Update

[lierdumoa]

The VividCon auction is live! Go check it out!

In other news, I'm currently nitpicking Gattaca!vid to death. Poor thing.

Oddly enough, this is the first vid I've used the blur function on. I noticed, after watching my latest export about four times, that this fucks with the edges of my picture (!@#$ing widescreen source). Okay, simple enough solution. Put a non-blurred copy of the clip behind the blurred copy and your clip will blur w/out you losing your nice clean lines. Problem. About half of my scenes that blur fade to black as they do so. This would require me doing what I said above, exporting, then taking the export and fading that to black. Doable, of course, but wasteful. I'd have to write another avisynth script because Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0 doesn't like lossless codecs and won't import the exports properly except via an avisynth script. I'd be using up harddrive space (granted I have the space, but I still don't want to use it), and I have a handful of extra files to keep track of. Ick. There's option two, where I fix the edge problem with mattes of some kind. Possibly a very rudimentary trackmatte. I'm not sure. I've done very little with mattes, so I'm theorizing here. I'm probably going to just end up doing it the first way I mentioned and then trying the second, theoretical way after I'm done just to see if I can make it work. Learning something new in Premiere at this point that may or may now work will require time that I probably don't want to spend considering how very far I am from finishing this goddamn fucking vid.

Oh wait. I can just put a black video over it and fade that in instead of trying to fade the blur out. Duh. No exporting or crazy wacko matting necessary. I'm such a spaz.

The sad thing is that I know 99% of the vidders on my flist wouldn't even consider this a problem, let alone try to fix it. I mean, who the hell notices when a blurred scene is darkening around the edges when it's fading to black anyway.



Also, saw Sin City w/ permetaform and others in the film club. Will write thoughts on that as soon as my brain re-solidifies from the post-coital goo to which the movie reduced it. Oh, and absolut3destiny, one of the previews before the movie was for Old Boy! They didn't use the tentacle eating scene, though, and me and permetaform were sorely disappointed.

Comments

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Cool!

Did you see Sin City at one of these cinemas?

http://films.tartanfilmsusa.com/oldboy/dates.html

Those are the only ones I know of that are getting the movie.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Yep! The Berkeley one.

[gilded_lady]

Cool idea for an auction! None of the fandoms really interest me, but the thing is still pretty neat.

(And I must admit, I'm surprised at the lack of amv vidders)

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

The amv community has very little connection to the live action community. They have their own vid conventions. We're trying to bring more anime vidding in, but it's happening slowly. A lot of live action vidders didn't know anime vidding existed this time last year.

The two types of vidding have very little in common, considering. Animated source and live action source have whole different sets of strengths and weaknesses, so learning how to do one when you've done the other is like learning how to vid all over again. Anime vidding is predominated by young men and live action by middle aged women. In live action vidding, the focus tends to be the fandom and the vidder's interpretation of it. In anime vidding the focus tends to be the vidder and his/her mad skillz.

[gilded_lady]

While I find most of that interseting, I disagree with your claim that the focus of amvs are all about the vidder--there are tons of terrific amvs out there about a show, about a pairing, or hell, just plain crack.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I know there are a lot of fandom vidders in anime. I think they're in the minority, though. Most live action vidders I know also read fic and read/write meta, that kind of fandom participation. Most anime vidders I know/know of watch a ton of anime, but aren't in any particular anime fandom. There's heavy crossover with the gaming crowd.

I think the ratings system at amv.org is partially to blame. So much weight is put on how good a vid looks, and so little on what a vid means. People are encouraged to devote more attention to how well a vidder said something than to what it was they actually said.

[gilded_lady]

I don't think one needs to write fic or meta (especially meta) in order to vid well. I think the only thing one needs aside from the skills and the tools is enjoyment of the fandom.

While there is some definite crossover with gaming and crossover in general, there are still plenty of vids that focus on a single fandom, or pairiing or whatever.

Maybe the core difference with anime vidding and live action is just that anvs are as much about enjoyment as they are theme? A deeper meaning is nice, and such vids do get awarded at big cons,but the key word is whether it's fun to watch. And really, that's fine with me, because I know that I don't go looking for that Deep Meaning. Doubly so when I've watched 40+ in a row :-p (thank you, AX)

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I don't think one needs to write fic or meta (especially meta) in order to vid well.

I don't think that either. I only meant that a person's background in a fandom has a strong effect in how he/she approaches vidding and what he/she wants out of a vid.



Maybe the core difference with anime vidding and live action is just that anvs are as much about enjoyment as they are theme?

I don't think there is a single core difference between anime and life action vidding. The two communities started out differently and have been developing independently from one another for years.

I know that it's hard to vid deeper meaning in anime because anything deeply emotional is usually conveyed through dialogue, and therefore very difficult to put in a vid.

I know that live action has many more creative limitations than anime. You rarely see constructed reality vids in live action, not only because the vidders may not want to make them, but also because they're much harder to make. A lot of the effects that look cool in anime vids just look tacky on live action footage.

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is that I know 99% of the vidders on my flist wouldn't even consider this a problem, let alone try to fix it. I mean, who the hell notices when a blurred scene is darkening around the edges when it's fading to black anyway.

Hehe, *I* noticed. Drove me nuts too. Only most of mine weren't on fade-to-blacks, so I made a track matte and had at it. I like your idea though. Very good solution for fades. Gotta remember it.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- I kept thinking there *had* to be an easier way, you know? And I finished writing my whole rant before I finally figured out what that easier way was.

If you had letterboxed source, you'd have to crop off the letterboxing before you added blur for this to work.

If you were fading one blurred scene into another, this should still work if you had the unaltered scenes fading into each other underneath.

Of course, some of the blur will extend past your original edge, but I always end up cropping that off anyway during post processing.

I don't know if this is easier or harder than trackmattes. I haven't learned trackmattes just yet, so at this point it's easier for me.