Today at ComicCon was “Lost” day. The two writers and the cast showed up in front of 6,500 fans to show teaser clips of Lost’s 6th and final season and (vaguely) answer some fan questions. Here’s a rundown:
– Small clips were shown from a timeline where the 815 crash never happened.
– The writers said that the timeline might have changed.
– But they were quick to also say that if they were to erase 5 seasons of plot that would be a “cheat to the viewers”.
– When asked if there will be flashbacks in season 6, the writers said that the “format will be different”.

Now, put all that together and theorize. Potential spoilers below (although I’ve been wrong before):

I believe that S6 will start off with the Oceanic 815 landing safely in LAX. The story will be split between two parallel universes: our original timeline, and a timeline where the crash never happened. Dead characters like Charlie, and Ana Lucia will be shown alive and well. It’s already confirmed that the Juliet actress will be back for a few episodes, and maybe Shannon & Boone too.

The other timeline will continue just after Jacob’s death. The surviving people from the nuclear detonation (which is what created the split of the timeline), will be transported back to 2007-8. This is what Jacob meant when he said just before he died “they are coming”.

In the other timeline, the heroes will just try to get on with their lives. Until that weird guy named Jacob tells them that things are not how they should have been. They think he’s crazy, even real-Locke thinks so too! But quickly after that the “special” people among the 815 passengers would momentarily cross over to another reality. Maybe through dreams, or other means. This is what will make them think that maybe this Jacob guy might not be so crazy after all.

These cross overs have a unique effect on the other timeline: apparitions and whispers. This is how these are going to be explained.

At the end of the season the two timelines will be merged back. But someone will have to take a decision: do you merge back to a timeline where so many people died, but have found their true self just before they died? At this point we should remember the main point of Lost, which is all about redemption and fate.

I posted the above theory on DarkUFO’s site, the biggest Lost fan site on the internet. There were many comments there from seemingly confused people by the various announcements, but when I wrote the above theory, everyone stopped commenting. There were a few saying that my theory makes sense, but they stopped commenting (so far). I feel like a party pooper. It wasn’t of course intentional, as this was simply a theory of mine. But apparently a theory that made total sense to them. Shows once more that what people want are more mysteries, not answers. It’s the answers that kill a show like this, not the added mysteries. It’s counter-intuitive for many people to realize it though.

This is the art of Fade from TN, USA. Fade uses the modest (but legendary) 3.1 MP Canon HV20 camcorder to shoot her amazingly artistic and beautiful pictures. I am a huge fan of her art and I had to write this blog post, as a shrine to her art. She’s yet one bright example showing us that you don’t need the best camera to shoot the best photograph or the best video. You just need to have the vision, and the skill. Enjoy.

Finally, a few more nice pictures shot by others with the HV20.

I had a shock tonight. I was watching the most popular YouTube videos for the day, and I stumbled on this and this video, promotional clips from the new movie “Funny People“. The clips felt very video-like, they had nothing from the $70 million look that the movie cost to produce. Which of course gives us hope that our consumer HD cameras can produce great-looking video if we knew how to post-process it. I tried to find which camera was used, but to no avail (it has a digital look though).

Later, I searched and found the trailer at Apple’s site to try to see more of the movie’s scenes. When I watched the trailer though, it was a completely different look. Obviously, the YouTube clips were ungraded!!! The actual trailer really did look like a Hollywood movie! I can’t believe how the colorists were able to make this originally terribly-looking movie to look so good. Check the before and after!

Of course, there’s always the chance that the Youtube clips were the ones that were graded to be super-contrasty for some reason, or that whoever exported these clips messed them up, but I don’t think so. It really feels like the youtube clips are the original ungraded clips, and the trailer was graded. Which shows us how important grading is. You could take any digital HD camera and make it look as fabulous (as long as you have access to RAW).

Update: I played with the HD YouTube clips and tried to reproduce the look. And while I was working with the useless (for color grading needs) 2 mbps YouTube clips, I was able to get pretty close to the trailer look (I would need the movie’s RAW files to be able to completely emulate it). Which means that the YouTube clips are *definitely* the original clips, as they came out of the camera, ungraded! If *I* was able to get so close with these useless 2 mbps files, the movie’s colorist could very easily get to that trailer look with his RAW 4k files. Which again, it shows us that if we know how to light, frame, shoot, and grade, we can get the “film look” even with a consumer HD camera (of course we would have to try a bit harder, but it’s possible). No need for 35mm adapters.

I used the freeware Aav6cc plugin (saturated greens and yellows, desaturated reds), Sony Vegas’ “Contrast” plugin (-16 value), and the “Color Corrector” plugin (low saturation, higher gamma, a bit of offset, mids+lows towards yellow). Piece of cake, huh!

Update 2: One more. Again, I would need the original RAW/4k files to do better than that.

3D is back as the next big thing (until holograms arrive, hah!) and many forces are heavily pushing for it on all fronts. Soon enough, we will be enjoying 3D without the need for annoying glasses too.

Since July 2009, YouTube supports 3D videos. It offers various viewing styles to fit all kinds of tastes and… glasses. So, here’s how to shoot, edit and export such 3D footage in stereoscopic mode (a mode that allows YouTube to offer more than one viewing style) on Sony Vegas Pro 9 and prior versions, or Vegas Platinum 10 or earlier. Vegas Pro 10+ and Platinum 11+ have their own, different way of editing 3D.

The shoot

1. Buy this and this. Here’s a cheaper twin-head model if you’re short on money.

2. Place two identical cameras on the twin-head tripod. If not identical, they should at least be similar models (e.g. the HF10 and the HF100). Leave less than an inch/2cm of space between the two cameras for zoom level 0. But if you zoom-in, let’s say 3x, make their space ~2-3 inches/4-6cm. Of course, you need to be super-precise about your zooming level each time (genlock the cameras if they have that feature).

3. Setup the cameras the exact same way: frame rate, resolution, zoom level, exposure compensation, shutter speed, etc etc.

4. Make sure the cameras are level with each other (you can enable the “Grey markers” feature on your camera to test if the horizon is tilted in one of the two cameras). Try to shoot an object in a non-static way, always making sure there’s some background visible, so we can fake “depth” in the image.

5. Press “Record” on both cameras (maybe even by using a remote control, if your cameras came with one). I suggest you record in plain 50i/60i because 3D requires more frames to look natural (although PF25/PF30/24p/25p are workable, PF24 can be very problematic depending on the pulldown removal algorithm used, so stick with the default frame rates).

6. Use the clapper board to clap. The sound it makes will be used later to line up the footage from the two cameras.

The editing

1. Load Vegas, and set up a 1920×540 project if your cameras were full HD, or a 1280×360 project if your cameras were 720p (notice how the vertical resolution is half of 1080p/720p). Make sure that the rest of the project properties are correct (e.g. frame rate, field order, aspect ratio). Select “Best” for quality, and “interpolation” for de-interlacing algorithm. Here’s how it would look like if you shot in NTSC 1080/60i HD:

2. Place the two nearly identical clips from the two cameras in the timeline (one clip on the video track on top of the other clip). Zoom-in in the timeline, and find the place where the clapper makes the clapping sound. Based on this, line-up the two videos. Cut off the edges of these clips.

3. Load the “Track Motion” dialog for the video track on top. Click “Lock Aspect Ratio” icon in its toolbar. Then, change under the “Position” section the following: X:-480 Y:0 Width:1,920 Height:540. It should look like this:

4. Load the “Track Motion” dialog for the video track on the bottom. Do the same as above, but for X use the 480 value (instead of -480). Close it down. Now, you should have something that looks like this in the (ultra-wide) preview screen:

5. That’s it. Your video is now stereoscopic. Save the project.

The exporting

1. Export like it’s described here, but with two modifications: first, ignore the “project properties” setup in step-1 (we already did that step above), and secondly, the resolution. If you are exporting at 720p, then the resolution you should export is 1280×360. Everything else is the same as in that exporting tutorial. If you are exporting at 1080p, export at 1920×540 and give it a bit more bitrate (e.g. 8-9 mbps).

2. When the video is exported, upload it on Youtube. Make sure you add the following TAGS in your video, otherwise YouTube won’t apply the 3D menu options: HD, 3D, yt3d:enable=true, yt3d:aspect=16:9 (eventually it will be possible to tell Youtube your videos are 3D, so the 3D tags won’t be needed, but for now, use them).

3. After a while, YouTube will have converted your video to HD (it transcodes the low-resolution versions first and HD becomes available a few hours later). Wear your glasses, select the right Youtube 3D menu option on your video page (depending on what kind of glasses you got), and enjoy!

Notes

1. The kind of export we did here is called stereoscopic (with its wide 2 clips next to each other). There’s a way to export directly an anaglyph red-cyan image, hard coded, but this is the old way of doing things, now YouTube can dynamically adapt the stereoscopic image to various methods and viewing styles, so the stereoscopic way in this very article should be the method you should choose.

2. You can edit & export at full HD rather than just 540 pixels height, but you will have to create a 3840×1080 project to do that (1920+1920×1080). Unfortunately, only Sony Vegas Pro 9+ supports such high project resolutions.

3. YouTube requires 2x the CPU speed to playback 3D videos. So an older PC that barely plays back smoothly an HD YouTube video, won’t be able to playback a 3D version of that HD video smoothly.

4. If you don’t have two cameras, you can “fake” it by using the exact same clip twice, but by offsetting it by 4-5 frames in its video track compared to the other clip. This is how I did it on my 3D test here, since I don’t have two HV20s (although I am seriously thinking of getting an HV30 now to use it in 3D mode). This hack of course doesn’t produce realistic 3D, but it’s good enough to test things around and learn the workflow.

A common problem users have is to know how to export to an intermediate format rather than on a delivery codec (read here for the difference between the two types of codecs and when to use one or the other). The following is two tutorials showing you how to do just that with AVI and Quicktime MOV intermediate codecs. The example codecs used are Lagarith for AVI, and Avid’s DNxHD for Quicktime. You export in a similar way for any other AVI or MOV intermediate format (e.g. for Cineform, Huffyuv etc).

First, you need to install these third party intermediate codecs. Download and install Lagarith from here, and Avid DNxHD from here (bottom of the page, the PC version). Then, start Vegas, and closely follow the tutorial links: Lagarith/AVI tutorial, DNxHD/MOV tutorial.

If you are not sure which one of the two tutorials to pick: use AVI if your destination is a PC, and MOV if your destination is a Mac or Quicktime Pro. Use the Huffyuv AVI codec if your destination is Linux.

We got married in a French castle. Lavish and all. I am very grateful to my parents in law who paid and took care for everything. That was really amazing on their part, and I can’t thank them enough!

If I could go back in time though, and if it was my decision alone, I would just do the town-hall wedding, with 5-6 of the most closer-to-us guests and be done with it. I just don’t see the point of expensive weddings. “Γαμος τρικουβερτος” my mother says to describe big weddings. And I ask you, why? Why spend a fortune for such a thing, when you can keep the money and educate your future children in a better college? Or buy a house, or a new car?

Sorry, I just don’t see the big deal over the whole wedding thing. I was never one of these women who dream of their wedding day: I picked my wedding dress within 10 minutes, 1 week before the wedding (because I had just arrived in France). Heck, my mother and my mother in law, present at the store that day, couldn’t make their own minds which wedding dress they wanted for me, rather than ME having such a hard time deciding. I just find all that superficial. What really mattered to me was to find my one true love and be with him (which I did). I guess, I like things to be simple, I don’t particularly like formalities.

Then, there’s the other thing: many parents (like my own parents for my brother’s wedding) are pushing for a big wedding because it’s a social status thing. The bigger the wedding, the more “respected” you are as a family man (let alone that my parents divorced 2 years later 😛 😛 ). Well, yeah, that’s cool and all, but thing is, why should the couple be your sacrificing goat? There were people at my brother’s wedding that the couple never met before (e.g. the elected senator for our periphery, that my father invited). At the end, in many such weddings, it’s the parent’s party rather than the kids’.

Some will bring the “have a celebration, bring the two families together”, argument, but I don’t buy it. I had a good time at my wedding, sure, and I am sure the guests did too. But it’s not something I would want to spend thousands of dollars/euros at. Even when calculating-in the wedding gifts, you’ll still be at a great financial loss. Heck, most of the guests are probably going to get so drunk, that they wouldn’t remember whose wedding that was. Case in point, we haven’t watched our wedding video more than once, and I have no clue where our wedding pics are located in our house.

So my advice to you youngsters out there: don’t do a big wedding. Go marry in a town hall with up-to-10 of your closest friends/family, and then, during the next months, just invite over on weekends the rest of the family/friends for barbecues or dinners at your home. This way you will get more personal time with them to talk about your plans and your life together with your new spouse, rather than one big crazy party where everyone’s drunk. That’s what I would do now that I am older and wiser (and if it was my decision, JBQ likes the formalities of a big wedding for example).

An experimental piece, comprised by unused footage I had around from the Canon SX200 IS digicam. Download the HD version here. It’s not really that good, which is why I was contemplating adding it to my YouTube account which is used for my tests, rather than Vimeo’s. My idea originally was to use a talent (model), and have a small story about him/her trying to sleep, and when falling into REM, to start seeing these things and wake up in terror. Each time he/she would be falling further into their world. But I have no model, so I had to release it as is.

I wasn’t on drugs when I made that btw. But I definitely had a lot of sushi in my system.

A beautiful and cleverly-shot HV20 video by music/video artist Arman Bohn for his song “Combat”. Arman’s first album is called “Bits“, and it’s inspired by classic video games.

The album can probably be classified as “easy listening indie pop with some electronic beats”, and it’s comprised by 13 songs. Its best songs are “Kaboom!” and “Combat” (toe-tapping, addictive hooks), followed (somewhat distantly) by “Warlords”, “Atlantis”, “No Escape!”, “Night Driver” and “Demons to Diamonds”. The music has a feel-good aura that should satisfy most indie (as in genre) listeners. The marriage of electro+rock in serene melodies make for one good calming listening session.

The lyrics are stellar. Smart, clear, and often epic. It’s obvious from the lyrics that Arman is one sharp guy.

On some tracks the keyboard is the main instrument, while on others the electric guitar, however both are usually are blanketed away by the constant vocals: not much of instrument solos/hooks are going on, which at the end makes the album sound a bit flat and repetitive. Only few tracks, like “Demons to Diamonds” have the music taking a front-row role compared to the vocals. For some of the songs to sound less flat, the tempo should have been upgraded to indie rock (rather than “pop”) with guitars taking over, while the vocals should have been a bit more aggressive. In other words, the album needed a bit more “nerve” in some places. One of the reasons why “Kaboom!” is so damn good, is because it takes that approach in its chorus.

Rating: 4/5

Users who export in web-sized MP4 h.264/AAC, primarily from Sony Vegas, create MP4 files that are not streamable via Flash (Flash has had MP4 decoding support for over a year now, but it requires the format to be tweaked, to be “streaming”). Vegas has no such option in their two h.264 encoders it carries. This means that if your MP4 is not streamable, it will have to completely download to the user’s browser cache before it can start playing back. And that can take a long time, aggravating your viewers…

A user over at HV20.com found a freeware utility that will allow users to load their stock MP4 files in it, and make them streamable in an instant. You just chuck your mp4 files in there, and off you go. You can then use them in conjunction to a Flash player application that supports h.264, to stream and playback on your web site (in case you don’t want to use Vimeo/YouTube for some reason).

It’s a curious thing, really. Back in the ’80s I hated the Cure, or the Talking Heads, or any other progressive rock band. I also disliked heavy metal, although I didn’t mind the milder Bon Jovi. I also hated my native Greek music (and I still do). I was a yet another pop girl, in love with Michael Jackson and Madonna.

But in the ’90s, things changed. The time I became an adult was also the time we were able to acquire MTV signal from the local pirate re-broadcasters in my area. It made me more used to rock, alternative rock in particular, but that was also the time that Eurodance was big in Europe/Japan, which I also loved at the time.

This current decade has been all about rock though. JBQ is a heavy metal/alt/hard rock guy (big Iron Maiden fan), so I naturally got used to the sound even more. Franz Ferdinand, AFI, Green Day, Rise Against, Disturbed, Linkin Park, Metallica are all in our daily rotation.

However, I am changing again.

This time, my favorite music is actually the indie experimental sound, a sound that usually sits somewhere between pop, rock and folk — with a twist. Bands like Arcade Fire, Cloud Cult, British Sea Power, Blitzen Trapper, Feist, Orenda Fink, Portugal The Man, Ratatat, Scissors for Lefty, Midlake, Sea Wolf, Sin Fang Bous, We Are Wolves, and Wye Oak are what I like listening to. I don’t like all of their songs, but some of their stuff, I find amazing.

Now, you are probably thinking: “wait a fucking second. Aren’t you the same person who said just a few weeks ago that indie rock is not that epic, or that this is the kind of music you actually dislike?”.

I am. Or, maybe I am not.

I feel that I am changing again. During my vast research of free, legal mp3s on the internet last month I had to listen to this “new” sound a lot. Most of the new bands out there play such music. And I got used to it. I now “get it”.

For some of that music we have a specific word in Greek: “κουλτουριαρικη”. Means that it’s somewhat modern art, difficult to get into at first, and usually liked by specific kind of people, not your normal Joe & Jane. This doesn’t mean that it’s the music for snobs, but rather somewhat underground and unappreciated by the public at large. The funny thing here is that I always disliked that kind of music and I even opposed it all my life. I liked accessibility. But I think I now too get the endorphins associated with it. Update: I guess the international equivalent term to that Greek word is “avant-garde”.

I think one reason this music is not more popular (especially in Europe), it’s because is it’s uneven. I mentioned some bands above, and yet, I only like a fraction of their songs. For example, I bought the whole repertoire of Arcade Fire the other day, and I only find 10 songs that I like in there (and only 5 that I really like). As for my favorite indie band, the Cloud Cult, I *only* like their latest album! And while I love the current Blitzen Trapper, I can’t stand their first two albums. On the other hand, I can go through an AFI, Green Day, Muse, Franz Ferdinand, Madonna album without skipping songs! Some of these guys with a major’s contract might be history in terms of music genre, but their albums are overall better because they have more evenly good songs in them. The only indie bands that I like all their albums and all the songs, from start to finish, are the Malbec and the Drist (JBQ likes them too).

However, JBQ hates that vast majority of that indie folk-y music (he can’t stand Cloud Cult for example, to my surprise). He in fact finds it “painful”, he said, on at best “nothing special”. But I think it’s just that: getting used to it and “get” the serene melody with complex layers these songs offer compared to a hard rock shouting match that probably we heard it all before. To me, indie music is like rock married pop and had babies. However, I did notice that for some songs that JBQ hated originally, when I replayed them days later he was more susceptible to them (e.g. Feist’s “One Evening”).

These days iTunes is playing for me alternative rock, that new crop of indie rock, and some hard rock and trance songs. Very rarely I listen to pop anymore. Regardless of what kind of music I will be listening to in the new decade, one thing is for sure though: it won’t be Greek.