JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)

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  • strike the anvil and forge the steel 2003-01-03 13:29:21
    I'm about 65% done that Boondock Saints AMV, with well over 100% overage and heading up. The source is there; now it's just on me to finish clipping and make it cool. It MIGHT be done tomorrow, maybe later; depends on how fast the last fifth clips and when I do the timing chart.

    I also have to sit down and test VHS output on my capture card. It never worked before, but it would make it a hell of a lot easier than having to do SVCDs for Sakura Con and Anime Boston, which are both coming up. It's a tough schedule I'm going into, with a bunch of submissions due that I sould start getting out of the way now, and two videos that I still have to make before the end of the month. I can do #65 in three days, but #64 will take at least a week, more like two. "Ah have told you, there is no tahm for that! There is no tahm!"

    Misc: got another opinion; hopefully the writer will respond and put in some comments about something more than the title (this was #23). Also there is a new virus apparently going around; infected documents from adiamante and rrwilson have shown up on my virtual doorstep. Protect yerselves, and fix it if you've got a problem.

    I'm not going to enter the Boondock Saints vid into the catalog, but it will be described here in full form as SH video #63.5, and may appear on CD at the DC if I can get the two other videos I have planned using non-English speakers done and into such form. Or, you could send me your fave line from the movie if you want to see it; not a lot of replies so far, so your chances are pretty good.

    --Kai out

     
  • to see the last survivor fall 2003-01-02 17:30:40
    Today I passed out of darkness and into new light. I fixed my capture card. It was just about nine months, in which I learned a lot about myself as an editor, and a lot about digital video in general.

    My faith has now been restored in Dazzle's DVC II and MovieStar 4.2x as the card and editing environment of choice for serious AMV work. It's practically the only stable card (not counting the DVC 100, which has some stability issues) allowing for block capture in DVD-quality, and the editor is fast beyond all reasonable estimation and virtually immune to crashes. If you're going to do serious AMVing, you're going to have or acquire the technical knowledge and smarts to handle the suite of accessory tools that you need to emulate Premiere, and if you use Dazzle's gear, you're going to be able to do it much faster, and with a much smaller memory footprint. I'm still on a 500MHz K7, still with 128 MB RAM, still running first-pressing Win98 (albeit tweaked to unholy extremes), and I still go at amazing rates of speed. IF I CAN DO THIS, SO CAN YOU!

    Unfortunately, the DVC II is out of production and the DVC 100 isn't mature yet. So you're stuck unless you can buy my spare card, but I aint selling. If you can get your hands, by some hook or crook, on a DVC II system, though, by all means do so. You'll never look back.

    Sometime in the near future, I'll post a series of articles here on leveraging the power of Dazzle's MovieStar 4.2x/DVC II suite for serious AMV making, then maybe compile it into a guide. The world deserves to know about this, because it's not fair for anyone to hold advantages. And the speed and power of this setup is an advantage and a half.

    I'm going to finish up the Boondock Saints video, then hit into the two vids I'm pointing at Anime Boston like a ton of bricks. #64, #65, bam, BAM! All before the end of the month; realistic, and allowing me a little cushion before the submission deadline. Not much, though, but it aint like I can't hand-deliver these.

    --Kai out


     
  • democracy their desire 2003-01-02 16:45:47
    Finally, showreview! One week till Life In Vain/Rapid Charlie reunion!

    Heavy Metal Christmas: We get in to Sputnik's about 7 or so, just as this three-piece deathrash outfit with a long two-word name that I didn't catch was setting up. Cryptic Warning may have played before we got there; their demo was decent, old-school death kind of feel with some 'modernistic' parts. This first band was pretty good, if a little weak in songwriting and prone to occasional tempo breakdowns, and they got a lot of points from my end for closing out with "Scavenger of Human Suffering" as a tribute to Chuck. Next up was Halo of Thorns. This band was not technically bad, but they impressed nobody, and were technically trying to be black metal, which they did not pull off at all. They got the rhythms wrong (two-based instead of three), the bass was too boomy, and their amps sounded too good. Real black metal is played with overdriven instruments on maximum distortion through broken amplifiers, at a completely breakneck blastbeat sextuplet pace. This was just neogothic crap.

    On to the top of the order! Next up were local power metal heroes Ravage, doing a bunch of originals (crowd favorites "The Wicked Way" and "King For Nought" as well as the less-heard "Wyvern") as well as three covers, "Be Quick Or Be Dead" and "The Evil That Men Do" from Maiden, and "Breaking The Law" by Priest. This band kicked a lot of ass, as expected,
    despite relentless posing from Greg Nelson, the world's only Ravage fanboy. Somehow this nurd got in front of me for My Pet Demon's set as well, where he got a sound whuppin. Whether or not there was a friendless, annoying fanboy in front of me, I was going to thrash to this band, and if he didn't move, he would get whipped by hair a lot.

    MPD opened up with a new, tighter intro to "Demons Are Forever", which always gets everyone worked up, then hit into "World Gone To Hell" and "What Would Jason Do", following up these new, unrecorded cuts with Megadeth's "Hanger 18" and a long solo break in said song before going back to familiar territory on "Cold Sweat", "Revolution's Breath", "Self Destruct", and Megadeth's "Sweating Bullets". This led into "The Faker", Metallica's "Seek and Destroy", and the impromptu closer "Ace Of Spades" at full Motorhead power. It seems as though they haven't played "Two Faced" in forever, and it looks as though "Undetermined", known to the band as "the gay one", has been cut from the set permanently as well. The crowd was okay with staying for more, but the band was out of songs that didn't suck. The suggestion from one of the members of Ravage to just "play Self Destruct again!" went unheeded.

    Also cool was picking up a flier for the biggest local show of the new year: MPD and Ravage supporting the reunion of both Life In Vain (aka Life In Flames, now with Danny (ex-Borgabor V) "Deathhammers" Goldberg on drums) and Rapid Charlie, who have not played together since the benefit for the scholarship fund established in memorial of their late founding keyboardist Andy Bell, and who had been basically defunct for a long while before that. January 11 at Sputnik's. Another one not to miss on pain of dismemberment. I have to remember to have more than just door money for one of these, so I can buy a Ravage CD or some swag from one of these bands.

    --Kai out

     
  • i don' wanna live like you 2002-12-31 12:41:24
    So I get a DVD drive. That's the way it's looking from here at least. I can't get through to Dazzle's website, so I'm out of luck at least for now on troubleshooting my current configuration. I may trade the XP setup I got for my family's 98 station if said box can capture successfully, or I may go with one of the rebuild plans mentioned earlier. Or I could try to finagle USB support and upgrade to Dazzle's DVC 100 -- mmm avi and dv output for interface to my toolkit without avisynth, only $170 -- but that's a bridge to be crossed on reaching it. No telling quite if it'll work, either.

    Anime Boston are begging out with regard to their submission policy. It's true that many people will not submit if they can't just send a CD, but if you use the Otakon rules (as Ohayocon and Tekkoshocon have done), you'll also get hi-fi videos that you can work with from people (like me) who don't like going through the bullshit of making a SVCD master and routing that onto VHS through their DVD player. Not cool, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get done.

    I've still got a trick or two up my sleeve to massage the capture card into functionality, but I'm not hoping for a lot (and that DVC 100 has got me drooling....hoshiiiiiiiiiiiiii................)

    I'll report on Heavy Metal Christmas sometime soon, I promise. Unrelated: why must banners suck so? When I have too much hate I get annoyed that there are no new banners posted, because there are always so many that suck and help relieve the pressure when you are SO FULL OF HATE. You'd think that with all the people making good music videos, especially effects-heavy ones, on this site, that there would be some good new banners every now and then, but I guess that those people are making videos, not banners.

    --Kai out

     
  • the plow that broke the plains 2002-12-30 18:57:38
    err....the operation was sorta a success. I've got my capture card to say "device attached to the system is not functioning" instead of "class not registered", so the problem may be a step closer to getting solved. The last time I got this message, I just ended up having to do some PCI-slot gymnastics to get the card to work again. Now, also, I have two of the same cards connected to the same board, which may have something to do with the problem. Sometimes it sucks not having anyone to go to for hardware troubleshooting help, but when this system's working right, I wouldn't trade it for all the Pinnacles and Premieres in the world.

    I also now have a re-re XP Home setup (it should be a crime to sell this OS to anyone on a machine with less than 265 MB RAM; wtf is with 112??! -- fuckers; but I can't complain having paid so little: $320 after rebate) which I plan on converting into a DVD-rip station if necessary, or into a rendering box if not. This'll require adding at least a CD-burner and a bunch of RAM, possibly a DVD drive depending on how things swing.

    Current video: *****, "#### ****" to ***-***. Progress check: 5%. Expected catalog number: #64. The deadline for really starting this video is not until 1/5, so that gives me time to get either my capture card or a DVD ripper going. On this second point, I really need to get off my lazy ass and find out to what degree vobs can be clipped up, because there's no way I'm going to fuck around with XP's shitty interface, buried controls, and digital rights manglement if I don't need the filesystem to get around 98's 4-GB limit. Should also definitely hit trythil's profile and find out about Linux in this regard.

    I'm also sorta working on a video using Boondock Saints, but as that isn't in the catalog, and I don't feel like pissing off Phade by adding non-anime items to the catalog, I'm not gonna throw progress reports up on it. However: running contest. All you have to do is send me an email with your favorite line from Boondock Saints, and who said it, or a description of your favorite scene, and you win a screener of this video on CD once it's finished. Limit one prize per line; we can't just have everybody mail in:
    "We could kill *everyone*!"
    "What d'you think?"
    "I'm strangely comfortable with the idea."

    --Kai out

     
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