Vidding update

[hmpf]

Spent roughly fourteen hours vidding today. Am totally knackered and going to bed now. Windows Movie Maker is teh suck, but I'm sort of learning to live with it. Does that sound stoically heroic? Not nearly heroic enough, believe me.

Vid's about two thirds to three fourths done.

Nearly lost my mind a couple of times after the program crashed for the umpteenth time, and learned to hate Tom McRae with a passion, or at least learned to hate his A & B Song, but am pleased with the result of my work so far (when I can stand to look at it at all - because, arrgh, fourteen hours today and six yesterday of constant replay will spoil *any* song for you).

I get the impression my vidding career may end up much like my costuming career: pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's simply too much effort. The result is kinda pleasing, but the effort made is disproportionate to the resulting pleasure.

Also, if I were to keep vidding I'd have to get more webspace.

kljfdavn ,.jxy

Sorry, kinda falling asleep on the keyboard there. Off to bed...

Comments

Movie Maker

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

WMM *is* teh suck. However, you *do* get used to it, and get better with it as you learn coping mechanisms. Believe me, your first vidding experience can't be more harrowing than mine. I had to literally reinstall my entire operating system to get it to render. ARGH!

But anyway, if it is your only vidding experience, at least it seems to be going well in terms of the final product!

You do know that if you're not legally inclined you can get much better video editing programmes and cracks from torrents and suchlike, right? I don't have any, cos I find them impossible to learn how to use. But you *could* do that.

TBRFKASK

P.S. I thought I'd be a one time vidder too. And while I doubt I'll ever be prolific or call myself a "vidder", it is fun enough I'll probably vid sporadically for quite a while yet... You'll succumb to the dark side, too. ;)

Re: Movie Maker

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tried Adobe Premiere, but it didn't like my computer. Maybe I'll try an older version of it, as it seemed to particularly dislike my processor, although that's *nominally* good enough to handle Premiere. Ah well.

Well... I've sort of revised my opinion on vidding (again)... When I looked at my half-finished vid this morning I was rather pleased. After another four hours I've now finished the rough cut; now to remove ghost frames, freeze-ups and those strange little image hiccups you sometimes get... and perhaps replace a couple of clips with something more fitting...

If only there was a way of doing that without destroying the precision of the entire vid again! (Or is there, and I'm just too stupid to see it?) There are quite a few sequences in it where I'm *really* pleased with how the clip fits the music in terms of movement etc., and I'm afraid that if I change something at the beginning of the vid it will all get screwed up again...

Yes, I have some tips!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Well, as long as you put a clip in with exactly the same amount of frames it shouldn't screw up the timing. Despite the problems with exact cropping mentioned above - the seven frame issue is only at the *end* or at the *beginning* of the clip. So just make sure you've got a longer clip and you're cutting out the middle section (more than seven frames away from either end.)

You may also have noticed that when you cut a frame at, say, 1.63s, the clip itself will say it's only 1.59s. You usually end up losing about 4 frames (and no I can't explain why). The best way to handle this when replacing clips is:

1. Hover the mouse over the clip you want to replace. This will tell you how long you *cut* the clip to be. In the above example's case - 1.63s.

2. Cut your replacement clip at the same point (regardless of losing the four frames). So, cut the clip to be 1.63s long.

3. Your new 1.63s clip that's really 1.59s should match your *old* 1.63s clip (that's really 1.59s TOO) and it should slot in without a problem.

Uh...yeah. Again, I HOPE that made some semblence of sense. Gah! Move to Britain, this would be so much easier to SHOW you! ;)

Oookay...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

but what do I do with clips that have ghost frames I can't even see when the clip's paused, only when it's running, at the beginning of the clip? Ideally, I'd need to remove just that one frame. I can't cut seven frames, as that would turn the clip too short, and it would screw up the sound/image synchronisation.

(Temporary vidding result here: http://www.allabouthmpf.com/a_and_b_song.wmv)

Re: Oookay...

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, that is a problem and one of the reasons I tend to render the finished video often (every ten seconds of footage or so) into a temporary .wmv and watch it so I can fix that sort of problem as I go through, not at the end. But I did have to fix it all at the end once with my first vid and basically it required some creative thinking, and yes, rejigging of the timing (although, ironically, in places I preferred it!)

Obviously you can't cut out the first seven frames. My ideal suggestion would be to locate the piece of footage you used, merge the clip with a few seconds of clip on each side, then recut the thing, but four frames further on (four frames is usually enough to reduce the problem and rarely screws the timing of any movements in the clip *too* much). The key is to remember the seven frame issue is only an issue when clipping from the *beginning* or *end* of a clip. You can clip *anywhere* in the middle of a clip. So just make sure the frame you want to cut to is in the middle of a longer clip.

But if the clip you need to use is so short that's not an option, then...you need to start getting creative, and I can't really help you. It's one of the "joys" of WMM.

Re: Oookay...

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

...Can't download that... :(

That's odd....

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

works fine for me. Any specific error message?

Re: That's odd....

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Ah! Now it's working! Before it was just...saying it couldn't find the file, but I've got it now.

And hey, it's nice! Yes, I noticed at least one ghost frame - although I've only watched it the once because I wanted to let you know it was good and not, like, leave you hanging for ages. Plus I'm really not experienced or good enough to offer you anything approximating a beta. Though I think the rewindy bit at 13s does look like a tiny extra clip that's been left in.

The tape at the beginning is nice, as is the knocking when the drums start, the fact that you aren't scared of using the fade effects (I'm afraid of using ANY effects, but I'm getting used to the idea, slowly), the lights going out during the first "time slips away" chorus is particularly effective and nearly in time to the music. Plus I think you handled the ending mish-mash of the song well, and a good, striking end scene that fits the song.

So in all, thumbs up. Although, as I said, I'm probably missing half the point of the vid having not seen Life on Mars, and I'm also not the best person to ask for vid-type betaing. But the ghost frames and rewindy bits are at least not too distracting - much less so than the first draft of the vid I made. ;)

TBRFKASK (note, beta *reader* not beta *vidder*!)

There are definitely not tiny bits of clips left in.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Those freeze-ups/hiccups are entirely due to WMM malfunctioning. I've tried replacing the clips - i.e. putting in the same clip again, but taking it out first, and then rendering the vid again - and it puts the exact same hiccup in exactly the same place again.

Oh, and I have another strange problem:

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Every now and again, there'll be these odd 'hiccups' within a clip. Usually near the beginning; it's like a very short freeze-up or rewind or something. I've tried replacing the clips, figuring it was a processing problem that could be fixed by repeating the process, but the hiccups turn up again in exactly the same places in the new version of the clips, as well. You'll see one at 00:13 in the vid, if you download it. Any idea how to fix that?

Re: Oh, and I have another strange problem:

[(Anonymous)]

Haven't seen it yet, but could this be a result of accidentally dropping seven frame long pieces into the timeline? These are usually too thin to notice, but will really screw with the timing and look like "jumps" or "rewinds". If this is the case, my suggestion is to change the view from timeline to storyboard as that gives you a visual of each specific clip like a photograph and ignores how long the clip is. You can then delete any ones you need to.

If that's not what it is, then I'm not sure. My WMM will frequently skip or stall images when I play it back in WMM, but that doesn't usually translate to the finished .wmv file...

Oh, arrrrgh!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Being so wrapped up in my vidding, I'd totally forgotten you don't know the show, and hence will get badly spoiled if you watch the vid!

Frell!

I'd love to have some advice from you... but I don't want to get your spoiled!

Re: Oh, arrrrgh!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

And I was so wrapped up in replying, I forgot to sign in!

I *will* take a look, although I won't understand too much, I guess. But it'll have to wait. I'm currenlty stuck in an internet cafe so I can print stuff out but the asshole in charge here promised me ten minutes ago to put paper in the printer. Meanwhile my time's ticking away...

The never-ending vid discussion...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>Well, as long as you put a clip in with exactly the same amount of frames it shouldn't screw up the timing. Despite the problems with exact cropping mentioned above - the seven frame issue is only at the *end* or at the *beginning* of the clip. So just make sure you've got a longer clip and you're cutting out the middle section (more than seven frames away from either end.)

Errrrr... but

1.) if I cut out a middle section bit, it will interrupt the movement in the clip, and

2.) are you sure it's possible to cut less than seven frames there? Because I have no idea how you would go about doing that. The only way I know to remove bits from the middle of clips is by using the 'split' function and then cropping the resulting clips, or removing a bit that lies between two splits.

Maybe we need to have that phone call now...

>You may also have noticed that when you cut a frame at, say, 1.63s, the clip itself will say it's only 1.59s. You usually end up losing about 4 frames (and no I can't explain why).

Are you sure it's four? I think it's seven for me.

Oh, and also:

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>Well, as long as you put a clip in with exactly the same amount of frames it shouldn't screw up the timing.

Actually, it will, as often I've timed the movements *inside* the clip to the music, as well. I.e. clip length is a secondary issue, in some ways, and it's the movement that matters.

What I need - and what WMM does not seem to provide - is an option to move the start or end crop point of a vid a tiny little bit *without* changing the position of the vid. I.e. just adding a seven-frames-block to either the end or the beginning of the clip I'm using. But the only option seems to be to remove the crop points entirely and re-crop the whole clip, which makes it nearly impossible to time it exactly the same way I had it before again.

How long...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

does it take you to finish a vid, on average? Just wondering if my 24+ hours are anything like the normal time it takes to make a vid. If so, my respect for vidders has just increased again. (Also, my wonder at people like LithiumDoll who produce such huge amounts of vids.)

Speaking of Farscape vidders and vids - I have some FS related vid bunnies, but I'm *so* afraid of having to a) put all of Farscape on my computer! It would totally kill my hard drive!, and b) let WMM import all the eps and split them into clips, as that takes around half an hour per ep on my computer. So... 44 hours for Farscape... arrrgh.

Re: How long...

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Hmm...difficult to say. Firstly of the three (four counting the one I'm working on now) vids I've made two (or three counting the one I'm working on now) of them are five minute songs, which is a minute and a half over the average. That said, yes, it takes a really long time. I don't usually work on them for 24 hours straight. But they usually consume most of my evenings for...I don't know, four days? Five days? So, probably, yes, that sounds about right. Then again, that time is greatly increased (probably) by the crapness and crashing of WMM. Also my first video took longer than my others.

Re: putting Farscape onto computer, yes, that will take a long time. Although, it might be worth using a free converter to convert them into WMV format at a lower quality (though still fine for vidding). This will reduce space on the hard drive and although it will take time, it might be worth it for future vidding endevours. Currently I mostly seem to be vidding BSG, and I have 173ish meg episodes for my portable cyberbox, and *those* are the ones I've been using to vid with. That said, it took a long time to convert the eps, but I had to *anyway* to put them on my cyberbox. So...it's a toss up - which is worth more? Hard drive space or speed? (and yes, it's the lack of accessible farscape episodes that's stopping me vidding more for FS).

I do have a tip about importing them into WMM, though. When you import something you get a box with two green bars that fill up, right? The one at the top is importing the file, the one at the bottom is making the clips. Once the one at the top is full (usually only a few seconds) you can just click cancel. This will leave you with the whole episode as a single clip. You can then spend about thirty seconds going through it, clipping it into five minute video clips for easier browsing. Again, this is a toss up - the convenience of having it clipped to smaller more specific scenes, or getting the episode quicker. I like to just get the file and do my own cropping because a) I usually know the episode pretty well, b) if I don't, I can leave it paused and just move the curser forwards by thirty second chunks to see still frames of what's in any given longer clip and c) WMM has that irritating habit of clipping a scene and leaving ghost frames at either end. So I have to be fiddly and crop both ends of any scene *anyway*.

Um...yeah, so this is getting really long - sorry! Hope that at least made *some* sense...

Useful tips!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think cutting the ep into smaller chunks myself may be something I'll have to try... on the other hand, doing that to 88 FS eps... hmmm...

Re: Useful tips!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Will you be using *all* 88 in your vid?! If so...yikes and I *double* definitely want to see it. But seriously, if you don't try to go for specific scenes and just splite every five minutes or so, it'll take a minute or less to split the episode. So that's only about an hour and a half.

Hooray for you getting into the world of vidding!

TBRFKASK