Escapade!

[lierdumoa]

To today I figured out how to fill up that one credit I need to be taking in order to remain living in my co-op (it's a nine credit minimum, and the two art classes I'm planning on taking only cover 8). The two art courses 5 weeks each, 2-3 days a week, 7 hours a day total immersion digital arts classes. I'm way excited about them. They start on Feb. 2. Aside from them, I'll be taking a seminar of some kind. Something fun. One of the guys at my co-op wants to instruct one on South Park so I might do that.

Basically, I have free time for the rest of the month to 1) panic over my lack of money, 2) find a job, and 3) vid and/or write fic. Now that I've got my schedule all taken care of and I'm feeling all productive, I decided it would be a good time to convert TCBU to m2v,wav format for submission to the Escapade vidshow.



So basically, I decided to edit this vid in Premiere's widescreen setting. Why? I don't know why. Because I am retarded. Editing in widescreen meant I had to enlarge all of my clips to fit the widescreen window. This made them blurry around the edges. The widescreen format still wasn't the same aspect ratio as my source clips, so I ended up with black bars at the top and bottom of my vid project. I had a separate video file for each credit. I exported the vid project without bothering to change any of the default settings, so it came out anamorphic (which means certain players will squish the image horizontally to fit regular tv dimensions instead of widescreen widescreen).

I assembled the separate video files using avisynth. I then used VirtualDub filters to crop off the black bars and fix the aspect ratio so the vid would look the same in every player. I tried to calculate the number of pixels I needed to crop, but the numbers I came up with didn't work, so I just eyeballed it. I compressed with divx and uploaded my vid to the web. I then saved all my original Premiere exports to CD, along with the avisynth script that assembled them.

Fast forward to today. My original plan -- I would repeat what I did before in VirtualDub, only this time without compressing anything. Then I would take my uncompressed vid and convert it to m2v,wav for Escapade. Then I ended up talking to absolut3destiny on AIM, who suggested I just translate all my VirtualDub filters into avisynth, and that way I wouldn't have to render a whole nother file before converting to m2v, wav. I told him all the steps I'd gone through, and after much confusion this is the script he suggested:

SegmentedAviSource("C:\...\chemicals.avi")
separatefields()
lanczosresize(720,180)
weave()
crop(0,60,-0,-60)
addborders(0,120,0,120)

Of course, you'll remember my saying that when I originally calculated the numbers, they didn't work and I had to eyeball it. I figure when I enlarged in premiere, I ended up shaving just a tiny bit off the left and right sides of my clips. When I returned my vid to default length of 720 and fixed the aspect ratio, the clips were now slightly wide, vertically. Just wide enough that if I tried regular crop settings, I cut off two strips from the top and bottom of my vid, each about 13 pixels wide -- just wide enough that I wasn't able to ignore it. In addition, the top and bottom borders of the enlarged clips were blurry, and for some reason, the enlarging put the clips ever so slightly offcenter. Here's the modified script I used to compensate for these problems:

SegmentedAviSource("C:\...\chemicals.avi")
separatefields()
lanczosresize(720,180)
weave()
crop(0,42,-0,-46)
addborders(0,104,0,104)

Note how what were before nice round numbers are now rather arbitrary and specific. Eyeballing things, as it turns out, is something of a chore in avisynth, where you can't actually see the results of your commands as you're writing them in..

The moral of the story: avoid Premiere's resizing function whenever possible. It smells like ass.

Comments

[weirdqafan.livejournal.com]

One of the guys at my co-op wants to instruct one on South Park so I might do that.
*is soooo jealous*

3) vid and/or write fic.
*cough*Jay & Silent Bob vid*cough*
;)

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

:-x

I know nothing of this vid of which you speak. What? I don't vid. What is this Premiere again?

::runs::

[weirdqafan.livejournal.com]

You MUST vid that or Jay will hunt you down and recite Shakespeare in his own speshul language until you vid his and Silent Bob's unique hetero love.
:))

[khaleesian.livejournal.com]

oooh, oooh, oooh, rest assured that I will ensure that tcbu has a HUGE round of applause come vid show...probably by shrieking, throwing myself at the screen and fainting. (I'll wait until the end of the vid before making a spectacle of myself, promise!)

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

::blush::

You flatter me way too much. I'm sorry I won't be able to make it to the con and meet you. Though I'd probably just end up doing even more fangirling over you than you said you're going to do over my vid.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

wish you could come to Escapade. Will you still be around in March? next tea party then.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I will be around in March! Count me in!

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

adding you to the evite (online invite).

[sherrold.livejournal.com]

Okay, but here's my dumb question, how did you get PPro to change the size of your clips in the first place. I have been told that in some cases of possible macrovision issues, the answer is to shave a pixel off the bottom of all of the clips on the timeline. But -- as usual -- I have no idea how.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

There is a box you can check when you start a new project that will tell premiere to automatically resize all source clips to fit the window. You can also change size manually. On the effects window of any clip, there are settings to resize, move clips around in the window, change opacity. Other effects can be dragged from the effects menu, but these effects will be there in each clip's effect window automatically.

You can find the effects window on the left side of your monitor window. Once you select a clip, click on the right tab labeled "Effect Controls" and under "motion" you will find resizing options. Refer to this screencap (http://pics.livejournal.com/lierdumoa/pic/0001a8hb) I've made of a project for another one of my vids.