yup. still boring.

[frayadjacent]

OMG how do people viiiid?????  I am so bored of clipping.  I need a snack, maybe?

In other news, I went on my first run in almost 3 weeks.  Cramps + migraines + sinus infections conspired to get me irrecoverably off the half-marathon training path.  :(  Well, at least I'm running again.

Comments

[frayadjacent]

So, my impression is this is possible with PCs and AviSynth? I vid on a mac and I'm not aware of any way to avoid clipping unless I'm vidding a movie.

Did you clip when you made "Quantum"? I ask because I'm trying to get a sense of what size project needs clipping and what doesn't -- there was about 1 season of OUaT at that time, right?

I bought my partner a refurbished PC laptop for Christmas so he could play PC games. But he never uses it! It's newer and faster than our Mac, which is 4 years old, and I've been thinking about commandeering it for vidding. If it meant I didn't have to clip as often I'd be particularly excited to do so.

[thirdblindmouse]

You can avoid clipping by vidding in Blender, which is available for all platforms! Come on over to Blender -- no clipping, easy-to-learn UI... Okay, no, I can't keep this up; I'm not that cruel.

Seriously, though, if you don't mind the other qualities of Blender, it does run quite nicely on a Mac. I've done it! (I've also tried to use Blender on the Windows machine at work, but the machine didn't seem to have codecs installed yet, and mainstream OS or not, no one on the internet could explain to me how to successfully install the damn things.)

[frayadjacent]

Well, if I comandeer my partner's computer there's a good chance I'll install Ubuntu on it. I'm not sure if I'd partition the hard drive or not in that case; I'm leaning toward not. Anyway, vidding is my main hesitation -- I want to check out your Blender tutorials first! Maybe trying it on the Mac would be a good start.

[sanguinity]

Blender is the... 3D modeling program? *is confused* I see mention here and there that it can be used for video editing, but that is less clear at the website itself.

ETA: Never mind, I found your blender tag! ...omg, I might finally get to try a non-linear editor omg omg. That can do color effects maybe? omg omg

[beccatoria]

Ooooh, interesting - I run Linux (sounds like you do to? - I'm on Ubuntu), and I use Cinelerra for vidding but I did look into Blender before I decided that no, Cinelerra would be easier to learn afterall... I would still like to learn more about it at some point, if only because its 3D modelling (okay so NOT an easy thing to learn) sounds so fascinating. I do have it installed on my laptop.

How does it stack up in terms of effects, etc.? I would eventually like to move away from Cinelerra, because as much as I've come to be competent and comfortable in it, it's not brilliantly maintained and one day I suspect it will die out. Blender is better maintained. But I'm concerned about functionality because I don't know how advanced it is as an NLE? For instance, if you don't mind my asking, does it have masking capabilities, and if so are they simple shape-masks or can you actually draw/feather/animate multipoint masks? What are its compositing capabilities like?

Also - have you taken a look at the Lightworks beta? That's another programme I'm looking at eventually moving to because again it'll be well-maintained and platform agnostic (though the Mac beta isn't out yet), as well as having a really high level of functionality. It doesn't currently have a few features I need it to have yet (though I understand they're forthcoming), so...I have an excuse to avoid learning New Stuff for a while longer... ;)

[thirdblindmouse]

It absolutely has masking capabilities. However, I absolutely cannot figure out how to work them, so I'm not sure what kind of masking it is. Which is pretty much my experience with Blender in a nutshell...

I don't know how Blender compares to Cinelerra because the last time I tried Cinelerra it managed to crash X. Granted, this was a long time ago, but I ended up in Blender not because it was superior as an editor but because it was superior as a program that didn't crash X. Now I have so many projects invested in Blender that even if this Lightworks project works out (sounds cool! I hadn't heard of it) it would be difficult to bring myself to switch.

[beccatoria]

Well, I vid on Linux - Ubuntu is my distro of choice - so I think that it is possible with avisynth and PCs, yes, but I wouldn't be a good source of help in terms of how.

But basically, yes, I load whole episodes/movies into my editing programs then subclip within the program. Harddrive space isn't a huge deal for me because the editing program simply uses reference markers that refer to the original files. So because I'm a lazy sod who doesn't convert clips into a lossless format, it's not really a quality or space issue for me.

I think there may be some crosscommunication here - I have a feeling that on Mac (which I think you are using?) many of the popular NLEs convert your clips on import into the programme into actual like, new files that take up hard drive space? Often high quality and large files? And my experience is that this is uncommon on Linux and PC where programmes tend to just reference the original file (or you can use avisynth as a workaround for this). Which obviously makes a huge amount of difference in terms of what's practically possible.

But to answer your question, no, I didn't clip for Quantum. I've never clipped for anything except video game vids because of the fundamental difference in the format where I have to cut out HOURS of gameplay which I have neither the space nor desire to keep around.

I hope that makes sense? :D?

[frayadjacent]

Yes, definitely makes sense! :) I believe that iMovie does create a new video file, but Final Cut doesn't. It also makes reference files. However, when I started vidding I was severely warned that Final Cut would be extremely unhappy if I tried to use source with a lossy codec. I actually did recently try importing clips with H264 codec and found that playback was nigh impossible, even after rendering. So I imagine that would be the case with the original source codec (x264, in this case. Not to mention that they're MKVs, which I don't believe FCP handles well, if at all.) Still, I know thingswithwings edits clips with H264 in FCP but it didn't work for me. :(

So yeah, I convert my source files -- movies or episodes -- into clips with a not-very-lossy codec (there's gotta be a word for that), where ~20 seconds of footage is on the order of 100 Mb. It would definitely take up too much HD space to do an entire season of television this way, though I might be able to get away with a movie since I've upgraded my HDD. :(

I guess current-day television is so pretty that there's no need to do the really low-compression clipping to have a shiny vid at the end! But with slightly older source such as Buffy, which I still vid, it could be an issue, even vidding on a different platform.

Are there limitations on the types of source you can load into Cinerella? Can you do VOB? MKV?

[beccatoria]

Cool - it does seem like that's why I have less HD space issues than you, yeah. Another programme you might want to look into - as I mentioned briefly in another comment, I think, is Lightworks. It's a professional editor (used for like, actual current Hollywood movies) that's getting open-sourced to Linux, Windows and Mac. The Mac beta is scheduled for later this year, and Windows and Linux are out already (although the Windows one is more advanced than the Linux one). It's functional right now, although at the moment, for Linux, the patch that lets it make reference files for h264 is busted so you have to conver/import imovie style. That said, it does this very quickly and efficiently, so if you're used to dealing with files of that size (it sounds like a similar size) that might not be an issue for you. Plus the next Linux update should fix the issue since it's already fixed in Windows. And will presumably come pre-fixed when they eventually release it for Mac.

It IS a work in progress, and currently, for instance, the only way to do masking work is to use a community-made effect which is a bit of a workaround - but the basic functionality and a fair amount of the more complex functionality is already in place.

It's also ultimately going to be Open Source but not entirely free to use. There's be a free version and a paid version. On the plus side, the paid version will be pretty cheap at £40/year which is way less than most NLEs of that level, and also I think the main thing you'll be getting for the paid-ness is extra codec support mostly for professionally used stuff like RED, but also I think for the ability to use reference files for h264 instead of converting to a new file (and again, this may not be that important to you?)

Anyway - in case you're interested - http://www.lwks.com/

As to Cinelerra, it can import a reasonable number of formats. It prefers uncompressed mpeg stuff, but it'll play fine with xvid or h264 as long as it's in .avi or .mp4 format. It's fine with .vob but won't import .mkv. That's not a huge problem though because it's the container it doesn't like, not the video stream, so if you just change the container without re-encoding the video, it'll deal with it fine.

It's a bit fussier with audio. Anything uncompressed - wav, or pcm - it's cool with. But it's fussy with other things, sometimes it'll play mp3 fine, sometimes not. It's usually cool with aac, although it tends to freak out if it's 5.1 instead of stereo.

Finally, you know, even with older stuff, I don't tend to feel like there's that much difference between using lossy and lossless stuff. Or like, what I mean is, if you rip at high enough quality you can tell the difference, it's too huge for distribution anyway, and honestly I can't even tell the difference on my laptop screen without actually pausing and specifically looking at/for the pixelation patterns. At a certain point I'm just not enough of a source obsessive to feel it's worth it, but as I said, I work with screens that can only handle 720p not true 1080p hd?

But also, stick with what is working for you, absolutely. And I have heard that clipping can be useful in rewatching. Honestly, I think my vidding would probably improve for more rewatching, but, um, lazy. ;)

[frayadjacent]

Thanks so much for the info! I will check that out!