Instrumental Anime Project

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 5:32 pm

I'm making some real progress on the opening and ending now. I haven't gotten much done over the week, due to other work - but there will be little, if anything, left to do after the end of tomorrow.

I'll check my ftp accounts (I sent Song information on a second one, in case she had trouble connecting to the [very sluggish as of late] server running off of my own machine) this evening to see if the last of the monologues are in. When that happens, I'll also be able to say that I finally have all of the pieces together and ready for assembly.

I've actually ended up encoding the videos at 768x576 and 768x432, after I noticed that both the 720x540 and 720x405 encodings had ugly blocking artifacts on their bottom edge due to their non-multiple-of-16 heights. The new encoded sizes, by video are:

Full
448.3 MiB (plus a little for the "extras" - but those are pretty compact compared to the AMV content)

Wide
441.9 MiB (plus a little for the "extras" - but once again, that shouldn't add too much).

Each segment will probably come just under 500 MiB with everything included. 500MiB fits neatly on a CD, and is within 100 MiB per-video limit (on average, a couple of the super-detailed ones go over that mark). Encoded at these settings, the video is also incredibly clean - to such a degree that over half of the segments are indistinguishable (even on close visual inspection) from the quality level of a professionally mastered DVD. The segments that do have some visible flaws had them already, making the final Instrumentality encoding a third or greater generation encoding for those segments. I'm also amazed at how little the filesize is increased when significantly increasing the size of the picture - but that all falls back to the idea of "spreading out" the image data, rather than really making more of it. The end result of the scaling is, essentially, nice smooth and crisp edges rather than the blocky, fuzzy, or pixilated options available at lower encoding dimensions. It also helps that the scaling operation makes sure the original macroblocks aren't aligned with the new encoding's macroblocks, avoiding the exaggeration of macroblock edges caused by repeatedly quantizing the same set of pixels in successive encoding's macroblocks (the 8x8 squares over which the DCT is applied to decorrelate data and facilitate the quantization and entrophy encoding process).

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What I'm planning to do for the "beta" viewing is as follows:

I have a very slow, unresponsive server right now. Because of this, I am unable to use it to upload all of the projects content to all of you for you to see it before it is released.

What I can do is take a couple of screencaps of each of your videos - so you can see what the encoding quality looks like (since you already know what your video's content looks like), and put the intro/credits/narratives up on my account with the school's web server - probably in two or three "windows" of time, to get around the 25 MiB size limitation of that account. I will then encourage all of you to download only the narrative for your own video, so you will all have a chance to see yours without getting the tech admins on my case about bandwidth usage.

When I do this, I will post a schedule of three day-long "windows" during which you will be able to download them from a web link I will send to you through PM.

This solution should, I imagine, give you all an opportunity to see the "glue" material of the project, and what you can expect from the encoding quality.

Songbird21 · Post by **Songbird21** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 11:34 pm

I finished my narratives and uploaded 'em to your inbox Rose4.

Enjoy!

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:17 am

w00t!

The end is near, hope to hear those narratives soon

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:40 am

I'll finish off the fullscreen narratives tommorow afternoon.

On a related note, Kalium has offered to help out with the preview distribution, so it looks like you will actually be able to see each part in full when I've finished putting them together.

Yea Kalium!

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 3:22 am

if it's possible to finish the dvds before xmas, they'd make awesome stocking stuffers. i'd be interested in a few copies.

if not, maybe three kings day presents...

Bakadeshi [AuN Studios] · Post by **Bakadeshi [AuN Studios]** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 7:40 pm

downwithpants wrote:if it's possible to finish the dvds before xmas, they'd make awesome stocking stuffers. i'd be interested in a few copies.

if not, maybe three kings day presents...

yea, we need to start thinking about setting that up. Since I see the end is finally near.

It'll only take me a day or 2 to actually splice up and construct the DVD format from the raw video files once they are available, the rest will be just making the copies. Oshna I beleive had offered to help with distribution, so what I would do is send him and anyone else that wants to help with distro, a copy of the cover art to send to Kinkos or any other color copy service, to print out, and the labels to print out on your printer for each DVD.

I should be able to handle a small amount of DVDs per day as far as requests. I have a paypal account that anyone can use to send me the funds to pay for the supplies. I'v ecalculated it to be about $3.50 per DVD including the case and cost of coverart/labels.

Exact cost breakdown for those interested:

I beleive Kinkos color copy comes out close to $1.00 per page
DVDs (Memorex, Virbatum, maxwell, etc) are about .70 cents to $1.00 per disc
DVD cases /w full sleeve covers = $1.00 each

As far as the actuall inc usage for each label... I'm not realy sure. I'll just set it to a nice round 50C each. I won't bother charging wear and tear on the DVD burner... Technology is moving so fast I'll buy a new one well before this one konks out anyway ;p

So 3.50 per DVD nets you nice DVD (always use good quality name brand products that I've tested with my burner to work in most set top players) with Cover art, and labels.

this price is tentative, I have to go confirm the exact prices for each component, its just to give an idea of what were looking at. The final price might actually be lower than this.

Oh btw, I'll do a free copy for all members of the project. on me. my GoodJob present to all involved ;p that includes those that didn;t do a video, but helped immensely in some other fassion, such as providing FTP service, etc.

Rose4emily:
I don't have a method of getting ftp access right now, to upload the finished video to, so if possible, can we either use Kaliums to get me a full quality copy for DVD authoring, or send me the files on DVD/CD media? Or maybe come up with some other method of getting it to me. I thought I would have my server by now, but its a no go.

Glad to see this project comming to a finish finally

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 10:40 pm

I just finished off the last of the narrative videos for the Fullscreen section. I've two overnight batch encoding jobs (well, it could be just one, but I want to be able to check progress after a certain number of steps to make sure everything is working as planned) to do to put the Fullscreen section together into a single AVI, then I'll put it on Kalium's server for a few days so you can get it before I have to remove it to make room for the Widescreen section.

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As for the DVDs, I don't have a decent MPEG2 encoder on my machine (licencing issues have kept good MPEG2 encoders pretty much in the domain of expensive software and specialized DSP chips), and Huffmans would be too large for even a single video to fit on a cd for several of the videos. This means I can't really "do it myself".

What I can do is use local networking to send them, one at a time, to one of my housemates' two iMacs, burn burn HuffYUV copies to DVDs, and send a set to you through the mail (keeping a second as a backup). The catch is that both of them are very busy at the moment with their own film and animation projects (the variety done from scratch), so it might be upwards of a week before I get a chance to do this.

I'm afraid I really don't have any convenient way (at least not without a lossy re-encoding) to add "black bars" to the Widescreen portion to make it fit the same aspect and resolution constraints as the Fullscreen portion - so I'd really just be passing you a lossless variation of the Distribution copy and leaving it up to you to handle the letterboxing, NTSC framerate conversion (if necessary), and scaling (if necessary).

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I've sent a PM to AbsoluteDestiny (I think he's the one who handles this stuff now) about project hosting asking about whether we'd be working with an "equivalent of 100MiB per video" upload limit, and whether I could create a special "Instrumentality" account under which this and any thematically related projects (like the "Around the World" project, or "ProjeKt Liquid Dreams" - if Pen-Pen's interested in the idea) could be listed.

The first concerns whether I'm going to have to make any bitrate adjustments before putting this project up on the Donut.

The second is because I'd really prefer not to see this project, with all of the wonderful work we've all put into it, land at the bottom of the list of generally mediocre (at best) videos I'm solely responsible for. Creating an account for the concpet behind this project would be a good way to acknowledge the degree to which it was a group effort, and to set it apart as a product of the group rather than listing it as "just another video" under my account.

I haven't heard back on either of these questions yet, but I'll be sure to fill you in when I do.

pen-pen2002 · Post by **pen-pen2002** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:29 pm

I've always thought it was kind of weird to see a project with a ton of members listed under someones profile, but our project was much smaller and had a greater amount of invovlement by all the group members (as our 80 page thread can attest) so I'm not sure that it's inappropriate to have it listed in all of our profiles.

An Instrumality account would be very cool though. I would be honored to have the Liquid Dream ProjeKct listed under the Insrumentality label. If we can't get an account we could just make it into a studio or something.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:28 am

Yeah, that's the B-plan - an "Instrumentality" studio, and just have everyone listed as "contributers" or "collaborators" or whatever it's called here where you stick extra names on a video.

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I've set the first of the two batch processes needed for the Fullscreen section running. Everything should be encoded under the final and standardized set of parameters needed for compiling the project by the time I wake up tomorrow (actually, just a couple hours from now - but I'm still going to get a full night's sleep). I'll then do the part where I merge all of those files together either tomorrow at some point during the day, or overnight if I'm tied up with something else.

Anyhow, you should all have a chance to see the Fullscreen half of this project starting Tuesday. The end credits still need a little tweaking, and I need to do the same two batch processes for the Widescreen section before it's ready for viewing, so I think I'll be switching out the Fullscreen and Widescreen sections on Kalium's FTP account on Sat. or Sun. - and leave it up for a few more days so you'll all have a nice, wide window of time to get a "preview" copy on Instrumentality before it goes on the Donut.

I hope to upload it to the Donut on the Thursday or Friday of next week. I still have to hear back on special hosting permission and such first, but that's what I'm going for in terms of a release schedule.

If I don't hear back from AbsoluteDestiny in the next couple of days, I'll try asking Phade, or one of the other admins. I don't really want to start nagging the admins, but it really would be nice to know what I need to know to upload the Instrumentality/Animasia film sometime not too long after its completion date. That, and seeing "Road to Iron Chef" (pretty entertaining, go watch it) leaves me a little wary of who's checking AD's messages, anyhow.

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I've added some faint instrumental music to the background of each narrative track. This really helps to fill in the gaps of dead silence produced by the hard gating in Song's recording equipment, and to mask the light background hum that remains somewhat audible in even the cleanest of my recordings. It also sounds pretty - but I've kept it down to a level where it in no way interferes with listening to the actual narrative monologues.

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I know Otohiko's up around the top of the list for number of posts - but I sometimes wonder where I'd land on one based on cumulative word count. I really ought to write less.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:36 pm

Great, and if it's next week, that means I'll be able to d/l it as soon as it's out!

That separate instrumentality account is probably a good idea. If the project is going to be available locally, I think it would even be a good idea for me to not release Ararat separately - I kind of made it specifically for the project, and I don't suppose a separate entry will make it any more available...

Anyways, looking forward.

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As far as the post counts, I'm indeed (somehow) in the first slot.
But I can almost certainly assure you that for average post length, you're almost the only contender. Although for combination of length + number, Arigatomyna may well have posted the most words on the .org (since she, too, usually writes relatively long posts).