Our next meeting will see us return to video editing to catch up on the software and hardware we have been using which has likely moved on since our last evening on this topic.
Gareth admits he is a complete novice to open source video editing software but intends to learn from scratch on the night by using OpenShot Video Editor on Ubuntu to put together some holiday footage.
Peter is probably going to show the use of Magix Movie Edit Pro again and also use some Serif Movie Plus X5 This will be in Windows, but may be on the Mac.
Anne may be bringing some Videos of her own.
Our Last Meeting: Wednesday October 16th - Raspberry Pi, Linux and RISCOS - All
John provided an update on his Raspberry Pi and Lapdock which have now become the most use RISCOS machine in the house. He has not moved email yet although Pluto has now been made 32bit/RISCOS 5 friendly.
The lapdock still has one or two annoyances, one of which is setting the screen resolution. An MDF file is available and screen modes can be selected from the standard picker on the icon bar but currently John cannot save the selection. Because of this it starts in a very high resolution where the text is too small. Paul suggested modifying the monitor definition to remove the highest resolution to work around the issue.
Another annoyance was that John has not yet managed to get sound from the Lapdock speakers when using the Raspberry Pi as a mobile device. This would be sound via the HDMI connection which doesn't yet seem to work via RISCOS. John also showed an issue with the USB sticks he uses for his data. These appear on the icon bar as USB disks :0 and :1 until you click on them and their names appear. John pins shortcuts to the desktop to commonly used programs so has had to work around this with if statements.
The Lapdock also misses a break key which has initially caused a lot of issue with hard resets and corrupted SD cards. John now has a break key by software mapping "Break" to an unused key on the keyboard allowing "Alt-Break" to be pressed when required.
John was demonstrating the Raspberry Pi on the evening direct to our HDMI display and using an external power supply, but when using as a laptop the Lapdock power is supplied by the Lapdock internal battery. The only thing to be careful of is not closing the laptop lid as this interrupts power. The Lapdock itself has a built in battery display in the form of a row of LEDs and runs for upwards of 5 hours.
Paul has also been using a Raspberry Pi for some time for RISCOS but also for Raspbian Linux and XBMC media centre and brought a number of SD cards along to demonstrate.
Under Raspbian Linux Paul normally uses the system headless with no display running the Nginx web server and MariaDB database but started up the GUI and showed a number of things including the Linux version of the Netsurf browser.
Paul also showed us the XBMC media centre build for the Pi. This boots a very minimal Linux OS and boots into the XBMC GUI for performance. The ability to configure aspects of the Raspberry Pi hardware have been integrated into the XBMC menus for ease of use. XBMC allows you to view pictures, videos and more and is extensible with plugins for things, from weather apps to YouTube, to catch up TV such as iPlayer. Paul also has USB IR remote detector which can map a standard remote onto keys and then be used to control XBMC without a keyboard or mouse.
In keeping with the ARM and Linux theme of the evening Gareth brought along the Toshiba AC100 ARM laptop running Ubuntu 13.04. The AC100 is a dual core ARM with 512MB RAM and works well within the limitations of the available RAM and no swap. The AC100 Ubuntu build uses LXDE as the desktop environment due to its lower system requirements and has Chromium as the default browser. Boot time is very quick and battery life on the far from new battery is ~3.5 hours. This could probably be improved to ~5 hours with a new battery. The accelerated graphics driver allows use of the HDMI port for external display but causes other issues with stability and video playback so Gareth tends to use the open source drivers. A good useable machine due to its small size and light weight especially on holiday for access internet and backing up the camera to a USB drive.
This week's meeting on Video Editing should be well worth attending and will probably quite varied in content. Also just a reminder that December's meeting is our annual Gadgets evening so I hope you all all prospecting for the latest gadgets; another evening not to be missed!
Peter
| 2013 | ||
| November 20th | Video Editing | Peter et al |
| December 18th | Gadgets and Party Evening | All |
| 2014 | ||
| January 15th | Winter Social Evening - Venue TBA | All |
| February 19th | Windows Evening | Michael |
| March 19th | Computer Surgery | All |
| April 16th | AGM + | All |
Meetings are now on the Third Wednesday of the month unless otherwise stated.
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE , for a map and other details please see the website.
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Currently both visitor fees and membership fees are in abeyance until the next AGM due in May 2014.
We are continuing our publicity for EAUG events , however their website has not been updated for a year now. So if you wish to know information please phone one of their contacts.
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall, on the second Tuesday of the month
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
http://www.eaug.org.uk/mtg.htm
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.eaug.org.uk or 'phone one of the contacts on http://www.eaug.org.uk/ppl.htm
Tea/coffee/biscuits usually available.
Visitors pay 2.00 GBP for the evening, which is deductible from the normal joining subscription if you decide to join at a later date.
See the Membership page of the website for more information:
They have now moved to the St. Andrew's Computer Club at Britannia Road, Ipswich.
They have a full programme on the parish website
(http://www.ourstandrews.co.uk), We may be able to make new contact with them to arrange something in common.
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
However many household insurance policies will include cover away from home often with no increase in premium. (Ed.)
Our website has had to be moved since BT is no longer giving free hosting to customers and Peter was running the old website on his account. So Gareth has been fortunate to register a web address of our own and has generously hosted it on his own woolridge domain. All our old website data has been ported to the new site and a redirection placed on the old address. The old site will disappear some time soon
If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website.
Our website URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk