2012-04 Music and Video

I really need to finish a piece of music.

I had a general idea and planned to keep it simple; Some autoharp mic'd up close so all the key bridge noises and fingers on the strings and creaks etc. would be picked up then add some short wave radio noise and some tabla.

Setup the mic's. Do a sound check with the electric guitar first. Like the sound. Try some delay effects. Like that. Add some more. Sounding quite good and a sequence of notes comes together quite well. Do a take. Sounds good. Add effects. Yum.

Now the video.

I wanted this to be about Autumn. Dig out photos of Autumn of Daniel's farm and some dead tree and park photos. Get the TV23 image scripts out and generate some scenes with them. Fire up a video editor and mix the stylistically best fitting ones together to the right length and add the sound.

Quite nice really.

Upload to Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A6Fl3EMZd2U

2012-03 Refurbish Autoharp

A friend gave me an Autoharp that needed some love after a few years in the garage.

Stripped down the key bridges and cleaned the gunk. The felt pads look good. The springs seem fine too. Cleaned what I could of the sound board while there and removed the remains of the broken strings.

Reassembled.

Got old guitar strings and fitted them where the weights seemed close. Pulling out the little brass plug from the end of the string left a loop of wire that fits well over the ping that secures the end of the string in the Autoharp.

No Key. The local music shop had them and luckily there's no fitting problem. Was $15 or so and they had them in stock.

The quartz digital tuner I use for guitar tuning has the range and made tuning a long (32 strings ) but easy enough process.

The chords sound very weird; re-tune. Still weird. Look at photos of instrument; Aha: I have the key bars on up-side down. You don't play it on your lap like a dulcimer but on your chest like a super stumpy guitar. Change the key bars.

Beautiful.

2012-02 Digitise Video tapes

I've had a few goes at this. always a bit half-hearted but I'd like to get rid of the tapes lying around and I have a gruntier system then when I last tried so I'll give it another shot.

# ***** Done: *****
# size is good.
# deinterlace is acceptable.
# cropping - could be better.
# Selects the correct video input (instead of the TV tuner) Check the size and rate settings.
# output to file. - works without fram dropping on video only - test with audio.
# audio capture. - need to set the capture channel via alsalmixer.
# sync to keep sound in sync - no noticable drift in 10 min tests
# A format better: 10min = 270meg. Try audio compression too ? Great - tiny now.
# Cropping top and bottom looks a bit out too. - Better, good enough for now.
# ***** Needs: *****
# nothing really - some good long tests.
# find out why the grab is sometimes textured and a restart fixes it.
mencoder -tv driver=v4l2:input=3:alsa:adevice=default:width=768:height=576 -vf pp=lb,crop=768:560 tv:// -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=medium -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=1 qp=40 -o deathrace2000.avi

# Result:
# Works very well indeed with 927M for a full length video that looks as good as the original and can be viewed close to real time with mplayer so you can record as you watch.
# Outstanding issue:
# find out why the grab is sometimes oddly textured and a restart fixes it.
# Workaround:
# Check recording with mplayer after a few seconds. Restart if not right.

mencoder -tv driver=v4l2:input=3:alsa:adevice=default:width=768:height=576 -vf pp=lb,crop=768:560 tv:// -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=medium -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=1 qp=40 -o deathrace2000.avi

# Trim and crop:
# ***** Needs: *****
# Needs to be sped up
# Needs to preseve quality.
# ***** Done: *****
# Start time: -ss hh:mm:ss.xx
# End time: - t seconds or hh:mm:ss.xx
# Crop: -vf crop=width:height:x:y
# the -vcodec copy overrides any -vf - fix quality: Use another codec.

ffmpeg -i deathrace2000.avi -ss 00:00:50.00 -t 20 -vcodec libx264 -vf "crop=656:560:54:0" dr2000-02.avi

That's all a bit sucky: Just trim instead and use the player to crop if needed. So I can just go:

ffmpeg -i deathrace2000.avi -ss 00:00:50.00 -t 20 -vcodec copy dr2000-02.avi

Which is blindingly fast and preserves quality.