I’ve been really happy with the Promise NS4300 network attached storage (NAS). It’s biggest weakness is its noise. I got sick of it so I pulled it apart to see what I could do about it. The PSU fan was a 40×40x20 fan (model AD0412UB-C50). Here’s a spec sheet. The noise level is rated at 36.1 dBA. Finding info on the 80×80x15 case fan (model fd128015eb) was a little tougher. It’s noise level is rated at 37.5dBa.

So far, all I’ve done is put some neoprene washers to isolate the vibrations of the PSU fan and replaced the 80×80x15 with a 92×92x25 fan. I mounted the new fan on the outside of the unit. It makes it uglier, but so far it’s been much quieter. I’ll make guides on how to crack open the housing and what I did later. (Hint: you’ll need a T10 security bit)

The only thing wrong now is that the rpm sensor for the case fan isn’t working, so the unit kept beeping incessantly. I gotta find out if I messed up my fan’s rpm sensor or what. Luckily the web admin interface lets you disable the beeping.

I haven’t expanded the grill for the 92mm fan from the 80mm fan yet. After I do that, I can disable the PSU fan and duct it into the case fan. With the new fan on its lowest speed, the case is 39 deg C. With the fan on its highest speed (it’s still quieter than the old fan) it goes down to 35 deg C.

March 11th, 2008 | Finish Writing Me Plz, Nerd, warranty breaker | 1 comment

Uncompressed Quicktimes are the most requested format requested from me. But it’s a lie! Most uncompressed Quicktimes are compressed. Wikipedia is a good place to start reading. Search for stuff like RGB, YUV, 4:4:4, 4:2:2, digibeta, chroma subsampling, ntsc, pal.

You back? Ok. So a typical “uncompressed” quicktime is usually compressed color-wise. But we don’t care, since everything is chroma subsampled from here on out anyways. Finishing in “true” 10 bit uncompressed 4:4:4 colorspace will be visually identical to a 8bit uncompressed 4:2:2.

10 bit vs 8 bit

I usually stick with 10 bit, since that’s what we get off digibeta. The only time I don’t do 10 bit is when I’m outputting from After Effects, because it normally only does 8 bit, so you waste 2 bits outputting back to 10 bit. Bit bit bit bit bit.

4:2:2

Most “real world” transport streams are at most 4:2:2. In fact, they usually get subsampled even further. Look it up on Wikipedia. So it doesn’t matter if it’s 4:4:4 or 4:2:2, it’s going to get mangled downstream anyways. As for other colorspaces like 4:1:1 or 4:2:0, you can have problems. This is a good read. In particular… this link within that page.

FourCC notes

• 2Yuv – don’t use this one, Final Cut Pro doesn’t know what to do with this.
• 2yuv – use this one instead. This is 8 bit 4:2:2
• v210 – 10 bit 4:2:2

Also, when making uncompressed Quicktimes from outside Quicktime or Apple, make sure your dimensions are a multiple of 8. Otherwise, your video may end up distorted.

If you really want to make an trully 4:4:4 uncompressed video, I’d try using ‘none’ as the compressor or ‘Animation’ set to ‘100′ quality. Animation uses RLE (run length encoding) compression or something so there’s a performance hit but the best in terms of file size. Lossless is inbetween, with a mild performance hit but also has space savings. Apple Lossless is still relatively new and has much less support (e.g. It won’t work in Windows, just like DVCPro HD) so I don’t touch the stuff.

March 2nd, 2008 | Nerd | No comments