move the hardware slider to right (Full) press Ok and Ok again in the Display Properties window to revert every thing back to normal and close all open windows.

Read more »

Free your RAM and improve system performance

1) Start any application, say Excel. Open some large documents.

2) Now go to Windows Task Manager and click Processes tab and sort the list in descending order on Mem Usage. You will notice that excel will be somewhere at the top, using multiple MBs of memory.

3) Now switch to excel and simply minimize it. (Don’t use the Minimize All Windows option of the task bar).

4) Now go back to the Windows Task Manager and see where excel is listed. Most probably you will not find it at the top. You will typically have to scroll to the bottom of the list to find excel. Now check out the amount of RAM it is using. Surprised? The memory utilization has reduced by a huge amount.

5) Minimize each application that you are currently not working on by clicking on the Minimize button & you can increase the amount of available RAM by a substantial margin. Depending upon the number and type of applications you use together, the difference can be as much as 50 percent of extra RAM. In any multitasking system, minimizing an application means that it won’t be utilized by the user right now. Therefore, the OS automatically makes the application use virtual memory & keeps bare minimum amounts of the code in physical RAM.

Read more »

Make Your XP Look Like Mac OSX

So you want your to look like a Mac OSX. There are two ways to accomplish the OSX look: the easy way - with a transformation pack, and the hard way - manually. I will, of course, show you how to do this the easy way:

Step 1: Get a transformation pack.

The best Mac OSX transformation pack for Windows XP is probably FlyakiteOSX. The creator’s website itself is worth the visit, but if it doesn’t load in your browser, get Firefox, and here’s a download link.

Step 2: Install

Run the installer and when you get to the following screen, MAKE SURE you check the box Create System Restore Point. The transformation pack will change a lot of system files and settings and although you should be able to uninstall easily later, you might find yourself in a mess if something goes wrong. This way you can always do a System Restore. Check any other options you want and you’re ready!

Step 3: Enjoy!

After the restart, you should be able to convince all, but the most die-hard Mac lovers, that you have an OSX. This is what your desktop should look like now:

Like other good transformation packs this also leaves you a nice Mac OSX shutdown screen:

…And a Mac OSX logon screen:

Note: The transformation pack might trigger your anti-virus protection as it changes some system files, but this is probably a false positive. Be careful though, and remember to back up!

Read more »