I grow less and less patient with the insistence of Facebook and Twitter. Yes, I’m on both of those, but they lost their luster for me some time ago. Whenever I sign on, I feel as if I’m walking into the local Mall, circa 1995.

So, I think in this new year of 2012, I’m going to return to the good old “blog” format. As a special bonus, I can pretty much say whatever I want to, since no one reads this anymore! Finally, a good use for that old devil, Time.

Anyway, thanks for dropping by, dear imaginary reader (I remember you from when I was a kid!). I hope to make more regular entries during the new year, including (I hope) the return of the PaintBlog.

With any luck, and a kind economy, I will endeavor to be back next year.

Anyway, using DreamWeaver, I finally updated my “Oil on Canvas” page. It’s got (with a couple of old exceptions) everything I’ve done in oils over the past couple of decades.

Right here. Some of the images are rather large so their thumbnails might take a moment to load. But that’s everything…everything in a finished state, that is. There are still a couple of others that aren’t done, and won’t be added until they are.

Oh, and there’s this.

That’s done, and actually owned by a “private collector.” It hasn’t been officially announced, though, so I’m not adding it to the page until it is. Consider yourselves privileged!

Due to rapidly growing dissatisfaction with Facebook, I hope to start updating this blog more regularly in the coming year. I look forward to resuming your acquaintance!

Turns out I was wrong. The girl and the guy are, if you’ll pardon the phrase, bigger than that. Yeah, sure, there are some breasts here and there, but they’re not the focus of the story. This is a definite Top Ten in my anime realm. The characters are great, the situations move the story forward, and the ending is just what you (or at least I) hope it will be. Of course, I’m a sucker for the Big Romantic Ending, especially if the show’s been shooting in that direction, so that’s not a surprise. It’s just remarkable how they tied up all the loose ends so well. I was expecting to endure this series, given what I’d heard, but instead it was one of those shows that told me, “Keep going, there’s still some anime stuff out there that will surprise you, in a good way!”

Recommended, if you can find it.

Still, I do have to admit I like the way this is going.

Just to define, I mean software allowing you to assemble video clips into something you might want to upload to YouTube. And by consumer-grade, I mean something you might pick up in the local Best Buy for (generally) less than $100. What I would like to do is place a few short clips next to each other, perhaps with a cross-fade between some of them, apply some simple special effects here and there, and add a soundtrack. I tried three major packages and all three had problems doing some of these basic processes. Why they should all fall so short of what seems to me a minimum acceptable level is beyond me; perhaps my own impatience and/or incompetence might be factors, but I’m not that incompetent.

So, let’s meet our contestants.

First up was Pinnacle Studio HD Ultimate Collection 14 and before you ask, they all have names like that. (And it’s important to give them their full names–you’ll see why when we get to the next package.) This is a pretty powerful software package, and it’s backed up by a massive number of plug-ins you can buy. It does video overlays really well. The layout is pretty basic and logical, with everything laid out pretty much where you would want it. So what killed it? Well, it’s very fussy about video drivers, and apparently my Intel something-or-other is not well liked. Some of the effects you could add you could not preview; you had to render it and hope everything worked out the way you wanted it to. That’s not a big deal, you could always go back and adjust, but it was something of a hiccup. However, that wasn’t its worst lack. That would be the inability to cross-fade between clips.

Yes, fading is something that the package knows about, but doesn’t do. A web search reveals that there are work-arounds, but really, work-arounds for something elementary like this? Argh.

So, with Pinnacle shot down in the night, we next turn to Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD 9. This is pretty nice software, very flexible with a layout a little more extensive than Pinnacle. And yes, it will do fades. So, problem solved, right? Alas not. I put together a somewhat longer series of clips and rendered it and…there were problems. When one clip would switch to the next, whether through a fade or just a cut, the video would pause

noticeably. (You see what I did there?) Again I went to the web. I found no information about what might be causing this; I did find a post from someone who had a similar problem. His solution? He upgraded to the next higher package. That sounds a bit extreme, doesn’t it? Damn it, Sony.

Back to the drawing board, I searched for “video software cross-fade” or some damn thing, and found a package called VideoPad. This is a pretty bare-bones freeware package, and you know what? It does fades beautifully. You can adjust the duration of the fade across one or both clips. Very nice. So I rendered a short little sequence, and yeah it had great fades. So what was the problem? Well, each time a transition began, there was a brief pattern of diagonal lines that was superimposed over the image. Just there for a fraction of a second, but noticeable. Sigh. A search of the package’s forums found no solution, and I tried to join said forum so I could post the question, but I never got a confirmation. That’s not a good sign.

Whilst trying to keep my sanity through all this testing and re-testing, I took a break and drove to Best Buy. Just for fun, I looked in their video software section. Same stuff I already had as well as a package by Magix. Do I want to buy more software? No. I’ve used some Magix stuff and it was decent software, but not the sort of thing that made me think they’d licked the problems I was seeing. But as I turned away–

Adobe Premiere Elements, hm? A bit pricey, but I thought I’d research it anyway. I mean, if Adobe can’t do it, we’re all in trouble, right? After reading some reviews I bought it directly from Adobe as a download. (They were offering a rebate which made them cheapest.) Installed and fired it up and…argh. Problems. I could not see a single clip, either on the dashboard or in preview. I suppose it, too, hated my video card (though I met the requirements). My frustration level was fairly high at this point, and after a fairly brief attempt to solve this issue, I initiated a return/refund with Adobe. To their credit, they processed it without any fuss.

So where did that leave me? I didn’t want to try another package to be honest–I knew I was only going to discover more unexpected holes in utility. And three of the folks I tried have very expensive professional versions used by Hollywood–Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas Pro, and Avid Systems (who bought Pinnacle). So clearly these people must know what they’re doing? Yes?

I was pretty close to abandoning the whole process as a bad learning experience. I had one option left before I did that, and that was to upgrade the Sony to version 10.

Follow me here for a moment. I’d owned the Sony software for perhaps two weeks. Now, generally upgrading from a 9 to a 10 would be free in that time-frame, wouldn’t it? You might think that’s reasonable, but you’re wrong. You see, version 10 was actually Sony Movie Studio HD Platinum 10. Apparently that word “Platinum” meant that it was an entirely different product, so it wasn’t so much as an “upgrade” as a “cross-grade” or something. Too tired to argue, I noted that the price wasn’t too horrible, so I ponied up. Total cost for both, around $120.

And mirabile visu, the video no longer paused between clips! Hoo-hah, I was on my way at last. I assembled a somewhat larger array of clips and rendered them, and found…the next problem. Which is that some of the clips just did not render. At all. I would have a stretch of black that lasted however many seconds the clip ran, then the next clip would pop in as if all were well. Well, all sure wasn’t well.

I couldn’t figure out what might be causing this. I thought it might be the clips with special effects, but a few more runs showed that the unrendered clips were a random mixture of effects shots and straight footage. (Each run would have a different clip that failed, though they were usually in the latter half.)

After trying to think, I went with my first thought: I’m straining the software. I’m asking it to do too much at one time. Now, it might seem funny that software designed to do these things was having trouble doing these things, but I’d pretty much abandoned logic (as well as sanity) by this point.

So I carefully constructed my final project by making smaller projects. If I applied an effect to, say, clip06, I would render it as clip06effect. Then I would start a new project and use the rendered effect clip rather than make the software do too much. Believe it or not, that worked. Finally, I had a complete 3 minute movie. I figured adding the soundtrack would be the start of another nightmare, but it was surprisingly trouble-free. I guess maybe Sony figured I’d suffered enough, or perhaps it hadn’t had time to think up some new problems to throw at me.

So in sum, I don’t know how many of you might take up video editing (you fools) but I hope my journey might help you through some of the pitfalls. I would like to close by thanking you for your patronage, and to tell Pinnacle, Sony and Adobe to shape up.

PS: All of the above packages had rather difficult trimmers, which one would need to cut out unwanted frames. I ended up with yet another package for that, SolveigMM AVI Trimmer. This little freeware editor is excellent, and highly recommended.

Thanks for tuning in!

For me, I simply couldn’t escape the feeling that I’d seen all the “good stuff,” or at least the stuff I was going to enjoy, and the subsequent diminishing returns over the years wasn’t even trying to prove me wrong. So I just kind of stopped after I’d finished Gun X Sword. I made an attempt at another series on the pile, Coyote Ragtime Show, but stopped after half of the first episode. It just seemed too dull–too assured of itself to do anything but bathe in the cliches–to fire any positive neurons.

A few months ago, though, I was suddenly seized with an urge to rewatch some of the older shows. So I fired up Gravion, Ghost Stories, Godannar, and just to step out of the “G” section, VanDread, followed by Risky Safety. And I found I really liked them. Aside from VanDread, I wouldn’t consider any of them classics or essential, but they were a lot of fun. And I thought, why not try to ply through the pile of The Great Unwatched?

First off, I decided to push my way through Coyote Ragtime Show. And I managed to get all the way through it, though I can’t say it was fun. It felt more like an obligation, but I did it. In fact, the whole show felt like it was put together as an obligation. I did like the severed android head and her conversations with the policewomen, but this was entirely a subplot.

Ninja Nonsense. You know, the yellow guy can be funny in small doses. Problem: no small doses.

Next up was Mermaid Forest. Well, the artwork was frequently beautiful, but the story never developed. I’m going to guess that the makers thought, “We’ll get to that in season two!” but I don’t think that materialized. Better than Coyote Ragtime Show, but then, what wouldn’t be?

The Soultaker popped up next. This one had Nurse Komugi in it, and it was interesting to see her own show in the shadow of this one. Her show, in fact, started to seem like a “behind the scenes” thing for the cast of this one, which put all those characters (they’re all in both shows, though of entirely different natures) into an interesting light. This show, though… The story is one you’ve all heard before–guy transforms into monster, fights evil, powerful conspiracies, hidden secrets, blah blah blah. Komugi remains the most appealing aspect. The main aspect, however, is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show as stylized as this one. The weird, shifting color palates were a constant presence, making the story actually difficult to follow. No, scratch that. It was hard to tell what the heck was happening, let alone put a plot to it.

Soul Hunter came next. Hey, this one was fun. A bit overlong (the first 26-episode series since my watching resumed) and with really nasty, sadistic villains, still it had some good action and some good comedy. Besides, how can you not give some credit to a show whose hero dresses exactly like a cleaning woman, and where people frequently fly around on giant Beany Babies?

Then I decided to take the plunge and watch Aura Battler Dunbine. Talk about long, this series has 49 episodes. That’s not a typo. Yikes. Still, it was fun, with old-school animation (pre-digital) and one of the cutest characters ever, a little “fiorine” named Chum. But boy, the repetition in a series like this–guys in giant robots fight each other–really goes on and on. “Hey, we wrecked the bad guy’s robot, and now he’s escaping? Should we go after him and kill him?” “Are you kidding, we still have almost twenty episodes to go!” (Not actual dialogue.) If you decide to watch this (it’s long out of print, but Netflix has it) beware that it has an absolutely terrible ending.

I’d seen the first disk of Stratos 4 long ago, and decided it wasn’t for me, but I saw the other volumes for cheap and picked them up. Well, it was enjoyable and most importantly, the characters were likable. Good stuff here and there. I’ll probably never watch it again, but hey it…was a show.

Princess Nine I really enjoyed, though I could have done without all the “love triangle” stuff. But then, in the last two episodes, the show shoots itself in the foot quite badly. No, really–they destroy the premise of the entire show. Which is a real shame, because I thought the story of these girls trying to compete in a boy’s sport really should have had the courage of its convictions. I’m thinking they wanted another season that never came. Well, most of it was fun, with some very appealing characters. Even the rotten rich girl had some depth and dimension.

If I thought Aura Battler Dunbine was long, I had another think coming as I finally broke the seal on the giant set of Card Captor Sakura DVDs. According to the Anime News Network, this one has seventy episodes. Big sigh. My big complaint with anime series is that thirteen shows is sometimes just a hair short of being able to tell a good story, but twenty-six has been, with a couple of exceptions, way too long. Things get dragged out to an unreasonable degree and I end up yelling at my TV, “Will you get on with it!” (My TV is used to this and is pretty nonplussed about it all.)

And for this reason, Sakura, I’m afraid, has defeated me for the time being. I’ve gone through the first three disks and the repetition level has already surpassed Dunbine without breaking a sweat. I may still be popping one of these in the DVD player when I’m an old, old man.

So much for that. Hey, an entire post about watching DVDs! Isn’t the internet awesome? Yeah, I thought so too. Thanks for visiting!

Of course, blogging now is so…2004, isn’t it? What with Facebook and Twitter and all those sorts of things. Who blogs nowadays? I mean, I guess apart from myself, I hope.

Since the Great Event of nearly one year ago, it might be thought that I’d have more time for doing this. Well, time and space being what they are, all in relative dimension to one another, such a thought had a hard time getting a firm grip on the old keyboard. But I’m going to make an effort to provide more content here. Of what nature I cannot say; perhaps a drawing, some random thoughts, a bit of fiction (can’t seem to give that away) or perhaps one of my long-threatened essays.

Hope to see you around more often, and thank you as always for popping by.