Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

thoughts

Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1

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I could write a post about how – even after a weekend primarily comprised of sleep – I am still a veritable vegetable after a week of near-all-nighters capped by two gigs.

I could write about how perfect a storm my Tin Angel gig was, but how already I know it wasn’t enough to fulfill this year.

I could write about a slew of interesting links I’ve flagged over the past two weeks.

Instead, I am writing to let you know that my first proper album in nine years is released to the internet at large today – for free, for the moment.* I am exceedingly happy with it, and still on my walk home could find previously unheard nuances in each of my performances. 11/12 of it appeared originally on the blog, although 8/11 of that has been significantly remixed or remastered since its original appearance.

Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1

It is called Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1, as a nod to the lunch sacks E inspired me to distribute them in, and also in a nod to the fact that there will probably be more of these before the year is up. Hell, as Arcati Crisis we released three of them in 2008, so I have to match that before it’s even vaguely impressive.

* It costs $3 for a physical copy at the moment, and I think I have it a bit backwards, because the physical one doesn’t have bonus tracks. But, the physical one does have the hours of hard labor, the stunning disc faces, and the hand-assembled brown-bag slipcase, so if you’re the sort of person who likes to own physical CDs $3 seemed like a reasonable threshold.

Flip Video Hell

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Good news: wallet found!

Bad news: still in video encoding hell.

Since I’m sure someone else on the face of the internet is experiencing this issue, allow me to expand:

My project: Shoot video with my Flipcam while I record audio in my home studio. After mixing the audio, sync it to the video in Adobe Premiere for a studio-quality music video to post to YouTube.

Sounds straight-forward, yes?

The Flip is certainly straight-forward – about the size of a pack of cigarettes and operates with a single button. Its 1280×720 isn’t the crispest, but it does well in all sorts of lighting conditions, and can absorb loud sound at concerts without clipping.

That said, the sound is still through a relatively tinny single mic, so adding stereo multi-track audio from my studio marks a vast improvement.

The problem comes when I import the MP4 into Adobe Premiere. It looks beautiful! However, its timing is every so slightly off – compared to the audio track the video falls increasingly behind. The difference is less than a second, but enough to ruin the visual sync of the audio to the video.

Not only is it visible against the video, but you can hear it via an increasing echo if you turn up the audio from the Flip. And after encoding the problem seems even more pronounced.

I’ve been trouble-shooting this for 72 hours, and I can’t discern the source of the problem. So far, I have:

  • Installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled all of my various video codecs
  • Tried encoding the end project in a number of formats
  • Tried editing with multi-threading on my system turned on and off
  • Tried converting the Flip video to other formats prior to editing

    At the moment I am truly and completely stumped. On one hand, it could be that I’m simply not unpacking the MP4 file correctly into a format that I can edit with.

    However, my growing suspicion is that the Flip is dropping and/or inserting some frames, and it would only take one or two “skips” to throw the video off several milliseconds against my audio recording.

    I lucked out on Monday with “Icy Cold,” which lags just a hair, but since then I’ve been completely frustrated.

    Unless some video superhero comes through with an explanation and a fix it looks like I’ll be hawking my Flip to step up to a more pro-sumer model for my upcoming projects.

    Updated: Comments from my personal video superhero, Colin, of SeptaWatch.

    MPEG is a compressed format, meaning it uses a combination of dropped frames + keyframes to make up for the lack of real data. When you “decompress” the MPEG, those frames are gone forever, so they have to be recreated. This is an imprecise science. Since the Flip is recording compressed video, you’re not recording with any sort of frame-by-frame accuracy.

    The songwriter’s job is never done, eh?

    PS: Could it be the audio that’s off? It’s possible, but not probable – I’ve been using Cubase for over two years, and my DAW is customized for it. It’s certainly not a logical explanation

    • Unsynced

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    I’m supposed to have another video posted for you in an hour or two.

    In fact, I do have a video. It’s awesome – more HD, more brand new digital audio, and a song overdue for re-recording.

    Except, the sync is off.

    Not the whole time, mind you – just starting from about 1:50. I seem to be moving progressively slower than I’m making noise, until at the end of the video I seem to be lip-synching in delayed reaction to a performing Peter positioned somewhere off-screen.

    However, that’s not really the case. At least, not in Adobe Premiere when I’m editing the video. There it is crystal clear and perfectly aligned.

    Digital video editing is new to me, and I approached it like any other technical skill I’ve acquired in my life – I started doing it blindly and learned more with every mistake. Codecs, lots of mistakes there. Frame rates and aspect ratios, more mistakes. Exporting, metric tons of mistakes.

    I’m pretty sure the syncing is not my mistake, as determined by an unreal number of hours of scientific trial and error. Even the almighty Google doesn’t have a lot of light to shed on the situation.

    That leaves me on day two of my new project with no product. Honestly, it would have been less frustrating if this happened on day one.

    Also, my iPod forgot all of my ratings from yesterday, I think my wallet was stolen on the bus, and I had a dream that Karen O. was following me around the house singing the first verse of “Man” over and over…

    …and if that sounds entertaining to you then you clearly are not having the day I am having.

    Monday Evening Remainders

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    I really need to get better at discharging links more expediently. At the moment sifting for true gold is an all-evening prospect.

    Kevin Smokler highlights eight awesome facts about Michelle Lynn Johnson, AKA Me’shell Ndegeocello.

    Do you feel like your eyes are bigger than your stomach? Well, maybe your eyes and stomach are the same, and the food just got bigger.

    Andre Torrez establishes seemingly unattainable resolutions, like not buying books for an entire year. For 2010 he is only listening to newly released music. I will gladly abet him in that quest.

    James Franco, on Soap Opera as performance art:

    I disrupted the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because no matter how far I got into the character, I was going to be perceived as something that doesn’t belong to the incredibly stylized world of soap operas. Everyone watching would see an actor they recognized, a real person in a made-up world.

    Genius. I love anything that alters an audience’s perception of art based on peripheral factors. See also: Brecht, Dresden Dolls, Lady GaGa. (via Kottke)

    Also via K: a couple paints what they want, then sells the painting for the price of what they want, then buys what they want. Ingenious, no?

    Stumped for a gift for a precious or precocious kid on your list? Get them a pad and some crayons, and spend some time with them on Christmas drawing monsters. Then, have their favorite monster made for them.

    Debbie Millman, one of my favorite bloggers and role models, is launching both a book and a television pilot. Both worth seeing.

    Who Sampled lets you figure out where that sampled hook came from (or, if the song you want to sample has been oversampled already). (via Fresh Arrival)

    Seth Godin’s blog is a goldmine of best-practice thinking and tools. Recently, a post chock full of personal to-do list web apps. Loves it.

    Speed Tracer is a Google Chrome extension that can help you figure out what’s slowing your page load. Remember when every page had to be smaller than 20k? Good times (via Lifehacker).

    PS: I have switched over to Chrome full-time for personal browsing. LOVE. And this is coming from a lifelong Mozilla devotee.

    Time for bed; another AC video in the a.m.