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Weekend roundup
2006-01-30 15:44:36
Preparation: 95 hours
Editing: 36
Project length: 3:52
Completed: One track of an eventual four that's about eight seconds long.
Weekend highlights include completely timing all the lyrics of my song (another procrastination landmark, there is absolutely nothing left for me to do other than get down to the serious business of editing my footage), resampling my audio up to 48 MGHZ (thanks a lot, AB), pretty much finalizing the first eight seconds of the video as far as the footage I'm using goes and beginning my "making of" silliness that may or may not ever make it to AMV.org.
Something depressing also occurred, however: my song is edited to shorten it and...well, shorten it. The first time around this editing was quite the traumatic experience, the second time around was much better, but it looks like I should have gone a third time around because *cue ominous music* I screwed up the song. Granted, if it took me this long to hear the problem, then who knows if anyone else is going to notice, but the fact remains that I did screw up the song. Basically, instead of one set of beats entering, exiting and entering again, I have enter, exit, exit. This explains why my second round of editing was so easy - I forgot that I had to do complex clipping and splicing the first time around to achieve enter, exit, enter, which actually is more like enter, exit, enter/exit. Yeah, so now I've got to worry that someone out there will hear the problem and be so shaken that they come to hate my AMV.
Let this journal entry stand as evidence that I knew about this error at an early date and chose not to correct it! Why? Because fixing it would demand two hours or more of work on the audio and another six hours completely re-timing the entire song - no way am I going to do that! Theoretically, I could have decided in advance to have the enter, exit, exit be the final product - after all, it took me this long to notice the error because it works perfectly for what it's intended to do: set up the next set of beats. It fails only at the front end, since it doesn't match the tail end of the set of beats before it (or rather, matches too well!)
I've made a mental note to make sure something really distracting happens onscreen at the intersection of exit, exit. If the viewer can get past that point and hang on in blissful ignorance for another three or four seconds, then I'm home free.
Also, the edits already existant in the song are such that anyone familiar with the "Addicted to Love" (and cares about it remaining virginal) will already be off balance because of what I've done to it and will hopefully assume that the glaring error isn't an error at all, merely further deflowerment.
These words I'm using are deliberate, because my AMV is all about promiscuity. hehe
God help me. *scrubs eyes* Tomorrow I start night classes. Major blow to my AMV plans. But I MUST FINISH THIS PROJECT IN TIME TO ENTER IT IN AB!!! Hmm, maybe I can rope some of my classmates into Photoshopping things for me...nah... -
2006-01-27 09:13:39
Preparation: 95 hours
Editing: 29
Project length: 3:52
Completed: One track of an eventual four that's about 8 seconds long.
Had a serious scare last night when I discovered my codec of choice in Premiere stamped "PICVIDEO" all over my render. What the hell? I thought I made darn sure NOT to use that codec when I set up this project! So I tried again, this time selecting something that didn't even begin with "P": Huffy. Pulled in my old project, deleted rendered sequence (even deleted clips in that sequence from my bin) and built it all over again. Rendered = "PICVIDEO." EAARRGGHHH!!! So brilliant me figures out that Premiere is lazy and will use its preview renders over and over again, regardless of your project's new settings, just to save itself from actually working. So I deleted all my previews AND all my autosaves, just to be safe. Voila. But now my cross dissolve is causing each frame of the sequence to shift marginally up and down, which looks horrible, and I don't know why. Is it Huffy? I never had this problem with other codecs. Must ask in the forum.
BUT I AM making progress! One of my ideas is actually working out pretty well. ^_^ The downside is that I need more manga for this idea...which requires I sift through umpteen pages of said manga AGAIN to find what I'm looking for. -_- I hate this. I could have sworn I took extreme care to gather an extensive collection of scans to cover every possible use. Maybe I burned them on a CD an they're sitting on my desk somewhere.
Delivery of my CS2 Suite has been postponed until Tuesday thanks to the jerking around I received at JourneyEd.com. Their ordering process is the most disorganized, unstreamlined, non-user friendly thing I have seen on the Internet since 1996. I really, really want to use that Adobe Bridge thingy and put those nice vector tools in Illustrator to work on my AMV.
Note to self: Remember that idea you had about using your dog in an AMV? Don't forget about! She's a corgi, all anime fans are supposed to love corgis, so I can melt their hearts right off the bat if I plaster that adorable face on their computer screens. Her Internet moniker is going to be Dog Butt. hehehe - p.s. 2006-01-25 09:32:07 Post-preparation editing, add three hours, although this is suspect, because technically I wasn't working in Premiere for those three hours. Hrm.
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OMG !!! EEEAAAAHHHHHH!!!
2006-01-25 09:30:59
Well, it's April Fool's Day, folks. Yes, that's the deadline to submit an AMV to AnimeBoston 2006. GOD HELP ME!!! I've got... exactly 62 days or so, about two months, to finish this GOD DAMN AMV if I want to enter it. *sweats profusely* Wow, I said I didn't care if I finished it in time, because I didn't want to rush it, but that's blatantly hypocritical of me, huh? SHIT.
You can tell I'm disturbed because of all the bad language I'm using.
Let's BREAK IT DOWN!
Editing at 2 hours a day, for 60 days = 120 hours of work. I can do this, but only if I pound myself into the pavement. There's also no way I can do 2 hours a day for at least two of those weekdays (given the fact that I'm away from home from 8:15 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. those days).
But let's be realistic. I cannot finish this AMV in another 120 hours - if I knew what the hell I was doing, yes, but I don't. Ok, so I had a fantastic session last night preparing some footage, but who knows if I'll even end up using it??
So, then. I can possibly squeeze out eight hours two days a week (Sat/Sun), two hours three other days a week (M/W/F). That gives me 14 hours per week and I've got about eight weeks, which results in 112 hours of editing. That's no good either! CRAP!
On the positive side, the touchy-feely stuff I'm doing now *should* be over quick. Once I get down to business editing my footage things *should* move more quickly. I*should* worry about the extras later. oh man... -
Back on track
2006-01-24 10:48:01
Got over the "I can't seem to be enthused about this project anymore" blues, thank god. A little persistance and self-loathign go a long way towards kicking myself in the butt.
Hours:
Preparation - 95
Editing - 23
Project length - 3:52 minutes
Completed - Nada! How can that be, if I've spent 23 hours (actually more) editing my AMV? Well, a lot of what I've done isn't likely to end up being used, and a lot more of what I've done is the result of exhaustive trial and error. While it may have taken me four hours to get a certain sequence the way I want it (this is a sequence that's half a second long), I can duplicate the thing in about 15 minutes now that I know what I'm doing. -_- I really need to get in touch with my AMV sounding board before I spend too much more time on things that may or may not actually work in my AMV. Then again, maybe this is good fodder for some strange incarnation of AMV Hell down the road.
Had a bad experience last night, though. Attempting to make AE and Premiere be nice to one another, I reinstalled the latter (which is supposed to recognize AE on my system and make certain modifications accordingly). It didn't make those modifications, and worse, it yelled at me that my registration had expired (it would be helpful if it told this to me right off the bat, like when I entered my S/N, instead of five minutes later), which is ridiculous. Fortunately, I got it to work the second time around. Weird. *sigh*
In other, better, news, I'm getting my new Adobe stuff this week, hopefully tomorrow. :D I'm having it shipped to my office, so I get to fondle it lovingly for a few hours before being able to bring it home and install it. CS2 Premium, here I come!
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
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