Ask Paul: October 13 (Premium)

Happy Friday and welcome to the end of our Activision Blizzard nightmare. Let’s get the weekend kicked off extra early for a change: I’m flying to Mexico City this afternoon, so I had to file this one early.

Clipchamp limitations

staganyi asks:

I tried Clipchamp for the first time because I had to trim a video (~300MB 1080p HD mp4 file). When I exported from Clipchamp to the same format, 1080p HD, the file size ballooned to ~800MB+. I couldn’t find any settings in the app (e.g. bitrate) or online to address that other than reducing the resolution. Maybe that’s a limitation of the free version?

No, unfortunately, that’s just a limitation of Clipchamp, period. There are no export options beyond the quality level (1080p, etc.). There are others I’ve identified—you can’t apply video stabilization to a clip, for example—but it’s so good generally that I just kind of deal with it. But this one could be problematic.

And on that note, I just used Clipchamp to create a 23-minute video for YouTube. And I, too, was surprised by its size (3.24 GB). This made me wonder if something had changed since this past summer, so I looked at some previous videos. And sure enough, a similar length (20 minutes) video I created previously is significantly smaller, at 1.79 GB. Both of these videos are very similar in that they both use a lot of image assets. That said, the newer video has a few video assets too, and maybe that is the cause.

But your experience sounds quite different, just a single video that you trimmed down. So it’s unclear what’s going on there.

I should be making several videos while we’re in Mexico over the next three weeks, so I will keep on eye on this.

Auto-sync photos between OneDrive and Google Photos

staganyi asks:

I’ve been following your digital decluttering series with great interest and is inspiring me to do the same. Starting off with pictures, I use Android and my phone automatically backs them up to Google Photos and OneDrive. Now, if I delete a picture in Google Photos from the phone, that doesn’t flow back to OneDrive and the picture remains there. Is there an app I can use that will compare files in 2 folders and flag the ones that don’t match (those should be the deleted files from phone/Google Photos that are not deleted in OneDrive)?

This is tricky.

It sounds like what you want is a way to sync your phone photos on the phone, after the fact, which I do understand, though I’ve never heard of such a thing. I never really worried about this need per se, but I also try to delete unwanted/poorly shot photos while out in the world with the phone, as it won’t sync to either service over cellular (by default, which is how I’ve left it). That way, those shots don’t sync at all.

The other option, I guess, would be a service that would handle this in the cloud. And I’m sure something like that does exist, though if you’re going to do that there’s probably no need to backup photos to both services from the cloud since this backend service would basically handle that. But I have nothing specific to recommend, sorry. I wonder if anyone else has tried the various third-party cloud service sync services recently or uses such a thing?

More generally though, this ties into an issue some readers raised during that digital decluttering series, which amounts to “why bother”? And it’s a fair question: We all have different needs/wants with regard to this kind of thing. And in the scope of things, worrying about the occasional one-off non-deleted photo in just one of those services doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.

But even with the things that do seem important to me, I may be overthinking things. In Digital Decluttering: Taking It On the Road (Premium), I mentioned that I’ll be at least looking at how I can reconcile a 550 GB Google Photos collection with a 175 GB OneDrive collection (the latter of which doesn’t include most smartphone-era photos in organized folders or at all). And since then, I actually spent time experimenting with this using one folder/year’s worth of photos (2016). And yikes. The sheer amount of work required here is beyond daunting. And that’s just for one year. And it’s nowhere near “done.”

This is the kind of rabbit hole I go down a little too willingly. And I’m coming around to the notion that I’m probably approaching it the wrong way. I will keep working on that and will explain what all that means in some later article, after which I hopefully come to some resolution that makes sense and doesn’t become a second career. But the theme here is the same. How perfect does this have to be? What can you live with? I’m not sure that worrying about the odd deleted photo is a great use of anyone’s time … unless of course you can set up something once and forgot about it, sure that it’s just doing its thing in the background.

So … any thoughts on this? Has anyone used some sort of cloud sync utility that would make sense of this?

Make the Switch

helix2301 asks:

Paul, I am thinking about getting a Nintendo switch for when I travel. What do you think would be the best the switch oled, reg switch or the light? If you have any recommendations would be great the last Nintendo product I had was wii and before that was super Nintendo and the original Nintendo. So I am a little out of the loop.

So am I: I don’t own any Switch, though I have almost bought one innumerable times. I suspect that if the pandemic hadn’t happened, and I was still traveling a lot for work, I would have done so. But all my travel for the past three years or whatever has been with my wife, for the most part, and this is the type of thing I don’t typically do when we’re together. My kids both have a Switch, however, and while I’m not surprised that my son uses one, I was surprised to discover that my daughter has one. I guess her and her roommate are really into it.

Anyway. “Best” is kind of a tough one, as the OLED version is arguably that. But I guess it comes down to cost/value, plus how/where you expect to play, since you may need additional accessories including a way to easily dock it to a TV. But if I were buying one now, I’d probably get the OLED version. That’s not a super-informed opinion though.

Speaking of docks…

Docks

John Dunagan asks:

Starting a new job Monday, and looking for a dock that will allow me to share monitor/kb/mouse/cam with a laptop that I receive tomorrow. My desktop is NUC10I7FNB on Windows 11, and carries Thunderbolt 3 port. I don’t know if the laptop will have USB C or also Thunderbolt 3/4. Would you still be able to if/then/else a dock recommendation? Thanks!

Funny, I was just thinking about writing about this. I may still do so. But …

I’ve used a lot of Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB 3.x docks, and while Thunderbolt/USB4 is more common now than ever, I would still go with a USB-C dock. And not so much “would” but “do”: As part of a More Mobile push, I transitioned from a TB3 dock to an Anker 555 USB-C Hub and successfully used it at home and then over many trips, mostly back and forth to Mexico, over two years. And then finally left it behind in our apartment in Mexico City this past July as part of a permanent docking setup for laptops.

Anyway, I explained why I made that switch to USB-C two years ago (!) but the weird thing is, nothing has really changed since then with regard to which makes more sense to me. And since our July trip, I researched getting a new dock, something that would travel but also work well in a configuration like the one you describe. And not only do I still think USB-C makes more sense—these docks are still much cheaper and more broadly compatible, and the data transfer speeds are fine—but I ended up just buying the same dock again. It still seems like the best choice. (I was semi-positive something newer would have come up in that time, but no.) This also happens to be the dock that The Wirecutter, which I trust, recommends.

Anyway. You could go either way if the NUC supports Thunderbolt, of course. But I would just go USB-C. And I do recommend the Anker 555. It’s small enough to travel with, and it has power-in and a great mix of ports.

Ads

Cornholio asks:

Will we all be walking billboards one day?

Probably. In this world, we will become like NASCAR drivers and cars.

I am sick of seeing ads everywhere – nothing is sacred any longer.  As a society, how do we stop this? For example, I’m normally not much of a baseball-guy, but do enjoy watching the playoffs.  T-Mobile’s banner behind home plate is almost enough to make a person put on sunglasses.  The revolving banners are obnoxious.  And don’t even get me started on the superimposed ads on the pitchers mound.  I’m seeing this kind of thing all over sports and it almost ruins watching the game.  I don’t need to see ads on the uniforms, ice, football field, etc.  I couldn’t care less about Flex Seal and don’t see how it contributes to tennis (US Open – player had ad on their sleeve).  I could go on and on.  It is all disgusting. 

This drives me crazy as well. We were watching an old baseball game the other day and it’s striking (pardon the pun) how devoid of ads Fenway Park was at that time, but also how little was going on on-screen during the broadcast, not just the ads but all the moving text and other distractions. We’ve sort of boxed ourselves into a corner here because it’s hard to imagine how it could get any worse. Even the infamous advertising sequence in Minority Report seems quaint now.

As for a solution … you got me. I see no end of this and no way to reduce it let alone fix it. Sorry.

Ghostbusters

jimchamplin asks:

How do you feel about the upcoming Ghostbusters film? As a sequel to “Afterlife”, I think it has a lot of potential myself but I’m not sure if in the 2+ decades I’ve been reading your work I’ve ever seen you mention Ghostbusters, but I thought in celebration of the Halloween season it could be a fun question.

Oddly, I was never a Ghostbusters fan per se. I saw the first two movies, and even the women-driven remake, but not Afterlife. I’m not opposed to it, in fact I think the nostalgia aspects to that are interesting, even with Harold Ramis having passed away. And I wasn’t even aware of another movie coming. But my wife and I almost rewatched the original recently, kind of out of the blue. And perhaps we’ll do that in Mexico now, since it just came up.

GEOS or GEM and whyyyyyyyy?

There are two sides to this one.

First, I was a Commodore guy, and so I was into GEOS as a way to have a Mac-like experience without having to pay for a Mac. And I used GEOS pretty extensively, especially geoWrite. But also geoPaint, and I recall printing out waxy color images on my Okimate 20 printer.

But GEM was clearly the more sophisticated environment, and I used it briefly on the Atari 520ST. Very briefly. It was certainly better than any version of AmigaDOS.

So this is one of those things related to maturing: You grow up with this limited, biased, and partisan worldview. And then you later learn more and realize those things you thought were the best were just one of a few good choices, and that there were better options you didn’t know about. This is tied to the whole Commodore 64/Atari 800/XE thing: Commodore won that round, and I loved that computer, but the Atari was technically better.

Sports is like this. I grew up a diehard Boston Celtics fan, so I hated the Philadelphia 76ers and LA Lakers. But distanced from that, I see that both of these teams were incredible in that era, and depending on the year, equal to or even better than the team I followed at the time. This is the kind of clarity you can’t have when you only know about one thing.

Anyway, GEM. 🙂 It could have beaten Windows. And maybe should have.

My latest Pixel disappointment

dremy1011 asks:

I’m guessing your Pixel came today, first thoughts?  I feel like I’m ruining an article! 

Now worries there, mine hasn’t arrive yet. According to FedEx, which is unreliable, it will arrive today. But we are flying to Mexico City today and leaving here at 1 pm for the airport. And I doubt it will arrive before then. If it does, I will of course bring it. But if it doesn’t—and it probably won’t—I will need to wait a painfully long time before I can use it. (Three weeks: We get back in early November.)

But I’m going through with it either way: My Pixel 7 Pro is packed up to ship back for the trade-in, and I’ll drive it over to UPS this morning.

My latest Bose earbuds disappointment

dremy1011 asks:

Related, how have your Bose Earbuds been, I know you had been back and forth on purchasing them initially.

I went back to the original Bose QuietComfort Earbuds and have given the newer version to my wife. I had two issues that got problematic over time. The fit was never quite right, no matter which tips I tried, and one would pop out occasionally at the gym, which is where I use them the most. And this is weird, but the noise cancelation wasn’t as good at the gym, either. I did multiple days of tests where I literally had each case in a pocket and swapped them back and forth, and the OG version was just better at blocking out the noise. (The fit contributed to this, I think.)

There’s a minor other thing related to controls that’s not a big deal per se, but I prefer the touch controls on the OG version too. It just makes more sense to me and it’s weird that I can’t configure the new versions identically. (Double-tap the right for play/pause, double-tap the left for quiet/aware toggle.)