Video editing

Production Diary: Linux Bromance

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I’m almost done sorting through the Broforce footage. I have about another half hour’s worth to sort through and then I can move onto tearing up the Crash Bandicoot Trilogy footage. I’m stopping myself now because I know that once I continue I’ll be up later than I should be. :v:

On the subject of my own productions I’ve done some more testing,and I’m pretty much ready to start my next set of SFM animations under Linux. I’ll probably complete the Linux setup of it after I move my install over to a new SSD. I’ve been planning it for awhile now, but since I’ve been spending more time under Linux I wanted to get it off of a mechanical drive and onto something faster. I love Linux on my NVMe, and while Mint boots up pretty quickly on my 7200rpm drive, it is beginning to show it’s old age. I’ll probably do a clean reinstall when the drive arrives then move everything over to it at my leisure… gotta love hot-swap.

It’s kinda funny… All these years I’ve been wanting to move my editing suite to Linux, and after all these years of people telling me that it wouldn’t happen I’m almost right where I want to be. Now if I could just ween myself off of Ye Olde Photoshoppe things would be cherry. All my audio and video work is done under Linux now, and now thanks to Proton Source Filmmaker too… just so long as I don’t run into any graphical glitches during rendering. I did a test image sequence earlier and it imported just as fast as it did under Windows, and from what I can tell it’s about as stable as it is under Windows too. If this works out I’ll have one large and one less reason not to use Windows anymore…

Oh don’t worry Microsoft, you’re still somewhat useful; it’s just that your list of useful properties shrinks a little more as time passes each day.

Video Editing Diary: Bromantic Edition

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I’ve slashed my way through the Borderlands Pre-Sequel footage and have about 4 videos worth of content with plenty of plans for additional animation. Now I’m going through my Broforce files and have now confirmed that I have enough for not one, but possibly 3 or 4 videos. I’ll probably continue at it some more tomorrow, my weekend starts early. My notepad is filling with all kinds of imaginative things that I can’t wait to animate… some of these ideas are tempting enough to be their own standalone videos.

My brain is doing things again

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I was contemplating a release of a video I finished recently, but now I’m thinking I may hold off until I sort through the current selection of video footage I’ve got. I need to cut up some more film and write down more goofy idea, then I can properly calculate what would be a good video to follow (or possibly proceed ahead of if I can find anything good in recent streams). I’ve been going through my Borderlands Pre-Sequel gameplay and have enough fodder for two episodes so far, and I’m not done going through all of the footage yet. My current list for that and other games is as follows:

  1. Borderlands The Pre-Sequel
  2. Broforce
  3. Crash Bandicoot
  4. Deadpool (Unlikely due to making fun of itself better than we could)
  5. DOSBox
  6. Fallout 4 (Need more footage)
  7. Garry’s Mod
  8. Left 4 Dead 2
  9. Linux Gaming
  10. No Man’s Sky (Need more footage)
  11. Okami
  12. Serious Sam HD SE
  13. Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse
  14. Skyrim (which might spread out as long as game of thrones at this point)
  15. MGSV: The Phantom Pain (Needs more footage)

Going through the Pre-Sequel stuff alone I can tell I have a lot cut out for me in the animation dept. With my latest render I’m thinking I might experiment with SFM under Linux again. For one of my scenes in the upcoming video I have planned I experimented with making an image sequence instead of an mp4 file and it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. If I can do that in the same amount of time as I can under Windows I’ll gladly start using SFM under Linux. Moving all of my production to Linux would be pleasing. The less reasons I have to go into Windows the better, the nightmare.

I’ll be less likely to live that nightmare again…

I have my work cut and paste out for me

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Sorry for lack of postings. Work has been making me feel worn over death lately, even doing my other after work activities. My new sound card arrived yesterday! I’m probably going to have a busy weekend with that, a video release and a few other things. I sorted through my video collection, and have an idea of what I need to collect more footage for, and what to work on next. What I can now prep for release are (these are in no particular order btw):

  • Brain4Dead (Releasing Sunday)
  • Freedom Planet (A stream from long ago… BACK WITH ANIMATION!)
  • Linux Gaming Video
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Finale
  • Skyrim (More recent stream)
  • NIGHT’S Into Dreams (Surprisingly)
  • Left 4 Dead 2 Run with Yutram and his roommate with my own assortment of mods.

Then I have other project folders that don’t have enough content yet for me to produce:

  • Broforce
  • Okami
  • Serious Sam HD Second Encounter
  • Serious Sam 3
  • Garry’s Mod Tour Of The Whitehouse
  • Fallout 4
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

It will probably be a little while before I put anything out. I’m thinking I’ll spend tomorrow going through a few projects, writing down ideas for the next videos. I’m not entirely about the MGR one, mainly because the previous ones I’ve put out don’t have any animation to them other than goofy additions I added to the videos in general. I’m not sure if I should continue it in my current style, or go back and redo the others. For now I think I’ll start off on one of the other ones, like Freedom Planet possibly.

Down the digital rabbit hole of issues

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My weekend started out peaceful… I treated myself to an omelette and some toast, made up some green tea and worked on some recent Left 4 Dead footage. Wow… Normally when I edit video footage I have to do a lot of trimming. Like trimming down two and a half hours of Serious Sam footage into two minutes… with our most recent game of Left 4 Dead though? It’s an hour and thirty minutes in length and so far I have about 15 minutes worth of footage with more territory to cover. I believe this could be its own miniseries.

After awhile I finally decided to give myself a break and head into Windows… Just when I thought I made it clear out of Windows Update hell I came across an issue with my microphone. It was recognized by Windows but not a single program acknowledged its existence. After some web searching I found out that if you blanket disable all apps from having access to your mic it’ll completely cut you off (despite that little message on the right telling you that it won’t block the mic from Windows). After fixing that problem I launched Steam and discovered that Shadow Of The Tomb Raider needed an update. Then I changed my mind and settled on Quantum Break instead… that’s when I ran into another problem. After playing for a few minutes my monitors would go black. This happened again at the exact same point in the game. Tomb Raider finished updating and I launched it, same problem. I updated my drivers to the latest ones (because somehow during Windows Update Microsoft oh so kindly installed an older one) and the problem still persists even on the latest beta drivers. I tried Skyrim and that seemed to remain stable, but DOOM 2016 choked just like Quantum Break and Tomb Raider.

That was last night. Today/tonight I ran more diagnostics; turns out it actually wasn’t Windows 10 in this particular case, because upon further testing I could replicate the same issue under Linux. I’ve tried clean installs of Windows and a couple other tricks but merit the same result. The only other thing that’s been done recently is a bios update. I’ll save that for tomorrow, I’ve been bashing my head against this long enough…

I’ll nibble on some clouds and I’ll lay my weary head to rest.

Early Thanksgiving Open Thread

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No Morty… You don’t get to be the turkey.

We celebrated Thanksgiving a couple days early, since we’re all going to be working on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday… bleh. I came home from work today and was immediately greeted with the scent of a turkey rich holiday meal. I’ll sleep good tonight (even moreso than usual).

For the last couple of days I’ve been working on video footage. I sorted out all of the Quake Champions footage I’ve squirreled away, think I can get a couple good videos out of that. Now I’m working on our recent Serious Sam HD: Second Encounter romp recently. I’ve been working on a clip that’s almost two hours long, and I don’t even have a full minute of presentable footage yet. What little bit I’ve collected so far though has given me multiple braingasms that I’ll have to jot down on paper after I further refine my footage. After I finish editing this clip I’ll have another one to go through that’s about another hour long. Fortunately with good editing tools you don’t have to watch the entire video to get to where you want to be. :meeseeks: Then I’ll have Left 4 Dead footage to go through; Yutram and I played a custom campaign that truly lives up to its name. I know for certain with that adventure that we’ll have a good video on our hands.

I’m going to continue doing my new style of adding SFM footage (and other elements) into future gaming videos when applicable. It will take me longer to compile them, but I think the extra effort is worth it. There was something I enjoyed about Solid Snake magically growing a cigarette out of his mouth that I found enjoyable to animate in the derpiest style I could muster.

 

Sunday Evening Open Thread: I’m still a nerd edition

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I worked on and rendered another video using the Linux version of Shotcut today. I don’t know what it is, but to me the Linux version performs better for me than the Windows version, which itself isn’t bad by any means, but to me it seemed even snappier under Linux. I won’t uninstall it from Windows just in case I need it under there (you never know), but I have a feeling I’ll be using it under Linux more. Hooray for progress! :meeseeks:

Other than that there wasn’t much else to my day. It was a nice warm morning, followed by large gusts of wind that brought fog and cold weather by the late afternoon. I sat inside drinking tea, getting my computer work done and trying to feel better. I reinstalled DOOM 2016 on my desktop to test it with the newest version of Proton, and I can say that I now have mouse movement, but it feels a bit janky… I know I could do some tricks to get it to work, and I probably will in the future. But for now I think I’ll hold off and see if newer versions of Proton will remedy the issue. I’ve already beat the game once, and I’m already replaying it under Mint on my laptop with flying colors. I have plenty of other games that need testing. :v:

Finally catching up!

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We had a surprise heatwave today, too hot for me to even want to take a nap. I ended up taking my laptop outside and play tested Prey on my Linux install, and surprisingly it works quite decently.

Speaking of Linux gaming I finished my first Linux related video. I’m not sure when I’ll release it, but it will probably be at the beginning of November at the very latest, with others hopefully following suit. I had to do a reinstall of Shotcut, the version I installed via my package manager decided that it didn’t want to launch anymore for whatever reason, so I tested with their portable version and that runs like a peach. It even has all of the same codecs I have under the Windows version… I’m wondering if I had an older version installed? Which is strange because it did report back the same version as Windows… Ponderous. If that’s the case I may start doing more of my video editing under Linux instead of keeping Linux and Windows recordings separate, and using Windows Shotcut to edit Windows video and Linux Shotcut for… well you get the idea. It’s kind of funny though when I think about it; Years ago when I first installed Linux to participate in the Steam Linux beta I couldn’t find any decent software to edit videos and always had to rely on Premiere Pro, among other programs that always had me going back to Windows (like game recording software for example). Fast forward to now, and we have several robust video editors to choose from, there are a couple options for game recording, and more and more everyday software being available to use. It’s amazing how much of this has grown since my early adventures of using Linux as a regular day to day desktop. Now here I am editing audio/video without having to rely as much or at all on Windows or Adobe for it. It feels good, real good.

As I’ve stated before though I’m nowhere near ready to completely ditch Windows yet, but the less time I spend under it the happier I am. I like having options.

Getting closer to the end

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Well, I managed to complete not only the last of the animation, but I’m also very close to wrapping up the project. I need to play with audio levels, render and make a thumbnail for when I finally get to upload. Probably won’t release it until at least next month. If I can I’d like to try and focus on spooky vids, and even if I don’t get to do that I can work on other things instead.

My next projects will hopefully involve something Linux related, and also a recent Portal 2 play-date. Yutram and I played custom maps made on Steam Workshop and we had quite an interesting adventure. I’ll have to sift through the footage and see what I can come up with. 😛

Adobe narrows their OS scope

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This is one of the reasons why I don’t like subscription model software:

We want to give you advance notice that upcoming versions of the Adobe video and audio tools will require Windows 10 (version 1709, or higher) or macOS 10.12 (or higher) to run. This applies to the next major releases of Adobe Media Encoder, After Effects, Audition, Character Animator, Prelude, and Premiere Pro.

Performance and stability are top priorities for all of our users. Running our apps on current versions of the Mac and Windows operating systems helps provide an optimal experience with our tools.

So basically if you’re on an older operating system and you still want to use Adobe CC Services you’ll have to pay a monthly fee for out of date software… Not that it matters to me. There are other pay and Open Source options that will do the trick in most cases, especially if you’re looking for encoders and video editors. This isn’t the early 90’s/mid 2000’s where Adobe was king, programs like Shotcut, Sony Vegas, and a few others are good substitutes. In fact I’ve been using Shotcut for over a year now, and only had to delve into Premiere Pro once to keyframe something (though I used CS6 instead of CC). All that I really use that’s adobe these days is Photoshop CS6, which will probably be my last version.