Know How... 98 (Transcript)

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Father Robert Ballecer: On this episode of know how making rocket fuel out of sunlight, we answer your questions about building a computer, stabilized platforms and stream your steam.

Fr. Robert: Welcome to know how. It is the twit show where we build, bend, break and upgrade. I'm Father Robert Ballecer…

Bryan Burnett: And I’m Bryan Burnett.

Fr. Robert: And for the next our we are going to take you through some of the projects that we have been working on so that maybe you can geek out in your real life.

Bryan: Don't worry about the time, just sit back, relax and learn.

Fr. Robert: Open up your learn holes. We are going to be dumping a lot of stuff in there. Now, Bryan. You know how we need sunlight?

Bryan: Yeah. That is how I got this sweet tan that I have.

Fr. Robert: That is how I got this sweet sunburn. Sunlight is not just for tanning, it is not just for sun burning. Did you know you can actually make fuel out of son?

Bryan: Well I understand the concept of solar power. Photosynthesis?

Fr. Robert: When we think of solar power we think about plants turning light energy through photosynthesis and to the energy they can consume. Or we think of stuff like this right?

Bryan: That’s the first thing I think of.

Fr. Robert: Direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. It is useful and it is kind of cool, but there is actually a new effort to turn it into a different type of fuel. Specifically into hydrogen. Now check this out. The EU has funded a project that is attempting to use concentrated sunlight and turn water and carbon dioxide into jet fuel.

Bryan: That is kind of the dream right? Being able to turn water into fuel.

Fr. Robert: And all the ingredients are there. We know that hydrogen is energy packed it there was a way to get pure hydrogen out of the molecules that it is attached to…

Bryan: The separating part is what’s difficult.

Fr. Robert: Typically when we want to get hydrogen out of water we went electrolytes it. You would run a positive any negative electrode in the water, you get hydrogen bubbling off of one side and you get oxygen bubbling off the other side. But you have to collect it. It is very energy intensive and it is kind of a pain in the butt. It is not all that efficient. But EU has figured a way around it with a project they are calling solar jet.

Bryan: That is pretty clever.

Fr. Robert: The question is, how does it work right? So imagine this. You have a pressure vessel. In the pressure vessel you have all this light that has been collecting with solar collectors, which is a fancy way of saying mirrors. So they are all focusing light into this pressure vessel. Which has a way of getting the light into the pressure vessel. Physics 101. Whenever you focus a lot of radiated light energy into a close space you are going to raise the temperature. When you raise the temperature you are also going to raise the pressure. So now you have a vessel that is incredibly hot and incredibly dense. Very pressurized right?

Bryan: Okay. There are a lot of forces at work there.

Fr. Robert: A lot of forces at work in physics, as we know it doesn’t work quite the same so what they do is they take advantage of that to pump carbon monoxide, which is CO2, and water vapor, which is H2O, into the pressure vessel. at those temperatures, at that pressure, it actually cracks the molecules. What ends up happening is that you can break the O2 away from carbon dioxide. You break the H2 away from H2O. And instead you now get carbon monoxide, you get a molecule O2 and a molecule of H2. so for every molecule of H2O and CO2 you get one molecule of pure hydrogen, one molecule of pure oxygen, and one molecule of carbon monoxide.

Bryan: Very cool. So it is just splitting them into little individual parts.

Fr. Robert: It just splits them up and they actually form back into those molecules. The cool thing is you can pump away the hydrogen and now you have pure hydrogen that you can turn into methanol. in fact this right here is a device that I got at CPS last year. The whole idea is that it uses a sodium silicate cartridge to contain hydrogen. It is actually very dense with hydrogen. When you add water to the sodium silicate and get heat and hydrogen. The hydrogen just bubbles out. And then it goes into this. This is a magical device.

Bryan: What is this?

Fr. Robert: This is a fuel cell. That is a hydrogen fuel cell.

Bryan: In the only byproduct is water?

Fr. Robert: Water and heat. So the way it works is if you pump hydrogen into that little inlet there you are going to run it through what is called a pem, which is a proton exchange membrane and you get water, and a small electrical charge. Well you have a lot of those the membranes this will actually charge an internal battery which in turn can charge a five volt device.

Bryan: I see that there is a little USB thing there. That is super cool.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. So if we have a process that can take light and turn carbon dioxide and H2O into a hydrogen fuel source we can now run it through a hydrogen fuel cell.

Brian: I remember a few years ago Honda made a hydrogen fuel cell powered car. And the only byproduct was water but the hard part was getting the hydrogen for the fuel cells.

Fr. Robert: Because piping hydrogen around the world is dangerous.

Bryan: Yeah, I remember they used to put it in blimps. If I recall correctly. They didn't call them solar blimps though did they?

Fr. Robert: The other use to this is that you can actually take that H2 and you can make oxygen tetrazine, rocket fuel. which is like for hydrogens on top of a carbon. I can’t remember the formula.

Bryan: But that is powerful stuff.

Fr. Robert: Powerful stuff. But you could take this process and you could directly Use it to create rocket fuel.

Bryan: Wow! That is pretty cool. Using the sign and basic water to make fuel.

Fr. Robert: Making fuel out of nothing at all. Much more efficient than solar cells and much more flexible too.

Bryan: And then there is also the NIF, the lab where they use the lasers to make fusions.

Fr. Robert: That is different. What they are doing is they are fusing atoms together so, versus nuclear power as we know it today, is all about fission. It is taking typically and atom of Uranium 235 and putting it in close proximity to another one, shooting a neutron at it and splitting it apart, creating two more neutrons which can then hit other Uranium 235 atoms and creating a chain reaction that creates heat. Fusion you are actually taking atoms and sliding them together.

Bryan: I think they have had a few successful tests. But this is cool, using the sun to do this.

Fr. Robert: It is all about energy. We love energy.

Bryan: Anything that reduces our carbon footprint. And hopefully reverses global warming. But that is probably not really going to happen.

Fr. Robert: I just want rocket fuel.

Bryan: Well if we can make enough rocket fuel…

Fr. Robert: I don’t know what you are talking about but I just want to go. Now folks, we are here on Know How because we know that you like to learn. We know that you are the smart folks that like to get online and find out things if you haven’t known about them before. And thankfully, one of the sponsors of Know How is Lynda. Now lynda.com is the source for online knowledge. It is what we use here at Twit whenever we need to brush up on a subject. Now, I did say brush up. Because Lynda is not just about learning new things, Lynda is a great resource for if you need to relearn something that you have forgotten. Now lynda.com is known as the leader in online education because that is what they do. That is what they have dedicated themselves to. lynda.com helps to keep you up-to-date with software, learn brand-new skills, and explore new hobbies with easy-to-follow video tutorials. Whether you want to make the most out of your camera gear, learn the latest version of Photoshop, or at it your own video footage using Final Cut pro, lynda.com offers thousands of topics in a variety of courses. At lynda.com watch and learn how to attach a GoPro to a Quad Captor, something I think you would be interested in. And a weekly the weekly series called DSLR video tips. You can turn your laptop into a live performance instrument, learn to play backing tracks to process the vocals and loop sounds with Main Stage. Their new releases include 3-D printing with Photoshop, where you can learn how to prepare and print 3-D models with Photoshop. And up and running with Square Register where you can learn how to start taking payments anywhere with the Square Register service. The payment processing solution that is perfect for small businesses. Now personally I have been into Final Cut Pro. It has sort of been my thing recently. I know a lot of you haven’t learned premier, that is the editor I have been using. So I figured it is only fair that I started to take a look at Final Cut.

Bryan: You like to suffer.

Fr. Robert: I played with it a while back, it is a good nonlinear editor. It was just not my thing.

Bryan: Not your cup of tea? That is the beauty of Lynda. You can learn new things and see if you like them or not.

Fr. Robert: The nice thing about Lynda is that it allowed me to skip back and forth. It is not one of these things where okay, here is the video watch the video. There are chapters, transcripts that tell you exactly where you can find things. So for example, if I am trying to learn Final Cut Pro and I’m thinking I know how to do this in Adobe Premier, I know how I do color correction where do I to color correction and Final Cut Pro? I don’t have to scan through everything to find. Instead I just go to the transcript and say locate color correction.

Bryan: Even if it is in the middle of the video.

Fr. Robert: There is actually a chapter About color correction. This is what Lynda is all about. This is what they are good at. Giving you the knowledge that you need, when you need it. Now Lynda offers courses for all experience levels. Beginner, intermediate, and advanced. And their instructors are accomplished professionals at the top of their fields. Passionate about the teacher. lynda.com Works with software companies to provide you updated training the same day new versions hit the market. So you will always have the very latest skills. With over 2400 courses and more added each week, lynda.com courses are produced at the highest quality. Not like the homemade videos on YouTube, which we love but sometimes you want good audio, sometimes you want good lighting, sometimes you want good camera work. It just takes all those elements out of the equation when you are trying to learn something new.

Bryan: Sometimes you just want to be able to find part two.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. Sometimes you just want to be able to skip ahead. That is what lynda.com lets you do. Whether you have 15 minutes or 15 hours, each course is structured so that you can learn from start to finish. lynda.com Also offers certificates of completion when you finish your course, which means you can publish your linked in profile with these certificates. Which is great if you are a professional in the field. So here is what we want you to do. We want you to try Lynda. learn something new with lynda.com. it is only $25 a month for access to the entire lynda.com course library, where for $37.50 a month you can subscribe to the premium plan which includes exercise files that let you follow along with the instructors projects using the exact same assets. And you can try lynda.com right now with a free seven day trial. Visit lynda.com/knowhow to access the entire library. That is over 2400 courses free for seven days. It is all at lynda.com/knowhow. And we thank Lynda for their support of Know How.

Bryan: Speaking of streaming things to multiple devices, what if I told you there was a way to do it with your gaming?

Fr. Robert: Impossible.

Bryan: On a Mac?

Fr. Robert: Speaking witch craft now.

Bryan: Such a downer.

Fr. Robert: This is something that has been going for a while right? Remember there was a service not too long ago that offered this idea of online, where you didn’t need a high spec computer because essentially what your computer was doing was receiving a streaming video and all the processing was done at a server far, far away.

Bryan: It was a pipe dream.

Fr. Robert: It was a pipe dream that ultimately folded. It died. There was a lot of latency issues, a lot of performance issues, but are you telling me that maybe we are ready for another go?

Bryan: We are getting closer. Yes it is still in Beta but there is something called Steam Streaming that came out fairly recently and what this allows you to do is use your powerful gaming PC that you might have at home and send it to a different device. So, for example I was playing my PC games on my MacBook Air. Which, unfortunately some of the game you can’t play on Mac. But I was playing Titan Fall. It doesn’t even have to be a steam game, it can be any game that you have in your steam library on your list. It is pretty simple and I made a video to show you how to do it.

Fr. Robert: Ok Bryan, why don’t you go ahead and blow my mind?

Bryan: So the first step to start streaming to use Steam is to have it installed on your gaming PC, which is the host. And then have it also installed on your client, which in my case is my MacBook Air. In the Steam Preferences under Account you’ll see a box where it says Beta Participation, click the change button and you’ll be prompted to be able to change from not using the Beta to Steam Beta Update. Once you check that and update Steam you should see a new tab saying In Home Streaming. Click that and if you are on the same network as your host machine it should pop up right away. This is named Gamers because Padre did that. And that is our gaming PC. Now we are connected and if you look at my games list it is not just the games installed on my Mac but also the games that are installed on the gaming PC. So unfortunately Goat Simulator is not a Mac game, but since I’m streaming from the gaming PC, I’ll be able to play from my MacBook Air. So I hit the stream button and you can see it loads up just like it would if I was playing it on my PC and down in the bottom, left hand corner you can see the resolution it is set at which I have it set to automatic and let Steam decide. It is 1280 by 720 and I’m getting a solid 60 frames per second. This is over the Twit’s guest wifi also. I don’t have it hard wired, which would be the optimum way to do this but you could see the game runs perfectly smooth and there is no noticeable input leg from the controls. Now that was a single player game but what if I tried playing a multi-player game? I like to point out that I am doing this over wifi so it is not optimal. But now that Game of Thrones is over I was playing a game to get my fix called Chivalry which is a first person Medieval war game and there was some lag, but it was definitely playable. When I tried playing on FPS at home it worked fine. I think because we have a lot of RF interference at Twit I was getting a little bit of lag. But here you can see the desktop of my PC and the screen of my MacBook Air and it is near perfect. Even though we are going over wifi. So now you are streaming to the client device that you want. But what if you have a Mac and you want to use an Xbox controller to play in your living room? Fortunately there is an option from Tetaboogle, download Xbox 360 drivers that will allow you to use your Xbox controller that you for your PC on your Mac. Navigate to the website, download the latest drivers and once you install those and restart your Mac, you can go into system preferences and there will be an Xbox controller configuration. Which should already be mapped perfectly with the controller using the triggers, the buttons and the joysticks. So now you can hook up your laptop to the big TV in your living room, use the Xbox controller to play it and you’ll be utilizing your gaming PC in another room and it’ll look better on your TV than even the Xbox 1. And if you’re a glutton for pain you can play Dark Souls 2 on a MacBook Air in your living room. So that is Steam Streaming in a nutshell and back to the studio.

Fr. Robert: Well, that actually is really good performance. That is much better than I thought you’d be able to get.

Bryan: Yeah, it is pretty cool. I’m using a MacBook Air that doesn’t have crazy graphical specs but it can play Higher definition video. You don’t want to try and find the most basic piece of hardware that you have in your house but if you have something a little bit more modern or maybe an old laptop that is playable with HD video, you can use that. Set it up in your living room and then you can play games not on your central PC.

Fr. Robert: That is actually how I see this. I don’t see this as find the jankiest piece of garbage you having lying around in your den and turn it into a gaming machine. I’m seeing it as I’ve got a nice Ultra Book which obviously I’m not going to be playing high frame gaming on but if it is decent enough and comfortable for me to use, I can make it a game machine leveraging the equipment I already have on my network.

Bryan: Exactly. And it is so cool to be able to play on a Mac laptop games that are never going to come out for Mac. The only this is that when I first heard about this project I was hoping that I could make a low powered Raspberry Pi for this project but it doesn’t work. It is only X86 processor.

Fr. Robert: That could change though.

Bryan: That could change.

Fr. Robert: You just have to recompile the code for arm, which again it is going to take a while and honestly I don’t know how good of an experience you are going to get off of a Raspberry Pi. I know Raspberry Pi can receive high definition video just fine but what has me worried is this. One of the issues of this sort of gaming is that it’s always been the lag. That is what killed Onlive, right?

Bryan: Yes. Because you are giving the input, it is going out and then it is coming back. But I was playing on it in my bedroom with my laptop and I was playing TitanFall and that is a first person shooter and I wasn’t getting any input lag. They worked some steam magic.

Fr. Robert: That is one of the things where if you are on the home network there should be very little latency. You’re living on the same wire as the other machine, it’s not like you are going across the internet. One of the issue I would be worried about though is that if you are using a wireless device you’d have to make sure that your wireless network is set up properly. I know you didn’t have any issues but if you were at a really RF crowded area with a lot of interference you could possibly run into those infuriating situations where you are doing some heavy FPS gaming and it lags for just a frame, but it is enough to get you killed.

Bryan: Right. And that is one of the last cons is that it is only on your home network. So I can’t play games here at work from my PC at home.

Fr. Robert: Although I’m sure that is going to be happening because think about it. All you’d have to do is set up a VPN so that you are back in your home network and then to the Steam system it looks like you’re in the network.

Bryan: I’m sure Padre could figure out a way to do that.

Fr. Robert: Actually that’s not a bad Know How. Okay so we are going to come back and we are going to show you how to get remote gaming using VPN back into your Steam network.

Bryan: Someone in the chat room asks, “Well did your MacBook Air get very hot?” Not at all. It didn’t harpy use any battery life either because it was just accepting the video. My PC in my room was doing all the work. That is one of the cons though is the PC that you are using to stream the games you are not going to be able to use it while you are doing it. It is basically a remote desktop, but for games.

Fr. Robert: See with the remote desktop you can have multiple sessions and still use the desktop. This is going to lock out the desktop. You can’t do anything while it is streaming. Which I could see a bunch of reasons why they did that.

Bryan: And it is still in Beta. So I did have a couple of crashes and there was a couple times I had to walk in the room where my PC was and reboot it and start the game over and stuff. For the majority it was super smooth and cool.

Fr. Robert: Super smooth and cool. Hey, speaking of super smooth and cool. You know what else is super smooth and cool?

Bryan: A slick bit of software called Square Space.

 Fr. Robert: Squarespace. Now, if you haven’t heard about Squarespace you are a bad person and you should probably turn off the stream might now. I’m just kidding. We love you all and we want you to know about Squarespace. Squarespace is the space that you should go to if you are thinking about starting up a high quality blog, or a website. You see, when you create a website today there is a lot of places that offer things that are good. You’ve got one site that has really good hosting, you have one site that has really good design. You have another site that takes care of the backend like e-commerce. But trying to get one site that does everything so that you only get one bill and you only have to deal with one set of hassles, that is the specialty of Squarespace. Now if you have ever used where space you know how good it is. It is a great way to get a blog or website up and running immediately without worrying about downtime, without worrying about a lot of little details that you have to take care of. It is a great way to share a weekend project, blog or provide the ability to jumpstart a site startup project with a professional, and I mean professional, looking site. And the ability to quickly and easily take orders and sell creations. Some of the reasons why you will love Squarespace is that they are constantly improving their platform. They are not willing to sit back on their laurels. They are always giving you new features, new designs, and better support. Now they are also really flexible. For DIYers this is important because you don’t want to be stuck in their templates. And they don’t demand that you stay in them. There are a set of tools to create your own website without code from design tools like layout engine to the logo Creator. A platform for customizing those sites especially if you do know enough code to get under the hood. The developer platform is super robust you will always be able to expand as your skills grow. Squarespace also offers beautiful designs, they have 25 beautiful templates for you to start with and they recently added a logo Creator tool which is a basic tool for individuals and small businesses with limited resources to create a simple identity for themselves. Squarespace is also easy to use. It is easy to use but if you want some help Squarespace has live chat and email support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Plus there is a completely redesigned customer help site for easier access to self-help articles and video workshops. They also offer you e-commerce like I said which is great for nonprofits, for cash weddings registries and for school fund drives. And it is inexpensive. It starts at just eight dollars a month and includes a free domain name if you sign-up for a year. One of the things I really enjoy about Squarespace is that they are mobile ready. They are not one of these sites that will look bad on a phone or it because it has been formatted for just a PC or a desktop. It will dynamically resize and reformat your content so it looks as good on a phone as it does on someone with a high definition PC. Now even their code is beautiful. You may know that I’m also the host of Coding 101, well Squarespace looks just as good on the inside is it does on the outside. They take just as much pride in their back end code as they do in those 25 beautiful designs upfront. Again, hosting is included so you don’t have to worry about multiple bills from multiple companies. Squarespace is your one stop shop. So here is what we want you to do. We want you to start your two week free trial, with no credit card required, and start building your website today. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace make sure to use the offer code know how to get 10% off and to show your support for know-how. We thank Squarespace for their support of know-how. A better web awaits and it starts with your new Squarespace website.

Bryan: You know what my favorite part is about my Squarespace site?

Fr. Robert: What?

Bryan: Check in how many people have subscribed. I love looking at the numbers and it says, you have two new subscribers! It is like I should probably keep updating it then.

Fr. Robert: You know what the worst part about that is though? Like saying you have 30 new subscribers and you haven’t updated your site in like four months?

Bryan: That’s what I was wondering. I have nowhere near that number.

Fr. Robert: Okay. Now, a while that I decided I wanted to start up a project. We were really getting into the Raspberry Pi and I thought hey I want to make an auto stabilizing platform.

Bryan: Sure, why not. That shouldn’t be too difficult.

Fr. Robert: All you need is you need some sort of solid-state gyro. Something that tells you if you are tipping this way or that way. Two axles right? That is really all you need. So I got that, I got a shield that plugged into the Raspberry Pi and I got this case so I could build my project inside this case and then build a mount on it for the cameras. I even got myself a display shield so that I could see all what is going on inside the Raspberry Pi as I was playing with it. Again a very versatile computer and just use the GPIO in order to get that information in. And then it drove a set of two servos that as it tipped this way the servo would tip it back. The idea was those servers would be installed right below the case so the case would also be level no matter what I did with it.

Bryan: Right. So if it tipped a little bit it would tell it to adjust this much to get back to level.

Fr. Robert: Really simple right? I almost burned down my house.

Bryan: That’s not the first time that happened. I’m curious to know how.

Fr. Robert: Okay, so I think there was a voltage mismatch somewhere and I actually think my code was wrong because what it ended up doing was when I tipped it this way it would tip it even more and I couldn’t figure out because the code looked right. So at some point I flipped the servo, because I thought maybe I have this wrong. And it did the same thing, so that is weird. And it started a small fire.

Bryan: Okay. Dude, do you typically have a fire extinguisher nearby when you start projects because you might want to start doing that.

Fr. Robert: It was down the hall. That was not good. The worst part about it is that I live in a school in San Francisco and the fire department is 2 blocks down and every time the school fire alarm comes over they respond and it is $1500.

Bryan: Oh wow. I thought you were going to say they have your name on file.

Fr. Robert: So as the smoke is coming up I throw it out the window and saying, don’t go off, don’t go off! It didn’t go off but I kept thinking $1500.

Bryan: There goes your pork fund budget for the month.

Fr. Robert: And who would suffer?

Bryan: Me.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. So this didn’t work. Which is fine. Failure is always an option. Sometimes we just need to have a fresh look.

Bryan: It is about the attempt. I like the idea but the execution needs a little work.

Fr. Robert: But let me tell you at NAB 2014 I saw a couple of attempts whose execution was awesome. Let’s take a look. Every year, everyone who is even remotely connected to content production comes to one place. The mecca of all things video and audio, ladies and gentleman, NAB 2014, Las Vegas. We are here at DI and I am sitting next to Paul. Well, Paul you are holding the Ronin, what is this?

Paul: This is our all new 3 axis camera stabilization system. It has these kind of modes like you have this smooth track mode and it is going to translate your movement, your pan, you have your pitch and besides this standard underslung control mode we have another mode where you can bring it down like this and this will allow you to get closer to your body. Most times if you are underslung you are always shooting at your chest or stomach level you do this. And you suddenly are at eye level. All of this is all automatically controlled through our complex algorithms and 32 bit processors. This gimbal system is more consumer friendly, meaning the price comes down.

Fr. Robert: You had the ability to change what it is, the dead lock or the dead band? So you can either have the camera locked in on a particular object no matter where you move it, or you can have it slowly follow it so again you get those buttery smooth pans.

Paul: Yeah, that is true. The dead band can be adjusted based off the app that is all adjusted through the blue tooth app and you can also control the speed at which your movement translates. We call that smooth track. So as you pan, you’ll see that it smoothly moves over instead of a sudden jerk which will translate to a very tricky video. Besides the app we also have a secondary operator remote control system. So if say one person holding this or if he attaches to a jib you have remote control capability of the system.

Fr. Robert: Okay, brass tacks. We know that the system is going to run for 4 hours on a charge and I know this is a prototype so you can’t tell me things like how much it weighs. But I know it supports, is it 15 or 16 pounds?

Paul: 16 pounds.

Fr. Robert: So 16 pounds of support. What is the price availability. I know there are a lot of film makers out there who are going to want this as soon as possible. Where would they be able to get it, when will they be able to get it and how much do you think it is going to cost?

Paul: We are not announcing the official MSRP but we are going to come in under $5000 and it will be released sometime this quarter.

Fr. Robert: Here’s a situation. You’re an amateur content creator and you want those buttery smooth shots that you would get with a rail or some sort of gyro stabilized platform but you don’t have the $5000 or $10000 you would need to buy one. Well thankfully we’ve got Big Balance. Here at Big Balance they are giving everyone the ability to have those gyro stabilized shots for a fraction of the cost. Now the idea is simple. Take a handle and put the electronics into is so I can go 360 degrees around this way, 45 degrees forward and back and give me the switches so I can tilt the camera exactly where I need. Now the cool thing about this that they design products for every type of camera, every type of shooter. Everything from the Gazelle which will give you your camera phone shots all the way up to the Mustang which will give you sort of the action camera shots to the Husky which will give you these larger single shot cameras and then ultimately to the Gorilla and the Brown Bear which will give you your DSLR support. Now, here is the thing you are going to love. Pricing. You may say it is going to start at $800 or a $1000. No, it starts at $220 for the Gazelle and going all the way up to $2800 for the Brown Bear. So you choose the levels of support you need and the amount of capabilities you want built into your unit. If you are looking for a steady shot, if you are looking for a way to have your camera phone, your action camera or your DSLR on that nice buttery smooth track, go ahead and check Big Balance.

Fr. Robert: I’m telling you those Big Balance ones I really, really like those.

Bryan: That’s the one I want. Because immediately I thought of GoPro. I’d use it for my GoPro.

Fr. Robert: That’s the thing. The DGI one is nice but it is designed for rad cameras.

Bryan: Right. That’s a little beyond what I would be able to spend on something.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. But starting down at $200. Absolutely, why not get one of those? What I did was I did a practice shot. I put one of the GoPro cameras and I hung it upside down and I ran it along the floor and it is so smooth it looks like a rail shot.

Bryan: I know you could see in the video when you were moving around. For that size of a camera that would be awesome.

Fr. Robert: And as a bonus, nothing caught on fire when I was using those.

Bryan: Which is unusual. So that was a plus. I’m surprised you get to go to NAB at all.

Fr. Robert: Don’t tell Lisa.

Bryan: The bigger one? I need the camera equipment before I could even buy that.

Fr. Robert: If I had a $40,000 camera red camera then a $5000 for a mount sounds totally normal. But if I’m using my camera phone, a GoPro or even a small camcorder that is going to be out of our price range.

Bryan: The majority of the stuff I do is what I can carry with me and I can carry a GoPro in my pocket.

Fr. Robert: So Big Balance, we’ve reached out to you and if you’re watching this video could we get like…

Bryan: Are those available now? Because the other one was like a prototype thing.

Fr. Robert: Alright. Let’s move on. We’ve got a bit of feedback. Remember how we told you we are going to break the feedback out of those big feedback episodes. We’ve got one that was a hold over from Dan Simon. He wanted our help in building his PC. Now his build, he actually gave us a link that showed us the store that he was going to buy it from. It included an Intel I5, it was a 3.4 Ghz CPU, a course hair liquid CBU cooler so it was one of those little heat pumps, an Asix motherboard, a course hair 16 GB 8.2 module of memory, Kingston SSD KC300 SSD, a Western Digital Black hard drive and an EVGAGTX 780.

Bryan: That is a pretty good set up.

Fr. Robert: $1500, it is a solid set up. There are a few things I would change around. Let’s talk about it. So, he went with an Intel I5 3.4 Ghz. I’m assuming so that he could free up some of the money to get that EVGAGTX 780. That is a fantastic card. The problem is that it is a $700 card.

Bryan: That is the majority of his budget right there.

Fr. Robert: It is half of his budget that goes to that. Which is not bad, if you don’t know the 780, it is basically two 770 glued together.

Bryan: Yeah, that thing is bad ass.

Fr. Robert: It is bad ass. But again you are paying a lot and here is the thing. We’ve been fine with the 770. This thing right here is silky smooth on anything. The only thing the 780 gives you above the 770 at the moment is if you are going to be multi-screen gaming the 780 is much better at that. Because again it has way more pipelines, it’s got way more shaders, it makes sense. If you don’t have a multiple monitor set up for gaming, I’m not saying that you have multiple monitors because everyone has multiple monitors.

Bryan: It is easy to have two monitors and just use one for gaming. But you are talking about having an array of monitors that all have the game on it.

Fr. Robert: And actually even the 770 could do dual monitor gaming just fine. You’re going to get maximum resolution on most games but if you were going to do say triple monitor then you would absolutely need the 780. If you’re not doing that, then what I would suggest is that you drop the 780, go with the 770. You are going to save yourself somewhere between $200 and $250 doing that.

Bryan: And then you can drop that towards the…

Fr. Robert: The CPU. See he took an I5. I5’s are good right? But here is the thing. I would always take an I7 because, for me, he may not be video editing.

Bryan: I also imagine if you are doing a multi-screen you probably want to do the I7 with the 780.

 Fr. Robert: Right. Right. And look, dropping the 780 and going with the 770 is going to get you between $200 and $250 back right? Going from an I5, he had a 4670 to an I7 4790 you are only going to be increasing the price by about $85. So why not do that? The other thing I would suggest is why not use that saving to bump up your SSD? Either get something from the Samsung A40 Evil Line. 480 GB, which would double the space of the SSD. Or get two of the Kingston KC300’s so that you could have the operating system drive and the gaming dry. Because you had a problem with this right?

Bryan: I did. If you play a game like Titan fall it is 50 GB. And I run out of space quick when 50 GB is taken up. So you've really got to decide which games are important to you or have a backup drive for stuff.

Fr. Robert: Now he went ahead and got a Western Digital Black, a rotating drive. So that he could have extra space. But, actually this is the way I set up my computers. I have a rotating drive, it is a Western Digital Black because I like speed. But if I am doing video editing I have a second SSD, a 256 GB or 240 GB SSD in there, which is my video editing drives, all my assets go on there. You could just as easily use that for all your games.

Bryan: That wouldn’t be too bad. That you are saying that you recommend maybe the Samsung? Was there one that you had an issue with?

Fr. Robert: Yeah, so I am having problems with the A30’s. I bought four A30’s like 18 months ago and the last one is dying now.

Bryan: So it’s not like it was a fluke. You had four.

Fr. Robert: There is something with the A30 line.

Bryan: because I know people kind of give you a bad time about supporting Kingston but they have proved themselves worthy.

Fr. Robert: So this is the Enterprise Drive, this is the reason that I started going with Kingston. Because I had all of these and all the servers I’ve ever installed. And I have never replace them. They are really good. They are very long-lived. This is the one they sent me to upgrade this machine. This is their Hyper X, it is the 3K version. This thing is crazy fast. It is like 555 read and 510 write.

Bryan: When it was put in there, I didn’t know when I turned on the PC.

Fr. Robert: Because I didn’t tell you that I had upgraded it.

Bryan: So I push the button and then I am used to pulling out my phone, checking my watch and then all of a sudden this screen was just up in Windows 8 was there and I thought, was it already on? Maybe I should reboot real quick. I rebooted it and it blinked off for a quick and it came back on. Oh, he put the SSD in.

Fr. Robert: Again, I have used by different manufacturers SSD’s. I have used Samsung, Intel, Kingston, Crucial and OCZ. OCA was a piece of crap. I have no problem saying that on the stream. That was probably in my machine for a total of 40 minutes before I pulled it out. Something happened Crucial I can’t remember what it was, maybe it was a product issue. The Intel’s are actually rock solid but I wasn't so happy with the price performance. I’m having a lot of issues with the Samsung’s. Kingstons, I have not replaced a single SSD yet. And as long as you don’t buy the Value Line, the value line of all the SSD manufacturers are kind of junk. Buy a decent bottom of the line and you will get great performance.

Bryan: If you save money on your video card you can keep the SSD and upgrade your CPU. Because the experience I’ve had is that if I have a good base of a CPU and hard drive, the GPU cycle of upcoming card seems to go a little bit faster. So usually my set up is that I buy a $200 graphics card and then in two years I buy another one. It blows my old graphics card out of the water.

Fr. Robert: That is the thing, if you wait that 780 is going to be a $300 card in a few years.

Bryan: It is the waiting that is hard.

Fr. Robert: But you are not going to notice it. Were you longing for the 780 when you were playing on this?

Bryan: No.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. Now one other thing is that he is going with 16 GB of memory. This machine we upgraded to 32 GB using King stands super crazy fast memory. Which is nice. We actually have an upcoming episode of Know How where we are going to show you exactly how much performance you gain from every upgrade. We changed the video cards, we change the memory, and we’d change the SSD.

Bryan: Incrementally, so that you could see the actual change in upgrades.

Fr. Robert: So you will be able to decide for yourself what you want to upgrade. But for me, I would say that the first thing that you always upgrade, if you upgrade anything is…

Bryan: Memory.

Fr. Robert: It is the easiest one to upgrade. SSD gives you the best price performance and the very last thing would be the video card. Because that is a big expense. So I realize, Dan, that we have answered absolutely none of your questions.

Bryan: We get sidetracked.

Fr. Robert: We like to talk. Oh, one last thing. He got the liquid cooler which, I love liquid coolers but here is the problem. In your set up, your CPU is not going to generate the most heat.

Bryan: It is going to be your graphics card.

Fr. Robert: Yes. So if you don’t have a heat pump system that has some sort of heat removal device that goes onto your video card, it is not really doing a whole lot. You are lowering the temperature of the case but if you really want to get effective it has got to cover both the CPU and GPU. It’s got to pump it out of the case.

Bryan: Those self-contained water coolers are pretty slick.

Fr. Robert: Very slick.

Bryan: If you are not planning on doing a lot of over clocking, then don’t do it.

Fr. Robert: Go with the air cooled. The other thing is that if you have got a water cooled system you do have to maintain it. Because it can get nasty really easy.

Bryan: I know someone who had an experience with that. Alex was an early adopter of water cooled.

Fr. Robert: Alex, how did that go?

Alex: Parts were leaking it eventually. And I had crusty blue stuff all over my case.

Bryan: It looked cool, when we first put it together.

Fr. Robert: So Alex I hear doubt water and electrical components they really like each other.

Alex: Oh yeah.

Fr. Robert: So take it all for what it is worth I would go with air cooled system unless you’re willing to spend that extra to go ahead and water cool the GPU as well.

Bryan: Yep. And then go play games.

Fr. Robert: Now folks we are going to be adding a new segment here. Something that I want to do every once in a while along with the feedback. Called the parting shot. Bryan and I are going to be going around the Internet every once in a while and finding something that is incredibly cool or incredibly derp.

Bryan: Which there is a lot of.

Fr. Robert: Now we are going to do a deep next time but I thought this time we should do a cool. This is one of the best optical illusions that we have seen this year. This comes to us from a really slate magazine. take a look at this. Now it should work over the stream as well. Pick a spot. Pick a single spot on the screen and just watch it. Do you have your spot Bryant?

Bryan: I've got my spot.

Fr. Robert: Okay so what color is that spot?

Bryan: It is teal.

Fr. Robert: Okay, now as it flips between horizontal and vertical continue looking at that spot. Does it look like the color is changing?

Bryan: Yeah, they are changing.

Fr. Robert: It changes shade right?

Bryan: Yeah.

Fr. Robert: No. It doesn’t. I didn’t believe them so I took this gif and I put it in Adobe Premier and I sampled the spots and the colors aren’t changing the lines are just changing from horizontal to vertical. It is persistence of vision that makes your eyes think that you’ve changed shades.

Bryan: That is messing with me right now.

Fr. Robert: Absolutely. So, hey Stream, if you are watching this pick a spot, take a look and if you don’t believe me go ahead and drop this into your favorite video or photo editor of choice, sample the colors and it is the exact same color. Okay, stop. My eyes are hurting.

Bryan: Why do you look blue now?

Fr. Robert: That might actually be kind of derp.

Bryan: Let’s wrap it up.

Fr. Robert: Let's wrap it up. We’ve done a lot of stuff here. Between your steam machine, between this old machine, and between almost setting fire to our house, and rocket fuel, I think it is time to wrap it up.

Bryan: Was that just this episode?

Fr. Robert: I know, right?

Bryan: If we didn't have a repository for all that information how would you ever remember it?

Fr. Robert: But, we do! That’s right! We’ve got our show notes. Go to twit.tv/kh, and there you will see all of our episodes, and more importantly you will see the show notes attached to those episodes. If you want to find out about that rocket fuel theme from EU there will be a link to that. If you want to find out about how I looked at those products at NAB that segment will be there. If you want to find out where I went to play with Bryan steam machine, jump in and you will see that as well. Also, you could email us at knowhow@twit.tv. Bryan, you check that mail right?

Bryan: Oh, not at all.

Fr. Robert: Me neither.

Bryan: So that probably isn’t best.

Fr. Robert: Yeah, don’t do that. Well, what you can do is you can actually find us on our Google Plus page.

Bryan: There are plenty of other ways to reach out to us. And the Google Plus page is a great place to share any projects that you may have built from watching our episodes, or if you have a question there are a ton of other know what awls on their so you don’t have to listen to us the whole time.

Fr. Robert: Please don’t. Because I don’t.

Bryan: I was twitching from that thing earlier.

Fr. Robert: Accent was looking up at the lights and they look like different colors now. My brain is weird. Also you can find us on Twitter. If you are not into the Google Plus group you can find me at twitter.com/padresj, that is @PadreSJ.

Bryan: And I’m Cranky_Hippo.

Fr. Robert: And also don’t forget about our TD. The guy who blew up his computer with liquid cooling.

Alex: Speaking of which, before we go I have pictures of that night that we did some maintenance on my computer, Bryan, if you want to share it.

Bryan: it was probably longer ago than I want to remember.

Alex: There is the computer opened upside down because we had to drain the system before we took it apart to clean everything. So I’ll kind of go through here.

Bryan: So you see this, he had coolers for the CPU…

Alex: And the hard drives.

Fr. Robert: I love that hair.

Alex: There we go, we are draining the system.

Fr. Robert: Did you have neon fluid?

Alex: No. It was that whatever blue stuff that came with it. The coolant. It is almost drained out, so you can see the crusty blue stuff over on the hard drive.

Bryan: Do people still use that kind of system?

Fr. Robert: They do.

Alex: Okay that is good. So it was leaking out of the connections they are and then dripping down to the bottom of the case and just making a whole mess of things.

Fr. Robert: Was this just liquid cooling or did you actually refrigerate?

 Alex: Know, this is liquid.

Bryan: It piped to a fan system on top of the PC.

Alex: It was a coolant and it was a case that they made and we modified the top and put their little cooler thing on.

Fr. Robert: So Alex, with your experience would you suggest that someone do water cooling?

Alex: No, it is just a pain. It was fun, but it just wasn’t…

Bryan: Do you think that is what killed one of your video cards?

Alex: No, they died later.

Bryan: Alex’s machine was a beast when it first came out. It had dual 78…

Alex: Dual G47800’s. And this was after we took it apart and cleaned it.

Bryan: And this was the Pentium D right before they came out with the…

Alex: It was the Pentium D/Pentium 4, the Pentium extreme. It was the Pentium D with hyper threading.

Bryan: Sadly, it was right before they announced the Core Duo.

Alex: Right before that.

Bryan: And that was a huge step up.

Alex: Look at all that goo, crusty stuff.

Fr. Robert: There you have it folks. That’s how you know that Know How is a good show. Our TD could be the host.

Bryan: What are you trying to say, Padre?

Fr. Robert: I think we should get rid of you. Or me.

Bryan: If I disappear…

Fr. Robert: Until next time, I’m Father Robert Ballecer.

Bryan: I’m Bryan Burnett.

Fr. Robert: And now that you know…

Bryan: Go do it!