jmtorres: image of a white ipod with an unbitten apple logo from Diane Duane's Young Wizards novels, text "I want a WizPod" (apple)
My laptop charger cord has the bullshit thing where it's constantly trying to pull out of its casing right (mac users ja feel me) and I tried to prod it back in as usual and it visibly sparked and is now no longer fuctional

standard oeprating procedure in effect: order replacement from amazon, notify internet, close computer.
jmtorres: (computer problems)
computer made hideous screeching noise, still not sure if it was mechanical or from the speakers, then spontaneously rebooted.

It was not a long reboot, and everything came back up fine, but...

...what?

TERROR. I THINK TERROR IS APPROPRIATE.
jmtorres: Aya from Weiss Kreuz gets petted, text: Everyone needs a kitten (kitten)
Pro animation software that usually runs $500-1200 currently selling for $10-$40 with the catch that the company has to hit the quota where this becomes financially viable before they hand out licenses (if they don't hit their mark, they will refund everyone). I figured, this would be a good tool to have in my kit, professionally and with some of the vidding ideas I've been contemplating trying lately, so I went ahead and dropped $40 on it.
jmtorres: The arch-elf from the movie Santa Clause, with pita. (holidays)
I have just received a Festivids assignment!

It contains 171 requests.

(Bad dress, good open?)
jmtorres: sewing machine operation modelled (crafty)
[personal profile] echan: making baby bells out of her jeans because she ripped them in motorcycle practice
[personal profile] jmtorres: converting standard keyboard to Final Cut keyboard
[personal profile] jecook: loading magazines

insomnia

Sep. 20th, 2010 03:58 am
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
It's four in the morning. What are YOU doing?

Since waking up at 1:30am, I have:
--subscribed to someone on the strength of a Vorkosigan AU
--priced Final Cut keyboards
--decided that putting Final Cut stickers on the keyboard I use regularly would be a good way to go INSANE
--discovered from close examination of Final Cut keyboard images online a set of shortcuts I will probably integrate in my repertoire now (⌘+1, +2, +3, +4, +5 goes through Viewer, Canvas, Timeline, Browser, Favorites)
--priced Final Cut keyboards on ebay
--dredged up my ebay ID from the depths of the internet to bid on a Final Cut keyboard on ebay
--refused to be sucked into bidding wars on ebay
--checked local craigslist for Final Cut or easily mod-able keyboards
--figured while I was making wishlists, priced flight to DC at end of October ($400)
--contemplated moving my desk three feet to allow vidding from bed and cause me to make some further effort regarding organization in my room

Wow I spent a lot of brainpower on that Final Cut keyboard issue. Uh.

ETA: Apparently what I actually want is to apply keys, not stickers to my standard issue NOT aluminum apple keyboard. If only it didn't cost $80.

the t00bz

Aug. 27th, 2010 11:05 am
jmtorres: Lennier from Babylon 5 about to do Minbari kung fu. Do not fuck with me.  (badass)
Upon discovering that the dispute I had filed with youtube over "500 Miles" had cleared, I was encouraged to continue uploading all my vids onto youtube. Next up: Long Spear.

Long Spear also autotriggered the "no, you cannot use this music!" *headdesk*

Dispute filed.

Someone was asking me why many vidders choose not to upload to youtube. *cough*

ETA: Huh. That was a REALLY fast turnaround on clearing the audio track on that vid. (Seriously, it was like, within five minutes.)

Here is one thing that hacks me off about youtube: they don't send you a notice when the dispute is resolved/decided.

ETA2: And here we go again for She Walks. Um, curiously, the vid became available again pretty much instantaneously upon my filing dispute. Weird.

ETA3: And Long Spear is blocked again. I... really don't understand how their dispute process works and I REALLY wish there were subsequent notification emails explaining What Is Happening Now.

ETA4: Right, took Long Spear back down. Mark that one off for a fail on the transformative work argument (reeeeaaaaally?).
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
But hey, three year warranty from Lacie, should be able to get her fixed or replaced. And I hadn't been using her for anything but a slut drive yet, so nothing on there not duplicated elsewhere.
jmtorres: Fight Club: animated with porn insert. Inches on the reel-to-reel. (vid)
Stuff other than Final Cut and Quicktime I use in the course of vidding on my mac (and forget the names of between vids sometimes)

(most of these do way more than I do with it, yay multitools)

--MacTheRipper, for directly-off-the-dvd-minus-DRM rips (as opposed to transcodes)
--MPEGStreamClip--multipurpose, the two big things I do with it are fix broken timecode on DVD rip files (this is another form of DRM) and switch containers on final files for the interwebs (the free/trial DivX codec I use in Quicktime for my interwebs encodes pops out a .divx file, but I prefer to put that data in a .avi container, because that's like, fandom standard)
--xACT--converts .flac files to .aiffs or .wavs, which are more Final Cut friendly

And then of course codec packs so Quicktime and therefore Final Cut will read .avi episode files the internet provides (and if I didn't have that particular neead I would just watch everything in VLC):
--Perian (if you use mac's ichat videochat Perian interferes with it, but other than that is brilliant)
--DivX for making fandom-friendly interwebs final vid files (from Quicktime, because for some reason it doesn't play nice directly with Final Cut, even though in theory Final Cut is built on and has all the capabilities of Quicktime)

I am probably forgetting some things I use. There's something I don't need every time, like FFMpegX was the app we used to get a semi-useable file out of a very old realmedia file for remaster last year (and [personal profile] echan, if MpegStreamClip doesn't do what you want to your .flvs, you might try FFMpegX).
jmtorres: 3D go board. Don't stand aside this time (go)
I have been burning the candle at both ends, hit the ground running at six thirty in the morning, never off work on time because it's goddamn rush season, all week long. And it's only Wednesday Thursday, and my classes start tomorrow some four hours after I have to get up, and next week I am working until 9 every night per schedule.

I keep thinking of entries I want to write and never being at a computer to write them. I want to write vidding meta. There was a entry in my head today about how vidders (ones I know anyway) choose songs, and how some songs are obvious to everyone and some are only obvious in retrospect once the brilliant vid is made. And I keep thinking about writing up some really basic Final Cut stuff, because things like markers OMG SO USEFUL yet news to some friends.

Anyway, since I am failing at getting those entries started on my own, I would like to put it out there, is there any part of vidding as a process or my vids in particular that you would like me to talk about? I am now taking questions from the audience. [personal profile] seperis, I am looking at you.
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
Most modern vidders primarily release vids online, and if that's the only place you release, this probably doesn't apply to you. But if you ever release vids to be viewed on a television screen (like a DVD of your vids) or to be projected (such as at a convention), you should know about Action Safe Lines and Title Safe lines.

Televisions do not display the entirety of the frame. This is standard and accepted. Hollywood media is filmed/taped with the expectation that not everything at the edges will be seen--not that things at the edges shouldn't be clean, but that if something important is going on at the edge of the screen, it needs to be drawn in a little bit to make certain it will actually be seen.

The "Action Safe" line is 10% into the frame (5% from each side). We're even more cautious about making sure text won't fall off the edge, so the "Title Safe" line is 20% into the frame (10% from each side). Professional editing software will display those guides for you--for example, in Final Cut, you can show the Action and Title Safe guides on the Canvas window by going to menu:View>Show Title Safe or by clicking the button on the top of the Canvas window that looks like the corners of a box and from the drop-down menu selecting Show Title Safe. "Title Safe" is not just a Final Cut term, it is an industry term, so if you have a searchable help menu for your editing software, you can search for it.

If your software doesn't have a way to show the guides automatically, it's a fairly simple calculation. If your frame is, say 720x480, you want to make sure your text is at least 72px from the sides and 48px from the top and bottom.

Here is an image of the Action Safe and Title Safe guides displayed on the Canvas window in Final Cut: Read more... )

And that is how you position your credits to be certain they will be visible on television and at con.

traveling

Aug. 5th, 2010 05:54 pm
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
Not off the ground yet. Still hanging out in Sky Harbor. Got felt up at security (I think they were checking to see if I was hiding something in my voluminous skirt), got dinner at Starbucks, watched vids on my nano for a while, now taking advantage of the free wireless.

niq made it safely to Chicago before I ever left the house. While it was nice to have a day to make sure I had my crap together and freak out and have lunch together, I kind of wish I was there already.

When I went to make up effects blood I discovered I had neither corn syrup nor food coloring in the house. That was about half an hour until my pick up for the airport so at that point I shrugged and said "Eh, I'll get it at the store in Chicago." I feel very silly for going through the trouble of finding a 3 oz container to carry it in, though. And also I feel like a crazy person, I could have SWORN the materials I got for a shoot last year were still around the house somewhere.

I also realized I won't be able to clip or lay timeline on the plane unless there's an outlet by the seat I can plug Jenny (the new external hard drive) into, because while I have all the media I meant to bring on Jenny, and then some, I did not put any on the laptop. Oh well, I can listen to vidding songs on repeat on the nano (manual repeat; if there is a way to set it repeat a single song I have not figured it out).

I'll be getting into Chicago around midnight, going straight to the room and falling down, I think. Or possibly hooking up Jenny and giving vidding a go. Who knows.

The plane is here, most of the previous passengers have disembarked, so I think I'll close up the laptop and pay a little attention.

In conclusion: CUPCAKES.
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (free bit**)
So I'm watching stuff on Free Bit and having a very odd issue: VLC gives me choppy audio UNLESS something else is running. If I'm, say, defragging the computer? Perfect audio. If VLC is the only thing running? Choppy. Currently trying to figure out what memory hog I can run in the background so I can watch my stories. Any idea what would cause this or how to fix it?

ETA: So in order to watch videos properly I downloaded Folding@Home. I am amused.

Baby bit

Jul. 6th, 2010 01:41 pm
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (free bit**)
(fucking a'.)

Baby Bit [my netbook, whose proper name is Free Bit from Lady Gaga's self-censored "I'm a free bit**, baby" lyric, but goes by Baby Bit much of the time because tiiiiny] seems... less inclined to randomly fade to white, or whatever the fuck she's doing [the exciting screen malfunction that made her unusable three weeks after purchase]. [personal profile] echan declared it was a Windows problem not a hardware problem. No idea. Anyway, since she seemed like she was inclined to behave, I started loading shit back on.

Added:
-AVG
-Firefox
--adblockplus
--add to search bar
--delicious bookmarks
--epubreader
--fireftp
--ljlogin
--noscript
--resurrect pages
--screengrab
-OpenOffice
-VLC

Got me a pretty wallpaper and forced Bit to recognize the existence of my desktop computer and steal episodes from it. One by one I will drag Numb3rs over here for my traveling entertainment.

Fade to white has occurred three times while I've been doing all that. First time was when I first abandoned her to download shit off the desktop computer over the wireless, because that looked like it was going to take forever. Baby Bit went to standby, screen dark, and when I jogged her back on, whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite. I glared some and fiddled with the power save settings to take stand-by out of the equation. I was hopeful for about five minutes. Then I got me some more fade to white, twice, roughly half a minute each time, in the half an hour I've been playing around since.

I'm having to add everything back on because product support's big helpful suggestion to solve the problem was wipe everything, return to factory defaults. While I could pursue further support under warranty I am... kind of not impressed so far. Especially since they did not suggest I back anything up before taking that step. (I didn't lose anything irretrievable, but that is bad support.) If it is not a hardware problem, as [personal profile] echan claims, then I feel like either I or one of the more technically proficient people I know should be able to solve it with poking, and leave support out of the equation.

The fade to white phenomenon--as best I can describe it, the screen holds images longer than it should, so everything seems brighter as static images are reinforced; the mouse leaves trails and is easiest to follow if you move it very sloooowly; paging down when reading something results in a fade to the next page of text; and when typing in a text box like oh say the post entry page, the letters will come up as fast as you type them but will have a vertical line between each, as the screen remembers each iteration of the cursor. Presently this phenomenon is intermittent and brief; my last go-round back in May, it got longer-lasting until it seemed permanent. [personal profile] jetpack_monkey suggested it was a heat-related phenomenon (boo hardware) but I do not think that can be so as it would occur when the computer had been hibernating or just plain off for hours or days.

So. Anybody got thoughts on my Free Bit, baby? What could cause my problem? What could solve it? Does it have a more recognizable name than "fade to white" that I could google?

--And as I finish up this post I'm getting a more sustained instance of the phenomenon; it's been about ten minutes now that it's stayed, and Bit's had some flashy moments where fade to white and regular view seemed to be duking it out. Flashy with a lot of horizontal lines across the screen. Fade to white seems to be winning. And oh look, finally just now I got her back. Through nothing I can tell that *I* did.
jmtorres: Fight Club: animated with porn insert. Inches on the reel-to-reel. (vid)
I am outputting an m2v right now.

I... am going to turn in a vividcon vid on time.

Help?

Jun. 25th, 2010 12:25 am
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
So, question, if one wanted to post a daily digest of one's delicious links to dreamwidth, how would one do that?

(I went googling and found delicious glue, which as far as I can tell, [livejournal.com profile] nounverb's original and updated links are no longer active, and I found a copy altered by a fan but as I read through it I realized I had no idea if it would work for dreamwidth as opposed to livejournal or how to make it do so.)

Whoops

Jun. 16th, 2010 12:55 am
jmtorres: Electric Mayhem: the Muppet Band's bus. (music)
So apparently FCP handles mp3s poorly; I went back to check in iTunes and QT to see if this audio track had as many blips as it did in FCP and the answer was "no, no it does not." So I made an AIFF out of the mp3 in QT and swapped out the source file in FCP and magically, all the weird blippy vaguely-clipping-but-in-an-analogue-magnetic-tape-sounding-way,-and-even-though-the-decibels-never-went-above-negative-5-or-so went away! Yay!

Except that I realized I may have been vidding a clip or two to artificially introduced noise. There's one in particular that... well, I'm considering adding a sound effect. *headdesk*

When I said I picked this recording of the song for the cheese factor...

eta: *starts examining sound effects* oooh. Maybe this needs more cowbell.

eta2: Every time I go hunting through audio loops I discover I love the dorkitude that went into these more than... than sleep. I swear this one is called 'electronic surge' because 'lightsaber hum' would get them sued.
jmtorres: Animated icon showing Iz and Max from Roswell serious and grinning like fools. Text: alien love/shiny alien love. (shiny)
I'm running range check on this vid right now (which makes sure that data isn't too bright or saturated for television; if it is, you dump Broadcast Safe filter on it and it clamps the relevant above max data). Now, normally stuff you get that's been on TV? Passes range check. And only stuff you've fucked around with fails. And furthermore I'm vidding Supernatural; if there was a "your footage is too dark, no one will be able to see jack shit" check, I would expect it to go off every four frames. (There is not. Even though it is actually possible to have blacks blacker than broadcast black. Go figure.)

However, it would appear Supernatural fucks around at the edge of range a lot. So far, things that have set off the meter:

--the burning light of SATAN
--Sam killing Alistair
--Sam killing Lilith
--gunfire
--Colt bullets burning out demons
--backlighting through venetian blinds
--things Sam sees in visions
--the COVERS of CHUCK'S BOOKS (seriously what)
--candles

PS Sam was like, two feet from Daddy Azazel when he shot him in the leg. There should not be a three-frame time gap between him firing and Azazel being hit. Just saying.

ETA: Relevant Bruce the Yak quote: What's the sound of one luma clamping?
jmtorres: (hide)
Class starts tomorrow. Tomorrow's a long work day that starts four hours early. I need to call tech support back.

Vividcon rollover date's not until July 1, which means I probably won't know if I'm off waitlist until after premieres deadline.

ETA: note to self, want to go into town this weekend for more books, including 364.163. [personal profile] echan? [personal profile] jetpack_monkey? You mind if I come by?
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
I've had Free Bit like, three weeks and she's having weird screen issues.

New toy

Apr. 24th, 2010 10:22 pm
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
Bought a netbook, named her Free Bit. Typing on her now. I can tell it's going to be the punctuation that does me in here, I keep hitting the slash when I am for the period/ (case in point). I guess I'll train myself eventually. I can find the backspace intuitively which is better than pretty much every other netbook keyboard I tried.

Anyway, this is the first time I have actually owned a windows system, ever, so: any recs for AIM and IRC clients? Trying to think what else I want--have already downloaded Firefox, need to get some add-ons for it, setting up AVG now, I figure I'll head to openoffice for my doc needs, and other than that, I can't think what else I'll be using little baby Bit for.

Got rear-ended in the parking lot of the electronics store, because pick-up truck drivers are asshats who can't see behind them and ignore honking horns. So I have a ding in my bumper. superstitious Juls is superstitious )
jmtorres: Fight Club: animated with porn insert. Inches on the reel-to-reel. (vid)
The following is not so much vidding advice as general video editing advice. These were taught to me as good practices for ensuring that no matter what wacky thing you do to your project, you have back-ups.

Caveat: I work in Final Cut Pro; to my understanding Avid and Premiere run on similar principles, but all my menu/keystroke instructions will be for FCP.

tl;dr on how to make sure your vid is always recoverable )

That's all I know about backing up your project files and sequences. I was thinking of doing another entry about my workflow, which of course is not the only way to do it but hey, I might know a few useful tricks?

Let me know if you've got any questions, about this entry or about Final Cut in general.
jmtorres: (computer problems)
Bran (the first media drive I had, which is now the traveling slut drive and four years old) had another breakdown. One of the pins on the power connection was bent and broke when [personal profile] nshoe tried to straighten it. However, [personal profile] nshoe put Bran's brains in another enclosure! This will be zir third. It's temporary and involves tape.

Can haz Bran via USB now, at least. I have heart for [personal profile] nshoe.

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jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
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