One Monitor or Two?

I already blogged this post. But... then it ended up in my drafts folder. I... don't understand things.
It may not look terribly big in this picture, but this new monitor is big. And bright (I turned down the brightness actually).

I'm starting to get all non-two-monitors over this thing.

This monitor was only 180 bucks. Back in the day I was getting a good price with Dell on a 24" monitor for $600. Remember those times? Wow. This monitor is bright enough I might even recommend it for my dad.

Ato and the Fourth Estate

Our man Ato Essandoh gets a write up in the LA Times. Uh, don't read if you don't want any spoilers about Django Unchained.

Here's Ato getting fake guts strapped onto him by The Queen of Mars and Tony Kenner.

Portrait of the Artist as a Dragon Renderer

6 Channels

There's a lot of iron in this box. I think my band(s) would prefer if I started playing a Leslie because it would weigh less.

I have six good channels of analog going on here. That's a pair of Lindell peamps above two pair of Neve 1272 preamps.
The A/D conversion is done with the M-Audio 2626 which then feeds the red thing -- a Focusrite Scarlett -- via TOSlink.
You might ask yourself "Why not eliminate either the M-Audio or the Focusrite?" Yeah. About that.
The Scarlett is USB so I can use my laptop. But the analog inputs on the Scarlett are very unhappy with the relatively high levels from the preamps and I can't turn the preamps down enough to work with it without getting into that very squirrely last 1/8 of a turn on the preamps pots. And the M-Audio, which can better handle the preamps levels, is only Firewire (so I can't use my laptop with it.) This means I have to feed the Scarlett with the M-Audio.
Note that the M-Audio's preamps aren't bad. They aren't as cool as the Neve preamps. But they're better than the Scarlett's. I'd come to a determination that I kinda liked the M-Audio's A/D better than the Scarlett's but not by much and so I'd be perfectly happy with the Scarlett's A/D if only the level thing weren't an issue.
Now. Three albums. One of which is an opera.
N.B. That thing on the top left is the power supply for an AKG C12A. I don't really have an awesome place to put it.

Pass the Test

I feel better now that I've given up on trying to test things and will just go with the M-Audio converter at 48kHz and recording at 16-bit. I'd use the Scarlett but I can't get the input levels under control with that thing.
I wouldn't have had to go through all that rigamarole if I'd only watched this video first.

Yes, it's almost an hour. But as a quick course in audio gear theory and testing it's well worth it. Ethan Winer does a much better job of explaining why I was frustrated trying to test things than I did.

Stacking tracks using higher-end preamps and reverbs seems to me to be better and easier to mix. Mr. Winer explains that the distortion on the same preamp on different instruments is a different kind of distortion. Which explains why it can be nice to record a whole record with the same preamps.

Now and Then

Typical for the New York Times the headline of this article isn't really demonstrated by the article itself. Royalties Slow to a Trickle. The key word here is "slow". As in, it's worse now than it was in some time before now.

“In certain types of music, like classical or jazz, we are condemning them to poverty if this is going to be the only way people consume music,” Ms. Keating said. 

Uh. Classical or jazz music... and not living in poverty? When has that ever been true? For four years between '59 and '63 maybe? For jazz artists touring Europe in the 1980's? I don't know.

This is odd thing for me to be cranky about because in this case because we have some actual data about royalties for streaming.
What do I mean then about "slow" or actual data? I mean we know what's happening now. But we don't really know what was going on then. What we don't have is context. How much were similar artists making before Spotify? It may be that information is simply not available in spreadsheet form because it was never delivered in spreadsheet form. 

It may be that artists were having an even worse time before. And now with Spotify there's at least something. Nobody knows. And as far as I can tell there's no way to find out.

Unloading some tabs again

The KWA KRISS Vector is an airsoft gun which runs on "green gas" and has a bit kick to it. The bolt ratchets back. Not a heavy amount of blowback like you'd expect with a real AR15 variant but a bit that might be enough to make it look good on camera.
Unfortunately it doesn't actually exist as of yet. They're still on "preorder". So uh, yeah.
+++++
Here's a post on Microsoft's hiring practices. From everything I've read about it, Microsoft is much much better at hiring than other people (especially Silicon Valley people) are.
+++++

Too Many Open Tabs

The Goblin Solo micro launcher.

Or the sexy Goblin Deuce kit.

They're both dual use airsoft and paintball markers with only one shot in 'em. Very sci-fi to me.
If you can read the Wall Street Journal then you can read this article about a local video store. They didn't have Feast III. Dude says to me "I know someone who was in it." I was all like "You know somebody in it and you don't carry it? Dude."
He was all like "I know."

Six Easy Days

I have no idea why exactly I'm doing this. But I'm on page 54 of a rewrite of "No Easy Day" making it into a sci-fi thriller about the Mobile Infantry.

Things that No Easy Day have in common with Starship Troopers include a complete lack of critical distance on the part of the authors. The absolutism in Starship Troopers is so enormous that you might start to question the reliability of the narrator. (The idiocy of the Fascism in Starship Troopers is, in fact, impossible to not parody when set to film.)
In No Easy Day they do things which the author doesn't even momentarily think about the ramifications of. Like when they steal some women's underwear from a house they're searching in Afghanistan. The SEALs think it's funny for them to parade around wearing some Afghani woman's bra. And it never occurs to "Mark Owen" that maybe some of the people who might be swayed one way or the other in Afghanistan might be swayed away from American policy because of that behavior. Or he never wondered what it would be like if soldiers came to his house in Alaska and did that with his sisters' bras. Or... well anything.
So anyway I decided to rewrite it. At first I was like "I'm going to do a word find and replace and turn 'helicopters' into 'landing boats' and turn AK 47's into 'SAG pulse rifles' and be done with it."
But of course that's not the way its going. I've gone and made the story much darker. And it's much more influenced by Dispatches. And it's not altogether pro-Mobile Infantry, but the narrator is. That narrator being very, very unreliable.
I'm also having most of the story take place in the Belt of Orion.
And the direction it's taking is much more grimdark than either Starship Troopers or No Easy Day.
Is it like I have nothing better to do with my time than write a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies version of No Easy Day? Not at all. I have to render dragons. Okay, so rendering dragons is its own reward. Or at least I need something to do while rendering dragons. But I could be prepping or next movie. And yeah, I am doing that. But just let me finish this dang book.

Dragon Renderer

My grandpappy was a dragon renderer. My daddy was a dragon renderer. Ah got my brothers, they're all dragon renderers. My momma used to render dragons 'till she got too sick to work in the dragon rendering mines. I got two cousins who are dragon renderers up in Altoona. I guess I got dragon renderin' in my blood.

C'mon. These LED lights are cool. Literally and figuratively. Yeah, seven-thousand bucks gets you the equivalent of a 2500-watt HMI. I really dislike HMI's. I mean I dislike them personally. They say mean stuff about my mom. I've been in more than one bar fight with an HMI. Let me tell you, those ballasts are heavy.

John Scalzi on the 1000 True Fans concept.

If I'd had this multiple-math-thing calculator in the 2nd grade I would have been much happier. 

1102: Callista the dragon watches Amelia (Julia-Rae Maldonado) eat a Choco Nom-Nom.

Nathan Vegdahl, who animated the above dragon, uses Dreamhost for web storage and Linode for applications.

If, in the next six weeks, you ask me what I'm doing, the answer will be the same.
"Rendering dragons".

Sometimes I blog for my parents

And this is one of those times.
Remember: the national Do Not Call Registry is your friend. Register your telephone numbers. Only use the ".gov" domain for doing stuff like that. For instance, if you're my parents, click on the link above and follow the instructions. You can add your home and cell phone numbers all at once.
Note that you will get a separate email for each phone number you enter, asking that you confirm. Make sure you click on the link in each email confirmation (and make sure the emails don't end up in your spam folder like they did with me.)

Picture Edit Rules

I'm coming up with some picture editing rules. These are just things I've noticed 'round these parts which we have to be careful about. I've noticed these issues, incidentally, in both Final Cut Pro and Premiere, and with quite a few different picture editors. So it's not like any of these are anybody's fault or anything, just that they're things to look out for.

Look out for:

• One frame of black between shots. 

The snapping tool is your friend, friend. You'd be surprised in QC how freaking often it is that we find a single black frame between two shots. And if we miss one of those you just know a distributor will kick the movie back to us to get fixed. Be careful out there.

• Speed changes in the timeline. 

This is about the number one thing which ticks off our distributor(s). If a piece of footage really needs to be at a different speed, it has to be brought into AfterEffects and the speed changed there with proper interleaving of frames and suchlike.

• Continuing the same shot as a new segment.

I know, you match-framed the shot and you just want to add some more time to it. But instead of it being one segment, this shot is now divided into two segments. Don't do this. There are a couple reasons not to do it: one is that you've just made two things to color-correct rather than one. The other is that now there's one more thing to get bonked out of sync. Sure, it barely ever happens -- probably just twice in a feature. But that's enough to fail QC.
But, you think, what if I'm changing the speed in one of these segments? See the rule above, brother, see the rule above.

• Embedding in embedded sequences.

I don't know why, but FCP and Premiere start to get very cranky when you've embedded in embedded sequences. Also, it makes it vastly harder to go back and see what the footage involved was originally named. Especially for the post-production-sound department this can be a hassle. But more than that I've found that both Premiere and FCP become very obtuse about correctly rendering out sequences-within-sequences. It'll look at first like it rendered out properly. But your distributors will find that the program did some unholy thing when it rendered out your footage with too many layers of embedding.
Try to just use the actual original synced footage when you're putting scenes together into acts on a sequence in the timeline. My angina will thank you if you do.

C'est La La

Today I struggle with knowing if 24-bit or 16-bit is really better for recordings (not mixing) of rock bands.
In similar vein I wish to know if I should care about 96kHz.

In both cases I just want the cheaper one to be better. I'm just not sure if they are.

Meh. I'm pretty sure.

Also, I've learned that I do not care much about the difference between a film dissolve and a cross dissolve. Yes, there's a difference. I'm just not sure I care about it that much.
Did I get much actually done today? Not as much as I'd have liked. But I guess that's every day. We have this beautiful Steve Niles script which needs to be boarded out. Or at least scheduled.
At the same time I have to finish laying out all the visual effects we need in the dragon picture.
I'm about halfway through slugging and delivering plates for the animator. Can I tell you that John Dillon has been doing a simply bangup job on the post-production here?
Holy cats Seed&Spark seems to be poorly thought out. Although, I don't have a lot of positive things to say about the art-house indy film part of the industry. So maybe for movies made by people who don't know how to make movies, making movies that will never be distributed, it's a perfectly fine idea. But selecting G&E gear from a drop-down list is an absurd activity. I tried Justcloud but it seemed a bit... scammy. Their 15GB free account is limited... to 5MB. Right? I de-installed it. I use SugarSync (free) on all my computers, iDrive (for which I pay -- on my Mac), and Backblaze (for which I pay -- on my PC).

Simple Sample Signs

Remember back when I was pontificating on the differences in sample rates and bit depths?

I've since given up. 48kHz and 16-bit is good enough for me. At least with Apogee converters they are. I've played The Great Gig in the Sky out of my iPod so many times now just to invert the polarity on different recordings and find I just don't care.
Actually, looking at the waveforms is interesting. Other than that, though, I just... don't care. My first reaction to hearing the 16-bit 48k recording was "Ooh, I like that one the best" before I realized which recording I was listening to.
I believe I'd already abandoned 24-bit as a recording bit depth when one has any sort of control over the input levels (recording classical music live and dialog for movies are not those times, so I'll still do those at 24-bit).
But I was still on the 96kHz Kool-Aid religion. I now forsake those high-sampling-rate gods. It's not that I believe those gods do not exist. I just do not believe they hold sway over the lands upon which I now live.
Excuse me while I set all my converters to 48kHz now. Oh look, now I can put signals over Lightpipe...