Tod's Tech Tomes

2020-01-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

Tod's Tech Tomes Has a new Home

It's 2020 and I'm going to try to be better about posting this year but you'll need to travel to my new home over on GitHub.

Using JavaScript In Zaps Part 2

2017-06-19T05:11:00.000-07:00

You need a way to trigger your code

Last time in part 1, we looked at a dead-simple bit of JavaScript code this time I want to create some more complex code but also have a convenient way to trigger that code outside of the Zapier interface. There are lots of Apps you can use but since I'm in Slack all day I find it's a convenient trigger and testing tool. This works better in a public channel, so I have one I use for this and related tasks. You could use a private channel, but when posting to a private channel, Zapier only looks on a timed schedule. Posting from a public channel makes the trigger INSTANT, and you'll see that tag on your step once you finish the trigger.

Once you have a channel to use, create a new Zap. I select the Slack App as a trigger and select the radio button for New Message Posted to Channel. In the next step you can click the drop down, and Zapier will poll your Slack and provide you with a list of your team's channels. You can use the search item that shows up first to find your channel or just scroll through and find it.

While I could trigger on any message in my channel, I like to add a filter step next. I set it to continue only if the text contains "jstest." Then my third step is the Code by Zapier step. We will come back to this step in a minute. My final step is another Slack App step to Send Channel Message. Select the same channel you used for the trigger and for now put anything in the Message Text. Eventually, we will use data from our JavaScript code here. Here's an overview of the steps you'll have.

More elaborate JavaScript code

I think it can be instructive to write some more complicated JavaScript code. One problem you might run up against when using JavaScript code in Zapier is timezone related. While you can set your time zone in your prefs and some Zap Apps will use that, the Code By Zapier App isn't one of them. The code always appears to think it's in UTC 0. We can solve this problem with Google's Timezone API. It's a pretty simple API, and you might figure it all out just by reading this post. However, you do need to get free API key, and the documentation can walk you through that. It's very straightforward.

When writing more complicated JavaScript code for Zapier I would suggest using a good JavaScript editor like Brackets, VSCode, or even jsHint.com to help. We can get started with our code by setting up a bunch of constants that we need.

/*jshint esversion: 6 */
const googleUrl = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?",
    la = "location=34.0522,-118.2437",
    timestamp = "×tamp=",
    googleKey = "&key=",
    currentDate = new Date(),
    SECS_PER_HOUR = 3600,
    MSECS_PER_SEC = 1000,
    timeAsSecs = parseInt(currentDate.getTime() / 1000),
    googleCmd = googleUrl + la + timestamp + timeAsSecs + googleKey;
//console.log(googleCmd);

You may want to change la with a city of interest to you, but you HAVE to replace the part that says <Your API KEY HERE> with the API key you get from Google. Otherwise you won't get timezone information returned, just an error message. You'll notice I have a log statement disabled that shows the actual command. If you have problems you'll want to enable that line to help debug. We are just creating a URL that will look something like:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?location=34.0522,-118.2437&timestamp=1497848541&key=
And again, your API key should appear at the end after that final equals sign.

Now we can use Zapier's built in fetch command which returns a promise. If you've never used Javascript promises you can find a great explanation of them on Pluralsight in Jonathan Mill's JavaScript Best Practices - watch the first three clips (Introduction, Callbacks, Promises) of the module Async Patterns. Pluralsight (where I work) is a subscription service, but you can get a free ten-day trial. However, the example below is pretty simple and you should be able to follow along.

fetch(googleCmd)
    .then(function (res) {
        return res.json();
    })
    .then(function (json) {

That's the basic boilerplate for doing the API fetch to Google. Now inside this then clause, we can just use dot notation to get to any property of the returned JSON object. If you read the docs, you'll see all the names, but at the end, we're going to print it out, so you'll see it there. The key thing we want is the rawOffset field and the dstOffset field.

const offsetSecs = (json.rawOffset + json.dstOffset) * MSECS_PER_SEC,

The rawOffset doesn't include any daylight savings time adjustment so we need to add the two fields together to get our local time adjusted for DST, then I convert the value to milliseconds. The currentDate variable is in UTC 0, I can use getTime() to get the timestamp in milliseconds, add the two together and I have the timestamp for my local time.

localTimeStamp = currentDate.getTime() + offsetSecs,

Now we can just create a new date object with that timestamp, create the output object (which Zapier provides to us). I will put the localTimeStamp, the new localDateObj and the json timezone object into output, log that object to the console and issue the callback() command.

localDateObj = new Date(localTimeStamp),
output= {localTimeStamp:localTimeStamp,  localDateObject: localDateObj, originalTimezoneObj: json};
console.log (output); 
callback(null, output);

As a final step we want to add a .catch(callback section in case anything goes wrong. The entire example should look similar to this:

const googleUrl = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?",
    la = "location=34.0522,-118.2437",
    timestamp = "×tamp=",
    googleKey = "&key=",
    currentDate = new Date(),
    SECS_PER_HOUR = 3600,
    MSECS_PER_SEC = 1000,
    timeAsSecs = parseInt(currentDate.getTime() / 1000),
    googleCmd = googleUrl + la + timestamp + timeAsSecs + googleKey;
console.log(googleCmd);
fetch(googleCmd)
    .then(function (res) {
        return res.json();
    })
    .then(function (json) {

        const offsetSecs = (json.rawOffset + json.dstOffset) * MSECS_PER_SEC,
            localTimeStamp = currentDate.getTime() + offsetSecs,
            localDateObj = new Date(localTimeStamp),
            output = {
                localTimeStamp: localTimeStamp,
                localDateObject: localDateObj,
                originalTimezoneObj: json
            };
        console.log(output);
        callback(null, output);
    })
    .catch(callback);

When you test this in Zapier if you click on the view your run javascript link you should see an object that looks something like the following.

{ localTimeStamp: 1497823736838,
  localDateObject: Sun Jun 18 2017 22:08:56 GMT+0000 (UTC),
  originalTimezoneObj: 
   { dstOffset: 3600,
     rawOffset: -28800,
     status: 'OK',
     timeZoneId: 'America/Los_Angeles',
     timeZoneName: 'Pacific Daylight Time' } }

In our final Step where we post back to the original channel, we can use the selector in the upper right of the Message Text area to pick our Javascript by name and then select a field or fields that we write back to the channel as shown in the image below. Now from you selected Slack channel you can post a message with the text you filtered on it step 2, in about a second you should see your Zap post back the text from your JavaScript code that you selected.

The problem with this code is every time we want to use it we have to cut and paste it into a new Code By Zapier step. This wasn't an issue when we wrote a couple of lines of simple code. However, as we write more complex code not only is this a violation of "Don't Repeat Yourself", it has the potential to be a maintenance nightmare. In the next post we'll turn this code into our very own Zapier App so we can easily reuse it just like any other Action in Zapier.

Using JavaScript in Zaps

2017-06-12T17:49:00.001-07:00

Zapier has a utility called "Code by Zapier" that allows you to run anything from little snippets of code to full-blown Node.js apps inside your zaps. There are some limitations on how long your code can take to execute, so the power isn't limitless, but it turns out this tool can solve a lot of problems with only a little (or a lot) of code.
Many times the Zapier triggers do just what I want, but the actions don't. Now I can solve that by writing more sophisticated code on the back end and using the new Code by Zapier to call that code. Other times, I just need to add some simple if-then-else logic inside a Zap and again this new feature does just what I need. I'm planning a series of posts here to dig into various ways to use Javascript. This feature also supports Python, but I'll limit myself to examples that use Javascript.
A simple example is the ability to set your Slack Status via a Zap. Normally this is a two-step Zap using a Schedule by Zapier trigger to fire an action on a Slack Action that sets the Slack status and emoji. Each weekday morning this fires to set my Slack status and emoji to indicate I'm available. This works great without code, but the first time I was out of the office on PTO, it overrode my PTO status. This is where a bit of code and three extra Zap steps were helpful.

The Slack Find User by Email action.
A Code by Zapier action
A Filter by Zapier filter.

The first step just needs to find yourself. Set the Code by Zapier step to use JavaScript then do these steps (shown in the image):

In the Input Data section in the box on the left, type a name for the data, I used StatusText.
Using the Insert a Field widget Select the newly added Find User by Email action. After clicking you'll see a long drop down and you can scroll down until you see User Profile Status Text.
The selected field Select that to map the user status to the StatusText input field. The selected user's status will be stored in an object named inputData in a field named StatusText.
Add an if statement and set up a json object to return that can be used in the next step.. The code looks like this.

    //If on PTO don't change the status
    if (inputData.StatusText.toUpperCase().indexOf("PTO") != -1){
    output = {continue:false};
    }
    else{
    output = {continue:true};
    }

Now in the Filter by Zapier step you'll click the Code by Zapier step. You'll notice in the image I named my code step "Set continue false if on PTO". Once you click on your code step, you should see an element named Continue. This name can also be anything you want, although Zapier does appear to capitalize it. If your code needs to return more information just create a valid JSON object and every valid field from the JSON object will show up in the list. Once you have the Continue field selected, set the conditional box to (Boolean) iS true.

That's it. If the JavaScript returns false, the filter will kick in and the original final step of setting your Slack status won't fire. If it returns true, the final step will be invoked.

Camtasia 3 Mac - Five Quick Tips

2016-12-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

TechSmith's latest version of Camtasia for the Mac brought the product into near parity with the Windows' version. There are a few things that are either easy to overlook or not yet documented that I think are worth knowing about.

Save Style To Annotations - I tend to use arrow callouts in most projects. Once I thicken up an arrow, change its color, shape, and delete that annoying default drop shadow effect, I can save that version to the User tab of the Arrows & Lines annotations. First, make sure you're on the annotations tab as shown; number 1 in the image. (By the way, the visual properties tab on the left, is where you can delete the drop shadow effect). Second, click the button shown by the number 2 callout to save your customized annotation.

You can delete that drop shadow effect from the timeline. Open the effect clicking on the white "up arrow" on the callout. Then right-click directly on the effect inside the callout and select the "Remove Effect" item from the context menu. If you want to remove all effects you can do that by just right-clicking on the callout itself and use the Remove->All Effects item. You can also delete any effect from the properties pane, just click on the X that's to the left of each effect name.

Quick Split/Ripple Edit - A quick way to split and create some open time in your clip is to hold down the Shift key and then drag the play head to the right.
If you are positioned on a break with open space available to the left in ALL tracks, you can also Shift-drag to the left to move all the tracks at once.

Extend Frame - If you use the previous tip to split your track and insert some time, you can easily extend the last frame of your video track. Hold down the Alt key and position your cursor near the video track you want to extend. The cursor should change to the shape shown in the image. Now clicking on the right edge of the video and dragging will extend that clip.

Resize Sketch Callouts - I have no idea why the logic of sketch callouts is different from other callouts, but with Sketch callouts, dragging the handles does a scaling change and won't allow you to change the aspect ratio. If you hold down the Shift key while dragging the handles, you can change a sketch callout's aspect ratio. (Thanks to the kurrykid for that tip.) Although after being thwarted by this for a while I did grow to like the normal callouts better than the sketch ones. I now just drag a Full Opacity animation to the beginning and a No Opacity animation to the end of the callout and the effect is very pleasing and less obtrusive. I'll reserve the sketch callouts when I feel I need a much more dramatic in-your-face callout.

Whack-a-mole Scroll Bars on the Mac - No More

2015-09-08T16:17:00.001-07:00

I recently got a MacBook Pro and moved from my Win7 desktop machine to this laptop for my daily work. One thing that drove me crazy until today was the disappearing scroll bars on the Mac. At first I didn’t realize it was Mac-wide I just thought certain apps and web pages were auto-hiding scroll bars for aesthetic reasons. I had to move my mouse wheel to get the scroll bars to show up and then try and move my mouse quickly enough to grab the scroll bar. Often I wasn’t fast enough.

Turns out there’s a system preference setting that will “correct” this. Open the General preferences and click on the Always radio button under the Show scroll bars: area. That’s it. My beloved scroll bars are back and I’m more than willing to sacrifice the 15 pixels or so of width they want to call their own.

OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock and the ASUS PB278Q Monitor

2015-07-25T19:11:00.001-07:00

I recently acquired a MacBook Pro 15 and I like to move it from my desk to other areas of the house. I thought this would be quite a bit easier with a dock so I ended up going with the OWC Thunderbolt 2 dock. Unfortunately the dock didn’t play so well with my new ASUS PB278Q monitor (which is as goregeous as everyone says). I then tried an Elgato Thunderbolt 2 dock and had the same issues. When the laptop boots or comes out of sleep the laptop screen just flashes and changes resolutions and it never wakes up the monitor. After two docks did the same thing I got suspicous about the monitor. I’ve written to ASUS but haven’t received a reply yet (it’s the weekend).

However I did find a work-around. Originally I was toggling off/on the monitor and it was somewhat hit or miss trying to get it synch up to the laptop. Then I started messing around with the On Screen Display (OSD) menu. I think the key is just to hit the menu button next to the power button, but here’s the full set of steps I first took.

I placed my index finger on the button next to the power button and each of the next fingers on the adjacent buttons. I pressed the menu button and that brought up the main menu. Now my ring finger was on the input select menu so I pressed that. That allows you to select things like VGA, DVI, HDMI, or Display port. I made sure HDMI was selected and hit the checkmark button to accept. The signal from the laptop showed up a few seconds later. Now I’ve tried sleep and restarting a few times. When the laptop starts flashing I just press the button next to the power button. The input select menu shows and I do NOTHING. Just bringing up the menu seems to wake up the monitor enough to to the trick. The menu will disappear and the monitor will still be black. BUT, a few seconds later the correct resolution gets set and the monitor displays the desktop.

By the way I sent back the Elgato dock. It has two fewer USB ports, no firewire, and worst of all its audio port was really noisy making it unusable.

Playing Audio from Reaper to a VOIP app

2015-06-25T22:25:00.001-07:00

I've had this idea for a while that it should be possible to use my recording setup to send cleaner audio to apps like Skype and Blue Jeans and other voice over IP applications. What I wanted to do was talk into my mic, process that input through whatever effects I have loaded in the current Reaper project and send the result to the VOIP program. After watching many complicated videos involving Jack, ASIO Bridge, Voice Meter etc. none of which worked, I finally figured it out and it was pretty simple.

The key was a piece of donation-ware software from VB Audio called Hi-Fi Cable. The download button for the Hi-Fi version is pretty far down the page. There’s also another cable app called VB-Cable but I installed the Hi-Fi version.

What it installs are two new devices in your sound control panel. One in the Playback tab and one in the recording tab.

Once it installs, you just need to change the output device in R eaper’s Device Preference panel as shown to be the Hi-Fi cable input. Note that you’re setting the output of Reaper to the input of the cable. I think it helps to think of a cable where sound only travels in one direction from the input to the output. You can’t mess it up though, because the input is the only option you have.

You then need to turn on the monitor function of the track that is armed to record. You don’t actually have to record, you just have to arm a track and turn on the monitor.

Then in your VOIP software you need to set the microphone to be the Output of the Hi-Fi cable. Here I’m showing the options pane for Skype, but it was pretty much the same in the Blue Jeans teleconference software. You don’t have to worry about confusing the input or output of the Hi-Fi cable, you’ll only have the correct choice in each drop down list.

In Reaper I can add EQ, a noise gate and the RX4 Dialog Denoiser and that can all process in faster than real time and go right to the VOIP app. Skype is somewhat noisy in the test call so I couldn’t tell how well it worked, but in a BlueJeans call the difference was dramatic! Enjoy.

Ada Rulez!

2015-06-19T11:15:00.001-07:00

My new course, Introduction to Ada 2012, just went live on Pluralsight. HEY , you in the back stop giggling! You better be ready to be shocked and challenge your assumptions. Ada might just be the most maligned, misunderstood and most unjustly ignored language out there. It’s development pretty much parallels that of C++. Some misinformed people think of it as a legacy language but as you might guess from the name of the course, the last major update was in 2012.

Ada the language, like Ada Lovelace herself, was ahead of the times. It has not only OOP constructs but support for generics, design by contract and just about everything else you’d want in a modern language. Plus it compiles to the metal so performance isn’t going to be an issue. It has by the far the best, most easily understood compiler messages I’ve ever seen. Once you learn Ada, you’ll think of C++ as a weakly typed language! You can develop with the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) at no cost. I think if you watch the course you’ll learn things from Ada that you can apply to your current language of choice. In other words, the course will benefit you even if you never write a line of production Ada code.

System Sounds

2015-06-16T17:01:00.001-07:00

I had a little free time I decided to address something that easily confuses me. Sometimes my PC makes beeps, boops and whooshes and I have no idea what it’s trying to tell me. One thing in particular that I find easy to miss is the Skype sound indicating someone just sent me a chat message.

I decided to make some less ambiguous sounds and use them. Most of the audio clips I made actually use English words and say things like “Warning Low Battery” with some relatively low volume special effects sounds in the background. I started off just intending to make three for Skype. Of course, in addition to being easily confused I'm easily led down a rabbit hole, so I ended up making almost two dozen in three categories:

Three for skype (named with the Skype prefix)
A dozen or so for Windows (named with the Win prefix, and named after the windows sound control panel events – including ones for Visual Studio)
And a few with no prefix that say Majel Barret things like “Unable to comply”

Now I doubt that anyone really wants my voice on their computer but you can download and use them for free if you want or be inspired to make better ones. The download is a single zip file with .wav and .mp3 versions (3.6 MB). Plus, now I’m hoping I’ll finally find out if a “System Notification” event ever happens and what causes it.

Google Voice Won’t Verify Phone Number

2015-06-01T05:51:00.000-07:00

I got an email from Google that I had to verify my home phone number to continue allowing phone calls to be forwarded to that number. I dutifully followed the instructions . I went to the indicated link and selected the phone number and clicked on the verify number link. A dialog box appeared with a two digit code and a connect button. I would click the connect button and nothing would happen. My phone would never ring.

After a few attempts it finally occurred to me that perhaps my Nomorobo service was automatically blocking the Google calls. It’s a wonderful service and easy to forget it’s there once your phone has stopped ringing constantly for a few months. I use Ooma, so for others that do, log into my.ooma.com, and follow the size steps shown in the image. Just to be safe I turned off all the blacklist features, saved, verified the phone number and then turned all the features back on.

Get cooking with Qt! The trilogy of courses on the Qt framework is complete. Check out the latest course: Integrating Qt Quick with C++

Camtasia Tip #10 – The Waveform Bug

2015-05-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

There’s a bug I’ve seen before in Camtasia where you replace an audio file and the waveform for the new audio file, looks identical to the old audio file and in fact plays the old audio file. Here’s a video showing the problem and how to make Camtasia display and play the correct waveform.

Get cooking with Qt! The trilogy of courses on the Qt framework is complete. Check out the latest course: Integrating Qt Quick with C++

The full list of Camtasia tips.

Camtasia Tip #9 – Speeding up Rendering

2015-05-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

See all the Camtasia Tips

I switched to producing my Camtasia videos in HD format using an mp4 encoding. I noticed they got a little bit slower and no longer seemed to be using multiple CPUs. Previously I was rendering at 1024X768 in WMV. I tried multiple experiments, including read/writing from an SSD (surprisingly little improvement) to try and improve the render speed. I also reran some tests using the WMV encoding. The one consistent, albeit small, improvement I got came from turning off the GPU acceleration. You can do this under the Tools->Options… menu.

Get cooking with Qt! The trilogy of courses on programming in C++ with the Qt framework is complete.

In the resulting Options dialog uncheck the Use GPU acceleration if available. My test clip was 5:11 long. The rendering time lowered from 3:11 to 2:53 a savings of about 5%. Rendering in WMV lowered the time to 2:20 but I’ll be sticking with mp4 for quality reasons.

Camtasia Tip #8 - Sending Snagit Captures Directly to Camtasia

2015-05-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

See all the Camtasia Tips

When I make a screencast with something like PowerPoint I don’t actually record the video of the PowerPoint in slide mode. I find it more flexible to just take screenshots of the slides and send them over to Camtasia. If the slide is a pedestrian Title/Bullet approach I’ll often have one animation on the slide. The slide with just the title shows first then the slide with all the bullets shows. Having the title only slide makes it easy to transition between slides. I then use various animation techniques in Camtasia to hide or highlight the bullets as I talk about them. I find I can make a nicer, more fluid, final video this way as opposed to locking myself into the PowerPoint animations.
The process is painless enough if you just have a few slides. In Snagit hit the Print Screen hot key, click to capture the slide. Click twice (the first returns to PP the second advances the slide) and then repeat. All the slides can be captured in a few seconds. A slight amount of pain comes in when I swap over to Snagit and use the Share with Camtasia button to send each slide over to Camtasia, especially when I have more than a handful of slides. I have to name and save each slide.
Much less painful is to set up a profile that captures the image, identifies the target folder, auto names the file and shares it with Camtasia in a single click. Here’s how:

I’m on Snagit 11 still so I use the classic view to get started. Clicking the + icon in the upper right allows my to create a new profile.

Get cooking with Qt! The trilogy of courses on the Qt framework is complete. Check out the latest course: Integrating Qt Quick with C++
Then click on the Share button at the bottom. Unselect the Preview in Editor option. Notice that I already had a tool from TechSmith installed that shares captures with Camtasia Studio. HOWEVER, as illogical as it seems, don’t use this. It wouldn’t work for me. Instead we’ll use the Properties…. option at the bottom of the menu to manually set up a link to Camtasia Studio. But before you do, uncheck the option for Preview in Editor. You don’t want the editor showing up between captures.
The Share Properties dialog appears to have two different tabs (Image File and Program) that allow the same information to be specified. It is safest to enter this in both places if you have any problems. However, I’ll start with the method that ended up working for me. Click on the Program tab. Next use the Add… button (Item 2 in the image)and navigate to where ever your copy of CamtasiaStudio.exe is located.
Here’s an example of a typical location. Note, makes sure you select the CamtasiaStudio.exe not the recorder or any other .exe.
Next use the Folder Icon (Number 3 in the image) to specify the folder where you want all the images save. This remains a bit of a pain point as for each project you’ll probably want a different folder so you do have to come back and customize the profile for each project. Then click the Options... button (Number 4 in the image).
This will open the Automatic File Name dialog. Fill out the fields to create a file name of your choice. Click OK when done.
When you’re done you can right-click on your new profile and assign a hot key combination. Typically you’ll want to open Camtasia and load the target project before using this profile. If you don’t, the profile will launch Camtasia with a new project for you.
If after doing this, Snagit keeps asking you for a filename, then try using the Image File tab and specify the folder and filename options in that tab as well. I want to thank Joe Morgan for showing me this tip. He has a video version of this tip you can watch.

See all the Camtasia Tips

Camtasia Tip #7- A Nicer Way to Zoom

2015-05-04T05:01:00.000-07:00

Using the Crop Tool for a Kindler Gentler Zoom Effect

See all the Camtasia Tips
Camtasia does have a built-in zoom effect but it’s pretty jarring. The whole screen zooms in and the viewer can often lose a sense of “context” of what they are watching. Additionally, if you use it very much you can easily make your viewers sea sick. I find a much more effective technique is to zoom just a part of the screen. This is especially effective when you want to make something small easier to see or just call attention to a particular item on a crowded screen. It looks like this. (Detailed steps are below)

In the example I’m in a code editor and I want to make the code area bigger. First I add a split to the video track and make a copy of the piece so that the zoom will take place in a section of the video. I then move that track above the main video track. The main video track will become the ‘background’ track.
The next step is to crop the duplicated track to just the portion that will zoom. It’s important to do this step so that the entire video clip is cropped. You can use the Camtasia zoom so you get a really accurate crop.

Get cooking with Qt! The trilogy of courses on the Qt framework is complete. Check out the latest course: Integrating Qt Quick with C++

Once you have it cropped to your liking, set two animations on the new track, one near the beginning and one near the end.
Click in between the two animations and set the zoom (using Visual Properties) and reposition. In my example I want the code to grow down and to right so I drag the zoomed clip so that the top left position is back at the original location.

Finally for an additional effect add a spotlight callout and position it below your crop/zoom effect and above everything else.

The full list of Camtasia tips.

Reaper Tip: More FX Customization

2015-04-27T06:22:00.000-07:00

This is a series of tips on using the Digital Audio Workstation software: Reaper with an emphasis on voice-over work.
Typically I have a single track in a project and I want the same chain of effects on each project. However slight variations while recording means I may want to adjust some settings. Typically this involves slight tweaks to the threshold values on various FX.
First open up the FX you want to work with. Then click on the control you want to customize. Then use the Param button and it will now have multiple options. Since I don’t want four controls named Threshold I give each an alias that is more meaningful to me, using the Alias Parameter option. This will open a small dialog where you can type your own alias name.
Then I enable the option Show in track controls and that control shows up at the bottom of my track window. You can see the final result in the image, in the area highlighted with the rounded orange rectangle. Once this is all done I save the FX chain as mentioned in a previous tip and reusing that chain also reuses the alias and automatically puts the FX control in my track.

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Reaper Tip: Using the ShuttlePro V2

2015-04-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is a series of tips on using the Digital Audio Workstation software: Reaper (full list of tips below). I have a Shuttle Pro V2 and a long time ago I posted on using the ShuttlePro V2 Controller with Camtasia. It’s equally useful with Reaper. Below are the settings I’m using. You can grab the Reaper.pref settings from Bit Bucket. It's not shown but the inner wheel is set to just mimic the right and left arrows so it scrubs audio as well. It ends up being dependent on your zoom level but that's usually what I want. I find the inner wheel much more useful than the outer jog wheel.
The only warning is in reference to that “Custom Trim Action” button. In a previous tip I talked about creating custom actions and I find the custom trim one so useful it’s assigned to one of my buttons and triggered by the shortcut “a”. As I fine tune my settings I update the settings and image on Bit Bucket so this blog post image may be out of date.

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Reaper Tip - Creating Custom Actions

2015-04-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

At first creating custom actions didn’t seem like much of a time savings to me. But, for those tasks that you do over and over again it can both save significant time and make the entire editing process that much more enjoyable. This post was inspired by a video from The Reaper Blog. The one thing that really qualifies for me is doing small trims. Maybe I cough, or say ‘uhmmm’ or there’s a background noise or an additional take. Doesn’t matter. The process is the same. Here’s what I used to do:

Go to the start of the problem
split.
drag the clip on the right to trim it until I removed the offending part.
Drag the clip over to the left to butt up against the split.
Move the playhead back a few seconds
Hit play to hear the new edit

Not too bad, but those last three steps require some time and precision dragging and get tedious. It’s not a huge savings but now instead of steps 3 through 6, I just position my mouse to the end of the offending area and hit the trim button on my Shuttle Pro. The clip gets trimmed and moved automatically and it starts playing so I can validate the trim. I do have ripple editing enabled for the track.

The process is pretty simple.

Use the Actions menu and select the Show Action List… item
Next to Custom Actions… click the New… button
In the Edit Custom Action dialog drag the desired steps from the left to the right. Use the filter box to find them easily.
Check the Consolidate undo points and Show in actions menu checkboxes and click OK
Click the Add… button in the Shortcuts for selection action area and in the resulting dialog assign your shortcut. I usually just override the less useful default.

I also installed the SWS extensions so I could move the cursor to the left one second, instead of the default 3 seconds provided by the built-in action Transport: Rewind a little bit.
This new action is also a good candidate for the toolbar even though it has a simple shortcut. When you add it to the toolbar you can right-click it, and the action will arm and turn orange. Now if you have already done a bunch of splits and just need to do multiple trims, a simple left click will repeat the custom trim action until you disarm it by right-clicking on the icon again. This arming tip works with other actions as well.

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Reaper Tip - Reafir Madness

2015-04-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

Intelligent Noise Reduction

One of the most critical things I need when post processing audio is a noise reduction filter. The room is pretty quiet yet there is still audible room noise. The noise sits around –60dB which is pretty far down but noticeably audible for anyone listening on headphones. I also like to use a noise gate to remove low level breathing, lip smacking and other distracting sounds. The problem is if you use a noise gate with room noise and you don’t add a track of room noise, it’s very noticeable when the gate kicks in. A properly used noise reduction filter makes this problem go away. A badly used noise reduction filter adds those tinkling high frequency artifacts that to my ear, are worse than the original noise. In theory they’re quieter than the noise but they are much more noticeable. Reaper has a built-in plug-in called Reafir that is a multi-purpose tool for audio processing. So far I’ve only used it for noise reduction. Here’s how.

The first step is to use the Mode dropdown and select the Subtract option. Then select a piece of audio that has only steady room noise. No clicks, no chair sounds just whatever ambient noise you want to remove. You can loop this section of audio.
Then enable the checkbox for Automatically build noise profile (enable during noise).
Select an FFT size. I tried all of them and I ended up just using the 4K FFT to build the profile. Now hit Play on the transport bar and it will build up a waveform in the bottom of the display. Hit Stop. If the red line doesn’t move to follow the noise then something isn’t working. Make sure the checkbox in the upper right corner is enabled.

Once Reafir has a profile uncheck the checkbox from step 2. You no longer want to build a waveform. Here is where you have to use your ears. Select a minute or so of your audio and loop it. You can apply the noise reduction differently from how you collected it. You can change the FFT size and listen. I found that I could hear artifacts with most of these settings. They higher the FFT size the worse the artifacts seemed to get. This led me to use the Edit mode drop down and select the Points (smooth) option. I don’t know precisely what this does but I suspect it changes from a 4,000 point filter to a 7 band filter. You would think this would be horrible but it sounded quite good to me when I did this.

Next while you’re still looping and listening hold down the control key and drag the red line up and down. I dragged it really high so I could hear it really trash the audio and really low so I could hear the noise. Then I closed my eyes and dragged it until I felt I had minimal noise and minimal artifacts. Turns out I dragged it about 1dB higher than the default.

Use the + button to save your final results as a preset. If your room noise changes you may have to repeat the process but I’m finding my room noise has been pretty consistent for weeks and I haven’t needed a new profile.

After I had a noise filter I liked, I added a noise gate to my FX chain. I wasn’t able to detect when the gate kicked in and out but all the low level breath sounds and noises were gone. When I turned the gate off I could hear some mild artifacts on my breathing but since the gate eliminated this I didn’t really care.

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Camtasia Tip #6

2015-04-03T13:56:00.001-07:00

Changing the Production Default Checkboxes

See all the Camtasia Tips

TechSmith’s decision to not give us preference setting control over various facets of the production steps strikes me as rather very user-unfriendly but there are hidden workarounds. My old nemesis, a default check on the organize produced files into sub-folders, resurfaced the other day after I uninstalled 8.5 and went back to the more stable 8.4 release. Unfortunately, some of my default settings were forgotten, especially on the dialog shown at the left. I never documented the fix so I had to rediscover it.

Get cooking with Qt! The trilogy of courses on the Qt framework is complete. Check out the latest course: Integrating Qt Quick with C++

You have to do a custom production settings run again. When you get the last page, check or uncheck all the options the way you want. I then proceeded to generate the final file but as soon as it started I canceled it. Then I went back to using my Pluralsight HD preset and the Organize produced files into sub-folders was no longer checked.

If you have other problems with this dialog you might want to see my Camtasia Tip 2 post.

The full list of Camtasia tips.

Reaper Tips Part 3 – Effects Quick Access

2015-03-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

This is a series of tips on using Reaper (see part 2). There are many ways to get to the effects for a track in reaper and many ways to apply a chain of effects to a track.
One of the easiest ways to get to the window for effects is to just click on the FX button in the track header area. This will immediately open up the overall effects window for that track as shown in the image below.

This window will show you all the effects that have been added to the track in the left hand pane. Details on the selected effect can be adjusted in the right hand pane. Double-clicking any effect in the left hand pane will give you a separate floating window for just that effect.

I find it more convenient to just right-click the FX button and you’ll get a drop down list of the effects applied to that track. Select one from the list and you immediately get a window with just that effect. (By the way the little pin icon in the upper right can be used to pin that window on top of other windows).

Perhaps most convenient way to get to the effects is to just expand the mixer area on the bottom of the screen. If you drag the splitter bar high enough; an area for your effects appears. If it’s not made big enough to see them all, you get some up and down arrows for scrolling through them. Clicking on a effect here opens its window. There is also another splitter bar just under the effects so you can dedicate more area to the list of effects on a track by track basis.

In addition to using a track template to automatically insert a track with effects there are two more convenient ways to add effects to a track. Both involve creating a chain of effects.
First right-click in the main effect’s window area. From the resulting popup menu use the Fx Chains submenu. You can use the Save all FX as chain… option to give the current collection of effects a name. Now you can use the Save all FX as default chain for new tracks or more selectively the Load FX chain… option to add your collection of effects quickly to a track. This won’t open all the floating windows where you last had them the way a track template will but this is more convenient if you have multiple tracks and only need the chain on select tracks.

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Reaper Tip : Backup Your Settings

2015-03-26T15:48:00.001-07:00

Keep multiple versions with DropBox

This is a bonus Reaper tip for Windows 7 users. The reaperblog has a video for doing something similar for Mac.

This entry has both a written and video version of the tip. The video version is a little more explicit. If you need it, I have a blog entry on how to show hidden folders in Windows 7.

The basic idea here is to automate the process of taking your entire Reaper settings folder and making a copy of it each day in your DropBox or GoogleDrive. Since those services keep multiple versions of files you should be able to restore more than just the most recent version. You don’t need any additional tools or programs to do this under window. It takes just two steps you need to create a single line DOS batch file and you need to schedule that batch file to run every day.

Step 1: First, create a small batch file with any text editor to contain a single line

cp –r %appdata%\Roaming\REAPER E:\Dropbox\Backup\Reaper

If you want to test this first, you might want to add a “pause” command at the end so the command window doesn’t close right away. The environment variable %appdata% will lead to a hidden folder similar to C:\UserName\AppData\Roaming. If you show hidden folders in the Windows Explorer you can see it. The above assumes you you have your DropBox on the E drive so change it to whichever drive you use for DropBox. If you’re using Google Drive and you use the default name with the space then quote the entire string like: “E:Google Drive\Backup\Reaper”.

I just stored the .bat file in the Dropbox\Backup folder itself.

Step 2: Use the Windows start menu and type “Task” you should see Task Scheduler at the top of the menu. Launch Task Scheduler.

Now you can use the option Create Basic Task… and walk your way through the wizard. When you get to the Actions section. You’ll select the Start a program option and select the .bat file you created in step 1. That’s all there is too it. Now at the time and frequency you specified your Reaper folder will be backup up to the cloud and you can get a previous version for however many versions your cloud storage option supports.

If you have any questions, the video version walks through all the steps on using the task scheduler.

Reaper Tips Part 2 – Track Templates

2015-03-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

This is a series of articles on tips for using Reaper for voice over. Links to other tips in the series can be found at the bottom of this post.
I mentioned last time that I create a new project for each clip. This would be a pain if I had to set up my effects by hand every time. Luckily Reaper lets you create a track template. That way every time I start a new project I just use the Track menu and select the Insert track from template menu item, and at the bottom of the submenu is my custom template. The image is also calling out the option for Save tracks as track template… which you’ll need to use one time to set up the template. You can even put each effect in a floating window and position it where you want and then save the template. Then when you use that templates all the windows will open just where you want them. (You’ll only want to do this if you only use on track/project like I do for voice over. Otherwise each track opens its own set of effects windows – very confusing). Next time some tips/recommendations on FX.

See Part 1 – Eight Quick Tips

Bonus Tip – Backing up your Reaper settings files automatically.

See Part 3 – Using Track Templates

Reaper Tips for Voice Over

2015-03-16T05:15:00.000-07:00

I recently moved from Audacity to Reaper for working with my voice over audio files.Reaper is really overkill for this as it’s a full functioned Digital Audio Workstation. I would call it on par with Logic and ProTools but I haven’t actually used those, but that is the claim I see. The bigger difference is price. The price for Reaper is either $60 or $250 depending on how you use it. A fully functional version can be downloaded for free. The limitation seems to be a small delay when opening the program while it reminds you it’s not free and it counts down. The great advantage I find to Reaper over Audacity is the ability to render in real time. You put a section of your recording in a loop, adjust an effect and you can immediately hear how it’s going to affect the final audio. That and it’s just one heck of a lot more fun to use. Easily worth $60.
I’m planning a series of tips that I discover while using Reaper that are appropriate for the screencast voice over.

Tip 1 – Name the Track

1. Reaper is geared towards multi-track music recording. When I use it for voice over I just work with one track and I tend to create a new project for every clip I create. My courses are composed of modules and modules are composed of clips. It pays to name each clip. Just double-click next to the arming button and type in your name.

Tips 2-7: Rendering

2. If you do have more than one track you can first click somewhere in the track header area on the left and then when you render (Ctrl-Alt-R is the shortcut otherwise use the File menu and selection Render…) you can select the Stems (selected tracks) option and just render out the single track.
3. Use the wildcard popups or just type $trackname and now the rendered file will have your track name.
4. I use my rendered files in Camtasia but the default WAV settings are not compatible with Camtasia. Still leave the selection at WAV and…
5. Select 16 bit PCM from the bit depth menu and all should work when you import the file to Camtasia.
6. Make sure you leave some headroom. As the file renders it shows you the output level and then how much headroom you have left. If it clips you’ll need to redo it.
7. You can have the window close automatically but see Tip 8.

Tip 8 : Don’t use Tip 7

8. When the render finishes there’s a very handy button that will show you your rendered file in an explorer window. Very convenient for dragging said file into the Camtasia Clip Bin area.

Quick Reference For All The Reaper Tips

See Part 1 – Eight Quick Tips

See Part 2 – Using Track Templates

Bonus Tip – Backing up your Reaper settings files automatically.

See Part 3 – Quick Access to Effects

I stopped Numbering them…

Reafir Madness – Intelligent Noise Reduction

Reaper Custom Actions – speed up your workflow
Using the ShuttlePro V2 with Reaper – speed up your workflow even more

More FX Customization – FX control aliases and add a UI for control to the track

The Qt Trilogy is Complete

2015-02-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

My third Pluralsight course in the series on the Qt Framework for C++ is now live! The first course offered an introduction to the Qt Framework for C++ programmers. The second course explained how Qt Quick works and how and why you would use it instead of Qt Widgets to create elegant fluid front-end interfaces. In this course, Integrating Qt Quick with C++ , you’ll learn the final moves that tie the first two courses together. Specifically, I’ll show you how to integrate your C++ back-end code with your beautiful QML based Qt Quick GUI. I’ll use a real-world application as a guiding example. You'll also discover several new areas of the Qt framework in the process. Not to mention this is my first course in HD, so it’s going to look awesome on your high resolution device. Fire up that computer and head on over to Pluralsight and put an awesome new programming tool in your software toolbox.

Basis Peak Surprises

2014-12-29T14:12:00.001-08:00

I got a Basis Peak watch/fitness tracker for Christmas and I feel compelled to write some clarifying comments about the biggest surprises I encountered after using it for a few days. This is not a comprehensive review.

1. There is no reminder to get up and move on a schedule. The software does have a Habit named Don’t be a Sitter where the goal is to not sit for more than an hour. The watch does have a vibrate feature. Amazingly (to me), the two pieces of the puzzle haven’t been put together. Once you’re close to (or exceeding) the hour I thought the watch would vibrate to remind me to move, much like my wife’s Vivosmart does. I guess that’s what makes hers smart.

2. There is no vibrate alarm to wake up. The watch tracks your sleep and categorizes it as light, deep and REM. It seems a no-brainer that you could ask it to wake you up within a range of time when you’re in light sleep by vibrating. It doesn’t even have a dumb wake-up alarm. There is just no such feature, I don’t think it’s even planned.

3. ~~The video ad~~ ~~on their site is HUGELY misleading~~. If you watched the video one of the first things you see is a woman getting a text notification on her watch at 7:32 (don’t you hate smug early risers) that a friend will be there at 7:45. It’s also the first of three texts which is why you shouldn’t be surprised when she turns her head and her friend goes rolling by on her bike. Would you be surprised to know that the watch doesn’t support text notifications? Surprise! It’s promised as a free future upgrade. Vaporware is back! I wouldn’t mind so much if this wasn’t so prominent in the ad. If you can read tiny white text, really fast, there is a disclaimer that this feature doesn’t actually exist. Gee thanks. It does refer you to ~~www.mybasic.com/availability~~ ~~which says it will be released in Winter 2014. Today is 12/29/2014. I guess I’ll get the feature in the next couple of days?~~ The promised text and email notifications became available near the end of January 2015.

4. There is no manual. Really? Do you need a manual for a a fitness tracker that tracks steps, heart rate, body temperature, sleeping patterns (including REM and deep sleep) and skin galvanic response? Crivens, I couldn’t even figure out how to turn on the backlight without looking it up online. There’s not really even an online manual. There is a series of FAQs that substitute as a manual and they answered most of my questions once I clicked on and read them all individually. Still, how expensive is it to put together a PDF for downloading? At the minimum, a printed sheet that shows the various screens and how to swipe to them (including the back lighting) SHOULD have been in the box.

5a. The iOS app software is buggy. At least two things struck me here. When going to the Activity Feed page the app often gets hung up, sort of. The wait cursor appears and never goes away. You can still move out of the activity menu but nothing seems to update any longer. Exiting the app (with the Home button) and reentering doesn’t fix the problem. Force quitting the app does. (Double-click Home, swipe up on the Basis Peak app.) This has become a ritual repeated multiple times per day. Hey it’s new, and I’m off of work, give me a break.

5b. Bug and Weird UI decision. When I go to select a new habit (from the notification home screen of the iPhone) and decide to exit out and not choose one, I can’t. I’m stuck in that mode unless I force quite the app. When I enter the add habit from inside the app it appears to work fine. I did find adding new habits confusing at first. You are on a screen where it looks like you should hit Add Habit to well, add the habit. However, I now think Add Habit is just the screen title because even though the other things on that line are buttons, the Add Habit text has no feedback. You have to hit Done from that screen to add the habit. Let’s just call this poor UI design. Like I said it’s minor, but I still found it surprising.

5c. Syncing is temperamental. They acknowledged the problem and said they had it fixed. Then they issued two firmware updates (1.8.15 and 1.8.16) that “Improved Bluetooth connectivity stability” and “Improved system stability”. Quotes are from the release notes. My experience is that things have gotten worse. For the last several days my iPhone app can’t find my watch even when they are less than an inch apart. Quitting and restarting the app doesn’t help. Turning off/on Bluetooth on the phone doesn’t work. Sometimes the app goes into a loop where it finds the watch then immediately tries to find the watch again. This appears to be an infinite loop that never stops and the watch never synchs. Most of the time the issue is solved by restarting the watch which has become a multiple times per day operation.

6. The most surprising thing of all. I like it anyway and I’m going to keep it. Not because it was a gift and I don’t think this is confirmatory bias but what do I know? Partly I expect Intel to live up to their promise to provide missing features (text notifications and such) and to provide more features that weren’t promised (movement reminders/waking alarm). I don’t think they’ll get the promised features to me in the Winter of 2014 (unless they consider that to extend until Spring 2015). Also, the heart rate monitor works surprisingly well. It loses track of my heart rate many times during the day and night, but when I’m exercising and the watch is snug it works and when I compare it to manually taking my heart rate it seems pretty accurate. I’m really interested to see how well it works when I’m sweating and playing tennis. I expect it to work even better. If it doesn’t I’ll let you know.

6. After using it for several months, I can’t recommend this device. The heart rate monitor works worse when playing tennis. I don’t know why but most of the time it can’t find a reading. After using it for several months I’m finding he heart rate monitor in general isn’t as good as I first thought. If you press and hold it to your wrist you can usually get a reading within a few minutes. Of course what you really want is a chart that tracks your heart rate throughout an activity and it just loses track too often to be useful. The pedometer feature is extremely inaccurate and undercounts steps compared to a VivoSmart and a Striiv. I would also have to have a very long stride for the step count to align with the distance walked. In a typical day it can not count THOUSANDS of steps. When it’s cold, I can’t walk with my hands in my jacket pockets or the steps won’t count (do all wrist pedometers have this problem?). I do find getting text messages on my wrist convenient but given the cost and all the other problems (especially the annoying problems with synching), you’d be better off waiting for a device that is better engineered.

Tod's Tech Tomes

Tod's Tech Tomes Has a new Home

Using JavaScript In Zaps Part 2

You need a way to trigger your code

More elaborate JavaScript code

Using JavaScript in Zaps

Camtasia 3 Mac - Five Quick Tips

Whack-a-mole Scroll Bars on the Mac - No More

OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock and the ASUS PB278Q Monitor

Playing Audio from Reaper to a VOIP app

Ada Rulez!

System Sounds

Google Voice Won’t Verify Phone Number

Camtasia Tip #10 – The Waveform Bug

Camtasia Tip #9 – Speeding up Rendering

Camtasia Tip #8 - Sending Snagit Captures Directly to Camtasia

Camtasia Tip #7- A Nicer Way to Zoom

Using the Crop Tool for a Kindler Gentler Zoom Effect

Reaper Tip: More FX Customization

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Reaper Tip: Using the ShuttlePro V2

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Reaper Tip - Creating Custom Actions

Reaper Tip - Reafir Madness

Intelligent Noise Reduction

Camtasia Tip #6

Changing the Production Default Checkboxes

Reaper Tips Part 3 – Effects Quick Access

See the full list of Reaper tips.

Reaper Tip : Backup Your Settings

Keep multiple versions with DropBox

Reaper Tips Part 2 – Track Templates

See Part 1 – Eight Quick Tips

Bonus Tip – Backing up your Reaper settings files automatically.

See Part 3 – Using Track Templates

Reaper Tips for Voice Over

Tip 1 – Name the Track

Tips 2-7: Rendering

Tip 8 : Don’t use Tip 7

Quick Reference For All The Reaper Tips

See Part 1 – Eight Quick Tips

See Part 2 – Using Track Templates

Bonus Tip – Backing up your Reaper settings files automatically.

See Part 3 – Quick Access to Effects

I stopped Numbering them…

Reafir Madness – Intelligent Noise Reduction

Reaper Custom Actions – speed up your workflow Using the ShuttlePro V2 with Reaper – speed up your workflow even more

More FX Customization – FX control aliases and add a UI for control to the track

The Qt Trilogy is Complete

Basis Peak Surprises

Reaper Custom Actions – speed up your workflow
Using the ShuttlePro V2 with Reaper – speed up your workflow even more