DrunkenBlog

EAA download FAQ

So, as we speak the EAA video and audio file are going out to a whole bunch of mirrors (distribute it, and they will come) and after a nap, my job for the evening is to hook it all up where it's supposed to go. I did want to nail a few things out of the inbox regarding the video so it was below 160 unreads, and because some of them were kinda wigging me out...

I don't think I've ever had so many questions about something "on its way", and it's probably partially my fault for mentioning there'd be a video and such. On the plus side, there's a lot of interest -- but some of them just seem a little out there when it comes to the chicken and the egg. I dunno, I'm not aware of other one-man-band sites trying stuff like this just because, and I'm guessing its hard to have a realistic idea of what goes into the whole thing -- and how amusing it is that it happened as it did at all -- unless you've been involved with something like it. I know I kept criminally underestimating and overestimating different things.

Anywho, bygones, as I'm not really annoyed so much as its hard for me to understand the mindset behind some of the questions, although considering all of the below was asked more than once, it probably says more about me than the questions. I did paraphrase a few of the questions to get to the point of them, and if I'm slightly snarky with a few, please attribute it to my banging them out before the nap instead of after.

How long is the total movie?

About 2.5 hours or so. It keeps on giving.

Will there be an audio-only download?

Ayep, however be warned that this is pretty ghetto, as in export as mono-mix to AIFF and then encode to 128k AAC ghetto.

What can I do with it?

It'll be licensed and distributed under the Creative Commons' "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5" license, which basically means you can do whatever the hell you want with it, so long as:

1. You include the license and proper attribution.

2. You don't use it commercially in any way.

3. If you alter it or include it in something, you can distribute it only under the same license.

If there is a special circumstance that someone wants to use it for, they can contact me and we can probably work something out, but I'm basically saying if you're an individual and not using it to generate cash, go nuts, but be cool while doing so and respect that you don't own it.

Will it be in super-duper delux resolution, like all HD and filling up my widescreen cinema display?

I want to say that if you're wigging about this type of thing you're in danger of missing the point of the whole endeavor, but that would be the lack of a nap rearing its head.

Part of dealing with groups of people is dealing with expectations, but -- and I mean no offense by this -- sometimes expectations wander out into left field and its your job to coax them back. I've gotten asked way, way too much about whether or not it'll be high definition, and I'm really only amused by those who offer up 200-300 megs of free space on their .Mac account to make it happen because there's a certain sweetness there.

I'm not going to go into great detail on this, because I'll end up strangling the next person who extrapolates Apple offering trailers into the real world, but while HD is the future it isn't close to being the reality yet for something like this -- at all stages, from cameras to processing delivery. It's the year of HD for sourcing downsized-rips for TV episodes and a fractional amount of users with $3500 cameras and suppah powerful comps and that's about it. As an indication, it's really just starting to get going in porn, and even then just for higher quality encodes and not distribution.

I can't believe I've been asked several times about the aspect-ratio. While there is some goofy stuff in it, and a certain camp factor, going through and letterboxing it while panning the content to be sure it was in frame would have been beyond overkill (even for me). Maybe for the platinum anniversary edition with the holographic cover.

Right, right, it's not porn. So what is it?

The movie is 416x312, encoded with single-pass h.264, because I needed my Mac back at some point. h.264 was used because for this type of source material it'll make a huge difference, single-pass or not. The total data rate is around 600k as that's where the balance worked out in terms of file size and keeping it reasonably playable on the majority of machines out there.

It looks great, and unless you're doubling up the size or something, you shouldn't be bothered by the encoding -- a much larger problem was say, lighting, which caused a bit of a Casper syndrome from some angles, but it's understandable for a variety of reasons.

We could have gone a little larger for those with the best of the best, but the majority of Apple CPUs out there would choke. G3 iBooks are going to be struggling anyways, and some might be out of luck, but they can always transcode down to something they can deal with. For various reasons someone with an 800MHz to 1GHz G4 or 1.7 GHz Celeron (my arbitrary median baseline) needs to be able to watch it while playing an MP3 without it choking, and h.264 basically exists to embarrass 3/4 of Apple's current CPU offerings and QuickTime for Windows' level of optimization.

Just trade-offs. If I had a dual-G5 so it wasn't taking 50 hours to encode, or wasn't uploading through a 35k cap on the cable modem, it might have balanced out differently.

...But anything less than (x) sucks!

I know, and some people get invited over for dinner and then complain about the food. While a few of you may look forward to downloading a 4.3 gig file I'm not that interested in uploading it tomorrow, let alone dealing with getting that seeded. All doable, but my cycles aren't prioritized there right now. It's just the reality of the -- and my -- situation at the moment, and there are going to be a ton of downloads of this.

Thousands upon thousands I'm guessing, because if I didn't exist and someone else had it up I know I'd want to see it, and I'm not above extrapolating a sample of size of one onto the world. If it goes well and people really like it, of course I'll look at getting something at a higher quality up, and yes I'm aware the preceding sentence made little sense.

Will it play on my spiffy video iPod?

Nope, as its not:

• Baseline profile

• 320x240

I believe it'd be hard for you to get through 2.5 hours on most of the models anyways, but if you're on of those who wants to do this, you're welcome to transcode it down in h.264 or MPEG-4.

Why not just put it out as compatible with the iPod or at least include a version that is?

A few reasons:

• The iPod currently only handles Baseline profile, which is weird and can't last and will probably change in the future anyways. Since they're in the minority, and the source will really benefit from Main, there you go.

• If someone has a video iPod and wants to take it with them, they can transcode it so it'll work multiple ways. Since they're a very small percentage, it makes sense to let them do it. Besides, I'm sure some enterprising soul will take it upon himself to whip up an iPod-compatible version to share with the world.

It's just where the balance worked out, with my time, the fact that I don't own a video iPod, and that people have the power to do it themselves all being big variables in the equation.

Surround sound?

The only explanation I have for people asking about 5.1 AC3 and such involves nurseries and peeling lead paint. Evening at Adler was a hack thrown together with love and luck and faith and lots of help, not an endeavor for a true cinematric experience. We're getting it online, but expecting to kick back in front of your plasma TV with the audience's voice coming from behind you is a bit much.

You haven't said much about how you put the video together...

Um, let's just say karma was on our side when it came to Evening at Adler, but made me its bitch the next day. Worth noting it all at some point, because some of it was spectacularly ghetto-fabulous, but would take too long to go into right now.

What's that surprise you mentioned?

Patience! There are hints to this already, and even one in the video.

I can't do torrents, so please make a web download available!

Ok!

Please make a .torrent available!

I think torrents would be great, but I'm probably going to leave it to others to do (and hope they do). There are two factors at play here:

All doable and solvable, but with DrunkNet™ coming together again it's probably better to just get a nap in. That said, I'd encourage people to put together torrents of it and throw it around wherever they please because if nothing else it might expose people to it that otherwise wouldn't have seen it. At worst, a bunch of Windows users will get royally confused.

Checking my mail, someone (Moo) is taking care of setting up the torrent and getting it properly seeded so I can take a nap before getting it all up.

Happy dance.

"You should sell DVDs of the evening @ adler as well. There are probably lots of us who would go for some kind of T-shirt/DVD deal..."

I ignored the first few of these, but the most recent came from someone at the domain of martian.com , which is about the coolest domain name evar (me want) and put me over the edge towards responding. This would be entirely possible, and actually wouldn't be that big of a deal to get going unless you went crazy with subtitles or something.

However, if one was going to do this, from a marketing POV you'd want it ready to go when the download is ready to go, and it doesn't really factor into any of my goals for this -- chief of which is to give people a better feel for who these guys are and how they think, which is why it's going up under the license it is, why we worked hard to keep every aspect free, why I'm hoping you'll spread it around to as many people as possible, and why we tried to keep it as accessible as we did -- camp included.

I could see where it might be a cool thing to help offset the costs of an EAA 2.0 bigger and better, but I'm not allowing myself to think much further than the next few days at the moment. If enough people like it and would want it, I'll look at it, but first things first.

Cool?

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    November 13, 2005, at 05:11 PM