Recently, I was re-watching the 1981 incarnation Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I love this book. Its brilliant. The idea that the Galaxy is by incompetent beaureacrats is believable.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the TV series is described as this:
Im many of the more relaxed systems in the outer eastern rim of the galaxy, the Hitchhikers Guide has already supplanted the great encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom.It struck me that this description largely fits the ubiquitous Wikipedia.
For though it has many omissions, contains much that is apochryphal, or at least wildly innacurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper.
And secondly, it has the words Dont Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on the cover.
Wikipedia has supplanted any given printed encyclopedia due to the fact its slightly cheaper. Its free in fact. And; you dont need to buy a book shelf to store it on.
The Hitchhikers Guide was also apparently written by people on the ground. Writers who lived on the planet they were writing about.
Wikipedia is written by people who live and experience what they contribute.
So, in short, Wikipedia's model is based on the Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy. Wikipedia can also be accessed via a device in your pocket.
Now, we just need Dont Panic coded into the home page.
"Brain the size of the planet and they tell me to take you up to the bridge"
In an effort to communicate very clearly to our key demographic, we decided to create a cartoon that works somewhat like an aircraft escape card.
All of the cartoons started as a sketch which were scanned at a very high DPI, and then painted in Photoshop with my trusty Wacom tablet. The result is a comic strip style cartoon that tells the story of one of our consumers using our service.
The entire process is quite lengthy. It became clear that it is extremely important that the message to be conveyed was firstly conveyed clearly to me (the artist). In one or two instances, drawings were unusable as the character was not sitting the right position or facing the right way. Such are the challenges of illustrating a visual language.
As a continuation of yesterdays post here is the step by step process of frame accurate DivX splitting.
Step 1 Set up the Codec that Cut Assistant will use. Go to Options > Settings and make sure Cut AVI Files is set to use Virtual Dub and the XVid Codec. If you dont have it see my post below under 'What Did Work'.
Step 2 Ensure Cut Assistant knows where VirtualDub is. Also make sure the last tick box 'Use Smart Rendering' is checked otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.
Step 3 Once you have opened your file under File > Open Movie, use the controls to find the start cut point. Now its a little archaic looking but F3 plays and pauses while the left and right arrows move frame-by-frame.
Now that you have reached the spot you want to cut hit the 'Set Current' button next to From. (Marked with 1 in the image.) Repeat the process to find the end point then hit the 'Set Current' button for the To area - marked with number 2. Once you are happy, click 'Add new cut' (3).
This is will add an entry to the Cut List and highlight the appropriate area on the frame slider at the bottom of the box.
Step 4 Click File > Start Cutting. It may start prompting you for file names and locations at this point. This can be pre-defined in the settings before you start the project.
Step 5 Watch the magic and you are done. This particular video is about 27 minutes long and 322MB. The cut and edit took a whopping 43 seconds to complete. The final result was a clean smaller video both in length and file size. Not bad. The window on the left is the XVid Codec doing its thing.
Why I needed to do this
In this last year, I have been involved with delivering the first 'distance mode' Diploma of Interpreting for English/Auslan in Australia.
Distance education isn't that special but education in such a visual language certainly presented some fascinating issues.
As a result of the course, we have ended up with a whole host of DivX files with examples of interpreting and dialogues. Through some short sightedness and a rearrangement of the curriculum and delivery methods, a lot of the DivX files are titled incorrectly. For example, one of our videos may say 'Week 16' at the start when, in fact, this year it will be delivered and reviewed in 'Week 21'.
Although we have kept all of the DV Tapes from all the filming sessions, recapturing, rediting and then recompressing to DivX would be an unfortunate way to have to go about cutting incorrect titles out of the video.
So the logical conclusion is to simply split the DivX and discard the incorrect title. Bear in mind, Im not interested in replacing the titles so none of this information covers this.
What didnt really work
I tried a few things that kinda worked but werent really that useful. Adobe Premiere (Pro) CS3 could cut the DivX's (as long as I renamed the files to .avi) but I would have to export and recompress the files all over again.
I thought maybe DivX's commercially available DivX Author may be the best tool to cut and edit DivXs but the program was able to accurately slice the footage.
Virtual Dub is touted in all the forums as the way to go. I have used VDub before and thought its simplicity and power are fantasitic. VDub was able to split my DivX's (in Direct Stream mode), but only at a keyframe which was inevitabely in the middle of a title that I wanted removed. The result was I ended up with 20 or 30 frames of a fading out title I didnt want.
Then I tried using VDub's Smart Rendering option which is supposed to solve this very issue, but that kept shooting errors at me about the source not being acceptable.
I figured this must have been something to do with an incorrect codec. But I was using the same codec I had used to make the DivXs. Whats going on?
What did work
Here are the tools you will need:
- VirtualDub
- Xvid Codec
- Cut Assistant
Cut Assistant takes the process one step further. Although mostly is German from what I can tell, Cut Assistant allows you to cut at time markers and then sends the instructions back to VirtualDub to do the work using the codec you specify in the settings.
Step by Step...
Is on its way as soon as I crack an effective method for screen capturing images from VirtualDub. When I hit the PrtScn button and paste, I get a black sqaure. As soon as I sort this I'll get a step by step up here.
Maybe the next post will be: Screen Capping VirtualDub.
My work involves a lot of different stuff.
Most of it is in front of a computer. Sometimes its behind a camera. Sometimes I present at a meeting. But mostly in front of the computer. I work on many types of projects be they web, video, strategic or anything else. Im the only person here that does this stuff and has this all round understanding of all things digital. So, Im the first port of call for many questions and ideas.
I also run into a lot of little issues on a regular basis. I rarely take the time to record how I solve the problems. I have decided that's wrong.
So I Start > Run > Notepad and start jotting. I then of course remembered that notepad isn't so good with screen shots so I went over to Word and start blazing away at the keys.
"But no one is going to see this stuff", I begin to understand.
I have no way of effectively sharing it from my PC; while my documents folder is littered with all sorts of notes that I have forgotten I have written over the years. So its time to finally stop reading Blogs and start keeping one. Partly for the joy of sharing and mostly so that when I need to remember how to do something, I can Google my Blog.
I hope you find the things I write to be of use.