(no subject)

Hi!

I just friended a bunch of people for vidding talk, and then I remembered I hadn't looked at my "Friends of" list for a while, and I did reciprocal friending, and then I got bored. So if I didn't add you, it's not that I don't like you, it's that my attention skittered away. I'm pretending sure it will come back. Also, if I added you, do not feel any obligation to add back. I post infrequently and I am really bad at answering comments. Really, you are better off without me.

Things I have discovered about vidding so far:

1. Audio editing is HARD.
   
   
2. It really isn't like writing! I hate writing. Writing is awful and painful. I just like having written. It takes me forever to get from the generally unpleasant state of writing to the much superior state of having written. I will take breaks at any opportunity. I will delay. I will procrastinate. Occasionally, I will clean my physical surroundings.
   
   Vidding is not at all like writing! I start fiddling with things and look up to find out it's four hours later.
   
   
3. It is a lot like writing. It's a good thing I've thought a lot about narrative and lyrical image association because I depend on them to get me through my hopeless visual memory, lack of visual or spatial sense, and complete inability to tell where the fucking beat is.
   
   
4. No, seriously, audio editing is REALLY HARD.
   
   
5. Friends are awesome because they will:
   
   
   
   
   • Sit down and count the beat through songs with you. Repeatedly.
     
   • Explain the clip-to-clip transitions in vids to you. Repeatedly. Then listen as you rewatch in slo-mo, muttering to yourself, "Vertical, vertical, horizontal, internal motion, internal motion, external motion, circle, shape, associational image."
     
   • Mark out the beginning of measures on a lyrics sheet.
     
   • Listen to your audio edits to see if you skipped a beat somewhere. Repeatedly.
     
   • Do audio editing for you.
     
   • Let you watch as they vid and explain tech and the logic of clip choice.
     
   
   
   
6. It is really educational to be watching someone else's vid and stop it because OHMYGOD THAT CLIP IS PERFECT I NEED IT, IT CAN REPLACE THAT FLAWED CLIP THERE and then go combing through footage for six hours to find it because you have too much shame to ask the vidder which episode it's from and then finally realize the reason it looked so perfect for the replacement of THAT FLAWED CLIP THERE is that it is, in fact, the same exact clip, only brightened enough that you can actually tell what's going on in it.
   
   I'm not kidding. That was educational. I have been fiddling with colors and contrast ever since.
   
   
7. I still don't understand what half the options on any color change are. But now when I go back and read the tech talk I skipped in Serious Vidder Discussions because HI BORING it suddenly makes sense, so maybe eventually it will become clear to me what "input" and "output" mean when they are both talking about program output.
   
   
8. I carefully wrote up AviSynth scripts that would index the images, resize my footage, kill the audio, trim the previouslies, and desaturate the color, and then two days later I commented out everything except the indexing, the trimming, and the audio. But at least now I kind of get AviSynth. I don't get frame rates, aspect ratios, pixel shapes, or why some DVD footage is interlaced instead of progressive, but so far Premiere seems to be getting all of that for me (except for the minor hitch wherein I discovered I'd been using 23.975fps film in a 29fps project and there's no way to convert the project specs, even if you look at the text file, not that I'm bitter [and I'm less bitter than I could be because I was actually feeling oppressed by the amount of pre-clipped clips I'd dumped on the timeline, so it was good to have an excuse to ditch it].
   
   
9. I have an irresistable tropism toward cliche. Candle-flames, breaking glass, blood, I want it! Why is it bad?
   
   
10. At war within me are two conflicting dictates: Do not be subtle and Literalism is bad! I am being very literal. The betas can make me take it out.
    
    
11. Audio editing is HARD. sisabet and heresluck said that it was hard but still easier than the rest of vidding, but I do not believe them. So far the rest of vidding is more time-consuming, but that's not the same as harder.
    
    
12. Of course, eventually "the rest of vidding" will have to involve clipping on the beat instead of slapping down draft clips in roughly the right place in the timeline, and then, like all things involving audio, it will get harder. I am full of fear and trepidation.
    
    
13. Key-framed variable-rate motion changes within a clip are THE BEST THING EVER.
    
    
14. It is kind of encouraging to do something I'm not any good at and get better at it.
    

(no subject)

Hi!

I just friended a bunch of people for vidding talk, and then I remembered I hadn't looked at my "Friends of" list for a while, and I did reciprocal friending, and then I got bored. So if I didn't add you, it's not that I don't like you, it's that my attention skittered away. I'm pretending sure it will come back. Also, if I added you, do not feel any obligation to add back. I post infrequently and I am really bad at answering comments. Really, you are better off without me.

Things I have discovered about vidding so far:

1. Audio editing is HARD.
   
   
2. It really isn't like writing! I hate writing. Writing is awful and painful. I just like having written. It takes me forever to get from the generally unpleasant state of writing to the much superior state of having written. I will take breaks at any opportunity. I will delay. I will procrastinate. Occasionally, I will clean my physical surroundings.
   
   Vidding is not at all like writing! I start fiddling with things and look up to find out it's four hours later.
   
   
3. It is a lot like writing. It's a good thing I've thought a lot about narrative and lyrical image association because I depend on them to get me through my hopeless visual memory, lack of visual or spatial sense, and complete inability to tell where the fucking beat is.
   
   
4. No, seriously, audio editing is REALLY HARD.
   
   
5. Friends are awesome because they will:
   
   
   
   
   • Sit down and count the beat through songs with you. Repeatedly.
     
   • Explain the clip-to-clip transitions in vids to you. Repeatedly. Then listen as you rewatch in slo-mo, muttering to yourself, "Vertical, vertical, horizontal, internal motion, internal motion, external motion, circle, shape, associational image."
     
   • Mark out the beginning of measures on a lyrics sheet.
     
   • Listen to your audio edits to see if you skipped a beat somewhere. Repeatedly.
     
   • Do audio editing for you.
     
   • Let you watch as they vid and explain tech and the logic of clip choice.
     
   
   
   
6. It is really educational to be watching someone else's vid and stop it because OHMYGOD THAT CLIP IS PERFECT I NEED IT, IT CAN REPLACE THAT FLAWED CLIP THERE and then go combing through footage for six hours to find it because you have too much shame to ask the vidder which episode it's from and then finally realize the reason it looked so perfect for the replacement of THAT FLAWED CLIP THERE is that it is, in fact, the same exact clip, only brightened enough that you can actually tell what's going on in it.
   
   I'm not kidding. That was educational. I have been fiddling with colors and contrast ever since.
   
   
7. I still don't understand what half the options on any color change are. But now when I go back and read the tech talk I skipped in Serious Vidder Discussions because HI BORING it suddenly makes sense, so maybe eventually it will become clear to me what "input" and "output" mean when they are both talking about program output.
   
   
8. I carefully wrote up AviSynth scripts that would index the images, resize my footage, kill the audio, trim the previouslies, and desaturate the color, and then two days later I commented out everything except the indexing, the trimming, and the audio. But at least now I kind of get AviSynth. I don't get frame rates, aspect ratios, pixel shapes, or why some DVD footage is interlaced instead of progressive, but so far Premiere seems to be getting all of that for me (except for the minor hitch wherein I discovered I'd been using 23.975fps film in a 29fps project and there's no way to convert the project specs, even if you look at the text file, not that I'm bitter [and I'm less bitter than I could be because I was actually feeling oppressed by the amount of pre-clipped clips I'd dumped on the timeline, so it was good to have an excuse to ditch it].
   
   
9. I have an irresistable tropism toward cliche. Candle-flames, breaking glass, blood, I want it! Why is it bad?
   
   
10. At war within me are two conflicting dictates: Do not be subtle and Literalism is bad! I am being very literal. The betas can make me take it out.
    
    
11. Audio editing is HARD. sisabet and heresluck said that it was hard but still easier than the rest of vidding, but I do not believe them. So far the rest of vidding is more time-consuming, but that's not the same as harder.
    
    
12. Of course, eventually "the rest of vidding" will have to involve clipping on the beat instead of slapping down draft clips in roughly the right place in the timeline, and then, like all things involving audio, it will get harder. I am full of fear and trepidation.
    
    
13. Key-framed variable-rate motion changes within a clip are THE BEST THING EVER.
    
    
14. It is kind of encouraging to do something I'm not any good at and get better at it.