I have news on several items. First off, I JUST received the audio back from Otto for the next Freeman’s Mind episode. I still have to do final processing on everything, but I’m pretty sure I can have it completed and sent to Machinima.com in the next 24 hours. After that it will go up whenever it works out for their scheduling. My apologies this episode took so long. It took me a while, it took Otto a while, then I didn’t get as far ahead on the next episode as I intended.

Second, while I’m guessing some of you may not believe me due to the timing, I’ve come down sick with something in the past day or two that’s gone after my throat. It’s currently painful for me to speak for more than a few seconds, making more voice recording not an option right now. I’ll resume recording on the next FM as soon as my throat is better.

Third, things may not be so great on the code end of things for the Source engine (again). I did get in contact with Valve, and the last email I received from them said that while it would take them a while to release a bug fix of the code officially, they could hook me up with a part of the code that fixes the stuttering of animations during demo playback. Unfortunately that was over a month ago. I’ve been sending them a check-in email each week since then, with no reply. While I suppose I’m the last person to criticize others of being late on emails (considering my current backlog), if someone is emailing me once a week as a reminder about something I already said I would help them with, I would almost certainly respond in a more timely manner. Anyway, I hope the employee I’m in touch with is just busy and will get back to me, but I may have to figure out alternatives in the meantime.

Fourth, I still have plenty of other things to catch up on. Round two of reviewing the sound editing contestants, finalizing the MKV tests, getting more things (like broken links) fixed on the website, and catching up on emails. The next post here will likely be the sound contest winners or else FM #39.

Well I’ve reviewed all the entries for the sound contest and I think I’m just a picky bastard in that none of them jump out at me as a clear winner, though some of them are close. I’ve gone and emailed all the contestants and a few have been eliminated. The rest I’ve written up a list of things each person could do to improve their mixes. I think after another round of revising we’ll have a clear winner. My attention to detail on this may seem excessive, but it’s nothing I wouldn’t do myself.

Work continues on the videos and I hope to have some more work started on improvements to the website (including broken links) sometime soon.

As for the video releases, for those that have a preference, people seem to favor MKV over MP4 almost 2:1, so I plan to be transitioning to that. From the feedback I received, there seems to be NO consistency with what stutters on people’s computers. It’s almost like each format is different for every person. MKV at least has the advantage of being one of the highest quality options, so even if you don’t like the format, you’ll be working with a better source if you want to convert it to something else. Also if you prefer the existing WMV copies of the videos for some reason, I recommend grabbing them now, because I plan to take them down later and replace them with the higher quality .MKV files.

Look! A poll:

[poll id=”4”]

I’m getting close to deciding on a format in the future for the videos, and I’ll probably go with either MKV or MP4, since both of those formats can utilize the x264 codec, which offers some of the best quality to size ratios out there. Before I make anything official however, I wanted to essentially “beta test” the new formats.

My biggest concern about .MKV or .MP4 is that in the past I’ve seen the footage stutter or become choppy under certain players. It’s my hope that this is the result of people encoding it in a less compatible manner, so I’m trying to make my as kosher as possible.

If you have time and bandwidth to kill, I’d like your help testing this out. I’ve uploaded some clips from Civil Protection that contain scenes with smooth-scrolling motion. This should make it easy to see if there’s any stuttering during playback. In addition to .MP4 and .MKV I’ve also uploaded a copy of the same footage in Xvid .AVI and .WMV for comparison. If you notice any stuttering in one format, but do NOT see it in another, I’d like to know. Preferably leave a forum post, or you can email me. Including information like your OS, any codecs installed, and what player you were using would be helpful. You don’t have to contact me if it stutters in none of the clips or all of them. In those cases, nothing can be determined specific to the format. Here are the clips:

1280x720 Test clip MP4 (70MB)

1280x720 Test clip MKV (70MB)

1280x720 Test clip AVI (125 MB)

1280x720 Test clip WMV (172MB)

Well today is the last day to submit entries for the sound editing contest. If you need additional time, email me today and let me know and I can provide a small extension. Otherwise I’ll review all the entires (about 8 or 10 total I think) and announce the winner in a few days.

In other news, the dialogue for the next FM episode is done and I’ll start on episode 40 soon. I simply didn’t get as much done on the videos last month as I meant to, but hope to get more done this month. I’m not sure when, but you can likely expect another “spree” of FM episodes at some point in the future. Until then, there will probably be a new one every couple weeks. CP is still in limbo because of some bugs with the engine, but I’m confident they’ll get fixed. Valve has said they’ve found the problem, but it may take them a while to roll it out into the next build of the SDK, but we might be able to get access to part of the code that fixes the bugs I was having.

Also if anyone has personally confirmed how to get lip sync extraction working in Face Poser on Windows 7, please let me know. I’ve already tried this software, which didn’t work for me at all.

Here’s another post I’ve been meaning to have for a while. While I’ve overall been quite happy with the sound editing for the different videos, I’m pretty sure I’m going to need additional help in the future. Rather than try to decide by email who is a good candidate or not for sound editing, I thought I’d arrange a small contest to let anyone take a shot at it for one of my previous videos.

For April Fool’s Day, “Diary of A Zombie” was completed just BARELY in time. Otto Beumelburg, my usual sound editor, was unavailable, so Phai Giron and I ended up doing the soundwork at the last minute, and I think the quality suffered as a result; there just wasn’t enough time to do a better job. I’d like to see a better mix made of the audio for this video, since I think it has a lot of potential in terms of the sound.
CONTEST:
My contest is to do a complete remix of the audio for “Diary of A Zombie.” I’m releasing all the unedited, isolated tracks for you to mix as you see fit. In terms of sound editing, this video has just about everything going on. Lots of different sound sources, volume balancing, lots of positional mixing, reverb in different areas, occlusion, audio cleanup, and any additional sound effects you want to add. The goal is to make the best mix you can, by any means at your disposable. Alternately, if you’re not the best at overall sound mixing, but think you’ll be GREAT at balancing the volume on everything, go ahead and give it a try too.

You can download the source files here (includes .wav files + .avi preview for syncwork):
Sound editing files (100MB)
RULES:
The rules, instructions, and guidelines for this contest are included in a text file in the download. The short version is just make the best mix you can. The deadline for this is October 1st.
PRIZES:
I admit these are kind of lame, but hopefully people will be doing this more for the fun / interest of it than anything else.

1st place: While I cannot change the Youtube version, the downloadable copy of the video will be re-released at higher quality with your sound mix, and your name will be added to the credits of the video. You’ll also be a top candidate for additional sound editing jobs in future videos here (if you’re interested).

Runner-ups: If you do a decent job, your name will be listed when the winners are announced, plus I’ll link to any personal contact info you want (email, website, etc.). If your mix is especially good, you’ll also be considered for future Accursed Farms videos.

People who do a bad job: Nothing.

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I’d wish you all good luck, except logically that doesn’t really work when there can only be one winner. So I hope everyone who works on this has some fun doing it, I’m looking forward to the entries!