Instrumental Anime Project

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:17 am

The straight greyscale, vs. the part greyscale / part colour version, does definately have a different feel. I actually like the new version, but I'll play with it a bit before I call anything final.

The "brightness and contrast changes" were actually originally done to hide the incredibly low quality of the multigenerational source I was working with - which it did quite well for the heavily blown out and pure b/w sections. They did also add a certain "unique" look to the video - but were also hard on the eyes and conceiled a fair amount of detail that actually makes the video feel much "richer" when left intact. Once again, I haven't set anything in stone yet, I just happen to like the original luma once I've moved on to some HQ source.

My favorte render, so far, has been the 16mm-like "grainy" version with a few hints of being old, somewhat worn film. Unfortunately, this translates very poorly throufh compression. I might do it for the HQ DVD version, but it just isn't practical for the internet distro.

BTW - my cinemetography track roommate is currently planning a film in pure black/white using some uber-high-contrast film stock he's come across and a few exposure/development tricks. As to how it'll come out, both of us have yet to see, as no lighting tests have yet been performed to determine whether the idea will translate nicely to the screen,

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I've set up my desktop and FTP and such over here. Now I just have to test it from an outside connection to determine whether the router's port forwarding is working as it should. Since it's late, however, I'll be doing that in the morning after I wake up.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 12:44 pm

FTP is up and working!. I'll send the new IP (my domain forwarding is now pointed to one of RIT's servers, where my [half-finished] website it hosted) and updated login information out through the PM system.

If possible, only upload to my FTP. My outgoing bandwidth is much more tightly regulated than my incoming bandwidth here, so it'd probably take you forever to upload a large file, and throw a flag or two with my parents' ISP.

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:29 pm

downwithpants: sorry if you've already downloaded the new Forbidden Memories! I just uploaded the I-Swear-This-Is-The-Absolute-Final version.

Final fixes:
- fixed framerate. I was editing in 24fps but accidentally exported in 29.97fps.

But apparently, it didn't have any effects on the finished video besides filesize.
- motion added to some still images. Might've been just one image; can't remember now.
- sloppy masking corrected, 0:20 and 0:50 especially. Her flapping mouth was so freaking troublesome.

- improved transition between the happiness and violence scenes. If you've been watching the old version a lot, this might take a little getting used to.

The video can be downloaded here. I'm using YouSendIt for a while because my friend's server is out of bandwidth for the moment.

Rose4Emily: do you want this new version to be on the internet distro file for Animasia? The last thing I want to do right now is delay the project even more, but if it's no problem for you, then I'll encode and upload the new file to your server.

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:51 pm

ack, i wanted to point out what looked like might have been a popped transition (a single frame of an extra scene got caught in a cut transition) at 1:22. might have been a really quick pan, but either way it looks confusing. visual quality looks very nice though.

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 6:22 pm

Yeah, it's just a really quick (2-frame) pan. I didn't feel the need to fix it since it was originally like that in the source.

Hmm... everybody I've shown this to so far has liked the visual quality. I personally don't see that big of a difference... maybe it's more noticable because of the higher resolution? I didn't use anything besides deen and fluxsmoothT. Oh yeah, it was due to your post in Site Announcements that I finally found out why fluxsmooth wasn't working.

NeoQuixotic · Post by **NeoQuixotic** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 9:42 pm

I just realized that my original huffy submission looks almost identicle to my new fitlering. Actually, I think I should of set mftoon to half strength. So I'm just happy with my original if thats fine. However, if you absolutly need a new DV version I will make it. And I will PM bakadeshi for ftp if there is a new ftp address and password to upload my MPEG 2 file.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Mon Feb 28, 2005 1:04 pm

Jasper-Isis wrote: Rose4Emily: do you want this new version to be on the internet distro file for Animasia? The last thing I want to do right now is delay the project even more, but if it's no problem for you, then I'll encode and upload the new file to your server.

Sure. If you can get it to my server sometime this week, that'd be great.

I'm assuming that the "download" link you provided is to a "distribution" encoding, rather than a "HQ" encoding. I'll be downloading it to see what you've done, though, anyhow.

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To Anubis:

The original Huffy is fine, the DV encoding can be done just as well on my end. If the 'new' version is just a filtered and rescaled version of that Huffy, I can actually take care of that just as well on my end with what I already have - just give me instructions on your filtering parameters and I'll translate them into my encoding process.

NeoQuixotic · Post by **NeoQuixotic** » Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:19 pm

Rose, I think just leaving my original huffy as is, is fine. I did filtering on it through virtualdub and it looks 90% the same as when I filtered through AVIsynth. I didn't rescale it since the actual area of the video on the 720x480 letterbox DVD takes up only a little more than 512x288. I don't think you even need to do anymore filtering to it, unless you feel like it.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Mon Feb 28, 2005 10:46 pm

Fine by me.

Actually, I do remember now that the EoE DVD had some pretty large black borders around the picture, as do many Ghibli DVDs. Must be a "TV safe" thing (though a shame to waste all those pixels on a black border when viewed on a computer screen or non-CRT television).

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Just saw "Millenium Actress", "Les Triplettes de Belleville", and "Return of the Cat" - all of them great films.

I also just purchased a copy of "Nausica", which I'm excited to see tomorrow with my sister and her fiance. While I'm catching up on my film viewing, I think I'll also finally get around to "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - what with the spectacular cinematography work I've heard it has, along with its supposed resemblance to the most "interesting" of my past relationships.

Maybe "A Very Long Engagement", if I have time, since it'd be great to see if the charm Audrey Tautou exuded in "Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" manefests in all her roles (as it did for another Audrey with whose films I am enamoured).

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Song, if you see this, toss me an e-mail at:

christian D0T paro A7 gmail D07 C0|\/|

(except in normal e-mail form, since you aren't a spam engine). Then I'll send you the script for 13'37". I brought my microphone home with me, so I can record narratives for "A Boy I Knew" and "Ararat" to take into account the aspect-correcting exchange of my video for those two between segments.

It's a shame, in a way, though - you did such a beautiful job with the "Ararat" narrative that I doubt I can match it.

BTW - loved the "Prescott Affair" trailer. Any relation to the new Intel chip manufacturing process?

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I haven't yet decided on the revised segment lineup, but I should have that done tommorow, along with at least half of the re-rendered narratives.

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 7:29 pm

So I'm trying to encode the improved Forbidden Memories for submission to rose4emily.

...

How do you convert a 24fps video to 29.97fps without (1) interlacing it, (2) speeding up the footage, or (3) inserting extra frames and making the video jerky?

Or is it that you want us to interlace? In that case, then, the only DV codec that I have (the old Panasonic DV codec) doesn't... really interlace. It left the footage at 24fps, progressive. It also softened the video quite a bit and left a noticable greenish tint.

I ran some tests with editable codecs, and here are the files that I ended up with.

Huffyuv v2.2.1. 720x480. 24 fps. 44100Hz, 16-bit WAV audio. [749 MB]
This is the master huffyuv file that I've been encoding everything from. I have resampled the audio, per your request, for the next two files.

Panasonic DV. 720x480. 24 fps. 48000Hz, 16-bit WAV audio. [468 MB]
This is the DV file that I talked about above. Panasonic DV seems to be a pretty outdated codec, but it is the only one available to me. For the reasons mentioned above, I'd prefer not to use it.

Lagarith lossless codec. 720x480. 24 fps. 48000Hz, 16-bit WAV audio. [409 MB]
This one really surprised me, as it's a lossless codec but came up with a filesize even smaller than that of the DV encode. This is the file that I'd like to submit, but I don't know if your computer can support Lagarith.

My biggest problem right now is still with the framerate. Unless you can point me to an easily obtainable DV codec that will properly encode interlaced video and conform to NTSC standards... I guess I'll be sending you the huffyuv.

...

Or maybe there's a solution right under my nose that I am unable to see...?

Help.