Still having fun with the DSLR and the intervalometer.
Also using some Andrew Kramer styles for the titles.

I have been trying figure out how best to deal with the footage shot on my Canon HG21 video camera. It is in the AVCHD codec, which is pretty heavy to deal with for most computers, and quite honestly, I wasn’t sure how best to “capture” the footage.
After a few trials and mostly errors, I found a video online which seemed to help.
Originally I was trying to bring it in thru Final Cut Express 4, which seemed to work before I wiped my system and did a re-install. Now it just gives me some error and won’t bring the clips into he editor (yet still allows me to video them).

Anyhow, seeing as how the camera is hard drive based, I kind of figured out that there is no “capturing” per se. The camera mounts like any other external drive and you just open the folder containing the .MTS files and drag n drop them on to your system!

With the newer Adobe CS4 software, you can play directly with the .MTS files (in After Effects & Premiere and apparently Encore), although because of the AVCHD codec, they are pretty clunky on playback (although I AM doing this on a Mac Book Pro laptop).

Using Adobe’s Media Encoder, I am now converting them into the Apple Intermediate Codec. This drops the file size way way down and they still look fabbo and are now much more manageable.
I assume I can use them as proxy files if I really wanted to, although I don’t have much experience using proxies.
Anyhow – this video from Adobe was a big help.

http://www.mbsdirect.com/current/News/Video-Production-News/adobe-cs4-production-premium.html

I’ll be VJ’ing the 2nd installment of the chip tunes showcase known as DutyCycle, on March 28th @ SpaceGallery SF, 1141 Polk St, SF. [MAP]

You should come. It is only $3 and it is on a Saturday. I’ll be trying some new stuff and hopefully using more Quartz Compositions this time around.

So far this year it is looking like it is going to be a good year for me and the visual stuff.
I have mixed live three times this year already, have another set booked next month, a possible bi-monthly VJ “residency” of sorts at a local club and I am going to Boulder, Co to do a live performance with my great friend mr. projectile at the Communikey Festival of Electronic Arts.
The set with mr. projectile is what I am really excited about. We are going to really try and get something very well meshed together, something complimentary and something that flows.
He is going to be doing a mainly hardware live set which will flow into a set of some of his newer stuff.
I am planing on using a combo of video clips and quartz compositions, all synced to him midi clock – which I have never done before – so there is a learning curve to get over. But I think I should be able to get over it. I am pretty much spending my after-work hours, slaving over a hot processor, trying to eek out new and purty visuals.

The website for the festival reminds me, I need a new photo of myself and I really need to re-write my bio-thingie. It reads like a pamphlet on how to suck.

Last month I got the chance to VJ for the 1st night of a low-fi, 8-bit-ish music kind of night known as Duty Cycle. It is quite different music than I usually mix too (which lately, due to the nature of San Francisco, has been breaks and dub step). So I wasn’t exactly sure how to pull it off. I didn’t have to time to make a whole new slew of clips so I dug into VDMX and tried various effects until I was able to low-fi my clips and get things a bit more pixellated and vectory. In the end it worked out rather nice and I was quite pleased with the night.

It is a testament to the power of VDMX that i was able to get my stuff, which I like to think is quite high-fi and crisp and nice looking, into something much more basic and low-tech looking, while still retaining a very high quality look.

VJing @ Duty Cycle

A while back, a friend of mine and I had the idea of taking the chunk from the movie “Back To The Future” where Marvin Berry calls his cousin “Chuck” to tell him he may have found that “new” sound he was looking for, and replace the “Johnny Be Good” song with other tracks.

So that is what we did. Completly pointless and I spent an entire sunday in front of my computer doing it, but here are the results. One version I did a massive re-edit of the BTTF sequence to go with my edited version of the Loverboy song “Workin’ For The Weekend”. The other version, I used the Beatles “Tomorrow Never Knows”, and although I didn’t edit the footage, I did highly trip it out.

Back To Tomorrow:

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Back To The Weekend:

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These are also up on YouTube but the quality is pretty crap on one of em, which is why I have made my own flv’s. Back To The Weekend and Back To Tomorrow.

*Ok. Two more things. One is that I just noticed a link on the vids on YouTube to watch them in “High Quality”, and I must say, it looks really good! Nice one!

The other thing is, I have NO idea why I linked the words “the Beatles” to the Beatles website. Like anyone doesn’t know who the Beatles are.

So recently I did some work for Om Records.
Ok. Recently is a bit of a stretch I guess.  It was over two months ago now.
The point being that I did some stuff for them. Namely two looping DVD’s to be played during live performances by Mike Monday and Mark Farina.

To be perfectly honest, I was not wild about the end product. It was a rather crunched time frame to create two looping DVDs of mostly original and branded content.

Anyhow, here are two clips from the loops:

Mushroom Jazz.

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And apparently I cannot find the uncompressed version of this one, so the flv is coming from and already compressed Quicktime in h.264.
Hence the quality.

Mike Monday.

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Someday I might even put these up as .m4v, so they can be viewed on things such as the iPhione and the iRaq. But then again,  Apple could adopt Flash like the rest of the universe and save me some trouble.

Despite the lack of activity around here, I have been busy.

Actually, maybe THAT is why there has been little blog activity.
However, I have been doing stuff and even have a few videos to toss up here.

Admittedly, the nasty cold rain today is keeping me inside, and forcing me to do things I have been putting off, like posting pointless crap to the interweb tubes. It is a series of tubes, you know.

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I have been excited about Obama since his speech at the DNC in 2004 and said then if he ever ran for any office I could vote for, I would support him. So here we are in 2008 and I am still excited about it and him and his potential for what he could do for this country. For the 1st time in my life, I have donated to a presidential campaign (and a number of times at that), partly because I am in a place financially where I can afford to do that, but mostly because I feel very strong about this.

So anyhow, I made this lil motion piece ages ago and just slapped it in my reel and never did anything with it. If anyone wants a quicktime of it or anything, just email me on the comments page and I’ll get it to you.

And although I know no one really reads this blog who doesn’t know me, I would like to ask and urge people to do what you can to help get this man into the White House. Donate, make phones calls, register people to vote, talk to your parents and explain to them why we don’t need another crotchety old white man running this country for a change.

Most of all, VOTE DAMMIT!

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Myself and two co-workers are trying to get some video and motion graphics projects going for fun and learning and to cram into our future reels. So we are attempting to team up and pool our creativity and talents in order to create such things. These will be our “After School Specials“.

This lil motion piece was just something I whipped up after seeing a trailer for The Brothers Bloom. The movie looks mildy amusing, but no where near as good as the directors (Rian Johnson) first film Brick. But I digress… I enjoyed the treatment of some of the word bits in the trailer and decided to try and recreate them.
And I have…
This was also an excuse for me to try out a new WordPress FLV player plug-in FLV Embed, which should make putting up FLV’s easier AND work in IE, which my previous technique did not.