Video Editing Software

Carrying on with our guest contributors, we have Ash Dunn this week with his guide to video editing software for all the youtubers and video editors out there...

As a youtuber, editing is the most difficult part of the creative process comes down to the editing. So it's always good to get the best software possible. So here are a few of my past and present favorites

Windows Movie Maker

Once a standard piece of windows machines back in the days of windows XP, now as a download for windows 7, this software is a great place to start. With simple easy to use tools and instructions I would recommend to anyone new to the world of editing. However it is very limited in its abilities, adding captions is not made clear creating the need to make a blank page and then attempt to drag and drop over the clip you wish to use. But if all you wish to do is create slideshows or just practice your skills then this is where to start

Revelations, Sight and Sound

The next piece of software I moved onto back in 2009 when I was creating more often. A really good mid range piece of software. Made adding of captions, transitions and effects much easier. Adding of backing tracks and adjusting the volume levels was easy. But again this was held back by its tendency to freeze or not render files cleanly. It could sometimes take three attempts to get the quality correct and trying to use the setting menu to correct this was no simple task

Serif Movie Plus 6

My current editing software and by far my favorite. This is by far the smoothest setup I've run, simple to use but produces great quality exports and easy to set the standards required. Adding of captions and transitions is as simple as a drag and drop, leading to neat overlay of clips. Although it is simple it is a very professional piece of software, easy to use setup for green screens is available, for which I am yet to play with but I shall update when I do as well as creating insert windows within a screen

So there you have it. I hope you've found this useful and enjoy your future editing career. Ash out   

Gaming PCs

So we're going to try something a little different, over the next couple of months we're going to have a series of articles written by guest contributors reaching across many aspects of computing etc from PCs to websites, you can guarantee we're going to cover it!!!

Our first guest article is written by Callum, an avid gamer who has prepared this review of a number of gaming PCs depending on the price range you're looking at so without further ado...

Pre-built Gaming PC Reviews

As an avid gamer, I know that getting into the world of PC gaming is awash with Custom Configurators and crazy names for products which are almost the same. However, what if you want to avoid the madness and confusion that comes with trying to build your own PC by yourself, or getting other accredited people to build it for you. That’s where ‘pre-built’ PC’s come in. These are sold by retailers, on behalf of manufacturers, in order to provide you, the customer, the ability to start gaming immediately. But even then, there is a large range to choose from, and with prices ranging from £300 to £3000 and beyond, where do you start from? Taking into account different manufacturers and different price ranges, I have selected a number of different pre-built gaming PC’s within three price ranges that I will pick apart to help you determine which one is best for you.

£300-£400:

At this price range, in my opinion, there is really only two manufacturers to consider. Cyberpower and PC Specialist. Both offer PC’s within this price range.

Firstly, PC Specialists Infinity Trion. At £349.99 this is a barebones PC (contains only the parts to get it started) that will form an excellent base for your gaming needs, If you have a copy of an Operating System, an Ethernet cable and a spare graphics card lying around. However, it does come with a quad-core AMD A10 – 7700K APU Processor with a clock speed of 3.4 GHz (which can be overclocked to 3.8 GHz), 8 GB of RAM (with room to be upgraded to 16 GB), 6 USB 2.0 Slots and a 1 TB Hard Drive, which is more than enough space to store your games, music and videos. 

However, if you don’t have the money to buy a graphics card or the know-how on how to install it, then I will recommend buying Cyberpower’s offer. The Empire GT II. At just under £400, The Empire GT offers two different things that the Infinity Trion doesn’t: Windows 10 (64 bit) and a more powerful processor. The AMD A10 7850K APU. This has an average clock speed of 3.7 GHz (which can be overclocked to 4 GHz) and comes with an integrated AMD R7 graphics chip which is perfect for MMOs such as World of Tanks and War Thunder. As a starting point, I would rather pay the extra £50 in order to get a fully functioning gaming PC rather than one missing the crucial bits. However, if you have the spare parts to hand, PC Specialists offer is one you can’t refuse! 

£401-£600

The same two manufactures dominate this price range as well with Cyberpower’s Gaming Empire Elite II and PC Specialist’s Vortex Impact both coming in at £499.99 RRP. Both come with an AMD FX4300 Quad-Core Processor with a clock speed of 3.8 GHz (which can be overclocked to 4 GHz). Both come with Windows 10 (64 bit) pre-installed and both come with a 1 TB Hard Drive. The difference between the two is the graphics card provided. 

The Empire Elite comes with an Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 with 2 GB of processing power whilst the Vortex Impact comes with an AMD R7 360 2GB graphics card. The Geforce GTX 960 is considered by many (including myself) as the best budget graphics card on the market today. So I would recommend the Empire Elite, as long as you don’t mind not having any USB 3.0 slots. Both are perfect for many genres of games ranging from easily accessible MMOs to GTA V at moderately High Settings.

£601-£800

Here, two different (and more well-known) manufacturers show up. Acer and Asus. Both at different price points and both with slightly uninteresting names. Acer’s Predator G3-710 may sound like a photocopier, however it is anything but! At £799.99, This comes at the top end of the price range. But when compared with ASUS’ Republic of Gamers G11CB (£729.99). Both come with Intel I5 – 6400 quad-core processors with a clock speed of 2.7 GHz (can be overclocked to 3.3 GHz) which at first may not seem powerful compared to AMD’s equivalent, but Intel processors utilises hyperthreading which makes up for less cores and lower clock speeds. This makes Intel processors the preferred choice for gamers. The Graphics cards offered is where the two systems separate. 

Asus offer an Nvidia Geforce GTX 950 2GB graphics card which, although cheaper than other cards offered, is nothing special. Acer offer a nice, beefy Nvidia Geforce GTX 970 4 GB card. This is considered one of the best Graphics Cards available within its price range. The Predator only has 8 GB of available RAM compared to ASUS’ 12 GB but the ability to upgrade to 32 GB of RAM. The Predator also comes with a 1 TB Hard Drive and a 128 GB SSD which is perfect for gaming, although more space can be handy as is offered with the ASUS. But with the Acer offering a fast wireless connection, Bluetooth, and an SD card reader, all of which the ASUS doesn’t offer. However, both are great for anything you can throw at them. GTA V, Sure! Counter Strike, No problem! Project Cars, of course! However, out of the two, I would prefer the Acer because I think extra £70 is worth it, for a lot more power and upgradeability. 

But, at the end of the day, it’s up to you to find the Gaming PC that fits your budget and needs.

Credits: Currys PC World - Prices

Set it up...back it up...recover it

 

 

I must say one of my happiest moments is getting hold of a new computer or laptop, tablet whatever (you name it) and getting the chance to put it through it's paces. I must say it can be fun to push technology to the extreme to review or just for reference (note, I don't endorse this unless you're experienced and are aware of what you're doing).

 

But, in the excitement of getting set up and playing with our new toy, one thing can get overlooked all too easily. What do we do when it breaks? Can we get our computer back to the beginning? Well yes provided that you have a disk with a Windows installation or a system image from which you can reboot your system.

 

These days, the responsibility is being put more and more on the user to remember to create their backup media and their reboot media in the event the unthinkable happens. Rule 1...get the system image (often called a system recovery disk) created and set up as soon as it is possible to do so. Rule 2...keep it somewhere safe for when you need it. I can guarantee you that many computers end up being replaced or new licenses purchased when they don't need to be because of the loss of recovery media.

 

It's a simple disk to create and most manufacturers put the media creation software into their devices and it will prompt you after a certain time to take action and create your disk. Do NOT ignore this message for too long or you could find yourself with a heavy penalty financially unless you know someone who can bail you out in some legal way (I do not and never will condone pirated software always buy legit or make sure you have access to legit software it always works out better).

 

It is not always the case that recovery media needs to be created from the system when you buy it. Some systems shipped direct from manufacturer have all the required utilities built in to do this from a reserved section of the hard drive and, if you have purchased a Windows disk, this acts as your recovery media but always always double check. If you're being prompted to create media, it'll be because the system doe not have a built in reinstall tool.

 

If you don't know where to start with making this data or if you want to check if it's needed, you would be best to check your manufacturer's documentation supplied with the computer or laptop or with the manufacturer website. They will normally have documentation and FAQs on the subject so do read around but make sure you're checking for support for the correct manufacturer and the correct model type (again this is supplied with the documentation and will most likely be on the system somewhere).

 

If you are having difficulty with this, we can assist you with our out the box range of services to get you fully set up and running and our system recovery options if you need your system restoring. Check out www.worleyitservices.com for more details and as ever, email enquiries@worleyitservices.com if you would like advice at no cost on how to approach these options. But please do not attempt to create backup media or reboot your system unless you are fully confident in your actions and are completely sure it is the best option.

 

For those windows 10 users out there, I have come across a few instances where Windows 10 is unwanted and a rollback is required to the previous operating system. Do not attempt to system restore as this will lock out the hard drive. Windows 10 has a built in utility to downgrade if you wish to revert to your previous operating system within 30 days of upgrading but please, consult with an experienced IT professional first.

 

I do hope you have found this little snippet useful if you are considering purchasing a device in the near future or just for general reference. Comments are welcome so please feel free to leave them at the bottom of this post and we'll get back to you if you have any other questions.

 

Hope to catch you soon

Ash

Blue Screen

A rather nasty failure commonly known as the Blue Screen of Death which we normally take as the computer is broken. Well yes and no so, what exactly is it?

Blue screen is an error that triggers when Windows encounters a system fault and thus saves and initiates an emergency shutdown to help save the computer as best as possible. It is important to remember that this fires after a piece of hardware fails or encounters an error. This is not an error fired generally by software as they have built in (and not always useful) options to inform Microsoft of the issue.

So what should we do when we get greeted with a blue screen error? Well, first of all....don't panic let the computer work through the error. Not all occasions of blue screen are fatal however, turning the system off by the mains will certainly kill the system off completely.

Although not all errors are fatal, they should be taken as a serious warning and that should be the point (if not already) backups should be made of your important files and folders in case the error repeats.

But, what if the computer fails to start again after blue screen? This is normally when a component has irreparably failed and replacement will be necessary. The awkward bit here is, we don't know exactly what has failed and so, many (myself included) have been known to assume that all data is irretrievable. Well not quite, only if the error was as a result of the hard drive failing will the data be irretrievable.

We can offer a free diagnostic to determine if any data can be recovered if this error has ever occurred with fatal results and, if recoverable, we can recover as well (see www.worleyitservices.com/Repairs/HDDRecover.aspx) for more info.

So for the best results, don't panic! Keep calm and restart and remember, help is at hand if it doesn't come back on.

Until next time

Ash

Back It Up!

A frequent problem that ties into our data recovery post from the other month, very commonly witnessed is the lack of backing up I see people do. Possibly the single most important (and certainly the most secure) way of protecting your data against all problems.

So, what are the best tips for backing up your data? Well to begin with, its important to know how much you want to back up. Remember, hard drives, pen drives and so on can only hold so much so make sure you know what you want to save and try to quantify it as accurately as possible.

There are a number of types of backups that can be made depending on the system you're using. Most computers and laptops these days have a function to back up the core operating system in some way shape or form in case a reboot is needed to prevent loss of data and settings. Or you can back up just selected files and folders (which is the absolute minimum that should be done).

If you are a tablet user, SD cards are the way to go to keep backed up and these can be quite reasonably priced (we will be looking at getting these in stock soon).

If you would like the reassurance that your backup has been/is being done correctly, we offer a data back up service at affordable rates, for more details visit: http://www.worleyitservices.com/Repairs/DataBackup.aspx

To cap it off we also offer backup restore services to find and restore your files from an existing backup. If you have had your data backed up with us, we can take 10% off the price: http://www.worleyitservices.com/Repairs/backuprestore.aspx

If you are looking for somewhere to back up to, we currently have a small stock of reconditioned hard drives which have been restored to factory defaults and all previous usage erased. Please see http://www.worleyitservices.com/Products for more details.

To summarise, make sure there is adequate backups in place to protect your data. These do not have to be company standards of several backups in case one fails and are very easy to set in place. Back ups are worth having at least every 6 months to prevent loss of changes etc.

Hope you find this useful.

ATB

Ash

Ubuntu - A Hidden Gem

For most people, the choice of laptop or computer is Windows or Mac both of which are very valid and good strong systems to have. We trust them and we've gotten used to their little quirks over the years (we know the complaints we all have about Windows!).

But for some Windows or Mac isn't the big flashy system we want. Many will have heard of Linux but not necessarily have used Linux. Possibly one of the largest collections of operating systems, Linux systems are just as robust and just as useful. In fact, they can be more secure than their Windows and Mac counterparts as well as less resource hungry resulting in better efficiency. For this reason many servers run a flavour of Linux and this is invisible to the end user.

Now this may sound great but, certain Linux distributions (Red Hat springs to mind) can be quite costly however, as the core of Linux (Unix) has exceptionally similar counterparts, we are fortunate to be able to obtain certain Linux distributions for free...ain't that awesome? These Unix-based systems form the core of a number of distributions and also point to the cheaper price Mac OS X software compared to Windows (seriously read on and I'll explain that further).

The biggest of these distributions is a fantastic operating system called Ubuntu which many may of heard from time to time. A great system with all the features that we've come to love over the years in Windows and Mac and looks a little bit like this:

For those of us that are Mac users, you can probably see the similarities between Ubuntu and Mac in the layout this is because they have the same core system. Pretty cool?

So what are the key advantages of Ubuntu then? Well for a start...it's free including updates and upgrades (apps purchased from the store may come at additional cost). Second, Ubuntu is an open source project meaning that anyone can contribute to the project. Now yes, that sounds risky but these people are experts and have been working on this for decades. But it is due to this, that Ubuntu is relatively secure and immune to viruses. However, this shouldn't be taken for granted and for peace of mind you should source some antivirus software to be safe. There are some good freebies out there.

It doesn't stop here though. As a taster, when you download Ubuntu to a disc, you can boot what is called a live version of Ubuntu on your computer to trial the software. In doing this, your current operating system is not affected and you can experiment with Ubuntu to your hearts content and then remove the disc, restart and you have your computer back as before. This is possibly the only case (certainly the only one I have come across) where you can 'try before you buy' (in this case install).

As well as this, if you're not a hundred percent on giving up your current operating system, you can install Ubuntu side by side with Windows or Mac and use the two. All in all not a bad deal and the installation is clear and well described at every stage.

As well as this, there is a huge amount of support documentation easily accessible by just typing in the issue you have and the answers are there for you, very clear and concise.

So if you've decided that you don't want Windows or Mac or you just feel like something different, give it a spin (please don't do anything you're not confident with without seeking help or consulting the Ubuntu documentation online) and see how you find it. The system will sit on the majority of computers and laptops that have been running Windows and Mac so you don't have to splash out for a new computer.

Hope for those who give it a try you enjoy the user experience of the upcoming system in the computer world.

Until next time enjoy!

Ash

The Multidevice Approach

There are many advantages to modern technology which we see as a great convenience to ourselves and many can be. However, I will reiterate what may have been heard many times before. Exercise caution especially if you sync across many devices.

It's a great and useful tool to have your data accessible across multiple devices so you have it on the go. But, as I discussed in an earlier post, its a one hit takes all if your devices get hacked.

So more a general advice and tips job this post. Don't take this as a don't sync across devices as it's a great approach for the modern day to day tasks we are faced with but don't sync the personal and confidential data across. That is where trouble begins and the difficult task of undoing the damage.