JOURNAL: koronoru (Kevin Oronoru)

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  • Progress 2003-03-27 11:09:48 So, I got my Hellsing 4 DVD at last. Had an interesting time ripping it because I couldn't remember just what command I had used for the other discs to extract just the video, chapter by chapter, into MPEG-2 files, while discarding the audio. I thought I had written down the command, but couldn't find it. I figured it out from scratch, but the resulting files were bigger than the corresponding files from previous discs, and the "tcprobe" utlity suggested they weren't really in the same format. Then I remembered that actually, I had re-used my scripts from my previous project (which is why I hadn't found a saved script file in this project), so I re-did the rip with those scripts and now the formats match but the resulting files are still larger than I expected. My guess is that since this DVD contains four episodes instead of three like the previous ones, they pressed it in a larger-capacity format (two layers or whatever), and then having extra space, they compressed the content less aggressively. Or maybe they just compressed it less aggressively and used more of the space, when previous discs didn't use all of the available space. Or something. If they were going to do one disc in higher-bandwidth format I'd have preferred that it be the first disc, because that one has the creditless opening and some of the best visuals. Not that it'll matter anyway after my VCD output codec has finished raping the footage.

    I'm still struggling with a coherent storyline. My inspiration for this video is mostly impressionistic (hey! Seras Victoria reminds me a whole lot of the character in the song!), but I fear that if I just string together a series of cool images, okay it'll be just like an MTV music video, but it won't really be as good as I want it to be. I've made up a text file of all the words in the (edited) song broken up by verse, chorus, and bridge, with the instrumental breaks marked and how long they are, and I'm labelling each section with a sort of theme of what kinds of things I want to be happening. Then, and this part seems to be helping a lot, as I add video I'm putting a line in the file for every shot describing what's shown. That way, I can look through the text file and get an idea of the story as it's developing. Maybe it's a learning style thing or maybe it's just the limited amount of real estate on my screen, but I'm finding text a lot better for quickly seeing the flow of the story, than would be the thumbnails produced by the video editing software.

    Total sequenced: 35 seconds at the start, plus a few shots later on.
    Favourite shot: Alucard's gloved hand (with sigil clearly visible) coming up to grab the full moon out of the sky. 
  • And another thing... 2003-03-17 20:48:04 My anon email address seems to be screwed up again, too. Maybe it's time I stopped being so paranoid and just got a hotmail account or something... but then I go read the news and think, you know, maybe it's time I started being more paranoid. The voices, oh the voices in my head. 
  • BACON... BACON... OH PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP... BACON... 2003-03-17 20:44:45 I spent much of the weekend trying to compile Cinelerra 1.1.5. It doesn't work. Total steaming pile. As soon as I load an MPEG-2 file (like, say, ripped DVD footage), it locks up on me, and that is *after* I already hacked the assembly language to fix it (because REPZ counts as a separate instruction from STOSW in the compiler I use which is the one Mr. Cinelerra Dude recommended in his document) and added in all the library includes that were mysteriously forgotten in the distributed version and on and on. Dude, I don't want to have to write my own nonlinear editing software notwithstanding that I'm probably qualified to do it... I just want to make video!

    So. On the plus side, after becoming disgusted with Cinelerra 1.1.5 I decided to roll back to 1.0.0 but make damn sure that it would really work, and I discovered that it is possible to build "table of contents" files which you can load instead of loading the raw streams, and that allows Cinelerra to do frame-accurate seeking (which had been the bane of my existence earlier, because it would always seem to be one or two frames off when push came to shove) and ALSO the table of contents files get rid of the stupid decompression artifacts that started mysteriously appearing last time I tried to render a preview of Mothyre. I think if I had known about doing this it would have eliminated the problems I was having with the split-screens in my last video (see earlier entries below), but that one's in the can already anyway, water under the bridge, and so on.

    Still no word on the fourth Hellsing DVD.

    I was up until two last night (Sunday) what with waiting for the table of contents files to compile, and then rendering previews and patting myself on the back for having gotten the timing right and so on. I have now sequenced roughly eight out of ten bars of the intro to "Mother", almost ready to get to the actual lyrics. Of course, all is subject to change if I find better footage on the one source DVD I still have on order. Geez, if dvdsoon really take forever, maybe I'll have to just rent that one and rip it. I feel okay about doing that since I have already paid for my own copy, am just waiting for it to arrive.

    BUT ANYWAY, maybe it was just my own stupidity or maybe it was because I was up so late, I forgot completely that I had a class today, an extra session of a class that usually meets on Wednesdays. And I forgot completely I was supposed to write a one-page paper for that class and hand it in today. I rushed into class a half hour late, had to apologise to the instructor and write my paper in a rush and file it this afternoon, and I already had other schoolwork I was supposed to do today that got put off because this class was a higher priority. So now I'm in the red, as it were, on the schoolwork scheduling situation.

    The sacrifices one must make for art. 
  • Why, we's doin' schoolwork here, miss! 2003-03-10 13:43:35 Multimedia database class position paper: one page, three paragraphs, written in 39 minutes including the several I spent poking around the Web, the MUD, and the IRC channel trying to find someone who could remind me what Bloom filters are called. Finished the paper and printed it off with 21 minutes before the deadline. I rock!

    Of course, that and the other homework I was doing all weekend, and various non-AMV projects, meant I had little time to work on my latest AMV. C'est la vie. For the moment I have to put it on the shelf, because my mad video skills will be spent ripping and analyzing DVD footage for my term project for that same class. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm pleased to have a solid academic reason to need that copy of DeCSS... 
  • I need a new 'puter 2003-03-06 12:14:19 My current computer just isn't fast enough for the video editing I want to do on it these days. As soon as I have more than one video track going at once, I'm at the point where I can't view the results in real time (even with my own very high tolerance for very low frame rates). I have to render chunks of the timeline into AVI and watch them separately. However, I downloaded the new Cinelerra the other night. Still have to compile and install it. With any luck that will at least boost my stability.

    I'm tired of waiting for my Hellsing 4 DVD so I'm pressing ahead with the project anyway. This may be a good thing, because after my two previous videos I resolved that this one would have a more coherant storyline, and now I have some time to write it. 
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