It appears that the Big N has bought Monolithsoft. I had a lot of hope (back in 1999 when the news about Tetsuya Takahashi leaving Square to form his own development house first broke) that it would mean a continuation of the fantastic Xenogears RPG. What we got was a poorly conceived "retelling" of the early parts of the Xenogears story (early, because the series was planned poorly, no one followed the plan, or there never was a real plan).
Now that they're under control of Nintendo, I don't know what to expect. The Wii is in desperate need of RPGs to bolster their lineup. And though neither series was very successful, I'm betting they'll end up expanding on the Baten Kaitos series (a Gamecube project by Monolithsoft) story rather than Xenosaga series.
I think I'd like to try my hand at making an AMV (but not actually of the music variety). If I could refine it enough, I'd like to see if it could make the cut for AMV Hell 4.
But I want to do it with a different clip. It's a toss-up between a clip of Aisha from Outlaw Star on the bridge of her (for a short time) battleship, or Admiral Spoor in one of her many bizarre bridge scenes. I'm leaning toward the later.
Oh boy... welcome to hell, boyo! If you've never used Premiere and all the other things you have to have to make an AMV (like me with The Kanon Project {working title}), you'll be wanting to run your wrists through a tablesaw in NO time.
If you HAVE used the programs needed, then more power to you!
I've gotten past the 'hell' part of my AMV, and now it's in the 'grinding' part... maybe by the end of the month, the 'first draft' will be done. Maybe.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 24, 2007 03:27 PM (aIFaX)
Heh, I haven't even met up with Virgil and started my decent.
I've never dabbled in this before, so I'm going to be searching out any FAQ's and how-to guides I can find.
I've got to figure out which software I want to use (and can afford). If there's something out there that makes life easier, but stings the pocketbook mightily, I may just suck it up and pay for it anyway. Of course that means I need to find other projects to get my money's worth out of the purchase.
Posted by: Will at April 25, 2007 07:42 AM (olS40)
Hah, I finally found where I put this comment! Will, if there's anything I can do to help you once you start trying to do this, lemme know. After (almost) finishing my first AMV, I know (first hand) the big pitfalls that will bite you otherwise. They bit me, and added three or four days worth of work to the project in the process, not to mention a lot of sanity.
I used Premiere, but I had a hand-me-down copy, so it didn't cost anything... otherwise, it would have cost an arm and a leg. For a simple, easy viddy, you could use Windows Movie Maker... It's not bad, per se, just really, really dumb.
If you're a member of animemusicvideos.org, download the amvapp. If you're not a member of amv.org, join up (it's free!), THEN download it (there may be a 2-week waiting period). It is worth it's hard-drive space in gold.
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 22, 2007 07:57 PM (aIFaX)
I've had an account over at AMV.org for a couple years (but I visit so infrequently, I always forget my password). I've actually got a couple projects (not all AMV's) in mind if/when I can get myself out from under the stack of jobs at work. That, and now that summer is back, my dad is probably going to start asking for help with his car restoration on the weekends again.
You know, I'd meant to offer up my services with your beta. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Sekai wo ooini moriageru tame no Suzumiya Haruhi no dan
He's mostly right. This ties back into one of my old threads about relative clauses.
The most basic form of this sentence fragment is...
涼宮ãƒãƒ«ãƒ’ã®å›£ - Suzumiya Haruhi no dan - Suzumiya Haruhi's group/brigade. In this case, the no is possessive. (another useful way of think about the no, it that it allows "Suzumiya Haruhi" to modify "group" similar to the way an adjective would in an English sentence)
The beginning of the fragment...
世界を大ã„ã«ç››ã‚Šä¸Šã’ã‚‹ - sekai wo ooini moriageru - is a complete sentence that says "to completely/greatly stir up the world."
The definition of "function" or "reason" for tame is basically accurate, but I don't think it conveys the full meaning. Think of tame as a way of saying "for the purpose of", "for...", or "in order to."
The other no between tame and Suzumiya is not a possissive, but definitely a noun modifier. Combining the complete sentence with the tame and the no gives you a relative clause that modifies "Suzumiya Haruhi's group."
Putting that into an English fragment...
Haruhi Suzumiya's group for (the purpose of) completely stirring up the world
The reason tame doesn't show up in a lot of dictionaries is that it's not really a free-standing word.
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I posted a comment on wonderduck's thread on the same topic, so sorry if I'm being repetitive. You do a good job of explaining this, but I have a caveat and a note.
As I said in the wonderduck thread, "stir up" seems like a clunker of a definition for moriageru. It's not actually incorrect, in the sense that moriageru could certainly be translated that way in some circumstances, but it seems really off to me. "Liven up", "enliven", and "brighten [up]" would all be better, I think, if you are looking to get the word across. Even "Overload with fun" is closer than "stir up", which is usually attached to the word "trouble" in English.
As for tame.. I would be very suspicious of a J-E dictionary that didn't have tame in it. It has to be among the several hundred most used words in Japanese, and you're unlikely to get through an arbitrary episode of anime without hearing it a few times.
Tame is actually a fine freestanding word, meaning something like "benefit". This is really clear in the common set phrase "tame ni naru" which means something like "beneficial". This actually explains the more common use "in order to" pretty well- ultra literally it would be something like "for the benefit of this purpose".
From there it's not hard to see how it might also mean "because" (I am hesitant to say that it evolved into that meaning as I am not sure of the chronology) though there isn't a satisfying ultra-literal explanation of that (one of the example sentences in my dictionary involves getting diarrhea "because" of contaminated water, and it is hard to see who that benefits, except maybe the bacteria involved). Still, I think this way of looking at tame can help in understanding its usage.
Anyway, sorry to geek out on you- your explanation is definitely good.
Posted by: Tagore Smith at April 21, 2007 05:50 PM (RHuBz)
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I certainly don't mind. It's been a couple years since I had any real practice with the language. I am quite rusty, and I have no doubts that some of the professional instruction I got in school may be wrong in places.
Posted by: Will at April 21, 2007 10:32 PM (olS40)
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Well, having seen your comments in other threads you don't seem rusty to me. But I do see a lot of cavilling based partly on the Monash definition of moriageru. As I said, I think it is a very bad definition.
Mainly I think it is very dangerous to evaluate a translation on the basis of one dictionary entry (or one dictionary's entries), particularly for people who don't speak any Japanese. Of course I wouldn't include you in that camp.
Anyway, I do know which forum Jim Breen reads and I will post something about moriageru there. It won't help with sites using older versions of the Monash JDICT, but...
Anyway, as I said, I think you did a very good job explaining the phrase.
Posted by: Tagore Smith at April 22, 2007 12:15 AM (RHuBz)
What I really need to find is my Kodansha Furigana dictionary. Nelson's great if you're looking up a kanji compund like 世界, but the furigana dictionary is so much better for finding phrases like 盛り上ã’ã‚‹.
The Nelson does have an entry for 盛り上ã’ã‚‹, but it only says "pile up" or "heap up."
Those definitions are clunkers as well. I think the problem lies in the addition of "save" and "fun" to the fansub translation. Those words simply aren't in the original Japanese text. Not even by implication, as far as I can tell. Looking at this complete title out of context (as we both know, a big no-no with Japanese), I'd be lost trying to figure out how one could "pile up the world completely."
That's why I want my furigana dictionary. It contains a lot of colloquialisms and implied meaning. It's too bad I seem to have lost it in my last move.
Posted by: Will at April 22, 2007 09:36 AM (olS40)
I guess you could take liberties with the definition of 大ã„ã« to mean "to bursting" and 盛り上ã’ã‚‹ to mean "to fill up." Combine that with the implication that everything Haruhi ever says or does is about having more fun, and you get...
Haruhi Suzumiya's group for (the purpose of) filling the world to bursting with fun.
The "saving" is the only part really left out, and that comes from the original SOS abbreviation.
Well, now that that's settled. *cough*
Posted by: Will at April 22, 2007 10:50 AM (olS40)
Don't ever drive across Central/West Texas (or much of eastern New Mexico for that matter).
Spent Thursday in my truck going to Justin, Tx. 17+ hours. Saw the VLA in person and drove through Roswell. Otherwise, ugh.
Friday... zzzzzzzz*snork* what? Tornadoes? Baseball size hail? WTF? Please don't hit my truck.
Saturday... brrrr..... *freezes near to death and sleeps all day*
Sunday... An idyllic Dallas / Ft. Worth day. Went to the NASCAR event at TMS. Got to walk back because my hosts changed post-race plans without informing me.
Spent Monday in my truck getting back from Justin, TX. There can't be many places on Earth flatter than the terrain near Amarillo, Tx.
And that, is why I haven't been responding to a damn thing anyone has said to me.
That file sizes look more like what I should be seeing.
So very weird. When I first load any page in which this video object exists, the player doesn't appear at first. I get the generis object icon. It acts almost like it's buffering before bringing up the player (WM plugin in my case). While that's happening, I can see my cable modem is actively trying to grab the file. Once the object decides to actually do something, both the embedded player and Windows Media both appear. WM gives me an error about not being able to parse the AVI (because it's not actually getting ahold of the file), and the embedded player has all the controls grayed out.
While all of that is going on, it locks me out of clicking on the "Add Comment" link. You can click all you want but nothing happens. Is there some controller that is being used by both the embedded player and the comment editor?
There must be something I'm missing in my object tag. Or, I haven't got just the right path in the tag. Is it possible that Minx thinks I'm trying to hotlink the file from outside and is shutting me out? I know I can right click the direct link and save as (and if that's what I have to do, it's what I have to do).
Posted by: Will at April 11, 2007 06:42 PM (olS40)
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Minx doesn't have hotlink prevention yet, so it's not that. I'm not 100% sure what it is, right now. Minx will serve up the file okay, but maybe there's something with the exact way the browser expects to receive an embedded object... I'll have to play with it a bit more.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 11, 2007 06:55 PM (PiXy!)
That seems to have fixed the comment hangup, but it's still not pulling up the content. crud.
Oh, and it looks like the uploads may be working just fine, but when the transfer takes too long, it doesn't route me to the File Info page when the upload is complete.
Posted by: Will at April 11, 2007 08:34 PM (olS40)
Oh, and it looks like the uploads may be working just fine, but when
the transfer takes too long, it doesn't route me to the File Info page
when the upload is complete.
Yeah, that might be the case. So all I'd need to do is tweak the timeout flag - I'll look into that.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 12, 2007 03:58 AM (PiXy!)
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Maybe we should try it with a very small video file; it might be easier to debug that.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 12, 2007 04:05 AM (PiXy!)
This time with a mock bumper sticker I made up a couple years back.
Good. It didn't dump it in the more editor this time.
And I'll leave it unassigned for a category and try moving it again. I keep doign this because I can see now that I'm frequently going to end up writting posts before I have a proper category. If I can't get them to move, well, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
Studied Japanese for two semesters. I still have the basics, tho I lost all kanji (well, almost all) and my vocab is getting smaller all the time. I can't remember how to do any tenses other than present, so I'm always stuck in the now when I try to say anything. If I had more time, I'd spend some of it on learning more. The most I do now is turn off the dub when watching a zatoichi flick or some animu...
Posted by: McGurk at April 12, 2007 09:16 AM (Ri74D)
Ok, so I've got the Category appearing below each post ("Posted in XXX by Will",unless the category is unspecified, then you just get the default "Posted by Will"), and I've managed to get Categories into the sidebar. Now I can flesh them out a bit. I can see where the folders are set to make things very powerful, but you've got to be careful about the Type you specify.
And I'm going to leave this post without a category. I'll create a "Tweaks" category later, and then I'll try to move this post into the category.
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Guess I need to be careful not to click into the More editor unless I really mean it. Now I've got a "more..." without anymore stuff to actually see.
Posted by: Will at April 10, 2007 03:50 PM (SOx9v)
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Yeah, even if you don't type anything it inserts a <br> all by itself. I can probably set the system to filter those out.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 11, 2007 01:17 PM (PiXy!)
A little experiment
Bringing up still more posts, but this time, I've created an "anime" category. But for some reason, if I view the anime folder, none of the previous posts appear there. (This posts is being created after the category was created. The previous posts were moved into the anime category. If this post appears and the others don't I'll have narrowed down what the problem is either way.)
more...
My old Haibane Renmei post
There are times when I'm just utterly embarrassed by my older posts. I do believe my writting has improved. I think I was just trying too hard. I sound(ed) like a pretentious ass.
more...
Wellll... I think it may be a good idea to start small. There's no sense in going nuts on the system. There are only so many bugs one person can fix at a time.
And I haven't been able to decide if this beta fell at a great or terrible time. I'm going to be taking a 6 day trip to Texas starting Thursday, so my contribution to the destruction may be limited. On the other hand, if my dad brings his laptop along, it may give me a chance to experiment with posting on the road.