@scottalanmiller said in Who do you call for IT assistance:

It can't, IT isn't a certifiable process.

ITIL certification?

@jaredbusch said in What am I doing wrong with ffmpeg:

I have some mkv media that I also have Japanese subtitles in srt and English subtitles in ass.

I would like to just mux it in so I don't have to worry about file naming or manually matching things. But when I try to do both at once things puke.

Can you have both ass and srt in the same container and have it working? How about converting the srt file to ass and then mux? I believe ffmpeg can convert the subtitles with ffmpeg -i subtitle.srt subtitle.ass

@notverypunny said in KVM or VMWare:

@dbeato said in KVM or VMWare:

@jaredbusch It is supported you can either pay for support or run OpenSource.
https://xcp-ng.com/

It has been super stable compared to Xenserver/Citrix XenServer.

Not looking to take over or diverge too much, but what stability issues did you have on Citrix? We're a 95% Citrix shop and rarely have issues with the hypervisor knock wood Just wondering if we're lucky or if there's something else at play.

We have both xenserver and xcp-ng servers but don't notice any difference. It's the same code base after all.

Never had any stability issues with either. If we did would have looked for something else right away.

@dashrender said in KVM or VMWare:

Why isn't ProxMox on the list?

MS just killed Hyper-V so I get why it's not there.

Because Proxmox is KVM?

@stacksofplates said in Does a script imply Automation?:

@pete-s said in Does a script imply Automation?:

@eddiejennings said in Does a script imply Automation?:

@gjacobse said in Does a script imply Automation?:

Simply thus

Does a script imply automation?

No. Often a script is used as a tool to create automation, and usually one would write a script with the end goal of eventually automating something. However, just a script alone in a vacuum does not imply automation.

That's not really true because automation is not just IT automation like DevOps.
Automation comes from ancient Greek and means "acting on it's own will".

So everything that is "acting on it's own will" is automated. If you start an install script, it will do things on it's own will. That is automation. If you use Ansible (a bunch of scripts) to do something, it's also automation.

Neither of those are fully automated because they will not initiate the process themselves and also requires some manual input.

In contrast things like large modern manufacturing plants are often fully automated and will run by themselves. However operators are needed to make decision and adjust the process so the end result is satisfactory. The ones that make the programs for a factory are called automation engineers.

I feel like this is splitting hairs way too finely. I don't think we can use that definition here.

Opening a browser and going to google.com would then be automation because I don't manually send the tcp request and then send an acknowledgement. I don't manually search the cache for data.

Same with any task on a computer. If we use that definition the only thing that's not automated is manually changing magnetic polarization on the platter by hand.

I believe there's a point where we can say things are automated or not based on what the script/task is.

I think what you are referring to is the fact that there are different degrees of automation. Fully automated would be completely automated and making it's own decision without any form of human intervention.

But it's also the control of the operation and not the operation itself that will determine if it's automated. For instance a motor in a car runs by itself. But that doesn't make the car automated. Because the control of the car is not automated.

A fully automated car would drive itself without human intervention.

I don't think it's hairsplitting, it's just that IT automation doesn't have the same degree of maturity that some other field of automation have.

PS. Just the fact that people are talking about automation is a sign that the IT sector has a long way to go here. In automation of manufacturing nobody talks about automation anymore because it's a given. Has it's own budget and everything for every project.

@eddiejennings said in Does a script imply Automation?:

@gjacobse said in Does a script imply Automation?:

Simply thus

Does a script imply automation?

No. Often a script is used as a tool to create automation, and usually one would write a script with the end goal of eventually automating something. However, just a script alone in a vacuum does not imply automation.

That's not really true because automation is not just IT automation like DevOps.
Automation comes from ancient Greek and means "acting on it's own will".

So everything that is "acting on it's own will" is automated. If you start an install script, it will do things on it's own will. That is automation. If you use Ansible (a bunch of scripts) to do something, it's also automation.

Neither of those are fully automated because they will not initiate the process themselves and also requires some manual input.

In contrast things like large modern manufacturing plants are often fully automated and will run by themselves. However operators are needed to make decision and adjust the process so the end result is satisfactory. The ones that make the programs for a factory are called automation engineers.

@gjacobse said in Does a script imply Automation?:

Simply thus

Does a script imply automation?

Yes.

It implies some kind of automation.

The definition of a script:

@stuartjordan said in KDE/Plasma DVD Burning MKV Files:

Might just tell my mate to bring a usb round, might be easier. he's got a brand new smart tv so it will might be able to read the files.

Fixed it for you!

@stuartjordan said in KDE/Plasma DVD Burning MKV Files:

@pete-s DVDStyler does recode them I believe. It's just the program that is having issues. I know quite a few windows programs automatically recode as well.

Yes, I know. I just mean that you probably have them in some odd mkv format so you might have better luck if you re-encode them with something else and then burn.

@stuartjordan said in KDE/Plasma DVD Burning MKV Files:

Hi Does anyone know of any DVD burning software that will burn MKV files to DVD. I've tried dvdstyler which its good, but it comes up with config errors etc and burns blank dvd's.
havent used dvd's in a long time wondered if anyone had any ideas, I'm on debian/kde plasma.

DVDs use MPEG-2 so MKV has to be re-encoded.

If you re-encode the files first so they are DVD mpeg-2 compliant you can burn them easily with dvdstyler.

https://sourceforge.net/p/dvdstyler/wiki/FAQVob/

@dashrender said in script to download and extract MicroSip portable:

I've been wanting a way to download the latest version of MicroSip portable.

I realize this doesn't ensure I'm getting the latest version of MicroSip - I'm relying on the lastest being the first listed item that's a portable version, but it's a start.

If you can offer suggestions on how to do a comparison of the list of /downloads/MICROSIP-x.xx.xx.zip I'd appreciate it.

I suggest scraping the source file list instead. https://www.microsip.org/source

From that take the highest version and download the zip version based on the version number.

I would also send the programmer(s) an email and ask if he/she has another way to determine what the latest version is. Perhaps without scraping html. Maybe there is a list of versions or files somewhere that is maintained.

@athornfam2 said in Milestone VMS Hardware:

@pete-s

Got it. With the CPU's under $1,000 a piece and the ram usage being so low we could easily upgrade the existing systems for about 2-3K each. Again, the initial concern that the district will have to deal with is that the system is coming up on EOL.

It's even lower than that. I think you're looking at well below $1K per server.

I've heard Servermonkey is good reseller of refurbished servers and parts. They're a HPE solution provider so they should know exactly what you need for doing an upgrade. You might need a heatsink or something besides the CPU. I would get a quote from them.

Xbyte is popular reseller too but they're Dell only.

Upgrading is good because it buys you some time before the servers goes EOL. It also gives you a good starting point for specs on a new system.

@athornfam2 said in Milestone VMS Hardware:

From my understanding... Xeon chips do not come with Intel QuickSync thus the thoughts of adding a GPU and to reduce the need for a larger CPU https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000034104/processors/intel-xeon-processors.html#:~:text=None of the Intel,Intel Quick Sync Video. I'm not sure what the CPU limits are for the 2017 version of xProtect are, if any

Sorry, my mistake. Some Xeons do come with Quicksync but not in the E5-2600 series it seems.

Hard to get a list of Xeon CPUs that support Quicksync but I think this will work:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/search/featurefilter.html?productType=873&0_QuickSyncVideo=True&1_Filter-Family=595

@athornfam2 said in Milestone VMS Hardware:

I'm not totally sure if the board is single socket only but it may very well be dual... I'm assuming I can just replace that single socket of CPU with the one suggested and just replace the existing ram with the proper spec'd ram and ram channel configuration for that CPU. That would allow us room to purchase the same setup on the other side to expand if needed.

Looks like it has dual sockets but it's likely that you're only using one right now.

Going from one E5-2609 V4 to something like two E5-2680 V4 would be a huge improvement.

@athornfam2

I'd avoid option 2. If your systems are transcoding the video, I believe you will lose the hardware acceleration if you run under vmware.

@athornfam2
You've probably done this already but take a look at how you have set up the software too.
If you can record h264/h265 streams directly from the cameras without transcoding, it will lower the requirements from your servers.

https://doc.milestonesys.com/latest/en-US/standard_features/sf_mobile/mobs_directstreamingexplained.htm?TocPath=Add-ons|XProtect Mobile server|Configuration|_____2

You might also want to check that you are actually using the Quicksync acceleration of the CPU.

@athornfam2

CPU & RAM upgrades are easy to do cause it's doesn't require any changes to anything. Only power down the server, taking out the old and putting in new CPU and maybe RAM and power up.

@athornfam2 said in Milestone VMS Hardware:

Hi all...

We have an external vendor that's providing us security camera services which I believe could be better. In saying that, we are hitting roadblocks with expansions to our surveillance on our campus due to their suggestions to a previous set of leaders that were passive. With that said I'm trying to apply a bandage until we can go through our budgeting process to acquire funds.

What we have:

HP ProLiant ML350 Gen9 (Intel Xeon E5-2609 v4, 32GB Ram, 4TB of internal storage) with Mobile Server, xProtect Service Channel, and xProtect 2017 R3. Total of 58 cameras with an estimated projection of 150-200 through 7 buildings
HP ProLiant ML350 Gen9 (Intel Xeon E5-2609 v4, 32GB Ram, 4TB of internal storage) with Recording Server.
Cameras range in megapixel from 2.1 to 12
Ingested bandwidth ranges from 70-115 mbps depending on motion

Solutions:

1. I think that we could upgrade the CPU's (since we are still on xProtect 2017) or upgrade to a newer version of xProtect to replace the CPU's and add a Nvidia card for hardware acceleration.
2. Another option would be to migrate the physical server to our VMware cluster since our compute typically sits around 5-15% usage... We have (6) E5-2680 v3 @ 2.50GHz in our cluster but lack the 8TB's of storage... However, I just decommissioned a SAN from our production environment which contains 16TB's (raw) 10K drives. So, I could setup iSCSI again to our environment solely for the camera system.

The only problem I see is that both the 3 servers in our cluster and the physical camera servers need replaced by 2023-2024 which is right around the corner. Its another story but the idea was to eventually to consolidate our 4 physical servers into a VM cluster with 4 or 5 servers total and add more storage to the HP MSA (only using 6 bays out of the 24).

If CPU is the problem you should upgrade the CPU on those server. The E5-2609 v4 is very slow.
With something faster such as dual E5-2680 v4 you will have at least twice the performance per CPU, but probably more.

Next, you want to check the memory configuration on the servers so that you are running with 4 or 8 RAM DIMMs per CPU. Preferably PC4-2400T type. This will give you the best memory bandwidth.

I think Nvidia GPU acceleration is probably not going to do much for you, since you have Intel Quicksync hardware acceleration in the CPUs for transcoding.

I would get refurbished CPUs since a CPU is a CPU. It's more or less impossible to wear them out. And since you intend to replace the servers in a year or two, you will have a hard time justify the budget for twin E5-2680V4 or similar performance.

You might want to have a look at the licensing as well on that server. Some opt for dual 8 core CPUs to optimize licensing. In that case the E5-2667 v4 is the one you want.

@scottalanmiller said in JavaScript Code for Adobe PDF:

I didn't even know that PDF documents let you have JavaScript in them.

You probably forgot about it. I'm guessing it's been around for 20 years but when I looked it up, it was actually 22 years ago.

PDF 1.3

Availability: April 1999
Matching software: Adobe Acrobat 4.0
New features:

• 2-byte CID fonts
• Support for OPI 2.0
• Additional color spaces – ICC-based colors are supported. A new color space called DeviceN improves support for spot colors.
• Smooth shading, a technology that allows for efficient and very smooth blends (transitions from one color or tint to another).
• Annotations
• Digital signatures
• JavaScript actions
• RC4 encryption – 40 bit (Acrobat 4) & 56 bit (Acrobat 4.05)