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left behind we are stranded not free
2005-03-07 09:25:38
INSO6:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
- Clipping: 0/5
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 0/26
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Field order problems meant that I had to redo nearly all of the precleaning work formerly done on #95, which blew a large hole in what I was able to practically accomplish this weekend. I should have at least timed the song for INSO6, but I didn't do even that. Clipping will probably go in tonight, provided I get out of work in a timely fashion; editing will probably drag on through the week and wrap over next weekend.
I finished up the metal recs, covering a total of 257 videos under exhaustive survey. Only a few I'd watched previously and held over under auto-rec, so I probably watched about 250 AMVs in a span of two weeks. There were a few known people whose work I was let down by, and a few unknowns with whose consistency and high level of production I was pleasantly surprised. There are two anime I have to start collecting as a result of this, and one or two albums that I may get knuckled into picking up as well. In that sense, the videos worked.
Of course, I got shunted into redoing someone else's concept because their execution fell down, and I had to endure two mind-numbingly awful videos from a power metal editor whose sense of reality is so out of kilter that I'm spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about how I can best apply the dope slap, so in that sense the videos worked *wrong*. It's not sensible to get this involved, but putting together a list of allegedly the global best imposes a stupid and egoistic sense of responsibility for those under survey. Not cool, but I still can't entirely get over it.
offtopic:
The mascot of the Philadelphia Soul is a white guy in a Blues Brothers suit. Leaving aside that the Blues Brothers were from Chicago, aren't there a lot of other mascot concepts that could more accurately capture the idea of "Philadelphia soul" as aculture and musical style? Of course, when the situation is Jon Bon Jovi owning a pretend-football football team, the whole concept of "reality" may be better left by the wayside.....
--Kai out
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where nothing | is everything
2005-03-04 09:29:36
INSO6:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
- Clipping: 0/5
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: 19/26
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 0/26
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
INSO5 finished last night, in a thunderous hail of rifle fire and beat flashes, then was packed into the trunk of a '73 Buick and thrown into the wastelands of coastal New J-- sorry, make that "the submission bin of the Live-in-'05 contest". People who are not judges in this contest can make the usual private arrangements to check it out.
Work on INSO6 is tentatively planned to encompass "the whole damn weekend", with suitable breaks for eating and screwing around that will allow precleaning on #95 to finish. The song is a little long, and I still have to time and storyboard it, but editing overall has been moving a lot faster. And, importantly, there are no hard beats, making it that much less likely that I'm going to have to stop-export-crossrender-rebuild around 2:50. I am, though, going to have to spend some extra time in the back end of the process, because Der Krieger und die Kaiserin is presented in this weird hybrid of letterbox and widescreen, like Columbia didn't know how to do a proper encode. The going assumption is like I did for #70 and #79 way back when: edit without regard to picture dimensions, then crop in post and to hell with white-screen overflow in the initial version. Cropping in the clipping phase is possible now, unlike before, but it's time-consuming, puts extra strain on the processor, and introduces the possibility of data loss going into the final version. Not a good idea.
The metal recs are almost done; club tonight and video work over the weekend may get in the way, but I fully expect to finish W (and the alphabet) by Monday morning, and promptly thereafter start addressing stuff that other people think should be on the list, drawing up the "bubble list" of everything I kept but did not recommend, and the four SH videos that, if someone else had done them, would have made the list. I've seen a lot of good videos, and a lot of amazingly shitty ones, but in total it seems like metal, despite being undersubscribed, is in pretty good shape on the .org. We need more vids to certain under- or non-represented bands, and more of those WMV videos converted to more open/general formats.
offtopic:
The United States, with 270 million people, supports 32 professional American football teams in its national league. Germany, with 85 million people -- and an enormous presence of soccer/normal football -- supports 32 professional American football teams in its national leagues (5 of 6 NFLE teams and the 27 teams in the GFL). Conclusion: Germans are more into sports than Americans. Conclusion 2: Given *more* football (per capita, anyways) and *better* beer, how on earth is 12 months in-country supposed to be any kind of hardship posting?
--Kai out
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i'm on the top as long as the music's loud
2005-03-03 08:47:55
INSO5:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: 2:53
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
INSO6:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
- Clipping: 0/5
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: 9/26
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 0/26
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
I battered up to the limits of the editor last night on INSO5, and it went fairly well. I've got a lot of good source left for the home stretch, and a good conceptual launching pad. Being prepared for this sort of thing and understanding when and why shit stops working makes it that much easier to deal with.
I also finished the S videos, leaving T-Z (more like T-W), which I hope I'll be able to resolve over the weekend. So far, 227 videos have been considered under scope. If I included WMV vids, this number might be nearly doubled (though the scores would look less like a normal curve). Metal is far from extinct on the .org, but more needs to be done. Extra incentive to bust those live-action vids the fuck out and get going on #95.
Things are getting shaken up with regard to Germany; the schedule is getting pushed back, possibly because their fab construction is behind and possibly because we're still shaking some bugs out of the machine. I don't know if my ship date is affected by the machine's on-dock date, but it's quite possible that I'll be delayed a month in leaving, which might make it possible to do a few more vids. However, if this is the case, it's more likely that I'll be sent over for a week or two before that (disrupting production), and almost certain that I'll be working longer hours and more on weekends, making any kind of progress extremely difficult. However, despite the burden of clipping for #95 and the noted pressures, there is an outside chance at SH100 before the studio turns 4. It's not real likely, but there's enough on the immediately planned slate that the possibility cannot be ignored.
Still no news on #94 wrt AniBo.....I'm getting impatient (as usual), and if I don't hear anything by the end of next week or so, I'm probably going to snap and just put it online as is. I can't STAND people malingering, but I'm terminally behind in my relocation and other administrative stuff....go fig.
--Kai out
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let battle commence
2005-03-02 08:40:08
INSO5:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: 1:59
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
INSO6:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
- Clipping: 0/5
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: 1/26
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 0/26
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
The new SH video on the chopping block is a direct consequence of the continuing sweep of metal videos. Somebody had an excellent idea but implemented it poorly, so I tweaked it and put it in the queue. Unlike anything I've done in over a year, this is going to use a 26-episode series, which means a lot of pre-production loading time distributed behind the completion of INSO5 and INSO6 (which will probably wrap, collectively, over the weekend, assuming I'm not going to Germany). I ended up working 11 hours yesterday, so I didn't have as much editing (or reviewing) time as I would have liked; despite this, I'm probably going to get to the stop line on INSO5 today and render the first bit out, at least, then finish up S by tomorrow morning and do a couple more prerenders for #95.
As has been usual lately, I don't know what's up for the weekend. I could be going to Germany, or I could be going to club and hacking two days straight on video. I'm doing this stuff with my figurative robes girt and staff in hand, which does wonders for one's state of mind, but has the unfortunate consequence of making long-range planning all but impossible. The brake is down and the engine is redlining, but the idiot with the flag won't start the damn cars running.
No notification on #94; it may have gotten into AniBo, it may not have. If not, it'll be up here all the sooner. Assuming I actually get #95 done before I go overseas, it may go to summer cons if it doesn't suck. That's always the caveat; it's going to involve a fair bit of lipsynch and some character replacement, and that's stuff I just don't do. To do it well on an extreme time budget may be asking too much.
--Kai out
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we've taken too much for granted
2005-03-01 12:42:03
INSO5:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: 1:19
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
INSO6:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
- Clipping: 0/5
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
About 75 minutes of work went into the first quarter of INSO5 last night, and it does seem to be moving slightly faster than SH094. However, this is being moderated by the nature of the source, and that I don't have nearly as much of it (~6GB total as opposed to ~15).
Live action, in Magix, requires more attention to detail than anime does, especially for layering (which everybody does) and looping (which is a weakness/calling card of my style). Looping anime is always easier because there are fewer potential positions for the character, and you can bridge into one fairly easily from any other position in the same generally loopable shot. Not so with real people who are not being drawn on a budget. The layering bit is more restricted to Magix and the way it handles it in general; every affected clip needs certain values reset, which is a chore to do while attempting to synch.
And there are beat-flashes in. Despite all better inclinations: it's cliche, and it'll cause me problems in another 1:30 when the editor starts running out of virtual memory. Damnit.
Also reviewed the R videos and got a start on S. Overall quality seems to be improving; many fewer 1 and 2 scores since M finished. However, overall it's still a normal curve, which is what I was expecting. It's be fucking weird if it heavy-tailed in either direction or made an inverse bell or something.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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