Review: Razer Nostromo Expert Gaming Keypad

QUICK SUMMARY

A premium gaming keypad.  It appears to have been designed to allow minimal learning time from traditional keyboard gaming functions while still allowing convenient access to more controls in a rather ergonomic form factor.  Noteable design elements include a D-pad, scroll wheel, adjustable palm rest and backlighting.

In all there are 17 push-buttons, a scroll wheel and a 4-way, digital D-pad which can be configured in both 4- and 8-way setups.  The software allows for every single one of these functions to be re-assigned, including setting the scroll wheel as two separate keypresses which repeat with each indentation.  The software also allows for each key to be bound to a macro, which can be of "infinite" length (limited, presumably, by the medium storing the macro as it has no on-board memory) and up to 8 Keymaps to be toggled through at a time either by holding down a key or pressing a key to cycle them with the active Keymap indicated by way of three coloured lights.  A total of 20 profiles, each with 8 Keymaps, can be used in all with manual and task-sensitive switching.

For further details, please visit the Razer website.

Tech Tip: Handbrake part 2

After over a hundred hours of testing, retesting, sleeping, then testing some more, I've finally come up with a configuration for Handbrake that I'm ready to share.  In the interest of full disclosure, however, I will say that I'm not entirely happy with the settings that I've found but I'll explain more about that later.

And, without much more ado, I shall begin part 2 of my Handbrake guide.

Tech tip: Getting the most from the least with Handbrake

It's a simple fact of life that all of us have videos on our home PC.  They could be of cats falling into puddles, instructional videos for heavy machinery, home movies, feature films and just about everything in between.  Some videos we're supposed to have, some we're not, but regardless they all have one thing in common: They all take up space, and chances are they're taking up more space than they need to.

That's where Handbrake and the x264 codec come in.

Update: It has been brought to my attention that these settings introduce what's known as "Ringing" to the output.  Ringing is essentially a visual artefact which causes the visible edges of objects to distort the surrounding detail significantly and unpleasantly.  Though the effect is minimal (to the point I didn't really know what I was looking at) with FHD source material, as the resolution decreases the effect becomes substantially more obvious.  As such, I will be going back to the drawing board and posting an update later based on my findings. 

The new settings are, unfortunately, quite a bit slower - early runs are suggesting no real increase in output size but that is offset by taking between 10% and 100% longer.