Showing posts with label catalyst control center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label catalyst control center. Show all posts

Monday, February 04, 2008

More on Redhead on the Catalyst Control Center Welcome Screen

Just for fun, and because I was too worn out to do any more work, I did a little investigating of the redheaded woman on the Catalyst Control Center welcome screen. I didn't find many other references to her (I guess having a oddly-angled drawing of a buxom lady on the welcome screen of a video card applet isn't worth commenting on). I did find one person who said the reason he chose an ATI over an nVidia card is because he preferred "RedHeaded Vinyl-Clad Ass-kickers" to "Mermaids and Ogres." [http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?p=1335327996]

I also learned that the Control Center is customizable, so the decision to put the redhead there must have been a purposeful one by ATI. [http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/692/3] I also learned:
ATI introduced the Catalyst Control Center suite early in 2004 along with the release of the X800 family of cards. Up until late last year ATI made the CCC an optional driver, with older cards still able to use the old ATI Control Panel. With the release of the X1K series of cards, ATI chose to make the CCC a necessary component for the new cards." [http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/hardware/1577_4.html]
Then, I discovered that different models of AT Radeon cards have different graphics on their Control Center Welcome Screen. Here's the one for the ATI Radeon 1950 http://support.gateway.com/s/VIDCARD/ATI/6008058R/6008057Rsi9.shtml:


Maybe, I thought, the higher-end cards have even more high-resolution images on their welcome screens! Then I found a box for the ATI Radeon 9550, which had this version of the redhead:


Alas, I couldn't remember if my mere 1550 had the redhead on its box, or if I would have even noticed if it had. But I found this, which suggests that the redhead appears on multiple models, and may differ by the country in which it is distributed:

I also found this, which i assume is supplied by ATI for resale vendors to direct their customers"



...and this...


It seemed to me that there must be some kind of backstory behind the woman: who was she, and what exactly is she doing in all these action shots? Clearly, she's a warrior. But for good? For evil?


Then, for some reason, THIS came up in an image search for "catalyst control center" welcome screen:

[http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,16477971]

What the heck, I thought? Upon following the link (above this paragraph), no sign of this image. However, when I followed the Google prompt to "See full-size image," it took me to http://www.michellestafford.com/images/ms_burg_1.jpg.

What, I wondered, does Michelle Stafford have to do with the Catalyst Control Center Welcome Screen?

Hmmmm.....

Then I looked again at Michelle, and then again at the redhead on the welcome screen. Hmmmmm......

Quite a resemblance there! Both redheads. Same face shape. Eyes similar.....

Is Michelle Stafford the redhead on the Welcome Screen?

I went to Michelle's web site, and found a couple of pictures that certainly suggest the Catalyst Redhead:





I didn't see anything like "Catalyst Control Center Welcome Girl" listed in Michelle's "Credits" section of her website, but I did learn she was a start in a film called "Attaction," which I googled, and found this Wikipedia article on Michelle, which informed me that her birthday is the day after mine (a VIRGO), and that she was born in the town where I live (Chicago), supports "The Earth Organization" (where's my checkbook!), and is a Scientologist (which I'm not).

Anyway, I haven't proven that Michelle is Ruby, but I wonder....


Then, I found another example of this image:

http://www.gamesblog.it/categoria/drivers/record/10


...only THIS time, she had a NAME. The name of the image file was Ruby_ATI.jpg. RUBY!! Finally, I could put a name to the face. This got me more excited. Instead of searching for vague terms like "redhead," I could search for "Ruby"!!!

I decided that maybe Ruby represented more than just the Catalyst Control Center; maybe she was an icon for ATI in general. So I decided broaden my search to "ATI Radeon" images, and see whether any other images came up.

First thing I found was the highest resolution image of Ruby that I had found so far, over the caption:

Ruby is ATI's new tech-demo superstar.
(click to enlarge)

so of course I did, and found



And then, another very high resolution image, available as wallpaper for the computer desktop:


[http://www.2desktop.com/ATI_Radeon_Ruby_Computers_free_quality_desktop_wallpaper_2982.html]

Clearly ATI has a sense that some of its customers might want to have more "eye time" with Ruby! However, not THAT much of a sense, because there were 11 matches to "ATI Radeon" on that website, and most of them feature THIS guy, hardly competition for Ruby:



I felt that I was coming close to finding out what Ruby was all about. I found this image:


[http://www.gamespot.com/features/6170621/index.html]

..which made me think there must be a backstory to Ruby. And the image was accompanied by this text:

ATI created a new Ruby "Whiteout" tech demo to show off what the Radeon HD 2900 XT can do. In the new demo, the Ruby model has 200,000 triangles, and the entire video averages more than 1 million triangles per frame. In comparison, the Ruby from the Radeon X1000 series demo, "The Assassin," only has 80,000 triangles, and the demo averages just over 500,000 triangles per frame. The new Ruby also has 128 facial animation targets compared to four for the older models, which allows for more realistic facial expressions.

Following the link [http://ati.amd.com/developer/demos/rhd2000.html], I came at last to where I should have started, the ATI web site, where I learned that Ruby is a model, designed (and repeatedly redesigned) to demonstrate new capabilities of ATI graphics cards. Regarding "Whiteout":
Ruby's latest adventure takes place in a rugged, mountainous terrain where her skills as a snowboarder are tested and may just save her life. This fast paced, action packed demo exploits the power of the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT to create a rich and expansive landscape of snow, rock, and ice. From the procedural snow accumulation on the harsh terrain to the wrinkles on Ruby's brow and the physics that drive each strand of fur on Ruby's fur collar, the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT can handle it all.

In order to create an expressive, compelling character our artists constructed 128 morph targets to drive Ruby's facial rig. All of these facial "poses" are combined using the GPU to create Ruby's final look. Ruby also uses a number of animated wrinkle maps to add additional subtle expressiveness to her brow, eyes, mouth and chin. High dynamic range imaging techniques are used through out the Whiteout demo to account for the brightest of outdoor environments as well as the darkest depths of Ruby's icy head quarters. Advanced light scattering techniques are employed to faithfully reproduce the complex interactions of light with snow and ice.

Sadly, since I only have an ATI 1550, I couldn't play the demo version of "Whiteout," which requires "
Windows Vista®, an ATI Radeon™ HD series product with 512MB of video memory and a high end CPU with 1GB of RAM." However, when I went up a level, to [http://ati.amd.com/developer/demos.html], I found a whole list of demos. Fortunately, some of the demos have MPG versions available, which (OF COURSE!) I watched, and you can too:

http://www2.ati.com/misc/demos/ATI-X800-DoubleCross-Demo-v1.0.mpg

"Doublecross" introduces the near future world of ATI's "Ruby" and her arch enemy "Optico". In an action packed 1 minute and 40 seconds, Ruby has to outwit the cunning "Optico" as he attempts to cheat on an exchange. Ruby not only has to use her wits but battle Optico's Ninja henchmen. Culminating in an explosive ending, Ruby escapes, leaving Optico vowing revenge. Through the use of motion captured animation, depth-of-field, realistic image based lighting and dynamic shadows; "DoubleCross" borrows heavily from both gaming and movie genres to create a compelling demo that further raises the expectations for real-time graphics.

http://www2.ati.com/misc/demos/ati-radeon-x850-dangerouscurves-movie-v1.0.mpg

"Dangerous Curves" continues the adventures of ATI’s heroine, Ruby. During this 45 second sequence, Ruby has to avoid Optico’s automated drones intent on her demise. A high speed motorcycle chase ensues through a gritty tunnel, punctuated by yet another explosive conclusion. Dangerous Curves continues ATI's tradition of blending movie and gaming genres to create a compelling demo. The use of real-time motion-blur, glows and precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) technology delivers realistic lighting and is a compelling demonstration of the cinematic experience that is possible on today’s 3D graphics hardware.

http://www2.ati.com/stream/radeonx1k/ati-demo-theassassin-v1.0.mpg

Ruby’s latest adventure places our heroine in a large complex environment and uses high dynamic range lighting and dynamic soft shadows to set the mood. The villain of the piece, a cyborg called Cyn, is our most complex character to date, consisting of over 120,000 polygons – all lit, transformed, rendered and shaded using the power of the Radeon® X1800.
Then, I went back to the HD2000 demo page, and discovered a version of Whiteout that I could play (hallelujah), at http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd/demos/Whiteout.html with a link to a downloadable version. This is the point at which she jumps out of the plane with her snowboard!

And this, when she's about to evade a rocket fired at her:

And this, as she is taking her revenge:


(You can also get Ruby videos at http://machinima.com.)

Ah, Ruby! She is, of course, a "good guy"--fast, sexy, smart, with a European accent, and always victorious, just as you'd expect, looking at her. And she makes you want to run out at get the latest ATI graphics card, just so you can see her beauty mark with more detail.




Sadly, it seems that ATI may have moved on to a new woman. This is the box cover of the ATI Radeon 1650 Pro, released in early 2007:


[http://peripherals.kyrnin.com/video/]

I guessed that Ruby must have lost some of her appeal, and was replaced with someone with more cache. However, I later found out that this is "Sapphire," and she's only associated with a particular line of ATI cards. ("A tool for the performance oriented, the Sapphire X1600 PRO comes equipped with the hardware muscle to deliver an entire realm of fantasy right to your desktop." [http://www.richardsontech.com/]

However, even more sadly,with the release of Microsoft Windows Vista, ATI seems to have changed their favorite image related to the Catalyst Control Center to something much less interesting than Ruby or Sapphire:


http://www.connectionworld.org/2007/06/25/ati-catalyst-76-oficial/

What the heck is up with THAT?!?!?!

PS. I could find no evidence that Ruby is modeled on Michelle Stafford. However, it was an odd coincidence that she came up in my search, only to not appear on the page where she was supposed to be. Does anyone know anything?

PPS. Now that I know Ruby's name, I can search Google Images for "ATI Ruby," and find a whole SLEW of Ruby images.


She even has her own fan site: http://atitech.com/ruby/index.html,

where fans (like me?) can download desktop wallpapers, screen savers, and videos. Ruby even has a biography:

Rumored to be the daughter of a high-ranking military officer and a foreign ambassador, Agent codename: 'RUBY' is listed in the agency database as ideal for covert missions and high-risk activities that are unsuitable for other freelance agents. This operative possesses Class One Security Clearance and Level 'A' computer expertise. Skilled in martial arts, demolition and surveillance, Agent RUBY is authorized in the use of extreme force and has global diplomatic immunity.

Prior to her working for ATI, RUBY operated internationally as a mercenary for hire. Her movements can be traced to various conflicts in Asia and Central America as well as operations involving the British Secret Service. Deep cover operatives have discovered documents suggesting her field rank within this organization as Security Director, Field Operations, Senior Grade (unconfirmed). Her associations with her employers have been verified as performing functions including: sniper, saboteur, hacker, spy, commando and as a diplomatic courier for various governments.

As an ATI operative, agent RUBY has dealt effectively with the billionaire technologist: 'Optico' ( see accompanying dossier ). In derailing Optico's use of secret technology, which he hoped to sell to hostile foreign governments, RUBY's intelligence-gathering network has allowed ATI unprecedented access to Optico's inner lair and the transfer of this highly sensitive technology, created by Optico Industries. Preliminary examination of this technology indicates unlimited potential.

Agent RUBY's past history, although free of overt criminal activity, remains open to further investigation. Although her loyalty is assured, close supervision of this freelance agent by staff administrators is advised.


There are even, at gaming shows, real-world imitators of the animated heroine:



Somehow, now that I know who she is and what she stands for, she seems a whole lot less interesting. What is it they say, about playing hard to get?



:-)


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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Learning more than I wanted to starting out....

So, this attempt to create a video to show how to build in SL is turning out to be quite an adventure in collateral learning. Not only did I have to learn about machinima making, and ways of tweaking the SL interface to improve the way the machinima looks, and short-cut keys for such things as camera movement and removing the user interface, but I'm also learning all about the various options for uploading and storing videos, video formats (wmv, mov, avi), the relative trade-off of size and quality, and streaming options. And, to make things even more interesting, my computer has been crashing regularly.

At first, the crashes only happened when I tried to do certain things in Windows Media Encoder--namely, access a "session setting wizard" that included video capture (as opposed to screen capture, which worked fine). And this crashed only Windows Media Encoder itself, not the whole computer. I eventually learned to avoid clicking on certain options in Windows Media Encoder to avoid these inevitable program crashes.

And, I pretty successfully used Windows Media Encoder to create a WMV video that does more or less what I want it to do, although it doesn't run especially well from http://blip.tv. Lots of hiccups and "blips"so to speak. Plus, the large version of that file (over 350 MB) was not successfully converted to Flash format, I guess because the size was too much for the converter to handle. When I used Media Encoder to convert the file to a smaller format, i lost the hiccups and blips, and got a Flash version, but the text is not legible.

I got excited when I discovered that a company called Netro Media (http://netro.ca) was offering a FREE streaming account (for people whose streaming needs were less than 500 MB per month). I quickly signed up for it, mentioning in my sign-up form that I was interested in streaming into Second Life. I received the Netro account information, and got excited about testing a stream into SL later that day. However, a few minutes later, I got a phone call from a Netro representative, informing me that the FREE streaming account was only for streaming WMV files (not Quicktime), and that I couldn't use it to stream into Second Life. When I emailed back, the representative said the company would offer me a free trial (24 hours), but that I needed to create a Quicktime file, and use a program called Wirecast 3 from http://varasoft.com to send it to Netro Media for streaming. (Quicktime Broadcaster is only available on the Mac.)

But then I found another way to inevitably crash my computer. And these crashes weren't just the program itself, but the whole computer. I downloaded and installed the trial version of Wirecast 3, but when I ran it, it brought my computer (poof) to a black screen, and reboot. This always happened at the same point: when the startup screen said "initializing video system." I downloaded the file again, and reinstalled it, just to make sure, and yep, the computer went down at the same point.

I began to suspect that maybe there was something wrong with my computer, since both Wirecast 3 and Windows Media Encoder were crashing my computer. I figured maybe there was something wrong with my a/v capture card, which is an ATI Radeon 1550. I went to the ATI site (and discovered that ATI and AMD are the same company...who knew) and downloaded the latest version of the drivers and Catalyst Control Center for my video card.


An aside.....WHY does the "Catalyst Control Center" for ATI cards include THIS welcome screen:

What's with the cute redhead, and WHAT is with the ANGLE of this shot? I guess ATI knows who their primary market is.... :-)

Well anyway, moving on....

While installing this ATI driver package, the system just stopped responding while installing something called the "WDM drivers." WDM, I learned, stands for "Windows Driver Model" ["is a series of drivers used to enable the capture and TV tuner features on VIVO boards" http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/346/ATI_Catalyst_6.8_x64_WDM_Package.html). I found a technical suggestion from someone who had also had their system hang up on WDM installation that you could install the card drivers and Catalyst Control Center separately, then reboot the machine, and then install just the WDM drivers. With this advice, I got the current version of the drivers installed, and working.

Unfortunately, cute redhead aside, this didn't solve any of my problems. Windows Media Encoder and Wirecast 3 were still crashing, as they had done before.

Meanwhile, since I couldn't get Wirecast 3 to work, I figured I might as well try to convert my WMV file to a Quicktime file, and then upload it to Blip.TV as a Quicktime "Fast Start" (or "progressive download") file, so at least I could show it in SL to some of my colleagues, and ask them if they thought it was worth continuing to work on this project. I tried to load the movie into Adobe Premier, figuring maybe Premier would let me export the movie in Quicktime format. However, Adobe Premier also crashed my computer, shortly after loading my WMV. (I never got to whether it could export as Quicktime.) I was getting tired of rebooting my computer.

(Another aside....not nearly as visually interesting as the Catalyst Control Center, but every time I rebooted my computer, Zone Alarm, my free Firewall, would keep reinitializing, like three or four times...I finally went into MSCONFIG and realized that "zlclient" was in the "services" tab twice; once I deleted one of those, and rebooted, I seem to have solved THAT problem.)

So I looked around on the 'net for something that would convert a WMV to a Quicktime file. If you have a Mac, and have Quicktime Pro, you can get a plug-in to convert from WMV to Quicktime, but I don't have a Mac. (For the record, I have a Gateway 840GM, which has proved totally reliable and a workhorse for the last 18 months, until this latest series of crashes.) I eventually found a program called E O Video (catchy name), from http://www.eo-video.com that professes to be able to convert WMV files to Quicktime files. But, LO AND BEHOLD, when I tried to load the WMV file into E O Video, IT CRASHED MY COMPUTER!!!! This, despite having upgraded the drivers for my ATI card.

(BTW, I was able to run E O Video on my work desktop, which is a four-year old Dell, but it was still in the early stages of PASS 2 when I finished teaching last night, so I just left it running.)

I was beginning to think that I should give up on the SL video experiment, and just prepare for my upcoming ELVEN workshop (http://elveninstitute.org/workshops.html) in a more traditional manner (using screenshots, as I did for teaching SL snapshots). However, I am the type of person (if you haven't figure that out already!) that can't relax if I can't figure out what's going wrong with a technical process. I literally can't sleep when I can't get a new piece of hardware or software to work effectively on my computer. And here, I had at least FOUR programs crashing with some predictability: Windows Media Encoder, Adobe Premier, Wirecast 3, and E O Video. There had to be a systematic problem that would solve all of these problems. So, I did a little more poking around.

I went to the Gateway web site to see if there was a diagnostic tool that I could run. Nope. I went to the ATI site to see if there was a diagnostic tool I could run. Nope. I searched for "ati driver problem" and "Windows Media Encoder crash" and "a/v capture troubleshooting." FINALLY, while reading a techical forum about ati 1550 troubleshooting, I ran across someone who had switched from using an nVidia card to an ATI card, and ran into problems with the nVidia drivers still being installed on the system after the cards had been switched. I vaguely recalled recently seeing an nVidia applet on my system's control panel. Yep, there it was! I wondered if maybe the problem was that my system was experiencing a conflict between the vestigal nVidia drivers and the ATI card. (I switched from the Gateway's Intel on-board video to an nVidia-based Verto GeForce 7900GS back in January of 2007 when I couldn't run SL very well with the on-board video; three months later, that card burned up, so I bought the ATI card.)

(As another aside, PNY gave me a TOTAL RUNAROUND on getting an "RMA" for getting a replacement Verto GeForce 7900GS card, which is STILL sitting here on my desk, soon to go out of warranty......I'm still seething at PNY for THAT slap in the face....)

So I searched Google for "nVidia removal" and found the suggestion from someone that "If you are still having problems you might try Driver Cleaner http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/ . Just follow instructions in the readme file." So I went to that URL, and it returned "page not found". So I searched Google for "Driver Cleaner," and found http://www.drivercleaner.net and saw that it was $9.95. Not a bad price, but "free" even better. I wondered if I could just remove the nVidia drivers from my system using the Control Panel and "Add/Remove Programs...." So I tried that, and it worked!!!! I rebooted the machine and, Voila! no nVidia applet in the Control Panel. And, was it my imagination, or....was the system working more quickly...with more responsive video....??? It seemed as if a sludginess I hadn't noticed before was listed. So......

I held my breath, fired up E O Video, loaded in my WMV file and......it played the video, unlike the last time! Then, I set E O Video to work converting the file into MPEG 1 (which I assume is an MOV file...), and it's chugging along quite merrily doing that conversion as we speak!!!


So, I am quite tempted to fire up Windows Media Encoder and Wirecast 3 to see if those programs will run okay now, but I don't want to crash my computer in the middle of this E O Video conversion (which will probably take another hour), so I think I'll go do something else for a while (maybe something non-computer related, like make dinner), and come back later to test those out and, if everything goes well, to upload my new Quicktime version of "Dewey Builds A Couch" to Blip.TV and try to view it from within SL. Wish me luck!!!

(/me waves at everyone, including the Catalyst Control Center redhead, looking at me over her shoulder as I walk away....)
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