Tutorial Almost Ready

Today I worked and am currently working on the tutorial. It's almost finished. I'm just rendering out a larger version of the intro right now. Once I put that in, it'll be ready to render for the final thing. The blur thing never really worked out very good, even though I changed codecs, but I didn't want to mess with it anymore so I just left it how it was.

After it's rendered, there will be a couple more things to do and it will be finished. Man...using free stuff really does take a lot longer than it would buying something better. Part of what took so much time was me not knowing what I was doing, but rendering and switching from program to program also took lots of time. At least it's possible to do if you don't got the money to buy something better.

After it's finished, I have to figure out where to upload it to. Will I want to try to make some money or go for quality? Youtube won't allow the length I have so I may have to cut it in half if I want to put it there.

Still lots to do.

Still Editing...

Editing is still taking a while. It would help if I had a faster computer, but I hopefully can get the job done with what I have. Codecs are making things hard for me right now. Things I still need to do are blur certain areas, add the intros, add comments, and add the credits. The blurring and comments will probably take the longest. Hopefully I can finish this quickly so I can get to work on some other stuff.

More Editing

Today I spent some more time editing the video tutorial I created. I'm working on the intro to the tutorial right now. It's taking a lot longer than I thought it would to complete it. I guess Blender and Virtual Dub are not the most efficient tools to use to edit video (or I'm not skilled enough), but at least it's free. The most annoying thing is compression. I have to make sure I keep my file size down and since I've never dealt with compressors much, I don't really know much of what I'm doing. The last things I have to do are combine a bunch of clips together into one and blur a few areas. The trick is getting my audio to line up with the video. Once that's done, it should almost be ready to put up on the web. I'll have to think about the show intro some more as well. Thanks for waiting.

Video Editing

I've been trying out some video editing using virtualdub and blender for the video tutorial. It's been slow because this is my first time doing something like this and I have to figure out a number of different things like codecs and stuff. Once I have the rough of it edited, I'll try some blurring effects to hide some personal info (not that personal, but want to hide anyways) and I'll need to do a few other things (add text, credits, ect.) and it'll be finished. I pretty much have the intro done, but I'm starting to think that there's probably some copyright issues with it because I'm using some software logos that I don't own in it. I may have to redo the whole intro because of that which could take a while longer or I'll just shorten it a bunch for the first few episodes or so until I can make the new intro. Other than that, things are going pretty good.

I'm probably going to be gone the next few days so I won't be posting, just to let you know.

Oblivious Inferno - Money Masters

Here's a neat animation using little circles of paper or something of the sort.



I've continued to work on the tutorial, need to figure out some editing stuff still, like I mentioned before.

Recorded: Wire Removal

Well, I recorded some today using a free program, keeping with the show theme, "Editing Free"(I'll probably try to create the show using all free programs). Now I have some editing to do, but I think I'll let that wait a while. How would I say my first video tutorial recording came out? I think it was decent. I didn't really go into depth as much as I wanted to and there were a number of flaws, but I think it will work. As always if people need help, I'll let them email me to ask questions. One bad thing I already noticed is that my headphones kept creaking so the audio in the video will have these little noises. It was also harder than I expected it to be. I kept messing up and had to really think through what I was going to say before I started recording. The computer lagging because of the screen recorder also didn't help much. Some things to do next time are:

- Write out an print a more specific script.
- Try to figure out some way to make the earphones not creak.
- Enunciate my speech better and speak slower.

My estimated time that this will be ready for online viewing is probably within 2 weeks. I still have to finish the intro animation, edit, and upload. I have a break from school this next week so it could come out much sooner. Hopefully people like it and want more.

Now I have to come up with some more video tutorial ideas...

Editing Free

I still haven't yet created a video tutorial yet, but when I do,I decided to make it part of a series called "Editing Free". I decided to call it Editing Free because I'll probably be using free programs in the video tutorials so that anyone using them can do what I'll be explaining. I don't know how often I'll be able to make tutorials because of different issues and that I'm not that proficient in the programs I'll be using so it takes a while to get it down before I can teach it. Also, based on the poll I took, it seems that people are eager to learn how to edit in Blender so that's good. If you haven't been keeping up with past blog posts, my first tutorial will probably be about wire removal. I might not be the best at teaching in the beginning, but hopefully I'll be able to learn to do things better over time through suggestions. Right now I'm working on an intro animation for the thing, it might take another week or so to polish up and get sound to.

Wire Removal Test Video

Yesterday I finally figured out how to finish up the wire removal stuff. It's not perfect because of some poor masking, but other than that, it looks pretty good. I'm probably going to try to make up a video tutorial, but I can't promise when it'll be on the web. Some planning will have to go into it as well as some other factors before it will be ready. If you want to see the results I got, view the video at the bottom of this post.

To get the results I went through a few different steps:
1. Combine captured frames into an avi movie clip (Virtualdub doesn't take QuickTime files) using Blender 3d.
2. Use Virtualdub and a filter to de-flicker the video. This made it so that there would be a constant lighting. If I hadn't done this you would notice where the wire once was.
3. Change the compressor in Virtualdub to one that is compatible with Blender, then save it.
4. Use Blender to draw over the wires and unwanted objects to create a mask. Save the mask as a movie or image sequence in case needed later for further use.
5. Use Blender's node system to mask out the wires and show the clean plate instead. Do a few color corrections on the clean plate and modify the mask a little.
6. Export from Blender as QuickTime File.

If you don't understand some of that, don't worry, I plan to go over it later. I just wanted to give a rough overview of what I did to get the results. I'll probably talk about the reasons why you would want to erase wire later. Note that this is just one way to remove wire. There are others, but I found that this is pretty effective as long as your camera is not moving.

Here's the video: