Vid: Sha're's Elegy

[smg01]

Yes. Again with the vidding:

Sha're's Elegy (This is the YouTube link. High Quality viewing may give better results.)

Downloadable here. AVI file. (Though again the file wound up being rather larger than I expected.) Also as an mp4 which will run in Quicktime here

Comments

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely lovely, Suzannemarie. I teared up. You really captured the emotion and loss. Very nice, indeed. I watched it embedded so I could see it right away, now I'm going to download it, so I have it for good.

Thanks!

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Let me know if the download works for you. I've had trouble with them on my work PC and I'm not sure if it's because of my computer or because of the format I'm using.

Re: Thanks!

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Nope-It worked!

Re: Thanks!

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Just to double check--do get both video and audio when you try to play it? The audio plays okay for me in WMP, but the video portion is MIA.

(Thanks for being my QC check.)

Re: Thanks!

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

I'm installing Windows Media player now. I'll get back to you on that. I can say that it works perfectly with MPCStar...

Re: Thanks!

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Okay, there is some kind of issue.
It works great in MPCStar and Fantasy DVD Player, but in Windows Media Player (version 11), it is black and white vith some orangey artifacts.
I tried downloading it a second time, and it was the same.
I notice it's an AVI file. I haven't managed to render as AVI (in sony vegas without ending up with audio only. You'll have to tell me how you do that!
Try rendering again as WMV. The quality won't be quite as good, but it will let me if that works. Thing is, this might very well be a codecs issue on my end, although this is a new install of media player, so I don't know... You can always post both versions with a note that if the file doesn't work properly in Media Player, to try the WMV. You should definately keep the AVI up, though. The quality is excellent with other players. Get someone else to try playing it with Media Player, too, so we can tell if this is a problem on my end...

Re: Thanks!

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That's well beyond the call of duty!

I was hoping we just had an ancient version of WMP at work. I'm not sure if this is a mac/pc disconnect or if I can tweak something when I encode. I'll play around with some different versions, including WMV and see what happens.

Thanks again!

Re: Thanks!

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

My pleasure! It really is a wonderful video. Let me know when you have another version for me to test.

Re: Thanks!

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

I just realized I didn't answer you're question.

I use MPEG Streamclip (http://www.squared5.com/) for rendering. I've found it to be pretty straightforward and quite user friendly. I use it both for editing down clips from ripped dvds and for converting to other formats.

(When I started going with avi, I did have to download an add-on for my computer. But I think that was just so I could play the avi files.)

Re: Thanks!

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

So how do you get the vid out of your editor? Do you render in a different format and then convert to AVI? Are you using Sony Vegas, by the way?
Oh wait, I reread your post-you can edit in this converter? interesting!
I'm having problems ripping my DVD's, but your aspect ratio looks dandy! I'll give this a try. Hmmm... I wonder if I can import vegas .veg files into this... I suspect I'm still going to have to figure out what I'm doing wrong in my editing software...

Re: Thanks!

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

When I pull/select my clips, I have MPEG Streamclip save them as quicktime files. I then use those to create my vid in iMovie. (Mac also has a product called Final Cut Express that I hear is the bees knees. But I can't possibly justify the expense. iMovie works really well for a novice like me.) Then, once I have my final product I save it as a quicktime (.mov) file. Which is generally ginormous. From there, I use MPEG Streamclip to make the conversion to either mp4 or avi files. It will convert to other formats too, but those two seem to create the smallest files while still maintaining integrity.

Re: Thanks!

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Good information to have!

Re: Thanks!

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Oh wait, I reread your post-you can edit in this converter? interesting!
I'm having problems ripping my DVD's, but your aspect ratio looks dandy!

Yeah, it's pretty nifty. You can use your arrow keys to select to pretty much the micro-second where you want your clip to begin and end. Then when you export, you can select your aspect ratio--for SG-1 you'll want the 16:9, but it also has 4:3 as well as a few other size options. And you can adjust the brightness/darkness of the clip as part of the export (which is really helpful when I remember to do that). There are some other choices too that I haven't really explored much.

What you've got seems to be working really well for you. But it might be fun to play around with Streamclip. I think it does need Quicktime to run as well, which I'm not sure is shareware, so you'd have to think about whether you really want to invest money into another rendering source. (If memory serves, the Quicktime that I needed was under $30.00.)

Re: Thanks!

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Well, it seems like this will definately help me with my ripping problem. My AVI problem with Vegas is probably just a missing codecs. I had to add one to get AVI's to play. It's likely that I need something else to make them render. I better get on that...