Creating a Video Editing Profile

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Creating a Video Editing Profile

Post by Administrator » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:10 am

Creating a Video Editing Profile.

Many problems relating to all aspects of working with Video Software can be avoided by creating a Video Editing Profile.

Creation of a Video Editing Profile does much more than speed up the rendering process, by its very nature it prevents many conflicts caused by the computer running other programs in the background. These programs include things like anti-virus software, screensavers, routine email checking, indexing services and a range of other background processes that most users are probably unaware of.

When you create a video editing profile you also prevent internet access therefore it is perfectly safe to turn off your anti-virus software.

Following my methods below will also make your computer more secure from virus attacks even when you are running your normal profile because of a small but safe registry tweak. (XP Professional only)

I will be making a couple of small but safe registry alterations. I must stress that it is always strongly recommended to make a back up of any registry changes before changing anything, again no need to worry because we will also be doing that as we go along.

Before we start you may wish to create a \"Before and After\" comparison just so that you can see the results of these changes.

Press the following 3 keyboard keys together [ctrl]-[alt]-[del] to bring up the windows task manager.
Select the \"Processes\" tab and then press the [Print Screen] button on your keyboard.
Now open you favourite Photo Editing software (Dont have any? - OK Use 'Paint' - Start | Programs | Accessories | Paint )
Now start a new blank screen and paste. You should now have a copy of the snapshot you just made of your screen when you pressed the [Print Screen] button. Crop away everything other than the Windows Task Manager. Save this image.
Now go back to the windows Task manager and select the Performance tab. Again press the [Print Screen] key. Open your Photo Editing software create a new image and paste. Crop away everything other than the task manager and save.

My images look like this:

Before Starting this Tutorial:

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After completing this Tutorial:

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You can now close the Windows Task Manager.
I think the above pictures are enough to convince you of the benefits of this tutorial - see how much more RAM has been released - it's as though you've been to the Computer store and purchased another Memory Stick!
Less running processes means the computers processor chip can spend more time dealing with your Video Project.
Less running processes also mean less danger of anything running conflicting with your work.

The first step is to create the hardware Profile.
The Second step is to tweak it
The Third Step is to create a separate XP User Account.
The final step is to edit the Startup Menus and the Registry (don't worry I will walk you through it)

Step 1: Create a New Hardware Profile.

Dependant upon how you have set up your Windows Control Panel
Classic View or Category view, follow these screen shots to bring up the
System Properties Hardware Tab

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Or....

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Now click the Hardware Profiles button
In the box that pops up you will see that you will have something named 'Profile 1(current)'
Select the [Copy] button
A box appears for you to enter a name for the profile, I call mine \"Video Editing\"

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'Profile 1' is rather meaningless and so I then select it from the list of available profiles and click the rename button and call it 'Normal'

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Finally on this pop up box I alter the default waiting period setting 30 seconds down to 3 seconds which is more than ample.
This time period relates to a menu that appears when you boot up your computer. A menu will appear allowing you to select which hardware profile you wish to use.
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Press OK and now close all of your dialog boxes.

Now shut down and restart your computer.

If you have done everything correctly so far then when your computer began to start up a menu should have appeared enabling you to select either your normal profile or your video editing profile. After 3 seconds it should have automatically selected your normal profile and continued to start up your computer. If 3 seconds was a bit too quick for you, simply go through the above steps to open up the Hardware profile dialog box and alter the 3 second period to something of your own choosing.

Step 2: Tweaking the Video Editing Profile.

If your now happy that the default setting to automatically select your normal profile is to your liking, we now need to get into that new Video Editing Profile. Although most tweaks can be made from our normal profile, if we want to disable any hardware devices we need to be in the profile concerned.

Shut down the computer and when it starts up again you will see the menu where you can select your normal profile or the video editing profile. This time select the Video Editing Profile.

Our next step is to disable our Internet Connections
hmmmm .... no internet, how are you going to read the rest of this then?

Not to worry as soon as we have followed the steps involved relating to disabling modems, wireless connections and any other devices that allow you to connect to the internet. we will restart our computer back up into our normal profile.

Normal Profile = Everything as it is now with internet enabled.
Video Profile = No means of connecting to the internet.

Follow the steps outlined above to bring up the System Properties dialog Box but this time choose \"Device Manager\"

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Here you can see that I have two methods of connecting to the internet
1. My Modem
2. My Wireless Network
I need to disable them both simply by telling my computer that (in this profile) these items do not exist.

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Right click on the first device you wish to disable and select 'properties'

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Then select
Do not use this device in the current hardware profile (disable)

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The device should now have a red cross next to it

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repeat this procedure for any other devices that allow you to connect to the internet.

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You should have now lost your internet connection.
Now shut down and restart your computer to revert to your normal profile. The internet and everything else should work as usual.

Disabling Various Windows Services
This it the stage where we cut down that huge list in the Windows Task Manager and release that extra RAM and reduce the number of running processes.

You may wish to place the following links in your Web Browsers Favourites folder for future reference:
User Profile for Gamers
Optimize windows XP Services
Disable DLL Catching
A comprehensive Guide to windows Services

Click the [start] button. Select [run] then type services.msc in the box and click ok. Right click a service and a list appears, select 'properties'

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To disable a service:
Select the 'Log on' tab
Click the Video Editing Profile
Click the disable button.

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The list of services is quite long and there will be slight variations between different users computers due to the fact we all have different software (such as anti-virus programs) hardware (such as modems etc.)

The list of settings I made to my computer will provide you with a good starting point to create your own list of enabled/disabled items.

My list is available for you to download in the form of an excel spreadsheet here

Upon loading my spreadsheet you will see a third column \"Start type\"
This relates to the \"General\" tab as shown here:

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There is a tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet for a key to the abbreviations I have used:
A Automatic
D Disabled
E Enabled
M Manual
X Cannot be changed

Step 3 Create a New XP User Account.

The purpose of cresating a seperate XP user account is to turn off any other programs that run when you first start the computer, also to turn off screen savers and background desktop images and anything else that may be unnecessary.

Open the Windows Control Panel and Select 'User Accounts' then create a new user account and name it \"Video Editor\"
We now need to activate this account before we are able to proceed to the next step.
Log Off from XP and then Log on using the newly created Video Editor Account.

Once you have gone through the initial welcome screens right click the desktop and select \"Properties\"
On the Desktop Tab for Background select \"None\"
click the Customise Desktop Tab

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Untick [Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days.]

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Select the Screensaver tab and set it to none.

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Click the power tab and then set everything to \"Never\"

Now check that all of your software to be used within the Video Editing Profile loads and runs. I had a problem with PhotoImpact 11 that kept stopping at this screen

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Despite several tests the only way I could get PhotoImpact11 to run even though this was set as an Administrator Account (bug?) was to modify the shortcut icon as follows:

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Final Step: Edit the Startup menus and the Registry.

This task is best performed from the Normal XP User Profile and so you should log off From windows and then log in to your normal user account.

Our first task is to move any programs in the Windows Start up folder to the Registry. We can also use this opportunity to delete any programs from the startup folder that we don't particularly want anyway but were installed by default with various software installations.

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Open Notepad.
Now open the [Start] [Run] dialog box and enter the following
explorer.exe /n,/e,C:\\
This will open Windows Explorer.
Navigate to C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup

Right click each file in turn (other than desktop.ini)
Select Properties and you will see:

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You will also notice that \"Target\" is already highlighted in blue.
Now simply right click over that blue entry and copy.

Now paste this shortcut into Notepad.
Repeat this process until you have copied all of the shortcuts (That you want to keep) into notepad.
You can now delete those files from the startup folder.

Now navigate to your normal XP user account startup folder
example
C:\\Documents and Settings\\Stephen\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup

And again repeat this process so that any startup programs are now in notepad and have been removed from the startup folder.

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Save your notepad file to your desktop.

Now open the Windows Registry Editor
[Start] [Run] [Regedit]

You will see that the Windows Registry resembles Windows Explorer
with folders and subfolders and various entries in those sub-folders.

The left hand column contains the following

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If it is not already open, click the + symbole next to the entry named
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Then expand the sub-folder Software

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And keep expanding these sub-folders until you reach
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run

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The entries in this folder work in exactly the same was as your windows Explorer Start Menu folder.

1. All users
C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup
2. Each Separate user
C:\\Documents and Settings\\Stephen\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup

The Registry works in the same way:
All users –
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run
Current User –
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run

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What we will now do is

1. Back up the existing [all users run section] of the Registry.
2. Back up the [current user run section] of the registry.
3. Add any items to the [current user run section] that were originally contained in the windows startup folder.
4. Move all entries from the Registry [All users run section] to the [Current User Run Section]
5. If you have Xp Pro we will alter the security setting of the registry [all user run section] to read only. This prevents new startup items being placed there by software installation programs and also is an extra guard against internet virus attacks. If you intend to install new software you can easily revert this to read/write. Move any new entries from the [all user run section] to the [current user run section], or even delete them if they are not desired.

Step 1. Back up the [All Users Run Section]

Currently we should be at this Registry location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run

At the top right of the Registry Editor Select
File | Export

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Navigate to your desktop. Enter the Filename AllUserRun.
In the Save as type: select Win9x/NT 4 Registration Files.
(This makes it possible to edit later with notepad.)
And Save this.

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Step 2. Back up the [current user run section] of the registry.

In the Registry Editor Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run

Follow the same steps above to save this registry location to the desktop and name it CurrentUserRun

Step 3. Add any items to the [current user run section] that were originally contained in the windows startup folder.

We should still be at the location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run

Now select Edit | New | String Value

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Rename this entry to something meaningful. In this example I am going to include Winzip which was originally contained in the windows Startup directory.

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Now we have to add to this new entry the file we wish to run.
You saved this earlier in windows Notepad.

Double click your new entry and a dialog box appears, you can now paste the shortcut from notepad into this box as shown here:

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Repeat this process and move all of your entries that were previously in the windows start menu to the registry
[Current User run] section.

Step 4. Move all entries from the Registry [All users run section] to the [Current User Run Section]

This easiest way to do this is to use a text editor - Windows Notepad will be sufficient. Firstly using notepad open your Previously saved registry file AllUserRun.Reg

Now to preserve that file as a back up re-save the notepad file as
NewAllUserRun.reg

Your notepad file will look something like this:
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run]
\"Norton SystemWorks\"=\"\\\"C:\\\\Program Files\\\\Norton SystemWorks\\\\cfgwiz.exe\\\" /GUID {05858CFD-5CC4-4ceb-AAAF-CF00BF39736A} /MODE CfgWiz\"
\"Creative Detector\"=\"C:\\\\Program Files\\\\Creative\\\\MediaSource\\\\Detector\\\\CTDetect.exe /R\"
\"Ad-watch\"=\"\\\"C:\\\\Program Files\\\\Lavasoft\\\\Ad-aware 6\\\\Ad-watch.exe\\\"\"
\"NeroFilterCheck\"=\"C:\\\\WINDOWS\\\\system32\\\\NeroCheck.exe\"
You can see that all we need do is alter the line I have highlighted in blue to become
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run]
\"Norton SystemWorks\"=\"\\\"C:\\\\Program Files\\\\Norton SystemWorks\\\\cfgwiz.exe\\\" /GUID {05858CFD-5CC4-4ceb-AAAF-CF00BF39736A} /MODE CfgWiz\"
\"Creative Detector\"=\"C:\\\\Program Files\\\\Creative\\\\MediaSource\\\\Detector\\\\CTDetect.exe /R\"
\"Ad-watch\"=\"\\\"C:\\\\Program Files\\\\Lavasoft\\\\Ad-aware 6\\\\Ad-watch.exe\\\"\"
\"NeroFilterCheck\"=\"C:\\\\WINDOWS\\\\system32\\\\NeroCheck.exe\"
Save the modified Notepad file and ensure it ends with a reg extension
NewAllUserRun.reg

Now double click that saved file and accept the prompt to modify the registry.

What we now have are duplicated entries in the Registry
All User Run Section
Current User Run Section.

Navigate to the All User run Section and simply delete entries that are not required which will be most if not all entries.
There is only one entry in my All User run Section, a piece of software specific to my motherboard to monitor the motherboard temperature and cooling fans.

Anything that you decide to keep in the All User Run Section can now be deleted from the Current User run Section.

Step 5. If you have Xp Pro alter the security setting of the [all user run section] to read only.

This is one of the simplest changes you will make to your computer that will also prevent many virus attacks. If you intend to install new software you must however remember to temporarily revert this setting back to read/write.

Navigate to the All User run Section. Then Edit | Permissions

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and now simply click each user in the list in turn and set permissions to read only.

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Repeat this procedure for the current user run section.

All you need to do to use your new Video Editing profile is to re-boot your computer and select the video editing profile, then log on with your Video Editor User Account.

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