CuVoodoo

the sorcery of copper

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montage

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Here some information about what I use to make the videos for the podcast.

general information

release

This podcast is not the main project. The projects I talk about are. And the video is just the final part. Projects need time, particularly because it is often about something new I have to and want to learn. Then comes the video in the end. Thus don't expect a new video every day. My goal is to release an episode on the 7th (at 07:07) of each month on my blog. Everything else is additional goodies.

resources

The opening music uses Voodoo by Opusvertigo.

The font for the opening screen is Voodoo Spirits by Levi Halmos.

recording

camcorder

To record my videos I use a Panasonic HC-V707EG-K. It was one of the first to offer 50 fps at 1080p. It's not bad, but lacks a couple of things:

  • no headphone connector
  • no manual focus ring
  • 60 frame/s only for the US model
  • no remote control or connection for a remote
  • the external microphone recording is sometime very noisy

screencast

To record the screen I use SimpleScreenRecorder. It's simple and does the job well.

audio

To record the audio I use a Zoom H4n recorder with a t.bone HC 95 head set microphone.

Additionally I have Audio-Technica ATR3350 omnidirectional condenser lavalier microphone. But when plugged in the camera it generates a lot of noise in the background. I could not figure the cause.

Previously I used the built-in Panasonic HC-V707EG-K when using the camcorder, and a Samson C01U USB microphone for the screencasts.

editing

video

I am using blender to make my videos. Most know it for its 3D modelling, but it can also do video editing. It is slick, stable, and does the job quite well. And it allows powerful scripting.

I tried several non-linear video-editors:

  • I started with Kdenlive (v0.9.10). But it crashes too often, it has to be restarted because some actions can't be performed in the timeline for unknown reasons. What made me change was the speed video effect. It does not stack with the rotate effect, and it does not work correctly (it uses video before the beginning of the video part, and does no go until the end)
  • Pitivi freezes when I open a folder with H265 videos, and does not provide speed control.
  • Lightworks (v12.0) does not work on Arch Linux. It shows a empty screen.
  • Shotcut does not provide speed control.
  • Cinelerra does not support a lot of input media. But I would like to test it further.
  • Blender does not provide Motion-Compensated Frame Interpolation. This means that the input video frame rate has to match the project frame rate, else it gets unsynchronized.

To encode the video before and after editing I use ffmpeg. It does a good job at transcoding videos. And for the final video packaging I use mkvtoolnix.

audio

Audacity does the job well and provides a nice noise removal function. But it does not provide a command line interface and can not be scripted.

SoX is small and fully scriptable. Its noise reduction is not very good, but the rest works well.

subtitles

To make subtitles I use Aegisub. On the first pass I transcribe the video with approximate timing, only using the keyboard. I correct the timing with the mouse on the second pass.

Until episode #007 I transcribed the complete videos in the subtitles. Starting episode #008 I use the subtitles to add comments, details, and correct myself.

work flow

To help me making videos, I have a Makefile script which does all sorts of side tasks:

  • compress the raw recordings
  • clean the audio
  • render the video (after adding transitions)
  • extract the chapter marks
  • package the final video (with chapters, tags, cover, and comment subtitles)
  • create a torrent
  • upload to my server
  • upload to the tracker
  • upload to youtube

But I correct and extend them for each new episode.

I just have to make the recordings, put them together, comment the video in subtitles, run the script, and finally click on the publish button.

montage.1433768626.txt.gz · Last modified: 2024/01/07 17:49 (external edit)