Transcoding a HDR video with tonemapping

Me

2024-10-20 23:30

Before HDR came into wider use, working with video was easier. You didn't have to care about colorspaces [1], it would display fine everywhere and working with it was painless. With HDR it's not so simple anymore: To display it a process called tonemapping needs to be applied and you even need a HDR-capable output device in order to see a meaningful difference compared to SDR (Standard Dynamic Range).

Here I will document how you can convert HDR video to SDR, e.g. to view it on an older device.

How to trick Windows 10 to install on an USB drive

Me

2024-01-08 22:50

Suppose you want a Windows installation for your computer, but a bit more portable. You might think to use an external USB but the truth is Microsoft doesn't want you doing this and prevents it in the Windows installer.

Linux package managers cheatsheet

Me

2023-11-13 22:26

This post isn't for the basic operations like installing stuff, because those are easy to remember or easy to figure out if you're missing them.

Putting a systemd service behind a VPN

Me

2022-10-25 18:11

It recently occurred that I had the need to route all traffic by a certain application through a VPN. While premade solutions for this exist using Docker (especially in combination with BitTorrent clients), I preferred looking for something that really just isolates what is needed and leaves the rest alone.

Ad-hoc router using OpenWrt in a VM

Me

2022-08-02 17:31

During writing of the last post I actually bricked my home router after installing a custom image. At the same time I didn't manage to get TFTP recovery working [1] so I started searching for ways to restore my home network for now to worry about fixing the router later.

OpenWrt build notes

Me

2022-07-07 16:22

This post contains Q&A-style notes on compiling software for OpenWrt or compiling OpenWrt itself.

Headless Raspberry Pi OS virtualization, 64-bit edition

Me

2022-04-29 16:44

With Raspbian (now named Raspberry Pi OS) having been released as 64-bit, I can finally write a proper sequel to the previous post that dealt with virtualizing ARM/Linux distributions headlessly using QEMU.

You can read the original article here: Virtualizing Raspbian (or any ARM/Linux distro) headless using QEMU. Since the process is the same I will skip detailed explanations here.

Installing UniFi Network on Raspberry Pi OS 11 (bullseye)

Me

2022-02-11 17:03

Installing an Unifi controller on a Raspberry Pi seems like a straightforward task until you notice the section with system requirements.

The software requires a MongoDB version before 4.0. The last version that satisfies this is 3.7.9 which is almost four years old at the time of writing. You may find old versions packaged on the MongoDB website or in other repositories but certainly not for ARM. The second problem is that MongoDB dropped 32-bit support in version 3.4 so the latest we can actually use is 3.2.22 (also 4 years old).

In the end I was unable to find a build of MongoDB 3.2 that could run on a Pi which leaves only the option of compiling from source. This is what I ended up doing, it required lots of trial and error [1] before it succeeded. To (hopefully) save someone else time I put up the final Debian package for download.

Overview of VPN providers that support IPv6

Me

2021-11-05 15:11

Finding commercial VPN providers that provide real IPv6 support (as opposed to just blackholing traffic) is pretty hard so I decided to write down the ones I know about. The amount of information present depends on the provider's documentation and whether I have tested them myself.

Setting up Smokeping in a systemd-nspawn container

Me

2021-06-11 11:48

Smokeping is a nifty tool that continuously performs network measurements (such as ICMP ping tests) and graphs the results in a web interface. It can help you assess performance and detect issues in not only your own but also upstream networks.