Hi,

I didn't want to post this in the taoA:M 'cause everything looked so orgainized... I know zip about the forum or the video versions of the tuts -- I went through the tuts long before the videos existed using (get ready for a blast from the past... perhaps a collectors item by now):

Click to view attachment

Anyway I noticed that the voice and the video are offset which is maddening for a person just learning. Seems to be this way with the online versions as well as the versions on the Siggraph 2006 Pro Series. Is there anyway to fix this?

Thanks!
Rusty

I just watched "Move It" (web version) and it didn't seem to have a synch problem.

Is there a specific one you noticed?

Almost all of them but not right at the beginning... it gets real bad toward the end of the video. I don't remember 'move it' but definitely 'flowerpower 1/2' and 'fighter plane 1' and the 2 or 3 before those its bad. It can be hard to tell if you are not following the tut. In flowerpower2 at about 10:02 (this is the on-line stuff -- there is a time code in the lower right) you see him rename the bone and he is talking about it as he does it later at about 10:17. In fighter plane 1 at about 16:25 he moves the wing into the body of the plane... he talks about this while he does it later at about 16:35 (before 16:25 you can really see it as he group selects, messes up and tries again then talks about it later.

What a shame! These are so great. Also the person drops the mic in a couple of them and all sound is lost (well, its very low). Re the audio offset, I'm hoping that I need a different codec or something like that to make it right.

Thanks,
Rusty

PS: I might be able to align the voice in Premiere... the biggest problem is finding the time.

Well...

In 'Fighter 1', who every recorded it (and this person gets my thanks! really great job!!)... I think his mic fell off mid-way through as the volume drops off to almost nothing. My wife is doing these tuts and it will be one of the greatest joys in my life if she kept it up and started helping me in the studio! She has never done anything like this before, she really likes these tuts (again, great job to whoever did these) and therefore I'm going out of my way to make the road as easy as I can for her. This is why I have this tut in Premiere, extracting the audio and will use what tools I have along with the little expertise I have with audio to fix the volume fall off as well as the audio/video sync problems which get pretty bad in this one. I wish I knew how this could happen... I may reinstall tech-smith to see if that helps (grasping at straws). If I come up with something that's an improvement, I'll post it for anyone who'd like it... primarily for Hash to replace its on-line version.

Cheers,
Rusty

Edit: BTW, if anyone has any suggestions to help with this please speak up. I have Sonic Sound Forge, Premiere, Audacity and After Effects Production Bundle V6. The problem of course is that increasing volume increases noise. Audacity has one of the best noise reduction functions I know of, Premiere has good hiss removal... honestly I don't know if AE has anything to help.

Rusty,
I can't speak for Steve Sappington and the other illuminaries who poured their sweat and tears into the TaoA:M videos but if you are up to the task I say go get 'em.

As the A:M Channel gets up and running on Youtube new edited versions of these tutorials might prove quite welcome.

Uh the old manual... got that one too
My startingpoint-version has to be the last version where it was delivered...
But yours seems to be much more used
BUt mine lost some pages which are now no longer attached to the book... (but I never lost a page )

*Fuchur*

The 'fighter1' tut kept me going for until 2 in the morning and, sort of in the background, most of today! There must be a much easier way to do this. Last night most of my time was spent on increasing the volume of and then cleaning up the latter 75% of the audio which was too low to hear, once the volume was increased there as a lot of noise -- this was removed fairly easily with Audacity but removing the very loud peaks by hand took forever (this isn't my area of expertise). Then I put the volume back in Premiere and cut gaps out to synchronize it with the video. It is very large and I hit render to AVI same codec as original, 10fps before turning in.

I woke up to 'Unknown Error', changed a few things and tried again... 'Unknown Error'... and again. Now I'm almost done rendering to TGA just to see where the error is... but why???? Well so I could let Cleaner compress the TGAs with the audio.

There must be a much easier way... if it were a QT you can simply remove the audio track and replace it with a modified version and save (which re-renders it). I'm not sure if there is a way to do this with avi files.

Anyone know?

This is taking way too much time... I won't be able to keep this up. Any new people out there wanna help? Or, I'll invest the time and effort for all of them (yes! all of them that currently exist but no time constraints, I'll just continuously work until they are all done) for two upgraded AM licenses (this year and next... we're talking a lot of work!). (Our portfolio provides us retired people with $$$ and, not to put too fine a point on it, the stock market crash killed us). Someone get this proposal to Dr. Hash. The tuts are valuable but watching them (and you can't see shortcut keys) and then 5 seconds later hearing what's going on is very hard for someone just learning to follow.

Rusty

A lot of times I've screen cammed something and had situation similar to yours where the sound gradually crept out of synch.

If I could judge how far off a track was running at the end* I'd load it into quicktime pro, export the audio and video into separate files , clip the lag amount off the end of the faster track and paste them back together.

You have to paste video into an audio track, not audio into a video track, to avoid distorting the sound.

then you export to a new .mov in some appropriate codec.

This was faster than resynching in AE, which I also tried.




*this is the tricky part

In the beginning they are in sync... they slowly go out of sync... so it seems in the one I've worked on. I think its more a matter of shrinking the audio down so it 'fits' again. This is not so hard. What's time consuming (besides rendering the adjusted sound with the video) is the volume problems. All of them could be a little louder (again no problem) however, in at least two so far you hear the sound of something dropping (like the mic LOL) and then the volume drops way down there. The only way I know to fix this is to pump the volume back up along with all the noise, hiss and static. You then use a variety of filters in a variety of tools to remove all this. Finally you have it cleaned up except for the sharp, very loud noise peaks, some very short that hurt your ears. I know of no way to remove these except by hand.

There is A LOT of material there (hats off to Steve!) -- part 1 of the FW190-fighter plane is an hour and there are 4 parts all about the same length. And this stuff is good and I believe has great value to beginners. Someone should clean it up.

Rusty

As much fun as it'd be to resync and refurbish these classic tutorials perhaps it'd be better to create new tutorials from time to time?

As long as the basic lessons from the tutorial are learned, that's our main goal right?
Rotoscopes, Splines, Lathing, Extrusion, Decaling... if the basic lessons can be learned with an airplane... why not a train, a boat or a spaceship. No matter the model if the student follows the tutorial close enough there is a very good chance the student's model will turn out just fine. They'll certainly have something to show for the effort and they'll have learned a whole lot about splines.

This need not be a lot of extra effort although good tutorials do take considerable time.
I'm convinced that if the average A:M User just recorded their onscreen efforts each day and shared the best of those efforts once in awhile, we'd have more tutorials here in the forum than we could watch in a lifetime. I'm sure more than a few would be worthy of prime time.

You speak as if you were the owner of Hash Inc. Rodney. ;-) Are you LOL? Anyway I'm not sure what change would inspire something that has not happened even once in the entire history of the company but I'm all for it! Until then, Hash has nodded -- I've already finished one and started on another.

Cheers,
Rusty

I think for the most part the subjects in TAoA:M are solid choices for teaching a concept. They may not be new to us, but they are new to the new user, and if they are old to us that increases the chance someone here will be able to answer a new user problem.

We do need a full giraffe video. I'll try to make that in the moderate near future.

Absolutely!!

(Pssst! Do a volume check before you start and don't drop the mic. :-) )

I laugh but that joke must be older than I am Rusty.

I speak as someone who has seen the TaoA:M tutorials stay the same for coming up on ten years now.
Ten years is a lot of time.

I'm glad to see the resurgence of interest in TaoA:M and applaud your personal effort here.
With attention going into refreshing these classic tutorials we could be ready to celebrate TaoA:M's tenth anniversary right on time.

I suppose others understand that but I'm afraid I'm clueless. :-(



I guess I don't know too much about you Rodney... in fact I know nothing about you. The above, taken literally, 'says' 1999. Now I started with Hash and the old Hash mailing list in 2001 (or maybe 2000 hard to recall) and truthfully the first couple of years were rough ones regarding the relationship between Hash and myself... lets just say that Hash and myself were in marriage counseling the first few years LOL. Now when the forum was born (early to mid 2003 I think) I joined right away but after about two months I walked out on the 'counseling' sessions not to return for about ten months -- early to mid 2004 I guess. When I came back, 'Rodney' was everywhere however, before that I don't remember you being anywhere. So I've always assumed you entered the Hash world in 2003/2004. Tell me what I'm missing. That's honest curiosity -- nothing more. For all I know you're Martin's son or brother!!

Rusty

You asked...

I first discoved A:M in 1994... at Las Vegas Comdex days before shipping off to Japan.
I didn't buy it... bought a demo video of A:M instead.
Missing that opportunity was the biggest mistake I've ever made in software purchasing.

Before and after 1994 I frittered away my early years of interest in 3D playing with command line programs like POV and Polyray.
It was fun but not particularly rewarding. I didn't have a head for the math. Too cheap to invest in A:M at $299 I spent much of my time cartooning.

Became something of a workaholic.
Really got into computers. DOS still ruled!
Got married. Had a baby. The first of two wonderful girls.
Stayed home a lot more of the time.
In 1998 I found I couldn't resist purchased the 'meltdown' CD.
Best choice in software purchasing I've ever made.

Lurked on the old animaster list.
Posted once or twice.
Asked a question like, "why does the CD have to be in the drive"... and felt the wrath of the vocal minority (probably one person but it felt more like a hundred). Retreated back into obsurity and started reading everything that got posted. Tried to apply what I was reading where possible. Sent a couple emails to A:M Users off line (Jeff Cantin responded!). Decided I didn't know enough about anything worth knowing to post. Discovered (by reading between the lines) that Steve Sappington was a nice guy. A slow dial up phone connection pretty much ensured I wouldn't see anything but stills and limited animation most of the time. Didn't really understand A:M but played with it every chance I got. Tried to make it do lots of things it wasn't meant to do.

2001 hit and the world exploded. Can't honestly say I've yet recovered.
Most of that year and the next is real blur.
Kept really busy though.

Moved back to the states and got cable connectivity at the same time Hash Inc launched their new online Forum.
Started answering simple stuff.
Got a little too bold.
Got a personal reply from Martin Hash... thought he was going to ban me from the forum.
Martin offered me the opportunity to moderate the Newbies forum.
I told him I'd be an honor.
Ken Baer helped get me going.
Discovered TaoA:M (4 years too late!)
Gulp.
I knew I should have read that manual!
Finally... started learning how A:M was suppose to be used.
More stuff happened.
A:M became even more of an incredible program.
Martin Hash started making a movie.
Too many deployments.
Too many disappointments.
Too many posts.

...and thats how I remember it mostly.
Ask me again tomorrow and who knows.

This is where I'm suppose to ask about you right? So... what's your story?
(Extra points if you include TaoA:M somewhere in it!)

Rodney,

That was cool. Thanks. So 'you' were lurking?!? That's sure changed. You are now a force in the community -- a good one -- and I guess you are not really Dr. Hash using the name of Rodney.

Perhaps Steve Sappington is a nice guy and just didn't like me or... maybe he was stressed out... I don't know. He sent me some pretty 'unique' support responses and, as a grumpy old man, I don't take much crap so I swatted back. He retaliated, things escalated, I threatened to turn all his 'unique' responses over to a big 3D magazine (I saved each one and they were official Hash support replies), many prominent users personally asked me not to as they thought it would hurt Hash (which I didn't want either but it was Steve hurting Hash) and so on and so on. Quite a shame. I think he was stressed and took every problem reported personally. Eventually we eKissed and made up (but I still have those replies).



Well, add this post to my previous one and you already have it all. I was in the IT Industry for 20 years (systems programmer, software architect, MIS) and also, evenings and weekends, while others were watching TV or surfing, my wife and I (a team for 38 years now) flipped houses long before it was called that. We both traded in all that for a portfolio and retired 7 years ago. All I do all day is work with AM and write my book. We have two wonderful children and two dogs. Now you have it all LOL. (Oh yeah, three cheers for TaoA:M!).

Sincerely happy to meet you Rodney.

Cheers,
Rusty

Back in the day too many people tried to get into Hash Inc policy.
Too few just used the software.

One thing you have to remember about the old listserver and why it was easy to get banned is that anyone could launch an email about anything and everyone would get all the spam. Many members of the listserve wanted Steve (or anyone for that matter) to rule with an iron hand. Not everyone knew this of course and there was always the potential for misunderstandings. But... and this is an important 'but'... if people followed the listserver rules they wouldn't have had any problem. On the day I discovered Steve was just doing his job to the best of his ability, something changed. For one thing, I stopped blaming Hash Inc for my errors.

Here in the A:M Forum life is a little easier.
If someone violates the rules their posts can go away.
And even it if is there everyone doesn't have to read the spam.

Occasionally we still don't get it.
But chances are if a post of mine disappears I can figure out the reason.
Like: 'Ah... feature requests go to A:M reports'... now I get it.
...and messages that should be send to [email=""]'support@hash.com'[/email] rather than become rants here in the forum.
Before we post that stuff here... we already know the outcome. Do we not?

Being edited pisses us off doesn't it? Grrrr... it's maddening!
I think thats a fair reaction but we get over it, learn to know better and press on.

As with the old listserver its easy to get unbanned* (or with the forum to rephrase and repost a question).
Hopefully no one will take it personally.
But we do have to follow the guidelines.

Nice to meet you too Rusty.
Here's to the future!
(with an occasional look back to TaoA:M)



*The ratio of banned users here is amazingly low. Its something like 1 per every 8,000 forum members.
I can remember one troll that really had it coming though.