JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)

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  • the axe, the bottle, and the rope 2003-01-15 13:51:37
    Clipping is proceeding ok on the current video, though there's a bit of a problem that is making it drag on and on and on. Apparently, the suspicions that Media Blasters used some sort of witchcraft to do their digital transfer of Kenshin TV are grounded, because I have not yet gotten a capture off this DVD that has a proper index. As a result the time to render HQ clips is measured in minutes rather than milliseconds, and I have a lot of spare time to read whatever, lift weights, or generally occupy myself. Almost four hours, and I'm only about halfway in. Glad this is only one ep.

    Sent off the Tekkoshocon CD this morning, and the entries for Sakura Con and AniBo should follow probably early next week. Once #65 is done, I just have to read up on SVCD formatting and trust that TMPEG has gotten my video files in appropriate shape. The footage I'm working from right now is particularly good (more of that witchcraft); hopefully it will continue to do so at 480x480.

    Current video: Sentenced, "No One There" to Rurouni Kenshin. Progress check: 50%. Expected catalog number: #65. Ten minutes down, nine to go. Perhaps I'll be working on charts and preparing to draft this time tomorrow.

    Ronnies will be posted this weekend. The contest (identify the first word spoken on a label recording by Chuck Schuldiner and win #64 and #65 on CD) will stay open until all five prizes are claimed.

    --K

     
  • as i reach out in the dark 2003-01-14 13:00:11
    The video entry for #64 is up, so you can get an idea of what you're getting once you win the contest (see end of last post for rules). Things are going fine on the next one as well, aided by me not having to reinstall my editing gear afterall. Just muddling on through, as it were.

    Sighted yesterday on my version of this page: Hits: 1488. Like many people with overactive mathematical minds I have an interest in numerology, for amusement when "significant" numbers come up. If you know what this one means, please don't hold it against me; I wrote an honors thesis on those sort of people and have picked up bits and pieces of their culture by osmosis -- though not their attitudes.

    Pointless anecdote:
    I'm writing a book in which small arms of various types and calibers play a major role, and so a little ways back I bought Guns Magazine's Combat Annual issue, for a little brush-up on tactical firearms use and capabilities, as I am by no means a "gun nut". I know the Weaver stance, and that my left eye is dominant, and how to operate the safety on most standard styles of automatic pistol, and how to clear a jam in a MG42 or descended weapon, but that's about it. So I'm flipping though this magazine, which I am glad to see has a major article on the FN P90 5.7mm subgun, because I have precisely no familiarity with this weapon and it's already in the book, when I see, immediately following this article, one of those ads for instructional videos. The video that stops me from just flipping the page is one called "Underwater Shooting", in which, you guessed it, automatic handguns are test-fired underwater.

    On reflection, just the IDEA of this video existing is hilarious. WHY on earth would you ever CARE about shooting off guns underwater? It's the one area of shooting that has absolutely no practical application at all. "Will the automatics chamber another round?" Who gives a crap, or gives a crap enough to order a whole video of this, is a more appropriate question. Like Scott Ian has said, right-wing pornography, on the level with those videos occasionally offered in the back of porm magazines showing just women's feet, or just nude midgets. Somewhere out there, there are people who are so into guns, or so into porno, that they will buy just about anything.

    For a similar example in anime, we have Violinist of Hameln TV, or, more recently, Tokyo Underground. No matter how dumb or badly done it is, there's a market out there somewhere.

    Current video: Sentenced, "No One There" to Rurouni Kenshin. Progress check: 25%. Expected catalog number: #65. Clipping shouldn't take too long, as mentioned, since it's only one ep under consideration, so I might even be in place to do a timing chart by tomorrow night, and an outside shot at distributing screeners at club Friday night.

    Con news: No wins at Ohayocon, so Tekkoshocon gets #54 and #56 as soon as I can get them burned and out to the post office.

    --Kai out

     
  • cannot be erased 2003-01-13 12:31:07
    #64 is done. It's mixing down right now, getting ready for the process that will make the screener for the contest described below (and for me club buds) and the full export version to comply with Anime Boston's Media Rules of Ravishing Dumbness. Once these procedures are done, I just have to strip out my current software, install the previous version, and try to capture the footage for #65 at proper brightness and framesize settings. Fun fun fun.

    As a whole, this weekend kicked much ass. Friday was club (new YUA dub [bad], sub [cool], and Hellsing 4-6 [cool save bad subbing]), and yesterday, I had the thrill of drafting video #64, but the certerpiece had to be Saturday night, the best show I've seen in a long while.

    Unfortunately, I got there a little late, and missed the first third or so of Rapid Charlie's set. They've added another (new) lead vocalist, and cut back on the theater-of-the-absurd stuff a little, but they're still the only band I've ever seen use a chair as a stage prop: standing on it, jumping off it, jumping over it, and, most Rapid-Charlie-like of them all, just walking around the stage holding it up above their heads. Next was Ravage, who revealed what might be a critical weakness in their sound when their bass player broke his E string with two songs left in the set. While the cover of "Breaking The Law" that they closed with sounded a little thin, it didn't seem like there was that much missing from "The King Forgotten". Not a good sign, even for power metal.

    Then came My Pet Demon, who played one of their better and tighter sets in a while....with the exception of Matt Kenney just totally forgetting to play his fucking drum solo in "Self Destruct", which ONLY happens to be their biggest hit, and the song that the whole venue is waiting for. The set was much the same as last time, but they did "Two-Faced", didn't do "Ace of Spades" or "Sweating Bullets", and closed with "Hangar 18", extended with some of the best solos I've ever heard people not Megadeth play with it. This came as a little surprise, since Kenny's solos were kind of off all night on the other songs. After this, of course, the headliners, the newly reformed Life In Vain (www.lifeinvain.com). Despite being the only band on the bill to have problems with the PA setup (the guitars were kind of buried for the first couple songs), they thoroughly lived up to their reputation. They came out to the courtroom speech from Boondock Saints, the best intro I've ever heard for a metal band from this area, and on the final gunshots, the band came in and the place went nuts. Almost two hundred scene heads, rushing up, moshing, thrashing like crazy. Some old and some brand new material from these guys, who definitely merit a look online, but what really sealed things was closing with "Jotun", which they now play better than In Flames does. There wasn't a rager in the place not shouting along. Overall, they've gotten over the originality hurdle that was the main problem in their first incarnation, and besides, In Flames doesn't sound like that anymore, so there's no real harm in it.

    Current video: Sentenced, "No One There" to Rurouni Kenshin. Progress check: 5%. Expected catalog number: #65. The video entry for #64 will go up tomorrow; capturing on this one will take place tonight, as soon as I've gotten #64 clear in all forms. Since I'm only using one ep for this one, clipping should be short but extremely intense, and since it's the most disliked episode of the saga, it's guaranteed new footage.

    Con news: currently waiting to compose the Tekkoshocon CD until I get results from Ohayocon. If #56 won anything there, I can't send it; if not, it's on the way, though not with its intro.

    And now, the new SH contest:
    Since it's the start of a new year, and the first SH/KK AMV finished this year uses Death, here's a chance to win a screener CD with #64, #65, and the Boondock Saints video described in an earlier entry. All you have to do is email me the answer to the following question, and a valid postal address to send the CD to:
    What is the first word spoken by Chuck Schuldiner on a label-official recording?
    The first five correct responses will win CDs, way before you'll be able to get these videos from the DC. Be careful; not all lyrical transcriptions will provide a correct answer, so the best way to find out is actually listen to some good old zombiethrash.

    --Kai out

     
  • to the emptiness of time 2003-01-10 09:25:09
    All source is cut, the timing chart is done, and I've gotten the ratio rebalanced correctly. Turns out that the proper resolution is 720x400 for the image discounting any letterboxing.

    (non-interesting niche video processing anecdote follows)
    As noted earlier here, there were some problems with the capture, probably because this DVD is anamorphic widescreen, and the DVC II seldom expects such tricky encodings. Black borders around every frame, which of course had to be stripped off. The only problem was that this is a dark-colored film, made worse in this regard by more jammed capture settings. So I had to find a light-colored clip (at least light aroung the borders) to establish the dimensions of the real image, and something I could key off to get the resolution back to the way the original producers intended it.

    I found the light-colored clip okay, and then I got really lucky. A shot of the full moon. Now, a lot of things are open to interpretation, but when you're drawing realistically, as here, the moon kind of has to be a perfect circle, or pretty close thereto. So I put these two clips into .avi with DVD2AVI when I finished cutting source (discovering I needed HuffYuV for this stage when I do clip finishing for-real this weekend), and went at them in VDub. First was the light-edged one. Cropping establishes borders, which I write down for future reference. Then, the moon. I save a cropped version, then open that, and apply a resize filter, using the preview to establish via trial-and error what resolution to use. It comes down to a choice between 720x416 and 720x400, and I go with 400, because I won't have to go to the trouble of making yet another set of white space fillers. This whole process would probably have been much easier if I had been using another toolset, but then doing the actual video would probalby be that much harder.

    Current video: *****, "**** ****" to ***-***. Progress check: 75%. Expected catalog number: #64. I should be able to draft tomorrow, but that's probably about it. I'll be tired from club tonight, and needing to roll hard into the Life In Vain/Rapid Charlie show tomorrow night.

    The 2K2 Ronnies ARE coming, there's just videos that need to clear, guides that need to be explored, and exports that need to be done first.

    --Kai out

     
  • behold how the blind lead each other 2003-01-09 12:14:31
    Almost into the clear; I have less of the source movie to clip though than I have, aggregate, clips made so far. Of course, I'm pushing 200% overage now, and the last nine minutes of said feature have a lot of killer source, but that's beside the point. I'll smash it out tonight and maybe do the timing chart besides. Ofcourse this will put me in a sticky position: I've found I can only properly work on this video at night, and I don't have tomorrow night available (club, etc), and hate losing time. Ofcourse a combination of long clipping tonight, the time I need for medical work tomorrow, and a particularly detailed timing chart, could completely erase any time loss.

    Current video: *****, "**** ****" to ***-***. Progress check: 65%. Expected catalog number: #64. This video is being made, literally, with gun in hand. Old Shonen Jump pages tacked in front of a box and a Tokyo Marui EBB Centimaster to ventilate them with, all to the strains of Death's last four albums. The zone, man, the zone.

    Best of 2002 awards coming, as are some other things. Wait till I get these two videos down and I can stop tunnelvisioning on the deadlines.

    --Kai out

     
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