The best Hong Kong action French period romantic monster movie evah!

[gwyn]

Even though I'm very disgusted with the whole vid sharing thing right now, I've posted a new vid. Yes, that's a big L painted on my forehead.

Fraternité
Fandom: Brotherhood of the Wolf
Song: Blue Lily Red Lotus
Artist: Susheela Raman
File: QT Divx avi, 23.6MB
I recommend VLC media player (there's a link at my site) as always -- makes this look much better.

I can't say that anyone who hasn't seen the movie will be able to get much out of this, but then, I never know. I thought people who hadn't seen Deadwood wouldn't be able to parse Come to Jesus, but apparently I was wrong. So.


In the "because I am stupid" department. Last night when I was making the web encoded version of this, I realized that I'm about thisfar from committing seppuku over this encoding thing. Everyone else I see around me gets these flawless encodes that have no pixelization to speak of, and yet I cannot seem to achieve that. I suppose I should just be happy that I have a way to get a large window file up at a reasonable DL size, but I want these flawless encodes, too. The instructions at astolat's LJ that everyone mentions are for Windows, and I'm a Macolyte. I keep fiddling with things, trying programs, to no avail. These Divx avis are the only thing I know how to make, but they pixelate in strange places for no discernible reason. I don't have a lot of the fancyass programs many vidders do, either. I've literally begged people for their processes to get a better encode, but... they never respond. I find this really discouraging. For the most part this file looks good, I think, but.. it could be a lot better.

Anyway. The one thing I did manage to figure out last night after months of frustration was that somewhere along the line, in DLing all these encoding programs, my settings for the QT player had been pretty much bunged, and that was why they were reading my avi files so poorly. Here I roll my eyes at the people who email me and whine about how their computer won't let them watch my vids (I always say, if you're on a Windows computer, please go into your WMP defaults and uncheck "make WMP your default player" and like magic, it works!), and here I didn't even think to go back and check if my default settings had been bunged up. Yup. So I reset them, looking for the one that mentions avis, and sure enough, it plays the files less herky jerky than it has been recently. You know that thing about how if you give a bunch of monkeys typewriters? Yeah.

So, the dumbass finally at least figured that out. The good news is that I can now check the encodes in QT without wanting to cry, so I can make sure everything's copacetic in both QT and VLC. The bad news is, they still look like shit in the regular QT player -- seems utterly unable to handle a slow pan and certain other types of shots, and it's way, way mushy. But at least the superfast cuts in this don't disappear completely now in the QT player.

But. On with the void!

Comments

is reduced to surfer-talk

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

Dude!

So awesome.
Seriously.

I had forgotten just how very strange that movie was...
This whole vid was just gorgeous (no pixelization, slowing, or jerking problems for me, playing with Realplayer v.10 on WinXP, if you're at all interested in the technicals), and I adored the music. Atmospheric, dynamic, and the very last image of the ash on the wind was a perfect visual complement to the sound.
Cool.

I'm gonna have to watch the movie again, aren't I?

Re: is reduced to surfer-talk

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Dude! Thanks! I'm glad it looked okay (it always amazes me how people who know what they're doing can configure players to accept files that the rest of the great unwashed don't know how to do). For the most part, I think it looks okay, but the part where the wolf guys toss Mani's body and the part where Fronsac discovers it are really pixelly and mushy to me. I guess that's not too much to complain about, but my Band of Brothers vid, that's upcoming, has more mushy spots that I can't get rid of no matter what.

It really is the craziest movie, but what I love about it is that it also has some great underlying real drama in it, and that it never makes the characters too comically outrageous. You do really care for them, and for what they are doing, and especially for Fronsac and how he wants to stop the killings and the group who's perpetrating them, and avenge Mani's death. I do so love a bit of reVENge.

Re: is reduced to surfer-talk

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

Ok, I've watched it a few more times, specifically for the parts you mention as looking pixellated and mushy. And...yeah...it's there a little, but not to an extent that I thought was particularly noticeable or distracting as a viewer (I'm well aware of how the most minuscule thing can be huge if you're the creator; even tho' I love it to pieces, I still get frustrated over the mistakes in the window I made for my parents' bathroom) and only significantly visible when I maximized it to full-screen. Not to downplay that annoyance, but, for me, I'd far rather see a really well-done vid, where it's obvious a lot of thought has gone in to the music choice, the editing is tops, there's story or atmosphere to spare, with source smudginess than something with pristine, flawless source that's pedestrian, lacking even a basic understanding of editing principles, with a musical choice that makes me want to cry/sledgehammer someone. (God, especially the music choices! I'll spare you the rant on that one.)

One of the things that I love about the movie is that it is so very, well, French. That combination of passionate sincerity with a sort of faintly amused world-weariness is unique, particularly in an action-ish movie.