Monday, February 12, 2018

Outlook emails disappearing, not in deleted items

I've had this complaint a couple times.
Email 'magically disappears'
It's not in deleted, not in the recoverable items on the server.
Turns out, if you hit backspace in newer versions of outlook (2016 for sure) backspace will put the email into the archive folder.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Media server with Ubuntu, Plex and and Intel NUC

What I used:
Intel NUC kit, NUC7i5BNH
Corsair 4GB DDR4 2133mhz unbuffered CL15 SoDIMM
Seagate 2tb 7mm HDD
Mac Computer
4GB flash drive
Ubuntu 16.04.3 64 bit
http://releases.ubuntu.com
Etcher

Ubuntu has a cool tutorial on making the USB flash bootable:
https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-macos#0

I'll copy the important bits in case the link dies


  • Launch Disk Utility from Applications>Utilities or Spotlight search
  • Insert your USB stick and observe the new device added to Disk Utility
  • Select the USB stick device and select Erase from the tool bar (or right-click menu)
  • Set the format to MS-DOS (FAT) and the scheme to GUID Partition Map
  • Check you've chosen the correct device and click Erase

Install Etcher from here: https://etcher.io

Select the ISO of Ubuntu in Etcher and tell it to load it to the USB. SOOO much easier than this used to be.

Boot the NUC and let it run. This took quite a while for me.

install Plex from Plex.tv

Install the newest handbrake like this:
http://www.ubuntoid.com/install-handbrake-ubuntu-16-04-16-10/
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk handbrake-cli

Then
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
sudo apt-get install libudf-dev 
I had to do those last two (I think) to get dvds to play at all. I'm new to this whole thing...
But I'm pretty sure this is all I ended up having to do to get handbrake working. I'll probably wipe the drive again and test this to see if this is all I had to do. I'm sure eventually this will crash and I'll have to redo it all again.
I kept getting the problem where the Encoding button was greyed out, I found out that when selecting the DVD drive, it was selecting the AUDIO_TS folder, selecting the VIDEO_TS folder got the encoding button to work.
It took about a half hour to rip a 2 hour animated DVD at the Super HQ 1080p setting.

Hooooly crap there is a lot of settings in handbrake.
This guys post helped me a lot.
https://mattgadient.com/2013/06/12/a-best-settings-guide-for-handbrake-0-9-9/

Update:
I'm using the following settings on handbrake:
I started with the 1080p Fast as a baseline.
I bumped RF to 12 and put it on Very Fast.
(I ripped a movie at Very Fast and the one just above placebo (slowest setting) and the file size was about the same, it just took a little longer.)
profile is Main and its set to 4.0.
(the default Apple TV setting its high and 4.2 so I ripped a movie at both settings and there wasn't a noticeable difference in quality or file size.)

I left Audio default, just checking the box for DTS-HD passthrough. No idea what this does. I have a sound bar/sub setup and the sound is very good on the default setting (based on the 1080p fast profile).
At least on par with Netflix or playing the disk through an Xbox.

File sizes are around 3-4gb and they finish in about an hour.
Quality on my 70in tv is good, even better on a 42 or my iPhone. Which you have to have Plex Premium for if you want to play more than a minute at a time. I like the program so I'll probably just buy their forever license, still have some reading to do on how that works.
(update:5/12/18 I bought the license, no regrets.)

So far so good. I've watched movies while its ripping dvds and it does fine, so I'm not too concerned with its performance doing multiple streams.
There was on time I think it got a little warm, causing it to shut down. I set RF to its lowest setting and let handbrake run for a while. The NUC went flashing orange, but started right back up when I hit power and it continued ripping. It was pretty weird. This resulted in a 14gb file that wouldn't play through Plex, giving me a shaka3015 error. I spent a whole two minutes researching what the error meant before giving up.
It would play through Ubuntu's media player though, so the file was fine.
I ripped the movie again with my 'pretty good' settings and it played fine through Plex.

Update:5/12/18
BluRay...
I could read some BluRays, but not others.
This thread fixed it for me:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/565516/can-linux-play-blu-rays
I already had MakeMKV installed so straight to:
Step 2: Uninstall the open-source libaacs
sudo apt-get remove libaacs0
Step 3: Symlink MakeMKV's libmmbd to emulate libaacs and libdplus
(/usr/lib might not be the correct directory for you – do a search for "libmmbd.so")
cd /usr/lib
sudo ln -s libmmbd.so.0 libaacs.so.0
sudo ln -s libmmbd.so.0 libbdplus.so.0

Note, I couldn't find libmmbd.so through the search, I didn't do a CLI search, maybe I would have found it that way.
I added them to the /usr/lib like it says and I was able to read BluRay.

That got it so I could read the files, then I had to do this:
https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14821
Go http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/ and download KEYDB.cfg. Put it under ~/.MakeMKV.
This location can be viewed and changed in the preferences of MakeMKV.
Mine was home/(computername)/.MakeMKV
Make sure you can view hidden folders.


Update:
I'm doing everything with Makemkv now, the quality is basically lossless. The files are huge, but data is cheap. I'm running a seagate (I think) 8tb external drive. I haven't had any streaming latency, even with blueray.

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