JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)

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  • anywhere in the world 2015-07-13 07:57:33
    SH130:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: none
    - Precleaning: none
    - Storyboard/planning: basically none
    - Clipping: none
    - Edit: none
    - Postproc: none

    So I got back without incident, fought jetlag to a standstill, and cycled up production again on the previously-slotted SH130, not having run into anything in Japan that was going to turn into an immediate queue-jumping idea, just in time for the motherboard in my primary edit station to short out yesterday morning. I haven't lost progress on the video because I did the ripping elsewhere, and the vobs and indices are sitting on an external drive; even if the hard drive in the shorted laptop is toast, I won't have lost very much due to a spate of recent backups. Everything I do AMV-wise is backed up to optical media pretty much immediately, any writing that is even half good ends up duped between my home machine, my work machine, and like half a dozen flash drives, and even if I was actively recording music at present, which I'm not, I wouldn't be doing it on this machine. Total loss is probably going to be a couple logins for Korean games that I don't play anyway, a few half-formed short stories that were never going to get finished, and a small library of textures that are only really useful in Magix that I probably was not going to use in a video.

    As previously intimated, I was planning to replace this laptop anyway; the schedule and the need to get it done right now makes it inconvenient, but it was a six-year-old piece of equipment and on its last legs regardless. It's going to be a pain to shake out AMVing on a new machine in the next month and a half, in addition to the other stuff I have to do, so there will probably just be the one video, especially since this is a 24-block cut that will require extensive cleanup, before France. After that, who knows; moving to more modern equipment necessarily expands the range of possible projects, and while the adjustment period means they won't necessarily be *better* immediately, *shinier* can almost go without saying.

    --Kai out

     
  • i just ended your life 2015-06-17 09:16:45
    So SH129 went out to release this morning, and with the INSO concept doubtful -- too much other stuff to do before I leave, the end of the video did not lack for good content, getting kinda burned out on this source pool, too many things not watched over the weekend doing this work that I need to catch up on -- I am done for most AMV purposes until into July, should I get back in one piece. If not, well, there are worse epitaphs.

    --Kai out

     
  • all signs of a wonder 2015-06-16 08:23:32
    SH129:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: effectively done I guess
    - Clipping: complete
    - Edit: 3:45/4:38
    - Postproc: none

    With less than a minute left and another good cold, rainy night coming, I should be able to get this one done up today and into releasable shape by tomorrow. It's looking pretty good, and the effects design for the bridge worked out, but it's not quite done yet, and the hammer needs to stay down in order to get this out the door before I have to be out the door.

    As a side effect of some process improvements, I'm now fairly certain that the "wall hit" behavior that I've been struggling with for the last eleven years in this environment is strongly linked to having 100 or more discrete video elements on the timeline. Working under this hypothesis, I have hit zero walls in the 3:45 and about 215 cuts in the video so far; I've done two adaptive pre-wall buildouts, so I'm still stopping, starting, and pushing stuff through VDub, but without the uncertainty and frustration of having the editor inflict those on me. We'll see if this holds up; I'm well slower than 1 spc, so it's not likely that I'll face another one before the video's over, but there's room for experimentation elsewhere.

    On a related note, it is not impossible that there might be an INSO track related to this one; such is dependent on a bunch of interrelating factors like production time tonight after the actual video finishes, the results of a tech check I still have to do and how that will play into the export process, and actually wanting to do such rather than starting in on burning the source clear. In a very loose sense I'm worried about eventually running out of INSO codes if I keep bolting omake onto every other project; realistically, though, that is not going to happen with 80 more slots until overflow. I'm not quitting (well, again) any time soon (note: dependent on not dying), but even with a fully loaded production pipeline, it's quite unlikely that I'm going to finish another 80 videos. Timewise, that's only like another 8-10 years, but the truth is that after a hundred and thirty of these, there's not a whole lot left that's new, essential, and good enough to end up turning into something releasable. Between releases and disqualifications, ideas leave the board faster than they come in.

    --Kai out

     
  • disobey the oppressor 2015-06-15 08:33:45
    SH129:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: solidifying...
    - Clipping: complete
    - Edit: 1:56/4:38
    - Postproc: none

    I wasn't able to get as much done on this over the weekend as I'd hoped, but I should have a good shot at it tonight, with my language stuff finished and nothing to do, prep-wise, but look up every so often and see if the current battery's completely charged yet. The video is looking ok so far, but I've got both a difficult transition and (likely) the first wall hit coming up, and my editing station has been getting less reliable as of late. Priority 1 after I get back from Japan is probably going to be to build or acquire a new one, then bring it into service in the fall after I make sure that I'm going to be able to have an editing suite I'm comfortable with in place on it. With no idea about what ideas may get pushed to the front as a result of the trip, the next two projects in the pipeline should both be doable on the current station, but ultimately this is a six-year-old machine running twelve-year-old software with the most godawful set of quirks on the planet (full-interlace by default, speed mods interlace rather than dropping frames, the whole "wall hit" malarkey). I should be able to do better than this by now; it's just a matter of getting the right equipment in and getting to a point where I'm comfortable using it.

    For the present, the current setup is still working, and despite the need to cut check builds, I feel I'm in a good place with it. There's room for improvement, but until we can get directly to neural interfacing, there's always going to be obstacles to doing exactly what you want to do.

    --Kai out

     
  • at your command 2015-06-10 08:39:17
    SH129:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: solidifying...
    - Clipping: complete
    - Edit: 0:16/4:38
    - Postproc: none

    After a lot of back and forth, I ended up with the projected final runtime figure above. I could potentially have taken some more off the front, but with three minutes already cut out of the back end, there was a legitimate concern that I might get expelled from the notional bassplayers' union for inexcusable crimes against music if I cut the intro here. Since I had to cut the last chorus off for fit reasons, the long bridge solo had to go as well, since it doesn't set anything up if the payoff bit is gone, and while meandering, self-indulgent bass solos do have their place, that place is not really "as a minute of falling action on the back end of a four-minute video, not really going anywhere". The structure of this edit will work with the video, and will also allow me, probably, to finish this before the end of the weekend.

    The initial editing noted is, really, barely started, both in terms of time and in terms of cuts on the timeline, but tentatively looks to be going about 1 mph. Six cuts and sixteen seconds is a hell of a small sample space to extrapolate that from, and things are going to get harder, but it would not be surprising to get some decent progress in tonight, despite language commitments and other crap. Probably not enough to get ahead and think about doing a Morbid Angel cramdown project when I really ought to be reviewing and packing out, but something at least.

    --Kai out

     
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