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it's big
2003-01-11 12:00:27
I'm sure somebody has noticed that I like to rant about Windows XP. That doesn't mean that (1) I don't rant about other OSes I use or (2) that I don't like things in XP.
One thing I absolutely love is multimonitor support that actually works. It's made Photoshopping a breeze. (Well, not really a _breeze_, but it's made it a hell of a lot easier.)
There's about five or six seperate shots in my current project that require me to have Rei crying in some form or another. In Evangelion -- the WHOLE of all animated Evangelion material -- there exist only three shots of Rei crying, and two don't even show her face. The one that does has her monologuing.
Arr.
On one hand, this makes it incredibly difficult to get the right sources for what I do. On the other hand, it allows me considerable artistic freedom -- though I must admit that I am probably doing something very, very stupid by mixing CLAMP-style animation with GAiNAX imagery, as I'm basing my teardrop look and fall sequence off of frames from Angelic Layer and a couple from Magic Knight Rayearth. It looks interesting.
Some, like me, would say that it looks downright stupid. But whatever; I've already invested a month into the pre-production of this damned video, and I'm going to keep going, even though my efforts will probably end up in a big pile of overproduced trash, like the other two projects I have floating around did.
2800x1050 screenshots look funny. -
whee
2003-01-09 10:07:50
MPlayer 0.90rc2-3.1.1 (C) 2000-2002 Arpad Gereoffy (see DOCS)
CPU: Advanced Micro Devices Athlon TB Thunderbird (Family: 6, Stepping: 2)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx
...
Reading /usr/share/mplayer/codecs.conf: 49 audio & 125 video codecs
init_freetype
Using Linux hardware RTC timing (1024Hz)
Input config file /home/trythil/.mplayer/input.conf parsed : 51 binds
Playing Youre_The_Reason_I_Believe_In_Love.avi
Cache fill: 0.00% (0 bytes) Detected AVI file format!
VIDEO: [DIV3] 720x480 24bpp 29.97 fps 2017.7 kbps (246.3 kbyte/s)
...
AO: [oss] 44100Hz 1ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
Building audio filter chain for 44100Hz/1ch/16bit -> 44100Hz/2ch/16bit...
Start playing...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 720x480 Planar YV12 [fs]
A: 113.6 V: 113.6 A-V: 0.000 ct: 0.013 3406/3406 22% 9% 0.5% 0 0 49%
...
The "A-V" counter is the one that I think is really kickass. I finally got my lazy butt to making mplayer use the hardware clock for A-V sync; I swear, it makes quite a difference. The A-V sync used to fluctuate in the range +/- 10ms; it's now rare to see the thing deviate by any more than +/- 1ms, if that much. (The text dump above basically says that the video and audio are PERFECTLY in sync.)
It's not like the difference between +/- 10ms and +/- 1ms is really all that noticable for most applications...although, for some, it can make a difference, like extremely precise and frequent beat-matching. My primary interest, though, is just the geek factor.
Most video players on any OS don't use the hardware clock directly; instead, they rely on the kernel scheduler. For video, though, this may not be precise enough to provide really, really good timing. What Mplayer is doing now is not using system calls, but rather direct access to the hardware clock.
Neatness. -
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2002-12-30 15:00:49
I have re-encoded "Flights of Fancy" from the QuickTime masters using XViD and a few VirtualDub filters (Graft's HSV, smart deinterlace, msharpen, and Post's Smart Smoother HiQuality). The results were very good; I have posted side-by-side comparisons of the MPEG and the XViD here:
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~yipdw/mpg-xvid-comparison-frame4290.jpg
For those who prefer lossless data:
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~yipdw/mpg-xvid-comparison-frame4290.png
They're both ~650K, though, so please (1) don't kill the Rose-Hulman web server and (2) be patient.
Even in the JPEG, the difference is very clear. The MPEG exhibits severe macroblocking problems which are appearent to the left of Shiro's face. It is also very desaturated, owing to the YUV -> RGB conversion that I wouldn't have had to have done, had I the wisdom I do now.
There's only so much one can do, however, to fix fundamental problems. In this case, the video was
(1) edited using MJPEG sources
(2) edited from the North America (Manga) release of WoH, which didn't need the help (hurt?) that MJPEG conversion gave it.
I think I've done all I can realistically do to fix one of the video's two major problems. (The other major problem is the video's editing itself, and I deleted the EDLs I used for Flights of Fancy in a fit of depressive destruction.)
I'll upload the XViD later today, when I can get in touch with my host's administrator -- got some things to sort out. Anybody who actually still watches my crap can then download it if they want. -
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2002-12-25 11:38:06
Merry commercialized, corporatist Christmas, and a happy, drunken, orgy-filled New Year to you all. That's all I have to say about this horrible time of year.
On another, brighter note, it's funny to see just how _crazy_ the Web is. I didn't really realize this until I came across a "How Obsessed Are You With Brent Spiner?" test. I thought that was crazy, and then I realized -- well, gee, ANY obsession must look like that to the "outside".
It's common sense, I know. It was just revelatory. Don't ask me why.
Required AMV blurb: I have no access to my video editing equipment or sources (how am I supposed to haul around 30 gigabytes of data without external storage devices?), so no progress on that front. As far as scripting goes, though...well, the document that describes this video has now grown obscenely long.
The funny part about it all is that I'll almost certainly throw away the design document and just do whatever I feel like doing, with only the general idea that I started with to guide me. However, writing out this script makes me feel like I'm actually getting something done. It's masturabation for the workaholic.
Took a look at the Scale2x algorithm used in MAME, ZSNES, and other such emulators -- it's actually pretty simple and neatly coded, as opposed to some other things (*cough* port of EffectTV filters to Cinelerra *cough*)
Thinking of bringing that over to Cinelerra before I attempt something like Graft's Decomb filter. I plan to use it to make scaling (which I do a lot of) look much better -- but even if that doesn't work out, it still has intriguing FX potential.
Listening: Kylie Minogue, "Fragile", Tamura Naomi, "Yuzurenai Negai" (Unchanging Wish, the first opening to Magic Knight Rayearth), and Onitsuka Chihiro, "Gekkou" (Moonlight). They just cycle in my playlist, and I don't know how I've managed to put up with it. The difference in style and mood is jarring.
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argh
2002-12-19 10:50:56
Looks like the fan on my video card has died -- no amount of cleaning can get it to work. The card itself is still in proper working order, but I don't want to run it at 71 deg C (160 F) ... that's just bad for the hardware and the computer in general.
Anybody know of any good deals on video boards? I'd prefer to stay within the NVIDIA GeForce line, since my video capture setup is specifically optimized for that hardware, but an ATI Radeon would be great, too...
JOURNAL: trythil (💩 💩)
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