Creative Juices

[alrobin]

Maureen,

Thanks for posting this - it's a very interesting and thought-provoking insight into the story behind what must be a great AV masterpiece. At least the judges at the super-circuit have so far thought so. Wish we could also get a glimpse of it.

Maybe if you did a special version without the music, and posted it, we could at least watch it and pretend we were hearing the background selection, and no copyrights would be violated?

Igor, maybe what we need in PTE, since copyright is such a problem, is the ability to create a synched show, delete the music, and have everyone who wants to watch it go out and purchase the cd, apply it to the .exe file, and have everything snap into sync again. Then we would be doing the musicians a favour and also having the luxury of watching great shows with great musical accompaniment.

[Maureen]

The problem with your idea Al is that most of the time, the soundtrack is edited, so playing a background track would not work with my sequences unfortunately.

For example if I made sequences & just played the background music behind the voice, the quiet parts of the voice-over might also correspond with the loudest parts of the music etc completely destroying any mood I want to create.

One of my earliest AVs was about Dolphins and then I had voice, several background tracks and the dolphin sound effects. All had to be edited and inserted in the correct places. This is going back way before wonderful computer editing and it involved lots of counting, maths and notes to get each part in the right place onto a tape recorder and in the right place.

It is so much easier now.

If I stripped the music out of my AV you would only be seeing half a sequence.

Because we do edit the music, that is one of the reasons we are not supposed to give credits for the music on our sequences, according to our UK licence agreements.

doing the musicians a favour

-that depends how the musician would view us cutting and pasting and changing their original piece ! They might be very unhappy with our version !

Nothing to stop us putting the info about the sequence on the customized start up window tho !

I sometimes do this so an audience can read the background there. This start up window can be easily changed for competition entries or different versions of the show. I am often surprised that this start up window is not used to greater advantage in competitions when the background information about the sequence can be projected up and even maybe written in the language of the hosting country. Normally sequences with a start up image are just started and clicked by the projectionist to make the sequence run immediately.

Although it is easy to add text info onto the slides with the object editor, I tend to quickly use Photoshop to create a new slide so I am sure the text will always appear as I want it on any computers.

[alrobin]

Maureen,

I watched the other 2 shows in your "tryptic" last night, and wish I could see the third. Very thought-provoking and well-done!

There are many "problems" with my idea. But my conceptual suggestion (and that's really all it is intended to be) is not all that far out in left field. (In fact it might fit very well into, and in fact become necessary in, the world predicted in your "Yet to come" presentation. )

Several members have already requested a second time-track to aid in merging several music pieces together. This second track could also be used for the copyrighted music, while reserving the first track for the voice-over, special sound effects, etc. And, we already have a capability for sound overlay which could be used for some of the special effects, while retaining the capability for synchronization.

I'm only trying to stir the "idea pot" a little, to get some further fresh thinking flowing on the Forum. And, of course this woldn't work for all shows - just the ones that the makers would like to distribute, but are hindered from doing so because of the ridiculous copyright laws.

One such possible application might be in wedding and portrait cd's where the recipient would receive a cd of the AV presentation as well as an original cd or even a downloaded, and paid-for, mp3 file with his or her choice of background music to "splice" into the show. Or even provide his or her own background selections for the show. All we would need is some way to re-combine the AV with the background music, in much the same way that software today can "splice" two digital images together and make a panorama. Or even a means to play back the AV in sync to the "external" background music. Just some more "food for thought"!

Maybe I should just stop smoking this stuff and go back onto Guinness!

[LumenLux]

I am sure I am pointing out nothing to you Al, just reminiscing that a competing software in recent history had some "ability" for the recipient to add their own sound. I think we just chuckled as the idea was equivalent only to turning your computer sound down and turning on a CD through a headset.

[ContaxMan]

Thank you for posting your description of the development(s) of your show "What do you see". I found this to be both interesting and informative. In fact, after reading this account I just wish I could watch the show again to relate the description to the end-product.

Your comments regarding Audition with Audacity were also very interesting. I also upgraded from Cool Edit to Audacity but have found the latter frustrating in that it crashes when I try to Rip a cd or load a track from a music cd. I find myself in the rather ridiculous situation of having to use other software to obtain the file before I can edit it with Audacity - most annoying! If you have any experience of this problem it would be interesting to know how/if you managed to get round it.

[alrobin]

I think we just chuckled as the idea was equivalent only to turning your computer sound down and turning on a CD through a headset.

Robert,

I remember something like that being the case. Similar to suggestions that PTE automatically turn down the volume if the music is too loud.

However it may come to that if the "copyright police" keep on gaining more control over our listening pleasure!

I was visualizing something much more complex such as copying the "original" piece from a CD or downloading it from a "licenced" site, for the usual fee, onto one's HD in the same folder as the exe file, and then having PTE find the music, and adapt its synchronization automatically to it per instructions recorded by the maker in setting up the original sync.

The technology is available today to have the PTE show go looking on the internet for the music, download it (provided the user is a subscriber to that music source), sync itself to it, and then play the show! No copyrights offended!! It's called a "Brave New World"!!

[Alan Lyons]

Hi All,

We're back on copyright again Perhaps we need to set up a code of practice amoung our selves where we can share work for viewing and critique. The IPF AV group members have a licence which allows them to show work for non profit events and competitions.

If someone sends you a show to view or for advice, then you should be expected to treat the persons work with respect and not break any copyright rules concerning either the photography or the soundtrack.

We could even send a disc with an expiry date and hope the post dosen't let us down

Anyway, back to the jucies seeing other's work is one of the best ways to improve your own.

Regards,

Alan