Instrumental Anime Project

[jasper-isis]

An update from Rose would be pretty awesome right about now.

Rose, if you're still not getting email notifications, maybe you haven't set your email address in the org's preferences to your current one?

If you're worried about spam, well, it's not such a big deal. Me, I filter all the forum notifications to the trash and check them from there. It saves me the trouble of deleting them as they come in.


Edit: Page 99!

[NeoQuixotic]

If it's out, then I'm calling in to talk about it, too

That gave me a great idea... I say we should setup some kindof Interview with Knives and Koop for RDS Radio when we release ;p... With all members involved. Would everyone be able to come on with skype if we could set it up?

Skype limits conference calling to five people at once. Knives, Koop, spot for a caller, and that leaves two slots for guests.

If that happens I will feel like a freakin' rock star ! The whole interview would be *interesting* (not sure if it would be good or bad) Anyways it would be fun if we could get everyone involved.

[ooshna]

If the video is completed soon i can host it. I have been offered free space and unlimited bandwidth from a friend but i am not sure how long the offer stands

[rose4emily]

Hello everyone.

I know it's been a long time since you've heard from me, and that you're probably hoping I'd be here to say "it's done".

Unfortunately, it's not done. I actually haven't made any significant progress on this project over the last three weeks, and do not believe that I'm going to have another window of opportunity for finishing it at any point in the next couple of months.

Because of this, and the fact that the project is already almost a year past its originally planned release date, I've decided to ask Helen (Jasper) to take over and see it to its completion.

Today, I'm organizing and documenting all the finished and half-finished pieces of the project that I have - and will burn all of it to DVDs so I can mail everything that's been done so far and which is needed to do what's left to Jasper. I'll also keep back-up copies, in case there's some problem with the first set.

Where almost all of my time is now consumed by "real world" obligations and concerns, and Helen has demonstrated incredible talent and attention to detail, I'm confident that she will be able to deliver a better film than I - and do so much sooner than I can realistically expect to on my own.

I probably won't visit the forums with much frequency over the next several weeks, but I can still be reached through e-mail if anyone has any questions for me. I'll also give Helen my office e-mail address, so she can count on my seeing her messages within a day, rather than the week it might take through my other accounts (which I don't check as often).

Anyhow, I thought I should explain what's going on and let everyone know that I have no intention of dragging this project out indefinately - even if I have to step out of the way to keep that from happening.

[kingmob_867]

[Otohiko]

Well, good luck to you - hope you get all that personal stuff sorted out. I think the decision is for the best, and I hope we do indeed get closer to release this way.

In the meantime... now that the word is officially out - where are you, Jasper?

[jasper-isis]

I'm right here!

Heh, this massive post took a while to type up.

_________

Rose: Thank you. I'll definitely manage the completion of this project to the best of my abilities. I will keep in touch with you over the next few weeks and let you know if there's anything I absolutely need from you. Good luck with your current endeavors.

__________

Okay everybody!

I want to aim for a late July/early August release date. This may or may not come at the expense of my entry to AWA Pro... but frankly, I'd rather see this project released.

Looking over the fullscreen beta from last December, I realized that there are a couple of things that need to be tweaked. Because I am not constrained by too many "real life" obligations right now, I'd rather see things fixed than rush a release. Rest assured, though, that this project won't be dragging on for much longer. (Really!)

Of course, to finish this, I'll need input and cooperation from everybody. My AIM screen name is jssssperr. Most of you have already talked to me online before, but I'd like to encourage the others to do so too. I'll talk to you guys online from time to time, either to ask an opinion or a favor, so I hope that the screen names in your profiles are current. Feel free to msg me whenever I'm on.

I imagine that I'll have received the materials from Rose about a week from today. At that time, I will look over all the files and post an assessment of what still needs to be done. To keep the project moving in the meantime, here are some things that I'd like to bring up:

__________

1. Submission quality. Yes, I'm a real stickler about this. But seriously, if you've still got lossless files lying around then it doesn't take long at all to correct. Of course, I won't know exactly who has and hasn't submitted a HQ copy until I receive the DVDs from Rose. But in the meantime, if you know for sure that Rose hadn't ever collected a HQ copy of your video from you, then contact me immediately. Basically, I'll want a file that's like this:

video resolution: 720x480. Don't worry about letterboxing if your footage is anamorphic widescreen.
video codec: XviD 1.0
- set up like it is on this page, but with the following exceptions:
- first pass only
- B-VOPS disabled
- Global Motion Compension disabled

audio codec: none. Uncompressed PCM WAV.

Yes, that was taken indirectly from the AMVHell thread. I'm trusting that Zarxrax knows what he's talking about. I'm putting down XviD here to avoid the frustrations of transferring large Huffyuv files. If you don't mind uploading a huge lossless file for me, then go right ahead.


2. Video comments. Can we get a group of volunteers to write our video comments page?


3. "Simplicity." Ooshna, your video was another widescreen video that's currently misplaced in the fullscreen section. We have two options here: a] I could crop from the sides of your video and let it pass as fullscreen. b] I could move it to the widescreen section, which would require an additional narrative recording from Rose. Moving it would also widen the length gap between the fullscreen and widescreen segments.


4. Speaking of the length gap, the fullscreen segment still clocks in about 6.5 minutes shorter than the widescreen segment, with the revised tracklisting. Half the fullscreen's length depends on 13'37". Which, I think, is still fine. But we could potentially have room for another short video in the fullscreen segment. Is anybody else open to this idea?


5. The beta from last December. See any issues with the old beta? Got some comments on it? Now's the time to post them. (Or re-post them, since it's been a while.)

Rewatching it in recent days, I remembered what had bothered me about it originally. The "wrapping" parts of the project - namely, the intro and the narratives - are not very "together" theme-wise. There's the very impressive intro that fits Animasia's theme and mood very nicely. And then there are the narratives, which Rose was not able to make according to his original vision due to time constraints. Frankly, I'm not sure if the whole new report format fits all that well with the tone of our project.

Somewhere in this 99-page thread, I remember reading about a darkened room, a commentator on a sofa in his den, smoking a cigar with smoke curling in the air. Well, it's too late to manifest that idea for the fullscreen segment now, since Song has already painstakingly recorded her narratives with a crisp and professional tone of voice. (Which sounds very nice, by the way.) However, I still think that we can take that voice and put it in a different context. One like this, for example.

Over the past few days, I managed to put together an example beta (in video form) of this new scene for the narratives. I will be PMing everybody soon with a link so you guys can download it and see it in action. Personally, I think that this new scene will do a lot to improve the mood of Animasia as a whole.

__________

I think that's all I have for now. There will be other things that I'll need to address (like intermission, ending credits, widescreen narratives, etc.) but those will wait until after I receive the materials from Rose. Until then, post away and tell me what y'all think about the stuff I mentioned above.

[downwithpants]

first off, /applause to rose for organizing the project and putting forth his ideas for this project (in addition to his video, intro, and narratives dub). and good luck with your current and future endeavors.

second, i propose we have each member write a blurb, as long as they want, for the video comments, a la the Children Project. except you don't need to write about creating your video (since this is covered in the narratives), but maybe about the project as a whole.

third, i've been planning to do another (fullscreen) instrumental vid. but at the rate i work at, i doubt i'll be able to finish it in the next two months. but i'll try to get a start on it and see if i can finish it in time. otherwise, i'll just release it independently at some point if i finish it later.

[jasper-isis]

Centralized progress report!

Thought one would be helpful, since I've been keeping in touch with most of you though AIM/email/PM only these days.

Narratives: Bakadeshi has offered to composite the fullscreen narratives, and looking at his beta, it's really turning out to be something. I'll be sending him all the raw narratives materials that he needs as soon as they arrive from Rose.

I also finished drawing the basic scene for the widescreen narratives, if anybody wants to take a look. It's slightly more abstract-looking than it's fullscreen counterpart, but I like it because it looks cleaner and more elegant.

Filling the length gap: So it seems like a number of you are open to the possibility of making a new short video for the fullscreen section but are not sure whether you can finish it in time. I'm just going to let the option sit out there for now, but I'm setting a tentative submission deadline of Saturday, July 23.

"Simplicity": Still haven't heard from Ooshna yet, but given the "real life" situation that he's in I don't blame him for not visiting the thread too often. xP Anyway, I can wait on the answer for another week or two.

Hosting, and files I need: Kalium has graciously offered to continue hosting stuff for us, so talk to him if you need a way to transfer a high quality file to me. Currently, I am waiting for HQ versions of these videos:

- "Oratorio of Ghibli"
- "Requiem for a Nightmare"

and I have a feeling that the list will be longer after I receive Rose's mail.

Putting it all together: I decided that I will join all the segments using Virtualdub. I was originally going to use the "stick everything on a Premiere timeline" method, but doing so would require a few colorspace conversions, which won't bode too well for the low-contrast narratives and lossy sources that I've no choice but to use for some of the videos ("Ararat, "The Wasteland," and "A Boy I Knew" come to mind). Here are the steps that I plan to take:

1. Make an AVS script for each video, with any necessary filters for the few source files that are substantially lossy. I use Avisynth to minimize colorspace conversions.

2. Make all of the feature videos competent** by encoding them in YV12 Lagarith, in either 640x480 or 640x352, which will be the final distribution resolutions.

3. Make sure all audio is in standard PCM wave format. For "Ararat" and "A Boy I Knew," this meant stipping out the audio, which was somehow corrupted and unconvertible to WAV, and resynching a higher quality WAV version for each. Don't worry, I made sure to synch them up very carefully. However, if you don't want me messing with your audio, be sure that I have a copy of your video with the audio in WAV format!

4. Line up all videos and "wrapping" in virtualdubmod to check for discrepancies. I'll make some super-short clips of black video/silence in case there needs to be a little bit of "buffer" space between the narratives and the videos.

5. Compress everything with 2-pass XviD, hopefully with zones enabled to give the harder-to-compress footage more bits.

6. Compress the audio in one sweep. I'm leaning towards 128kbps but 192kbps is also possible. You guys decide.

I've thought this methodology through several times, and I'm pretty certain that this is the best way to go about putting the project together.

Finally, here is a checklist of competent** video segments that I need before I can commence with Step 4 above. I'll update it regularly. * denotes a narrative

[ ] Introduction
[ ] *
[ ] Tomoe in the Moonlight
[ ] *
[ ] Simplicity
[ ] *
[ ] Warrior's Dance
[ ] *
[ ] 13'37"
[ ] *
[x] Forbidden Memories
[ ] Short "to be continued" clip

[ ] Short clip complementary to the previoius "to be continued"
[ ] *
[ ] Oratorio of Ghibli
[ ] *
[x] Ararat
[ ] *
[ ] Requiem for a Nightmare
[ ] *
[x] A Boy I Knew
[ ] *
[ ] End of All Eva
[ ] *
[x] Surrealism
[ ] *
[ ] The Wasteland
[ ] Credits

Seem like a long way to go? All I can say is that it will (hopefully) be over faster than you'd think - as long as everybody keeps in touch.

_______________
** In biotechnology, "competent" bacterial cells are ones that are treated until they are ready to take up foreign DNA plasmids. I couldn't think of another word to describe video segments that have "treated" to improve compatibility and appendability.

>__>

Also, I'm starting my internship at a biotech research lab sometime soon, proabably next week. But that shouldn't affect the progress here, so stay tuned.

[jasper-isis]

Hey, can you guys help me compile a list of people and things that should go into the credits besides the info for the actual videos themselves? I'm talking about narratives, animation, hosting, etc.

Still haven't gotten those DVDs from Rose yet, but progress is nevertheless being made...