Youtube

Download 672x384 WMV (86MB)

 

Freeman’s Mind continues with a new episode. I’m mostly happy with this one, though it becomes difficult for me to tell what’s good or not the more of these I do. I’ll continue to update the progress chart, though I may forget some days.

This episode got delayed for release more than most. This is part of the reason I never like to give release dates, I never know them myself. Machinima.com works in mysterious ways. The progress chart on the right will tell you at least what’s been completed.

The brightness / contrast levels seem to be off in this episode on the Youtube version. The downloadable copy will have the original game light levels once it goes up. Also the resolution is being reported at 1280x720 on youtube, which is incorrect. I was told to submit it at 640x360 for Youtube. The original footage is now recorded at 848x480. Going to HD resolution really isn’t worth the slowdown in processing for me for Freeman’s Mind, since this is just Half-Life, there’s not much to show off visually. I plan on releasing copies of all the videos at original resolution and with higher quality codecs/formats in the future, it’s just something I haven’t gotten around to yet. That and some people appreciate smaller copies to download. So the current 672x384 WMV copies are just a temporary compromise between higher quality, lower size, and player compatibility.

You can look forward to more videos coming one way or another.

Well the site has now been set up to accept donations. The link is at the top of the page where you can donate money if you feel so inclined and/or read my thoughts regarding donations in general. I’d like to stress that I added this at the repeated requests of some of the viewers. I’ll continue making videos as long as I’m able to and I’ll never hold them “hostage” in exchange for more money. If you never donate anything, that’s fine, you’ll keep getting videos. I’m happy to have as many people interested in watching the videos as I do.

One thing I would like viewer feedback from is I’d like to do something extra for people who donate if possible, but I’m not sure what sort of things people would like. If you have ideas of little things donators might appreciate, go ahead and post them in the forums.

Youtube

Download 672x384 WMV (95MB)

 

Here’s the next Freeman’s Mind episode after a delay of me moving, doing April Fool’s Day videos, trying to get the website/forums fixed, and getting a good recording setup. You can expect them to come out at a faster pace now, especially since the series has been neglected for a while. I can’t record at all hours of the day at my new location however, but I should have regular blocks of time when I can get recording done for it. I think this episode came out pretty well and contains a line I thought of before I started doing the first episode. I’ll keep updating the progress on future episodes so you can see how far along things are.

EDIT:

For some reason the video was darkened by Machinima.com on Youtube. I don’t know why this is, but the downloadable copy should have the correct lighting values, it’s as it appears in the game.

I have a new audio interview with “Caboos15” available on his Youtube channel. He originally contacted me months ago, but I delayed him because I wanted to finish The Tunnel first before doing any PR stuff. He’s conducted many interviews with other machinima makers and makes some machinima himself. He’s also the sneakiest interviewer I’ve talked to. Once or twice he would tell me he was going to ask a question, I would get confused, thinking he was asking the question, I would answer the question, then he explained afterwards he hadn’t asked the question yet. It felt like kind of a Zen exercise. Anyway, here’s the interview:

Youtube

It’s not my best interview since I think I stammered a bit, but that’s also a good example of why I do multiple takes when recording lines for videos. More news and videos coming soon.

Well the website and forum is now running on the new host, so let’s hope nothing melts down again. In the meantime, I THINK the forum is stable enough now to have a post about the new subtitle section. I meant to have this done a long time ago, but it’s only just now that some of the major problems with the forum and hosting have been ironed out (I hope).

Subtitles are probably the most major area I’ve completely failed to manage properly because I’ve gotten bogged down with organizing and reviewing everything. It’s not that I don’t care about them, quite the opposite. I want to get as many subtitles up as possible and I hope to someday have Accursed Farms videos be the most-translated machinima videos out there. However, I also want to have some standards for them as well.

Having a forum section devoted to subtitles solves a LOT of problems involved with me managing subtitles in the past:

1. You won’t have to wait on me to approve subtitles in order to see them. This is a good thing, since if I get busy with work or whatever, I often don’t have time to manage subtitles. While the first subtitles that go up in the forums may not be the most accurate, if some people can’t hear or understand English very well, then subtitles that are only 80% accurate are far better than none at all. While it’s still going to be a slow process for me approving “official” subtitles hosted on the site, from now on, you can always go to the forums and see the most recent user-submitted subtitles as they’re created.

2. This will lead to more accurate and polished subtitles overall. Moving subtitle development to the forums means they’ll effectively be “crowdsourced.” Instead of just myself and maybe one or two other people looking at them, everyone can view the subtitles and suggest revisions to them. In short, everyone can now be an editor, for better or worse.

3. I don’t have to decide who works on what now. A problem I used to face a lot trying to manage the subtitles is I would receive multiple offers from people offering to transcribe or translate the episodes and I would have no clue as to who the best person to pick was. Now, you guys get to decide. If someone rushes out subtitles for an episode that are thoroughly flawed, that won’t last long against someone who takes a little longer and does a much better job. I plan to let all future subtitles “cook” in the forums for a little while before approving any more official ones, so hopefully any errors can be ironed out. This goes double for foreign languages since I can’t judge how accurate a translation might be, but other people who speak the language can.

4. This frees up some more time for me. I do think it’s necessary for me to personally review all the English subtitles for accuracy, because my annunciation isn’t always the best. Sometimes people think I say “and” instead of “then” or “if” instead of “is,” etc. I’ll be the ultimate authority on the correct words being spoken in the videos. Beyond that, I think it will work better if viewers proofread everything else. Proper punctuation, formatting, spelling, timing, etc. are all things that can be better handled by viewers. Even the “official” subtitles that are currently up on the site could probably use some help. So if you spot problems with ANY subtitles, now you can submit your corrections in the forums and eventually they’ll get reviewed and hopefully approved. I think everyone would prefer I spent more time making new videos than editing subtitles.
 Right now the subtitles section of the forums have been launched with sub-forums for every language that I remember receiving offers for. This will make things easier organization-wise. New languages can be added as people volunteer to translate them. If your language isn’t listed, just post your subtitles in “Other Languages” for now and if there are enough posts it will get its own section later on. You are welcome to chat in your native language in the different forum sections as that will likely make communication easier.

* * * Be sure to check out the guidelines for submitting subtitles listed in the forums as this will expedite your submissions getting approved. * * *

Anyway, I encourage people who are interested to submit or edit subtitles in the forums. The process will be a bit chaotic, but I think eventually it will all get sorted out. There are some 40-50 videos made and many new ones coming this year. I’d like as many people to be able to enjoy them as possible and subtitles will go a long way towards making that happen.