Computing desk
< September 27	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 29 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 28

Flashing screen bug afflicting Windows 10

Has the known flashing screen bug afflicting the free Windows 10 downloads been fixed? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:30, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any Source-to-source compiler that compiles Javascript to Java?

731Butai (talk) 04:53, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Googling found this following as the first search result. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Rhino/JavaScript_Compiler 217.158.236.14 (talk) 10:22, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's not source-to-source, though, because it generates a .class file - a compiled Java binary, not a source file. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 10:29, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure it is possible to compile js to Java because the languages are very different. Ruslik_Zero 20:42, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Image stabilization tool needed

I've shot last night's super moon and lunar eclipse on video. Now, I'd like to stabilize the footage the way I once could do in Discreet Combustion. I. e., I'm not looking for a way to stabilize a shaky handheld shot, but I'd like to fixate the moving moon to a stationary point. I've tried Deshaker in VDub, but all it does is stabilize a shaky shot, it doesn't fixate the moon to a stationary point. I have two OS's at my disposal here: Windows 7 64-bit, and Windows XP 32-bit. --2003:48:2E4C:B161:F595:647D:789D:3252 (talk) 18:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You might find the keywords "astrophotography" "-stacking," "-alignment," and "-image registration," to be a more precise and correct way to search for what you are looking for. (If you search for "stabilization" you will find software tools that are designed to reduce hand-shake, as you have already discovered). Algorithmically, these tools are almost doing the same thing, but the under-the-hood details are tuned for specific use-cases.

Here is a free tool, DeepSkyStacker, a free-ware tool for Windows. You'll want to use the alignment and registration parts, but not the stacking parts, of that software tool.

Another tool I use for alignment is Hugin. Here is a brief overview and a list of tutorials, including some time lapse tutorials.

These tools aren't great and they aren't user-friendly, but they are free. You can find plenty of commercial alternatives by searching the web for those keywords.

If you're willing to do a lot of frame-by-frame work, you can even use a general-purpose video editor to crop, scale, and translate (slide) each video frame. We have a comparison of video editing software; you might be able to select keyframes by hand, and tween (interpolate) the crops, if you're pretty experienced with a nonlinear video editor.

It has been my personal opinion that each instance of these kinds of algorithms are sufficiently complex that I need to write custom software for a specific set of photographs. I'm not certain if that's actually an accessible task to everybody - it pre-supposes a solid familiarity with image- and video- algorithms and a strong grasp of programming. However, I often find that there's no substitute, because the amount of control I need to get the effect I want can't be expressed unless I have total control of the algorithm.

It is worthwhile to learn a simple image-processing toolkit, like GNU Octave (or its commercial alternative, MATLAB); or Python (including the SciPy and PyPlot toolkits); or if you're really interested in performance, to learn the AV software infrastructure system of your favorite operating system.

Nimur (talk) 20:01, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I happen to have Premiere Pro 2.5 here. And thanks, not looking for anything like fine-tweaking by hand for every single image. All I want is something like what I used to have with Combustion: I clicked an object to fixate, then I clicked a button, and five minutes later, I had a stable video. Back in 2003, the tool cost circa $600 (been trying to find my CD in the garage for something like two hours tonight), but I thought since FCP and other tools have gotten as good with it since, I thought there may be free tools around by now that could do it. --2003:48:2E4C:B161:F595:647D:789D:3252 (talk) 20:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that kind of fancy object tracking is cutting-edge stuff ... if you know a good tool, stick with it! It's rare to find one that works well for any use-case. Nimur (talk) 23:48, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think I should also mention that I have 5-6 hours of footage here, and that it's ridiculous to try and edit every single one of half a million frames by hand. --2003:48:2E4C:B161:F595:647D:789D:3252 (talk) 07:14, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Going down the route of Lucky Imaging may be better for video. Forget about your current OS, instal a VM and run any OS that does the job. There is a hell of a lot of Linux apps for this sort of thing. Just a thought.--Aspro (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've played around with After Effects you can definitely do all this kind of stuff, but not what I'd call cheap, unless you have access to it already, or easy, there will be a steep learning curve, at least there are loads of tutorials online. Vespine (talk) 01:05, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Using the down arrow in Microsoft Outlook

In many programs, I'm used to using the down-arrow key to get to the bottom line of text and then hitting it again to reach the end of the bottom line. I just did it now in Chrome when I used the mouse to place the cursor where I wanted to make a correction, made the correction, then simply reached my finger over to the down-arrow to reach the end of the line. For whatever reason, Microsoft Outlook doesn't seem to have this feature. Am I missing it in the preferences? Or is it just not possible to do in that program? I realize that I could use the End key as well but that's not a habit I've picked up. Thanks, 198.169.189.230 (talk) 19:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Using the down arrow to reach the end of the line in Chrome even? That's a new one for me, I just tried it just now in the edit box while typing this reply to you, and all that did was move me down one line in the paragraph, but kept my left/right column position the same instead of moving me to the end of the line. The end key works for me in Chrome, and Ctrl+End moves the cursor to the very end. This is the standard keyboard processing framework for Microsoft products such as Word, etc., and since Outlook is part of the Office suite, that's likely why using the down arrow like you described isn't working, it is expecting the End key instead. RegistryKey^(RegEdit) 03:39, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See my first sentence again. The down arrow does bring me down one line at a time and then once the bottom line is reached, another press of the button takes the cursor to the end of that bottom line.

That aside, it sounds like I just have to get used to the Microsoft way of thinking. Oh well. Thanks! 198.169.189.230 (talk) 12:57, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

why do I see still ads on ntv.de or focus online, N24.de or some other pages,

if I have installed 5 adblockers? --ZinssätzigeTargobank (talk) 19:27, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Only certain types of ads can be blocked. For example, if they embed an ad as a picture on the page itself, how would the software know it's an ad ? StuRat (talk) 23:13, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's true that there's no way for a computer to definitively know whether something is an ad (that would require human-level AI), but there tend to be lots of patterns. Look at AdBlock Plus's EasyList filters, and you will see that a lot of things are blocked based on filenames, CSS selectors, etc. For instance, a site may store ads as files named "ad-X.jpg", where X is some number. In response to the original question, my first reaction is that five adblockers seems unnecessary, unless some are not strictly "adblockers" but more general content blocking extensions like NoScript. Anyway, as was just touched upon, adblockers aren't magic. If you're using AdBlock Plus, do you have filter lists installed that target those sites? As you can see from the link I provided, EasyList has a bunch of sub-lists that specialize in non-English languages, and one of those is German. The core EasyList doesn't have many entries for non-English sites. For a more comprehensive answer, we need more details. Exactly what are the "five adblockers" you're using? Have you done anything to configure them? --71.119.131.184 (talk) 19:06, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But once we apply game theory, we can predict that the ad makers will rename "ad-X.jpg" to "critical_info-X.jpg" to keep the ad blockers from zapping them. StuRat (talk) 22:40, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Those blockers for adds and popups stil offer to contribute. If you see still such stuff, try to find out how it works and have the vendor this information. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 10:30, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]