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1200 and Counting
2002-11-03 18:54:16
My Drops of Sailor Jupiter video has now received 1200 direct downloads. Considering this is the second direct link for the video (the first one had around 200) I'd say it has done pretty well. And no emails about bandwidth use from my host, yeah! =)
AMV DC: Finished burning two large orders today. I'll be getting those out in the mail tomorrow and emailing their owners. Submissions are starting to die down and requests are starting to pick up so this is a great time to send in a request. Going to plug at the forum right now in fact =) -
Kids These Days
2002-10-31 20:09:20
I handed out some candy for some neighbors while they took their own kids Trick or Treating. Not many kids showed up (live in an apartment) but those who did were some of the rudest and most ignorant I have ever seen. Not a one said, "Trick or Treat" and some even got pissed and started to walk off before an adult nearby suggested they say it. I was dressed in my classic Grim Reaper costume minus the scythe. Total black with a hooded cloak and a black mask so, with the hood up, where my face should be is a black hole (real cool effect, got a lot of attention back in college). Well I don't move until they say "Trick or Treat" so there was all kinds of carrying on. You wouldn't believe the number of threats I received from kids no taller than my thigh and not a one parent said anything. In fact, most of the parents stayed in the parking lot talking while their kids ran up to the second story apartments, a good amount of the time out of sight.
What scared me even more than the total lack of behavior (and parental supervision and/or control) was that not a one of them knew who I was! It isn't a bad costume. Standing outside my college's library a few years ago I gathered a crowd around me talking about the cool figurine the library bought for decorating. They all jumped back a foot or so when I suddenly, but slowly, turned to walk back inside because they had no clue I was a person and that was in broad daylight. At night the costume is even more effective. Even when someone else told them I was Death they only looked like they half understood.
The real scare comes from the fact that in a few years these ignorant and rude kids are going to be getting onto online communities such as this one and causing all kinds of trouble, flame wars, forum closings, and what have you. -
Experiment Glitch
2002-10-31 11:14:11
Okay, ran into a glitch with my playing around last night. As I said earlier I found that I could make a disc image of the DVD and that disc image was readable by my DVD extraction software. Well after playing with extraction and disc images I needed to use DVDBackup (which is the program that copies DVD to your hard drive in a form that the DVD Player software can play without trouble) on a couple of DVDs for work (I wanted to put some DVDs on the demo Power Mac so we could show off the 23" HD display we have attached to it). Everything went fine until it came to my Lord of the Rings DVD which was the one I really wanted since it is only PG-13, has special effects, and is widescreen. DVDBackup couldn't read the first major VOB file due to a read error. I took out the DVD and found two (TWO!) scratches on the DVD. I've played it three times and no one has so much as touched the case.
*sigh*
Anyway, the DVD played just fine so I decided to see if I could disc image the sucker. It failed once when I had a lot of other programs running so I quit everything and it worked the second time. I mounted the disc image, used DVDBackup, and went to bed.
I transferred the backed up DVDs to the Power Mac at work this morning and played them to make sure they worked. Every DVD file ran great but the LOTR file. The file ran but the video was overly pixilated, probably from the disc image not spinning up the same or as fast as the real DVD.
Well this caused two problems. One, I'm going to have to bring in my LOTR DVD and see if another Mac can get over the scratch issue and back it up. Two, how will extracted and decoded files from a DVD disc image look? I'm going to test that tonight so I may be back to having to working with only the original DVD (which is okay but I was happy with a more time friendly method).
Could have been worst, could have made these findings after editing and exporting a completed video. -
Experiment Results
2002-10-30 20:29:45
Well the initial experiment failed. The backup software it created a VIDEO_TS folder that is readable by the DVD player software but that folder can't be used with the DVD extractor program (the program itself required a disc). However, while making CD copies for the AMV DC I made a discovery. Toast, my CD burning software (which can also be used to burn DVDs) was able to make a disc image of the DVD. Once I mount that disc image then the extractor software saw the "disc" and was able to go to work. So in the end I got it to work, but not with the software I expected. I'll post details on everything I did with the updated Mac AMV guide I am working on.
AMV DC: Added a new CD from Iserlohn Productions to the catalog. Check it out at http://homepage.mac.com/red_wolf/Distro/catalog.html#cd21
There will be a delay on the availability of the ErMaC Studios 2002 CD. Go ahead and place an requests you may have for it but be aware that it may take a few more days to get the CD for distribution.
NES Project: Picked up some DVDs to start the footage capturing process. I got Vampire Princess Miyu (Vol. 2) and Transformers: The Movie. I'll going to make another run at a new place tomorrow. I probably won't get to the footage extraction until the weekend (Halloween party Friday night and plenty going on with work). - Experiment Time! 2002-10-30 16:59:08 I have a piece of software that "backs up" a DVD to a hard drive so my DVD software can still play it. I'm going to see if I can extract VOB files from such a file. If so renting DVDs becomes a lot more time compress (don't have to look for footage during that 3-5 day period).
JOURNAL: Red Wolf (Paul Quinnell)
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