The two settings that I edited are loglevel and tvshowmatching. Loglevel was edited to help with debugging issues and tvshowingmatching was added because the default regex entries weren’t picking up all of my anime. Here are the contents of my advancedsettings.xml with comments added:

<advancedsettings>

<!-- hide="false" Displays the "Enable Debugging" setting in the GUI -->
<!-- 1 sets the loglevel to debug logging where the default (0) only logs errors -->
<loglevel hide="false">1</loglevel>

<!-- adds 3 new Regular Expressions (Regex) into XBMC to use when scanning in media -->
<!-- action="append" inserts the additional regex entries after the defaults -->
<tvshowmatching action="append">
	<regexp>[\._ \-][Ss]([0-9]+)[\.\-]?[Ee]([0-9]+)([^\\/]*)</regexp>
	<regexp>[\._ \-]\[?([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)\]?([^\\/]*)</regexp>
	<regexp>[\._ \-]([0-9]{2,3})()([\._\ \-][^\\/]*)</regexp>
</tvshowmatching>

</advancedsettings>

An entry that I found useful in the past but am not currently using is cleanonupdate; which as the name suggests, cleans the database when updating the library. By default this option is set to false.

<cleanonupdate>true</cleanonupdate>

Go to the XBMC advancedsettings.xml Wiki to read more about a plethora of additional settings that can be configured.

The post XBMC Advanced Settings (advancedsettings.xml) appeared first on Tech Explored.

As expected there were several warnings in the logfile but one line in particular stood out.

15:33:30 T:9520 WARNING: DXVA - colorspace not supported by processor, skipping frame

DXVA was the render method that I chose to use in the video settings (System -> Video -> Playback).

To fix the problem I changed the render method to auto detect and then I restarted XBMC. Afterwards the video played properly.

The post XBMC Video Playback is Blank (Only Audio) appeared first on Tech Explored.

The file loads each time BF3 is launched and gives you the ability to configure some advanced options. Here are the contents of my current user.cfg file:

GameTime.MaxVariableFPS 100
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 1
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 2
PostProcess.DynamicAOEnable 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapEnable 0
WorldRender.TransparencyShadowmapsEnable 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 256


Here’s some good info posted by csathdfw at deltaops.eu:

PostProcess.DynamicAOEnabl​e 0/1
-Enables automaticly when SSAO or HBAO is used (HBAO does not cost much fps!!!)

RenderDevice.ForceRenderAh​eadLimit 0-?
-Amount of prepared frames by the cpu. 0/1 only when having inputlag on a higher value, 2-3 on balanced systems, 4 or more on big quad with highend CF/SLI, too low value equals in significant fps-loss. Set acording to the balance between cpu and graphics, a perfect value can be “unbottlenecking”.

RenderDevice.TripleBufferi​ngEnable 0/1
-Enable only when using Vsync. This value is set to enabled by default, even without Vsync.

WorldRender.FxaaEnable 0/1
-This is the ingame option “antialiasing post”. In difference to MSAA, FXAA takes almost no fps even on high value.

WorldRender.SpotLightShado​wmapEnable 0/1
- Enabling/Disabling shadows produced by some artifical lightsources (helpful indoors!!!)

WorldRender.SpotLightShado​wmapResolution 64-1024
-Higher value = higher quality = lower performance (when SpotLightShado​wmapEnable set to 0 this commands renders obsolete)

WorldRender.TransparencySh​adowmapsEnable 0 /1
- Produces shadows drawn by particles (i.e. smoke). Enables automaticly on shadowquality medium or higher. (Disabling can lead to pitchblack terrain under all trees and especially at the C-Flag on caspian border CQ)

WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPa​thEnable 0
-unknown. Some people report more fps, others fps-loss, and/or increasing/decreasing maploading times.

RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 0/1
-Use according to the capabilities of your graphics.

Gametime.MaxVariableFps 100
-Limit fps to a specific top value. Can help to save resources and energy.

The post Battlefield 3 Advanced Settings user.cfg appeared first on Tech Explored.

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The post Razer Game Booster Settings appeared first on Tech Explored.

This next part is where things got a bit tricky. It would’ve been nice if I could have just used my WatchWindows.ahk script to also trigger an event when the BF3 window was closed but AutoHotkey is on Punkbuster’s disallowed programs list. So if you’re running an AHK script while playing BF3 in a PunkBuster enabled server then you’ll eventually get kicked with a disallowed program error. At this point I had to find a new way to trigger an event when BF3 was closed. My first idea was to find a file that got changed only when the BF3 window was closed so I setup TheFolderSpy to monitor the following directories:

C:\ProgramData\Origin
C:\ProgramData\EA Core
C:\ProgramData\EA Logs
C:\ProgramData\Electronic Arts
C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\Origin
C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Local\Origin
C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Local\Temp
C:\Users\Peter\Documents\Battlefield 3
C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games
C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin

Then I launched BF3 and shortly thereafter I closed the game. When I went through the log created by TheFolderSpy I found a .lock file located in C:\ProgramData\EA Core\cache\[temp folder] that was deleted only when BF3 closed. So I setup Hygeia to continuously monitor that folder (including subfolders since the temp folder name changes each time BF3 is launched) and to be triggered only when a file is deleted. Here are the settings I used in Hygeia:

One of the actions I have setup is to launch RazerGameBoosterNormal.ahk which only contains one line of code.
[autoit title="RazerGameBoosterNormal.ahk"]
SendInput, ^!r
[/autoit]

And that’s it! Now Razer Game Booster will enter boost mode when the BF3 window is launched and will return to normal mode when the window is closed.

The post Razer Game Booster Fix For Battlefield 3 appeared first on Tech Explored.

With the shell information collected you can now add your own code to trigger certain actions on specified window events. Two ways that I’ve used so far to match window titles is as follows:
1) If (Title = “Windows”)
[autoit title="If Statement"]
WinGetTitle, Title, ahk_id %lParam%
If (Title = “Windows”)
[/autoit]
2) IfInString, Title, Battlefield
[autoit title="IfInString Statement"]
WinGetTitle, Title, ahk_id %lParam%
IfInString, Title, Battlefield
[/autoit]

Method #1 is fine most of the time unless the window title uses abstract characters. For example the Battlefield game window uses the title “Battlefield 3™”. If you paste that exact title into the script the if statement will evaluate to false. In order to get around this issue I used IfInString. While this fixed my initial problem a new problem appeared in its place which triggered the event when I launched the Battlelog website in my browser. To get around this I added another IfInString statement within the first that looked for the proper class.

[autoit title="Nested IfInString Statement"]
WinGetTitle, Title, ahk_id %lParam%
WinGetClass, Class, ahk_id %lParam%

IfInString, Title, Battlefield
{
IfInString, Class, Battlefield
{
MsgBox, Success!
}
}
[/autoit]

To perform an action when a window is created use {autoit}If (wParam = 1){/autoit}
To perform an action when a window is destroyed use {autoit}If (wParam = 2){/autoit}

What I use the script for:
1) Triggering my Razer Game Booster hot keys to enter boost mode when Battlefield 3 is launched.
2) To close out of the “Windows has detected that your computer’s performance is slow” window.
3) To move program windows like Evernote to a specific location when their window is created.

[autoit title="WatchWindows.ahk"]
#Persistent
SetBatchLines, -1
Process, Priority,, High

Gui +LastFound
hWnd := WinExist()

DllCall(“RegisterShellHookWindow”, UInt, hWnd)
MsgNum := DllCall(“RegisterWindowMessage”, Str, “SHELLHOOK”)
OnMessage(MsgNum, “ShellMessage”)
Return

ShellMessage(wParam, lParam)
{
If (wParam = 1) ; HSHELL_WINDOWCREATED := 1
{
WinGetTitle, Title, ahk_id %lParam%
WinGetClass, Class, ahk_id %lParam%
IfInString, Title, Battlefield
{
IfInString, Class, Battlefield
{
SendInput, ^!b
Sleep 1000
Run F:\Development\AutoHotkey\PauseSABnzbd.ahk
ExitApp
}
}
IfInString, Title, Evernote
WinMove, %Title%,, -1920, 0, 894, 1078
If (Title = “Windows”)
WinClose, ahk_id %lParam%
}
}
[/autoit]

The post Capture Window Events with AutoHotkey appeared first on Tech Explored.

My current backup program of choice is Areca Backup which is open source and is hosted at sourceforge. I make a separate target profile for each piece of software that I’m backing up so I can backup only the necessary files. Areca handles this method without fail but because there isn’t a built in scheduling system it can be a hassle exporting each individual target backup. There’s an option to run a single export for every target in a group but I have a few targets that I don’t want to backup on a schedule in my main group.

One method of scheduling backups is to run the wizard “Generate backup strategy commands…” which is located in the right click context menu.

My current backup strategy is as follows:
One archive each 1 day, 7 times
Then one archive each 7 days, 3 times
Then one archive each 28 days, 1 time

The backup wizard then creates 3 .bat files in the location that you specify. For each target that you run the wizard on 3 new .bat files are generated. Normally, the next step would be to create a separate task for each .bat file using the Windows Task Scheduler. However this becomes very time consuming and rather sloppy with a large amount of individual target backups. It was for this reason that I created a .bat parser for Areca.

In my programs current state it only parses files which contain “1_days”, “7_days”, or “28_days” in the file name. If the program finds any matches then it takes the contents of the file and appends it to a master backup file titled every_1_days.bat, every_7_days.bat, or every_28_days.bat respectively. Then it’s only necessary to create one Windows task for each .bat file. every_1_days.bat would be scheduled to run once a day, every_7_days.bat once every 7 days, and every_28_days.bat once every 28 days. Each new .bat file is scanned and checked against its master .bat file before being appended in order to check for duplicates. If a duplicate is found then a notice appears alerting the user that the .bat file being imported is already in the master backup file.

To further automate this process you can use a program like Belvedere to scan the directory where Areca exports the .bat files and then launch the .bat parser when a new backup file is found.

Edit the first line of the script SetWorkingDir, F:\Libraries to point to the directory where your .bat files are located.

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