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save me your speeches
2002-09-26 13:40:49
Thanks to a bad encode on one of the remaining eps and a severe lack of suitable footage in the other (3 clips wtf), I'm in position to draft and possibly finish #53 tonight. I wish that I could find a job so I didn't have to kill so much time doing this, but there seem to be annoyingly few openings for Real Programmers in the Boston area, and I don't have the right skillset to do this webmonkey stuff. Maybe it's time to finish those applications going to the feds...
I read Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival over the weekend, and so now I'm reading The Spear of Destiny again, and marvelling at how misreadings and outright stupidity led Trevor Ravenscroft right down the garden path. He takes the idea, thoroughly rejected by anyone with more than a cursory understanding of Wolfram and his era, that a "Kyot the Provencal" actually existed, then downright fabricates a whole slew of connections between Nazi Germany and a series of events in ninth-century Sicily that he alleges to have inspired the Grail romance.
It's enough, and the truth, to say that the Nazis were nothing more than a cult on steroids, and to note that a vast number of Nazi beliefs, practices, and crimes, had their origins in a mystical or ritual-magical view of the world. It is enough to note the occult focus of the Thule Gesellschaft, which organized and funded the Nazi Party from its beginnings, to note the occult obsessions of Himmler, Hess, Eckart, and Hitler's whole circle; to understand that a substantial reason for the longevity and continuing appeal of National Socialism comes from its turning racism into a mystic blood-cult.
Saying that Hitler acted as he did because he was the reincarnation of the black magician who inspired Klingsor, and required the head of the Spear of Longinus not only as a historic Germanic artifact, but also because he knew that it would give its bearer domination over the entire world, though, is a little thick. He-man could barely get away with something that stupid.
Anyway:
Current video: Synchronous Hearts, "Take On Your Will" to Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. Progress check: 85%. Expected catalog number: #53. Drafting tonight, having spent entirely too long transcribing the lyrics; we'll see how many builds this takes to go to completion. Probably no flashy Meimi work here.
Con news: sending Sugoi-Con package today to beat the deadline. Amusing to see possible reactions to the cube-in-cube....not like I didn't let anyone know this was coming....
Hopefully, I'll get most of my requested digitals (I've been doing pretty good in this department) Friday; I only have the first 10 of the series I need for the next major project, and I'd feel better with more. If the current method (VDub clipping, then render) doesn't fuck up the drafting process, I'll have a much easier road doing the next vid. If not, it's back to the grind and back to the drawing board.
--Kai
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least expected -- cloud connected
2002-09-25 13:30:39
From this perspective, it seems that the new technique is a winner; I've broached the 50% mark, chopped up half the available source, and total man/machine time logged is still under 12 hours. Of course, the method scales more poorly the richer the ep being cut up is; the high is 5 hours on one ep with the low being 1.75. Feeling good about this video under process -- now I just need somewhere to send it.
Pulled #49 from the Sugoi-Con slate and swapped in #51, so now I'm sending my two latest works to the same con, which I also did with Ani-Magic, apparently now in vain if Anneke's telling it straight. A bad habit to get into, but I've mostly cleared my back catalog; everything else is either in MPEG1 or unsuitable due to concerns of content, length, or fidelity. Hopefully, I'll soon have a job, and with it the money to buy a new editing station, so I can get back to capturing source and get on with my life rather than working from other people's encodes.
I've been going from digisubs virtually nonstop since the second week of February or so, and it's absolute murder hoping to get them to a proper resolution, then having to deal with file damage, misplaced frames, and the godawful bother of acquiring them in the first place. Sword's curse on Adobe Premiere AGAIN for killing my card's drivers and putting me in this position.
Current video: Synchronous Hearts, "Take On Your Will" to Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. Progress check: 51%. Expected catalog number: #53. With luck, I'll have this done by/over the weekend.
Con news: I could have saved a buck by registering NOW with my current club for Anime Boston, which always hurts. Sent off the Nekocon package; mailing the Sugoi-Con package tomorrow, then I have to look for some more cons to enter. Only Ohayocon seems left with deadlines this year, and I've already got a full slate for that. Offseason! Vid hacking time!
Yeah, probably going down to Providence this weekend to catch the biggest and shortest tour of the fall; it don't get much better than DT, IF, and the Northernmost Killers, all on the same bill.
--Kai out
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runnin' free, yeah
2002-09-24 13:50:42
After a long journal layoff I'm back in the saddle again, and feeling pretty happy about the last vid, which actually produced (hq) on the first try, for the first time since like video #38. Holy crap -- I've done 14 videos since the end of May. Scary, dude, even for me.
And yes, there IS a cube-in-cube. And what's more, there's frame-acceleration on the cube-in-cube sequence! Meimi-chan and Vado-kun [Virtual Dub], working together again.
I'm trying out a new clip-collection process on the current video as kind of an experiment. With my current hardware, I need to put in 17-18 hours of processing time per ep before I can even start thinking about getting clips. I'm trying now to make clips in VDub, run 'em through TMPEG to make the HQs, then make the LQ draft versions in my main editor. This is all attempting to save time, on the proposition that even if I get 3 minutes of usable source from an ep, that's 19 or so minutes that I'm not able to use in the video and shouldn't waste time working with.
Of course, it's STILL taking a load of time, and I'm spending more of it closer to my box instead of being able to go do something else, but while I have no job and slow hardware, I might as well try. Even just as an experiment for the current vid.
If you aren't watching Monday Night Football, you should be. Even if you hate the game. After every quarter of play, before the next one starts, there's a little 10-second or so assemblage of footage that may or may not have made the network broadcast on the first go-round, synched up to a random but appropriate song. Given that we're talking 15-45 minutes to pick clips from a couple dozen camera streams, select a song and a section thereof, and do up the editing, this is pretty much where it's at for on-the-fly music video work. Try watching next Monday. You might pick up some pointers, and maybe even enjoy the game as well.
Current video: Synchronous Hearts, "Take On Your Will" to Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. Progress check: 29%. Expected catalog number: #53. If someone could identify the real artist on this song, I would be most grateful, so I can enter it into the DB here correctly. After this, there's a video that may also get a KK number, another bit of the Solo Project, and a really, really weird one that'll demonstrate just how effective the simplest VDub effects can be.
Con news: I didn't win crap at NDK, as expected, but if you're going to AWA this weekend, you might catch two SH vids in the screening of the Pro entries, and another two if you pick up Red Wolf's comp disc set. Mailing out Nekocon entry tomorrow.
--Kai out.
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practice what you preach
2002-09-19 12:04:56
Century Media has sold out. I'm kind of disturbed. See, the order form for their mail-order house that came with the new Dark Tranquillity opens with this line: "Thanks for picking up this CD!" What's wrong with that? Nothing, except it used to read "Thanks for picking up this CD! (or congratulations on stealing it and not getting caught!)" Complete sellout, right there. If you formerly embrace the light criminality and commitment to anarchy at the foundations of metal, then step away, that is a sellout move. Not as major as cutting your hair and playing country rock, but a sellout move nonetheless.
It's been two months since I joined the .org again, in which I finished 8 videos, got about 1200 hits, won a con award, contributed to several forum arguments, got pissed about various mindsets in the scene, and had people look at this weird record on over 400 separate occasions. I've been slapped around by some of the 'gods' and praised by at least one. On the whole, I have discharged myself as commanded by Joey DeMaio. I have stood and fought. I have lived by my heart. I have been unafraid to suffer death or retribution. I have said what I feel. I have given, at all times, another try.
This space was formerly filled with introspection and bizarre front-first thinking about the future of AAMVs and my place in the cosmos, but nobody wants to read that kind of tripe, and nor do I particularly want to write it. Instead, logpage:
vid XX:
STUTTERFRAME SUX. piano effects coo, but here's too much jawflap and framestutter. audio issues mean it's not Quu's problem. Good vid screwed by technical probs.
vid XX:
jawflp still suxors. overall quite good, tho.
vid XX:
concept is flexible, but the editing is front-to-back cool: among top action.
vid XX:
audio seems overdriven. stray blood spray? actual instrumental action synch -- wow.
With regard to my hatred of stray moving mouths, this is the one element that I think is drastically holding AMVs back from being acknowledged as Real Cool by the rest of the world. Watch some MTV sometime. Watch the Sentenced videos I've thrown links at here in the past. Rent The Princess And The Warrior (Der Krieger und die Kaiserin) and watch the music video on there. Even when there is an obvious drama storyline, MOUTHS DO NOT MOVE ABSENT LIPSYNCH. Maybe some fly open, but there is not the obvious "silent speech" that one sees so often in AMVs.
There is an easy solution to this one, which is what I do in order not to have this problem in most of my videos: work from subtitled footage, and use a clip-gathering technique where you have all of your source anime editable, so that you can go frame-by-frame and cut around subtitles. Do you miss good clips this way? Sometimes. Is the end result more professional-looking than something with jaws flapping all over the place? Hellz yeah.
I've said it before (if not around here): there is no reason for mouths to be moving in your video if they are not lipsynched. The main reason that video #34, "Ocean's Call", sucks so horribly bad that I will never post it or allow it to be shown in public is that it breaks this rule all over the place.
Current video: Gamma Ray, "Heaven Can Wait" (2000 version) to Onegai Teacher. Progress check: 53%. Expected catalog number: #52. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel; I just wish that this particular one led to a job instead of just another finished AMV. I may not use the cube-in-cube on this one, but there WILL be several MEIMI effects, just to pump up the visual pace a little. Cutting seems to be fast enough, but this is a slow anime and a fast song, so I'm really going to need lay the wood on to get it to come out right.
Salce: I'll mail yer package today. _Wait Me At Dusk_ plus some SH omake.
--Kai out.
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komm schliess die augen
2002-09-18 15:02:17
Currently in the middle of getting clips the hard way: working from old documentation and going divX->raw->mpeg2/draft lq. More tiresome than anything else, but at least I'm moving forward.
Job front still uneven; the government requires a whole bunch of crap before they consider you, then takes forever on the reply. From current finances I can pay health insurance and student loans for about a year, but before that happens I'll surely be temping or at least SOMETHING. Maybe going to try out for the NYC fuzz as well; see how that goes.
AWA Pro logpage, since I've only got a couple more days left on these:
vid XX:
Why <famous creator's name deleted>'s Take Sucks. Spackly but finally subbed/translated. Not as synched as it could be, but good all the same.
vid XX:
Rough degrades, no synch to speak of -- mostly lip and mostly very bad. THIS VID SUCKS ASS! Who thinks that pixellation this bad is even remotely acceptable for competition?
NO DUB SOUND -- Disq'd!
vid XX:
stutterframe bad! odd mix of obvious parody and neo-serious synch. cool.
There ya have it: no hate like Heavy Metal Hate. "other bands play -- MANOWAR KILL!"
Anyway:
Current video: Gamma Ray, "Heaven Can Wait" (2000 version) to Onegai Teacher. Progress check: 47%. Expected catalog number: #52. Bit of a minefield to get through still, but I'm still looking at the same completion date, roughly. Definitely by the END of next week if not the beginning.
--Kai out.
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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