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Nyarlathotep

@[email protected]

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Am I the only one preferring low quality media over high quality one?

I have a very slow Internet connection (5 Mbps down, and even less for upload). Given that, I always download movies at 720p, since they have low file size, which means I can download them more quickly. Also, I don’t notice much of a difference between 1080p and 720p. As for 4K, because I don’t have a screen that can display...

Nyarlathotep ,

If each frame in the media contains the exact 1920 × 1080 pixels …

This image has the same number of pixels on the top and bottom half, but you can probably see the bottom half looks worse. That’s what lower bitrate does. It’s like turning up the compression on a jpg – you are not getting the exact same pixels, just the exact same image size.

i.imgur.com/CFriCXf.png

Nyarlathotep ,

Great guide, thanks for sharing.

I would like to add that for people who may be intimidated by the tagging section, the tags that Deemix gives you are usually pretty decent to start with. You can clean them up to match your preferred format with a couple of quick mp3tag shortcuts. The hardest part is rectifying genres, which it looks like a lot of your automation is designed to do.

mp3tag is an amazing tool and anyone with a big music collection would be well served to study it!

Nyarlathotep ,

You can keep tagging files ~forever and still not have them perfect… I just stop after when I think it’s good enough and I might start tagging them again at another time.

QFT!!

My current genre process is more hands-on but it’s working for me. When I grab something, usually a complete discography, I look up the artist on Discogs, and use their genre pick. Sometimes I will put in specific genres for specific albums but usually, one genre for the whole discography is good enough.

Normally I can tolerate the Discogs genre picks, and this gives me a pretty consistent and bounded list of genres used in my library.

But like you said, it can never be perfect. Organizing my library can be kind of soothing though, like playing solitaire.

Nyarlathotep ,

100% Usenet here. Maybe I am basic, but it has everything I want and grabbing stuff is very easy.

Once in a great while I cannot find something and then I ask a friend to check his private trackers.

YMMV

Nyarlathotep ,

I’m a resident of the retirement home, but this is still funny.

Nyarlathotep ,

There must be more to it than being a Pixel phone, as I have a Pixel and I do not have those features unlocked. It’s an old Pixel, though.

Nyarlathotep ,

That would make sense, though it is surprising how my old phone still gets some of the new stuff.

Nyarlathotep , (edited )

I must be a dummy, I cannot find a way to download anything off UG other than PDF. (I do have a premium subscription.)

Can you spell it out for me? Where the heck are the Guitar Pro or PowerTab versions? I just looked around for 5 minutes and could not figure it out.

Edit to add: I saw someone else with the same question and someone posted a pic. I swear to God I have never seen this button in UG!

i.imgur.com/1ph2q2t.png

Nyarlathotep ,

So what you did here was tell a guy who is learning how to play the guitar to “LOL just play it.”

Nyarlathotep ,

Don’t fucking let anyone tab shame you my friend. Use them if you need them. The important thing is you are playing and learning and having fun. You can always learn new things too when you are ready.

Nyarlathotep ,

Ah hah, now I get it. Thanks!

Nyarlathotep ,

TYVM. I think a big part of my problem is I had been grabbing chords for most things, not tabs… And when I did get tabs I was looking at the Official ones which don’t have this download.

Nyarlathotep OP ,

I can’t believe you’ve done this.

Nyarlathotep OP ,

gasp

Nyarlathotep OP ,

I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Nyarlathotep OP ,

It’s a fair cop.

Nyarlathotep OP ,

I’m glad someone enjoyed the reference. :)

Nyarlathotep OP ,

Iä!

Nyarlathotep OP ,

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/753fc590-5f7d-4d00-848c-36bff3338860.png

Nyarlathotep ,

I’m upvoting you because you used a question mark, and deserve to be rewarded for it.

To answer your question, my method is Usenet, and I am very happy. It does require spending a little money to get a good indexer and Usenet provider.

Nyarlathotep ,

I use this too. It’s a good extension but I noticed these issues.

  • It will black out your stream and say “hiding ads” instead of actually blocking the ads and letting the stream play continuously.
  • It does not support raids

I still use it regularly.

Nyarlathotep ,

I actually listen to music on Twitch a lot. I follow a handful of streamers who play music I like, and are always playing stuff that is new to me, and kindly list track IDs on the video feed.

I hear a song I like by an artist I am unfamiliar with and then guess what…? Entire discography.

Nyarlathotep ,

Plex’s specialty audio client Plexamp is pretty good if you want to make your own “radio stations.” And if you have a Plex Pass, the server does “sonic analysis” of each track so it can do a good job of playing related music in its smart playlists.

Of course, Plex Pass ain’t free, but if you are in it for the long haul the lifetime purchase may be worth it.

(Everyone’s worried about Plex’s future right now but I would be surprised if they killed self-hosting. That’s another topic though.)

Nyarlathotep ,

♫ Don’t call it a comeback ♫

Nyarlathotep ,

I have an 1813+ and it’s also been a champ. Unless the computer inside it dies, I will continue to use it indefinitely.

However, I have offloaded all server duties other than storage to other devices. I do not ask my Syno to run Plex or any other services else besides DNS. As long as those SMB shares stay up, it’s doing what it needs to do. And gigabit will be fast enough for a long time to come.

This community's stance on physical media ownership?

I might be asking a rhetorical question here but I was curious as to the overall consensus on physical media. Do support it because, unlike streaming, media can’t take away what you’ve payed for? or are you against because it’s a waste of money when you can “acquire” it through “alternative means?” I’m also...

Nyarlathotep ,

I partially agree.

Reference books, with high-resolution images and diagrams, or subjects that invite constant page flipping, are great as physical objects. Most other books I prefer to have digitally. I do not need to have an object full of short stories or history lessons taking up space in my home.

I do like the feel of books and the look of a bookcase… But not as much as I like having that space for other things.

Everyone finds their own path in this, there are no wrong answers.

Nyarlathotep ,

The problem I have with Plex is that default UI is bloated…

Also an avid Plex user.

The Plex new user experience is absolute garbage. What if you just want to share a family video with your grandma? Someone better be there to do the initial app setup because it is overloaded with nonsense like Discover. Sharing Plex with a normal person? You still need to walk them through setup or they will not find your stuff, and stumble into the ad-supported streams.

Oh, and every client app is kinda different, which is terrible.

I do use and like Plex but man, I wish they would make some changes.

Nyarlathotep ,

My friend, there is retro… And then there is masochism. :)

Nyarlathotep ,

I once pirated a book I wrote because it was faster to download a pirate PDF than to find my original files and export a PDF myself.

It still counted as piracy because the book was owned by a company I used to own.

Nyarlathotep ,

This is a good alternative client for Android TV.

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.s0und.s…

And this is a Chrome extension that is an alternate client with ad blocking. It’s pretty good though unfortunately it does not seem to support raids, your video will just end instead of switching to the new channel.

…google.com/…/bhplkbgoehhhddaoolmakpocnenplmhf?pl…

Questions regarding Old-new Hard drives

Hi, I seek your help once again. I’m in the need of upgrading my storage now and I found what I consider to be a good deal via Amazon on an older gen enterprise WD drive that supposedly hasn’t been used, but I’ll let the power on hours tell me the truth. The price is about 16usd/TB and I’m wondering if this is a bad idea...

Nyarlathotep ,

I just placed my first order with them a couple of days ago. It looks like a great source, and there are lots of happy users.

Nyarlathotep ,

Not a tracker, but on undernet has been good to me.

Nyarlathotep ,

Plexamp is pretty great but it won’t feel very slick without a connection to the server. You can download tons of stuff, but that means digging into the downloads section, and ignoring most of the stuff on the front page where it offers artist mixes, etc. For a person who needs a simple interface, it would be a minefield of buttons that lead nowhere.

I am all about raising the Jolly Roger, but honestly think that if it is affordable, the best option would be just subscribing to a music service. The user will have access to everything, can probably use voice commands on the device, and can enjoy whatever auto-playlist features are on offer. “Hey google, play oldies music.”

Depending on how well the user is able to operate a device, a set of internet radio stations like SomaFM might be better.

Sites for downloading high quality music files

I am making a script that can download high quality music files, currently from free-mp3-download.net and slavart.gamesdrive.net. Are there any others? I could look into torrenting things automatically and maybe looking into Lidarr? Not 100% on how that works but any ideas on what else I could add or links to other places I can...

Nyarlathotep ,

Deemix is so good. It’s a great benefit to having a legit sub.

Nyarlathotep ,

What kind of files can you get, and do they come tagged well?

Nyarlathotep ,

Good to know, thank you!

(Yeah, weird that Bandcamp has zero genre tags, ever!)

Nyarlathotep ,

Thanks to OP for mentioning this! The old shows were fantastic.

I see the new shows on my Usenet indexer as Connections season 4, WEB-DL.

Nyarlathotep ,

At the time I posted that I did not see it on Planet, which I also use, and it’s still not there. I found it on Slug.

I just checked abnzb and they don’t have it either.

(Planet is good and it is my primary because I bought lifetime, but Slug has been really great when Planet doesn’t have something.)

Nyarlathotep , (edited )

For now I am not messing with my extensions to prevent the YT message. I found that the extension Kill Sticky, which eliminates all kinds of elements that cover content, blows away the popup. So, I just dismiss the message with one click when it comes up.

Eventually the adblocker situation will improve, I hope, but for now doing it this way is only a minor inconvenience.

Edit to add: Well I got the “countdown” popup, and you can certainly dodge it by blowing it away with a tool that deletes overlays… but the countdown continues and then it does block the content in a new way. Other people posted that accepting the ads once resets the countdown, this did not work for me. I ended up installing my own Invidious instance since I have a Linux box on my LAN but I look forward to better anti-anti-adblock extensions.

SmartTube on Android TV still works great.

Nyarlathotep ,

Looks like a good option, unfortunately it would not run for me on an Android emulator in Windows. (LDPlayer 5)

Nyarlathotep ,

Whoa, I thought that was only for Win 11. Cool, thanks!

Nyarlathotep ,

Handy site, bookmarked. I don’t use Telegram because of the phone number requirement, but it’s good to keep track of what it has.

Nyarlathotep ,

I was looking into those services too, thanks for letting me know this one worked for you!

Nyarlathotep ,

It’s not really like radio, it’s a bunch of people running their own shows at times of their choosing. But if you follow a bunch of people who are doing 2-3 shows a week, pretty soon you will find that when you look at the “Following” page to see what’s happening right now, something worth listening to is probably on.

Here’s what my Following page looks like at the moment: i.imgur.com/7OXkRbN.jpeg

Not too good, but it’s early still. Only one person I follow is live and it looks like they are chatting instead of playing music, which is unusual (and I won’t bother to listen).

There are some recommendations below. If I click Show More, I can see 8 other live streams. (I can see more under the Browse feature.) : i.imgur.com/U5Bvec5.jpeg

Some of these 8 I recognize as being not my taste, some show genres I don’t care about, but there are a few that I will check out. OK… the reggae dude was playing hip-hop which isn’t my bag but I might check back later because I like reggae and ragga. The funk dude was playing great music but wouldn’t shut up. SlugRadio is playing some good EBM that is new to me, the DJ puts up a track ID in the chat stream, and most importantly doesn’t seem to be on mic all the time. So that’s a good find and if the music stays good, I’ll probably Follow that channel. (this is what the stream looks like: i.imgur.com/cCFPpG7.jpeg)

One other thing…

Twitch lets you watch replays of shows which gives you even more ways to find something to listen to… But, they process saved videos and knock out copyrighted audio, so most recorded DJ streams are mangled. For some reason, Twitch gets away with letting people do anything they want when the show is live, while YT uses realtime detection to mute your stream and issue a copyright strike.

Nyarlathotep ,

Genre tagging is a huge pain in the ass!

Picard is probably the most popular tool for this, but a problem with any auto-tagger is that you may disagree with the genre selection. Because the data is all crowdsourced you also see inconsistencies… Like “Hip-Hop” and “Hip Hop” both in use. Either you live with that stuff… Or, you do it yourself.

2500 tracks isn’t actually that much to do manually. Chip away at it with a great tool like mp3tag, and once you are caught up, do new additions as you get them.

Someone here said:

It does tend to work better with albums, I’ve mostly moved to getting an album when I’ve wanted a single song…

This is so true. Loose single tracks are a pain in the ass too. Try to get full releases.

Nyarlathotep ,

Sadly you can’t download anything. There’s a note at the bottom of the page:

*Note: Site in archive-mode. Downloads temporarily disabled.*Working on appropriate route to release archive legally.

If you’ve got a copy…

Nyarlathotep ,

Got it, thank you!

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