beaumar

Go to their web site...you'll see they already have it done. Looks pretty nice, too.

Accidentally did a double post. sorry

Ahh....the good ol' days. I've done many of these types of images in the past using a few different vector-based programs. Nearly anything that can display transparent layers can be used to accomplish this type of drawing. The difference I found is how easily it can be done. AutoCAD is my personal favorite for these although I've been forced to use CORELDraw (2nd fave) and Illustrator (hate it for these types of drawings, primarily because the puds at Adobe are so full of themselves that they've never made trimming lines easy to do). Basically, imagine the three dimensional "appearing" image is a series of vellum layers overlaid on one another with, in this case, an image of the roofs being the top layer. If you'd like a more detailed explanation along with a sample or two, just reply in this thread. Once you get a few text commands down in Autocat (LINE, TRIM, OFFSET, EXTEND, FILLET) you can make these up in no time. Hope this helps. B)

I had the same problem and eventually just installed it like Hulk (i.e. full installer with NO switches but WITH an ini file). It installed fine. Dunno why the /qb or /qn switches caused install to fail but with no switches and an ini file I get a progress bar and a successful install.

Hello, Don't wanna rain on the parade with an endless series of annoyances since these are the GREATEST COLLECTION OF DRIVERS EVER PUT TOGETHER!! But... Two things: 1. The updates to the txtsetup.sif are still being placed AFTER the EOF character in my txtsetup.sif file. Not much of a problem tho, since I can simply manually cut and paste everything BEFORE the EOF. Maybe it's just MY stupid computer...doesn't have enough sense to let your command file do it's job correctly! EDIT: I think I've found that nLite is the cause of problem #1. Applying your driverpacks to a clean, UN-nLited, XPCD, places the changes to my txtsetup.sif at the end of the file and there is no weird box-shaped EOF character! Bashrat, you may want to change your FAQ and let ppl know about this problem or contact nuhi and ask him how he gets his nlite.inf reference into txtsetup.sif. (it sits right at the beginning of the file, under the very first "[sourceDisksFiles]" section!) 2. I read in a post somewhere that you had changed the dir structure inside the driverpacks...to a DP\etc.. (DP, I presume, for Driver Pack). I test-extracted a couple of the driver packs and confirmed this. I noticed in the presetup.cmd file that the extraction (for Method 2) is still set to go to %SYSTEMDRIVE%. That would make the resulting hard drive dir structure be something like: C:\DP\... when all packs are extracted. However, in the "Scanning for driver directories" section of the presetup.cmd just below the extraction command, the command points the SetDevicePath.exe program to %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Drivers! REM +=======================================================+ REM | If you are using compressed drivers unpack them here: | REM |-------------------------------------------------------| %SystemDrive% cd \ %CDDRIVE%\OEM\bin\7za.exe x -y -aoa %CDDRIVE%\OEM\DriverPack_*.7z -o"%SYSTEMDRIVE%" REM +=======================================================+ REM +=======================================================+ REM | Scanning for driverdirectories | REM | ONLY USE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING COMMANDS, NOT BOTH! | REM |-------------------------------------------------------| REM | This one is for uncompressed drivers on the CD | REM %CDDRIVE%\OEM\bin\SetDevicePath.exe %CDDRIVE%\OEM\drivers REM | This one is for your unpacked drivers on your HD | %CDDRIVE%\OEM\bin\SetDevicePath.exe %SystemDrive%\Drivers REM +=======================================================+ I read in the original Pyron thread, I believe, that the SetDevicePath.exe will, indeed, recurse subdirectories. But since it's starting from, presumably, C:\Drivers\... and not C:\DP..., will there be a problem? I have not even tried to create an ISO and test all this yet, so I don't know what would happen with things the way they are. I've just started doing dry-runs of the sequence of operations of all my unattended files BEFORE I burn my CDs anymore. Virtual machines seem to either be flaky or too forgiving so I don't trust them completely anymore (case in point - an unattended setup I had that worked flawlessly on my MSVM had some bizarre stuff going on when I installed it on my ASUS AV8X-Deluxe system, from some registry settings not being applied to what I suspect was the dreaded portcls error to some bizarre thing that made it so it took FOUR MINUTES to update every time I clicked on something in windows explorer. I took the driver packs out, manually extracted them, manually edited my OemPnpDriversPath to include only LAN drivers, reinstalled, and the thing runs faster than I've ever seen it!). So...sorry for going off on a tangent there...long story short...I'm trying to do a logical, in-my-head install before I do a real install, just to try to catch some of the more glaring problems. I apologize that I may not have a solution to the things I've brought up here, but I'm cursed with having just enough brains to make trouble. It's you guys who know HOW to do the stuff...I only troll here!

Hello, I JUST noticed this while I was double-checking the order of operations of all my unattended files before burning to CD: This is for Method 2, btw... In my txtsetup.sif, there is no entry for setupORG.exe or presetup.cmd! Did a Find on the text file and both came up a blank. I haven't burned anything yet so I'm gonna try to copy the entries from my old unattended CD that used Method 2. I remember having the same copy protection errors as mentioned above when I first started out on this whole maddeningly frustrating yet rewarding unattended CD thing...and I finally tracked it down to the setup.exe in my I386 folder was the original, not the Pyron version. Bashrat, could you verify your new batch file commands... I already had a $OEM$ folder in my xpcd dir so I'm gonna start again from scratch and see if that was the problem somehow. As far as command file syntax, I can barely comprehend "REM This is a comment, you moron..." so I am DEFINITELY not the one you want verifying the functionality of the whole batch setup. Me run files. Pretty words move fast. Read destructions. Make CD (no finger stick into magic disc-eater!). Turn power. Pretty colors move fast! Windows work (sometime)! ^ ^ ^<<<<Cro-magnon Beaumar... EDIT: Yep, tried it on a clean XP and there are no entries for setupORG.exe or presetup.cmd (the files ARE in my I386 dir, tho...). I noticed that ...V006.cmd and ...V007.cmd thing too. So...will just wait for a fix. Just for kicks I peeked into the .cmd files and...my head hurts!

Oh, and P.S.... Yes, there IS a link to the guides on the home page: Very top, upper left. I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so that would explain how I missed it - for two months! And yes, I looked and looked. Rather than interpret this as a lack of attention or perception on MY part, however ( ), I choose rather to make the point that the link is really not visible enough! Ahh...creative reality...nothing else like it!

Now THIS is a great thread! The collection here is good, complete, comes complete with links to MSFN threads, app switches, and coherent instructions for each app. Keep it up. Aaron really should either replace his sticky with this or incorporate all the extra info. That seems to be the one thing that most forum sites neglect: consolidation. There's a thousand posts on lots of topics, but they're ALL RELATED! The biggest timesaver for new users is to NOT have to do a search (and get either "nothing" because their search is too specific, or a hundred hits, usually occurring in the middle of a long string of incremental replies, that keeps them jumping around all over the place). Comprehensive guides that collate lots of information, created by those most experienced with the process, would likely cut down a lot of the duplication we see in the forums. The MSFN Unattended guides were the most helpful pages to me when I started this whole unattended adventure, but there's not even a link to them from the main forum page! They should be the most accessible, most advertised, and most updated locations (next to the daily news) on the MSFN web site, IMHO. There is a thread somewhere else, I believe in the Unattended section, where Alanoll is taking on a massive task: complete comprehensive description of the ins and outs of Unattended CD creation. Maybe some brave soul (Aaron?!) could attempt the same thing for this section... This is not an attempt to hijack this thread, but I know that some admins sometimes take a peek into the threads. I thought they might appreciate some feedback that conveys some constructive analysis of the big picture. I mean, we're all here to try to make life simpler, more efficient, and hassle-free, right? :

Awesome!

Bashrat... Just to let you know. I'm having some problems w/ windows installation using your driverpacks (presetup.cmd doesn't seem to be running and extracting the drivers to the system drive - using MS Virtual Machine...anyone else have this problem?) but I'm not posting here for that just yet. I thought, "What the hell'" and decided to start everything over from scratch (hadn't downloaded and run updates since your "Gonna have tests 'til Dec 22nd" post at the end of November). So I ran Update_V007.cmd and kept running the Update_XXX.cmd files til I got to number 11. That's where the bad news starts. In all the .html files that come with your most recent updates, all it says is "This site is defaced!" by "NeverEverNoSanity WebWorm generation 13." The f***ers. I guess this is the result of that Santy virus you mentioned. Sorry that happened but thought you might like to know about this problem, too. I mean, it's not like you've got enuf to do, right?!?! Take care and hope you get through all this with your sanity intact...

Hello, Twizt3d: Tried to login to ftp.twizt3d.com to upload what I have of the RyanVM files (just Adobe 6.02, but I figured something was better than nothing and maybe ppl would see some activity and take the hint! ) The user name of msfn was accepted, but the password of msfn was not. Used both IE's built-in ftp login capability and, when that didn't work, used SmartFTP... that didn't work either. So, please double-check your ftp server settings and maybe we'll see some of the RyanVM files uploaded muy pronto! To those of you who don't know what's needed to be uploaded: Still need just about everything Adobe 6.02 install Adobe 7.0 install .Net1.1 with SP1 JavaVM 5 (btw, does anyone know if RyanVM has updated this to the newest 1.6 version? It just came out a couple of weeks ago...) Hope we can get this going. I can't offer any hosting or anything, just my appreciation to folks like RyanVM, Bashrat, Greenmachine, Astalavista, Pyron, et. al. who put in countless hours figuring out how all this stuff works so the rest of us have something to waste our time on. If I've missed someone (i.e. all the msfn moderators), please accept my apologies and belated gratitude...

I know this is an old topic, but I just found it. Best thing you can do is ditch MCE. Go to www.htpcnews.com and look through the forums there. They do the same thing for computer based PVR software/hardware that MSFN does for windows... i.e. user base devoted to helping others become familiar with and setting up different types of PVR arrangements. Personally, I use SageTV 2.1. It will work with your WinTV USB and, through the use of a program called Girder and an IR flasher, will allow you to control the channel switching of your Digital Cable box. SageTV is about $70. There are other programs out there like BeyondTV and, recently, Meedio (which is a new, commercial version of a freeware PVR that open-sourch ppl have been working on for a couple of years). SageTV utilizes a completely free scheduling database that lets you enter your city and state, along with your cable provider, and download a continuously updated program list. You can select programs to record, of course, as well as all the other nifty PVR functions like skipping commercials, pausing live tv, rewinding live tv, etc. etc. There is as much variety to PVR software alternatives to MCE and TiVo as there are many ways to create a windows unattended CD. Go to that web site, look around, and if you have any other questions, ask here or post there. Someone's sure to help. P.S. I really enjoy my SageTV, but the best thing it has going for it is that even my wife loves it! The WAF (wife approval factor) is REALLY important when you're setting up a HTPC!

Hello, Just so you know, I'm not trying to be a dick about this. This is probably one of the simplest types of AfterEffects compositions to do and there are a plethora of training sites on the net to walk you through all the capabilites of AFX (In addition to the excellent online help that comes with it). For details of the steps I'll list below, it would serve you well to read the help and go through a few of the online tutorials. You'll probably learn a few other things along the way...and that always helps in the long run. I'm a firm believer in the "If you give a starving man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach him to fish, you've fed him for a lifetime." philosophy. In that vein (and remember, I'm NOT trying to be a dick, like I've seen some ppl on this site be), I'll give you the basic steps to take and let you search AFX online help and web tutorial sites for the specific commands... 1. Open Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro and create a new image with 720x480 pixel dimensions (or whatever your video clip resolution is) 2. Create your watermark logo or text on the image in the same location you'd want it to appear on the finished video. If you're using PSP, flatten the image and make sure you save as a format that can have a transparency, or alpha, channel (e.g. targa, tiff, or psd). If using Photoshop, save as a plain ol psd file and keep your layers (you may want to consolidate them if you have a large number. For a watermark tho, you should be able to do it in just one layer with transparency. 2. Open After Effects and start a new project (probably use DV format, 720x480 resolution, or, if your clip resolution is different, choose the closest NTSC equivalent if it's going to be on ppl's tv screens or whatever dimensions you want if it'll be on computer screens. IMPORTANT: Make sure the duration of your composition is at least as long as your video clip. You can adjust the duration from within AFX after you've created the comp, but it's easier to do it now. 3. Import your watermark image into your project bin. Drag it to the timeline. 4. Import your video clip into your project bin. Drag it to the timeline. 5. Scale the timeline view so you can see the entire duration of your video clip in one screen (use zoom in and zoom out tools). 6. Grab the right handle on the watermark image and, if it's not there already, drag it all the way to the right had side of the timeline, so it's duration is the same as the duration of your video clip. (By default, single images should have a display duration equal to the length of the comp, but you never know what AFX is gonna do sometimes if you miss a check box or a setting somewhere). 7. That's it! The key things are to make sure that your watermark image is the FIRST video layer in your composition and that it's display duration is the same as your video clip. Depending on the speed of your computer, you should be able to scrub through the timeline and see your watermark on every frame of video, or press the space bar to play your video with all layers shown. 8. Render entire timeline to a vid format of your choice, and you're done. Hope this helps.

I've seen a few posts where people mention this, but I'll be darned if I can find an answer from someone who knows for sure: 1. Are there drivers that come with WinXP (even SP2) that enable full 1024x768 resolution in the setup phase where the winntbbu.dll is displayed? 2. If not, is there a way to pre-load basic drivers from the text setup portion (like Bashrat's mass storage drivers, etc) that would allow windows to know what the heck kind of ATI card is really in the 'puter. During the first GUI setup stage (where the winntbbu.dll is used), my computer only uses what appears to be 640x480 resolution. I have a Radeon 9800 Pro. When checking the vid driver that windows has loaded when it finally first runs, it shows the S3 Trio or some such drivers! (And yes, I know you can do a silent install of the catalysts after setup is complete, I wanted to know what Bill-o-Soft thinks I have for a vid card...) I've seen umpteen posts describing how to get the control panel, wdm, omega, etc drivers installed from RunOnce or batch file. What I'm wondering is if there is something screwy with the detection of my card by Windows setup (and, by extension, all of us ATI weenies) or if I'm simply missing a setting in the .sif or unattended.txt somewhere... Any help or comments anybody has to finally resolve this would be greatly appreciated ad infinitum!

When you entered those pipes, did you just do one after the other or did you add some spaces after each one? If just blank spaces doesn't work, maybe you could add periods or some other unobtrusive character. I think when I double spaced after some of my text (between sentences) the formatting picked up the double-spaces... Try |(space)(space)(space) |(space)(space)(space) etc and see if that works. If I try this and find out before you repost/reply, I'll be sure to post here. Good luck.

And P.S. No...that last comment was NOT an invitation to turn this post into a flame war in regards to Microsoft, Open Source, Linux, Mac, Commodore 64, my dirty underwear, or anything else... it was a "short, sharp, shot" and is meant to be left to die with dignity. If you must post, please please please post more specific information about formatting visual items on the winntbbu.dll screen. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. *beep*

As far as I've found, there's no way to lower just ONE line (until ppl like jcarle share their analysis of the winntbbu.dll file with the rest of us...he speaks about finding references to word wraps etc in the file.) I discovered by accident that there are TWO ways you can adjust the vertical spacing on the left hand menu (don't know that I've seen anyone else post about this, so I'm gonna go ahead and do it now...). 1. Create taller or wider than normal icons for the icons to the left of the status images. They're 18x18 now. Just for kicks I created some that were 40x40 and 22x58 and they forced the text messages to space proportinately further apart vertically. (I'm using my 22x58 in a special, super-secret way that I'll be showing in the next few days or so when I post my winntbbu.dll file) 2. Either use a long text string or lots of superfluous space groups e.g. | | | in the menu text fields of the winntbbu.dll file (I've tried the long text, but am just hypothesizing about the spaces). As many lines as the text takes to wrap, that is how far your spacing will be modified. WARNING: The spacing is determined by the LONGEST string. The wrapping and stacking of the longest string of text will determing the spacing for ALL of the menu items. Since Bill-o-Soft never intended for us to mess with the setup files it's gonna take some pretty deep analysis to figure out the low-level interoperation and specification of the setup programs and files. For the time being, we'll just have to be happy with the sledgehammer cludging we can do (wish they'd hire some of the gaming company employees so they could figure out how popular they could be if they DESIGNED the software to be modified by the general community...oh wait... that's called Open Source... oops. My bad). Hope this helps.

Hello, Here's my $.02... Three main things I think you should keep in mind when working on logos in general: Color Contrast CSimplicity Heh, couldn't keep the alliteration going.. If and when you need to print up things like letterhead, business cards, signs, you'll find that Lots of Colors = Lots of $$$. (And in psychological respects, there is actually an inverse relationship between color complexity and memorability...That's why IBM's logo is solid blue, Verizon's logo is a big red checkmark, and Qantas' logo is a simple red kangaroo (or a red field with a simple white kangaroo within it). I know it's fun and neat to play with all the neat features of paint programs, but in the world of business, where instant recognizability is highly sought after, less = more! As far as contrast, the further away or smaller your logo can be recognized at the better. Contrast is the key here. Again, IBM's blue logo is great. Search the web for some color contrast studies. You should find a whole slew of combinations that someone has gone to great trouble to determine that people can recognize most quickly. Try to adopt one of these color sets for your company, keeping it close to the colors you've already started using, if you like, or completely going off the deep end and re-inventing yourselves. Just FYI, if I remember correctly, the most perceivable color contrast combination is yellow text on a black background. Haven't seen many companies using that yet, except maybe that small company that nobody's heard of called Caterpiller... And finally, CSimplicity...er..Simplicity. Take a look at logos of major corporations for ideas. Believe it or not, they have the money to hire some of the most talented people on earth to create their corporate images; people who have taken great pains (and spent lots of money) to discover all sorts of human factors that go into making a particular symbol recognizable. I'm sure I don't even have to tell you what McDonald's logo shape is, or IBM's, or Nike's... Look at the simple lines of every one of these logos and then apply that mindset to your company's image. You don't even need to use your letters...you can use the "meaning" of your name, or an "impression" you want to convey, or even a "principle" your company embodies. Look at Cingular wireless. Um..Cingular...does that conjure an image of a happy jumping orange guy? Probably not...but that happy jumping orange guy certainly brings the name Cingular to mind. So that's all the unsolicited input I have about that. Now, specifically, about the ideas you've posted. At this point, I don't think any of them are as good as you could do. However, I LOVE the design of the "S". It looks like it's going a hundred miles an hour. You've got a real opportunity to get yourself a very recognizable logo with a little work. Remember the three C's above! Good luck!

Depending on the software you're using, it can be easy or hard. If you've got Adobe AfterEffects, it's easy: Open AFX, Add your current video clip to the timeline, add a single image with your watermark to the B video channel and adjust it's display duration to be the length of the entire clip. Adjust the transparency of the video B layer until you get what you like and render the work area. It would certainly help if you created this image in Photoshop and it had an alpha channel that made everything but your watermark transparent...otherwise, whatever fill color you've got will impart a slight tint to your original clip even when you set the transparency very high. If you've got a sequence of stills, and you've got photoshop (may be the same for Paint Shop Pro, maybe someone else could answer this), load up the first frame into Photoshop, go through the steps to apply the watermark image as a layer with transparency until you're satisfied with the result. Write down all the values that are pertinent, e.g. any layer transparencies you set, any bright and contrast changes you make, ...everything. Revert the primary image, create an "Action" and begin recording. Go through all these steps again and stop recording your actions when you've finished processing your example file. Create a destination directory for all the processed images on your hard drive. Create a Photoshop Batch command and select the folder with the images to be watermarked; then point the batch to your newly created output folder so it'll save the processed files there. Run the batch and, as quickly as your computer can handle it, you'll have a watermarked sequence of images ready to be assembled into a video clip. Specifics for Actions and Batch processing can be found in the Photoshop help files...they've gotten MUCH better and more complete over the years! In the interest of brevity, I'm not going to detail every step of the process. Using the description above, you should be more than capable of using each program's help files to get the specifics (and maybe a search on the internet or two). I'm not trying to be an a** about this, but I've found a little reading in the help files actually helps more. When I was learning this stuff myself, I was always more interested in the "how" of things rather than the DETAILS of the "how." OK, now I've screwed up the brevity thing anyway, but I hope this helps. If you've got some other program that you're using, reply to this post and I'll see if anything is different for that app. The steps above are general enough that they're pretty program-independent. Good Luck.