SuperSatellite

Once in a while I get finicky

// February 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // Books, Brain dumps, Theatre

Sorry that I’ve been too busy lately to write much. Marisol is running at the studio theatre at PSU next week, Thursday thru Saturday (I think that’s right anyway…). I’ve been pretty tied up doing the sound design/board op stuff for it as we prepare for full tech rehearsals. I have to make up for lost ground due to Alice in Wonderland (don’t ask). Anyway, sound for this show is shaping up to be quite a spot of all right, and so far the cast has been happy with it. It’s just a time suck, as usual. I stand by the theory that I could go for a shorter year if it meant each day could have a couple more hours to them. Be sure to stop by if you get the chance, it’s a short show. I think once this wraps, I’m going to take a longish break from theatre, and get back to writing (as well as finding someone to produce Walking).

It’s a good thing I’m not actually in it though. My voice is apparently taking a vacation from my body at the moment. I feel fine though otherwise, which I’m hoping isn’t a bad sign. I say that only because of that super crappy throat infection I had a couple years ago that was similar. Like swallowing molten shards of glass. I’m keeping an eye on it, so far there isn’t anything resembling that former pain, so it might just be random sore throat. But I sure do sound funny.

I finished Yakuza Moon last week. It was all right. You could tell it had been translated (some of the language was awkward, and it was far from without typographical errors). It wasn’t quite what I had expected. Very “young lady overcoming adversity,” not so much “young lady fighting the dark shadow of the Yakuza boss father.” It is, however, a fast read, which makes up for some of the lack of details. I just expected a little more information about the skeletons in the closet her family had or something like that. It was just more personal than I expected. But, it was also her first (and so far only?) book. I suspect future work will be a little thicker around the middle, hopefully. I’m probably coming across as very “don’t bother reading this book,” though, and I don’t want to give that impression. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was still a fine read. And it’s short enough that even if you don’t like it, you aren’t out much time.

Jamaica we have a bobsled team!

Reaching into the shadows

// January 15th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Music, Web

So, the internet today provided one of those random needle-in-a-haystack moments to me. It was funny, because with as big as it is, and as much information as is out there, it’s weird when you unexpectedly hit something familiar. I think I have an average sized digital footprint in the grand scale of things, but at the same time, I try to keep it tidy. I generally know where all my stuff is that’s out there.

This morning, a friend had me checking out some music videos on YouTube. This turned into a game of association. Saul Williams turned into Andy McKee, which turned into Jeff Martin, which turned into me getting a random curious bug and searching for an old local band called The Sound and the Fury. They broken up some time back, but I was curious if they had any media out there on da ‘Tube. Imagine my surprise when I saw a video of them covering Superstition. A video from 4 years ago. A video posted by some random patron on the net. A video that I filmed in Joplin at the Green Room during an interview. It was just very unexpected, like when I still worked for KIND and made a radio friendly edit of Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus, only to be driving around Pittsburg and hear my exact edit of the song on a station here years later.

I hadn’t even thought about this video in the past couple years. Since this unscrupulous person clearly took the video from SuperSatellite where it had been posted in ’04 when we were still a site for music and concert information, I find it only fitting that I upload it (with proper credit as to the source, me, I might add) and re-present it to you! Here you go, watch and enjoy!

Taking TV to DVD

// January 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Software, Tech, Television

Storing video can be one of the single most space consuming tasks you can do on a computer. If you do any video editing, you know the pain of storing 6+ hours of uncompressed DV footage for composition (not to even mention work in HD). That’s bad enough. At least once you are done with it, you can archive the footage on its original tapes, or select out the best bits and pieces for a scratch file to be used later, and dump the rest. Where I am running into more and more problems is backup of TV shows I record on my tuner and such. Rather than setting my VCR to record, it’s all too easy to keep up with a show’s torrent RSS. Once I’ve watched them, I tend to not get rid of them however (at least if I like the show), because once in a while I like going back and watching it over.

This adds up. Several seasons of a show will really pack on the gigs into a hard drive. Yes, you can buy it on DVD, that is an option I have exercised more than once. But sometimes shows on DVD are way overpriced, impossible to find, or not even released (has anyone seen the Drive season set yet, or anything past the first volume of Whose Line?). Thanks to my friend Rachel giving me a spindle of blank DVDs for Christmas, I decided to try my hand at burning my shows to DVD to watch on TV, instead of my computer monitor, and also free up the space on my server.

First, go here. It’s a tutorial at the VideoHelp.com forums. Though a tad dated (there’s a new version of TMPGenc Xpress out, and you don’t need Goldwave), it still gets you familiar with the process. It does help if you know a little about video encoding ahead of time. I’ve done a lot with the VCD format in the past, and done my share of editing and exporting. If you aren’t familiar with codecs and bitrates, I suggest starting in some of VideoHelp’s FAQs.

To give you an idea of what I was able to accomplish (I’ll explain my settings momentarily), I can fit 7-8 ~45 minute episodes on one DVD. Caveat: At my settings, the quality is above acceptable, in my opinion. But, I don’t have an HD TV (not that VCD, SVCD, or DVD supports HD in the first place), I’m not hell bent on perfect clarity, and I can probably tolerate more than some people. I actually use formating that falls somewhere between VCD and SVCD, and as far as I am concerned, it’s a fine compromise, but there’s a chance you would disagree. So, preview your transcoded video before burning it, or burn a sample disc, just to make sure you can live with it before sinking several hours of CPU time into settings that aren’t acceptable to you.

First, that tutorial I mentioned says to use Goldwave to rip the audio stream. That is unnecessary, as the new version of TMPGenc Xpress can do this all as a matter of course in one step. It rips it straight to an .mp2 file as well (by selecting “ES (audio + video)” instead of “ES (video only)”), removing the intermediate step of converting the ripped .wav you get from Goldwave into an .mp2. You can still follow the steps as laid out if you want, it just takes longer. Generally, allowing TMPGenc Xpress to do it all takes about half an hour for a 42 minute episode. By comparison, it’s roughly the same the original way, but you have to babysit it a lot more.

For the video encoding, I select MPEG-2 (which is the SVCD standard), but use the VCD resolution of 352×240 (for NTSC people) at a bitrate of about 1500kbps. You can use a bitrate calculator to figure out the rate best for you, or TMPGenc Xpress will show you in the lower right corner how big the output will be. With a DVD5, shoot for no more that 4500MB. On the older VCD standard, the bitrate is 1150kbps. For SVCD, it can vary, with 1600-2000 about normal. I go a hair under depending on how many episodes I’m fitting.  Obviously if it is a shorter season, or you aren’t concerned about spanning several discs, you can stick to SVCD standard encoding. The result is video that looks just fine on a TV, right about what you would get from standard cable.

To create and burn the disc, you can use DVD-lab Pro (which is fairly easy) as suggested, or Adobe Encore, or whatever you are most familiar with. At that point, you can import the elementary streams you have encoded and create menus and whatnot as you desire. Then just build and burn. Before burning, you can also open up your built disc by dragging the folder to most DVD player programs (WinDVD works, or VLC Player can do it too) and test how it looks and runs. This can be handy if you don’t want to waste a disc if the output isn’t what you’d like. Be prepared to waste a disc or two if you really want to tweak your quality, as balance between resolution and bitrates can be a challenge.

Otherwise, this all worked out well for me. I can get a 16 episode season on two DVDs. This would change for half hour episodes obviously, which means I’ll probably be retweaking my settings again, heh. It runs about 4 hours of labor per disc, most of which is time spent transcoding from AVI to MPEG-2, which is a good task to let the computer do overnight while you sleep.

I’d be interested to know if any of you do something different, or have different settings, etc, that you find useful.

Failing at Movies: Hot Rod

// January 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Entertainment, Movies, Reviews

Akiva Schaffer, you are officially fired. Fired. Go to your office, pack your bags, and GTFO. Pam Brady, you too. Don’t even think about it, just leave. You both fail at movies. I watched Hot Rod yesterday, and it was the kind of bad that legends are made of. Not the good legends, but like the bad ones, ones no one remembers because thinking about it makes your brain hurt. They don’t have names for the evil that lurks in people’s souls that brings crap like this out.

I wish I could tell you Akiva Schaffer is known for some good movies in his past. He’s not, so just give up that hope right now. Like the Easter Bunny, the Holy Grail, or Will Farrell’s talent, it does not exist. He’s directed some Saturday Night Live. Oh, and a segment on some show called Channel 101. That’s it. After this movie, you can bet he won’t be lighting up the silver screen with new gems any time soon. Brady has written some South Park and other misc. TV shows. “How could this not turn in to Hollywood gold?!” you might be screaming in question at an unreasonable volume at your computer screen while sitting there in your underwear (…mmm….underwear readers…). Well, let me tell you, that particular equation actually comes out to epic fail.

The film truly had but one redeeming quality, and that is Isla Fisher, the cute starlet who is inexplicably married to Sacha Baron Cohen. But even that isn’t enough to justify spending a single dime on the film. It’s crazy, because I can normally pick crap out from trailers, but this film’s trailer made it look funny. I was fooled. That is a cruel and unfunny joke, however. Beneath the humorous trailer is a film made from anti-funny. Like matter and anti-matter, funny and anti-funny might appear similar at first glance, but they annihilate everything when they come in to contact.

Leading man Andy Samberg was painful in his portrayal of Rod Kimble. He was many things in the film: stale, dumb, unmotivated, uninspired. Things he wasn’t include: funny, creative, or engaged. Of course, what can you expect from a man who’s career highlight reel is capped with the Dick in a Box song. In fact, there isn’t a good character in the entire film. Isla Fisher is cute, yes, but the Denise character makes zero sense. All this is due to bad directing, and the worst writing I’ve heard in years. Example: The plot is driven by Rod, who gets into fights with his step dad to prove that he’s a man. Except he never wins, and the step dad’s heart starts failing, so Rod decides to do a stunt and raise the money to get him the heart transplant. So that he can beat him up. And prove his manhood. And the crazy part is, it plays out ten times worse than it even sounds.

There was hope in the plot. I am convinced that the right actors and writing can make any concept funny, and as dumb as it sounds, you see moments of potential here and there. Rather than take advantage of it, I genuinely believe the producers sat down and calculated ways to crush any chance whatsoever of anything being done right in the film. It’s so bad, it can’t be on accident. Somewhere, someone is having a good laugh over the whole thing, like it’s some stupid inside joke funny only to them, at the cost of millions of dollars.

FirstShowing.net terribly disappointed me here, giving it a 9 out of 10, and praising the very things that makes it awful. All I can imagine is that their reviewer was stoned, drunk, or confused with when April Fool’s Day is. Or maybe their review scale was flipped, and 10 would be like evilcarnagehitlerpornbad. In which case 9 is just really, really bad.

And that’s all I have to say on the matter. Don’t see it. Don’t think about seeing it. Don’t even talk to people who have seen it. Including me. I am poison now.

Two for the price of one!

// December 29th, 2007 // 4 Comments » // Books, Entertainment, Movies, Reviews

Today, you get a very special deal. Two review-like things for the price of one! It’s a holiday special, and everyone wins! I also admit that I am lazy, and didn’t want to spread this over two different posts.

Michaele and I went and saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets last night. I did really enjoy the first one, that is for sure. It was a good movie with a nice, historical basis to it that kept the brain happy. Book of Secrets, however, was not that. I thought that FirstShowing.net did a pretty good review of it, and I pretty much mostly agree with it.

It was not bad at all, so don’t get that impression. I’d rather not spoil anything, but it is mostly the first movie, with rehashed bad guys and a new treasure. But that’s what made the first movie work, and I was fine with it this go around. They could have done better tying things together like they did in the first, but they didn’t. Oh well. It was still a fun holiday movie to go see with some neat trivia, excitement, and relatively good pacing. I am not disappointed, and am not afraid to recommend it to others who enjoyed the first one.

If you’re interested in the Page 47 mystery, I did find this research someone did.  Likely?  Who knows.  I have my own theories.

Okay, die hard liberals are not allowed to criticize me for reading Culture Warrior. For one, I made a promise to. Second, it’s important to be educated about all sides of issues. For the most part, I group Bill O’Reilly at about the same level of Michael Moore. But not quite Ann Coulter. At least he’s still human. The point being that he’s a strongly partisan commentator, and as such, is a little looney to several degrees. Except he has a broader appeal among the right than Moore does with the left, or so is my perception.

Anyway, it’s actually not that bad a read, and it’s a little less political than you might assume at first. I agree on many points about certain aspects of traditional values in the country. Then again, I’ve never read a book that I can agree with on one hand, turn the page, and be completely blown away by the disregard for logic and proper problem solving.

For one, O’Reilly apparently has no concept of the differences between correlation and causation. The way he draws certain conclusions is so flawed, even high school debaters would rip him in half. I also disagree on a fundamental level with his concept of the “culture war” that he claims is in progress. I prefer to look at it as “culture rot.” It’s not a battle between two sides, it’s a disease that is eating us away. His culture war approaches conspiracy theory levels.

O’Reilly also has this strange habit of defending traditional values at the feet of how government here was founded. I call this strange because of other analysis he does. Such as attacking the media that has grown out of a system he directly praises (ideas of free market, etc). He will praise certain systems and principles we have, and then directly criticize the products of those systems. He blatantly ignores founding principles that we learn in elementary school, like the Constitution as a living document designed to grow with time. It comes across more like him resisting needed change in society, changes that are needed at root points to continue thriving as a society that is exponentially larger and more complex than the one that existed at the founding of the nation. We cannot live in the 21st century with an 18th century government and moral structure.

In the end, it makes him come across mostly like a stubborn old man who’s afraid of the future. He spends more time writing vanity text and fluffing his own ego than developing his points in defendable ways. He takes the opportunity to lambaste people who have spoken against him in the past, and between the lines all you can hear is “ha ha, it’s my book and you can’t interrupt me here, I can say as much as I want to and I know my fans will all agree.”

The worst part is that there are a few good trains of thought started. But you have to take care with the knowledge, and follow up on your own if you want to get any real “truth.” It’s a quick read, and as such is probably worthwhile. I would definitely recommend the die-hard left take the time for it. It’ll fire you up, and also give you more insight into the right, so don’t disregard it out of hand. He also does try, if in a biased manner, to approach issues nonpartisanly (if that makes sense, he basically thinks he’s being nonpartisan).