Monday venting

Still no new updates from the November La Femme Nikita update, but for those of you I haven't kept abreast of things, here's what First Team had to say:

This afternoon we spoke with a representative of Warners Home Video who is assigned to the Season 2 LFN project and have been told that the legal issue is being resolved and that the re-release of S2 is projected for the first quarter of 2005.

We have confirmed through the representative that it is indeed a music licensing matter that has held up the DVDs.

We also confirmed that S3 is scheduled for release in 2005, providing that sales of S2 are satisfactory. We pointed out that prior to the recall of S2, Best Buy and numerous other retailers sold many, many copies of S2 and asked how these copies would be treated in computing overall sales of S2. The representative said only that "this is something we will take into account."

So what that means is that those of you who've stolen copied downloaded! ;-) the eps online or from the DVDs, if you can buy the S2 discs (if you didn't get them in that initial Best Buy mixup) it will probably mean life or death for the rest of the series on DVD. Still no plans for other regions, unfortunately, because Warner really has abandoned this series for the most part. Grrrr. They're expensive sets, I admit, but... it's the only way we'll be able to get the best quality presentation. For us vidders, that's the thing we care about most.

Speaking of vidding... (rant warning) I'm still grumpy almost a day after getting an e-mail from someone chiding me on password protecting my vid web site and informing me, with her vast amounts of experience, of course, that passwording won't stop either the edit thieves or the Powers That Be once they get in and that it just makes it harder and less likely for people to watch my vids. And then proceeded to grace me with her desire to see one of my vids despite everything because Damien Rice rocks. It took everything in me not to write back, "Dear Asshat. Thank you for sharing your amazing life wisdom and the considerable vidding/TPTB/edit thief experience that you obviously have. I'm so glad that others in the fannish vidding community are willing to give you their vids without safeguards and that it has encouraged you to believe everything is here for your grabby little fists, free, without you having to deal with such encumbering processes as sending a simple e-mail to ask for the password -- because dude, Damien Rice rocks! I won't bore you with my 10+ years of experience in this area and the names of the people I know who've had C&Ds from legal departments, or the people I know who have had their work stolen. I also don't want to add to your overburdened brain by telling you that having a password may not prevent anything bad from happening, but it means I get to control the access of whom I allow in to my site. Fuckwits like you, for instance. Some people don't password because they are fine with open access and know the risks; some people don't password because they are stupid or ignorant of the problems that can occur with online vid availability and think everything on the internet is free and cheap and nothing has consequences and it's all for your convenience. Obviously we know which category you'd fall into were you to share your brilliance with the rest of the world."

But you know, I didn't. I just pointed out that having a password means I get to screen the people I let into my site and I like it that way. The funny thing is that I've been thinking of relaxing my password standard just a little bit if I ever do a new vid, and then moving it behind the general password screen once it's been announced and out for a bit. But now? Not so much. The past couple years have been pretty decent in terms of not having my fic ripped off or plagiarized or put into archives without my permission, and it seemed like the vid thing was settling down, but now I'm just too grumpy to relax it.

What is it with people who diss you or lecture you or criticize your personal standards and then demand something from you? I can't count how many people have made veiled snide remarks about the passwording thing if they've recc'd a vid, or the people who've written to me to demand more fic while complaining about how I don't write fast enough or put disclaimers and warnings and whatever, or the people who've bitched me out for everything from using a black background on my main page (not the text pages, I might add) to not making my vids available in the file format they prefer to use and why won't I expand it for them? (I don't know, I always want to say, why don't you pay me the extra couple hundred bucks I'd need for more space?) Why does every kiss have to have a slap along with it? Why do people have to give backhanded compliments, like that distances you from liking something (this song sucks and it's about charcters I hate, but the vid is pretty good!)?

See? Still stewing... I'm in a Monday mood.

I will never vid again

I got home late last night and did a few things and then got online and DLed mail and such, and checked out my computer, because black_bird_777 put my new 512MB memory chip into the little iMac this weekend and now I have like 767MB or something (zoom!) and I figured I'd test it out and see if Final Cut would open. Which it did, and I took one look at it and closed it immediately.

I will never make a vid with this program. At the Apple store it just looked skeery, but they had some actual video in there and so you could see stuff being applied. In my computer it is a big blank screen with another blank screen and teeeeeny little command names and features that I can barely squiz out, and worse, names that make no sense in English. They sounded like Japanglish -- "the updown reversal dissolve" and unintelligible things like that. I feel like if I work on it I will be in a spy movie with bad code dialog: "The purple ripple overlays the crossfaded in-out point." "Ah yes, I select the degaussed transgendered effect. DuPont Circle station at 9." I mean, I know I balk at the ridiculous words computer "we couldn't be bothered to look up the real words used for 100 years in film history" programmers use to describe perfectly serviceable words like superimposition (I couldn't even find anything that vaguely resembled a Japanglish word for superimpose; I have no idea if it even exists) or dissolve, but I had no idea what half the terms they were using in that effects panel meant. I am doomed. (insert Charlie Brown voice here)

No way can I make a vid in time for Escapade and figure out this you can fly your own 747 control panel program. It's back to iMovie for that, for me. If I can even figure out what to make. My Miami Vice vid plan is scotched; so now I'm torn between Mag 7 and Keen Eddie, but I did Keen Eddie last year, and I can't figure out what to do. In iMovie, of course.