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Turn information into a podcast automatically with NotebookLM

I maybe late to the NotebookLM train but I’m blown away. From Google’s page “…Audio Overview [turns] your documents into engaging audio discussions. With one click, two AI hosts start up a lively “deep dive” discussion based on your sources. They summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth. You can even download the conversation and take it on the go.”

I dropped this 22 page academic paper “My Boyfriend is AI”: A Computational Analysis of Human-AI Companionship in Reddit’s AI Community into a notebook. Then, by clicking on the Audio Overview function, Google’s Gemini generated a 2-person interview style podcast after about 20 minutes. I actually clicked twice accidentally, and it made a second one. You can listen or download them: Podcast 1, Podcast 2.

And for additional listening – here is the IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C as a 2-person podcast. And a podcast on the “IPCC Global Warming Policy Makers Summary”.

The audio dialog, voices, life-likeness is amazing. Have a listen and compare it to the written paper.

Davinci Resolve settings to edit HDR iPhone and Sony videos

Davinci Resolve (DR) is a free, popular, powerful, and fully featured video editor. However, setting it up to edit footage in HDR and exporting HDR clips for Instagram and YouTube can be challenging as there are multiple settings to get right, and a lot of outdated tutorials and FAQs on the Internet.

Apple Macbook Pro computers from 2021 have an XDR (HDR) display that can be used successfully to edit HDR footage but setting up DR to do so correctly can be puzzling. Sometimes footage looks over saturated after it is imported into DR’s timeline, and sometimes footage can look washed out when it is exported. The settings below ensure:

  1. Exported videos from an HDR timeline have the correct metadata to be recognised in Instagram and Youtube
  2. The exported videos look the same as they did in DR’s edit timeline
  3. Footage from iPhone and Sony cameras can be used in the same timeline

The best test footage to use is a color reference target like the X-Rite Colorchecker, but any scene with a variety of colors and good dynamic range will do. This will allow you to match the footage from Sony cameras and iPhones. The image below shows how the footage from the camera, DR’s timeline and exported clips are identical, despite different codecs and software.

Settings for HDR footage* from iPhone (not ProRes) and Sony cameras using SLog3.

(*These settings only apply if you are working on a MacBook Pro with its XDR display. Editing HDR footage on a non-HDR display will require different settings and not covered here.)

Display settings for HDR

– On the iPhone, make sure “HDR Video” option is turned on. This setting is in Settings/Camera/Record Video
– On your Sony camera, enable Log option and choose S-Gamut3.Cine/S-Log3, There are several ways to enable this depending on the camera model
– On your MacBook Pro, choose the Display Preset HDR Video (P3-ST 2084) in Settings. This is critical to get the correct luminance on your HDR display. The screen might look dark compared to what you may be used to but it will display the HDR luminance range correctly
– Create a new project in DR with Color Management settings as shown in the screenshot below. The Color Managed option is the simplest and cleanest approach. Note, the “free” version of DR is able to edit and export HDR footage, you don’t need to have the Studio version. Make sure the Output color space is HLG – any other settings like Rec.2020 ST2084 won’t work for Instagram, despite many tutorials saying otherwise.

– Import the footage and place in a Timeline.
– For iPhone footage, set the clip’s Input Color Space to HLG/Rec.2020 HLG as shown in the screenshot
– For Sony log footage, set the Input Colour Space to S-Gamut3.Cine/S-Log3 (assuming this is what you shot the footage in. S-Gamut3.Cine is the preferred format if you intend to grade for HDR)
– Make the color gradings you want to match the colours from the two cameras

– To export, go to the Deliver tab and choose the export profile H265 Master, or use H265 Master via Quick Export, do not make any changes to the preset. Export the footage and open in Quicktime Player. The footage should look identical to the video in the timeline
– Upload the footage into Instagram as a Reel and observe that the screen confirms that it is in HDR format. You can also use the Instagram Edits app to make further edits, and the HDR format will be preserved
– For more information, there is an excellent Youtube video here.

Non Colour Managed Settings

If you do not use DR’s Colour Managed timeline, the setting to use is shown below. A very important note – do not use Rec.2020 ST2084 as the Output color space if you want to generate Instagram compatible HDR. While YouTube will accept ST2084, Instagram will not. Here is the setting:

You will then need to use a Colour Space Transform CST node for Sony footage. This can be separated into two nodes if you want to add other nodes for color grading, but this CST is the minimum needed to have the footage render correctly in DR and when exported. The iPhone footage does not need a CST.:

Setup IPv6 vlans on unifi with a /56 prefix on Unifi and NBN

I haven’t found any examples of how to setup ipv6 vlans on Unifi Network with a /56 prefix.

I have a service with Superloop in Australia. Superloop provides customers with a /56 IPv6 address. This means that with the appropriate router, you can setup 256 subnets. However, with Ubiquiti Unifi routers, it’s not clear how to assign a subnet to a VLAN. This is what works for me:

Assume I have 4 VLANs. Default, IoT, Servers, and Security. And I have this IPv6 prefix from my ISP 2401:8888:1234:a000::/56

You can see from using a subnet calculator that this gives the subnets :a000:: to :a0ff::

2401:8888:1234:a000::/64
2401:8888:1234:a001::/64
2401:8888:1234:a002::/64

2401:8888:1234:a0ff::/64

The Unifi Network app will automatically assign your VLANs with a subnet starting from “a000” once you choose either the SLAAC or DHCPv6 option for client address assignment – see screenshot below. And each VLAN you enable with either IPv6 SLAAC or DHCPv6 will get the next subnet. “…a000::”, then “…a001::”, “…a002::” and so on. You can’t choose which subnet prefix, it does this automatically. The configuration page (Settings/Networks/<Network name>) does say that the ability to select the subnet will be something that may be provided in the future, but not being able to choose doesn’t affect much for me.

I’ve tested this with both SLAAC and DHCPv6 and either works fine with my ISP. Note if you have Android devices on your network, SLAAC is recommended.

Unifi setup for SLACC

Time Machine on macOS can chew up disk space for photographers

Public service announcement for photographers and anyone that add and delete lots of files on their Apple Mac computers.

If you’re using a Mac, and your disk seems to be filling up even though you’re deleting files, check if you’re using Time Machine (TM) for backups. If you are, Time Machine’s Snapshots is 99% going to be chewing up your disk. Here’s why…

Snapshots is macOS approach to create a restore point so you get your Mac to a known state. It does this by combining the last TM backup with a snapshot. The backup has all the files just before the snapshot and the snapshot has all the files that you have deleted since the backup.

So, let’s say you’ve just copied from your camera 1000 photos for editing and have now decided to move those 1000 photos to an external disk, NAS or just delete them. Even though you’ve deleted the 1000 photos, macOS has kept them in the Snapshot, and will keep them in Snapshots until a TM backup has been done. It will still keep those on your disk until at least 24 hours after the TM backup, because that’s what it does. So your 256GB or 512GB SSD is going to fill up pretty quickly and deleting files isn’t going to get you back your disk space until you’ve done a TM backup, and then 24 hours later.

But, luckily there’s a simple solution. Go into the Disk Utility App and choose Show APFS Snapshots in the View menu. Select your disk and you’ll see probably several Snapshots. Click on the – sign and you can delete the snapshots, start with the most recent going back to the earliest. And Voila. Disk space reclaimed. Of course, if you do that, you won’t be able to recover the files in the snapshot. But since you deleted them anyway, you probably don’t want them.

And, the way to avoid this and keep using Time Machine is to create a separate disk Volume that is excluded in Time Machine backups. You need to create a separate volume because excluding a Folder in TM won’t stop TM keeping the deleted files in the snapshot, it just stops TM from backing up that folder.

More technical details about snapshots here https://eclecticlight.co/2024/04/08/apfs-snapshots/

Swapping a UDM Base for a UCG-Max

I’ve had a Ubiquiti Unifi Dream Machine for almost five years powering an NBN Fibre Gigabit service. Knowing that the probability of electronics that run 24/7 tend to go bang goes up every year it was time to swap it out for something more current and keep the UDM as a backup router/gateway.

Ubiquiti has released a lot of new equipment this year and one that is ticking a lot of boxes and have received good reviews is the Unifi Cloud Gateway Max, aka UCG-Max. This is essentially an upgraded UDM without a built in wifi access point. The UCG has not only the Network app that delivers the routing, VLAN and firewall, but several other applications in the Ubiquiti universe like Protect which is used to manage cameras. The other main feature is that it features 2.5Gbps ports and can route traffic at 1.5Gbps with a packet inspection firewall turned on.

Migrating from the UDM to the UCG is incredibly straightforward. Backup the system, and restore it to the new device. Unplug the UDM and replace it with the UCG. The following video shows how it’s done.