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those who suffer | have no voice
2005-01-18 10:32:42
SH093: released
SH094:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: ripped (may require edit)
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: partial
- Clipping: 0/12
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
#93 finished post-production and export last night, and was released this morning, despite the strains of having to drive all around creation last night picking up people after car problems. Eventually, the thrift of keeping the same vehicle forever has to be balanced against the cost of major repairs; so far the equation is working out, but we'll be in a fix the next time if it's the transmission rather than the constant-velocity shaft.
#94, on the other hand, is going to be a fairly straight-ahead video that will require a lot of close attention to detail, unlike the two vids I've done with Magix so far. There is not a lot of room to look past, because this one is going to be pointed at Anime Boston, and will probably be the last video developed for con release before 2006. I've got fairly good source, fairly well cleaned, and what remains is to make a decent video out of it. The immediate focus of production for probably the rest of the week is going to be on tweaking the song (I'm feeling too much self-absorbed slack space) and planning out the flow of the video.
This has taken enormous importance as I've gotten into working with a multitrack NLE, and it's something I should have picked up on earlier from my Acid work. The greater degree of control that Magix provides induces a smaller and smaller effective focus, to the point at which it is very difficult to have the video make itself, dictate its own course, as was often the case with MovieStar. I'm seeing the video in three-second chunks, and while that's great for making sure that the timing works out, it's pretty awful for effortless flow. The answer, of course, is more planning and better process; I got this goddamn-huge drive for a reason, and that reason was to hold source. No overage is too much; only "too much" will suffice for real coverage.
It's also a pain not to be able to coordinate source via thumbnails as in MovieStar, but the added search burden isn't too significant, and a lot of the time, those thumbnails were misleading and I had to preview the video anyway. Maa ii.
Club Friday.....gotta figure out what I want to swipe, and how I'm going to cart in the stuff I'm donating. I really need a bigger bag, one that I can also use in Europe where shooter's bags with Special Forces insignia on them will draw too much police attention. Even in the People's Republic of Cambridge it gets me immunity from police hassling, but over there.....
--Kai out
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you can get out all your weapons
2005-01-17 11:46:02
SH093:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: complete
- Postproc: partial
- Export: partial
SH094:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: 0/12
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
I have more or less lost patience completely with Magix's export capabilities. The idea that people would want to edit digital video for digital playback seems to have entirely escaped its developers. If you want progressive footage, you have to export as MPEG; while I can deal with this and do have a process for it, it's not as good as it should be given that Magix can also export uncompressed AVI -- with full interlacing. This is no longer simply "stupid", but pushes hard on "ridiculous" -- couldn't they at least do a proper telecine? More evidence that this program was developed in Europe, the land of kludge-and-munge 25/50 PAL. Fuckers.
SH093 finished yesterday with 6 hours of work devoted, and in the deinterlaced MPEG2 I squeezed out, looks pretty nice. I may make some extra tweaks, but tonight the principal aim is to dump out a SHQ MPEG2 to mix down for distro, and try by hook or crook to get the rainbows out of the source. It's not a big problem, but I'd rather not see them in the few places where they do present a problem. The difficulty, though, is that there are several effects in this video that may get adversely affected by rainbow cleaning. Definitely have to do this in pre-production next time instead of in post.
I also managed, in between the good guys winning all four playoff games, to get the music for SH094 ripped. The CD it was on was killing Keystone pretty consistently, which finally gave me an unavoidable need to put CDEx on Battlefreak. I should probably also get checked out on whatever audio gear I have loaded, but that's probably an issue for another day. Right now, I've got a MPEG2 to dig out, a video to finish post on, and a bunch of administrative stuff to take care of, at work and outside. Fucking HR, letting benefits slide for "rehires" who haven't previously been eligible...
--Kai out
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and kneel to the cross on the wall
2005-01-14 14:39:18
SH093:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: none
- Postproc: planned (partial)
- Export: none
SH094:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: none
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: 0/12
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Amazingly, INSO2 also got a largely positive reaction. This is fucking weird. At any rate, I cut through everything needed for SH093 that needed to be cut, and loaded some stuff that I had precollected from various sources, which may or may not be needed. Editing will go down over the weekend (there'll be enough time around the football-watching schedule), and hopefully the finished product will go up (and in the unconventional contest) on Monday. I need to start looking at convention requirements again, even though it's going to be #94 that will be headed in those directions. With this new editing suite, I now also have the ability to do arbitrary bitrates on MPEG2, which is always good for con exports -- provided that I can grab time to go to the post office and send them out.
Work gets more interesting and dangerous every day. First we fixed an arcing problem that was throwing 250,000 electron-volts into the roof of the machine, then we swept for radiation and discovered that leaving the top cover off leads to the roof getting saturated with soft X-rays. This while doing ion bombardment with toxic gases. There's fun, and then there's semiconductor-industry fun.
--Kai out
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with doubt | with pain
2005-01-13 16:51:51
SH093:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: 0/2
- Edit: none
- Postproc: planned (partial)
- Export: none
SH094:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: none
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: 0/12
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
The cat is officially out of the bag on INSO4, thanks to Kalium; it can now be revealed that said video is a parody of Ben Jelen's song "Christine" using footage from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. It was fun making the video, fun playing the prank on .org viewers while it lasted, and fun seeing people's reactions. Today's experiment: SUCCESS.
Meanwhile, INSO2 went for release, because it was determined on further review to be nearly nifty enough for public screening. Tonight, I'm hoping to get the storyboard and at least half the clipping done for SH093, with the intent to finish it up tomorrow being as there's no point in going to club (no need for Nadesico and no library checkout anyways). The wheels are rolling again, at work as well; I got through a bunch of administrative bullshit and blasted a bunch of problems off the tool.
Of course, my knee went totally to shit and I may end up coming in on the weekend because there's a cunstomer crunch and someone on the third machine set part of their mainboard on fire, but that's what karma gets you. Just notmal karma, though; unfortunately, Karma Rosenberg is not involved anywhere in this situation. :(
--Kai out
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paranoia, whipped in a frenzy
2005-01-12 08:53:54
Video progress report:
INSO4: released
SH093:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: 0/2
- Edit: none
- Postproc: planned (partial)
- Export: none
SH094:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: none
- Precleaning: complete
- Clipping: 0/12
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
INSO4 has indeed been released and is out spreading havoc. Doing this release properly was a pain in the neck and involved entirely too much website-updating, but hopefully it will pay off. Now, though, I have to do another live-action video for this "live in '05" contest; I'm thinking hacking over some German movies to these two ideas that would have required me renting all of Last Exile and probably most of Wolf's Rain and Witch Hunter Robin. Much simpler to work from source that I already have.
SH093 is in the blocks and ready to go, though clipping probably won't start until tomorrow; I've got to go on a white elephant chase around the North Shore tonight, again provided that the machine doesn't go to hell.
The jig on INSO4 should be up within the day; I'm sick of talking around the content and concept.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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