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Five hundred twenty-third entry - I blame pink haze for my re-sparked obsession with Darren Hayes
2013-04-26 23:52:08
Time - 10:18, Noise - Darren Hayes - "Stupid Mistake"
So I have exactly one month to edit something if I want to meet my personal deadline of putting out a new video on my birthday, as seems to be the tradition. I think it's time to get crackin'.
Oh oh oh! So I FINALLY came up with an idea for a Tomb Raider video! I have been stumped for years on this one, but with the new game, I think I can actually make something work. I just have to cut down the seven minute beast of a song to a more tolerable length - not easy to do, since it's sort of a cinematic-styled rendition. It's not really meant to be hacked up and reassembled, but I'm sure I'll figure out how to tweak it in an acceptable way. It's not that I'm against editing a long video, so much as I'm not sure I'll be able to keep the tension high enough for that long, or that I'll have enough footage to pull it off.
Let's see... what else. I finished uploading my Let's Play of the Vergil's Downfall DLC for DmC Devil May Cry. I'm trying to clear off hard drive space, which has encouraged me to finally get around to processing my .vobs. Although I'm still not entirely happy with the export that Magix has forced onto me, it does work and it uploads just fine later on, so I can live with it for these videos. I'll have to do more troubleshooting if it gives me grief with AMVs.
I got my second idea ever for a live action video the other day. It's a terrible idea, too - the "so bad I have to make it" variety. For House MD, of all things. It would be a boring video, incidentally, since that entire show is effectively comprised of meaningful face shots, most often of Hugh Laurie. Oh wait, that would make it like all of the popular romance videos on this site. (Sorry, the jibe was too obvious not to take, and I am slinging mud my own way on that one, in all fairness, if you've ever watched Let the World Crash.)
In case you were wondering - I'm sure you weren't - the first idea I ever got was for a pointless Resident Evil action video (which I'm still planning on doing someday, if only to hone my action skills). I don't really dig LA videos for the most part - too much dialogue, not enough active movement. If you don't know the show, you typically don't get the video, whereas games and anime are a little more "body language," for whatever reason. Maybe that's just my perception of it.
So, ACen? Anybody? Who am I unintentionally avoiding seeing this year? I hear there's no AMV contest, unless that's changed. Sort of puts the kibosh on my desire to get a video done, but hey, what could be more deserving of a video release than my golden birthday? Pretty much any other day of the year, I guess. So yeah, if you see me, shower me with preemptive presents. Like the loose change in your pocket or something. Or your love. Also an acceptable - if useless - substitute.
See you, folks.
- Jen -
Five hundred twenty-second entry - migraine pending
2013-04-07 18:25:39
Time - 5:23, Noise - the blood boiling in my ears
Aaaaaaand now my audio is out of synch with my video upon export.
MAGIX YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO MAKE THIS EASIER NOT HARDER.
Carry on, folks.
- Jen -
Five hundred twenty-first entry - typical Friday night (Saturday morning?) alone
2013-04-06 02:13:21
Time - 12:47, Noise - Journey OST
Well, gee golly whiz, there must only be like three people on this site who use Magix. Guess I'll have to troubleshoot the problem myself.
And on that note, holy fuck, if you aren't using a cheaper program like Magix, where the hell are you people getting the hundreds of dollars for Vegas, Premiere, Final Cut, etc.? Share the wealth, please and thank you.
In other news, blasting through Tomb Raider to catch up to the part I need to record again didn't take too long. I only needed three sittings of dedicated play to get there. I find that I'm still dying a lot, though, even on Easy Mode. Part of that is a general lack of caution on my part (trying to Rambo my way through everything), but I'm finding that this game just has a lot of cheap shots.
I don't know. It's too combat heavy for my tastes. It's like the illegitimate child of Uncharted and Resident Evil 4. More platforming, less shooting, thanks. In the future, though, all playthroughs will be on Easy Mode. I don't feel bad in the slightest by saying that, either. This isn't the kind of game at which I excel and I'm not going to put myself through frustration when the experience as a whole will be the same.
Anyway, I have one more theory to try for getting the footage to work in Magix before I give up and go back to the other editing program (just for the Let's Play series), which I really didn't like and would greatly prefer not to use again. I would say "fuck technology," but let's face it: I'm too far gone with attachment. Me 'n my compy 2gether 4 ever. <3
See you, folks.
- Jen -
Five hundred twentieth entry - a little hang up
2013-03-30 23:53:30
Time - 10:51, Noise - blissfully silent
Magix users, HALP:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=112701
In other news, my life is a goddamn awful trainwreck.
Carry on, folks.
- Jen -
Five hundred nineteenth entry - "you mother-ranter" seems like a good insult
2013-03-24 14:44:21
Time - 12:42, Noise - mother ranting
Amount of Attention Paid to VCAs This Year
"Did Fay-Sa's video make it in the horror category? No? Fuck this shit."
/attention
In related AMV news, I think Ut video and I have come to a shaky truce. Since Magix still hates Lagarith with a burning passion - it gives weird frame-long video glitches a couple of times throughout an otherwise normal video and is constant with all versions of the program and codec - I have decided to give Ut another chance.
I can't do the Huffyuv thing anymore. It just eats up too much hard drive space. I have two terabytes between two drives, and they're almost all gone from video processing. (I'll get quite a bit back when I get off my ass and process these Let's Play videos, which I am doing slowly.)
Oh, so I played the Vergil's Downfall DLC for DmC Devil May Cry. It's, uh... not that good. Not terrible, but when you have to rehash a location from the game, and then make me replay that exact same level a few missions later... we have a problem.
The ad talked about new enemies, but those only number two (well, three if you count an uninspired boss), and the game is so proud of itself for one of them that you'll be fighting it in just about every skirmish. Most other battles are the same thing over and over, and Yamato just feels like you're doing the same combo over and over, regardless of what you're actually doing.
Vergil's DT is a little more useful than Dante's was, as it can be used for multiple purposes without entering DT - for example, the Spiral Swords move, which has good lasting power and recharges fairly quickly. However, don't expect to be dominating the game with Super Vergil, because DT doesn't have the stunlock-shit-in-the-air ability of Dante's version. The actual Devil Trigger move is not as good as far as I have seen, but I haven't used it much.
Most of the difficulty of the game comes from Vergil's inadequacies and not really from player error. His dodges seem slower and his attack animations are harder to break out of, meaning you can see a demon rearing up on you, smash the dodge button repeatedly, and Vergil will stupidly keep slashing his sword to the end of the combo instead of getting the hell out of there like you wanted him to. Most of the damage I took was from this, although the pattern of mindless button mashing that I got into as I lost interest in battles also caused quite a bit of pain.
Secrets are easy to find for the most part. I only needed to look up a few lost souls and health cross fragments. There are no extra unlockables as artwork goes and whatnot, although there are a few more trophies.
The stats menu clearly didn't get double checked before release, because it has some mistakes in it. Like me having obtained 20/19 health cross fragments, or having defeated the Mission 05 boss zero times, despite having beaten the scenario on five different difficulties. Also a trophy that the system said I got, but which doesn't appear as being completed in DmC's in-game listing. The environments are more glitchy overall if you get too close to piles of rubble, and enemies will sometimes hilariously get caught on them. You can tell that this was a rush job, and it was peppered with problems during production.
Oh, and lastly. The cutscenes. The goddamn, ugly, thoughtless cutscenes. Imagine bad comic book art. Now give it some form of bad animation. And there you have the main driving story scenes of the DLC. There are some short scenes rendered out during the missions, and those are okay, even though they clearly imported Dante's animations for a few things. However, I was unfortunately disappointed by the low quality of the scenes otherwise.
For $8.99, it's not the worst thing you could buy, and if you really loved DmC, it's probably worth it. Nostalgia is what drove me, yearnings for the Vergil of olden times.... that, and a great irritation at how much of a useless twat he was during the main game, and so I wanted to see him actually fighting for once.
I also downloaded the Bloody Palace (free of charge), as well as a costume pack for Dante (why not). Barring some other unexpected release, I think that will close my time with this game for a while. It's not nearly so replayable as the old games, but it was a decent action game, and it deserved most of the praise that it got, although definitely not all of it.
So anyway, sorry to type your eyes out (at least, that seems like a reasonable way of saying "talked your ear off" in internet-ese). I gotta go get ready for work.
See you, folks.
- Jen
PS: I kind of want to make a DmC video, but the actual cutscenes surprisingly don't have that much going on during them, so I don't know. Also, I don't particularly have a song in mind yet.
JOURNAL: dj_ultima_the_great (Jen )
Current server time: May 24, 2013 00:56:19