Scale inserted videos with the correct aspect ratio in Adobe Premiere CC

When we insert a video clip into our timeline that has the same height, but different width than our project, Adobe Premiere CC distorts the inserted clip.

My project is 1920 x 1080, the inserted clip is 1440 x 1080. When I insert the narrower clip into my timeline, Adobe Premiere stretches the inserted clip horizontally.

To set the correct aspect ratio

  1. Select the inserted clip in the timeline
  2. In the upper left region select Effect Controls
  3. Expand the Motion element
  4. Uncheck the Uniform Scale checkbox
  5. Set the Scale Width to the appropriate value, in my case it was 75% (1440 / 1920 )

Copy files between Windows and Linux computers

There are many tools to copy files between Windows and Linux computers, I have found this method the simplest.

It does not require any software installation on the Windows machine, and only one package installation on the Linux machine.

Share a folder on the Windows machine

Share a folder on the Windows machine and allow access to it for a user. If the Windows computer is in the Windows domain, the domain user does not have to be a member of any security group on the Windows machine.

If you copy files from Windows to Linux, make the folder read-only for the user. If you copy files to the Windows machine, allow write access to the folder for the user.

Set up the Linux machine

  1. Install the cifs-utils on the Linux machine
    1. On Red Hat, CentOS, and Amazon Linux 
      sudo yum install cifs-utils
    1. On Ubuntu 
      sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

Mount the shared Windows folder on the Linux machine

  1. On the Linux machine create a directory to mount the Windows folder to 
    mkdir /tmp/windows
  2. Mount the Windows share 
    sudo mount.cifs '\\WINDOWS_SERVER_IP\attachments' /tmp/windows -o domain=MY_DOMAIN,username=MY_USERNAME,password=MY_PASSWORD,vers=1.0

    First, you will be asked for the root password on the Linux machine.
    If you do not specify your password in the line above, you will be also asked to enter your password on the Windows machine.

Access the Windows share

  1. On the Linux machine navigate to the mount directory 
    cd /tmp/windows
  2. List the files of the Windows share 
    ls -al

Troubleshooting

If you get the error message when you issue the mount command

mount error(16): Device or resource busy

try to unmount (umount !) the share first and try the mount again

umount /tmp/windows

 

Edit the HKEY_CURRENT_USER Windows Registry keys of another user

The user-specific settings in the Windows registry are stored under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER key. If you open the Regedit.exe application the HKEY_CURRENT_USER key contains the settings for your user account.

To access the registry keys of another user we need to

Find the Security ID of the user

  1. In Regedit navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\hivelist
  2. The key lists the Security IDs and usernames
  3. Save the Security ID of the user.

Another Security ID list location:

The partial list of the Security IDs is also available at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Not all user profiles are listed here.

Click the Security ID folders on the left to see the username in the ProfileImagePath.

Open the user-specific registry keys

  1. In Regedit navigate to the HKEY_USERS key
  2. Select the Security ID of the user you are looking for
  3. The user-specific values are under that key

 

“Ran out of time waiting for the server with id” with Windows Server 2016 in Chef Test Kitchen

AWS changed how Windows Server EC2 instances send messages during boot.

Windows Server 2012 R2 AWS EC2 instances sent the “Windows is ready” message every time those became available after boot.

When a Windows Server 2016 AWS EC2 instance launches, it only sends the “Windows is ready” message during the first boot. If you create your custom AMI with Packer, the first boot happens during the Packer AMI creation, so Chef Test Kitchen does not receive the expected message and the process times out with the message

>>>>>> Ran out of time waiting for the server with id [i-… to become ready, attempting to destroy it
EC2 instance <i-…> destroyed.

To configure Windows Server 2016 instances to send the expected “Windows is ready” message during every boot, add a PowerShell line to your Packer template that creates your custom AMI:

{
  "type": "powershell",
  "pause_before":"2s",
  "elevated_user": "MY_ADMIN_USER",
  "elevated_password": "MY_ADMIN_PASSWORD",
  "inline": [
    "C:\\ProgramData\\Amazon\\EC2-Windows\\Launch\\Scripts\\SendWindowsIsReady.ps1 -Schedule"
  ]
},

This code creates a scheduled task to execute the configuration script on the instance.

More information is at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2launch.html#ec2launch-sendwinisready

 

Test Chef cookbooks locally on a virtual workstation

When you use a virtual machine to write your Chef cookbooks you may want to test them locally with Vagrant.

This nested virtual machine cannot use a 64 bit operating system, because to run a 64 bit virtual machine, the host computer’s CPU has to provide the CPU Extensions. Currently only physical CPUs can provide the CPU Extensions, no virtualization software can do that.

The Chef Test Kitchen uses Vagrant to launch test instances. In the background Vagrant uses the VirtualBox engine, so your virtual workstation needs to have Vagrant and VirtualBox installed.

To make sure TestKitchen uses the 32 bit operating system first we will set up the 32 bit virtual machine in Vagrant.

Install the necessary software

  1. Install the Chef Development Kit
  2. Install VirtualBox
  3. Install Vagrant

Create the 32 bit virtual machine

  1. Open a terminal window
  2. Initialize the vagrant virtual machine. Vagrant will download the OS image and start the virtual machine. 
     vagrant init hashicorp/precise32
  3. Stop the virtual machine 
    vagrant halt
  4. Make sure all Vagrant virtual machines are off 
     vagrant global-status

    The result looks like this:

    id name provider state directory
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21590cd default virtualbox running C:/Users/interview/Documents
  5. Shut down the running virtual machines. Add the id of the virtual machine to any command to administer it from any directory. 
    vagrant halt 21590cd

Set up the Vagrant connection in the Chef cookbook for Test Kitchen

  1. Navigate to cookbook folder
  2. Edit the .kitchen.yml file:Set the network port forwarding in the driver section: 
    driver:
  name: vagrant
  network:
    - ["forwarded_port", {guest: 2200, host: 2222}]
    - ["private_network", {ip: "127.0.0.1"}]

platforms:
  - name: hashicorp/precise32
  3. Test the cookbook 
    kitchen converge hashicorp-precise32

 

Nested VirtualBox virtual machine on a VirtualBox virtual machine

There can be reasons when we want to run a VirtualBox virtual machine on another VirtualBox virtual machine.

I am setting up a Windows virtual machine to interview job candidates and want to run a small Ubuntu virtual machine on the Windows virtual machine. It is not recommended for performance reasons, but I want to set up a base interview machine that I can wipe and recreate any time for the next candidate.

Besides the performance hit there is one more rule: the nested guest operating system needs to be 32 bit.

Even if you have a 64 bit workstation, and run a 64 bit guest operating system on it, the VirtualBox on the guest operating system can only host 32 bit guest-guest operating systems, because for a 64 bit operating system to run, the host machine needs to have the CPU Extension feature turned on. Currently only physical CPUs have the CPU Extension feature, so even a 64 bit guest virtual machine cannot provide it.

To set up the 32 bit nested virtual machine

  1. Download ISO image of the 32 bit version of Ubuntu from http://releases.ubuntu.com/artful/
  2. Start VirtualBox
  3. Click the New icon to create a new virtual machine
  4. Select Linux (32 bit)
  5. Accept the default memory and hard drive settings

Start the virtual machine the first time

  1. Select the new virtual machine
  2. Click the Start button
  3. Browse to the downloaded 32 bit Ubuntu ISO image
  4. Follow the prompts to set up the operating system

 

Resize the VirtualBox image hard drive

When your VirtualBox virtual machine’s hard drive fills up Virtual Box does not provide a user interface to extend it. If you run VirtualBox on a Macintosh workstation

  1. Stop the virtual machine
  2. On a Macintosh workstation, the virtual machine image files are located at ~/VirtualBox VMs
  3. The name of the subdirectory and the image file matches the name of the machine
  4. Open a terminal window
  5. Navigate to the VirtualBox application directory 
    $ cd /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app/Contents/MacOS
  6. Check the current size of the hard drive. Place a backslash in front of every space character in the path. 
    VBoxManage showhdinfo ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/Win\ 10/Win\ 10.vdi
  7. Resize the drive. Place a backslash in front of every space character in the path, and specify the size in megabytes, so 100 GB is approximately 100000 MB 
    VBoxManage modifyhd --resize 100000 ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/Win\ 10/Win\ 10.vdi

    UMG/Win\ 10\ UMG.vdi
    0%…10%…20%…30%…40%…50%…60%…70%…80%…90%…100%

  8. Check the size again to make sure the resizing succeeded.

Extend the volume on the enlarged partition

Windows 10 virtual machine

  1. Start the virtual machine
  2. Click the Start button and the Gear icon to start the control panel
  3. Type admin into the search box and select Administrative Tools
  4. Double-click Computer Management
  5. Select Disk Management
  6. Right-click the partition and select Extend Volume…
  7. Click Next on every page of the wizard to extend the volume to the maximum available size.

Ruby tips and tricks

Bang methods

(Exclamation point at the end of the method name)

There are methods that have a permanent or dangerous version. The exclamation point designates to use the dangerous version of the method.

String manipulation

The bang versions of the string manipulation methods (with the exclamation point), modify the string variable in place. Some of these methods are

  • sub
  • gsub
  • reverse
  • sort

The original string ‘gsub’ substitution method:

original = 'My old cat'
new = original.gsub('old', 'new')

results:
original = 'My old cat'
new ='My new cat'

The dangerous (bang) ‘gsub’ method with the exclamation point modifies the original variable:

original = 'My old cat'
original.gsub!('old', 'new')

results:
original = 'My new cat'

Kernel::exit

The script exits with Kernel::exit, but Kernel::exit! causes an immediate exit, bypassing any exit handlers.

 

Find the AWS account number

The AWS account number uniquely identifies the AWs account you are working with. All AWS “arn” identifiers contain it, and you need to know it when you want to share AMIs with other accounts.

If there are no resources created yet in the account, you can find the account number in the “arn” of your user account.

  1. Log into the AWS Console
  2. In the upper right corner click your username and select My Security Credentials
  3. On the left side select Users, and click any of the usernames in the list
  4. The account number is part of the “User ARN”