- 2002-07-17 06:51:53 Looks like I'm almost certainly dropping out of competition at AWA this year. We'll see for sure a bit later today. Boy is it depressing. And extremely ironic, if you know all the details.
- 2002-07-15 11:25:08 3 months ago, the plan was to enter Sappy Self-Indulgence, the now-on-hiatus Trigun video, and the new video (which I can't think of a title for yet) at AWA. I figured one would go to Masters, and the other two would go to Pro. Well, Trigun's just not gonna happen this year (though hopefully I can finish it in the fall/winter and hit some of the 2003 cons), and both Sappy Self-Indulgence and the new video have been demoted. NOTHING I've done this year is Masters worthy, so it looks like Sappy Self-Indulgence (which was originally my biggest Masters hopeful) is going to try and squeak by in Pro, and the new video is going expo all the way. Which means I need to get my ass in gear if I want to meet the Pro deadline. I'll probably work on the new video all through this week, just to get my creativity flowing in a different direction, and this coming weekend I'll probably go back to Sappy Self-Indulgence and try to finish it up by around Otakon. And yeah, I was originally using the designation Sappy Self-Indulgence as a self-deprecating joke, but now I think it's going to be the official title.
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Z-U-L-U that's the way we say Zulu...
2002-07-15 11:02:04
I had a good weekend. Actually, it was pretty pathetic by normal standards, but because it ended on such a high note, I'm happy about it. After literally weeks of struggling with technical BS, I have FINALLY managed to SUCCESSFULLY EDIT a ripped DVD! Yes, around 10 PM last night, I imported a file into Premiere, picked out the clip I wanted, laid it into the timeline, and previewed it -- and IT FUCKING WORKED!
Why am I so excited about this? Well, let's see...
For weeks, my brand new DVD drive on my brand new computer had been choking during rips. I thought maybe it was the DVDs, but I tried some brand new DVDs, and it STILL choked! I thought I was SOL -- but it never even occurred to me to try my 3-year-old DVD drive on my 3-year-old computer! Well what do you know, it fucking worked. Mostly. Sometimes it would crash during a rip, but as long as I knew which VOB it crashed on, I could restart, and then resume the rip on that VOB. One DVD took me a couple of hours to get fully ripped, but it was NAUSICAA, so it was goddamned worth it. My old computer had about 2 GB free though, so I had to plop down my birthday cash for a new 80 GB hard drive. And after every rip, I leaned back and watched TV or something as multiple gigs transfered from my old computer (now designated the Ripping Machine) over to my new computer (now the Editing Machine). This always took forever, because the Editing Machine was usually in the midst of some intensive VirtualDub conversion, and the Ripping Machine usually had at least 5 IM windows open. Anyways, after beginning the process weeks ago, I finally got everything ripped on Saturday afternoon. Then I spent a while running DVD2AVI and writing AVS scripts for each DVD. Then I realized, "Wait, I don't want to deal with 2-hour video streams!!" So I went back and redid all the DVD2AVI/AVS scripts, separating the sources out by VOB file. That way the files were only about 30 minutes long instead :P All that took a few hours.
So this was late Saturday evening, and after months of having this video in my head, I was finally ready to start editing! Of course, then I realized how impossible it was to edit with these massive AVS files. First off, the video wouldn't even show up unless I stretched the source/monitor window to 720x480. Well that was just too goddamned big. So I struggled to get my dual monitor support working, which had never worked before. Lo and behold, I still couldn't get it to work. Plugging in the second monitor still magically crashed the entire system. So Ian Roberts (Absolute Destiny) suggested converting each AVS file into an MJPEG AVI and editing with those, and then simply replacing them with the AVS files later. Well, Pinnacle had seemingly infested itself into every aspect of my computer (I had long since taken out the DV500), so the Pinnacle MJPEG drivers interfered with things every step of the way. I used the uninstaller, even went into my goddamn registry, NOTHING could get rid of those pesky Pinnacle configurations. Out of desperation, I started trying every CODEC I could find. Each CODEC either edited too slowly, or wouldn't edit at all. I had actually resigned myself to editing in *CINEPAK* when Will Milberry suggested looking in my plug-ins directory for stray Pinnacle crap. Well that finally worked, and about 10 minutes later, I successfully laid down an MJPEG clip! The whole CODEC/Pinnacle ordeal took from Saturday night to Sunday night to get resolved (with some sleep in between, of course). Over 16 hours in front of the computer, dealing with dismal failure after dismal failure -- but it ended up in success, so it's all good.
So that ordeal was about 90% of my weekend. Thanks so much to Ian Roberts, Will Milberry, and Justin Emerson, all of whom I pestered constantly these past few weeks, but especially this past weekend.
I also saw "Reign of Fire" this weekend. It was about what I expected. Testosterone and dragons. The whole Archangels-leaping-out-of-helicopters thing was pretty badass, but I'm still a bit confused on how it's actually supposed to work. They also completely ignored the fact that Christian Bale's character had been the one who had personally woken up the first dragon and inadvertantly caused the DESTRUCTION OF CIVILIZATION. It wasn't really his fault, but shouldn't he be a bit haunted by this fact? And shouldn't some people resent him for this? Anyway.
Spoilers: I thought the "We kill this one certain dragon, we kill the species" plot point was kind of lame, but how ELSE could a conflict of such epic proportions be resolved in a 90-minute flick? And what the hell was Matthew Mc-something doing at the end when he leapt into the dragon's mouth with an axe? What was he expecting to accomplish? I mean, he was dead no matter what, but still...
Oh yeah, I also found that an arcade 5 minutes from my office had installed a DDR machine!! Guess what that means? Yup, DDR for lunch! It'll be good to get some exercise again. Kendo can get pretty intense sometimes, but that's only twice a week...and reading about EK's gym exploits have made me feel like a sloth lately.
So...that's about it. My new video doesn't suck YET, seeing as how it's just a couple of clips and a crossfade so far, but at 5:29, there's a WHOLE lot of suckage that has yet to be unearthed. Sigh. There's one 3-second clip that I need After Effects for, but I can't justify plopping down the cash for 3 seconds, especially since I don't foresee myself using it in the future ;_;
I can't believe my brand new 80 GB hard drive is already down to 7 GB free... -
one hand loves the other so much....
2002-07-11 16:34:14
I haven't written a new journal entry in at least a couple of weeks. Why? No particular reason. Just haven't gotten around to it. Well, it's probably because I can't get this site to load in Netscape, and I'm usually loathe to open an IE window.
Anyway...on a whim today, I bought a new 80GB hard drive during lunch. Well, not entirely on a whim...my other 160 gigs are just about full now, and I'm gearing up to do some major ripping. Also managed to get a 100 CD-R spindle for THREE FRICKIN' DOLLARS! (after rebate, of course). Guess that means I'll be passing out massive free DDR Project VCDs at Otakon, courtesy of Best Buy and Digital Research Technologies :)
So...the second DDR project is progressing nicely. We've got a very diverse lineup of talent, and the tracks are slowly starting to fall into the timeline one by one.
With some help from ErMaC I've finally got about half the source ripped for my next video. Sappy Self-Indulgence isn't done yet, but I need a break from all the meticulous timing and clean-up that will be required for finishing touches (if you consider ~20% of the video to be "finishing touches.") It started out wildly ambitious, but instead it look dismally plain. Every now and then when I watch what I've finished so far I like it, but it's more like flashes of brightness against a gray background--the whole video is a long series of hits and misses.
Should be starting editing on the new video this weekend.
Despite having only boring-as-hell work to do, this week has gone by super fast. All of a sudden I realized that today is Thursday, and the impatience for the weekend came rushing brutally in. Urgh. The rest of today and all of tomorrow are going to go by super slow now.
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when illusion spin her net...i'm never where i wanna be...
2002-06-25 14:28:31
Crap. I got home from kendo at 10 PM last night, as per usual on a Monday night. I sat down at my computer to work on my video and laid down two clips. They actually worked out WELL, which already put me more on a roll than the entire past weekend! So I was all ready to get deep into the video when Paizuri IMed me and informed me that there were something like five thousand people in the AMV chatroom! I decided, "Ah, what the hell" and switched over to my AMVKusoyaro screen name to drop by for a few minutes. Well, from the moment I signed on and entered the chatroom I was more or less inundated with IMs and chatroom conversation. Then Leandra called, so I went outside to talk to her. When I came back in, more IMs were waiting for me, and eventually Leandra came online too.
So basically, I didn't get any more work done on my video last night ;_; And I'm going to miss Phade's last rugby/bbq get-together, too :(
Oh, great. Neverwinter Nights LOOKS awesome, SOUNDS awesome, and supposedly IS awesome. Not like Diablo II isn't already monopolizing all my time again after a 2-year hiatus :P And then there's Warcraft III coming out soon, too. Argh.
Ah, for lunch today I found a new Japanese place near Annapolis, about 15 minutes from my apartment. It was a bit pricey, but not bad. At least, it's better than the place really near me that tries to sell me a bowl of lo mein soaking in greasy broth and calls it "udon."
I was kind of weirded out by eating chicken teriyaki and tempera without any rice, though. I also ordered what I thought were normal rolls, but I ended up getting one of those long cone-shaped hand rolls, which I'd never had before. I wasn't sure how to eat it, so I just picked it up with my hands and just started taking bites out of it. Is that the correct way to eat those? It's okay to dip them in soy sauce, right? That stretch of Ritchie Highway near Annapolis has just about everything. There's gotta be a pho place somewhere around there. There's just GOT TO be.
This just in, from Paizuri's website (www.iwillpretendtocare.com):
"Last night, my friend Ben was relating the story of how he got into a car accident over the weekend due to a pig. Apparently, a truck hauling pigs hadn't tied them down properly or something and they were falling all over the road. Well, Ben hit one and jumped it, crashing into the median and losing his front axle in the process. "
Is it just me or is that second sentence the funniest thing you've ever read? Just the image of pigs falling out of the back of a truck....:D Or maybe I'm just sadistic.
lalala I have nothing to do....
JOURNAL: Kusoyaro (Hsien Lee)
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