beccatoria | TwelveColonies: So long, and thanks for all the fun.

Hey guys, just a heads up to let anyone who cares know that I've left

twelvecolonies. I had a great time playing through two challenges with you guys, and while I promise I'm not personally beating myself up over our incredibly close loss, (though please, feel free to blame me if it will help you not blame yourselves! :p), the fact that I had neither the time nor inclination to participate in as many challenges as I should have done is why I'm leaving.

That classic breakup line, but nonetheless true, IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME!

Basically my real life is weird and messed up right now, and for a while

twelvecolonies was a fabulous distraction, but changing circumstances and changing me means that I can no longer give it the attention it requires or deserves, so I'm bowing out.

I wish you all nothing but the best, and be damn sure you post all your entries for the vidding challenge to your LJs once the challenge is over! (And you know, if anyone is thinking about dipping their toes into vidding for the first time and wants help wrangling WMM, that offer always stands.)

So anyway, so long

twelvecolonies and

teambasestar, and thanks for all the fun.

(In other news, I'm really sorry I haven't been posting much lately; see above for real weird life and my varying responses to it on any given month. In other news, I liked this week's Fringe.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

emmiere.livejournal.com

Real life > fandom is true too. Glad to have you while you were there. *hugs*

I was slightly disappointed in this week's Fringe? Partly because a friend and I were betting (hoping) on Elizabeth Bishop being an scientist too, since Bell introduced her and Walter at a science-y sort of conference. Sad day. But it had early versions of everybody, Nina, and filled in the outlines nicely.

And er, I know WMM like to chew through all sizes of footage, but is there any way to remove those small bars on the sides of footage? Short of clipping everything in something like V-Dub. :)

From:

beccatoria.livejournal.com

Thanks, I hope you guys keep on kicking ass over there! And yeah, real life either > fandom or ends up distracting from it in ways you wish it didn't far too often. ;)

This week's Fringe was... Okay I can see the disappointment if you thought Elizabeth Bishop was going to be a scientist and it turned out she wasn't (that we saw at least). Since I didn't have that expectation I guess I was just busy enjoying Dr Warren? Mostly I was afraid they were going to go the route of blaming the mother for being Eve with the Apple and MAKING Walter keep Alternapeter, which I was glad they didn't do. Because at the end, Elizabeth very clearly doesn't ask and Walter very clearly states it was his decision because he saw in his wife what he feared in himself; that he wouldn't be able to give this Peter up, so he didn't. So...I guess that's why I kind of liked it more than I thought I would? Also I liked terrifying and arrogant eighties Walter. And was intrigued by Nina's weird apparently connection to Peter which was unexplained.

I'm extremely "meh" about the whole "the boy is important" thing because I really, really don't need Peter to be "important" like that. But I was pleased that this whole episode was about Walter instead of Peter? So Peter gets to continue to be hilariously irrelevant except for what he represents and doesn't even know about?

So, I dunno. It wasn't the most mindblowing episode ever but I did like it.

WMM! Okay, yeah, basically it just takes whatever pixel-by-pixel size you have and fits that into one of its presets meaning that you often end up with thin black lines above, below or to the side. The only way to avoid this - or at least have it remain the same throughout the vid is to make sure that all the footage you put into WMM is the same pixel-by-pixel size (or, you know, larger/smaller by the same degrees).

Which, yes, is a pain in the ass and is best achieved by re-running errant sized footage through another program like V-Dub or somesuch.

The other two options are to live with it, if the bars above and below are pretty narrow, which I've seen in a lot of vids, or, if that bugs you like it kind of bugs me, and you can't be bothered to get all your source the same size (which I confess I did), the final option (which I used one time) is to render it as WMM spits it out and THEN to crop the VID in V-Dub or something, just shaving off the 10 pixels above, below or to the side that are problematic.

You might end up with a slightly weird pixel-by-pixel size from this which probably won't make any difference, but if it bugs you you can stretch your cropped image back to a standard size and it'll be such a small difference, any warping of the image will probably be unnoticable.

The problem with that is running it through another program will cause a slight degradation of the image quality.

Um, I hope that all made sense?

From:

emmiere.livejournal.com

Mostly I was afraid they were going to go the route of blaming the mother for being Eve with the Apple and MAKING Walter keep Alternapeter, which I was glad they didn't do.

*blinks* You know that hadn't really even occurred to me until a little bit at the end there since the show is usually pretty good about not woobifying Walter (er, for lack of a better word), but I SHARE THIS RELIEF NOW. Dr. Warren was an excellent surprise, since I'd been expecting a younger, more Astrid-like assistant, and instead we get a rather awesome woman with complex principles and 3(?) doctorates. Boo that we don't get to keep her though. And a lot of my 'meh' does also come from 'the boy is important', since it feels more like Walter's backstory is setting up the action and I am still cynical about Peter's chances for remaining irrelevant or becoming interesting in a way that is...interesting. But I am will trying to think positive and not infect the rest of the internet, since they actually haven't DONE anything with the stuff I worry about yet. :)

Also, Olivia's avoidance felt a bit off unless it was only a short time later and I'm just forgetting.

But WMM! Re: the bars, I'm still trying to figure out how a rip from the same DVD (mine) has footage 16 pixels wider on several of the episodes, but your explanation of how to fix it to standard format sizes makes complete sense. I'm shaking my fist at it more for the inability to do actual overlays. ;)

From:

beccatoria.livejournal.com

Yes, I agree, I always thought Dr Warren was going to be as Astrid-type assistant too, except, like, probably even more assistant-like than Astrid who is at least part of the FBI. I'm not sure she had three doctorates specifically but she had three "advanced physics degrees" at least one of which must have been a doctorate. Pretty impressive stuff and I Really loved that she got to be religious without being a kook.

I also completely understand the simultaneous desire and inability to give them the benefit of the doubt re: Peter's importance. They haven't failed yet but I'm just...I don't know. I have a horrible sense of waiting. And I feel if I give up my cynicism, I'll be let down even more badly, or will justify things that aren't worth justifying, but if I hold onto my cynicism, I'm being unfair to the story since they haven't, strictly, earned that cynicism from me? OH WELL. I guess we'll have to wait and see...

As to Olivia's avoidance, I'm not certain but I got the impression it was a very short time later. Her words about not knowing yet if she was going to tell Broyles suggested to me that she hadn't seen Broyles yet or decided anything which would be a bit weird if they had been working cases with this big elephant in the room - not to mention Peter. The trailer for next week looks like it starts to deal with that kind of thing so my assumption is that this episode occurred very shortly afterwards. Although since Walter was trying to get in touch with her if I had to put a time frame on it I'd guess at the following evening or something?

WMM! Unfortunately I can't help with the DVD ripping issue since I'm not an expert on that and I don't know what program you're using anyway. :( But I'm glad that my explanation at least made sense!

As to the overlays, you can get a custom plugin for WMM that lets you do overlays. The problem is that because it's not a two-track setup, the overlays are basically done as transitions, which means that during the transition, you just...see both tracks at once. The plugin offers a variety of opacity levels as different transitions. The problem therein is that the overlay clip just cuts in immediately rather than fading in which often looks very abrupt.

The only way I found around that was to:

1) choose the clip onto which you want to put an overlay.

2) render that clip with an overlay, being careful to note the timestamps.

3) reimport the clip with the overlay. Put it on the timeline next to the original clip. Fade between the original clip and the clip with the overlay, making sure you're fading between "identical" points in the clip.

i.e. if the original clip is 1.00 seconds long, you could cut the first 0.10 seconds off the front of the overlay clip, then overlap the two from 0.10 seconds into the original clip. So in effect, you're fading between the exact same frames in each instance, except, one has an overlay, so this gives the illusion of fading in and out of an overlay.

As you can see, even if that made sense to you (again, words + vidding = argh!), it's incredibly fiddly which is why I never bothered much. But it is possible.

I wrote up some stuff I learned warring with WMM including some stuff about places you can get custom effects/plugins for it here:

http://beccatoria.livejournal.com/68259.html#cutid4

In case any of that's useful. :)

From:

emmiere.livejournal.com

Thanks for correcting my memory on the degree question, 3 doctorates seemed um, a wee bit excessive. :p And the non-kooky religious character is a huge type of mine, plus the fact that 'assistant' didn't seem to define much of what she did and knew, which was apparently everything Walter did.

I'm kind of at the point where I feel slightly ridiculous for the nail-biting over an episode that Peter wasn't even in (as Joshua Jackson anyway). And for the fact that he is actually one of the three leads and just balancing the arcs dictates that he will probably have more to do in the future and, as a best case, might even make a better character of him that I wouldn't rather ignore or find amusingly useless. Yet I already resent the ~~probable~~ potential encroachment on Olivia's storyline. Usurper!

And no, I don't think it was so long that they were working cases in silence, and I can sort of buy that there would be a small overlap between the time Olivia needs to process alone and the point where Walter's anxiety would make him come find her (though I kind of think Peter might have made it there first unless there were off-screen shenanigans, so there's a bit of a gap for me. Which meant that they could make it Walter's story only, so who am I to complain really). But I suppose Olivia has never struck me as the type that needs less information to process, and even though the basic facts were probably enough for her to guess at most of the story, the only way I can see her not going to find Walter herself is the legitimate fear that she'll have to face up with Peter before she's decided anything. Which...ok, may have just made some sense of it for me. (Of course I would never think to go process more by making a post, that would just be silly.)

And dude, I remember that link! Sort of. Which is kind of depressing, as it is from 2008. (Also, thank you, it is useful and I think I understand, and am impressed by, what the fiddly bits of the explanation mean). I'm assuming the overlays are the Blaine effects bit, since that sounds familiar-ish and I might have bookmarked it at some point?

From:

gonzo21.livejournal.com

Was this weeks Fringe the one that was All Walter, ALl The Time?

From:

beccatoria.livejournal.com

Yes, that's the one! Arrogant, terrifying, eighties Walter, no less!

From:

gonzo21.livejournal.com

I thought that was just the best age makeup I've ever seen too. They deserve to win an award for that.

From:

beccatoria.livejournal.com

Absolutely! It was really, really impressive. Kind of a contrast to Nina's which, while not awful, kind of looked awful in comparison to the impressive job they did on Walter.

From:

nicole-anell.livejournal.com

*hugs* I'll miss you but hopefully not miss you TOO much 'cause you're still here on my flist.

From:

beccatoria.livejournal.com

The same right back at you! I really did have a fabulous time and you're a great team leader. *hugs*

From:

frolicndetour.livejournal.com

~~Come back, Shane, come back!!~~ I mean, I hope you're not leaving because you feel guilty at all. :( You're still one of the best participants we've had over the long term and one of the reasons we were doing so well to begin with. There are plenty of people on every team who haven't participated at all.

In a way I'm kind of glad another team won a round. JUST THIS ONCE, I mean. ;) It's probably better for the atmosphere overall?

Edited Date: 2010-04-02 11:53 pm (UTC)

From:

beccatoria.livejournal.com

Just a quick cus I really need to go to bed, but I don't want you to worry! No, I promise, it's absolutely not because I feel guilty, though it's always nice to know I pulled my weight. ;)

I decided I was going to leave at the end of this challenge probably about a month ago but I wanted to see it through to the end. It is honestly, and completely, only because I'm at a point where I don't have the attention to participate the way I would want to, not the way I think anyone else would need me to. And the only reason for that is, well, me, and my ongoing weird real life situation which I know you're already aware of anyway. So don't worry, I know that fandom is kind of imploding a bit at the moment, but I'm just a casualty of real life implosions, not online ones. :) NO FLOUNCING FOR ME! :p

So thanks for worrying about me, but it's not necessary. And I FIGURED that our team were just playing possum to lull everyone into a false sense of security. ;)

Maybe next round if I'm in a better place, I'll sign back up again.