JOURNAL: Arigatomina

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  • terabites rock, dvdfab does not 2011-05-03 23:16:58 So I sprung for another external drive. As expected, the price when it's not on sale was painful. I won't be stocking up on those after all, unless I buy one once a year when the income tax returns come in. Still, got a new one and it fit all 30 of my new Naruto dvds on it so I didn't have to delete any of the files on the other drive.

    Yeah, I know, because the world needs more effect-less Naruto amvs. Deal with it. The kid loved my little Wolfram vid and now she wants one with Wolfram and Sasuke both in it, so that's what I'm doing. She has me editing actual amvs for the first time in four years, so I ain't complaining if she picks the songs and most of the scenes. Once I have her requests out of the way, I may even go for an actual crossover. She's got it in her head that Wolfram could kick Sasuke's butt just because his fire magic is stronger, and no amount of explaining about ninja speed and taijutsu can convince her otherwise. She even shrugged off the valley of the end fight by saying Wolfram could burn him to a crisp without even getting off his horse. A visual demonstration would settle the issue nicely, and that would tickle even my older niece (who is a wanna-be effect whore to my little niece's preference for anime footage she can actually recognize from the original show).

    It's so much fun watching anime and planning vids with kids. They really refresh and revitalize the hobby for a jaded oldtimer. That almost makes it worth buying and watching the dubs. The 6yrold still isn't good enough to read subtitles and she's the one practically living with me these days. ^^;

    In other news, I'm really worried about this DVDFab8 thing that's supposed to replace dvddecryptor. It's a trial set to expire on the 22nd. And I don't like the way it ejects the disc after each "main video" burn I make - I have to restart it in order to choose a different 'movie' segment to rip. With dvddecryptor I could choose as many as I liked or do a 'full disc' rip without paying a penny. I won't be buying a copy of this when the trial expires, that's for sure. [Yes, I spring for a harddrive I don't really need and then whine about shelling out $50 for a program that everyone else recommends. I admit my priorities are skewed.]

    /And I finally finished catching up to all my password requests, so ripping dvds on the side didn't take any time out from that. I answered emails, ripped dvds, and planned out the next chapter of a fic all at the same time. I can straddle three hobbies at once. Really. For now, anyway. ;p 
  • Ack. Terabites.... 2011-04-26 23:57:18 I just finished ripping all 18 discs of my new KKM boxsets and converted all the avs scripts to huffyuv so I could scroll through and pick my clips later. It turns out I don't have to do that. I didn't realize until this moment just how big a 2tb harddrive actually is.

    All 18 discs, each one broken into 12-13 huffyuv files of 2-3 gigs each (to watch out for that infamous 4gig limit I heard about somewhere...which may not actually exist...). And I still have over 1tb left on the drive. That's not even counting the backup copy I made of my scanlation folder, which clocked in at over 60 gigs all by itself. Or my amv folder, which was the biggest one on my dearly departed external drive.

    Guh. And it was only $75. I spend that much on food in a week when I have my great grandmother to take on one of her Ponderosa kicks. ^^;

    For once I'm siding with the new and improved. Forget trying to fit 112 episodes worth of YYH clips onto a 20gig harddrive. Or trying to go through 50+ dvds of DBZ on a 60gig computer. I'll just buy a few more of these 2tb drives and disc space will never be an issue again.

    Liking technology a lot right now. Let's see how long it lasts... Probably until I get to Radioshack tomorrow and realize these 2tb drives are no longer on sale. ;p 
  • Second-guessing like a fiend 2011-04-22 02:39:08 I was all set to post in the Video help section, tagged onto the end of the big thread all about Ut Video, which I'd never heard of until tonight when I uninistalled amvapp and got the newest version of all the fun stuff. Then I realized...they're arguing about a few seconds and a bit of disc space. I ain't worried about disc space or time...I just want to be sure I'll be able to export a video when I'm done editing it. ^^;

    I'm going to post what I had typed up here, since I did wade through that entire thread (without comprehending half of what they said) and read every thread that showed up on my "ut video" search of the forum while writing it up. A waste of three hours, pretty sad. For now I'm going to stick with huffyuv, but who knows, a few years from now I may read what I had intended to post and laugh at my noobness.

    Ut Video vs Huffyuv

    I use an old version of Premiere, 6.0, and I never could use Lagarith in it. It would lock up during export, sometimes on previews. It seemed memory heavy or just hard for my version of Premiere to read. So I stuck with huffyuv.

    I just installed the new amvapp and read the updated guides and they recommend Ut video. When I did a test clip and imported it, Premiere let me scroll through the file and preview clips in the timeline, but they're black in the import box and black on the timeline (no thumbnails), and it locked up when I tried to export a two second clip from the timeline. I figured it was the same problem I had with lagarith, just a hard codec to swallow. After wading through all the color conversion talk in this thread, all of which went right over my head, I'm not so sure.

    My questions:

    Is there any advantage to using Ut Video aside from the file size and speed (convenience) compared to huffyuv (dependable dinosaur)? Is it worth studying this color space stuff in order to get this codec to work in an outdated version of Premiere?

    When I searched, someone in another thread mentioned a bug in the installer that kept them from playing the codec in players and opening it in vdub, but I have no problems playing UtVideo clips in Media Player Classic or using them in Vdub, and they even open and render fine in WMM.

    Is there some RGB Premiere setting I need to use to make Ut video yuv420 work (and can I change it at will if I want to work with huffyuv as well as Ut video clips in the same timeline), or is version 6.0 just too old for this new codec?

    NOTE: I didn't think it was this RGB vs YUV issue because I always used Huffyuv with no problems and YUV420 is still YUV (or so I thought?), so I didn't do anything involving RGB during or after making the clip.

    ...

    And that's when I realized. I can't wrap my brain around the logic. If there's even a possibility that I was supposed to convert my YUV source to RGB before saving to YUV, or that I was supposed to save to YUV only to mark some RGB setting in Premiere even though I've always used YUV in the past... I'm afraid to hear what sort of answer I'd get. If they tell me I have to involve RGB at any point in the process of going from YUV to YUV in a YUV-friendly program, my brain will explode.

    So...yeah, I'm sticking with huffyuv. Again. It's lagarith all over again. No upgrades for Ari.

    [On an aside, I figured out why my computer was locking up when I tried to open my vobs in DGIndex. It was switching color schemes to "basic" and never had enough memory to pull it off without locking up completely. I ripped my new KKM dvds and the first time I tried to open one it did the same thing. I had to restart the computer and then - with nothing else running - it succeeded in downgrading the color on the computer while that program was active. Now that I've upgraded to the new and improved DGIndex it's no longer an issue, no color downgrading necessary and thus no lock ups. So, yay, I didn't screw up on my dvds, I was just reinstalling already-outdated amvapp packages every few months.] 
  • dummy sectors 2011-01-30 23:35:13 Not procrastinating. Real life is just kicking my ass as usual. Honest.

    .-.

    I'm still trying to set my new computer up so I can make amvs on it. After months of trying to find the lame.exe file included in the amvapp (according to the org guide), which involved me reinstalling it over and over every few weeks, until I'd made absolutely certain there was no such file in existence in anything amvapp installed to my computer, I finally went to google instead. I didn't find it there, either, but the next time I tried to rip a cd, it worked fine. Go figure. Maybe it was the cd itself, in which case I'll come back to this problem if I ever try to get the song I'd wanted off it in the future.

    Today's fun business involved ripping a dvd. I actually counted myself ahead as far as this goes since I've made a little hobby out of converting files, making my own dvds, and making copies of them. DGIndex has serious issues with the vobs I create, just trying to open one makes my computer turn itself off, but I can convert the files to huffyuv in AVS Video Converter and go directly to vdub to snatch clips, so that's not a big deal. With all the luck and cute programs I've got on this computer, I figured ripping a few anime dvds would be easy. I was wrong. Who'd have thought, right?

    Apparently my great success stemmed from the fact that the only dvds I'd been working with were old ones and ones I'd created myself. I finally renewed my netflix account so I could rent some anime, expecting I could nab the vobs for the episodes I wanted without having to buy the entire series. And as soon as I got the first dvd into dvd decryptor, I ran into dummy sectors. Yeah. I'm sure everyone on the org knows about those. I haven't looked in the org guides to see if that's been added. After the fiasco with lame.exe I figured the guides hadn't been updated much in the years I was away and I really didn't want to get a bunch of dead links to files I'd have to google anyway. So I went straight to google.

    The process seems a little complicated right now, so I'll write it all down that way I can come back and reread this if I forget later.

    I need four programs instead of two. I already had DVDDecryptor and DVDShrink, but now I've also got RipIt4Me and FixVTS. I'm really curious about the FixVTS since I have another program I was using to do that with my early dvd attempts. I bet they both do the same thing and here I was dumb enough to pay for the other one because I'd never heard of this FixVTS one. Bless the Freeware. Just wish they were better advertised.

    Anyway, the easy steps:

    RipIt4Me first, which opens Decryptor itself, select and rip the files, then follow R's buttons till it opens S, make sure the vobs are readable - if so, it's done. If not, run it through FixVTS. [According to the little guide that recommended these files to me. Actually, Ripit4me fixed the vobs itself and never once referenced this FixVTS program - so I may not have needed to download it at all.] Then voila, no more dummy sectors.

    It's a shame dvddecryptor isn't being updated anymore. I bet the people who made it could have built all this into it. Though this Ripit4me program is really easy to use. I may have to play with it to see if it fixes the problem DGIndex has reading my homemade dvds.

    I swear I will devote a month this summer to reading the new (I assume) guides on the org. I'll have to since I'm so used to converting and compressing files with AVS that the idea of writing an avisyth script for vdub makes me squirm. Deinterlacing. Geh. The very vague memories are intimidating in themselves. I'll probably have to hook up my old computer and play a compare and contrast game with it when the time comes to refresh this memory of mine. I hope it still turns on. It's been sitting in the corner for a very long time...  
  • still procrastinating... 2011-01-14 04:38:15 I leveled three projects and cleaned one. I'm allowed to procrastinate for a few hours after that, right? No? Well, I'm doing it anyway so nyah. -.-;;

    .

    Doesn't anyone read threads in different sections and put things together? In the org redesign section I compared the org to a library and everyone jumped to point out all the ways in which the org is nothing at all like a library. A month later a thread in General Discussion had quite a few people comparing the org to a library, so for shits and giggles I pointed out all the ways in which the org is nothing at all like a library. In both cases, everyone was quick to disagree entirely, as if their lives depended on the issue and it wasn't just some categorical debate bordering on semantics. What I find interesting is that no one noticed that I had flipped my stance completely. Or that the people responding were now arguing the exact thing they'd argued against in the other section. I know this works with little kids. It's the old "Is too! Is not! Is too! Is not! ...Is not! Is too!!" back and forth. It was really popular on the Bugs Bunny era of cartoons. It's not supposed to work on forums, though.

    But it does work. I could argue that the earth is round and have people come out fighting to prove it's flat. Heck, on _____ there was a thread about people forcing their opinions on others. Someone pointed out that the reason we disregard some people's opinions is because they're simply wrong. You're not going to listen to someone who says the sky isn't blue because they're simply wrong. Immediately people jumped up to argue that the sky is not actually blue because the color we see is simply a reflection filtered through the atmosphere etc etc. Yeah, and my gray shirt isn't actually gray, it's just light waves bouncing and appearing gray when they hit my eyeballs. Just because my eyes and the eyes of everyone else register the color as gray doesn't make the shirt gray. This is a totally stupid argument just for the sake of arguing. The shere contrariness of people with way too much time on their hands is astounding. Well, maybe not astounding since it comes as no surprise and gets tedious more often than not. But it's interesting and entertaining and very fun to play with.

    For the record, I stand by what I said over a month ago in the redesign section. To me, the org was a library. Now it's a library that has been taken over by a writer's guild that has turned the entire building into their own clubhouse and who view readers as uninvited visitors who only come in and dirty the place up because the new owners haven't gotten around to redecorating the building and changing the locks. As I said when we were discussing the org's goals in that section, the new owners have to decide what they're going to do. Keep it as their personal clubhouse or turn it back into the library it used to be. I think it would take too much work to make it a library again. They're too used to having it all to themselves, and there are plenty of other libraries for people to go to now. To make it a library, they'd have to stop being possessive and exclusionary and start competing with the rest of the net, operating on the same terms as all the other libraries. It would be a lot of work and would cause a lot of disruption for the club members who aren't used to outsiders, most of whom have rightly gone away despite the lack of an "Under New Ownership" sign out front.

    On the other hand, there aren't many editor guild clubhouses around, so they could gain visitors by maximizing the nitch they've turned the org into. Everything is already in place for this. All they have to do is put up the new ownership sign and change the site description so it's calling itself what it really is. And then advertise it. They're already doing that by handing out cards to editors at cons. They're not handing out cards to all the viewers in the amv rooms, right? Just to those who are interested in editing their own vids. And that's how an elite club gets its name spread around. There wouldn't be much redesign necessary to achieve this. They don't even have to excize the viewer sections, just distance them a little more and make it clear that they're reminents of the old library kept around for club members who still like to use that stuff now and then.

    Since the org is funded by donations, I'm looking at what the donators want. Most of them want to keep their clubhouse to themselves. A few want to turn the antiquated library portion into youtube, so they don't have to upload the video twice in order to have it streamed on the rest of the net. And then there are some torn donators who don't think the org can survive as an elite clubhouse, and question whether it's even possible for it to become a library again. Personally? I think there should be a poll. It's a really quick way to see exactly where the majority stands.

    1: Burn the guesthouse. We don't need them or want them, let them go away and lock the doors so they can't get back in.
    2: Turn the org into free video hosting site instead of a fansite, because while the fans have better places to hang out they can always use another free host.
    3: Remodel the guest bedrooms. Emphasize the community as a whole and destroy the editor/viewer divide. It's a fansite, not a guild.
    4: Argue about it incessantly just for the sake of arguing until everyone is so tired of the subject they drop the idea of change entirely.

    1 makes my stomach roil. I'd be locked out with the rest of the viewers and then I'd have no more nostalgic org to come back to.

    2 makes me want to hurt someone. Risk killing the org because you don't like having to upload videos to youtube and megavideo? Those sites can afford it because they have advertising - they're for-profit websites. And they make a huge profit from hosting the files we're too cheap to host ourselves. The org is a non-profit site backed by donations. Only members can donate, so the org gains nothing from streaming files to people too lazy to make an account. Not to mention what will happen if the doujinshi and manga videos start coming over here. If we get into the same mess that closed the online-reading sites, the org is screwed. They don't even have to worry about US license holders in that case because the Japanese ones will slaughter them. But forget that. I'm hoping that will never happen here. We'd have enough problems simply for having previews. Anime companies are charging people to stream their shows online now. Do you think they like sites providing free anime footage to be streamed online for anyone using a search engine? That just because the org is currently smaller they'll ignore the org doing the exact same thing as youtube? Somehow I doubt it. The only reason they haven't targetted the org over previews is because they're not visible to search engines. No one browsing the org can see them, so even if someone reports the org, they'd have to make an account here in order to verify the report. [This is why livejournal communities friends-lock their posts before sharing risky content, btw. Making your risky activity visible only to members is commonly accepted as the smart thing to do these days.]

    3 strikes me as impossible. Most donators are editors and longterm members of the guild. Even if they agree to go this route, their hearts won't be in it. And any viewers drawn in by the gesture will be walking right into hostile territory. I'd feel sorry for them.

    I'm leaning toward 4 myself. It keeps us busy, lets people pretend they're willing to share without having to share more than the general discussion forum (which they're already hating with a passion), and keeps hope alive for those who actually want change enough to work for it. And so long as the org doesn't actually go through with a radical change, there's little chance of it being closed almost immediately afterward because of that change. Maintain the status quo. Nothing gained, true, but little lost. In the meantime, stalling is a good way to make sure I have time to download all the videos I'd hate to lose forever if the org does get shut down right away. That's really what I'm most afraid of - having to use the tube to watch amvs because the org went down and I wasn't fast enough to backup my favorite vids first. I have to go through my star rating list to catch all the ones I just streamed, so this could take a while. Luckily for me there's too much bickering for any decisions to be reached, so time isn't really problem. Right? 
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