Archive for video

Bound Cheerleaders

August 6, 2009 at 14:26 · Filed under video ·Tagged ,

Time for a post about movies again! :-) When I played one online game I talked a lot with a clever girl that taught me a lot about the game. And we discussed the life too and so we got to the fact that she liked girls. Not that it is important but it made sense that she recommended me two movies – Bound and But I’m a Cheerleader. Both are about lesbian girls and while in Bound it’s not really the most important part of the plot in Cheerleader movie it’s all about it. I saw Bound some time ago and I watched the latter just the other night. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten to this post if I hadn’t cried at the very end of it. The fact itself amused me – I’m not one of those hard men who never cry, I cried lately even hearing one beautiful song (and not even for the first time). I cry at the end of the movie here and there, Hollywood is good at it after all, and there are topics I simply can’t resist. Mostly naive, romantics, but it’s not that often. Kate and Leopold for instance didn’t drive me to tears although I like it and the happy end was definitely nice. I can’t explain when and why it happens, it simply happens sometimes.

Let’s discuss Bound first – no crying part here. ;-) You can read the plot on IMDB, so I’ll not focus on it. There are two girls that happened to be neighbors. They are quite different and their common ground is obviously their mutual attraction and later their plan to gull a mafioso – partner of one of them. There is a cool erotic scene with two girls that doesn’t involve any stupid covers up to their necks. But otherwise it’s semi-thrilling story that reminded me The Sting with the idea – but you may find it different entirely. Doesn’t really matter. What’s interesting about the movie is that it’s made by Wachovski brothers – three years before their Matrix. I’d say you can see it on the visual style too – but it’s easy to see what you want when you already know who made it. Plus I’m rather unaware of the artistic style unless it’s really striking. The atmosphere of the movie sucks me in if the movie is OK or better but I don’t notice there is a different filter on the camera for instance. ;-) To wrap it up – Bound is cool movie and I recommend it to general audience, it has fine plot with a scam that doesn’t go exactly as planned but you can expect happy end. Nothing about meaning of life though. Who wants to watch the philosophical and difficult stuff all the time after all?

But I’m a Cheerleader is different kind of movie. It’s a bit bizarre and surrealistic – mainly on the artistic style that is intentionally full of synthetic colours and scene sometime looks more like for a fairytale. Edward Scissorhands came to my mind. It definitely wasn’t so pink and blue though. :-) So the cheerleader girl is suspected to be a lesbian by her boy, friends and parents and sent to a homosexual deprogramming camp called “True Directions”. The whole story is half-half funny and romantic – although the topic is quite a serious one. I like the construction of those ex-ex-gays and the idea of the whole lying game in order to get out of the camp – but after graduation. Mostly for the sake of their parents, but sometimes even themselves were convinced they have to change. Again – our main hero, cheerleader, is attracted to other girl that is completely different, attraction is mutual and there is happy end, although there is no scam this time. :-) What made me cry was the final kinda desperate attempt of our cheerleader to convince the girl of her choice – and of course the result too. But I’m a Cheerleader is movie I find hard to generally recommend because it’s so over-played, over-coloured and exaggerated – probably for the idea of “healing gays”. But if you are open minded give it a try. It’s not even long after all.

“5-6-7-8 God is good, God is straight!”

So that’s me crying for two lesbians in the movie. Doesn’t really matter that I’m straight like the aforementioned God in the song the Cheerleader has to write in order to fight her direction. The story is about two people who fight the odds, it’s naive – and man, if something is naive, I simply love it. Not naive as stupid, but naive as nice. And if I hadn’t met one nice girl I probably wouldn’t have seen these movies. Whatever direction she had. :-) Maaan… I didn’t wanna by philosophical by no means.

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Beginner’s misfortune with home video

March 25, 2009 at 23:57 · Filed under real-life, software, video, virtual-life ·Tagged , , , , ,

After first two days spent with our new HD camera and Sony Vegas I was ready for therapy. So many codec troubles, so many setups that refused to work… I have a habit to reinstall K-Lite Codec Pack when some other application messes up my settings and Media Player Classic stops to play some files. Generally good habit, but mine has one flaw. While I progressively downloaded new version (4.7) I forgot to place it into my install directory hence I always reinstalled older one (3.x). This was just fine for Media Player delivered with K-Lite, but it was also the root cause why Sony Vegas refused to use some codecs for rendering.

That’s also the reason why I can rewrite my original desperate text. :-) Still – the truth is that working with codecs and video is simply way too complex. And probably also not cheap (or for free for that matter). What I want to do with videos? Nothing big actually:

  • to record myself talking to the camera (done, camera, MTS output file, …)
  • to record something on the computer (done via CamStudio)
  • to put both videos to the one (sequentially) and add some text… result should be tutorial of some sort.

First I tried Sony Vegas Movie Studio before I found out that output in the HD resolution (720p for instance) is actually not a mere codec setup, but it’s a feature. So you have to go for Platinum edition for ~$90. I moved to this SW (in trial of course – for the start). Vegas looks cool and I put both videos one after the other and played them. While the video from the camera worked just fine, the one from CamStudio did not. I’ve noticed that these videos have incredible 200fps, I tried also other settings with various codecs, but I came to the conclusion that I have to pre-process the video prior I put it into the Vegas. This funny investigation even resulted in my first YouTube tutorial test!

Now I’m luckily behind my first bad days with video processing. Many times I asked myself: “What have I messed up with this time?” Most of these questions were cause by aforementioned unlucky K-Lite mistake on my side. Trouble is that without some experiences all those error messages don’t tell you what you need to know. There is no “man, you have wrong codec version!” error, there is nothing that leads you to the problem cause. When I wanted to render with x264 from Sony Vegas it said “the selected codec does not support the current render settings”. Or it couldn’t open Lame MP3 codec – but it happily offered all these options I couldn’t use. Then you mess up with other things too and when you fix the root problem it might even not manifest properly! :-) Funny world of over-complex video technology with billions of various codecs.

Originally I also tried to find some free solution instead of Sony Vegas (or Adobe, Pinnacle, whatever). I checked a lot of software – SUPER, Any Video Converter, virtualdub(mod), avidemux, muvee, VideoSpin… but I will probably purchase Sony Vegas as my nerves also have some price (let’s say they are priceless for me ;-) ). Good thing is that now I work more with Sony Vegas (or my camera or CamStudio) and spend less time on Google. There is actually a lot of people with similar questions but answers either don’t work or I was just “lucky” and haven’t tried the right ones first.

I feel ready to do some tutorial now, but it will take some time. It will be probably about home music recording with tight budget or something like that. But that’s another story. If you ever suffered through your own pile of problems related to video processing, I guess you understand how I felt during last few days. If not, you’re lucky. If it’s still before you, my fingers are crossed for you. And double check codec versions! :-)

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24 catchy and cheap

February 15, 2009 at 21:10 · Filed under video ·Tagged , ,

“Than why the hell do you watch it?” Right? No… I said catchy and that’s why I watch it. It’s more catchy than Prison Break, although it’s not as good as some older series. I plan to elaborate on this maybe in some future post. Now about 24. It’s action, 24 episodes of action in every season, it has its twists, surprises, it’s simply cool. But not all scripts are good enough. Trouble is that bad plot here means the whole season is ruined.

I’ve watched second season without having a need to extend my previous 24 post. Now – in season 3 – I have the need. I have it since episode 3 or so… because I’m willing to pardon a lot to the first two episodes. I was curious if I’m the only one who thinks this season is different and I’ve found that the general view is with me. But there are many fans who consider third episode to be the best. Strange, but it’s probably about every viewer’s needs and expectations. 24 is not supposed to be sci-fi (or plain fiction for that matter) in our times. It should be thrilling action I can believe in.

But I can’t believe that so many smart people … how to say it nicely… screwed up big time in this season. When CTU wanted to catch Kyle in the mall… disaster. And he managed to run away! I also can’t understand how Michael Amador could get to L.A. without CTU being able to trace him. Maybe I’m naive, but I also can’t believe that when there is a copter in the town attacking offices in a building it can disappear without a trace. I’d think it can actually be traced before it even lands. I’m watching the series in English without subtitles which means I miss some details here and there but that doesn’t make pardon so many situations when the good guys were not able to do something. Ok, maybe there was no satellite cover of Amador because the only possible satellite had just collided with some retired one. Whatever.

Now I know that when the mole is revealed to us from the start – it’s no mole at all. To be fair to the season it started to be pretty interesting in the second quarter when the secret plan of Jack, Toni and Gael is revealed. Finally the Nina is gone (not that I don’t like her face though ;-) ). But still I have the feeling that the plot is bad. Not the threat, not the idea, but all those little elements you have to put together to get the good plot. But there are a lot of dead instead. I’m not talking about virus victims because they are rather anonymous to us. But many people are simply killed just to make 24 look more serious, so it seems.

It’s quite boring to watch people die under not so believable circumstances. Yusuf Auda in season 2, few agents/doctors during Nina’s last strike (guards so sloppy? can’t believe that), it happens all the time. I’m really glad that Nina is dead because the ever-cliché of many movies and series is “we still need him”… just to let him cause even more pain. (Like Joker in The Dark Knight – he should be killed in cold blood sooner than the half of the movie… but what movie would that be, right? :-) )

24 still is good fun to watch. But this season is much, much cheaper than the previous two. Luckily for me (hopefully) seasons 4-6 are reportedly better. And I’m looking forward to them.

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Wanted Equilibrium

January 25, 2009 at 15:37 · Filed under video ·Tagged , , , ,

I’ve just watched Wanted and I watched Equilibrium some time ago (probably twice or thrice maybe). Don’t even ask why I wanna compare these two – I guess you wouldn’t if you’d seen them both. :-) So… Wanted or Equilibrium? The latter in my eyes and by far. Now when I revealed my uber-objective result let me elaborate. Only a little, I don’t wanna push it too long this evening. I’m quite a bad judge of movies to be honest – I generally like something and appreciate the effort.

To make it clear, I gave Wanted 7 and Equilibrium 8 on IMDB – and so I’ve just joined the crowd (7 or 7.8 respectively). I enjoyed both of them. But anyway you look at it Equilibrium is more serious, more deep, it’s about something (freedom? 1984 reminiscence?) and it was first! ;-) There must be some reason why users on IMDB see it similar – especially if we’re talking about “the Equilibrium like scene”. Neither of these films made it into my TOP selection, but I simply liked the Equilibrium more. The conflict inside the main hero’s soul and the whole story was much stronger than the troubles of the wanted guy (yeah, I probably forgot they wanted him dead ;-) ). I’m quite lucky that I’m not that ultra-critical and I can enjoy movies with weaker plot fixed by average (or better) acting and good effects. Good effects are now more and more standard, so I’ll be probably satisfied in the future. While Equilibrium was obviously influenced by the Matrix, Wanted was influenced by the Equilibrium and Matrix and I while bullet-time is now more and more cliche it’s something that makes many scenes more enjoyable. Sometimes even funny (ok, I really didn’t wanna mix Shrek into this article ;-) ).

That said… another nice evening with enjoyable movie is behind me. I don’t give a damn that critics didn’t like Equilibrium, IMDB users obviously did. I don’t give a damn if you think I’m simple man when I enjoyed Wanted. Scenes like “Time to say goodbay”/”I’m sorry” simply were more than satisfying and while I don’t like Angelina dying I liked this movie in overall. It’s not the recommendation – it’s just the fact. For me. ;-)

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24 defiled

October 17, 2008 at 22:40 · Filed under video ·Tagged , , ,

I’ve finished watching 24 season 1 a few days ago and it was quite good. I was really curious about it before I started – how can any 24 hours be so interesting to satisfy TV show? Some people even lost their interest during the show – but rather because it was difficult to wait another week for just another hour. With such a complex plot it’s much better to see the show in just a few days. So did I – with some pauses during the first quarter of the season. I probably watched last 9 episodes in just two days!

So – some people like it, some not. I do like it – yet there were some glitches I was really nervous about. I did not suffer that much as I did with Prison Break but some cliches were really annoying. Some might question the stubbornness of officials that Jack Bauer dealt with – for instance when he was caught for the first time. These really are the moments when your blood boils and you’d like to kill those stupid bastards you’re just dealing with. Anyway, I can accept these situations because that’s just the same bureaucracy we can find anywhere else. Even in private companies. So no points down here.

Things I really don’t like are those I saw so many times in other movies or shows – yet they repeat again and again – like we couldn’t have learned from those movies before. ;-) When David Palmer didn’t want to say to his son why he had backed off… why? I can’t see why this was the best thing to do. It only drove his son to the hasty reaction that only happened to turn out well. With luck. (Also his son’s immediate checking of the recorded tape was amazingly stupid, but not punished. With Luck.)

When Bauers stopped their car on the edge of the cliff I noticed immediately – “Jesus, why she stopped the car like this?” I expected something unnecessarily dramatic. Ok, I know that in a series like this you have to have dramatic moments all the time. Maybe that’s the price – that sometimes they are unnatural. I also can’t understand why Kim decided to go to Rick in spite of his disapproval of such step. But I’m not a girl in puberty.

The biggest disappointment came between 8 and 9 P.M. when Jack Bauer – professional counter-terrorist – put down his gun when threatened “otherwise we kill him” (some other guy). He put it down and they killed the guy anyway. I understand that the show can’t end in its 21st hour with Jack Bauer dead… but it was a tough moment to swallow anyway.

All this said – it’s a good show really! 24 episodes with only a few “aaargh!” moments in such an up-tempo story – I think it’s a good result. I’m rather forgiving viewer and I simply like what people can create and come up with. Maybe it’s funny that those really bad guys appears in the half of the day when those who were bad before (and worked for those “really bad” ones) messed-up with their assignment and were also killed. There are too many bad guys I think – starting with that bad girl in the plane. Bad guys line up is saved by the mole in the CTU that is revealed at the very end of the story. Spoiling it completely: It breaks your heart so much that you even forget to think about why she helped Jack Bauer during the whole day. It doesn’t make sense – that’s why it’s so staggering. Anyway – it gives the whole story some final twist.

So if you don’t mind many dead people I can recommend 24 for an easy – yet breathtaking – watching. That is if you can make it in a few days and not an episode a week. :-)

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