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in the earth so hard and cold
2003-02-18 14:33:32
Blizzards suck. I got in physical mode at about 6:45 in the morning to drive a friend in to the airport, but surprise surprise his flight was cancelled. And since I was geared up and already had a trail blazed, I decided to finish digging out the driveway. Half an hour later I had most of the plow throw cleared (up to 3+ feet deep in places), leaving a foot-thick, four-foot-high retaining wall at teh end of the drive, whereupon I went in to get another breakfast.
At that point, even though I was nowhere near done, I knew I was toasted for all editing purposes today. I've heard others tell of doing video editing when sick or whatnot, but I just can't do that. My style requires too much concentration, and even though I probably have the physical energy to clear another 60 cubic meters of snow, that pulling on the outside of my legs keeps me from paying proper attention to my controls. Just a matter of modes.
so...no video progress today. So I'm now officially Way Behind, and must work with absolute dedication tomorrow and Thursday in order to bring this one in under schedule. That's the big problem with having a fast production pace and a long idea queue: getting behind on one video, by even a day off schedule, creates this immense domino effect that may force you to resuffle your whole prod schedule.....which is a pain in the ass and takes even more time from the video-making process.
Hopefully, I'll be able to smooth these bumps out and get things back on track. The next video has a little wiggle room in it, and there's no telling how much faster I'd go if I didn't take weekends off.
Two good things in my still-seeming-to-continue weekend off, besides Spirited Away:
* Cooking Master Boy 1-9. Borrowed from club because I'd never heard of it, pleasantly surprised by both the nift of the show and the quality of the Chinese dub. The last Chinese dub I saw was of Initial D Second Stage, and that sucked giant ass. This one, though, is definitely worth hunting down.
* AFL on NBC. Sure the field is small, and there's no defense, and the commentators should be shot, but it's FOOTBALL! What more do you want? Many will disagree, but the only thing now required for sports TV in this country to be perfect is better coverage of the World League (NFL Europe now, but the old name is still better); then we could watch football 12 months a year.
Some other stuff to take care of, but I'll probably do up video versions of those logos I did Saturday and use that to work into clipping at least one ep tonight. So today won't be a total waste.
--Kai out
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all the hills | my eyes could count
2003-02-17 19:29:55
Work proceeds apace. My hair is safe, as I knew it would be; saw Spirited Away in spite of a potential top-10-all-time blizzard; got a nice idea for Haibane Renmei and a bunch of cool borrowings at club; and managed to get a good bit done on the video.
I did the compositing shot today, and now have just less than 7 minutes, with 4 eps to go. Given a little pick-up in source rates, I should get 100%overage. I also did up some new logos for SH Prod. and KK Studios; perhaps one of those will replace the current profile pic in the near future, becasue I have a bunch of reviews to send out, that I really should have gotten to Ben over the weekend.
I'm currently planning out the con slate for the early summer season, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm sending to Otakon, Fanime, AX, PortCon Maine, A-kon, Shoujocon, AFO, et al. Or so I think. That's the problem with having a fast production pace; you plan to send a video to two or three cons, but only end up sending it to one to ease your backlog. Some people have aired concerns about the anime I'm considering for this year's AWA Masters (thank you CNAnime for getting my foot in that door), so I'll have to see about fitting that into the schedule. On current pace I'll start that project in about 3 months, but it'll be a big'un, and maybe require me to get a new harddrive. All in good time.
Current video: Dark Tranquillity, "Hours Passed In Exile" to Saishu-Heiki Kanojo. Progress check: 57%. Expected catalog number: #69. I lost a bunch of anticipated time this weekend, but I should be able to make it up. Anticipated completion date hasn't changed.
--Kai out
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a spell was cast and the sky turned red
2003-02-14 12:41:54
Bad trends continue....I got only 21 cuts and about 40 seconds out of the latest episode. Maybe it's a good thing I have the whole series, so this video will be possible (just short of 6 minutes of the 9.5 needed cut so far), but maybe it's a bad thing in that I'm not selecting all the cuts I could.
Of course, being in the middle of a series by itself will create a trough effect; if you're not looking to pull viewers in or make a memorable impression to have everyone buying the DVDs when they come out, you're not going to waste the expense needed to make shots of the kind that will work in this sort of video. Fortunately DT has enough emotional twistiness to save me from exclusively hunting violence.
Current video: Dark Tranquillity, "Hours Passed In Exile" to Saishu-Heiki Kanojo. Progress check: 51%. Expected catalog number: #69. I'll be losing a little expected production this weekend in order to catch Spirited Away at probably my last chance at the film in theaters. However, if the current trend keeps up, I'll probably be able to pick it up without much trouble. Still shooting for a week from today as completion date.
Con news: Katsucon is this weekend, and #58 is actually competing, strange as it may seem. You might also be able to catch #60 if they do some kind of overflow showing. If you're there, please support. If I manage to win I may have to do something embarrassing like cut my hair or whatnot, but the likelihood of that is rather remote.
--K
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the choice is made
2003-02-13 13:53:04
Decent progress today, though I keep falling behind on source milestones. I'm at about four and and a half minutes of the nine and a half I'll need, though I should have five by now. Law of diminishing returns.
As if our (USian) government's exterior actions weren't dumb enough, they also are responsible for the followign piece of online stupidity. I screwed up my tax return and need to file a 1040X, so I went to the IRS webpage to track my return that way, to see when I'd earliest be able to correct it. Unfortunately, I got bounced from their secure side with the reason of my browser being incapable of Triple DES. This might not seem so bizarre to some, but anyone who knows their way around encryption and knows anything about the internet should see the idiocy of it.
DES of any kind is a traditional bidirectional cipher; you use the same key to encrypt and decrypt. Anyone who has the key can read the message, and anyone on the same subnet as you can pick up that key (ask someone you know who's into network security about "ethernet cards in promiscuous mode if you don't believe me -- or just like getting scared by lack of privacy). So how do you, the IRS server, send the key for that cipher to the users wishing to access info? In the clear? Only if you're a total moron. By the 128-bit SSL implementation that forms the standard for all e-business transactions? If so, then why bother using DES at all? Sure, DES has its place, but for broad-based cipher use like is required by any secure internet site open to the public, there's nothing better than the public-key paradigm. You can't get much more secure than never exchanging secret keys.
On topic:
Current video: Dark Tranquillity, "Hours Passed In Exile" to Saishu-Heiki Kanojo. Progress check: 43%. Expected catalog number: #69. In making this video, I'm finally seeing how the threshold filter can be effective, especially in combination with a nice gaussian blur. Sometimes, the shot will work without the blur for a starker feel, but that little bit of edge fuzziness makes a lot more threshold cuts usable. As for final effect...wait a week or so.
--Kai out
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something has got to give
2003-02-12 12:40:23
Good news all around: I got paid for that damn computer I sold last week, I'm lined up to do some stuff over the next two weeks or so that'll get me more paid, I'm well ahead of original production schedule on the video, and I got another op.
I also cut a compositing shot from the schedule last night, as it was already done just the way I wanted it in the anime. Sure, the color variance in the manga version would have looked cool, but I don't want to spend time fucking around with resizing to do a zoom if I've already got that camera motion animated. I also found a really neat shot that illustrates why digisubs are a double-edged sword.
I found this one frame that was pretty beat up, from a video fidelity standpoint. However, the pixel-blocking lines were such that it looked like a shot from a lo-fi security camera rather than just a fucked-up frame. I couldn't do this effect in a million years, but here somebody's suboptimal encoder did it for me. Not good for people who want to know how their video's going to look before they sit down to compose it, but if you're into serendipity, you'll occasionally get a nice surprise.
Current video: Dark Tranquillity, "Hours Passed In Exile" to Saishu-Heiki Kanojo. Progress check: 35%. Expected catalog number: #69. Going just fine, should wrap by the end of next week. Right now it looks like I'm going to compose one, maybe two shots from the manga, but that could reduce depending on what I find in later episodes. Also keeping a log of settings for the VDub colorize filter to produce certain colors, something I should have been doing a while ago.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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