[SGA vid] Welcome Home

[permetaform]

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Please right-click and save as! (all feedback and critique are adored and will be responded to)

Welcome Home | .wmv (624x346, 36.1mb) | .avi (624x346, 43.9mb) | mirror here (thank you paranoidangel_!)
_{Source: Stargate Atlantis (Spoilers up to The Siege III)
Song: "The Blood of Cu Chulainn", by Mychael and Jeff Danna
Summary: Her, city}

Thanks: Much love and thanks to aurora_84, nel_ani, and sisabet for the feedback and advice, and also to lierdumoa and absolut3destiny for audiencing! =D

"Let us resolve that she shall dream dreams deeper than the sea and higher than the clouds of heaven, that she shall come forth crowned and transfigured with her statesmen and wizards and saints and sages about her, with magic behind her and miracle before her."

_{-Vachel Lindsay}

Notes: It's been awhile since I've let myself cut loose on the cutting, partially because I've been experimenting in style and effect and partially 'cause I was testing my threshold of pain/irritation with not molesting every beat. This vid felt like a sigh of relief after all that, what with the massive beat-whoring, finally getting the RAM able to handle the type of vid I've been wanting to make, and finding SGA. Which, just...::waves vaguely at old meta posts:: yeah.

Oh, and there's like huge numbers of things I tried to say about Elizabeth and Atlantis in the vid, all mixed up together, so there are a very many equally valid interpretations of the vid. Hell, I'm not even sure of all the things I put in there, but I'm very curious as to what themes or stories or impressions that those watching the vid might get, so don't be afraid to tell me what you think!

(I would recommend using VLC Player to play the vid, it's free, or you can look at this guide. Also, apparently there's a compatibility problem with playing the vid in Quicktime.)

Notes part 2: The wierd and uncomfortable feeling that occurs before the music starts? That's on purpose; it was my goal that Atlantis is creepy and uncomfortable and wrong...until the expedition came, woke it up, and let it breathe.

Notes part 3: Wow!



::bounces and glomps everyone::

Thanks to everyone who'd nominated and voted for me at the Stargate Fan Awards, it won for Weir's catagory!

Comments

[amalthia]

I loved this vid! the editing, the song, Elizabeth! what a great vid for her character. I loved the fast forward effect and I think you mirrored? some shots beautifully. I also loved the timing...um overall great vid! :)

[permetaform]

::highfives the Elizabeth love:: =D


I think you mirrored? some shots beautifully.

::ponders:: are you talking about that last sequence with Elizabeth welcoming John home mirrored with Atlantis welcoming John from The Rising?


Thank you! I'm glad you liked the vid! ::hugs::

[amalthia]

some of the shots looked like they were flipped around (like looking into a mirror)...I'll have to go through the vid again but I know the effect in WMM is called mirroring. I could be wrong some of the shots went by quickly. I think other programs can create the same effect but it's called something else.

but um btw I really loved how you did that shot with Elizabeth welcoming John back and him coming through in the Rising.

[permetaform]

ohhh, they were mostly flipped around to work with the eyelines better and to improve flow =) I'm glad they worked for you!

(and that last sequence was almost an accident, I was vidding it and then was like, "waiiiit, John turned his head like that *before*, where did I see that...?")

[amalthia]

another question, what program do you use to video edit??

[permetaform]

adobe premiere pro 1.7, it does awesome things and lets you edit non-linearly

[amalthia]

the non-linear means you can place clips later in the time line and not have to have filler at the beginning of the timeline to keep it there, right??? that would be so nice to do. the frustrating part about vidding for me is that if I add a new clip or take a piece out everything on the timeline shifts with the change..... I really should buckle down one day and learn how to use adobe premiere.

[permetaform]

yup, non-linear is *wonderful*, and actually if you can start with premiere 7 at least or premiere pro, 'cause they'd changed several major things from 6 to 7 and apparently it confused a hell of alot of people

[amalthia]

well at this poing I'm waiting for Premiere to accept AVI files created with xvid. I have Premiere 1.5? I think after 7 it went to 1.5...it's kind of confusing, I mean I expected the number to just keep going to 8 then 9

[permetaform]

heh, I created Welcome Home with downloaded files, I think they're either dvix or xvid encoded. Premiere accepts them via avisynth...which is a whole other kettle of fish which you might or might not want to go into. It gives *beautiful* encodes though, and there's a good guide for it here.

Poke at the guide slowly though, it's liable to explode the brain.

[amalthia]

thanks so much for the link. I've tried using avisynth but never with importing to premiere. I'll read through and see what I can understand. Because I'm planning an action vid and though I'm getting better with Ulead...there are limitations. however going through another learning curve does not appeal either.

[permetaform]

maybe make a vidlet to help yourself over the learning curve? It's like several vidder's Insane Vidding Projects to make a series of vidlets over the course of a month, to force themselves up a learning curve. I'm attempting one to a lesser degree (and unofficially) for SGA for the American Beauty soundtrack.

[amalthia]

I might just do that...most likely after X-Mas. :)

[permetaform]

cool! ::waves pompoms::

[amalthia]

hey figured out how to get the import plugin for peremiere got my first avs script...it loads...now I just need to figure out how to edit my clips out. Thanks for letting me know about this. :) now I actually have something I can use to learn how to use adobe premiere.

[permetaform]

Yay! glad I was of help!

what do you mean by edit clips tho? There's a "trim" function in avisynth, and you can define the frame #'s that you want for in and out points, then you can "trim" again and get another set of in and out point, and then they'll add up to one big long clip of trimmed sections, is that what you mean?

[amalthia]

lol I have no clue how to edit with avisynth. I just had adobe open the avs file and figured you should be able to edit the file in adobe...but actually I may give up on adobe for the moment because I just discovered that Ulead came out with Media Studio Pro 8.0 and it has a lot of the same features adobe offers but it imports my files and is a bit easier for me to figure out. Of course I'm still learning how to use this program but so far I really like it. :)

[permetaform]

ahhh, cool. You can just edit the file in adobe, but I have no idea how Media Studio Pro 8 is. =) Just mess around and see what works best then? Do tell me how they compare, because it'll just be good to know, you know?

[amalthia]

well so far Media Studio Pro has the option to add and delete video and audio tracks, non-linear editing capablities, and pretty much as hall the same features as adobe, it's just more user friendly, as in it only took me three hours of reading the help contents to get the ghist of everything where as I've spent a lot longer trying to figure out adobe and kind of feeling lost half the time. Of course having files I could actually load into adobe might have helped in my previous explorations. :)

So far one of the things I like best about the MediaStudio program is that it does split by scene, has a multi-trim function and the media library...I like being able to see the clips and browse through them. Now the real test will be what happens when I start making the vid and add titles and tranisitions? So far the program hasn't crashed once (always a good sign) But for me this program looks like it has a lot of the advanced features I wanted out of adobe but has all the things I loved about Video Studio. :)

[permetaform]

ahhh, cool then! It sounds like it's suiting you well, I know that alot of people have trouble transitioning to Premiere which is understandable 'cause it allows both alot of flexibility and yet also so many ways to fuck up.

[amalthia]

yeah but I think once you learn how to use adobe you wouldn't want to go back because the more user friendly editing programs also have a lot more limitations on what you can do or how you do it.

[permetaform]

::nods:: there is that. I still keep WMM around for encoding purposes tho.