Pixar vs. DreamWorks
on
Shrek 2 How-To
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, I think there's going to be a Pixar vs. DreamWorks debate raging for a long time. I've seen all of Pixar's movies and most of the DreamWorks flicks that were computer animated, including Shrek I and II. I tend to try to stay out of these types of debates but I do have some opinions on this one.
First off, I've felt that DreamWorks has been unfairly riding Pixar's coattails for a long time now.
They find out about Bug's Life, they release Antz. They find out about Monsters Inc., they release Shrek. They find out about Finding Nemo, they start work on Shark Tale. (I would expect the announcement of a super hero flick really soon now.)
It always came across to me as being a dirty practice meant to intentionally cause confusion in the marketplace and get people to see their movies thinking there was a connection to the Pixar films.
Secondly, I feel DreamWorks' stories are lacking - particularly when it comes to Shrek I and II. To me, watching Shrek was like watching the best of Saturday Night Live. There were lots of short parody bits, many targetting Disney movies or traditional fairy tales - most targetting current pop culture. I think that between these bits and the modern pop music, these movies are not going to stand the test of time well. In my mind, they were well worth the ticket price at the theatre but I wouldn't dream of purchasing them on DVD.
As for the quality of the animation, I think anybody would be hard pressed to say that Shrek I and II weren't extremely well done. They were certainly cinema quality productions. I still think Pixar does it better though. There's something about the movement of the characters in Pixar movies that is more emotionally expressive and natural looking. It's just a tad more polished and artistic than the DreamWorks stuff.
Man, these teams are using the wrong military vehicles. Humvees? Supply trucks? What the hell is that? Seriously man, strap a GPS system onto an M1 Abrams and open that baby up.
I say screw collision avoidance. Go for collision dominance. Any obstacle capable of stopping a 65 ton tank travelling at 45mph is gonna show up on the mother f**king map.
Vocals in a tight room
on
Quieting Your G5?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I am currently recording some vocal overdubs in a small room with a dual G4 in it. Here is my advice if you can't move the machine to a second room:
1) Position the mic so that the maximum angle of rejection faces the computer (180 degrees for cardioid patterns, 90 degrees for figure 8, etc). 2) Dampen the walls of the room with auralex, blankets, mattress foam, whatnot. 3) Gate the vocals when mixing down.
If you're close mic'ing the vocals, fan noise shouldn't be a big issue. It's really when you want to start using distant mics that it becomes a pain. Obviously omnidirectional mics will also tend to be more problematic.
Another thing I do sometimes if I want to record an extremely quiet audio source is fire up VNC on my laptop and run mic cables into the next room. My laptop is dead silent under normal operating conditions so it makes a great remote control for my desktop.
It depends on the speed that the device is set to. It's contantly detecting what pitch you're singing. When it sees that you've been on the same note for x amount of time, it starts correcting. In the case of a very short auto tune time, you would hear glissandos as a scale of distinct notes. It would probably sound especially unpleasing to the ear too because the singer would not be accenting those pitch changes. In the case of a very slow retune time, the gliss would be completely unaffected by the auto tuner.
I'm not sure what the maximum time the device can be set to is but the fastest setting is nearly instantaneous.
The idea that perfect pitch is required for "absolute mastery of the craft" is absurd. Most people with perfect pitch can barely stand the sound of a piano, guitar, or any other instrument with preselected notes.
For example, the note D is actually a slightly different pitch when played in the key of D vs when played in the key of C or G. However, you don't want to tune a piano to only be in tune for songs in one key so somebody developed what is called the equal tempered scale. It's a scale where in theory, each note is equally out of tune no regardless of the key you play in. This drives people with perfect pitch and even some orchestra players without perfect pitch absolutely crazy when a piano or classical guitar player is playing with the orchestra.
The more you learn about pitch, the more subjective and nebulous you'll find it to be.
Ok, first off, I saw Shania Twain perform at the superbowl last year on TV and I can say she absolutely, positively, was NOT using an auto-tuner. I mean, why use an auto tuner when you're lip synching?
Secondly, they're not the black magic that the article makes them out to be. I've used one many times in a recording setting and they can't make a bad singer into a good singer. They can make a slightly out of tune singer sound in-tune and that's about it. Plus they're hard to use. If you set the tuning speed to fast, they'll flatten out your vibrato. If you set it too slow, bad notes will get through. They have limited usefulness.
I wish I would get one of these. I think everybody should pick their favorite arcade game, zip up some random binary data, name the zip file after their favorite game, then put it up on their website with a hidden link such as a 1 pixel transparent gif or such.
The story says it is possible for a Chimera to have different sets of DNA in different body parts. This can cause complication for body identification, DNA typing for organ transplants, crime investigation, etc.
Wouldn't this cause complications a little more important to the individual than those listed? Like say, stuff not fitting together right? I mean, I wouldn't want to try and build a working car from half Ford Explorer parts and half Ford Focus parts.
I wonder how many people with this condition die before birth or at a very young age.
I don't know what you consider "true conversation" but I think we have a difference of opinion here. I can't stand sitting around and talking about the weather for half an hour. It's just social lubricant for situations where people have nothing in common but are forced to interact.
You can't be in close proximity to people in most enviroments without talking or the situation feels awkward and uncomfortable. So you talk about the weather. But after a short time, there's nothing more to say and without conversation, here comes the awkward silence. Talking about cloud types or pressure systems or whatnot will at least extend the conversation and might even lead to another topic. Calling this behavior a plea for attention is absurd.
Talk about what you're interested in and sooner or later you'll find other people with similar interests. Talk about the weather all the time and you'll find people with nothing interesting to say and nothing in common with you.
Yeah now X is so perfect we couldn't ask for anything better. I've NEVER heard anyone have a problem with setting up X now!!! *infinite line of rolling eyes*
Ok, X can still be a hassle from time to time but it's nothing at all like it was before. Try setting it up with no autodetection of any hardware at all. No automated configuration scripts, nothing. Just you, your text editor of choice, and the config file.
The information you needed to configure it was never actually supplied with your video card. You pretty much just had to hope that somebody who was really brilliant with hardware would own the same card as you and post the specs to USENET. It took me days to get X running for the first time. Now, with a modern distro, on a lot of machines it does a damned fine job of configuring itself. Hell, lots of distros even have X based installers. There's no way that would have been remotely possible.
While X might still be a headache sometimes, you have to appreciate how far it's come.
Setting up X11 back in the day used to be a complete and utter pain in the ass. All that dot clock stuff used to drive me insane. Not to mention everything you read said that if you did it wrong you could fry your monitor and/or video card. Man, thank god those days are over.
I think perhaps people are missing the biggest problem with this whole case. The problem is not whether or not Mike Hawash is guilty or innocent. He made the decision to plead guilty. That was his choice, right or wrong.
What I think we need to look at is how the government was able to arrest and hold him for months without access to his family or lawyer while no charges had been filed. We have a right to due process in this country. The government is not supposed to be able to lock you up indefinitely without a trial. Yet they were able to use a loophole to hold somebody that they clearly were intent on prosecuting without the rights even the most vicious serial killer would be granted. "Hostile Witness" my ass.
Keep in mind, before we jump all over the potential violation of his right to freedom of speech, he chose not to defend himself. It was his decision to go for a lighter sentence in a plea bargain rather than take the risk of being found guilty. You can't fault the government for that. Perhaps you can fault his publicly appointed defender or the judge but in this case, the law wasn't even tested.
Ok, I know it's counter intuitive, but bear with me. I think DRM could possibly make music, movies, books etc, MORE readily available for free.
I've layed out my idea in my blog. I could be wrong but I think it works. The only barrier I can see here in the states is possible DMCA issues resulting from decrypting DVD's or some future encrypted audio format.
DRM can be used to subvert fair use, or protect it depending on whose hands it's in.
A better question to consider is this: In this forum you have asked a question regarding the legality of a certain action. Imagine, it is not found to be legal, and later on you are caught red-handed when doing that very thing you were asking about (downloading an MP3 song).
You can't claim ignorance anymore; in fact, you have just incriminated yourself by talking to the very person who will aid in prosecuting you later.
Ya know, I was just about to ask a question redarding murder but I thought about those three guys I killed back in texas and realized my mistake. If I let on that I knew murder was a crime, then I could be found guilty!
I'll also have to make sure I don't ever bring up parking tickets, speeding tickets, or failure to pay fines. I don't want to lose my license.
Ignorance provides 0 protection from criminal prosecution. If it did, we couldn't prosecute anybody for anything.
Speaking from experience, getting hit by the current from a ringing phone line can be extremely uncomfortable. Back in the dialup days I always had a second phoneline. I also moved a lot. So most places, I would have them bring the second line to the outside of the house/apartment and then wire it myself to save cash. The last time I did this, the apartment was already wired for two lines but the second one wasn't connected to any of the jacks. So, being a moron, for some reason I was holding the wires for the primary line in my mouth while I was stripping the wires on the second line when somebody decided to call me. Wham! It was like chewing on an electric fence. Very unpleasant experience.
Needless to say I don't put wires in my mouth anymore whether they're connected to anything or not. Looking back I'm not sure why I did it in the first place. I think maybe the wire was wanting to fall back into the wall and I was in a hurry.
Interesting that they pulled the "details" because they seem to have been reminded that they were confidential (see note at bottom of page). Do we see the shadow of the Long Arm of Apple or a case of sudden recall?
It doesn't look that way. It looks like the author misunderstood the purpose of the meeting according to this.
I also believe a mirror of the original text on CD baby lives here.
Man, I hope CD Baby works out a licensing deal where CD's from CD Baby's catalog are also sold on iTMS. I plan on selling an album through them this summer and I would love for it to be available in iTunes as well.
I heard an old Billy Joel ballad on the radio, a song from back in the days when I had hair. I just had a few lines, but the melody stuck with me.
I typed those lines into Google with his name, and the song popped up on a fan/lyric site. It was "And So It Goes." Never would have found it otherwise.
I did go out and buy the CD, though it wasn't easy to find. If this is their attitude, next time I'll just snag it off eDonkey. Fuck 'em. Lot's less hassle to just steal it.
The problem may be this... MPA members do not get any cash from the sale of that CD.
This isn't the first time Saturday morning cartoons have "disappeared". There was a time when I was in middle school where none of the three major networks were airing cartoons on saturday morning. I think my local Fox affiliate was playing some agriculture show that lasted all morning too. So we had 0 cartoons. A few months later, our Fox affiliate started broadcasting cartoons and then eventually the big three got involved again.
If the networks can find something else that will produce higher ratings on a Saturday morning, it might be a while before we see Saturday morning cartoons come to every station. However, I would have to imagine that at least one network will find that they can make very high scores with toons.
And in other news, Several so-called "slashdot readers" have been hospitalized with probable blindness after trying to get a close up view of their freakish toys in action...
I've news for ya. Robots have nothing to do with why slashdot readers go blind.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I think there's going to be a Pixar vs. DreamWorks debate raging for a long time. I've seen all of Pixar's movies and most of the DreamWorks flicks that were computer animated, including Shrek I and II. I tend to try to stay out of these types of debates but I do have some opinions on this one.
First off, I've felt that DreamWorks has been unfairly riding Pixar's coattails for a long time now.
They find out about Bug's Life, they release Antz.
They find out about Monsters Inc., they release Shrek.
They find out about Finding Nemo, they start work on Shark Tale.
(I would expect the announcement of a super hero flick really soon now.)
It always came across to me as being a dirty practice meant to intentionally cause confusion in the marketplace and get people to see their movies thinking there was a connection to the Pixar films.
Secondly, I feel DreamWorks' stories are lacking - particularly when it comes to Shrek I and II. To me, watching Shrek was like watching the best of Saturday Night Live. There were lots of short parody bits, many targetting Disney movies or traditional fairy tales - most targetting current pop culture. I think that between these bits and the modern pop music, these movies are not going to stand the test of time well. In my mind, they were well worth the ticket price at the theatre but I wouldn't dream of purchasing them on DVD.
As for the quality of the animation, I think anybody would be hard pressed to say that Shrek I and II weren't extremely well done. They were certainly cinema quality productions. I still think Pixar does it better though. There's something about the movement of the characters in Pixar movies that is more emotionally expressive and natural looking. It's just a tad more polished and artistic than the DreamWorks stuff.
Am I alone in wanting a completely computer-generated movie that looks real instead of cartoony and actually has a good plot?
:)
Well, there's Star Wars episodes I and II if you're willing to loosen your requirement that it have a good plot.
Man, these teams are using the wrong military vehicles. Humvees? Supply trucks? What the hell is that? Seriously man, strap a GPS system onto an M1 Abrams and open that baby up.
I say screw collision avoidance. Go for collision dominance. Any obstacle capable of stopping a 65 ton tank travelling at 45mph is gonna show up on the mother f**king map.
I am currently recording some vocal overdubs in a small room with a dual G4 in it. Here is my advice if you can't move the machine to a second room:
1) Position the mic so that the maximum angle of rejection faces the computer (180 degrees for cardioid patterns, 90 degrees for figure 8, etc).
2) Dampen the walls of the room with auralex, blankets, mattress foam, whatnot.
3) Gate the vocals when mixing down.
If you're close mic'ing the vocals, fan noise shouldn't be a big issue. It's really when you want to start using distant mics that it becomes a pain. Obviously omnidirectional mics will also tend to be more problematic.
Another thing I do sometimes if I want to record an extremely quiet audio source is fire up VNC on my laptop and run mic cables into the next room. My laptop is dead silent under normal operating conditions so it makes a great remote control for my desktop.
what does it do to glissandos?
It depends on the speed that the device is set to. It's contantly detecting what pitch you're singing. When it sees that you've been on the same note for x amount of time, it starts correcting. In the case of a very short auto tune time, you would hear glissandos as a scale of distinct notes. It would probably sound especially unpleasing to the ear too because the singer would not be accenting those pitch changes. In the case of a very slow retune time, the gliss would be completely unaffected by the auto tuner.
I'm not sure what the maximum time the device can be set to is but the fastest setting is nearly instantaneous.
The idea that perfect pitch is required for "absolute mastery of the craft" is absurd. Most people with perfect pitch can barely stand the sound of a piano, guitar, or any other instrument with preselected notes.
For example, the note D is actually a slightly different pitch when played in the key of D vs when played in the key of C or G. However, you don't want to tune a piano to only be in tune for songs in one key so somebody developed what is called the equal tempered scale. It's a scale where in theory, each note is equally out of tune no regardless of the key you play in. This drives people with perfect pitch and even some orchestra players without perfect pitch absolutely crazy when a piano or classical guitar player is playing with the orchestra.
The more you learn about pitch, the more subjective and nebulous you'll find it to be.
Ok, first off, I saw Shania Twain perform at the superbowl last year on TV and I can say she absolutely, positively, was NOT using an auto-tuner. I mean, why use an auto tuner when you're lip synching?
Secondly, they're not the black magic that the article makes them out to be. I've used one many times in a recording setting and they can't make a bad singer into a good singer. They can make a slightly out of tune singer sound in-tune and that's about it. Plus they're hard to use. If you set the tuning speed to fast, they'll flatten out your vibrato. If you set it too slow, bad notes will get through. They have limited usefulness.
I wish I would get one of these. I think everybody should pick their favorite arcade game, zip up some random binary data, name the zip file after their favorite game, then put it up on their website with a hidden link such as a 1 pixel transparent gif or such.
The story says it is possible for a Chimera to have different sets of DNA in different body parts. This can cause complication for body identification, DNA typing for organ transplants, crime investigation, etc.
Wouldn't this cause complications a little more important to the individual than those listed? Like say, stuff not fitting together right? I mean, I wouldn't want to try and build a working car from half Ford Explorer parts and half Ford Focus parts.
I wonder how many people with this condition die before birth or at a very young age.
I don't know what you consider "true conversation" but I think we have a difference of opinion here. I can't stand sitting around and talking about the weather for half an hour. It's just social lubricant for situations where people have nothing in common but are forced to interact.
You can't be in close proximity to people in most enviroments without talking or the situation feels awkward and uncomfortable. So you talk about the weather. But after a short time, there's nothing more to say and without conversation, here comes the awkward silence. Talking about cloud types or pressure systems or whatnot will at least extend the conversation and might even lead to another topic. Calling this behavior a plea for attention is absurd.
Talk about what you're interested in and sooner or later you'll find other people with similar interests. Talk about the weather all the time and you'll find people with nothing interesting to say and nothing in common with you.
Yeah now X is so perfect we couldn't ask for anything better. I've NEVER heard anyone have a problem with setting up X now!!! *infinite line of rolling eyes*
Ok, X can still be a hassle from time to time but it's nothing at all like it was before. Try setting it up with no autodetection of any hardware at all. No automated configuration scripts, nothing. Just you, your text editor of choice, and the config file.
The information you needed to configure it was never actually supplied with your video card. You pretty much just had to hope that somebody who was really brilliant with hardware would own the same card as you and post the specs to USENET. It took me days to get X running for the first time. Now, with a modern distro, on a lot of machines it does a damned fine job of configuring itself. Hell, lots of distros even have X based installers. There's no way that would have been remotely possible.
While X might still be a headache sometimes, you have to appreciate how far it's come.
Setting up X11 back in the day used to be a complete and utter pain in the ass. All that dot clock stuff used to drive me insane. Not to mention everything you read said that if you did it wrong you could fry your monitor and/or video card. Man, thank god those days are over.
I think perhaps people are missing the biggest problem with this whole case. The problem is not whether or not Mike Hawash is guilty or innocent. He made the decision to plead guilty. That was his choice, right or wrong.
What I think we need to look at is how the government was able to arrest and hold him for months without access to his family or lawyer while no charges had been filed. We have a right to due process in this country. The government is not supposed to be able to lock you up indefinitely without a trial. Yet they were able to use a loophole to hold somebody that they clearly were intent on prosecuting without the rights even the most vicious serial killer would be granted. "Hostile Witness" my ass.
Keep in mind, before we jump all over the potential violation of his right to freedom of speech, he chose not to defend himself. It was his decision to go for a lighter sentence in a plea bargain rather than take the risk of being found guilty. You can't fault the government for that. Perhaps you can fault his publicly appointed defender or the judge but in this case, the law wasn't even tested.
Ok, I know it's counter intuitive, but bear with me. I think DRM could possibly make music, movies, books etc, MORE readily available for free.
I've layed out my idea in my blog. I could be wrong but I think it works. The only barrier I can see here in the states is possible DMCA issues resulting from decrypting DVD's or some future encrypted audio format.
DRM can be used to subvert fair use, or protect it depending on whose hands it's in.
That's odd. Can't both people share the same area code?
A better question to consider is this: In this forum you have asked a question regarding the legality of a certain action. Imagine, it is not found to be legal, and later on you are caught red-handed when doing that very thing you were asking about (downloading an MP3 song).
You can't claim ignorance anymore; in fact, you have just incriminated yourself by talking to the very person who will aid in prosecuting you later.
Ya know, I was just about to ask a question redarding murder but I thought about those three guys I killed back in texas and realized my mistake. If I let on that I knew murder was a crime, then I could be found guilty!
I'll also have to make sure I don't ever bring up parking tickets, speeding tickets, or failure to pay fines. I don't want to lose my license.
Ignorance provides 0 protection from criminal prosecution. If it did, we couldn't prosecute anybody for anything.
I think we should hold this guy to his word. For those of you who didn't get this month Linux Journal, here's a quote:
"Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim."
Darl McBride, CEO, The SCO Group, August 2002 Linux Journal Article #6293
We should have seen this coming almost a year ago! Note the double negative. "nor will not" Damn, he was telling us his intentions all along
Speaking from experience, getting hit by the current from a ringing phone line can be extremely uncomfortable. Back in the dialup days I always had a second phoneline. I also moved a lot. So most places, I would have them bring the second line to the outside of the house/apartment and then wire it myself to save cash. The last time I did this, the apartment was already wired for two lines but the second one wasn't connected to any of the jacks. So, being a moron, for some reason I was holding the wires for the primary line in my mouth while I was stripping the wires on the second line when somebody decided to call me. Wham! It was like chewing on an electric fence. Very unpleasant experience.
Needless to say I don't put wires in my mouth anymore whether they're connected to anything or not. Looking back I'm not sure why I did it in the first place. I think maybe the wire was wanting to fall back into the wall and I was in a hurry.
Interesting that they pulled the "details" because they seem to have been reminded that they were confidential (see note at bottom of page). Do we see the shadow of the Long Arm of Apple or a case of sudden recall?
It doesn't look that way. It looks like the author misunderstood the purpose of the meeting according to this.
I also believe a mirror of the original text on CD baby lives here.
Man, I hope CD Baby works out a licensing deal where CD's from CD Baby's catalog are also sold on iTMS. I plan on selling an album through them this summer and I would love for it to be available in iTunes as well.
I heard an old Billy Joel ballad on the radio, a song from back in the days when I had hair. I just had a few lines, but the melody stuck with me.
I typed those lines into Google with his name, and the song popped up on a fan/lyric site. It was "And So It Goes." Never would have found it otherwise.
I did go out and buy the CD, though it wasn't easy to find. If this is their attitude, next time I'll just snag it off eDonkey. Fuck 'em. Lot's less hassle to just steal it.
The problem may be this... MPA members do not get any cash from the sale of that CD.
RIAA members get case from the sale of the CD.
This isn't the first time Saturday morning cartoons have "disappeared". There was a time when I was in middle school where none of the three major networks were airing cartoons on saturday morning. I think my local Fox affiliate was playing some agriculture show that lasted all morning too. So we had 0 cartoons. A few months later, our Fox affiliate started broadcasting cartoons and then eventually the big three got involved again.
If the networks can find something else that will produce higher ratings on a Saturday morning, it might be a while before we see Saturday morning cartoons come to every station. However, I would have to imagine that at least one network will find that they can make very high scores with toons.
Heh heh, that's pretty funny. Now who said that?
I'm not sure. My braille terminal is on the fritz.
And in other news,
Several so-called "slashdot readers" have been
hospitalized with probable blindness after trying
to get a close up view of their freakish toys in action...
I've news for ya. Robots have nothing to do with why slashdot readers go blind.