Well, I got a new PC built for a friend, and did some major upgrades to the box I use for Audio/Video editing. That one got a new Core 2 Extreme Quad CPU, and an upgrade to Windows 7 Professional. I also swapped out the two DVD burners I had in the, as they were both IDE interfaces. The new ones are SATA-III interfaces, and in place of one of the DVD burners, I plugged in a shiny new Blu-Ray burner, along with the specialized software for that. I did a clean install after I formatted the drive, as I've never tried to use an "upgrade" version of Windows. I then upgraded all my Adobe software to CS 5.5, and installed the latest software for my Matrox RT.X2 Professional video capture device.
What makes it "Professional" compared to a "Consumer" video capture device? Well, for one thing, it can record 1080i via a component video input, or 1080p through the IEEE-1394 "Firewire" port. And secondly, it plugs into a PCI Express slot on the motherboard where most consumer-grade video capture device connect to the PC with USB.
I'll have to open one of my archived Adobe Premiere Pro projects and run it through the newly rebuilt system to see how it performs. I'm not sure if the video quality will be any "better", but I'm sure it will do the transcoding to DVD format much faster.
In the meantime, the wife and I went to Lowe's to (finally!) get the two doors I was going to replace over my Christmas break. The new exterior door for the garage is sitting in the garage, but the storm door we bought to replace the screen door that disintegrated is another matter! I not only measured twice (THREE times, actually, and wrote it all down after I had the wife check my measurements) and cut once, and it just will NOT fit the opening.
BUMMER MAJOR!
The height is damn near perfect after a bit of trimming, planing, and sanding, but the width is about 3/4" TOO SMALL. So, I'm going to have to take off the "hinge rails" where it hangs on the left side of the door frame, and shim them out a little less than 3/8", and add the same amount to the right side of the frame before I screw the matching "latch rail" to the door frame.
It's funny, but all the reviews on the Lowe's website raved about how easy it was to hang an adjust this door. The fastest time was 1.5 hours, and the longest was 2.5 hours.
I spent FOUR hours on it, didn't get it installed, and used up most of my "colorful" vocabulary while fighting with it.
Oh, well....at least I know how to correct it, so back to the Home Improvement center tomorrow to try and find some suitable wood strips to make shim strips out of.
Hope you all have a good week!
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<i>The Fisher Saga</i> Continues - Act III -
Been working on this post since right after Thanksgiving. I'm making very good progress on the Fisher, and will most likely power it up...
Don't ya just 'love' it when that happens??? I'd recommend some good marine grade plywood, cut and sealed as the shim. Not that I've ever had to do that... sigh
ReplyDeleteWell, the 'shim' would be covered by the rails that screw down on each side of the door frame, so I don't think a marine-grade wood product would be required, but I'll look into it.
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