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2002-08-09 16:58:22
Ever get that feeling that you'd just love to finish a project, but you don't know where to go?
It's like...you know where you want to end up, but you haven't a clue how to actually get there.
I've hit what seems like a dead end on my Metropolis project, at around 2:04. Trying to tell a storyline that never existed in the movie, keeping it coherent, and still making the flow of the video fit with the audio is a bigger PITA than I'd ever expect it to be.
Whatever. Maybe if I watch the movie (for the 37th time) I'll get an idea.
Another thing: ever notice how something can look so cool in your mind, but six video tracks and a few dozen layer masks later, it looks like crap?
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Re-built Cinelerra from weekly backups. Works a heck of a lot better than beta2 and beta3 did, though there's still the odd crash -- I'm pretty sure it happens when you start layering effect plugins like a madman. I'll have to report it as a bug, when I start getting more reproducable behavior (hopefully, I'll be able to code something up to correct it, too...)
Writing this stream-of-consciousness-crap while I babysit my baby nephew -- what a nut. The kid is the most hyperactive thing I've ever run into. :) -
compiler-induced ranting and some random thoughts
2002-07-31 22:32:39
Up and running with Cinelerra beta3; I must say, this is a major improvement over beta2. Now it doesn't take an hour to render an effect-intensive video :P
Not to say that wasn't a fair amount of work. The Cinelerra source distribution is the best way to use Cinelerra; unfortunately, there's all kinds of stupid little problems in the Quicktime library (most of them having to do with inlining of functions). Trying to get the build to dynamically link against existing quicktime4linux shared libraries, rather than statically link against the libraries in the Heroine Virtual distribution, was rather tedious -- but it worked. I'm rather amazed that I'm able to use it as I type this out. :)
Anyway, with this new speed and stability I've been able to try out more visual-intensive things without fear of crashes (hey, it IS only a beta test version, after all), and I think that'll result in some marked improvements over my Kanon video. Sure, focus on plotline and themes are always first and foremost, but -- let's admit it -- deep down, we're all shallow, and we like flash and bang.
I'd also like to play around with multi-channel audio effects; unfortunately, the only way I know of to accomplish that in any sort of size-efficient fashion is to use Vorbis audio, and Windows Media Player does NOT handle Vorbis well at all. (At least not on my test platforms.) A/V synchronization is horrible -- the video would become desynched within seconds. Seeking was also broken. Bah. Xine and mplayer handled it fine. :D
I had a 56-second preview clip of what I was doing, but I soon found out that I borked my transcoder parameters, which resulted in the index block not being generated at all.
The world does not use Xine; the world uses Windows Media Player, and WMP is, unlike other media players out there, too stupid to know how to regenerate an index block. Whoops.
I'll re-encode it someday -- maybe after I've gone through more of my "to-do" checklist for this video. Certainly some parts could use some polishing and embellishment.
JOURNAL: trythil (💩 💩)
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