Darkness, darkness

[gwyn]

One of many reasons I hate online vids is that they're so small, the files end up being darker than they already are by virtue of compression. For a show like Angel the series, that's deadly. Every time I vid in this show I'm more and more frustrated by how hard it is to get a clear sense of the visual, to allow the audience to make sense of what's happening. If you're using a lot of action scenes, it's even more difficult. Buffy, Firefly, and Angel all tend toward the dark, but at least Buffy used a fair amount of those SoCal daylight scenes to leaven the mood. There are things I can do in Final Cut that I couldn't in iMovie to lighten things, but they make the vid look like crap -- grainy, washed out when there is light, etc. I'm experimenting with some different methods of compressing the newer vids, but so far my luck has been abysmal and they look ten times worse than if I just compressed them into teeny files that get even darker. And of course it's stupid, and it's displacement, but my frustration at not being able to understand codecs and compression is driving me to tears -- it's like I've got all my sanity eggs in this vidding basket and the fact that it's not working right leaves me feeling hoplessly upset and confused. Yes, I know, I need therapy. (How do you other Angel vidders deal with this? Just ignore it, because too damn bad, or do you spend a lot of time trying to "fix" it visually?)

Making the vids feels therapeutic, though. And I've been reminded as I work on one right now that as much Spike or Wes or Angel or Buffy or Dana or Willow or... love as I have, as much love for myriad other characters on these two shows, there was one pairing I never really pursued much about, but that I think is the hottest pairing they ever had on the show -- Wes and Faith. It's funny, because I loathed Faith on Buffy, and hated Wesley in his doofus incarnation, too. When he got tortured by her in first season Angel, though, things really started to change, and when they broke her out of prison in Salvage, I was all "wow, these two are smokin'." That is the part I'm most looking forward to writing in Measure of a Man, oddly, but it's a long time till I get there, and I'm making such impossibly slow progress. Once I'm done with that story, though, I may have to think about writing a Faith and Wes as rogue demon hunters piece. Though by the time I do that, I'm pretty sure I will be about 80 and there will be no one left in the fandom.

My progress on Measure updates is very slow, as I mentioned, and I apologize again. For some reason I find it harder to write Buffy stuff than Fast and the Furious stuff, though it makes no sense, really. Not that being able to write either means much -- I think everyone gave up on the F&F WIP a long time ago, and I'm sure people have given up on the Buffy WIP. I can see it all in my mind, everything's done and blocked and scored and edited, but getting it down on paper seems so damn hard. I can't seem to translate the movie in my mind to "paper" no matter how hard I try.

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

In my Angel vid, I went ahead and screwed around with the brightness and contrast to bring it up (much as I tend to do with all the icons that I make), but that was with the Adobe Pro trial, so I don't know how many other programs carry that option.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

Something I've been playing with for brightening clips (because brightness alone tends to wash it out) is using the gamma filter. Not too much, but a little tends to make the white pop out a bit more, giving an overall brighter effect. And if I do use the brightness filter, I always up the contrast, too.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Do you blanket apply that to the whole vid, or do you go to specific clips that are especially bad? There are a couple clips that are just really, really bad, but some of the dark ones also have some particularly cool light effect in a corner or glowy ball or something that I don't really want to lose... that's the hard part.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

I tend to go through and apply it to the clips that I feel need it, and at different levels for each one depending on how dark it is.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I use the gamma filter as well. I haven't vidded Angel, but I brighten all my vids for online distribution, and I'd say both X-Files and Farscape give AtS a run for its money, darkness-wise.

If I'm feeling lazy, I'll apply the gamma filter as a blanket to the whole vid. I usually keep it at about .75 or .8 -- just enough to pick out the detail.

If I'm energetic, I'll brighten the clips individually using the 3-Way Color Corrector filter. I find I get excellent results this way, with very minute adjustments, but it can be time-consuming. If you ever want coaching with this filter, let me know and I'll try to help.

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

Apple is terrible with codecs. I've been beating my head against the wall since forever with that one.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The hardest part is that I just don't understand what I'm doing, and I keep trying things that other people whose work I admire are using, or that are recommended to me, but I can't seem to achieve anything like the same results. In some cases my results are truly terrible, where theirs look spectacular. I just... Idon't get it. So I stick with MPEG 4 becuase that's offered the best quality, but it's a little larger, and if I try to get the size up then the file size is so large a lot of people can't DL it. I should just give up and accept everything looking like shit, but it's hard.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of mp4. It's my preferred format. I've been using DivX ever since I learned that it's actually based on the mp4 format, and it looks every bit as good. It requires you to download a codec, but it's super-easy to use.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I had wanted to do what sdwolfpup did with her recent BSG vid, and put some of the newer ones up in a larger size (640x480), but she got hers looking gorgeous at that size and around 30MB, and I can't get a much shorter vid song down to anything less than 54 at that size, and it looks terrible! So i think I am just doomed. It doesn't help that the words the programs use are gibberish to me, no matter how much I try to read up about them.

i tried to DL that Divx for Mac thing when I first got DSL, but it simply would not install. Every time I opened it, it asked me to install, and then I did, and then it would make me install again the next time I tried. SO I just gave up. This 3ivx that sdwolfpup recommended seems like a nice program, but I can't get the same results that she's achieved... I'm just honestly so down about this that I feel like giving up. It's either small file size and crappy small dark picture, or large lovely picture and giganimous files that no one will want to DL (a lot of my fandoms have quite a few viewers who are still on dialup).

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

The thing about installing DivX is that it's invisible -- you don't see an icon in your applications folder or anything. It becomes a Quicktime plug-in, so you only see it when you're using Quicktime Pro or Final Cut and you select Export --> DivX AVI. It took me a while to figure out, too. It sounds to me like you may have successfully installed it on the first try, but since it doesn't give you any obvious feedback, you wouldn't have known that. Argh, I wish I was there with you and your computer right now -- I could show you!

I still haven't made the jump to 640x480 frame size, although that might be coming in the future. So I can't advise you about that. But I get good-looking mp4s and Divx AVIs at about 25 MB, give or take, and that's enough for me.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

Laura, I downloaded the DivX codec and now have the Export to DivX AVI option, except when I use it all I get is a "DivX Log" that's essentially a .txt file. There's never an actual video file outputted. I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong, because the settings all look right. The only thing is that I can't actually adjust any of the settings, I can just change the "Home Theater" "Web" etc dropdown box selections on the first screen. Any thoughts?

And Gwyn, remind me to check next time I turn on the Mac and tell you what my settings are for 3ivX. There's a really specific way I'm exporting it that I picked up somewhere that I can't remember now.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I've had this happen once, and it was because I tried to export unrendered video as DivX. What file format are you starting out with? Are you sure it's a MOV?

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

I'm actually trying to use the Export to DivX AVI directly from FCP. When I've done it in Quicktime, it's from the m2v file. So you actually export to MOV and then export to the AVI from there?

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I've never successfully exported a DivX file from FCP. I always use Quicktime Pro to make my DivX files.

Actually, what I've done most recently is:

1) Export the full-size Quicktime file from FCP
2) Open that file in Quicktime Pro and export it as an MPEG-4 (29.97 FPS, best possible quality, usually around 900kbps)
3) Open the resulting MP4 in Quicktime Pro and export that as a DivX AVI (Home Theater setting, use the defaults)

It's not as onerous as it sounds -- just click and go get a cup of tea or something. I'm getting excellent results so far.

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

Well, that seems to blow goats. I wish you luck in getting your projects to obey.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I usually go into the levels effect and up the white (makes the whites - whiter, the blacks a bit blacker). This keeps the scene from looking washed out, but yeah - Darkness on Angel is a very difficult thing to work with.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Do you do that for the entire vid when you're finished, or do you pick specific clips to do that to? I should probably just give up, but I want this to look cool, as it's more visually interesting than a lot of my vids, I think... it's just tough.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Clip by clip - otherwise you can overwhelm the (few) already bright clips.

::sympathizes::

[ruddigore.livejournal.com]

I'm sure people have given up on the Buffy WIP

Not at all. I pounce on any little bit like a rabid pouncy thing. :)

[sweet-ali.livejournal.com]

Well, for the record, *I* haven't given up on the Buffy WIP, if that's any consolation :)

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

give me a call and I can chat you through how to use DivX to make a smallish/good looking avi file.

On the darkness, I use gamma/brightness contrast and if only a few clips are dark apply it to those for internet release. if many clips dark, I do a blanket.

check out this:

http://www.lafcpug.org/gamma_mac_pc_print.html