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forget the past
2004-12-23 11:00:41
Video progress report:
SH093:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: none
- Precleaning: partial
- Clipping: none
- Edit: none
- Postproc: planned (partial)
- Export: none
INSO2:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: partial (may involve edit)
- Precleaning: complete?
- Clipping: none
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
I'm using Vic's method rather than that of the main guides for source cleaning, with some minor tweaks of my own, at least on INSO2. The issue is pretty much the recoverability threshold of the source; it's difficult to make a more-or-less homebrewed movie from 1969 look really crisp, so a compressed working-set version make sense, and also saves me a hell of drivespace. Issues with the VOBs involved may mean that precleaning is done now, or that I still have two files to crank through. Clipping will start in the near future, and depending on final filesize may continue over the holidays. Otherwise, I set #93 precleaning and tell the drives to shut off when they're done.
Working from DVD, at least in the initial stages, requires a bit more technical thinking and planning than I'm used to. However, once the precleaning is done, I can basically swing into processes I'm familiar with and just roll from there. It's more of a conceptual than actual speedbump; as soon as I can get a good and dependable process worked up for it, it won't be as significant. I'm already coding somewhat ahead as regards the AVS stuff I need, and definitely thinking critically about what results I need on my system.
Time management, technical constraints, rigid processes, varying interactive component; AMV is getting more and more like work, which hopefully means that I'll continue to dig it. Counting on down to ship date.....
--Kai out
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evolve into soul-felt questions
2004-12-22 13:34:08
I was reading over some guides (on music synch and plotting) today, in part hunting up some tech tips (as I've gotten started moving again), and I was getting really dissatisfied with what I was reading. As soon as the material moved off the technical hardpoints, it got stupid, and got stupid principally because it made a lot of assumptions about what was right and what would be considered desirable to achieve. One of them essentially lost structure and started bleeding nonsense all over the place. It was obvious that the writers had no clue about what they were trying to articulate -- or no way to communicate it.
And I realized that while I do understand the essentials of what they were trying to get at, I can't articulate it either. All I can do is say, no, this is wrong, but I can't do more than point out *what* is wrong; I can barely idenify *why*, and I certainly can't describe how to do it right. The result is pushing me really hard towards rejecting the whole idea of stylistic or conceptual guides. You can teach someone to press down the strings or valves or keys on an instrument and generate sound, and teach them to follow notes and keep time, but you can't teach someone how to *play music*. You can teach theory and how to build chords, demonstrate what tones sound like on different instruments, how to use notation, but you can't teach someone how to compose and create *music*. The ability is just *there* to greater or lesser degrees, and if there are ways to increase or develop it, they vary from person to person and certainly don't correspond to anything rational or that can be articulated as general guidelines.
You can't teach *art*. All you can do is teach technique and hope the student can connect the dots on their own. I'm not convinced yet (and may not ever be) that AMV is really "art", but to the extent that it is, it cannot be taught beyond the technical level, and any attempts to do so will produce not new works, but stale imitations of older ones.
If I go further on this line, this post will just turn into another ".org culture considered harmful" screed, of which I have to date written several and posted none. The point is more another step in where I am intellectually as respects this hobby: at the beginning I thought I had all the answers, and others were wrong; later, I saw what other people had and put less stock in the belief that what I had observed was in any way universal; now I can see that other people's takes are also far from universal, and I know that I certainly don't have all the answers, or even possibly any of the correct ones.
If you want to make a better video, make another video. Think about what you like about other people's videos, and what you like and hate about your own work. Develop the good, shed the bad, repeat.
Accordingly, I'm working on two projects, which will also see the emergence of a new progress format, as show:
SH093:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: no
- Precleaning: partial
- Clipping: none
- Edit: none
- Postproc: planned (partial)
- Export: none
INS02:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: partial (may involve edit)
- Precleaning: partial
- Clipping: none
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
This replaces the percentage system used to date, because it wasn't representing the actual work going into the video very well, and doesn't even have captions for most phases of DVD-based process. This may take some tweaks as I settle in to production with Magix; INS02 is a shakedown project that isn't going to involve much to any effects, just placing clips and straight-cutting, and SH093 is going to be the first AMV with the new setup. Right now I'm just making sure that I can get the technical stuff down and to the point where I can just run wild creatively on the editor.
Grimlock news:
The Naicitrom song will be recorded after the holidays. It's mostly arranged, I just need to make sure the live instruments are all in tune and probably get a real microphone. The earbud I've been using to record with has very bad low response, which is a kiss of death with the way the tunings have to go.
I should really be writing more original music, but I've got fixes to make to a bunch of written projects as well as those videos to work on, and I'm still at work 10 hours a day. Getting behind on something is pretty unavoidable, and since my work situation basically prevents me from being in a band, music usually gets the short end of the stick. Damnit.
--Kai out
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it's my last supper
2004-12-21 14:12:11
Time is drawing short, and despite that "unconventional videos" contest, it's looking less and less likely that I'll be able to get a new video out before the end of the year. I still have Christmas shopping to do this week, and there are relatives out of state to visit next week. You kind of have to when your three remaining grandparents are all pushing hard on 80 and you're about to leave the country for a year or so.
However, I'm definitely getting into position to do another video, which despite being short off short source will probably occupy all of January in the production process; the respite here at work will likely not last much past New Years' due to another demo at the end of January. At the least I'll probably have to take my year's vacation before I leave; I don't expect getting much voluntary time off when overseas.
When the hell did I find the time to do videos way back when? Must have just been young and more resilient; more able to do 18-hour days thick with editing.
--Kai out
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beware the coming of night
2004-12-17 12:11:42
No club tonight -- or at least none worth going in to as of right now -- so possibly some time for video work if I can get a few things squared away. I want to start moving, because I'm at a standstill on nearly everything else.
Some odd tidbits of late:
- Apparently my forum avatar makes some people sick. Kickass. \m/.
- #89 has received a total of 4 stars, including one 1 and at least 1 5, possibly two. I don't know where this is going or what it means.
It's looking less likely that I'll get the next video under serious production before the end of the year, but I'm still hoping. Things should clear off a little at work, and I might be able to drop down to only 45 hours a week instead of 60.
--Kai out
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till it forever bleeds
2004-12-14 15:59:26
I would describe it as an invisible darkness
Casting a shadow, a blinding black
Guarded by hope, my soul is kept from
The bloody claws
Look to beyond, what vision lets me see
Time after time, unneeded misery
Holding tight to my dreams
I own no price for you
I grip them tight and hope for sight
Open my eyes wide to see a moment of clarity
Confusion gone, it's in your hands
Your turn to ask why
Life is like a mystery
With many clues, but with few answers
To tell us what it is that we can do to look
For messages that keep us from the truth
- C. Schuldiner, "A Moment of Clarity", 1998
Three years have come and gone, and now that we are today burying another legend, some may ask at what point it is time to move on and let the dead lie; at what point does it become toxic to mourn. And the answer, as evinced by various reactions to Dime's recent murder, is that it is not over, and we cannot forget these men, until we have truly effected the transformation of our current society into something that truly reflects their ideals.
There are nose-sneering articles in the right-wing press today, all but blaming Dime for his own death, accusing him of contributing to a toxic culture of filth and violence -- one which we participants know holds some of the purest ideals in music and inspires countless thousands to hold their heads up in the face of a world that conspires openly against them. The vultures of the left and the right have descended on the Alrosa Villa, with Ted Nugent and anti-gun-violence groups making Dime's memorial their political OK Corral. And the mainstream schlumps on, content to deny, dissemble, and disdain, feeding the jackals the latest tearings from the Peterson trial, while one of the most important musicians of his generation is laid to rest and a worldwide culture mourns. There is something horrendously wrong with society when this level of disrespect can be dropped on a well-known and influential figure, simply because he had long hair, a loud guitar, and a mildly titillating nickname.
Support Music, Not Rumors. That's what it all comes back to, Chuck's incessantly quoted maxim, and Dime's seldom-explicitly-articulated way of life. At the core is the idea that the truth, the *reality*, is what matters, and that it is not only stupid but dishonest to be distracted by image. This is a philosophy that both major political persuasions in this country claim to follow, but seldom enforce in practice: it makes them look too bad too often, as it does anyone who seeks to mislead others into supporting some agenda or another. The media hates it, because a populace fed on rumors is anxious and eager for their next feeding, hooked on the informational IV needle, even when the drugs in the spoon are mostly sugar and cut battery acid. A culture of truth puts the power and the initiative back with the people; the media interests will not take kindly to being told that their reports are accepted for consideration -- and possible dismissal -- rather than swallowed instantly and whole.
We seceded from the mainstream popcult because we were sick of a constant diet of processed turd, and wanted something real, something substantitive. Now, before things get any worse, we have to start giving back. Play "Voice Of The Soul" for someone who thinks metal is all just noise; play "Planet Caravan" or "Cemetery Gates" for someone who thinks Pantera were just redneck gorillas. It's unrealistic to imagine that we can instantly effect some miraculous transformation of the common mindset, but some of the seeds that we shoot out *will* take root on foreign stars, and the cosmos will be a better place for it.
Drink your blacktooths and pour out your beers; spread the word, rock on, and let the metal flow.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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