Old Tricks for New Dogs

Oh the things we learn we never dreamed we would ever need to know. After far too long, I've finally gotten around to working on Rosentendo & Guildenwii (working title), a machinima piece based on a tennis theme.

Actually I have been working on it for a while. I've bought 2 different tennis games over Steam, and figured out how to play them (as previously mentioned not something I would do otherwise).

Today, however, I knuckled down to figure out what shots I needed and set to work with FRAPS. Before long I had enough clips to get started. I fired up Adobe Premiere Pro, imported the files, and thought I was cooking. That was until I discovered that the audio on 3 of the 7 files disappeared after 33 frames. Drag.

Well, obviously, google to the rescue. Seriously, google is starting to scare me, the way it knows all that is known. But i digress. The point is that one quickly learns that A, fraps doesn't have its own forum, and B, the fraps codec isn't premiere friendly.

clearly, a conversion is in order, and as Im on a budget, a free tool was a priority. VirtualDub is well know to the machinima community to so that was my first choice, and it did work. But the file sizes weren't so good and I didn't trust the ancient codecs that appeared on its default list of choices.

back to google, and presto! HuffYuv pops up double-quick. Download, install, and I'm good to go seconds later, right? SORRY!

Didn't work. But I've been learning. Could VISTA be the culprit? Google says, 'Youbetcha!'. But Google also says, 'wise man reads forum post, learns complicated method for installing codec!' And sure enough, after carefully following instructions, Premiere Pro is playing my clips, with Audio. But who knew I'd be learning how to authorize Administrator level installs by typing 'cmd' in the run-box and pressing Ctrl-Shift-Enter? Or even that I'm teaching myself Premiere, even though I already use Avid and Final Cut Pro on a regular basis? Complete the trifecta, I guess.

Stay tuned, y'all for upcoming video.

Hairpin Learning Curve

Getting a PC has really jump-started my machinimaking. It would be nice to be able to use my Mac for all my needs but that's just not the case.

For example, I've been working on a piece with tennis as the central metaphor. While I admit I didn't do an exhaustive search, I wasn't able to find a suitable tennis platform on the mac. Ideally I would have liked to use TopSpin3, but that is still console-only. Buying a console is definitely not in my budget. TopSpin2, however, is cheap on Steam. Plus buying it though Steam saved me a trip to GameStop.

Now I've actually got to learn how to play the game, and curse the luck, play it well. Oh, and I've got to start combing game boards to see if there are any hacks for removing the HUD and other onscreen graphics. In short, I need to know all there is to know about T0pSpin2 in a hurry. And here's the rub. I'm not particularly interested in the game - for its own sake at least. Shazzbat!