DigitalDuckling

Just put some work in progress up on my SkyDrive

No Comments | In: Maya, Stills, Work | | #

During 3DDA I did some stuff that I have yet to upload in OK quality. So I’ll do it in this post, note that this work is almost over two years old. And back then I had no experience with animation or anything, so I’m happy with some of this work

Bad Room

Of course there is more but this post is getting rather long and I cannot upload everything on my server. There may be something else on my Youtube account.

No Comments | In: Animation, Noroff, Portfolio | | #

I wouldn’t exactly call this a tutorial, but it can help you with a little file size struggling when you are going to upload your videos either it is to YouTube or other places.

Ok, the first thing you need to have is your finally edited movie. (My example here is already compressed, but I think you get a lot better quality with less compression!)
Got it? Great!

Next, if you haven’t yet, get QuickTime Pro! Yes, the Pro version, it costs about $29.99 or NOK 249, and that really isn’t too much for a video compressor. Sorenson Squeeze 5 costs $ 499.00 and lets be frank; how many ways of compression do you really need?

So now that you have gone pro, lets move on! Open your video in Quick time and just hit [File -> Export]
Now you can choose to either export to Qucktime-Video or MPEG-4
I have experimented a little bit with the formats and genially like the Quicktime (mov) format best and as illustrated in the preview under you might get a little better quality from choosing it:

Illustration of Settings and Difference

Okay so the clue here is to use the H.264 Compression Codec,

(this is the same codec they use for the trailers at  apple.com) You should be able to just copy the settings  I have set for the different formats and that should do it. (You might adjust the Data rate if you are having a higher resolution on your film.)

Another good tool in Quicktime Player is the Movie Inspector [Ctrl+I] this one gives you all the technical info on the movie you are watching. Want to compress your video in HD 480p, 720p or 1080p? As long as your original resolution is bigger you can do so by just copying the preferences from a trailer with the definition of your choice. Good luck!

In my example my video was already compressed in another codec, and still I made it 8,5 times smaller. Its just amazing!
I got the inspiration to make this comparison over at 11 Second Club and if your clip at least has sound (unlike mine) you should check it out!

No Comments | In: Tutorials | | #

Ever seen this show? Unforgotten Realms is the perfect show for people that like South-Park, don’t have a particularry conservative humor and are or know somebody that are into any type of role playing games.

It actually is so stupid that it is good, and tonight another episode showed up

I would suggest you start from the first episode though. -Its just a 5-7 min online show, no reason to let it slide.

In other news Zero-Punctuation finally gave me a long awaited review on Little Big Planet.

No Comments | In: Games, Shows | | #

Ok, so I met up with Morten 10 some hours ago and followed him to Qvisten HQ, beforehand informed about the trainee spot , sadly, already taken. I can’t blame anybody; nobody knows me, and I completely understand that they wanted to hire someone they could trust.

Anyway over at Qvisten I got to look around a bit and even help out, as I am very happy to do. Morten had a assignment with a Stratos commercial, and this is a guy thats really fun to help out because he is always open for critique and tips, before I knew it I had been there for 8 hours. Cool!

I got to talk some with the other employees and one the supervisors as well, hope they made a positive impression of me as I would like to help out over there if I am allowed to. Morten is going to contact me tomorrow so that I can have a look at the render we worked on, can’t wait.

No Comments | In: Life | | #

I mean whats the point? When you start watching something it just gets pulled. Stupid abc…

I have recently sunken my teeth into Dirty Sexy Money, only to find out that its not going to air anymore. I should have checked for this before spending all those hours, but naive as I am I didn’t. And consequence follows.

Today I’m meeting up with Morten I think, he is probably going to show me around at Qvisten. But I really should get a haircut so i don’t scare anybody there. Its due you know.

Sent my CV to that other job as well, the most important thing for me now is to get some kind of experience so that somebody that doesn’t know me would take me seriously for once.

No Comments | In: Life, Shows, Work | | #

The last couple of days I have updated to the latest version of WordPress and started on building my own design; amazing what you can do with some images and some tweaking in CSS… I guess the divs are blocking the background, but here it is if you want a closer look. Not much; just a collaboration. In other news… I still want a job! Got one for me? I received a phone call for a couple of hours ago about a job down here in the center of the city. It seemed alright, really the only thing bothering me now is that my friend, Morten, may have arranged for me to become a trainee on Qvisten which is awesome! This means that I’ll have to work for free, but that is well worth it! It is a little bit sad to hold back on the other job if I can’t get on the trainee program though. SO. I have to do something clever now! Anyway… this was not meant to be a story of my life kind of thing… Learning Maya is getting more interesting. The website I am working on for the guy I probably never mentioned is getting done, as soon as he pays me. Ah… I gotta go to sats now.

No Comments | In: Job, Life | | #

Once more it has been a long time since I have posted anything.
I have discovered some nifty tools as of late; The Snipping Tool, this one came with my Vista Ultimate some how or I did not realize it before now. Really nice if you just want to print screen a tiny piece of your screen. Too bad there is no way, (that I know of at least,) you can make a hot-key for it. Thats the only flaw I can see now. There an alternative I have been using thought, (Gadwin PrintScreen,) and it lets you add hot-keys, sure there are others but I express the ones I have tried.

I have also come to like Google Chrome a lot, until now, as it is impossible to compose any type of e-mail in Hotmail with it. It also has issues with the 11 second club frame counter and always start loading pages on a white background. But it is quite nice to avoid the whole browser set crashing.

Last but not least. Ever heard of Oscars File Renamer? It is a free and nifty tool that lets you rename file names in any folder as if it was writing in note pad! This is great for organizing, say your mp3s or pictures? You do not need to rename them one by one you just type all the filenames and hit a button and thats it!

As for me, well I am doing okay, if you should care. Really want a job thought. I feel like an idiot for not having a job while I was younger, really. But I guess standing up for my friends seemed to be worth it then and there, I believe it will be the right choice in the long run thought.
I’m currently trying to get a job with a car rental service, I know it seems way out of my orientation, but I am a guy and I love cars so I think I can enjoy myself there, at least for a while.

Hope I remember to post

Edit 02.05.09:  
There is a temporary way to make Chrome working with hotmail etc. (QuickTime still an issue) add this to your shortcut:
–user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.19″ 
 Example:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe –user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.19″

Remember that you have to have all instances of chrome closed before running the shortcut; if you don’t it won’t work!

No Comments | In: Life, Software | | #