Instrumental Anime Project

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:07 pm

rose4emily wrote:Problem is, I checked again, using MPlayer instead of the filesystem metadata and see that the videos marked as 23 were either 24 or 23.something.

In conclusion, by 23 I meant 24.

Wahoo, less resampling for me to do.

Pen-pen: can I get your bumper info? I haven't been able to download your video yet.

Bakadeshi: I downloaded version 1.0 of your Oratorio of Ghibli last night, and as it would take some 40 minutes to download your newest version, I'll just comment on the version that I already have.

0:08 - I really like the moving blur that you have in the background there. It compliments the music well.

0:11 - Was this clip sped up? It looks nice.

As with the blur from before, it really compliments the music.

0:12 - (transition to The Cat Returns) no movement here?

There's still a harp in the background...

0:14-0:42 - I like how you kept the transitions here simple.

0:31 - The girl's foot slows down and ends up moving in a choppy way. I think what you meant to do here was freeze the frame for the rest of the fade before it gets choppy?

0:39 - Shiita's look of surprise, then joy as she's surrounded by birds... priceless.

0:42 - love this part.

0:54-1:07 - You used flashes here to emphasize the drum beats. Personally, I don't like semi-transparent flashes in general. (They just look muddy to me.) The one at 0:56 was good because it was a stronger flash matched with a stronger beat. I know that you probably don't want to give the audience seizures by using full white flashes all the time. Perhaps stronger cuts would be a good alternative to just making flashes within continuous footage. Or instead of flashes you can increase the contrast of the video on the beats, giving it a more "shining" look.

1:24-1:28 - I noticed that at 1:25 you changed to a different scene in order to match the music, but you didn't at 1:27. Sorry for the nitpick; I'm a sucker for consistency. XD

1:47-1:58 - love how the video flows with the music in this section.

1:59 - The drums come in again. I must admit that I like the fades a lot better than the flashes from before. Maybe quicker fades would do better to accentuate the harder beats?

2:14 - Now we've got both white and black flashes. The first group of white strobes looked good to me, and I liked the black flashes. However, at 2:27 you start using white strobes in abundance in order to match the woodwinds in the background. Those are my biggest nitpicks for this video. I don't know... they just seemed distracting. And they also took away some of the vividness of the video.

2:56 - Not sure how I feel about this part... it just kinda stuck out.

3:04 - Smooth sailing from here on to the end. I love the feeling of tranquility that's conveyed by the ending.

That's all I have to say. Just ask if you need any clarifications!

Bakadeshi [AuN Studios] · Post by **Bakadeshi [AuN Studios]** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:35 pm

Jasper-Isis wrote: Bakadeshi: I downloaded version 1.0 of your Oratorio of Ghibli last night, and as it would take some 40 minutes to download your newest version, I'll just comment on the version that I already have.

Thanks, ofcourse you had to post this minutes after I deleted the vobs off my HD for my AWA project ;p Awell no biggie I could always reextract em.

Heres some comments on your comments:

0:11 - Nope thats streight off the DVD, but I like how the hair and grass is moving fast there aswell

0:12 - Fixed in 1.1, the movement was off to the beat in 1.0

0:31 - Darn, thats just cuz the foot scene doesn't last long enough for how long I wanted to carry the fade, so i had to slow down the footage here. I had hoped it wasn't noticable, but now I might have to change it since you picked up on it.

0:54-1:07 - hmm, I guess some people won't like this part for that reason, but I have nothing better to do there. Brightning/Contrasting up the scenes on the darker scenes looked like garbage, trust me the white flashes look better ;p

1:24-1:28 - I'm always inconsistant in my editing :p its probably part of my style. Shes waving to the music in that scene, while in the prvious one I had her flying down to the music, hence why theres no scene change for the second one.

1:59 - hmm I did try that, but I liked the longer fades better. I guess it depends on the person ;p

2:14 - Here is where I might try your suggestion on using brighter scenes instead of white flashes where I strobe it. Because honestly I wasn't sure I liked em like that either, but had no better ideas to use there. I will try it and see.

2:56 - Also looks better in 1.1, its smoother, not so standoutish.

Thanks for the feedback, it gave me a few fresh ideas to try out in certain areas, so there might very well be a 1.2 comming soon.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 10:48 pm

Bakadeshi [AuN Studios] wrote:
Otohiko wrote: In ~2 weeks (maybe less) I'll be going offline indefinitely
aww Indefinately???
yea right, lets see how long that lasts.... your soul is already ours!

Anyway, seriously, thats a shame. Will miss those videos from you in the meantime. If you want, PM me your new address and I'll send you a DVD of the final project when it releases.

I'll try to get my narative done asap, But I'll be in New york the rest of this weekend, so I won't be online again till monday or teusday.

Ah, thanks. Well, by "indefinitely" I mainly mean that I don't know how long it's going to last. It may be as little as a week or less, but it may be a while. It's just out of my control for now, that's all.

So, other than providing all that's needed for my videos that I know about already, tell me if there's anything else that needs to be done before the final release.

ooshna · Post by **ooshna** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 3:14 am

Bakadeshi it would be good to work together. But depending on your schedule I might be a better choice for distributing them mainly b/c I have no job, no school, and never go on vacations because I have to watch my dad all day because he had a bad stroke a few yeas back.

Songbird21 · Post by **Songbird21** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 3:24 am

Just finished uploading a completed (Finally) version 1.0 or Warrior's Dance to Kalium's FTP. Please let me know what you guys think. Please feel free to nitpick it to death. I want this to be at it's best when I submit my final version.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 9:25 am

I just got my first check for the summer and picked out a machine for my full-time server/router. It'll take 1-2 weeks to ship - but, when it does, we'll be in business for completing and distributing this thing.

Until then: I'll be leaving my laptop server up for most of this weekend - barring any freak testing issues at my father's job. That should at least give the mirror servers a chance to synchronize and anyone who has new work a chance to put it up so I can continue with the compilation work. I should also have the preliminary (unprocessed/uncolored) drawing for the setting done and settled upon (I've been going through drafts). I've also set up Audacity and my recording drivers so I'll be ready to start with the narrative audio as the scripts come in. I'd have everyone use their own voices for the narrative, but that wouldn't really work with the visual contect of the narrative sections (i/e - the same person with multiple voices?).

If you can't get your frame rate to an exact 24 fps, I can do that for you. Just be forewarned that my method is a script that just doubles or removes a frame every n frames to get the right number of frames (much like is done for international television), so there's no fancy blending techniques to maximize smoothness.

I like the idea of a DVD distribution. I don't have a DVD burner, so there isn't much I can do other than make a VHQ version of the compilation for someone else to distribute, but I think it's a cool idea.

I will also host a downloadable (~700mb per file for two files) version for people with fast internet connections and no desire to deal with money or the postal service. I might try a reduced-size encoding to see how it comes out, but I wont post it if it comes out too ugly to be representitive of the project.

Otohiko - aww... no huffman. damn. at least the xvid is a very good looking xvid, and a little hand-editing can do wonders to compressed footage if you ever want a pristinely restored version. Do you remember what the first half of my video looked like in its original incarnaion? I shall use fansub footage no more. As to your absence from the Internet, nothing like moving to disrupt that (as we've all seen with my server connection). Good luck with Ottawa, anyhow, and feel free to toss me a note (e-mail, snail mail, whatever) if you can't download the finished version and would like a CD copy or first notice on the DVD if/when it becomes available. Your contribution to this project has definately been worth a plastic disk and trip to the post office (probably much more - but we are all volunteers), and I'd hate to think we went through all this work if some of us couldn't harvest the rewards of our effort. The same goes for anyone else who is stuck on dial-up or otherwise unable to reasonably obtain the downloadable version.

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Thanks to Paizuri for getting the end of this thread to show up again. Small favor, big help.

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:40 pm

rose4emily wrote:If you can't get your frame rate to an exact 24 fps, I can do that for you. Just be forewarned that my method is a script that just doubles or removes a frame every n frames to get the right number of frames (much like is done for international television), so there's no fancy blending techniques to maximize smoothness.

It's pretty easy to change framerates using VirtualDub or AVISynth. Audio can be resampled using the BeSweet GUI. The problem with reducing the framerate would be that very precisely-timed edits could lose their precision. (I inferred this from the Reflections of Style thread.)

Songbird21 · Post by **Songbird21** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:19 pm

Can someone please review my beta (Warrior's Dance)? I really would like to fix it if it needs to be fixed so I can get to work on my second entry.

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:27 pm

The only gripe that I can make is the splitting transition that you used at 0:10. It stuck out to me because it was used only that one time in the whole video, whereas you were consistent with the use of other effects, like the negative flashes. I'm usually not a fan of negative flashes, but since this is an action video, I suppose it fits. Though I feel that there's a bit of overuse of that effect in the beginning of the video. (This is going by my personal preferences.) Other than that, it's great! All the timing is dead-on.

Oh yeah, and you might want to crop out the black borders.

Is it just me, or did you encode this version at lower quality than v0.9?

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:31 pm

@Songbird -

Forgot to mention: your video is one of those that may lose the well-timed cuts if it is decimated down to 24fps. (I'm assuming that you are currently in 29.97fps.) Why don't you try resampling it to see what happens?