Praise the Lord! I won NaNoWriMo 08!
Congratulations to JakeLongbane too! Keep going Lottie, you’ll make it!
Enough said. 🙂
-b
P.S. This year’s novel has a ton of novel-related notes, plus some notes that don’t even relate to this story or a novel at all. But I still say I won… at least I wrote it all. 😉 There are story sequnces, like the last part I was writing… Praise the Lord.
Just realized that I accidentally deleted the editing files for a very short film I was working on. ;( This means I will either have to start over with the editing process (I might still have the PNG title sequences) or give up on it. I lost all other .blend files I was using with BlenderAVC before I moved my hard drive to this PC as well. 😦
So, in other words, oops. 😉
I am also realizing that shutter speed and frame rate are two totally different things. LOL. Yeah, I know, I may sound amateur, and I am, but I am learning… some. ;D
So, for now, adios!
-b
P.S. I will most likely not complete NaNoWriMo this year (2008 for those of you who have lost track) because I did not spend enough time on it, and I am only to about 20,000 words so far. Hopefully I will get 25k before the deadline hits. Oh well, there is always next year … and this January (2009 for those of you who forgot about the New Year) three of us will hopefully be doing a “homemade” NaNoWriMo – same goal, different month. This means more writing for me, so that’s great… You can still see my NaNoWriMo user page here. Ciao!
Alright, after switching my hard drive back to this PC I was unnable to run BlenderAVC 0.7 (which I got to work on the other PC.) Finally I did a litte more research this evening and tried installing the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) (which I thought I already had installed) and BlenderAVC opened up! Praise the Lord! I was getting the message “The Application failed to initialize properly ( 0xc0150002 ) click OK to terminate the application” and was unable to open it up – but now that’s changed! Yahoo… that’s great. 😉 Praise the Lord.
Besides that I now have 18,444 words in my NaNoWriMo 08 novel… praise God… I need to get back to writing it, too… yikes. 😉
Well, adios, praise God, ciao,
-b
Dear reader and friend,
Just recently a big goal of mine has been reached: I am now a BlenderNation.com editor! Praise the Lord! I will be submitting articles under the name “banor,” so be looking out for them! 😉 I greatly appreciate the warmth with which the other BlenderNation editors have greeted me! (And a big thanks to Bart for letting me join the team!)
NaNoWriMo does not go so well, sadly. I still only have some 14k+ words, and I need 50k by November 30, 11:59pm, about ten days from now… yikes. If I am going to make this year’s goal I need to put my nose to the grindstone and get it done.
Been enjoying Playlist.com – very nice for listening to music! 🙂 Still need to check the legality of it. Check out my playlist here.
Hoping to do some debating soon, with a friend at least. There is so much to discuss, to decide. Maybe we are too compliant, or maybe too argumentative and self-centered?
Ah, I love music.
I could tell so much more, but an online blog only yeilds so much privacy, so I will have to deter from family news, highly personal thoughts, etc.
Well, still looking forward to the future in some way… there is always something before me, I just need to reach out and grab it.
And for now, goodnight friend! Thanks for listening,
Never give up.
-b
I have finally gotten my video editing to work! Hallelujah! Ha ha ha!
Alright, here’s the story: I’ve been trying to get my video editing workflow down for a long time now, nearly a year since I got more serious about it.
For some years now I have played with video editing very little, but have enjoyed making short films with family.
December 2007 I purchased the Adobe Video Collection (2003) from a friend to use for my personal video projects and to edit something to DVD (Miracle In Gansu play to DVD.) But after nearly a year I still have not gotten the project done due to a lack of knowledge and to my royal procrastination skills. 🙂
During this time I tried to get Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0 to work for my video editing tasks, but for the majority of it I was unsuccessful. The only successful project that I produced from it was DuelMind, a short film for the 24 Hour Christian Film Contest (however, I was unable to enter my film into the contest because I had never used YouTube before and did not realize that the file size of my video was way too big. The next day a friend of mine gave me some advice which solved my problem – but the deadline had passed and it was too late.) And even with that project I think the audio and video were getting out of sync. 😦
I will let you know: a/v out of sync has been my greatest technical video editing “curse.” 😀
I have tried to get Cinelerra to work, (actually the link goes to the CV version, whereas I may have been trying to get the official release to work,) but I was not successful with that. I have seen Kino, touched Avidemux, tasted VirtualDub, and used Windows Movie Maker. The latter program was the one I used the most, especially before I got the Adobe Video Collection. Simply put: It worked. But to use who are artistically inclined or professionally minded, it just isn’t enough.
I saved up for a camcorder and purchased the JVC Everio GZ-HD7. The .tod file type (video container) posed a big problem, though, and for long time I was stumped (and frustrated.) Multiple times I have considered selling the camera and getting a MiniDV SD camcorder. But in a way I am glad I didn’t, because the Everio can get some sweet footage, and the fact that I couldn’t edit my video like I wanted to drove to new measures to discover the answer to my problems.
Eventually I decided to give the CyberLink BD Solution software a try (it came packaged with my camcorder.) Surprisingly enough it worked, and it has been quite useful to get some DVD projects done. I am planning on using it very soon to get another DVD project done. I edited the Dr. Narendra Singh – 2008 Interview with PowerProducer Express. Simple editing features are available, like splitting (cutting) video. You can also use a range of video transitions inbetween video clips – but I only ended up using a few of them, like Fade and Burn.
Now this is where the history gets a little blurry… at some time I tried Blender’s VSE (Video Sequence Editor) to try to do my video editing, but I still had trouble with the audio/video being out of sync – and I couldn’t figure out how to export my video with the audio!
So the days passed, and my years waned… no, that bad. 😉 But one day someone heard my call, a man by the name of Rob Scott. He had been working on something called BlenderAVC and kindly let me know about it by commenting to one of my posts here on the Minosa Films blog. That’s where it really started. From there I tried to get BlenderAVC to work. I filmed with a few different settings and gave Rob some of my .tod files to work with. Rob Scott’s BunnyHopHop workflow is very useful as well. But BlenderAVC still wasn’t working for me.
I finally got a project to work in Blender’s VSE, the audio and video being in sync! However, I won’t likely need to edit that project.
So, time passed…
But just today I downloaded the most recent version of BlenderAVC – BlenderAVC 0.7! I can import my .tod files and it works fine! But I still had trouble with my audio and video being out of sync. I wrote some e-mails to Rob Scott asking for advice, but I didn’t need to… read on. 🙂 I noticed that Zelgadis (leader of the Morevna Project) was online, so I started IMing him. He suggested I change the FPS on my file and so, after some tweaking, I reported back to him with a “OK, it’s official. You the man!” victory cry that it had worked.
BlenderAVC 0.7 - screenshot of some successfully synced audio and video (see the last two strips)
So, praise the Lord! One of my biggest video editing hurdles has been removed. With further testing I hope that I wll be able to consistently repeat this successful outcome and get the rest of the workflow down pat.
I have not yet realized how great this is… if it really is true. Maybe I will be glad tomorrow? 😀 Ahead of me lies the journey of actually learning what “video editing” really is! Whew… this is very good.
So, I guess that’s about all. I hope your journey is as exciting as mine – no, WAY more exciting!
One big sigh: Whew, video editing success.
God bless, friends, and may your journey be bright,
Best wishes,
-b
P.S. So a big PRAISE THE LORD!!! 😀
Hi, this is just a quick update to keep the blog active.
Did some filming with a good friend. I hope to edit it into a music video. 🙂 We didn’t write the music – I’m just going to add an artist’s song I like.
Updating the ShadrachYouth.org website…
Need to copy more DVDs…
Get another DVD project done…
Write more for NaNoWriMo 08… 🙂 This year’s novel should be quite interesting. The main character’s name is Jiason.
Do more work for the Morevna Project…
So, yeah, busy, but quite glad for it. The burden of project after project can be tiresome, but being involved is such a treat I imagine I would not trade it for being bored! My life may continue to get more and more hectic through the years … it’s not bad now, quite relaxed overall.
Anyhow, that’s some news… sorry that there are not very many films yet. Oh, GOOD NEWS! I now have a tripod to use! The owner of the Whipple Company Store & Museum has graciously allowed me to borrow it while they winter in Florida. This means I don’t have to save up for a tripod for a while and that I can have much better results for my filming! Praise the Lord!
Please vote your conscience – not all of us have the privilege to cast our vote.
God bless,
-b
P.S. Actually, I am uploading the ShadrachYouth.org website with it’s updates… priase the Lord! Ciao -b
The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has finally started! After a year of waiting it’s finally come around again!
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
No, I haven’t written anything yet… however, this year I am using a large dry-erase whiteboard to map out my characters, and I have the main character marked on the near-center of the board. 🙂 As I progress through the story (no outline written down this year) I will write down the new characters, write notes, and link everything together on the dry-erase board. 🙂
I am immensely looking forward to creating this year’s novel, code-named “Backspace.”
I have participated in and won NaNoWriMo once – last year, NaNoWriMo 07! 🙂 It was such an excellent writing experience that I hope to do it every year for the rest of my life here on Earth.
This year’s novel will hopefully be a lot less wordy than last year. 😦 No matter what happens, I hope it will be worth while and a ton of fun!
See you on the other side,
-b
P.S. I may do some NaNoWriMo vlogs this year… maybe. 🙂
Minosa Films 