#(you might have to download the youtube video first and then upload it there but it's got a lot of options for editing and it's free :))

[pineapplefulfillseveryneed]

Sparks - National Crime Awareness Week

[kuwdora]

A Vidding Primer

A guide written for @wren-of-the-woods who asked for advice about how to start vidding! This is far from comprehensive and I tried not to make it too dense because it's a big subject. I still wanted to share a variety of topics about getting into vidding because it's a hobby and art that is near and dear to my heart.

First Piece of Advice

watch a lot of vids and rewatch vids multiple times. Seek out vids on YouTube, AO3, Watch the TikTok and Twitter/X vids that show up on tumblr or wherever you’re browsing. They all have distinct styles and tools/techniques they use to make their vids and edits. Rewatch the vids and ask yourself what you like or dislike about them. The song, the editing, the source. That can give you a good starting point about how you might want to approach making your own fanvids. The TikTok style of 30 and 40 second edits are very different what you find on YouTube. YouTube editors tend to use a full song and a lot more effects and a lot more overlapping dialogue. Whereas the fanvids - Vids - from people who came into vidding in the mid 2000s/2010s have their own culture, different ways they approach song choice, clip choices and narrative. I also suggest watching vids for shows/films you’re not familiar with as well as your fandom favorites. You can learn a lot about how vidders try to tell a story even when you might not grasp the context behind certain scenes but you can still follow along with the emotional arc of the vid.

Second Piece of Advice

Have fun and enjoy yourself. Everyone starts a new hobby as a newbie. It can be a lot of effort to make 30 seconds or a 3 minute vid, but it’s such a unique type of fanwork that is fun to watch and fun to make. It can also be migraine inducing because of all the learning and technical issues along the way. But!! omg when you make a clip fall on the perfect beat with your blorbo crying that perfect tear or you find an idea and sources for the bestest perfect lyrics of the song, it’s a magnificent high. It can make you feel like a god. At least that’s how I feel a lot of times!

There are about 10 steps* to creating** a fanvid/edit:

• select your platform and software (phone/computer video editors) • gather your video and audio files • create a new project in your video editor • import audio into the editor • import the video into the software and mute audio tracks that contain your video’s audio • review, label and cut up the video into shorter clips - this step is known as ‘clipping’ in vidding parlance, but it’s also optional. Some people pull in movies and scrub through the whole film and just pull it directly onto the timeline • move the various video clips around on the timeline to match the audio track you’ve chosen for your project, add video effects and additional dialogue if you like • export the finished timeline • upload the video to a streaming platform and/or downloadable service • share your project!!! posting to ao3 and/or social media or share on discord, etc * there are a lot more steps involved with each of these steps. What what software to use, where to find video, how to deal with copyright blocks on Youtube, etc. Some of that will be covered in the links below but is not comprehensive. That would require separate posts and links and I don’t want to drop an encyclopedia on you right now! I’m happy to provide more resources that I can curate if you want more direction and pointers to resources and amazing vidders.

** like any hobby, there can and will be a learning curve and frustrations. Blank page for a writer, blank timeline for a vidder. Is anything you put down is any good, self esteem and confusion about what actually makes sense is part and parcel for any creative work. Once you're in the vidding process and committed, as long as you're enjoying yourself you gotta just keep going to get it done.

Getting Started Vidding

My knowledge and background and learning how to vid from people on livejournal and dreamwidth from 2007. I don’t have any experience in editing with a phone but if that’s something you’re interested in, YouTube will be a place for you to start finding tutorials for various apps and tools. Probably discord communities, too. Vidding Workshop - a great how-to/guide when you're starting out. This is on dreamwidth from the WisCon vidparty in 2014. Some of the tech discussions might be a little outdated but there’s a ton of relevant information. It covers technical subjects as well as developing vid ideas and actually getting started. If you have any questions about what you’re reading you can leave an anonymous comment and ask - some of these vidders responding inthe threads are still active. You can find them on AO3/YouTube, tumblr, discord and actually leave them questions about their vids. Many vidders are more than thrilled to talk about their vids and answer questions. Vexcercises - this is a dreamwidth community for short-form vid excercises. This is a very structured way of introducing vid concepts and constraints so that you can produce a vidlet. I highly recommend you check this out and participate! There’s even an AO3 collection so you can check out how people have done the different exercises, too.

The Process of Vidding

Watch Me Edit - @limblogs put together a fantastic playlist of YouTube editors who will show you beginning to end how they made their vid. A lot of these editors appear to be using Sony Vegas but the general process of vidding end-to-end will be similar with other nonlinear editors like DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, etc. It’s a great way to actually see the vid come together if you don’t know what that even looks like. Every vidder will develop their own workflow and approach (which might even change from vid to vid), but it’s useful to see in video how people actually DO the thing. @limblogs also created a handy YouTube playlist some vidders from Bradcpu’s Vidder Profiles (Fanlore page). These profiles are basically like a director’s DVD commentary on their vidding process, featuring the vidders talking over their own vids! So cool. Phenomnal insights from these vidders about how they choose song, use effects, think about their narratives.

Self Rec: I recently did a vidding textpost series called: do it for the process - a naked vid draft: What (Yennefer of Vengerberg). How I Edit by @vimesbootstheory is another textpost about their vidding process. Self rec: Here’s my text interview: Vidder Profile - Kuwdora 2011. I talk about my process with a lot of specific examples from my previous work and lots of screenshots. This profile is over a decade old but a lot of this still holds true for me today! videlicet - this is an incredible vidding zine that @limblogs put togegther with a lot of amazing contributors. These articles and discuss about specific vids and aspects of vidding. It’s really detailed and a fantastic piece of vidding culture. I highly reading recommend the Demystifying Vidding article by lim and the A History of Vidding by @meeedeee and…pretty much every article in the zine!

Doing the vidding!

I recommend joining exchanges and watching vids that come out of exchanges and checking out fannish cons that have vidshows and discords to get more exposure to vidders and vids. Many people have joined @festivids (AO3 collection here) and made their very first vid, it's a very fun and great way to get into vidding. It’s not quite festivids season right now but time flies and it will be time to nominate sources and do sign-ups in the blink of an eye. Follow @festivids and check out the AO3 collection and see what people are making. Join the Vexcercises community and make some short vids and share them on your tumblr or on discord or somewhere and bask in the thrill of making your first fanvids. Check out who reblogged the vidder ask game - go and read other vidders responses and ask some new-to-you vidders questions. Everyone has their own take on process and tech and everything. It's great to hear and see what a lot people are doing and making.

Final Advice - talking about vids and doing the vidding

• watch vids • rewatch vids • leave a comment and ask a question about something you saw in their vid! • Again: find someone’s AO3 page of fanvids and ask them something about their vid in a comment or send them asks on tumblr (people usually have the same alias or link to their tumblr or dreamwidth pages somewhere.) • YouTube can be a valuable resource for tutorials so if you don't know something, there is likely someone who has made a tutorial about how to use a cross dissolve transition or anything else you might want to replicate in a video that you've seen in a vid. • start making a vid, scream and cry, ask for help, and keep going until you get it done. Celebrate and bask in your completed vid and share it with everyone! • Follow vidders on tumblr that you find from the vidder ask game • Check out the vidding discord for community and questions and vid recs and news about vidding exchanges and cons. • Have fun!

Hope this helps you get started! Thank you so much for the ask! Let me know if you have more questions and I can help you out or send you to cool vidders who have great advice and suggestions. And please send me your vid if you make one!

[fabaulti]

I think most of us should take the whole ai scraping situation as a sign that we should maybe stop giving google/facebook/big corps all our data and look into alternatives that actually value your privacy.

i know this is easier said than done because everybody under the sun seems to use these services, but I promise you it’s not impossible. In fact, I made a list of a few alternatives to popular apps and services, alternatives that are privacy first, open source and don’t sell your data.

right off the bat I suggest you stop using gmail. it’s trash and not secure at all. google can read your emails. in fact, google has acces to all the data on your account and while what they do with it is already shady, I don’t even want to know what the whole ai situation is going to bring. a good alternative to a few google services is skiff. they provide a secure, e3ee mail service along with a workspace that can easily import google documents, a calendar and 10 gb free storage. i’ve been using it for a while and it’s great.

a good alternative to google drive is either koofr or filen. I use filen because everything you upload on there is end to end encrypted with zero knowledge. they offer 10 gb of free storage and really affordable lifetime plans.

google docs? i don’t know her. instead, try cryptpad. I don’t have the spoons to list all the great features of this service, you just have to believe me. nothing you write there will be used to train ai and you can share it just as easily. if skiff is too limited for you and you also need stuff like sheets or forms, cryptpad is here for you. the only downside i could think of is that they don’t have a mobile app, but the site works great in a browser too.

since there is no real alternative to youtube I recommend watching your little slime videos through a streaming frontend like freetube or new pipe. besides the fact that they remove ads, they also stop google from tracking what you watch. there is a bit of functionality loss with these services, but if you just want to watch videos privately they’re great.

if you’re looking for an alternative to google photos that is secure and end to end encrypted you might want to look into stingle, although in my experience filen’s photos tab works pretty well too.

oh, also, for the love of god, stop using whatsapp, facebook messenger or instagram for messaging. just stop. signal and telegram are literally here and they’re free. spread the word, educate your friends, ask them if they really want anyone to snoop around their private conversations.

regarding browser, you know the drill. throw google chrome/edge in the trash (they really basically spyware disguised as browsers) and download either librewolf or brave. mozilla can be a great secure option too, with a bit of tinkering.

if you wanna get a vpn (and I recommend you do) be wary that some of them are scammy. do your research, read their terms and conditions, familiarise yourself with their model. if you don’t wanna do that and are willing to trust my word, go with mullvad. they don’t keep any logs. it’s 5 euros a month with no different pricing plans or other bullshit.

lastly, whatever alternative you decide on, what matters most is that you don’t keep all your data in one place. don’t trust a service to take care of your emails, documents, photos and messages. store all these things in different, trustworthy (preferably open source) places. there is absolutely no reason google has to know everything about you.

do your own research as well, don’t just trust the first vpn service your favourite youtube gets sponsored by. don’t trust random tech blogs to tell you what the best cloud storage service is — they get good money for advertising one or the other. compare shit on your own or ask a tech savvy friend to help you. you’ve got this.

[userpeggycarter]

TOPAZ AI TUTORIAL

i was asked to do a tutorial for Topaz AI (a software that enhances screencaps), so here it is! :)

[tutorial under the cut]

i’m going to gif a 720p YouTube video from 12 years ago as an example. it’s the bottom of the barrel when it comes to image quality, but in the end, you won’t believe it was once so shitty. here’s the gif, without any editing:

THE APPLICATION

Topaz AI is a paid software for image enhancement. you can download it for free, but your images will have watermarks. here's a random link that has nothing to do with this tutorial.

you can use Topaz AI as a Photoshop plugin or use the software separately. i will explain both methods in this tutorial.

USING SEPARATELY

it’s the way i do it because it’s more computer-friendly, the plugin can take a toll on your PC, especially when you’re dealing with a lot of screencaps. 

you first take screencaps as you normally would (if you don’t, here’s a tutorial on how to do it). open Topaz AI and select all the images. wait a while for the software to do its thing.

on the left, there is your screencap untouched. on the right, is your edited version. if you click the edited screencap and hold, Topaz will show you the original, that way you can compare the versions even better than just looking at them side by side.

Topaz AI will automatically recognize faces, if any, and enhance them. this can be toggled off, by disabling the “recovering faces” option in the right panel. it’s always on for me, though. you can tweak this feature by clicking on its name, the same thing for the others.

Topaz AI will also automatically upscale your screencaps if they’re too small (less than 4k). it will upscale them to achieve said 4k (in this gif’s case, the original 1280x720 screencaps became 4621x2599). i suggest that you let the app upscale those images, giving you more gif size flexibility. you can change into whatever size you want if you want something less heavy to store. don’t worry though, even these “4k screencaps” are very light megabytes-wise, so you won’t need a supercomputer. it might take a while to render all your screencaps, though, if you’re on a lower-end computer. (the folder with the edited screencaps ended up being 1GB, but that’s because it contains 123 screencaps, which is a lot of screencaps for 4k giffing).

two options won’t be automatically selected, Remove Noise and Sharpening, you will need to enable them to use them. rarely i don’t use Remove Noise, as is the best tool to remove pixelization. the Sharpening option depends on the gif, sometimes your gif will end up too over-sharpened (because of Topaz’s sharpening and later your own). that said, i used the Sharpening option on this gif.

next, select all images by clicking the “select all” button. you will notice that one of the screencaps’s thumbnails (in my case, the first one) will have small icons the others don’t have. this is the screencap you enhanced. you will need to click the dots menu, select “apply”, and then click “apply current settings to selected images”. this way, every screencap will have the same settings. if you don’t do this step, you will end up with one edited screencap and the rest will remain untouched!

all things done, click “save X images”. in the next panel, you can select where to save your new screencaps and how you want to name them. i always choose to add a topaz- prefix so i know what files i’m dealing with while giffing.

just a note: if your way of uploading screencaps to Photoshop is through image sequence, you will need to change the names of your new screencaps so PS can perceive that as a sequence (screencap1, screencap2, etc). you can do that by selecting all the screencaps in your folder, then selecting to rename just one of them and the rest will receive numbers at the end, from first to last. you don’t need to rename them one by one.

here’s the first gif again, without any editing:

without Topaz enhancement but with sharpening:

without sharpening, only the Topaz enhancement:

with Topaz enhancement and sharpening:

her skin is so smooth that it is a bit unrealistic. i could have edited that while tweaking the “Recovering Faces” option and/or the “Remove Noise” option, but i prefer to add noise (filter > noise > add noise) when necessary. this way, i don’t risk not enhancing the quality of the screencaps enough.

i added +3 of noise, making the gif look more natural. it’s a subtle difference, but i thought it necessary one in this case. you can continue to edit your gif as your heart desires.

VOILA! 🥳

AS A PHOTOSHOP PLUGIN

if you have Topaz AI installed on your computer, Photoshop will recognize it. you will find it in filter > Topaz Labs > Topaz AI. while in timeline mode, select the filter. the same Topaz AI window will pop up and you can tweak things the same way you do when you use the software separately. by using the plugin, you don’t need to upload your edited screencaps or use screencaps at all, a video clip (turned into a Smart Layer, that is) will suffice. the downside is that for every little thing you do, Topaz AI will recalculate stuff, so you practically can’t do anything without facing a waiting screen. a solution for that is to edit your gif in shitty quality as you would edit an HD one and at the very end, you enable Topaz AI. or just separately edit the screencaps following the first method.

this is it! it's a very simple software to use. the only downside is that it can take a while to render all screencaps, even with a stronger computer, but nothing too ridiculous.

any questions, feel free to contact me! :)

[putschki1969]

Kalafina 「sprinter」 (Yuki Kajiura LIVE Vol.#2) - Unreleased and Unedited

Update 24/09/07: The original YouTube "video" was made private so I can no longer link to it. Instead, I am including the audio which I downloaded last night from the video. Please note that even though I keep calling the original upload a "video", it is just an audio track with a picture.

Update 24/09/08: The video on YouTube is back up again. I don't notice any obvious changes so I'm not sure why it was put on private in the first place. Check it out HERE.

Update 24/09/09: Check out my UPDATE POST here. New information has been revealed that in my opinion proves that the track on YouTube is fake.

Thanks to @gslin (@gslin on Twitter) for the heads-up! A mysterious account on YouTube (@FJS_Official => which is definitely not "official" but pretends to be judging by their name and handle; The account has since changed their handle to "@FJS_Channel") has uploaded an interesting audio a couple of days ago. It is presumably from Kalafina's front act performance for "Yuki Kajiura LIVE Vol.#2" held at Shibuya O-EAST on July 31, 2008. Wakana, Keiko, Hikaru and Maya (who was still a member back then) sang 4 songs in total:

oblivious

Kizuato

ARIA

sprinter

Official footage exists of their "ARIA" and "Kizuato" performance (included as bonus content on the "Seventh Heaven" album) but up until recently, I think everyone believed that there were no live recordings of "oblivious" or "sprinter" featuring Maya (please correct me if I'm wrong in that regard).

When I initially saw the video on YouTube, I thought that this whole thing was fake. I feel like these days, any tech-savvy person can layer different audio tracks and make it sound like a brand-new live recording with a few tweaks here and there (especially if you factor in the growing popularity of AI). I mean, all you'd have to do is mix the original studio recording with Maya's vocals (or Maya's unofficial karaoke performance of the song) with one of the many existing live recordings of "sprinter" and voilà, you'd have created something like the above audio.

However, after listening to the audio a few times, I'm having a hard time recognising any specifics of the live performance. I'll admit, I'm not 100% familiar with every single "sprinter" performance since it's not exactly among my favourite songs but from what I can tell, Hikaru sounds a lot shakier than in any of the "official" live recordings that are out there. So yeah, this might indeed be "unreleased" and it appears to be as raw/unedited as it gets. I did a quick research but couldn't find anything on this topic so I don't think this has been posted before...

As @gslin has mentioned on Twitter, the sound quality is exceptionally well, too good for a bootleg (possibly recorded in an official manner close to the PA system?)

The video description says that it is a sound source preserved at Sony Music but I have my doubts about that. I wonder how the person who runs the account would just get access to it and be allowed to post it on a random YouTube channel. Sounds a bit fishy to me. If there are actually people out there who can get their hands on unreleased Kalafina audios, there would be more of them floating around (someone give me all those Christmas live sound sources!!!!).

But who knows, anything is possible. Maybe the venue had some of these sound sources stored (no idea if this is a common practice)? Shibuya O-EAST could have gotten rid of them (made them publicly available) after they rebranded the venue in 2021.

[rotisseries]

WHAT WAS THAT THING YOU EXPLAINED TO ME AGES AGO FOR WAITING ROOM ABOUT HOW TO LISTEN TO SONGS THAT ARENT ON SPOTIFY ??? I NEED RED FLANNEL GEORGIA AND I NEED IT NOW

AKAJDFJSKFKS OK THIS IS MY FAVORITE SPOTIFY FEATURE YAY!! relying on people to have uploaded things as a podcast sucks so bad because they get taken down a lot and also it breaks up the vibe because the title and artist are always something random and the little picture is just a sunset or whatever idk IT BREAKS UP THE VIBE

so you can do this from any device, (i prefer to do it from my computer though for reasons that'll be explained later) and if you have spotify premium you'll also be able to listen to it on all devices, but first thing you're going to do is go into your account settings and turn on the local files option

once you do that, it'll access any downloaded audio files you have, and you can listen to them on that device. they'll be stored in a spotify playlist named local files, similar to the liked songs one. (i would also recommend making a separate folder for the songs you want downloaded on spotify, at least on the computer, i know you can change which folder it takes from there. otherwise you might end up with random audio you downloaded for something specific in your spotify library.)

if you have premium, you can also turn on spotify on other devices, and add the song you downloaded to an actual playlist

and it'll sync up on all your devices and you can download the playlist on every device. if you don't have premium though you'll either have to download it on every device or you can only listen to it on the first one you downloaded it on.

now for actually getting the song. this is really simple I tend to go straight to youtube and it's usually pretty easy to find the song I want, and then I just put the link into a youtube to mp3 converter (dodging the hot moms in my area. maybe next time ladies) and then I download it. make sure it's in the right folder and boom! I now have mitski's cover of let's get married to cry to on demand! soundcloud also works though obviously because any audio file will do, and a lot of unreleased songs get uploaded to soundcloud, and there’s a handy little download button right there and you don't need an account! great if you run into a song that isn't on youtube. totally unrelated but I have phoebe bridger's cover of iris downloaded

now. reasons I tend to do it from my computer specifically.

1. most shady websites are just easier to navigate lol. it's twice as hard to deal with pop ups when things are also rotating your phone screen around. so yeah i'd prefer to hit up the mp3 converter from my laptop

2. if you have any songs where the only video for it has an annoying intro or outro, it can be easier to edit it out. like lil nas x's cover of jolene was from the youtube channel for some fucking radio station or whatever so I had to edit that out. and my laptop's native audio file player has a trimming option, so I didn't have to download extra software like I would on my phone

3. and most importantly to me, you can make it aesthetically pleasing. when you just download the audio file it won't have an album picture and it won't have an artist name it'll only have whatever the file name is as a title, which you can change obviously but it doesn't fix the rest of it. on the computer it is so easy to download a metadata editor, and you can edit the file's metadata however you want and it'll have the little artist line and the album if you want and you can put whatever picture goes with the song but this is of course not required it just matters a lot to me personally

anyway have fun!

[winter-seance]

GIF Tutorial

This is going to be a long post, so I'm going to place the majority of it under the cut.

Disclaimer - There are many ways to make gifs, and this is just one way to make them - it's the process that I have figured out works best for me. I am in no way claiming that this is the "definitive" or "best" way to make gifs. There are probably other, better ways to do things, but because people have asked how I do it, I am sharing my process.

Introduction I use a Mac. I am assuming most of this will also be applicable to those of you using Windows as well. This tutorial is divided into three parts. Here is a video of the following process as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBRbWC-iMOM

Actions I use three Actions, that you can download here through my Google drive, if you want. A tutorial for how to install Actions in Photoshop can be found here.

Photoshop Layout I use Photoshop CC, but I used Photoshop CS5 for years, got used to it, so when I upgraded to CC, I arranged it to resemble what I was used to.

I have the following windows open:

And they are arranged like this:

PART ONE - CLIPPING Part 1 consists of using a screen recorder (i.e., Quicktime) to make short clips of scenes or parts of a scene that you want to make gifs of. I have a Mac, so Quicktime is what I use. For Windows users, I’m sure there are equivalent alternatives that are just as good. Years ago, when I was first starting to make gifs, I frequently heard people refer to KMPlayer as what they used, so that might still be a good option for you if you are a Windows user. The most important part is that it takes high-quality recordings, with as little detail and quality loss as possible.

With this screen recording method, you can make screen recordings of video files that are stored locally on your computer (I use VLC to play videos), or streaming on sites like YouTube, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, etc. No downloading of the video is necessary. For some of those websites, if you have trouble with getting it to work, you may have to disable your browser’s hardware acceleration. This process is described here (https://www.theverge.com/23715928/netflix-amazon-prime-screenshot-mac-windows-how-to).

I record the clips with sound, to make it easier to transcribe/write out the dialogue in Photoshop later. When I have recorded all the clips I want, I put the clips into my folder where I store all my clips, and into another folder that is labelled with the episode number so I can remember where each clip came from in order to properly label them later when the time comes to upload them to Tumblr.

Example: A folder containing clips from Good Omens 2x01

PART TWO: EXTRACTING/MAKING GIFS FROM THE CLIPS

Open video file in Photoshop To do this, click on File > Import > Video Frames to Layers

Use the markers to select roughly where you want the gif to begin and end.

With videos that have been clipped with Quicktime (not sure about other programs), the vast majority of the time there are twice as many frames as needed – every other frame is a duplicate. For a smaller gif size and smoother playback, I delete every other frame in the timeline box at the bottom of the screen. I used to do this manually (very time consuming), but now do it with the use of an action that I created that will automatically select every other frame. Downloads and installation instructions for all the actions I use are available above.

To use an action, click on the title of the action, then click the play button at the bottom of the window.

I often get an error message that says “The command ‘Extend Frame Selection’ is not currently available”, but it still works. Just click “stop” and every other frame will be selected.

Click the trash can icon in the timeline window to delete the selected frames.

At this point, you will have half as many frames in your timeline as you did before. You will also likely have extra frames at both the beginning and end of the timeline that you don’t want to be part of the gif – from the previous shot, for example. You can delete those now.

This next step is optional: There will still be some duplicate frames in the timeline that were not deleted earlier. It is not strictly necessary to delete these, and I see many gifmakers who don’t get rid of them. It’s usually not all that noticeable. However, because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, I always go through the timeline frame-by-frame and delete each duplicate. This ultimately will reduce the gif’s file size and make the movement in the gif appear much smoother. I usually find that every fourth or fifth frame is a duplicate. Unfortunately, it’s not always consistent, so using an automated action would not work to make this process go faster.

Cropping Once this part is complete, I select the crop tool. I usually make my gifs 540px wide by 350px high. You can change the height to whatever you want, but Tumblr’s max width is 540px. I find the aspect ratio of 540x350px usually allows gifs to feel large, while at the same time not cutting off too much of the sides. Depending on the type of gif I’m making I may adjust this, but generally, if I’m giffing a scene from a TV show or movie, I stick with my standard 540x350px dimensions.

Adding Text Next, I add text. Select the text icon. In the layers window, make sure the top layer is selected, otherwise the text will not show up when you start typing.

The top layer is selected

These are the font settings I currently use:

If I am just making one gifset, or one or two gifs, I’ll go straight on to the next steps. However, if I’m making a large amount of gifs, I save the gif right now, close out of it, and repeat the steps in this section for the next gifs, so I eventually have an entire folder of “raw” unedited photoshop files that have been cropped and captioned, and just need to be colored, have text effects added, and be sharpened. For me personally, I find I make gifs more efficiently by doing it in this “batch” style process.

All cropped and unedited gifs (psd files)

PART 3: COLORING, EFFECTS, & SHARPENING

Coloring I do plan on making a separate tutorial on this at some point, but will include a brief summary here. When it comes to coloring, I generally tend to go by a “less is more” attitude. I am not by any means great at coloring, but nonetheless I’ll explain the types of adjustment layers I typically use.

Note: Before making any adjustments, make sure you have the layer directly underneath the text layer selected, as shown in the screencap below, otherwise it will also apply those adjustments to the text, which makes it look weird.

I start with a Curves layer to change the overall brightness/contrast, then a Levels layer to adjust the shadows and highlights, and then a Brightness/Contrast layer to do some final minor tweaks. The only time I ever reuse gif coloring is when they are from the same scene with the same colors, lighting, backgrounds, etc. Every other time, I tailor the adjustment layers to the specific gif.

You can add adjustment layers by clicking the half light/dark circle on the bottom of the Layers window.

How the gif looks with both a Curves layer and Levels layer

Before adding the adjustment layers

After adding the adjustment layers

A lot of the time, I'll just stick to adjusting the lighting. However, if the colors look gross, or if they are over/undersaturated, I’ll add a Color Balance layer and play around with the settings on that, or use a Hue/Saturation layer and increase/decrease the saturation of specific color channels. It really depends on what you’re going for, and what you think looks good. There is no one “right” way to color a gif.

Text Effects If you are using the Actions I included in the download, you can just run the "Text Effects" action with the text layer selected, and it will do the following automatically. If not, you can do it manually by doing the following.

Right click on the text layer in the Layers window and click on Blending Options.

I use a stroke and drop-shadow on my gifs. Here are the settings I use.

Drop Shadow settings

Stroke settings

Next, to center the text, click on the text layer. With the text layer selected on the Layers window, Select All by clicking ctrl+a (Windows) or command+a (Mac). Then click on the "Align horizontal centers" icon in the “Move tool” option menu.

Important – in the Layers menu, make sure the buttons “Unify layer position” and “unify layer effects” are clicked an enabled for the text layer.

Sharpening Select all the frames in the Timeline window. Then in the lower left-hand corner click “convert to video timeline.”

In the Layers window, select all of the frame layers (do not include the text layer or adjustment/coloring layers in the selection) and right click on it. Select “Convert to smart object.”

Select Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. In the same way that coloring can differ depending on the gif, the ideal settings for sharpening can also differ from gif-to-gif. It can really depend on the quality of the source of the gif, like whether it’s HD or not. These are the settings I’m using for the current gif:

If you are using Actions, you can run the "Layers to Frames" Action. If not, do the following:

Click on the button circled in red

It will open up this menu. Click on "Flatten frames into clips"

Click the button circled in red, then click "Make frames from layers"

Delete the first couple of "junk" frames

Select all of the frames. Right click on the "0 sec." to change the frame rate. I usually use 0.05, but it might depend on the gif itself.

Exporting Click on File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)

I cannot add another screencap because I've reached Tumblr's max for this post, but here are the settings I use: Selective Diffusion 256 Colors Dither 100%

You may find that when you try to export your gif, the file size is too big. Tumblr’s gif file size limit is 10mb – try to make it under that – even anywhere in the 9.9mb range. As long as it’s under 10mb, it should work.

To get gifs that are too large to fit under the limit, I usually end up deleting frames from the beginning or end of the gif. If you’re using the 540x350px dimensions, I typically find that the average number of frames I can fit into one gif is between 80-90. Depending on the colors in the gif, it’s sometimes more, sometimes less.

[glassprism]

Hii!! I found out about trading an hour ago and am a bit confused. Like, how do you even find the bootlegs if not on youtube? Also, why trade instead of posting publicly?

I have a YouTube page where I post slime tutorials and the like of shows I have watched or proshots I have downloaded. Why gatekeep? I'm literally just curious, I don't mean to offend.

So, the thing that I really, really want to emphasize, because I feel like it'll make everything make more sense, is that bootlegging is illegal. It is against the law, people can and do get arrested for it, and there have been many recorders (mostly filmers) in the past who have been caught and simply disappeared, taking with them any unreleased boots and all potential boots they could have filmed in the future.

And I say that because I REALLY want to emphasize that when people, especially filmers, say, "Hey, can you not post these on YouTube or anywhere else publicly?" it's NOT because they are trying to "gatekeep". Many of them are making their bootlegs as accessible as possible by making it available for purchase and/or trade down the line. They are doing it for their own safety. They are risking legal repercussions getting these bootlegs to you and are asking you not to get them into trouble by blatantly posting their stuff on the most accessible video-sharing site out there. THEY ARE TRYING NOT TO GET FINED, ARRESTED, OR WORSE.

Okay, got all that? Great! Now I can answer your questions.

First - many traders, myself included, have trading sites where we post everything we have available to trade. That is a great place to find bootlegs, and even better, people who have those bootlegs and might be willing to trade or (if you're polite) gift them to you! Here's mine. How do you find these sites? Honestly, a lot of times I just stumble on them by Googling something like "[name of show] bootleg trade". What I also personally do is start bookmarking sites of traders that have large collections of shows I'm interested in (like Phantom) or the sites of people who record bootlegs, so that I can easily check up on them every week or so.

There are also many areas where traders congregate! Musical Exchange on LiveJournal is one of the easiest to find. There was a Yahoo board back in the day that has not turned into a Groups io thing. There's Encora Reprise (I don't use it and I feel like it keeps going down but some swear by it). There are also several Discord servers devoted to trading or set up by filmers. Those are also great places to find other traders and newly released boots.

Second, I partially answered your question about posting publicly with the safety issue, but the other answer is, simply, that trading is decentralized because it's illegal. I don't think there's any one person who has every bootleg ever recorded, it's all spread out amongst us, and it's going to be extremely difficult to get everyone to pool it all together because, well, this is also a hobby, not a job, and we just don't have time for that. And even if we did, there probably is no person with enough space and money and time to upload every bootleg in the world and maintain it, because they will not get enough benefit out of it because musicals are a relatively niche interest.

Here's another way of thinking about it. I'm at the point of trading almost exclusively Phantom. I don't have every bootleg in the world, but my collection of Phantom boots alone is 2.7 TB. That is Phantom alone, I haven't even considered every other musical in the world and all their bootlegs. If you want me to have all these available publicly, I would basically need to get my own server. If I want my own server, I'm probably going to pay money. Hundreds of dollars of money. And I will have to maintain this, which will also cost money, with possibly the only way I get money back being to use, I don't know, ads or making users pay money for accounts, and unless I finagle things legally I could also be responsible if the site gets found and taken down, and you want me to do this, constantly, for bootlegs that 99% of people won't download? (You really think some people are raring to get the blurry 1992 video of Jun Sawaki, for example?) Yeah, that looks like a lot of work and trouble for me to do something that probably won't save others a lot of trouble either.

Anyway, I know you don't mean to be rude and I hope the above didn't come off as aggressive, it's just that, well, I've seen these arguments time and again and it never really seems to cross people's minds that, at the end of the day, this is a hobby that is technically illegal, that just about all the rules and limitations around are done for the safety of the bootlegger and not because they enjoy waving the boot out of your reach, and that trading is done because it's the safest, most anonymous way of, well, getting theatre bootlegs, that people have come up with. At any rate, I hope that answers your questions!

[prinnamon]

Hello! I saw your post about subtitling and fanworks other than fanart and fanfics and you mentioned being a subtitler yourself. If you’re okay with answering this could I ask how you started being a subtitler? (if that’s even how it works lol) I’m guessing it depends on what you’re subtitling but I’ve always super appreciated subtitles and the ppl that make them and think it would be fun to do

hope you have a nice day/night!

this ask sat in my inbox for a while because sadly my PC's power supply unit failed and made it less convenient for me to write lengthy posts. however! i'm back in the swing of things and im too excited to let it sit here any longer.

long post under the cut!

to start off, i wanna make it clear that what i do currently is write english-language subtitles for english-language content on YouTube! there is no translation involved. i'm not confident enough with any other languages to sub any other kind of content. so all the advice i can offer is gonna be related to my specific experience! (i'm learning that maybe i should have used the word "captions" instead of subtitles to eliminate confusion. you can tell i am an amateur and not a professional since i thought the words were largely interchangeable)

i started doing captions for fun several years ago as a fan of The Shrieking Wizard Co! that company/channel had an associated discord server, and there was a section for fans to submit captions for their videos using a service called Crowdscriber. i was not super good at it or familiar with any of the best practices at the time, but i could make out even overlapping voices pretty well and i had a lot of free time!

the SWC is no longer around as a company, but even before that i'd fallen off of doing captions for them since school started to eat up all my free hours again. recently, though, i picked the habit back up and started doing captions for a niche machinima series that a friend got me to watch! the first episode and a half already had captions, so i was dismayed when i realized the rest of the series lacked them. in a sort-of special feature video from a couple years back, the creator mentioned plans to enable community captions so fans could pitch in if they wanted! however, since then, YouTube has removed the community captions feature.* but the creator is still active and the series is still ongoing, and i figured i probably had the tools available to me to caption the episodes on my own. i reached out to ask if he'd like the help, and he said yes! so wahoo!

a lot of creators would probably be happy to accept volunteers to help them with captions. some larger creators may even be open to offering someone a paid job at it. the worst they can do is say no or not respond, so there's really no reason to be afraid of reaching out about subtitling one or more videos that mean a lot to you! sadly, this is not going to be as reliable for older stuff on abandoned channels. you may have the resources you need to subtitle something but no way to reach out to the creator so that your subtitle files can be uploaded and seen.

the first step of my process was to download all the episodes of the series that i wanted to caption! it's also fine to go one at a time if you lack the storage space, of course. i used VLC to download YouTube videos (check out this tutorial! it wasn't what i used at the time, but i think the one i did use is out of date and your odds with this one might be better!), but i know there are other reliable options out there.

YouTube's built-in caption/subtitle editor is pretty ass and not fun to work with! i find it frustratingly limiting. luckily, there are free programs which do it better. i've got decent experience editing videos, so the free version of the program DaVinci Resolve is my subtitle editor of choice since it feels very much the same as editing videos like i'm used to. i'd open it up and take some screenshots to show off the process, but my PC is currently not functioning. i will say that i found it pretty easy to muddle through after a couple basic "how to add subtitles in DaVinci Resolve" tutorials.

i still don't know if i'm the best person to give lessons on best practices for captioning, but here are some very basic guidelines i try to adhere to:

don't let captions take up more than two lines on screen at their standard size! three or more lines of captions cover a lot of what's happening on screen. there are times when it might be absolutely necessary because characters' lines are overlapping while other sounds are also occurring which are crucial to the viewer's understanding of the scene, and that's okay, but 3+ lines of captions should really be a rarity.

generally try to have one sentence on screen at a time! there are plenty of exceptions to this. for example, a character may utter several short sentences in a short amount of time (eg. "Yes. Okay. I understand.") which don't make sense to break up any further because the captions would be flashing on screen for such a short time, impeding readability. moreover, a character might say a sentence that needs to be broken up at a logical midpoint so it doesn't take up three or more lines on the screen.

preserve comedic and dramatic timing. sometimes the above rule must be sacrificed so that the punchline of a joke or the narrative twist of the knife is not revealed before it's supposed to be revealed.

sounds that characters acknowledge and react to, or which impact your understanding of the scene, should be represented with a caption. the audience probably needs to know about [distant gunfire] and [pained scream]. however, in a lot of cases, a sound is implied by what the audience can see or is unnecessary to their understanding of the scene. the audience probably does not need to be told that the door which they can see opening is making the sound that a door makes when it is opened. the audience can probably infer that the character who they can see walking is making audible footsteps. but then there are times when these sounds might be important because the characters comment on or react to them. it's situational. i say use your best judgment.

generally, above all, be courteous and remember that subtitles are a tool, and they're not something silly with. it's really not the place for jokes. it's more clear and useful when a gasp is captioned as [gasp] as opposed to [O_O] or [le terrified gasp]. it's more clear and useful to describe the sound of an airhorn as [airhorn] than to write [HOOONK!!!]. and please don't use captions for extensive easter eggs and inside jokes. like alt text, it's not a place to hide treats for people who click a secret button. it's an accessibility tool. (i'm pretty serious and passionate about this point, and i don't wanna see jokes about it in the reblogs or replies.)

if you can understand and transcribe what's being said, you Must do so accurately. this includes swear words. this includes slurs and disrespectful language and words and subject matters you're uncomfortable with. if you can't bear to type these things out, you're not the person who should be writing captions for this particular piece of media. if a hearing viewer can hear it, it must be captioned. deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers deserve to know exactly what is being said.

this page might be able to help you get started with some more specific professional guidelines! i disagree with some of these; for example, subtitling a foreign language as [speaking French] is really not ideal, because a hearing viewer who speaks French would be able to understand what was said, so you're giving the folks using the captions an incomplete experience. like i said above, if you can understand what's being said, transcribe it accurately.

YouTube accepts at least a few different file formats, including .sbv and .srt (if you're saving as an .srt from DaVinci Resolve, make sure to check ".srt Without Formatting"). proofread your work before sending it out/uploading it to catch surface errors! in fact, i recommend checking the captions in YouTube's subtitle editor by uploading them on a private video to see whether it throws up any errors at you or has any unintended formatting junk that you need to go back and eliminate.

i hope this was somewhat helpful and can maybe inspire you to go for it yourself! this mostly felt like me rambling about my personal experiences and opinions, haha. at the very least, if this didn't make any sense, maybe you can look at it and go "well if she's this incoherent and can still write captions/subtitles then certainly there's hope for me" lol. thanks for inviting me to talk about the thing i'm passionate about. it's a joy whenever someone asks me about this. i hope to get to do it as a job someday (though i'm not looking forward to when i inevitably have to caption somebody as [speaks Spanish] due to professional practices).

*i have heard from one or two folks that YouTube's now inviting viewers to contribute captions in a different way, by "providing corrections" to a video's auto-generated captions! even if this is true, i have to say it doesn't really excite me. in my opinion, trying to work around the automatic first pass is usually a worse experience than starting from scratch. the auto-generated timings tend to be really bad, usually not cutting naturally at the beginnings and ends of sentences, and that's ignoring the fact that auto-generated captions also censor swears and transcribe many things incorrectly. YouTube really should never have removed community captions. i hope they get brought back or replaced in a meaningful way

[cyberphuck]

The Human Voices Project

So I have a very very dear friend who has been blind since birth. They're actually pretty good at being blind-- they have a Masters in Eyeball Science, live independently, and make amazing art (by pressing their face so hard against the drawing surface to see it that they used to get sores on their cheeks!). They have also gone through a lot of shit-- some of it, but not all, due to being a disabled trans person-- and though they have been trying their hardest to keep a smile on their face, they live in a place where they have few in-person friends, accessible social spaces are hard to get to (or don't exist, or cost too much), and sometimes they don't have the energy to go out at all. They use a screen reader to hang out on tumblr and on discord etc, but one time, after a DnD session over voice chat, they told me that it was always so quiet in their apartment after the session was over, and that it was nice to hear real people talking. That stuck with me. Last week I started asking friends and family to record themselves talking-- about anything. My older brother and his wife told funny stories about crazy things they'd done. My friend who loves the circus arts described a particular act that they loved. Dad told a story of his own, and Seb and I recorded ourselves trading banter while he played Mario Kart. People read stories, read poems, described what they saw while on a jog through their neighborhood. A whole bunch of people, just talking, so that my blind friend could listen to a real human voice whenever they wanted-- not a polished podcast, not a sponsored youtube video, but a regular person.

I uploaded this first batch of audio files to a google drive folder and sent it over to my buddy. They loved it! They downloaded all the files to their phone so they could listen whenever they wanted. And I thought, there must be more people who want to tell stories about their lives, or talk about their favorite subject, or read poems that mean something to them.

If you have a way to record a digital audio file (most smartphones and tablets have a native recording app) and would like to participate in the Human Voices Project, you can send an audio file to thehumanvoicesproject (at) gmail [dot] com.

Guidelines: mp3 is the *preferred* format because it'll play on most devices without having to have a special app. If you send me something other than an mp3 I can convert it, but I would appreciate it if you converted it on your own.

most subjects are okay; the only thing that's absolutely a no is talking about or describing guts, innards, or viscera. Try to *avoid* explicitly describing abuse (of anyone, including animals), and if you're reading a story or poem, let me know if it's in the public domain or not so I can make sure to put those in a different folder.

you can introduce yourself if you want but you don't have to.

the recordings I've gotten are usually between 3 and 5 minutes long, but I also recorded myself reading a short story at 20 mins, and a friend talked about not knowing how to swim for 90 seconds, so any length is fine.

Right now the google drive folder containing the audio files is private. I might make it a public thing someday, but as for right now it's still a thing for my friend, to fill up the silence and brighten their day. Thank you so much to the people who've already contributed, and thanks also to all those who'll contribute in the future!

[blazehedgehog]

A Eulogy for my Playstation 4 Pro

So since I was a brain genius who decided to transfer all my fundraiser money to my bank account on a weekend, let's have a little eulogy for my poor Playstation 4 Pro.

I bought it in 2017 after a hellish move from Colorado to Nevada. We'd lived in Colorado for 26 years, and rented the same house for 24 of those years. I literally grew up in that house. Then our landlords got greedy (as all landlords eventually do), almost tripled our rent, and we had to move.

One of the last things I did before I packed up my computer was release The Definitive Way to Play Sonic Adventure on Youtube. That video was a modest success, but it had a secondary effect where a no-commentary gameplay video I'd uploaded for the fangame Sonic Utopia got picked up by the algorithm as a result, and that video suddenly took off like wildfire. I found myself sitting on a pair of videos that were about to pull in close to a combined 3 million views. It was the most I'd had a video blow up in a very long time.

I was now flush with a few thousand dollars of cash that I could do whatever I wanted with. That was great, as I got to help cover some moving expenses. I gave my Mom some money, I paid one of the deposits on our new apartment, paid to fix some stuff that got broken in the move, I bought myself a new desk, new computer chair, some storage shelves, a new bed frame, and still had about $700 left to spare. So I bought a PS4 Pro and a small handful of games (The Nathan Drake Collection, Yakuza Kiwami, The Last of Us Remastered, and Parappa the Rapper Remastered, I think). It was the first true next-generation console I'd bought in 11 years -- I'd had a Wii U, but that doesn't count.

Within that first year, I'd already run into my first problem with that Playstation 4. Back in the Xbox 360 era, I had a moment in my life where I was a psychopath that was running a media server off my PC. Every morning I'd wake up, download everything my Youtube subs had posted the day before, along with whatever GiantBomb had uploaded that day, and threw it up on the media server. The 360 could see the server, and those downloads would basically become my background noise for the day. I watched the entire GiantBomb Persona 4 Endurance Run that way: on the 360, through my media server. For context, these were the days before there was any way to watch Youtube on a television. There was no app. Youtube was just a website. So the Media Server was what I had to do to see Youtube on another screen.

In the move out to Nevada, I'd bought a cheap 32GB USB thumbdrive from the back-to-school section at Wal-mart and filled it full of movies and videos and stuff. With the PS4 set up, I plugged that thumbdrive in and tried out the PS4's media player capabilities, hoping it worked like the Xbox 360.

It did... for about 45 minutes. In the middle of watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie the media player suddenly crashed and refused to see the USB thumbdrive anymore. I reached down to pull it out only to find it was almost too hot to touch. I might have actually dropped the thumbdrive because it shocked me just how hot it was. I have never felt a piece of electronics be that hot before.

For the rest of that day, that USB port was dead. Nothing you plugged into it would be recognized. Eventually, it finally started working with controllers, but it never accepted any other thumbdrives, ever.

After about three years, I started to notice recordings were starting to get a little weird. Clips I'd record of my Fortnite matches would have huge 2-3 second chunks go missing, or the encoding would corrupt and smear. But then it went away, so I figured maybe it was just a problem with the game and not the console. It'd come back every now and then, maybe once a year, but it only ever happened with Fortnite, and only occasionally.

About a year and a half ago, I started to notice something else weird. Unless there was a specific game I needed to play for work stuff (like Sonic Frontiers or whatever), my PS4 was mostly just a Fortnite machine, and mainly because the PC version of Fortnite is a disaster.

But for months I'd left a disc in my PS4's disc drive. I think it was probably Balan Wonderworld or something, and as I booted up Fortnite for my daily founder's mission rewards, I noticed a sound. I'd been hearing it on and off for a while, but now I was finally paying attention to it. I realized: the console was sitting there scanning the disc, over and over and over, like it couldn't read it. I'd hear the disc motor spin up, the soft click-click-click as the read head scanned for data. It'd spin down, spin up, click-click-click, whirrrrrr, click-click, spin down, spin up, etc. Over and over. It'd do this for a good 30-45 seconds, then finally settle down and identify the disc.

The first time I noticed this, I ejected the Balan disc and put in something else; I think it was Dreams. PS4 read the disc instantly. I shrugged, figured maybe the Balan disc was just cursed and didn't think anything of it.

About a week later, I caught it doing it with the disc for Dreams. And then Sonic Frontiers. Then Sonic Superstars. Pretty much any disc I'd put in there. As the months wore on, it started taking multiple minutes for it to identify the disc.

A few weeks before it died, I ended up taking the disc out and basically resigning myself to only putting a disc in if I was going to play it, and removing that disc the moment I was done, because that scanning process seemed like it was making the problem worse.

A few months before it died, I got a full hardware crash on the console. The error code it gave me pointed to a hardware failure, but a google revealed that it was a generic error code that could mean literally anything. Right around this time, the video corruption in my Fortnite recordings came back around. I had a feeling it was the HDD.

Thus began the saga of trying to replace my PS4's HDD. I knew it could take SSDs, so I did some research, saved up $100, and bought a 2TB SSD that was compatible with the console. Followed Sony's official instructions on replacing the HDD, and...

It didn't work.

I vowed to get my money back and order a different HDD, but prices went up and realizing the other mounting problems with this machine (including the fried USB port), and my general mood overall, I just kept the money and figured I'd ride or die until the machine breathed its last.

8 months later... it refused to boot up at all.

Rest in piece, king. The only other console I've ever had straight up die on me like this was my Xbox 360, and if I'm being honest, I kind of smothered that poor boy a little bit hoping to get a sturdier console back from the repair center.

(I did not, but that's a story for another day.)

[jenba]

Hi Jen! I hope you're doing well! I know this is a complete longshot, seeing as how they're so old and came out back in 2014, but is there any chance you still have the three save files by SimGuruZera called "Bachelor," "Mad Science," and "Power Couple"? I noticed them in an old YouTube video and have been looking everywhere online for them but can't find them anywhere. I even used Wayback Machine lol. Your post was one of the few to even mention them so I thought I'd ask.

Hi Anon!

I looked through my old Saves and couldn't find them, so I did a little searching on the web and found them on what looks to be a French Sims 4 forum (posted by SimModo_Olive). I downloaded the zip file in the post and loaded the save files up to make sure they were the same ones. They looked right to me!

I made sure I could load all three. I didn't play them, just loaded and saved. I renamed them with "777" in the number so they shouldn't overwrite any saves you already have, zipped them up, and uploaded them to Sim File Share:

Download SimGuruZera Save Files (SFS)

I haven't uploaded anything in ages so I hope Sim File Share is still acceptable! Let me know if you have any trouble downloading or opening the files. You'll want to just pop them into your Saves folder but if you're worried about them overwriting something, I would back up your Saves folder first just in case. If you don't have any saves starting with "777" in the file name then you should be okay. :)

Edited to add - here's the text from the post on the French Sims forum translated to English, for anyone who wants to know what these files are!

For your greatest pleasure, we offer you 3 unique pre-recorded games. Each provides a different look at some of the possibilities the game offers and allows you to discover ways of playing that you might not encounter in the beginning of a gaming session.

Bachelor : Play the life of the rich and influential Rico Bachelor, who knows almost everyone in town. You start at a party in Rattlesnake's Juice Bar, where Rico will have a suggestive conversation with Katrina Caliente. Take advantage of Rico's Flirting emotion, with a Charisma level of 10, and the Romantic character trait to help him achieve his current aspiration of successfully engaging 10 Kisses!

Mad Science: Enter a world of crazy science with the Malakai brothers. Being twins, these two Rocket Scientists are physically identical - but they couldn't be spaced much further apart based on their personalities. One aspiring to be a Friend to the World, and the other a Public Enemy, explore how these Sims, with very different personality traits and opposing goals, can have significantly different long-term stories.

Power Couple: Wondering what it's like to have all that? Jump into the life of wealth and power with Ethan and Allyson Poole. Both at the peak of their careers, they have honed most of their skills, earned some great awards, and are even working on their next aspiration. See what it's like to have everything and be good at everything.

[olderthannetfic]

Hi! So I have a rambling explanation that’s going to lead into a genuine question about making a website somewhat like a03 or finding alternatives to a site I will mention (it’s not a03 don’t worry)

I am a non/disney editor, crossover artist, amv maker and deep faker and any other term for “make videos of characters in canon or au type scenarios to music”. I’m also a fanficcer. And I remember when being wary of Anne Rice and Archie Comics and DC was a thing. A teacher, to cover his ass for an assignment of mine, taught me how to write an apology letter to a company on the offhand my hand written basically Batman fanfiction, made it’s way online or was heard about. I was in the tail end right before A03 but I am extremely grateful that the site exists. Okay. So now I need to talk about the Owl House. In season three episode special one, Luz Noceda makes an amv coming out to her mom.

Editor friends in a private discord were both happy and worried. Luz is one of us….but also Disney knows about us, to some level. Nothings happened I’ve just been stewing and I’m just worried something might hit the fan for the community given many of us use Disney media (hard not to when 80% of things put out is by them) So I’m asking how one would make a platform like A03 but for video media. Or if there’s things you know like that. YouTube is getting more and more difficult for anyone nowadays too.

Again, nothings really happened yet, I just can’t get it out of my head

--

Video is worlds harder than text, but you know that.

There are a couple of approaches here: First, more is more. The more sites you have your stuff on, the smaller the chance that Disney can nuke all of them. Second, if you're not just using youtube and getting good at playing the algorithm, you need some way for people to find you or to keep track of all your alternate hosting.

Vidders of the oldschool sort have taken to using AO3. It doesn't have native hosting, of course, but it provides a stable URL and useful fandom-based tagging without algorithm bullshit. It's also a decent way to get vids out there if you only have download links and no streaming (though, of course, that means fewer views). You can embed a bunch of different copies of the same thing in the same work.

I don't know of a ton of fannish attempts at video hosting that are open to everyone. The only person I can think of who's heavily working on that is the guy behind Vidders.net who has a few different projects going.

For other hosting options, I'd see what AO3 currently has whitelisted for embedding. Two obvious ones are Critical Commons and Archive.org.

--

Broadly, yes, fanvids and AMVs have been subject to even more disastrous mass deletions than fanfic has, and far fewer of them have been saved by other fans because video files are huge.

Oldschool AMVs in the strict sense (i.e. Japanese anime and not Disney) are catalogued and sometimes hosted on animemusicvideos.org. Oldschool Media Fandom has some vidding archivists, and really old stuff was released on tape and then disc, and people still have their copies of those. But online-only fannish video stuff from the 00s and 10s has massive gaps in the historical record already.

Disney is quiescent now, but they haven't always been, and neither have other rights holders. Worse, a bunch of hosts vidders liked just up and deleted their entire sites, wiping out eras of videos and commentary.

Your stuff is in less danger than it would have been 10 years ago, as far as anyone can tell, but video is always in massive danger of disappearing.

--

If you actually succeed at video!AO3, more power to you! I'm just skeptical that you'll be up to the technical and financial challenge if you don't already know more than you currently do, you know?

Hosting video has, among other problems, the issue that people trading actual abuse materials will upload their videos to your service. Hosts often play whackamole with illegal and traumatizing content. I've known people whose jobs exposed them to this shit, and they were... not okay.

I guess you could make things slightly easier on yourself if you restricted video to cartoons only, but then you'd have the same issues amvs.org does where people who start as one kind of editor start working with other footage and keep trying to upload the wrong thing.

It's often not really viable to host unless you make everyone pay and/or you're authorizing a few dozen accounts of people you've vetted, not running a service just anyone can sign up for. Hosting a hundred videos for friends that you have reviewed and know to be fanvids/amvs is a lot easier than hosting enough stuff that you can't personally review it all.

If you or anyone else is interested in trying to start a site, I'd go check out the various writings by Denise (who runs Dreamwidth). She has some twitter threads and posts on enforcement and running a platform. I remember she talked about the tech people use to detect CSAM from known law enforcement databases.

I don't want to be a downer here, but there are serious legal implications to being the actual host as opposed to just running a discord or something on someone else's platform and reporting some fucker if they try to post illegal shit.

--

If I were you, I'd get my buddies together, embed all our works on AO3, and then maybe make a collection or tagging standards so we could find each other's stuff.

For hosting, I'd add the Internet Archive, Vimeo, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. to Youtube and do a periodic audit of AO3 works to make sure links were still working.

AO3 already has a lot of tags that have been made filterable, like Fanvids, AMV, Video Format: Streaming, etc.

[are-you-judd-enough]

last updated: 26/Oct/2024

Submissions open: see below the cut.

Submitting a map, best practice; a masterpost

I thought I'd make a styleguide and masterpost for how to submit a map!

On backups: First things first, take a video of the result as a backup. Load the code, skip to the end, see the funny cephalopods dance and hold in the screen capture button. If an update ruins your code, this backup will live on until you delete it. I take the video right away instead of watching a replay and take the screens from that video recording where I can pause and scrub for the frame I want.

1st preference: I love receiving your codes; I'll do all the work for you! Please also make a backup via video capture because updates kill your match codes (learned this the hard way). You can go to the terminal in the lobby and save a game to recieve its code!

The splatoon font is utterly incomprehensible, so please make a backup screenshot of the code; if you typo and then play too many matches, you can lose the code and with it the map. this happens more than you think and it's sad to not be able to feature your map!

On codes: Codes can be generated from any of your last 50 matches, "no-contests" included, and remain available until a patch breaks continuity. Once you have a code, it's saved and you can play as much as you want right away, play 60 more matches and your code persists! Patches can take us by surprise, however, so please prepare a backup.

Second preference; If you're the kind of person who wants to submit screenshots, remember that you need to submit two!

The "question" image should be a clean image of the map, before it is obscured by the handsome judges. This one is easy to grab because the map is displayed for about 3 seconds. This should not be the mid-match map.

The "answer" image should be after the splash of the colliding ink, but before the banner drops. This can be a little tricky to pin down unless you're taking the capture from a video capture. This is very difficult to grab from a twitter video because you cannot pause the video without the video controls being overlayed, but easy on switch where you can track, pause and save the frame as a screenshot.

For Splatfests, if you want to include the vicory or defeat message becasue it's a multiplier battle, feel free to keep it included.

Some advice: Lil Judd and I like to curate interesting and close maps, especially ones that have you scratching your head: to this end, please also submit interesting losses too, noone is thinking less of you for it, we are not @squids-posting-their-ws. It's no fun if you can guess the answer, just because it's a submitted map.

Finally; A video capture (hold in the screenshot button) of the results screen is also a valid option. You can upload the video somewhere manually, such as to youtube. It is no longer possible to upload directly to twitter from your switch so you'll either need to read the information from your SD card, download your video, or by connecting to your switch.

It helps out if you trim your clip: best practice is to have the clip start at the black screen before the map is shown, and end after the banner has come down, but before the players are displayed.

Asks and messages are open! If your messages are open, too, I'll let you know when I've queued your map so long as I have the spoons (as in, when your map enters the hopper, I have a lot of maps and am not sure when it will be seen, but it will be!). To be able to post properly, the blog can't accept submissions via the tumblr submission section; strange, I know.

I make a note of your blog name, for credit purposes, when I queue the map, so if you change your blog name between submission and posting, I might have diffculty crediting you.

[rjalker]

Oh hey. Crochet people! You don't have to do a magic circle or chain 4 and slip stitch, you can literally just treat the first chain as a circle and do stitches into it!!! Then pull on the tail to tighten it!!!!!

To do douvle crochets, chain 3, then use the first chain as the circle.

Actually Walks is here so I made a video showing how to do it. Brb in like 10mins while it uploads to Youtube....

...Okay it was longer than 10 minutes but anyways, here you go!

Someone tell me how I can rotate this video. It wasn't supposed to be sideways...

This video is also on the web archive! Feel free to download it. Apparently you can't link videos from there so they're playable from the dashboard...

[ID: A two minute video in portait mode, showing how to crochet a circle using a gold metal hook, and blue yarn against a black background, with flash on. White hands hold the string and hook, and demonstrate how to do three chains, followed by multiple double crochets, while the narrator says, interrupted at one point as a black and white kitten jumps up and obscures the hook and yarn with her face for a moment, then leaving one paw visible: "--it might be a Short on YouTube but okay uh this is how you can skip doing a magic ring or chaining four and then going back! So put on a slip knot and then chain three, that's one, two, three, yarn over, and then use your very first chain as a thing and pull through --oops-- then do a double crochet like normal: yarn over.. and literally just keep doing this until you get all the way around-- "--oh, Saphire wants to join the party. And she's sticking her face under the camera, sticking her face in my-- tail in my face. hi. "Sapphire she wants to know why we're not petting her… Then when you are all done, put the hook---if I can do it on camera--through the first stitch…which I'm failing at… Whatever, good enough. "Do a slip stitch, now you have a circle, and then you just pull on the piece of yarn to tighten it, and now it's completely solid in the center and you can continue making your hat or whatever you're making and you don't have to do a magic circle or waste yarn chaining four and then slip stitching and then having a giant hole in the center, and it is so much easier! Why doesn't everybody do this?! All righty, that's it, bye-bye!" End ID.]

[dragonmarquise]

MegaMan NT Warrior officially available on YouTube for a limited time!!

It doesn't seem like anyone in the BN/NTW tags has made a post about this here on Tumblr? So I might as well at least let my followers know more about this. Copy-pasting from a post I made on one of my other social medias:

Yesterday as of this post, practically all of the MegaMan NT Warrior episodes, including Axess, have been uploaded to the official Capcom USA YouTube channel in celebration of the upcoming Battle Network Legacy Collection!~

The playlist for the first season is here, and then here's the playlist for Axess.

Now, some things to note:

The episodes will only be available until sometime in September, so please be sure to watch them while you can!! And also download/rips the videos if you want your own file backups of the episodes as well.

Whoever uploaded the episodes had, for some reason, simply used translations of the original Japanese episodes (one of the big examples is the first episode saying "Plug In! MegaMan!" instead of "Jack In! MegaMan!" :u) instead of the actual dub titles.

In addition, they went by the original Japanese order of episodes. Including episodes that were skipped in the dub. So after a certain point, all of the titles are completely off from the actual episode. Two examples are Ms. Millions' episode being named for the skipped idol episode, and the Wily memory chip episode being named after the skipped baseball episode. :P

It seems, somehow, the first dub episode of Axess was lost. Instead, they uploaded an officially subtitled version of the original Japanese episode. This is the only episode between the two seasons that was apparently lost.

The time limit on the availability of their episodes, combined with that one official sub episode, is leading a lot of people to believe Capcom will start selling a new special DVD/Blu-Ray/etc. set of all the dub episodes together once they take them down from the channel. This could also include a separate set of officially subtitled episodes for all of them, including the seasons that never got dubbed at all. One can only hope!! ;o;

So yeah, if you're a fan of the dub or even just want to watch out of curiosity, go check out the playlists while they're still up!! :D