BBC: Musicality Test for SKIENCE

Ahahahaa. So. I took the BBC's new science musicality test thing which measures five different parts of your relationship to music, from technical skill at keeping the beat, etc., to remembering songs, to emotional connections, etc.

Anyways, it reflected my somewhat weird relationship with music quite well, that being, I'm actually reasonably good at it, really love it when it's around, but don't exactly make space for it in my life or actively pursue my moderate talent in that area. I think this is partly down to my inability to focus on much for very long - I think it's why I'm drawn to vidding. I can immerse myself in music and interact with it, but with...extra bits. Music is a background to a lot of my life, but rarely ever foregrounded.

I miss when I was regularly playing cello, guitar, piano, bodhran and singing, but apparently not enough to dust off my beautiful cello and tune it.

I have this vague wish that I lived in a place where music was more generically around so I could casually participate, but not enough motivation to go out there and do something about it. I don't miss it enough, and I have...headphones and vidding.

Anyways, the hilarious point being, here are two of my five test results:

Musical Perception (things like rhythm, pitch, tuning and genre): 98%.
Musical Curiosity (things like seeking out new music, genres, artists): 1%.

I can keep the beat, you guys, but damn if I ain't lazy when it comes to finding new stuff. If it doesn't FALL OVER ME, I will stick to political hip hop, emo indie rock, and Romantic or Minimalist piano. ♥

If you're curious, the test is linked in this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12127843

Vidukon Vid Poll: the etiquette of watermarks.

SO. I have a draft of my VidUKon premiere! This is quite exciting!

HOWEVER, before I can get too self-congratulatory, I have a problem. I'm using (and yes really need) some TV rips as well as DVD footage. So there's a FOX watermark on the footage. Generally I've never worried too much about that - a lot of my vids have watermarks on some of the clips. It's a shame, but whatcha gonna do aside from never vid the new stuff you're actually excited about?

However, I get the feeling that this is A Bit Frowned On, so I'm...toying with doing other things.

I have discounted the idea of zooming over the watermark as it negatively affects the quality of the footage so it's even easier to tell it's not of the standard of the DVD footage - I'm only doing that where I'm forced due to those annoying Bigger Watermarks and stuff.

This leaves me with a few options:

1) Leaving it be. Does it really matter that much?

2) Cropping the vid above the watermark so that the vid itself is just shorter in height. I'm a little reticent to do this because there are several clips where I'd need to pan to compensate for people's chins or other important things being cut off and a bunch more where I'm pretty sure panning so I don't miss the bottom of the clip will make me miss something important at the top of the clip. Idk, other people do this and it's okay, but when I tested it it just...felt like I was taking a machete to it for the sake of a watermark which seemed a bit extreme given that I think it negatively affects a fair bunch of the clips in terms of framing or content.

3) Put a watermark over the FOX watermark across the whole vid so's it looks like I've just watermarked the whole thing. Problems with this include the fact I'm generally not a fan of watermarking vids (again I don't have anything particularly against people who do it - it's never bothered me, it's just never been something I wanted to do), and the fact that I can't make it as opaque as most vidder watermarks are because then it starts showing the network watermark I'm trying to hide in the first place. Plus I can't have it just be a gigantic rectangle or it'll be obvious what I'm doing, but the options re: making it look like a design are limited. Either way, I have come up with the following - see screencap:



A POLL!

[Poll #1667335]